Jots & Tittles

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What’s in a Name?

Welcome to the debut of The newest department in an evolving BR. While the core of the magazine will not change—we will continue to bring you the best in contemporary Bible studies, festooned with beautiful art that not only pleases the eye but also illuminates the article that it accompanies—we are adding some new features that we hope will increase your enjoyment of the magazine.

Jots & Tittles will provide some light fare—short news items, occasional odd-ball pieces, museum listings, cartoons—to balance our meatier feature articles. On the last page of this issue, you will find another new department: Detail. We will zoom in on a great piece of art and explain the significance of a small part of it. We hope you will learn something about both the artwork and the biblical scene that it illustrates.

If you’ve been with us for the past few issues, you will have noted the arrival of three new columnists. N. T. Wright (Tom to his friends), Tony Saldarini and Ron Hendel have already made their debuts; we hope to feature other new voices as guest columnists as well. And we have one other department still in the works. Called Insight, it will allow leading Bible scholars to share with us things they have noticed about a Bible story or character—things we may have never noticed, which will enrich our understanding of our civilization’s richest text.

Oh—getting back to the question at the top of this item. Just what are jots and tittles? The phrase comes from the King James translation of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus says, “Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:19). “Jot” refers to yod, the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet (the lefthand letter in the drawing); a “tittle” is a stroke used to differentiate between certain Hebrew letters (the blue stroke [or tittle] on the righthand letter would change this dalet [d] into a resh [r]). Jesus is saying that he did not intend to alter the laws of the Torah in the slightest. For our purposes here, we’ll use jots and tittles to mean small odds and ends—but odds and ends with some interest, we hope.

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Thou Shalt Not Steal (Bibles)

The perennial best-seller in bookstores now has a new and more dubious distinction: It has become the number one book to steal.

With deluxe, leather-bound Bibles costing $100 or more, it should be little wonder that the Good Book is so frequently a target of thievery. The rip-off artists usually either shoplift or switch pricetags from cheap editions to pricey ones.

“If we check a Bible to make sure it’s the right Bible in the box, people look at us like, ‘Do you think we’re going to steal?’” Jan Brehmer, manager of the Christian Emporium in Phoenix, told the Associated Press.

Other popular scams include writing checks on closed accounts. And one person shoplifted a Bible and tried to sell it—still shrink-wrapped—at a nearby McDonald’s.

Bibles are also routinely lifted from hotel rooms. W.W. Vardell, of Gideons International, told the Associated Press that his organization checks hotel and motel rooms twice yearly to replace worn Bibles and always finds some missing. “We would like for the Bible to stay there, but if someone feels the need to take it, we’re not going to strenuously object because we feel like they might have a strong need for it,” Vardell said.

At lodgings in Tempe, Arizona, typically ten percent of the Bibles have to be replaced. But after Super Bowl XXX, in January 1996, as many as 25 percent were missing from some hotels.

No doubt Bible theft will continue. We would just like to see the look on the thieves’ faces when they get to the Ten Commandments.

Let’s See Them Get This Through the Eye of the Needle

Looking for the Perfect Gift? Got $395? That’s the price tag for The Holy Bible with Illustrations from the Vatican Library, a lavish new edition of the Bible published by Ted Turner, of CNN, the Atlanta Braves and Jane Fonda fame.

The lavish price tag matches the volume’s sumptuous production. Printed with gold leaf and six colors (not the usual four), the 1,312-page, silk-covered, oversize book features illustrations from 30 rarely seen illuminated manuscripts in the Vatican.

Defending the steep price of the volume, Michael Reagan, head of Turner Publishing, told USA Today, “It’s like buying a piece of art.” He added that the book will allow people to glimpse treasures they would otherwise never see. “You can’t get a Vatican library card.”

Who (or What) You Gonna Believe?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or so it would seem when looking at the results of two surveys of American religious beliefs and practices, taken 50 years apart by the Gallup Poll. But a harder look at the numbers shows a country with religious attitudes very much in flux.

According to a recent report by George H. Gallup, Jr., director of the Princeton 019Religion Research Center, 96 percent of Americans believe in God or in a universal spirit; in 1947, the figure was 95 percent. Today, 71 percent believe in an afterlife, compared with 73 percent 50 years ago. And two figures are identical over the half-century span: 90 percent pray, and 41 percent attend church or synagogue once a week or nearly once a week.

Gallup’s father founded the Gallup Poll in 1935 and conducted the 1947 survey for Ladies’ Home Journal. The Gallup family sold the Poll nine years ago.

Other pollsters, however, noted that while they do not dispute the statistics, important changes in religious beliefs are hidden by the numbers. George Barna, a West Coast pollster who also conducts surveys of religious beliefs, told the Washington Post that while in 1947 “the vast majority of people believed in a God described in the Bible,” today about 30 percent believe instead in a “higher consciousness” or an Eastern God or in many gods. Barna noted that about 3 or 4 percent believe they themselves are God.

As for belief in an afterlife, “More people are buying into Eastern philosophies, reincarnation and other stuff I don’t understand,” Barna said. He also found wide discrepancies in the beliefs of conservative Christians. Of those who consider themselves “born-again Christians” (43 percent of those surveyed), more than half said the Holy Spirit was “a symbol of God’s presence and power, but not a living entity.” About 30 percent also denied the physical resurrection, 30 percent said Jesus committed sins and more than 50 percent said Satan was only a symbol, not a living entity.

There are other signs of changes in religious attitudes. In 1952, the first year the question was used by the Gallup Poll, 75 percent of respondents said religion was very important in their lives; today that figure is down to 57 percent.

“Millions of adults embrace a worldview totally at odds with the faith they allegedly embrace,” Barna concludes.

Gallup concurs: “Most Americans don’t know what they believe and why, quite frankly.”

019

On View

William Blake: The Book of Job

November 1, 1997-January 11, 1998

The Virginia Museum’s complete set of Blake’s engraved illustrations of the Book of Job will enjoy a rare display. Created just two years before the artist’s death in 1827, the prints are considered the most significant line engravings executed by the British poet and mystic. Because they are fragile works on paper, they can only be exhibited for brief periods. Sixty drawings, watercolors and engravings, including preliminary sketches, trace the aesthetic and spiritual implications of the Book of Job.

The Body of Christ in the Art of Europe and New Spain, 1150–1800

December 21, 1997-April 12, 1998

The figure of Christ in European painting, printmaking and decorative arts is the focus of this exhibit. Three main sections are the Word Incarnate (including images of the Madonna and Child), the Passion and Resurrection, and the Mystical Body. A fourth section, the Body of Christ in the New World, will focus on the striking variation in the images of Christ in the art of colonial Spanish America. Included are Botticelli’s Adoration of the Christ Child, Durer’s engraving of The Passion, and works by Veronese, Tintoretto and Zurbaran.