Extra! Extra! Philistines in the Newsroom!

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Pity the poor newspaper writer. Every day he (or she) must grab the reader’s attention, convey something newsworthy in a fresh way and do it all in the space of a few inches of type. Is it any wonder that newspaper reporters and editors reach for the Bible?

But when newswriters pick up the Good Book, they do so not primarily for spiritual solace or for religious inspiration; they do it because the Bible provides a rich store of characters and readily recognized events that newswriters can draw on to enliven their stories. Or, to put it into headline-ese, “BIBLE A GODSEND FOR REPORTERS.”

BR readers know that I love to read newspapers. My fondness for “the funnies” led to my articles on biblical themes in the comics.^a Although I readily admit that the comics are the first section I turn to in the paper, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that the comics are all I read—or that cartoonists have exclusive rights to the Bible in the newspapers. News stories, features, editorials, opinion pieces and even headlines are filled with biblical references.

Lately, I’ve been evaluating which biblical incidents, individuals and concepts appear most frequently in newspaper stories—a rough survey, if you will, of our country’s biblical literacy as gauged by the staff of America’s newspapers. Let me add that I am not concerned with stories about the Bible, such as may appear on the religion page or in an article on Near Eastern archaeology. I am interested primarily in stray biblical references in articles unrelated to Scripture.

For my admittedly unscientific survey, I will eschew lowbrow publications such as the supermarket tabloids. Instead, I will concentrate on high- and middlebrow publications, with the New York Times as the prime example of the former and my local paper, the Omaha World-Herald, as an example of the latter.

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Happily, my previous research on biblical themes in the comics has proven helpful in my wider study of biblical references in newspapers. The four biblical topics that dominate the funnies—Noah and his Ark; Moses, especially with the Ten Commandments; Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; and Creation—also provide many of the biblical references elsewhere in newspapers. To these Big Four, we can add three other subjects that come up frequently in the papers: Philistines, particularly Goliath (who is regularly contrasted with David); Solomon and his proverbial wisdom; and Jeremiah, whose pessimistic tirades are frequently recalled in the eponymous jeremiad. Moses, with 30 references in the 130 stories I surveyed, is the clear leader, greatly aided by the recent controversy over posting the Ten Commandments in public schools. Goliath and the Philistines were mentioned almost as often as Moses—25 times. Solomon weighed in with ten references, Adam and Eve with eight, Noah’s Ark and the Creation both with seven and Jeremiah with five. Straggling in with a handful of references were the aged Methuselah, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jezebel and Job.

David & Goliath

Let’s start with David and Goliath. David is the underdog, outmatched but not outclassed by the loutish Goliath. Honor, truth, bravery and all that is good can be associated with David, whose small size belies the source of his strength and his claim on our sympathy. Goliath is a giant, but typically not a gentle one: He throws his weight around, hurls insults and relies on brute strength—no match against the cunning and agility of his opponent. So, for example, the activist Michael Moore, who directed the film Roger and Me, has as “his modus operandi…to play a comically rumpled David and ambush one or another business Goliath with poison-tipped questions” (Boston Globe, May 22, 1999). This description works well with our sense that David’s cause, 052however quixotic, is a righteous one and that his bloated antagonist can be felled only by a well-placed slingshot or “poison-tipped question.”

But David’s image—to say nothing of our credulity—is stretched rather far when Jeff Bezos, founder of the on-line behemoth Amazon.com, appears to style himself (and his company) a David in combat with Barnes & Noble in this biblically redolent taunt: “Goliath is always in range of a good slingshot.” The New York Times headline writer of this story (which appeared on November 9, 1998) is on firmer fiscal ground when he described this match-up as “Bookstore Goliaths Fax to the Finish.” And who would think of casting the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, in the role of David, as depicted in a December 5, 1999, New York Times business feature: “When Wal-Mart opened its first store in Argentina four years ago, it found itself cast in the unaccustomed role of David—against a Goliath of a competitor in Carrefour, the French general merchandise chain. And finding a slingshot has been anything but easy.”

As in business, so in politics—it’s smarter to position yourself as the underdog. This can be seen in the succinct front-page teaser for a Sunday New York Times Week in Review story headlined “Slaying Goliath”: “Governor George W. Bush has the money and the endorsements. But nine other Republican Presidential candidates think they can beat him anyway” (July 25, 1999). More discursive is a New York Times account of a winter meeting of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which featured this extended narrative: “There was a contest this year, but it was of the David-vs.-Goliath variety. Goliath was played by Mr. Gore, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and David was Bill Bradley, the former New York Knick now running for President. (This David was at least six inches taller than this Goliath.) When asked how he felt about playing David, Mr. Bradley borrowed a page from basketball: ‘I’ve been the overdog in my life…I don’t mind being the underdog’” (February 21, 1999).

The death of basketball great Wilt Chamberlain, in the fall of 1999, evoked the only positive reference to Goliath that I found. A New York Times reporter recalled that Chamberlain once said, “Nobody loves Goliath,” but countered that “he was a good-natured Goliath” (November 13, 1999).

Philistines

When not invoking Goliath specifically, newspapers often refer to Philistines in general. “At first glance, 12-year-old Patrick Wylie looked like another Philistine-in-training. He had been scolded twice for poking his buddy’s ribs as he dragged near the back of a group of sixth-graders touring the sculpture collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,” wrote the Omaha World-Herald on February 21, 1999. And a policeman complained to the New York Times that many college students had the “misconception” that “people who work in the Police Department are basically all Philistines, brutes, idiots” (January 27, 1999).

A contributor to the Sunday New York Times book section had similar terms in mind when he reviewed The New Prince, by Dick Morris, President Clinton’s former political adviser (June 13, 1999). The reviewer, Andrew Sullivan, wrote that Morris’s “philistinism, by which I mean his complete unconcern for the highest goals of any society, is so complete it is fascinating.”

The last word on the Philistines comes from Near Eastern archaeologist Seymour Gitin. Summing up excavations at Tel Miqne (biblical Ekron) conducted by him and Trude Dothan, Gitin cogently observed, “The Philistines were not philistines” (Los Angeles Times, March 13, 1997). I, for one, hope that—at least in popular culture—the powers-that-be ignore Gitin’s otherwise very reasonable advice “to get the word philistine out of Webster’s, or at least change the meaning.”

Jeremiah & Solomon

Jeremiah, like Goliath, shows up in odd places. In the political realm, the intense criticism of the democratic system by Wisconsin congressman David R. Obey is styled “the jeremiad of a man in the minority” in a Public Lives profile in the October 4, 1999, New York Times. Not limiting himself to a biblical allusion, the author of the article mines Homer for another alliterative and descriptive phrase for Obey—“the reigning Cassandra of Congress”!

Far more positive is the modern view of Solomon. Gone from current references are any of the criticisms voiced in the Bible against this monarch. All that remains is his wisdom: “The highest court in Massachusetts faced a case today that called for the wisdom of King Solomon: Who legally controlled the frozen vial containing four embryonic cells?” writes the New York Times (November 5, 1999). There is also something biblical in an entry appearing in a New York Times Metropolitan Diary (November 7, 1999). A woman is reminiscing about a sukkah (a booth used on the festival of Sukkot, or Tabernacles) that her father used to build in the backyard of their East Bronx apartment building. When a new building superintendent objected, going so far as to seek a court order to have it taken down, “the judge was obviously a modern-day Solomon. He ordered that the structure be taken down—in 10 days” (that is, after the conclusion of the holiday).

A front-page New York Times story about Ellis Island renamed it “Solomon’s Island,” noting that the Supreme Court had recommended dividing the island between New Jersey and New York (April 2, 1999). The new name was a reference to an episode in 1 Kings 3:16–28: Two prostitutes approach King Solomon, each claiming that they are the mother of a living newborn and that the other’s infant had died in the night. Solomon orders that the living child be cut in half with a sword and divided between the two mothers. The first woman is distraught and exclaims that it would be better for the other woman to be given the child than to have him killed; the second woman finds Solomon’s proposal just. Solomon, of course, recognizes the first woman as the child’s true mother. With that biblical passage also in mind, a letter writer, responding to the article a few days later, concludes that “the island rightfully belongs to New York. Unlike New York and in the same way as the woman who was not the mother of the child, the Governor of New Jersey expressed pleasure with the decision to divide.”

My favorite Solomon reference appeared in an obituary entitled “Glenn Bernbaum, a Solomon of Bistro Seating, Dies at 76” (New York Times, September 9, 1998). What could Bernbaum, the owner of Mortimer’s restaurant, “a favorite watering hole for Manhattan socialites, glitz folk, and achievers since 1978,” possibly have done to earn him such high praise? It turns out that the most coveted table at Mortimer’s was usually occupied by the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Gloria Vanderbilt. But “on the rare times when these luminaries were not present, Mr. Bernbaum had to make decisions that would stump Solomon. If there was a party of four or five ‘known’ people, the table went to them. If there were more than one party of such rank, Mr. Bernbaum 053would reach back to his maxim: ‘The trick in seating is not where they are, but who they are surrounded by.’” It’s hard to imagine that maxim appearing in the Book of Proverbs, but old party-giver Solomon might well have enjoyed hearing, and then probably ignoring, such a nugget of sage etiquette.

Moses, etc.

Of the more than two dozen references to Moses—the Exodus—the Ten Commandments, one of my all-time favorites reflects the artistry of a gifted headline writer: “Searing Sounds Spout from a Burning Bush” led off a column that described Governor George W. Bush’s criticisms of President Clinton in a speech at the dedication of the Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University, at which Clinton was in attendance. The piece, by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, appeared with this clever headline in the Omaha World-Herald (November 11, 1997).

In the category of unlikely comparisons, there is the case of an Israeli politician sentenced to a four-year prison term for corruption, who—echoing the language of the first chapter of Exodus—compares his plight to that of the enslaved Hebrews: “But you know our slogan, ‘The more they oppress us, the more we thrive’” (New York Times, April 16, 1999).

The often raucous world of Israeli politics produced another reference to this period of biblical history. In decreeing that members of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) desist from one of their many less-than-courteous practices—in this case, turning their backs to opponents as they are speaking from the dais—Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg quoted from Exodus 33: “Only of God does it say, ‘And you saw my backside and not my face’” (New York Times, July 28, 1999).

I also like the comparison between South African leader Nelson Mandela and Moses as reported by New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis on August 9, 1999: “Mandela was the Moses who brought us to the promised land, but he did not come to grips with what it would take.” That task was left to the new president, in much the same way that Joshua functioned as Moses’ successor. Similar imagery was invoked in a tribute to civil rights leader Joseph E. Lowery (as reported in the New York Times on July 19, 1997): “The Rev. Jesse Jackson called Mr. Lowery ‘an enduring figure’ who has been underappreciated. In an apparent reference to Dr. King, Mr. Jackson said there had been ‘so much focus on the work of Moses as the leader who first broke the line that there was not ever adequate appreciation for Joshua, who organized the subsequent battles.’”

My favorite Ten Commandments reference comes in a subhead to a William Safire New York Times essay of April 16, 1997. Safire had sought a (Solomonic?) solution to the contentious issue of displaying copies of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. Safire suggested that the displays contain “representations of the two tablets of the law—Moses’ tablets, of course—but with no writing on them.” The subhead reads “Take two tablets, call in the morning.”

For sheer bravado, nothing beats the following from a New York Times restaurant review (October 27, 1999): “There is one instance when Mr. Roth’s [the chef’s] good taste fails him. Thin slices of grilled New York strip steak arranged around fennel slices, a heap of watercress and little dollops of Gorgonzola are piled high to form a plate-filling ziggurat. So far so good, but then comes a fatal step. The serpent in this paradise is a totally uncalled-for vinaigrette made from Concord grapes, which contribute nothing but weirdness. If kitchens had bouncers, the grapes would never have gotten in.” Mesopotamian prayer towers, Satan-as-salad-dressing and brawny-armed guards to keep out offending fruits (any connection here to the “sour grapes” of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel?)—it just doesn’t get any better!

As a longtime researcher of the Book of Joshua (as well as Peanuts), I was especially taken by the opening lines from a New York Times theater review of a revival of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown: “Sally Brown is mad at the world, and if the world has any sense at all, it will stay out of her way. Though still on the fair side of 5, Sally has a highly developed sense of the injustice and futility of life. Her indignant quotient is off the charts, and her mighty bleat of a voice could bring down the walls of Jericho” (February 5, 1999).

Some biblical references can be poignant as well. In commenting on the continuing tragedies that beset the Kennedy family, columnist Safire notes, “clergy often turned to passages from the Book of Job” (“Is Life Unfair?” New York Times, July 19, 1999). Safire concludes: “But he [John F. Kennedy, Jr.] did not fall victim to any ‘Kennedy curse.’ The icon-busting Book of Job teaches that God does not micromanage the universe, and that free-willed human beings are responsible for actions and injustices. That’s why life is unfair.”

On at least two occasions, a biblical reference led me on a search for the exact source of the citation. In one case (in the New York Times of December 19, 1999), the biblical book was named: “If, as the Book of Proverbs says, the prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it, then I must be among the simple.” In the other, even that information was lacking: “If, ‘the sleep of a laboring man is sweet,’ as the Old Testament insists, the slumber of a retired man, or woman, should be even sweeter” (New York Times, March 17, 1999). Considering myself somewhat above average in biblical literacy, I was surprised that these references in the popular press sent me to the concordances. How often would that be the case for general readers? By the way, the quotations are from Proverbs 22:3 (repeated in Proverbs 27:12) and Ecclesiastes 5:12.

For most of the 20th century, pollsters chronicled what they generally judged to be the dismal state of our “biblical knowledge.” These surveys have led to memorable phrases, such as the one describing the Bible as “the Greatest Book Never Read.” I believe these disparaging remarks shortchange both the American public and the Hebrew Bible. As we just saw, newspaper editors and reporters, among the sharpest judges of public taste and knowledge, are comfortable with a fairly extensive repertoire of biblical phrases and personalities.

Still, we are left with the distinct feeling that there is something paradoxical in all of this. The entry of the Bible into the popular culture of the press has been eased by the perception that it is a rich source for quotations and illustrations, but only one of many. Shakespeare, Homer and Near Eastern mythology are other apt resources. Or, to put the message into headline-ese one last time—with apologies to the author of Ecclesiastes: Of Making Many Books, With Good Quotes And Memorable Characters, There Is No End!

Pity the poor newspaper writer. Every day he (or she) must grab the reader’s attention, convey something newsworthy in a fresh way and do it all in the space of a few inches of type. Is it any wonder that newspaper reporters and editors reach for the Bible? But when newswriters pick up the Good Book, they do so not primarily for spiritual solace or for religious inspiration; they do it because the Bible provides a rich store of characters and readily recognized events that newswriters can draw on to enliven their stories. Or, to put it into […]