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Why Johnny Can’t Read the Bible

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mwkruse
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Christianity Today: Why Johnny Can't Read the Bible

Most Americans—including Scripture-loving evangelicals—cannot name the disciples, the Ten Commandments, or the first book of the Bible. But that's not our biggest biblical illiteracy problem.

 Americans love their Bibles. So much so that they keep them in pristine, unopened condition. Or, as George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli said in a widely quoted survey finding, "Americans revere the Bible but, by and large, they don't read it."

Anecdotes abound. Time magazine observed in a 2007 cover story that only half of U.S. adults could name one of the four Gospels. Fewer than half could identify Genesis as the Bible's first book. Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert have made sport of Americans' inability to name the Ten Commandments—even among members of Congress who have pushed to have them posted publicly.

Perhaps the first step toward improved Bible literacy is admitting we have a problem. A 2005 study by the Barna Group asked American Christians to rate their spiritual maturity based on activities such as worship, service, and evangelism. Christians offered the harshest evaluation of their Bible knowledge, with 25 percent calling themselves not too mature or not at all mature. …

… But pastors, professors, and others committed to teaching the Bible have identified a problem far larger than fluency with basic characters and stories. It's one thing to recognize the reference to the Promised Land in a Martin Luther King Jr. speech. It's another to recognize biblical references within the Bible itself. Even weekly churchgoers who know the names and places struggle to put it all together and understand the Bible as a single story of redemption. …

… The rise of historical criticism in the 19th century was largely responsible for downplaying the Bible's overarching metanarrative, says Thornbury, dean of the School of Christian Studies at Union University. But evangelicals have done their part as well. Scholars' narrow specialization in one aspect of the Old or New Testament can trickle down from seminaries to pastors, then to local churches.

As a result, sermons about King David often amount to little more than moral biography: David committed adultery and murder, and we shouldn't. Or pastors may search for allegorical meaning behind the Old Testament figures, matching a sermon point on courage to each of David's five smooth stones. In either case, churchgoers do not see how David contributes to the messianic pattern fulfilled in Christ. …

The article discusses some ways Christians are trying to address the problem. I once enrolled in a seminary class to learn more about the New Testament, but frankly, it was all Greek to me. 🙂

Here is a quiz from the end of the article:

A Different Kind of Bible Literacy Quiz
So you can name the 12 disciples, the 10 Commandments, and the 7 days of Creation. But do you know how they fit together?

1. What lesson from the life of Jonah did Jesus talk about?
(a) Jonah learned to obey God, because disobedience is punished.
(b) God forgives the repentant as he forgave Nineveh.
(c) God rescues us as he rescued Jonah when he was cast overboard.
(d) Jonah spent three days in the fish as Jesus would spend three days in the tomb.
(e) People are as wicked today as they were in ancient Nineveh.

2. Melchizedek, king of Salem, met with which biblical figure? How is Jesus like Melchizedek?

3. Besides Jesus, name five biblical figures who rose from the dead.How were these incidents different from Jesus' resurrection?

4. Name four biblical instances where the number 40 is important.

5. Whose faithfulness is contrasted with the Israelites' grumbling in Exodus 16-18?

6. Name the four women besides Mary who are included in Jesus' genealogy (Matt. 1:1-17), and describe their circumstances.

7. "No prophet is accepted in his hometown," Jesus said after his inaugural sermon (Luke 4:14-30). He then gave examples from the lives of two other prophets. What were they?

See the end of the article for the answers.

Comments

5 responses to “Why Johnny Can’t Read the Bible”

  1. John Avatar
    John

    But the various Bible stories etc are now just bits and pieces of words floating around in the collective world wide tower of babble/babel. As such they really do not have any more real significance or meaning than any other random collection of words, or TV advertising jingles.
    Welcome to the sound-bite generation.
    We now also live in a truly multi-cultural world in which all of the Sacred texts of the entire Great Tradition of humankind are freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
    ALL of that IS now our common inheritance. As such we are all obliged by historical necessity to go back to school and thus free or minds and bodies from our religious and cultural provincialism.

    Reply
  2. Travis Greene Avatar
    Travis Greene

    This is a big problem for everyone, particularly in regard to the overarching metanarrative. Most Bible stories are presented as that, individual stories (implicitly for children) that have no larger context they fit into. But with all due respect and with appreciation for what I’ve learned from the mainline traditions, I do think evangelicals do a better job of at least learning the stories, and while there’s much I’m glad to leave behind from my conservative upbringing, I’m thankful for biblical literacy.
    So let’s see.
    1. What lesson from the life of Jonah did Jesus talk about?
    (d) Jonah spent three days in the fish as Jesus would spend three days in the tomb.
    2. Melchizedek, king of Salem, met with which biblical figure? How is Jesus like Melchizedek? Abraham, and Jesus is like Melchizedek because he is a priest outside the order of Aaron’s descendants.
    3. Besides Jesus, name five biblical figures who rose from the dead. How were these incidents different from Jesus’ resurrection? Lazarus, that kid that fell out the window, Jairus’ daughter, Dorcas, the guy they threw into Elisha’s tomb. Those were different because someone else raised them, whereas Jesus raised himself. Also, they presumably will die again, whereas Jesus is truly transformed.
    4. Name four biblical instances where the number 40 is important. Noah’s flood, the Israelites wandering in the desert, Jesus being tested in the wilderness…um…it’s probably in Revelation somewhere.
    5. Whose faithfulness is contrasted with the Israelites’ grumbling in Exodus 16-18? The church in Corinth? Or Galatia? Someplace.
    6. Name the four women besides Mary who are included in Jesus’ genealogy (Matt. 1:1-17), and describe their circumstances. Rahab, who was a Jerichoan (sp?) prostitute who hid the Israelite spies; Tamar, who tricked her father-in-law into getting her pregnant; Ruth, who stayed with her Israelite mother-in-law after her first husband died, and married Boaz, and whose grandson was David; I forget the other one.
    7. “No prophet is accepted in his hometown,” Jesus said after his inaugural sermon (Luke 4:14-30). He then gave examples from the lives of two other prophets. What were they? Um…Isaiah? I’m not sure about this one.

    Reply
  3. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    You done pretty good Travis. Here are the answers from the end of the article:
    1. (d) See Matthew 12:40.
    2. Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” met with Abram (Gen. 14). Jesus is like him in that he is a priest forever (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 5:6), once and for all, and greater than the priesthood of Aaron (Heb. 7). The writer of Hebrews says that he was “without beginning of days or end of life” (7:3).
    3. The son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17); the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4); the dead man who touched Elisha’s bones (2 Kings 13:21); the son of the woman of Nain (Luke 7); the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5); Lazarus (John 11); Dorcas/Tabitha (Acts 9); Eutychus (Acts 20); and the dead raised when Jesus died (Matt. 27:52). Each was resuscitated, not resurrected; they died again. Jesus’ resurrected body was unbound by normal physical properties, though he ate and could be touched.
    4. Days Jesus spent tempted in the wilderness (Matt. 4:2); days Jesus spent with his disciples after the Resurrection (Acts 1:3); days and nights of rain in the Flood (Gen. 7:12); Moses’ years in Egypt and then in Midian (Acts 7); years the Israelites spent in the wilderness; Moses’ days on Mount Sinai (Ex. 24:18; Deut. 9:18); days the spies were in Canaan (Num. 13:25); Elijah’s days journeying to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8); Nineveh’s days to repent (Jonah 3:4); the years of rule of many judges and kings of Israel.
    5. Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, the Midianite priest (fitting the pattern of the faithful outsider contrasted with the unfaithful Israelites; see also Rahab, Caleb, etc.).
    6. Tamar, who masqueraded as a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law (Gen. 38); Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute (Josh. 2, 6); Ruth the Moabite (Ruth 2-3); and Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, who was murdered by David (2 Sam. 11).
    7. Elijah’s care for the widow in Zarephath (instead of the widows of Israel), and Elisha’s healing of Naaman the Syrian (instead of the lepers of Israel).

    Reply
  4. Travis Greene Avatar
    Travis Greene

    Bathsheba, of course.

    Reply
  5. ZZMike Avatar
    ZZMike

    Our Presbyterian church gives Bibles every now and then to children graduating from grade school. At the time, I thought that at least the good part is that they will never read them – except perhaps parts of the 4 Gospels, during Bible study.
    Any sane seeker, ignorant of Christianity, who could read through the first 5 books of the Bible, and still want to become a Christian, should probably have his head examined.
    I wonder if the results would be much different if the poll questioned only “People of the Book”.
    Michael: Do you think “reinterpretations” like “The Message” help any? (Personally, I don’t, but then, I’m sort of partial to the KJV.)

    Reply

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