Adam Nicolson, author of God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, writes in the Wall Street Journal today about biblical illiteracy.
Do we need to know what it says in the Bible? Are we somehow illiterate if we don't? Up until, say, 100 years ago, biblical literacy would have been practically mandatory. If you didn't know what "the powers that be" originally referred to, or where "the writing on the wall" was first seen, or what was meant by "the patience of Job," "Jacob's ladder" or "the salt of the earth" -- if you didn't know what an exodus was or a genesis, a fatted or a golden calf -- you would have been excluded from the culture.
It might be said that a civilization consists, at its core, of these easily transmitted packages of implication. They are one of the mechanisms by which cultures can be both efficient and rich. You don't have to return to first principles every time you wish to communicate. You can play your present tune on a received instrument, knowing that your listener hears not only your own music but the subtle melodies of those who played it before you. There is a common wisdom in common knowledge.
But does this Bible-informed world still exist? I would guess that on the whole, and outside committed Christian groups, biblical literacy is a thing of the past. That long moment of Christian civilization is over. The lingua franca of modern, English-speaking people is not dense with scriptural allusion, just as the conversation of educated people no longer makes reference to classical civilizations. If you dropped the names nowadays of Nestor, Agamemnon or Pericles -- every one of which would have come trailing clouds of glory up to a century ago -- you would, I think, draw a near total blank from even educated listeners.
As Al Mohler comments:
Nicolson is concerned that our "long moment of Christian civilization is over." I am less concerned with the eclipse of civilization than with the ignorance of the church. Yes, it would be better if some level of biblical literacy could still be found among the inhabitants of the land. But our far greater concern should be the biblical illiteracy of too many Christians, for whom the church (and Christian parents) must take responsibility.
One of the purposes of Nicolson's artice is to highlight a new high-school textbook, The Bible and Its Influence, "an exceptionally well-executed introduction to the books of the Bible and the shaping effect that it had on the writers and artists of Western civilization. It is a scholarly, clear and richly illustrated amplification of the stories of the Old and New Testaments." It is published by the Bible Literacy Project.
