IS THE BIBLE TRUE?

n March 16,1985,journalist Terry Andersonwas kidnapped from the streets of Beirut,Lebanon. As a political pawn he was heldhostage for 2,454 days. During this excruciating ordealMr. Anderson showed remarkable courage,althoughfrequently stretched to near his breaking point.On the first day of his confinement his abductorshustled him at gunpoint from his car into theirs,then took him to a half-built apartment building. There they blind-folded him and chained him to a cot.During his first 24 days in chains,bound andrestrained like an animal,he struggled to find a wayto maintain his sanity. Realizing the need to summoncourage and strength from somewhere,he asked hiscaptors for a Bible.In his memoirs Mr. Anderson related the result of that request:“The next day,late in the afternoon,theEnglish-speaking guard came in and threw a heavyobject on the bed. I reached for it,felt the smooth coversof a book. The guard came around to the head of thebed. ‘Good?’‘Yes,very good,thank you.’“I cautiously pulled my blindfold up a bit,untilI could see the book ... A Bible,the Revised StandardVersion. I caressed it gently ... I read the title page,thepublishing and copyright information,the notes of theeditors,slowly,carefully. Then:Genesis. ‘In the begin-ning ...’”(Terry A. Anderson,

Den of Lions,

Crown,New York,1993,pp. 14-15).How often in crises have men and women turnedto the Bible for help? The value of the Word of God isacknowledged at such moments of unease,uncertaintyand apprehension.

A perennial best-seller

The Holy Bible is regarded by millions as the writtenWord of the one and only true God. Indeed,the Bibleclaims this distinction for itself. In the eyes of manyothers it is highly regarded as a collection of some of the world’s greatest literature.The nonprofit American Bible Society has,in morethan 180 years of its existence,distributed approximatelyas many Bibles as there are people in the world—somefive billion.Millions of Bibles,reflecting numerous translations,are sold every year. Translations exist in more than 2,000languages and dialects.The Bible is especially popular wherever Englishis spoken. It is “the most widely known book in theEnglish-speaking world ... No one in the English-speaking world can be considered literate without abasic knowledge of the Bible”(E.D. Hirsch Jr.,JosephF. Kett and James Trefil,

The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy,

Houghton Mifflin Co.,Boston,1988,p. 1). Sowithin the English-speaking world,even where religionsother than Christianity dominate,a basic knowledge of the Bible is essential if one is to be considered aneducated citizen.“Literate people in India,whose religious traditionsare not based on the Bible but whose common languageis English,must know about the Bible to understandEnglish within their own country. All educated speakersof American English need to understand what is meantwhen someone describes a contest between David andGoliath or whether a person who has the ‘wisdom of Solomon’is wise or foolish ...”(ibid.).Americans in particular attribute great influence to theBible. In a survey by the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club,readers were asked what book hadmost influenced their lives. The Bible topped the list. Ina 1938 Gallup poll the Bible was considered the mostinteresting of all books read that year. It was rated bya majority as more-interesting reading than the 1930snovel

Gone With the Wind.

However,in more secularBritain this is not the case. In a similar British surveythe Bible came in 35th in a ﬁeld of 50 books.The Bible is quoted by statesmen,politicians,philoso-