The Bible and the Back Story
If you went to see “CATS: The Musical” and heard Old Deuteronomy’s “Addressing of Cats,” wouldn’t you miss something if you didn’t know the source of his name?
Thirteen years ago, my husband and I were eating our salami-and-liquid-cottage-cheese breakfast with a medical group in Kiev, Ukraine, when some women approached us. Having heard about our team, they introduced themselves and humbly submitted what they knew was a bold request. These leaders from the Ukrainian equivalent of the National Organization for Women wanted to know if we would teach them the Bible.
Frankly, I was a bit suspicious. But when I explored their reasons for asking, I found out they were legit. They said they sensed they were missing a lot of good literary references and wanted to know the “back stories.” It was their feeling that intelligent, educated people should know the Bible. Yet because the book had been outlawed in their country for so many decades, they had remained in the dark. Now was their chance.
Imagine reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Russian and having all the great literary references go right over your head. Or curling up with Moby-Dick, having never heard the story of Jonah. Right there on the first line they’d encounter “Call me Ishmael.” Wouldn’t it help if they knew who the original Ishmael was? Or imagine not knowing the story about the handwriting on the wall in Daniel. Or about the giant who got his head chopped off by a shepherd boy. Or the flood. Or the baby in the manger.
Sometimes we get so focused on dissecting the Bible in exegesis that we fail to stand back and appreciate the quality of its literature. Best-selling author Anne Rice spoke recently of being amazed at its rich poetry and narratives. And this week I read this in How Not to Write a Novel by British writer, David Armstrong: “Shakespeare, along with the Bible, of course, is the source of most book titles.”
Consider Oprah’s pick, The Book of Ruth, or Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Thumb through chapter titles in Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible and you’ll find “Genesis” and “Exodus” among others. There’s the current social-concern book, The Case for Goliath, and books in several genres all bearing the title, Leviathan.
Beyond titles, could you really appreciate the literary richness (or note 
the liberties taken with the text) in The Red Tent if you’d never actually read Genesis? How could you comprehend Handel’s “Messiah” if you didn’t know what it meant that “Unto Us a Child is Born”? If you went to see “CATS: The Musical” and heard Old Deuteronomy’s “Addressing of Cats,” wouldn’t you miss something if you didn’t know the source of his name? How could you appreciate A Tale of Two Cities, I mean really appreciate it, if you’d never heard about a substitutionary atonement? Imagine reading East of Eden without knowing Cain and Abel. And that DaVinci guy, who was actually in the news long before Dan Brown--how could you grasp the meaning of all those men at a table in his painting if you didn’t know that the one in the middle was destined to die?
Feel free to write and tell me others I've left out...
What strikes me as sadly ironic is the number of American Christians I know whose Bibles (in versions ranging from King James to the Purpose-Driven Toddler) collect dust on weekdays while even members of Ukraine’s most influential women’s group would take a bus across town through stormy weather and approach utter strangers just for the chance to hear even a few of the greatest stories ever told.