MOVING JESUS
by Professor Revilo P. Oliver (April 1992)
I learn from the *Wall Street Journal*, 2 March 1992, that the American Bible Society, one of the foremost publishers of the world's most widely distributed work of fiction, are coping with a falling market.
Bibles are still printed and sold in large numbers, but, as several dervishes cited in the article complain, the book is treated as a talisman or fetish, put on a table or shelf, seldom opened, never read. Even the pious do not read the bulky collection of dreary tales. A Gallup poll found that out of persons who claimed to believe the book to be the Word of God, only half could name even one of the four synoptic gospels.
It is true that although that bag of grotesque tales has endowed English with innumerable phrases, aphorisms, and pregnant allusions, it has little literary quality. It lacks both the dignity and the charm of Classical mythology. Its historical value is virtually nil. And for what is called 'human interest' it cannot vie with Flaubert or Thackery or Dickens or Agatha Christie. But persons who think a god the author should overlook their god's awkwardness.
It is true that many Americans do not know enough English to understand the King James Version and are too indolent to remedy the inadequacy of their education. I discovered this some thirty years ago, when I discovered with horror that some of my colleagues were translating the English of Milton's *Areopagitica* into 'contemporary' English in the hope that it could then be understood by graduate students in "Political Science" (i.e., Marxist propaganda). There are said to be some forty English translations of the Bible, most of which try to jazz up the stories by vulgarizing the English in which they are told. But these versions are equally unread.
There remains the question whether True Believers could read their Holy Book if they wanted to. I remember having seem some years ago an estimate that no more that 27% of adult Americans (1) were mentally capable of reading a book--any book. Most of the others, of course, could recognize the letters of the alphabet, read road signs (although I note that these are being replaced by 'international symbols'), and understand headlines and short paragraphs in newspapers. The limiting factor was power of attention. A newspaper called *USA Today* is said to have ascertained by investigation that most of its readers could not keep in mind more than a short paragraph. Their feeble intellects, palsied and spasmodic, could not remain in focus on a longer text. That is probably correct, although no one noticed that the fact made idiocy of our ochlocracy, and proved that a society that permits more than the 27% to vote is simply committing suicide.
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