Author preaches Bible literacy

CLEVELAND

Woe is me: If you want to be all things to all people, remember that many are called but few are chosen. If those phrases have a familiar ring, they should. They come from the Bible and have entered the secular lexicon. The nation’s left-right culture wars have heightened such use of biblical phrases as rivals try to invoke heavenly punch and challenge your Bible IQ.

President Obama, for instance, has said that opponents of his health care proposals are “bearing false witness” against his ideas, recalling the commandment against lying without accusing critics of being liars.

That gave Mr. Obama’s rhetoric a dose of divine imperative, said Timothy Beal, a college religion professor who has written a book connecting popular references to biblical stories. “Biblical Literacy: the Essential Bible Stories Everyone Needs to Know” was published in October.

“I think you can’t be culturally literate without being biblically literate,” Mr. Beal said in an interview in his snug, book-lined office at Case Western Reserve University.

“These biblical stories and even images are pervasive in our language; they are all over our culture, from high culture to low culture, from Michelangelo to the Simpsons.”

Mr. Beal thinks people who are unfamiliar with these or other biblical references in everyday life are missing a lot.

“When we don’t know these stories, when we don’t hear these resonances, and we’re not familiar, we’re really missing half the conversation,” said Mr. Beal, who has written 10 books and teaches Bible literature and the method and theory of the study of religion.

In the big health care debate in Washington, Mr. Beal has watched both sides invoke “the least of these,” from the story in Matthew’s Gospel, in which Jesus Christ says anyone who helps those in need is helping the Lord. The message: Those who back health care proposals helping “the least of these” are following the Gospel’s directive.

“The debate is over who are ‘the least of these?’ Is it the elderly? Is it children? Is it the uninsured children? The uninsured? The immigrants?” Mr. Beal asked.

Mr. Beal, a Presbyterian married to a Presbyterian minister, has detected a shift in biblical invocations since Mr. Obama succeeded George W. Bush.

“Generally the shift is from a more apocalyptic, good-versus-evil, cosmic war kind of language that Bush tended to use to a more moral obligation, moral imperative, ‘I am my brother’s keeper,’ ‘Take care of the least of these,’ kind of language,” he said.

In the economic meltdown, Mr. Beal has seen a prophetic biblical tone invoking Amos, Isaiah and Micah in condemning predatory lenders who might take advantage of the vulnerable. He cites a project named for the prophet Nehemiah aimed at helping people avoid predatory loans.

His compilation of biblical stories likely familiar to many exposed to the Bible include the Tower of Babel, the great flood, the Ten Commandments, the golden calf, Jonah and the whale, Jesus turning water into wine, doubting Thomas and Paul’s road to Damascus.

There are also familiar phrases like “Woe is me” (Job), “All things to all people (1 Corinthians) and “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew’s Gospel).

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