Faith Works 3-31-07
Jeff Gill

Do You Bury a Bible?

Beyond the hype, the story of the so-called Jesus family tomb has some interesting sidelights worth checking out.

One is the website, which has a great interactive feature on the Land of Jesus, even if I don’t think much of the “Tomb of Jesus,” at
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/land/land.html.

The consensus of scholars, liberal and conservative, is that there wasn’t much “there” there in the story. My own lack of interest was rooted in remembering when the tomb first turned up, over a decade ago. I recall reading a few stories that pointed out the interesting cluster of names, confirming the everyday-ness of New Testament names, and mostly about the controversy over how the site should be stabilized, what with an apartment complex going up over the top of it.

What I never heard about, until the recent TV program, was what they did after the ossuaries were given to the governmental Antiquity Authority, and the bones given to Orthodox Jewish leaders for reburial. What about the tomb?

Well, as most of us know by know, they built structural walls around the area, capped the whole deal in concrete, and left an obscure hatch. After the series of towers went up, kids did what kids do, which was figure out how to break the lock and get in, so the hatch was replaced with a welded steel lid.

As for the now vacant tomb, the religious authorities did a very sensible thing, given the practices of Judaism.

They turned it into a genizah.

Genizahs aren’t part of Christianity, so I suspect most Licking Countians haven’t heard of them, unless they’ve done some serious Biblical studies, and even then they may have missed what a genizah was in the footnotes – just as you could have missed the re-purposed genizah even if you watched the “Lost Tomb” program.

In Jewish (and Islamic) practice, any text that includes the name of the Lord must be treated with particular respect. Mostly, this would refer to Torah scrolls, but in much of the ancient world contracts and other official document would include an invocation of the Divine Name, so they would come under this concern as well.

What do you do with an old scroll or document, worn almost to illegibility, or simply no longer of use? The idea was that they would receive a “proper burial” like any other valued member of the community of faith. You would set them aside for a term, usually seven years, and then take up the volumes and pages and texts and box them and bury them.

The Talpiot tomb, whoever really was first buried there, was full of old scrolls and books when the TV crew crawled in. The producers clearly wanted to move past this point and not get bogged down, but that’s what had been done with this rock-cut space now that all the human remains had been removed. Jerusalem genizahs (genizot for all you Hebrew scholars) had been emptied into Talpiot before the tomb was re-sealed.

Personally, I find this interesting because . . . well, look at it this way. The Barna Group says, based on data, that the average American house has five Bibles in it. If you count Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and Spanish texts of scripture, I’m carrying more than my fair share: maybe 40 (lots of different translations, OK?).

Some of those I have because as more people have more Bibles, pastors more and more are getting asked by parishioners, especially after Great-Aunt Hattie dies or some such, “what’s the right thing to do with these very old, falling apart Bibles?”
It’s one thing to hold onto the big Family Bible with clippings inserted between testaments and a marriage and baptism list for the late 1800’s in the back. But we have more and more Bibles laying about, and still a desire to honor the word, and the Word, by how we handle, care for, and ultimately dispose of these texts.

Do we need a tradition of a Christian genizah? Church librarians are already starting to smile sadly and shake their heads, let alone clergy. Many of us have these in our basements already, not wanting to say “just throw it out,” but knowing that there is a steadily growing number of broken binding, crumbling page, non-reuseable Bibles slowly arcing their way towards us. The American Legion and the Boy Scouts often hold very moving “flag retirement” ceremonies at Memorial Day around the area, respectfully burning the tattered scraps. What of our Bibles?

I’ve already heard tales of boxes of old Bibles showing up on church doorsteps, like a child left at the orphanage. Truth is, folks, that just bumps the problem along; do we pulp them reverently, and use the recycled cellulose for the rosebushes by the sanctuary? Do we put them in a pine box and have a ceremony the Sunday after Easter each year? I’m seriously interested in your ideas.

You can tell them to me by email, or in person next Sunday at the Midland Theater, where the Newark Community Sunrise Service starts at 6:30 am. I’ll preach, I’ll shake hands after, but I won’t take your unwanted Bibles…

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.