Almost half of adults didn't know that the story of Noah's Ark was in the Bible

[3bunnies]

According to this news story. I know that this sample will include people from other cultures and I guess that my knowledge of their religions isn't perfect, but when 65% of the population say that they are Christian I find it surprising.

Many people confused plot lines from Harry Potter as being in the Bible and a third of children (8+) didn't know that the nativity was in the Bible and had never heard of the crucifixion.

I find the same problem with lack of historical knowledge when I take groups around my church. The older generation may have some memory of the Normans and the Civil War but it seems completely new to anyone under 40. I was at a junior school on Friday where all of the children came down to my church for a carol service just before Christmas yet most of the children appear to have forgotten the Nativity story six weeks later.

The Genesis stories are fascinating. Scholars get very excited about the different authors and the four main ones have letters associated with them (JEPD) so that scholars can begin to untangle who wrote what and when. This is not closed knowledge only available to those who go to vicar school. As the Bible is a set of sacred stories written over a long period of time by different authors, which have been edited and re-edited, rather than an ethics manual or rule book, it should come as no surprise that the early editors preserved two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 and knitted together two stories around Noah's ark with the dove and the raven.

I can't claim to have read the Bible cover to cover but I have read everything within the covers if that makes sense.

I really want to find the original survey so I can test my DCs (and DH - I went to a cathedral school so I'm pretty sure I'd ace it). I can only find these little snippety stories. What was the Harry Potter story line for example? (Pretty sure DD would manage to identify that one).

Well yes it does make sense as the Bible is not a novel where you start at page one and read to the end, but a library, from Greek ta biblia "the books".

X-posted with Ain'tnobody.

I've always been Atheist but would have thought it's just a general knowledge type thing.

I wasn't taught a lot of important history at school because the teachers chose which units to teach and we stopped learning in yr 10. I still know a lot about history because it's just something you pick up throughout life. I think some people must just not read or be interested in general knowledge.

I'm not a very intelligent person,but I've not been walking through life with my eyes and ears switched off.lol

Sorry meant yr 11

And it certainly does undermine the credibility of the 'indoctrination' argument.

If it does then take that up with your fellow believers who are fighting tooth and nail for the continuation of the 'indoctrination' and claiming that removing it would destroy the church.

I'm happy to have a talk about some of the hard bits in the Bible, because I'm committed to grappling with the Bible as a whole. And I'm committed to using the best scholarly tools available for doing so.

You mean we say "look it's all about brutal murder and abuse. It tells you that psychotic behaviour is normal and expected" and you say 'well according to this learned paper all those bits are metaphorical but it goes back to being literal for verse 12 and 13 and then 14 onwards is metaphorical'

Think I'll pass today

In the case of the flood I hope you know that people say to kids "God DID this" and don't say "God did NOT do this, but it's a nice story".

I have met lots of Christians you know who dismiss the whole OT on the grounds that Jesus swept it away. Apart of course from the 10 commandments and the bit where it says kill all the gay people. Those are obviously literal and applicable.

consensus of scholarly opinion is that this story is part of the section of Genesis which takes place in primeval time; the stories are myths not history

Tell that to the large numbers of Christians around the world whose devout prayers constantly confirm to them that it is all true and happened just a few thousand years ago. How can god be so mean as to purposely deceive them when he considerately allowed you to guess the true version.

As the Bible is a set of sacred stories written over a long period of time by different authors, which have been edited and re-edited, rather than an ethics manual or rule book,

Some religious people believe that the ten commandments are quite important and many say that the bible is the source of all morals.

Niminy- how do you decide which bits of the Old Testament (my children, I have just discovered, call it the Hebrew Bible- is that the proper thing to call it?) are symbolic and which literal?

Curlew as far as one can tell as an outsider, on the basis of what's politically, socially, and economically convenient at the time.

Curlew, it's more correct to call it the Hebrew Bible, because this acknowledges that the OT is the Bible in Judaism. But many people continue to use OT and it's not incorrect to do so.

To decide which bits are symbolic and which historical (which is what I assume you mean by literal), you'd have to find out a bit about the book you are reading. As Greenheart and HoneyandRum said, the Bible is a collection of books, and there are several different genres collections of prayers and liturgical material, poetry, sayings and 'wisdom' literature, prophetic writings, myth, laws, histories. The histories are the bits that are best able to support a literal reading. But even then, we need to take into account that the ancient world didn't have the same idea about what history is that we do. So Kings 1&2 and Chronicles 1&2 tell the same events from a different perspective sometimes saying contradictory things. Which is true? Well, for the compilers of the Hebrew Bible, they both were. And this is not secular history, which looks for causes of events in things like power struggles and socio-economic changes, but sacred history, which interprets the history of Israel in relation to its mission as God's chosen people and the degree to which it fell away from faithfulness to God. But you'd need to look closely at the context, the genre, the sources of individual passages to really make sense of them.

I'm sorry, BackonlyBriefly, that you don't want to engage in a conversation about the Bible. That's a shame for me because I love talking about the Bible. It's hard not to suspect that you don't really want to engage with anything but a caricatured version of the most extreme fundamentalist version of Chrstianity.

I would say (as an atheist) that the message of Harry Potter is quite Christian on the whole. Redemption and forgiving one's enemies and all that. Granted, there are no floods, but I can see how it could get mixed up in people's minds with a whole host of fairy tales with some quasi-historical aspects, including the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and the Bible.

I'm an atheist, but think it's sad that people don't know Bible stories. They're a huge part of our culture.

I'm at uni studying old English, among other things. Having knowledge of the bible has massively enriched my understanding of older texts and how our ancestors understood the world.

J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien are/were believing, practicing Christians so it not surprising that many of their themes and stories echo those in the bible.

This does not surprise me at all.

I teach A level Religious Studies but philosophy and ethics, so we do not study Christianity directly. However, at times we have need to use the Bible. In the past I have been asked whether Robin Hood was in the Bible, whether Jesus was in the Bible, whether Jesus was the first man created in the Bible. All from 16+ year old A level students. Most students cannot find their way around the Bible without looking up the contents page, and many do not know the differences between the Old and New Testaments. And only last time I asked for students to use the Bible, I asked them to look up the book of X (can't remember which one) to which one student replied "What do you mean, the Bible is the book?"

"and a third of children (8+) didn't know that the nativity was in the Bible "

However, I would say to the OP that the nativity is not in the Bible. I know I am being pedantic, but there are two birth narratives in the Bible, each giving a different account. However, the notion that there are 3 kings, cattle and oxen, with Jesus being laid in a wooden feeding trough and all the bits that make up the nativity quite often is simply not there. I am always shocked by the number of people who do not realise this.

'In the Bible' and important in Christianity aren't always the same thing though. The Virgin Mary and the Three Wise Men are barely mentioned, for example.

Mary is mentioned many times, I'm off to bed so don't have time to look up all the biblcal references but in terms of stories there is the Annunciation, the Visitation when she visits Elizabeth John the Baptist's mum and John leaps in her womb recognizing Jesus is present, the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, The finding in the Temple when Jesus is 12, Jesus' first public miracle at the Wedding in Cana is at the request of Mary. She is present during his ministry, at the Crucifixion and in the Upper Room with the Apostles at Pentecost. I may have missed some others, but these are the well known ones.

The Bible does not say how many Magi there are. Their number and names come from tradition. They are important as a sign of the Gentiles coming to Jesus to pay him homage at his birth but I would say there are other figures and instances which are also very important. Mary and the Wise Men are characters that most non-Christians will recognize as Christian but there is much more to our faith than this.

I'm sorry, BackonlyBriefly, that you don't want to engage in a conversation about the Bible. That's a shame for me because I love talking about the Bible. It's hard not to suspect that you don't really want to engage with anything but a caricatured version of the most extreme fundamentalist version of Chrstianity.

Hi niminy

It's hard not to suspect that you don't really want to engage with anything but a caricatured version

Well that's pretty much what I said to you. When I bring up the beliefs of other Christians with different views you dismiss them as nonsense. I'd like to know your basis for doing so since as far as I can see any argument which dismisses their belief out of hand works for yours too.

I know you'd like to make it sound like we're talking tiny sects here, but I refer to 10s or 100s of millions of Christians now and throughout the ages.

Feel free to ignore this or reply to some other point to change the subject.

I don't think I've dismissed fundamentalist views as nonsense -- I certainly think that they are wrong about some, indeed many, things. I'm happy to explain why I think they are wrong, but you don't want to talk about the Bible with me. I'm happy to talk about the varying ways that Bible has been read in history (this is a fascinating subject), but again, you don't want to converse. Perhaps you could refrain from putting words in my mouth and we could have a conversation?

I'm certainly up for a discussion on how the Bible has been read through history as it is a fascinating. I'm doing a module at the moment where we have a whistle stop tour of the past 3000 years of ways of understanding the OT and NT and we have landed in the early medieval period this week. My head hurts as it is very odd and very different from early 21st century.

ooh! would love to hear more about that

Nowhere near as fascinating as the discussion about whether or not it's genuinely a message from the creator of the universe.

Odd that almost no Christians find that "fascinating".

And Niminy, you referred to "caricatures" of Christianity. No such thing. Worldwide, Christians tend towards the more fundamentalist position - most of them in America don't accept evolution, for example.

You seem to be indulging in the No True Scotsman Fallacy.

That's fantastic green. Have you studied affective piety yet?

I've always thought it odd that there are, for instance, Noah's Ark bedding for babies, etc. Like this And I am a Christian!

Most of them in America don't accept evolution

That's not entirely true Hettie. Only 15% of mainline Protestants don't believe in evolution, that's not "most". Depends on the religion and also the way the question is phrased. Many American Christians believe in evolution as part of a plan guided by a deity.

"Many American Christians believe in evolution as part of a plan guided by a deity."

So they don't believe in evolution then.......