The Bible: Jerusalem Olympics

In Haifa and Tel Aviv, the major movie theaters were half empty. Throughout Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews sat listening by their radios, many with Bible in hand. Jerusalem’s big Convention Hall was jammed to its 3,000-seat capacity and, said an official, “We could have sold out the hall five times over.” It was time for the third International Bible Quiz, a triennial event that has become an international institution in the land of Benjamin and Ben-Gurion.

Bookkeeper & Glassblower. This year, 20 contestants were in Jerusalem for the finals, each a winner of competitions in his homeland. There was a chicken farmer from New Zealand, a paratroop major from the Belgian army, an Italian glassblower, a Seventh-day Adventist bookkeeper from Brazil, a Swiss electrician. From the U.S. came Polish-born Samuel Joshua Singer, 58, a onetime Yeshiva student and a former assistant attorney general of New York State. France sent a professional Scriptural scholar, Roman Catholic Abbe Raymond Seguineau, 42, who is preparing a Bible concordance; Finland’s champion was blonde, blue-eyed Irja Immonen, 29, a church worker. The Israeli champion, predictably, was a rabbinical student: tense, bearded Yomtov Krasniansky, 24, who crammed for 15 hours a day before the contest. Calmest of the lot was Graham Mitchell, 29, a Seventh-day Adventist and an accountant from Sydney, Australia.

The contest lasted two nights, using questions drawn up by a team of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish scholars and tested out on the 1961 world champion, Rabbi Yihie Alsheich of Jerusalem. A team of 15 linguists then put the questions, all taken from the Old Testament, into the ten languages spoken by the contestants. Toughest problem: phrasing the questions in Amharic for Begalech Gabre, a beautiful 18-year-old girl from Ethiopia, who entered the contest in hopes of getting a scholarship to a Jerusalem medical school.

King & Prophet. Some of the questions were easy enough for a Sunday school class—such as “Who smote a lion and a bear?” (answer: Samson) or “Give the names of two Biblical shepherds, one of whom became a king, the other a prophet” (David and Amos). Others demanded an almost photographic memory of the prophetic books and chronicles. Example: “Give six instances where a man or a woman prevented war or bloodshed.” By the time of the second round, half of the contestants had dropped out of competition; Mitchell and Krasniansky were neck and neck for the lead. On the final round, Mitchell scored 45 out of a possible 50 points, including eight out of twelve on a complex question about prophetic references to Jerusalem. On that question, the judges gave a nine to Krasniansky, who nonetheless fluffed an easier one, finished second with 44. Third, with 38½, came Irja Immonen.

It was 2:30 in the morning when the judges announced the results, six tense hours after the final contest began. As they handed Mitchell his prize, a gold medal, a band struck up God Save the Queen, and the audience stood to give him a long, warm round of applause. “All I was concerned about was to bring Australia the gold medal,” said Mitchell proudly, “and I’ve got it.”