Nov 02
Top Verses, bottom idea
Perhaps better called “How not to read the Bible” Top Verses (The Bible. Sorted) reduces Scripture to a collection of verses ranked in order of popularity. As their About page says:
The Top Verses team has analysed thousands of pages of teaching material to determine the most frequently referenced Bible verses. This information is entered into our search engine enabling it to return the most familiar verses first.
I am disappointed, but not surprised, that no First Testament book makes into their top ten of Biblical books. I am surprised that none of the Synoptics make it into the top ten. What Jesus said doesn’t appear to be a top concern. I might just have thought of this as an evangelical tendency to live in the epistles, but I was equally surprised to see that the second top book is James. Luther, you may now spin in your grave.
There are all sorts of oddities here. While I guess ranked popularity may change from time to time, I can only go by today’s figures. In the top ten verses of Leviticus, the list is headed by 18:22 ‘You shall not lie with a man, as with a woman. That is detestable.” (ranked 101st most popular verse in the Bible) This is followed by “‘If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” (20:13 – Rank 333) By contrast, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (19:18 – Rank 460) comes third. None of the verses about care for the poor (by not harvesting to the edge of the field) or care for the stranger make it into the top ten at all. No wonder the church is in such a mess.
Coming back to the Synoptics, the two most popular verses from Mark are respectively Mark 16:15 (Rank 21) and Mark 16:16 (Rank 84)! The first verse that actually is in the gospel what he wrote is Mark 1:15 (Rank 332). The commandment in the NT to “Love your neighbour as yourself” is most popular in Luke’s version (10:27) where, of course, it is not attributed to Jesus (but only ranked 649), followed by Matthew’s version (22:39 – ranked 1602) and then by Mark (12:31 – ranked 2275).
All in all, I think this quick sample shows exactly why this is how not to read the Bible.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Thanks for sharing this! Inevitably all readers of the Bible have ‘favorite parts’, whether they are the words of Jesus, things to do with sex or social justice (usually not both), or something else.
The important thing is to be aware that there is all that other stuff in there as well. When one only knows “Leviticus’ Greatest Hits”, that is when one is most likely to veer off into an extremism or fundamentalism that can legitimately called unbiblical, because it is all about obeying rigidly and literally a few parts of the Bible, while ignoring all those songs from the original albums that didn’t make the top 40.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
I vaguely remember a note from the Lao Tsu - that water is the strongest element since it seeks the lowest place.
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:31 pm
For some reason the trackback hasn’t worked, but there’s an interesting reflection that picks up this post on Kouya Chronicle.
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:31 am
I know it’s a hard question, but I still want to repeat it - I asked it of Tim Glass, who drew attention to “the top 10″ before any of the rest of us noticed them:
What are our ten most favored verses? What do they say about who we are?
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
[...] own stumbling across this top verses stuff was pure synchronicity, but in a comment on that post, John repeats and broadens the challenge. I [...]