Hmmm, looks harmless enough...

Mark Twain said, “A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read.”, and the Bible, as we all know, is a classic. Every year it tops the best seller list, and this has gone on so long that the list now starts at #2, which we, of course, call #1. This anomaly is the result of the fact that so many Bibles are bought, not for reading but for giving away, generally by someone who knows it and loves it, to someone who doesn’t and doesn’t. And it’s also placed in hotel rooms, and waiting rooms, and almost anywhere a person might get stuck with nothing better to read. I actually met a man who buys copies of the Gospel of John just to leave in buses and airplanes and taxi cabs. There are worse forms of littering I suppose.

I say all of this as a warning to the unsuspecting public who have come to believe that this volume is as harmless as a mint on a pillow, or a discarded gum wrapper. In truth, however, this book has derailed more lives than any slot machine or roulette wheel. You start out innocently, just looking up the Christmas parts, or maybe checking to see if the word “pisseth” actually does appear six times in the King James Version. Then pretty soon you’re reading whole psalms – at least the short ones – or flipping to the back to see how the story comes out. Then you find yourself buying one and taking it home in a plain brown wrapper. And finally one day someone mentions that they saw you reading the Bible in Tim Hortons, and you realize you’ve hit rock bottom. Some recover, but many never do. This has been called the divine ruining, so, be careful. The price of spiritual contentment is eternal vigilance.

We think of this thing as a big book when, in fact, it’s a bunch of little books; sixty-six to be exact. Well, not exactly exact, because the Catholics have 73 books in their Bible (7 extras in the Old Testament). The longest book is Psalms at about 44,000 words. — The average novel is twice that long. – And the shortest is the Third Epistle of John at just 344. The Old Testament, which was written in Hebrew over the course of about 800 years, is more than 3 times as long as the New testament, written in Greek in less than century.

The Bible has been called The Owner's Manual, which is kind of cute but very misleading. It’s not a manual at all, but a little library of 39 Old Testament books and 27 New. – And, if you’re Catholic, the seven extras I mentioned that are called the Apocrypha. – Some are history, some fiction. There are myths, poems, proverbs, songs, and even letters. Most books are a mixture, and there are some things we don’t write much any more like gospels and an apocalypses. And the whole thing hangs together loosely around a geographical region (the Middle East) and a people (Semitic folks for the most part: Hebrews, Jews, and a few others they pick up along the way, until the end when all these Greeks a Romans show up) and the God they worshipped (known by many names but ultimately Jehovah, or more correctly Yahweh).

Some people call the Bible the "Word of God", but it never calls itself that so I prefer to just call it the Bible or the Scriptures (writings). And some people insist that it contains no error of any kind, but because it doesn’t make that claim, and I don’t see how foolish, ignorant human beings could ever determine such a thing, I prefer to just read it and let it speak for itself.

We don’t have easy access to many books that have been shaping lives and cultures for 3000 years, so next time you’re in a hotel room with nothing better to read...