The Bible--A Heritage Lost

A few years ago an English instructor at the local community college began a section of her English 101 course with a list of Biblical names that students were required to know. The interesting thing is that she was and remains vehemently non-Christian.
Her reason for the course requirement is that these names are part of our CULTURAL heritage—and that most high school/college students today have no knowledge of the names or the characters and traits they represent. She felt this should not be lost—especially in the study of English literature where so many allusions come directly from the Bible.
What’s the Biblical name for traitor? What are the Little Foxes? Who is Pontius Pilate—and what does it mean to “wash your hands of something”? Doubting Thomas? Who was the left handed assassin? Who got a whole town to circumcise themselves so they could be wiped out? Why?
In which Biblical book does “The Sun Also Rise”? Why is Jude obscure? What is significant about being “East of Eden”? Who built an Ark before it rained forty days? What does it mean to be wise as Solomon? And so forth, and so forth.
This heritage is rapidly being lost. I have sat in senior English class after senior English class—AP classes as well—where not a student knew who Noah was, or Adam, or Abraham. St. Paul drew a blank as did Peter, James and John. They didn’t know who the people were or any of their stories.
We’ve all but dropped back to the 1400s. That was a time (also) when a functionally illiterate populace stumbled through life without a written heritage. Most attended church regularly; but few understood what was read to them in Latin; fewer could read anything for themselves.
This was one of the great contributions of the Protestant Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli) to western civilization. Starting with the notion that a man would be a better and more knowledgeable Christian if he could read a Bible for himself, they established schools to teach reading.
Not to be left behind, the Catholic Church (which had not favored reading amongst the laity) creating an entire teaching order of monks—the Jesuits. Even protestants hired the highly educated Jesuits to teach their children how to read.
Of course, once you could read the Bible—a reasonably difficult book—you could read anything else. Popular literature began. Books like “Don Quixote” and plays like “Hamlet” appeared. Scientific treatises were published—and read—suggesting such heretical notions as the world moving around the sun.
Political books, philosophic works, military strategies, mathematical treatises—the who cornucopia of human knowledge became available to anyone who wanted to buy a book.
This all came about because men like John Calvin insisted that people be taught to read the Bible and be taught from catechisms. All of this came out of the perceived need for people to know and read that one book.
The first public schools in America were essentially created to ensure biblical literacy. For those who had to work six days a week, Sunday Schools were created that allowed the unlettered to learn to read on Sundays. That’s what a “Sunday School” originally was.
It became a common tradition. Americans, like Lincoln, tutored themselves by reading the Bible and Shakespeare, the twin pillars of the English language. Luther created the modern German language with his Bible translations. It became a common European heritage.
And now we are losing it. Rapidly. That—for secular reasons alone—will be a true literary tragedy.