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.