Religion: The Bible as Culture

WHO was Cain? Where was the Garden of Eden? What is the patience of Job? Many teen-agers cannot answer such questions—and for a good reason: since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963 outlawed devotional Bible reading in public schools, few U.S. school systems have offered Biblical studies of any kind. Justice Tom C. Clark’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court decision made a point of recommending that the Bible should still be studied for its “literary and historic qualities,” but that option is rarely exercised. Some diehard school districts in a few states still defy the court and teach an old-fashioned Protestant version of the Bible, but only four states, a handful of cities and some individual schools have attempted new approaches to the Bible.

Each of the attempts has been different. In Indiana, an optional literature course presents the Bible in the light of 19th century “higher criticism,” but few schools have adopted it. In Pennsylvania, a new course on “Religious Literature of the West” tries a broader perspective and includes not only selections from the Bible but also from the Koran and rabbinical writings. A successful program was created by the University of Nebraska for elementary and secondary schools; it incorporates religious viewpoints on various topics in English courses. Florida, in a promising new effort, combines religion with social studies rather than with literature, and uses historic documents and sermons to illustrate religious influence on various periods. For states that have not yet created a program, though, there may be a simpler solution: an ambitious new book called The Bible Reader: An Interfaith Interpretation (Bruce; $3.95 paperback).

The 995-page volume was written by a quartet of authors—a Roman Catholic priest, a rabbi and two Protestant scholars—and contains extensive selections from both Old and New Testaments. Its value, however, lies mainly in its wealth of commentary, which provides a cultural understanding of the Bible that few college graduates possess. Moreover, disputed texts are fully and carefully interpreted, explaining the basic Jewish, Protestant and Catholic viewpoints.

Adam’s fall, for instance, elicits a variety of interpretations, from the Catholic teaching on “original sin” to the Calvinist idea of “total depravity,” the essential corruption of all man’s powers. The authors point out that Jews in particular “do not hold that man is permanently tainted with guilt as a result” of Adam’s sin, and quote also the second of the Mormon Articles of Faith, which states that “men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam’s transgressions.” Unusual interpretations by smaller sects are noted elsewhere in the Reader. General William Booth’s idea of a strongly centralized authority for the Salvation Army, the book points out, derived from a passage in the Book of Exodus.

The idea for the book originated with Jesuit Priest Walter M. Abbott ten years ago—four years before the Supreme Court decision—while he was an editor of America. Work began in 1961 after Father Abbott had been joined by Dr. Rolfe Lanier Hunt, a Methodist educator, the Rev. J. Carter Swaim, a Biblical scholar and Presbyterian pastor, and Rabbi Arthur Gilbert, now dean of the Jewish Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia.

Literature or Revelation. The authors faced formidable problems trying to meet the Supreme Court’s requirements and at the same time answer serious theological objections. Though the Clark formula is clear, critics have argued that objectivity is difficult to realize in practice. Most religion courses, Jews maintain, are bound to reflect a Christian bias in what is historically a Christian society. Other critics insist that true impartiality, in any event, distorts the real nature of religion as a sense of the ultimate. “Reading the Bible as literature rather than as revelation,” says Rabbi Eugene Borowitz of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, “is worse than not reading it at all.”*

Though The Bible Reader has yet to be tested in court, it seems to overcome the other objections to a remarkable degree. Rather than disguise the Bible as a vague sort of cultural literature, the authors do in fact treat it as the central spiritual experience in the lives of the Hebrews, and later, in the lives of Christians. Jewish critics will be mollified by the rich Jewishness of the commentary. Rabbinical interpretations are frequent; renowned authorities like Rabbis Hillel, Gamaliel and Samson Raphael Hirsch are quoted. The Hebrews’ escape from Egypt leads to a description of the Passover Seder, and the appearance of the young Jesus in the Temple is used to discuss the ceremony of Bar Mitzvah (a phrase, Christians will be interested to learn, which means “Son of the Commandment”). Some of the details even border on the esoteric: when the story of Joseph’s temptation by Potiphar’s wife is sung in synagogue, the book notes, the musical notation over the word “refused” is long and drawn-out, “suggesting that it was not easy for Joseph to turn away from this temptation.”

Famous Rebuttal. Protestants who envision Roman Catholicism as being out of touch with Scripture may be surprised to find how much of the Catholic Mass is derived from the Old and New Testaments. Catholics, on the other hand, may gain a new respect for the earnest Biblical faith of Protestant heroes. Acts 5:29 (“We must obey God rather than men”), the commentary notes, inspired Martin Luther’s famous refusal to recant—”to go against conscience is neither right nor safe”—as well as the defiance of Nazism by Germany’s Confessing Church. Some examples of heroism are poignant: Quaker John Woolman, dying of smallpox, told his friends to “rejoice evermore, and in everything give thanks.” Then he added, “This is sometimes hard to come at.”

The Bible Reader is not exclusively concerned with religion. It abounds in references to music, art and literature that reflect Biblical themes, from classical art and music to the late Arnold Schoenberg’s contemporary opera Moses und Aron and Soviet Author Vladimir Dudintsev’s anti-party novel Not by Bread Alone. Political and legal references also abound—especially contemporary ones. In selected passages from Jewish law in Deuteronomy, students are invited to find comparisons with today’s bankruptcy laws and military exemptions. In an extensive commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ counsel to “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies” is cited as the reason “some persons” become conscientious objectors. Throughout the book, alternative translations of famous passages are offered. An American Indian version of the 23rd Psalm, for instance, reads in part “He puts his hand upon my head, and all the ‘tired’ is gone.”

Indeed, perhaps the major problem many will find with The Bible Reader is its very abundance of thoughtful material. To cover the book thoroughly, or to expand on it, as the authors suggest, would probably take even the most heroic of teachers (and the most alert of classes) longer than a year of daily sessions. For most schools, the book could very well be spread out over two or three years—an option that the authors just may have intended.

* Or, as W. H. Auden put it in a somewhat broader context:

Thou shall not be on friendly terms With guys in advertising firms, Nor speak with such As read the Bible for its prose. Nor, above all, make love to those Who wash too much.