The Null Hypothesis...
Thank you for once again producing a fine issue of The Skeptical Review. I've been following the Jeremiah "prophecy" with interest. I read the previous issue in a sloop 60 miles off shore, and my jaw hit the deck when I read where Dr. Price mangled the "null hypothesis" so horribly. I was in no position (nautically) to mail my objections. Imagine my delight when your next issue hammered the "null hypothesis" back into shape.
The "null hypothesis" is exactly that--null. It does not address the how, why, what, where, and when of something that happened; it addresses the if of something having happened. One need not explain an event that never occurred. The "resurrection of Jesus," Lazarus, and assorted saints is an example. Where Atlantis existed is another. How Nazi flying saucers enter and exit the hollow earth is a third. The default is the null hypothesis. There is nothing to explain.
After plowing through the last three issues, I think all question of Jeremiah's "prophecy" can be answered in the negative. Dr. Price cannot possibly reconcile the evidence against him that you have presented to him. One can only wait and hope that Dr. Price has the grace, intellectual honesty, and balls to concede his defeat.
Concerning the "sins of the fathers" topic, I am at a loss to understand why Roger Hutchinson wrote what he did. Every Bible verse he quoted damns his position on the issue. The verses he quoted did nothing to address the fact that the Bible claims that a child was punished for the "sins" of the child's parents. The fact that Hutchinson can provide verses where the Bible also says otherwise is the whole point: the Bible contradicts itself. Anyone who believes otherwise has never read it.
My favorite part of TSR is "From the Mailbag." (I read this for entertainment and the rest for education.) I take umbrage at Larry Laird's claim that Christians as a whole are not, and cannot be, rational! TSR addresses a small subset of Christians who are compartmentally irrational when it comes to their paper idol. Even this same subset must be rational at many or most other times.
About "converted atheists," fundamentalist Christians have been using this ploy for decades. (Creationists use it rather often.) Some claim to have been "Satanists," "witches," thieves, rapists, blah, blah, blah... until they found fundamentalist Christianity and "got better." This sells books, tapes, magazines, pamphlets, buttons, stickers, pins, and lectures. It should be pointed out that every human being on the planet is born an atheist: atheism is the default. "Committed atheist" is another matter, which you addressed well. Compared to inerrant fundamentalist Christians, mainstream (i. e., rational) Christians would appear to be atheists.
(Rev. David Rice, 723 Calle Casita, San Clemente, CA 92673-2708)
EDITOR'S NOTE: I apologize for the delay in publishing this letter, but the articles by Dr. Price and Roger Hutchinson have generated more correspondence than space was available for.
Convoluted Thinking? Whose?
Dr. Hector Avalos said that he hoped his letter to Dan Barker concerning Walter Kaiser's view of the snake in Genesis 3 would help to "unravel the convoluted grammatical arguments that some evangelicals like to use" (TSR, November/December 1997). However, it is Avalos who is guilty of convoluted thinking if he believes the Bible but denies that the snake was Satan.
"All the days of your life" (3:14) shows that the serpent is treated as a personal being. In Job 1-2, the devil impugns the character of God again. In John 8:44, Jesus states, "[Satan] was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (NIV).
Martin Luther correctly noted, "The devil was permitted to enter beasts, as he here entered the serpent. For there is no doubt that it was a real serpent in which Satan was and in which he conversed with Eve" (Luther's Works, Lectures on Genesis, ed. J. Pelikan and D. Poellot, trans. G. Schick, 1.511).
Is Genesis 3 a fable? Walter Kaiser answered Barker's logic with this reply: "You do have an animal speaking, but that's not your only criteria for what constitutes a fable...." The real question of evidence is answered by looking at the evidence available from historical records and archaeology. This evidence confirms the accuracy of many parts of the Old Testament. In fact, archaeology supports the view that the Bible is the inerrant word of God!
(Everett Hatcher III, P. O. Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221)
EDITOR'S NOTE: Hatcher's letter was timed perfectly. It arrived as I was writing a response to his article on the authorship of Daniel (pages 2-4, this issue), which I have been holding for several months until space was available for both it and my reply. In order to help readers see the type of mindset that accepts the traditional, 6th-century B. C. dating of Daniel, I bumped a couple of other letters, which I will publish later, in order to publish Hatcher's letter simultaneously with his article.
Hatcher said that if Dr. Avalos believes the Bible, then he was the one who is guilty of "convoluted thinking." I think that Hatcher must have fallen off the turnip truck just the day before he wrote his letter, because Dr. Avalos's letter made it rather obvious that he doesn't necessarily believe that something is true just because the Bible says that it is. This puts him poles apart from Hatcher, who is obviously a biblical inerrantist and will therefore believe anything the Bible says no matter how absurd it may be. Furthermore, Dr. Avalos did a thorough linguistic analysis of the Genesis text to show that the only reasonable way to interpret it is that the writer meant for readers to understand that a literal serpent talked to the woman Eve. I wonder what Hatcher's linguistic credentials are that entitles him to dispute Avalos's conclusion. I trust that everyone noticed that Hatcher made no attempt to analyze the Genesis text. He just arbitrarily declared that Avalos was wrong.
He did cite some scriptures, but their relevance completely escaped me. He seemed to be arguing that because the Bible says elsewhere that Satan "impugned the character of God" and that he was a murderer, a "liar and the father of lies," the talking serpent in Genesis 3 must have been Satan. I can't see that either scripture that he quoted sheds any light at all on the identity of the "serpent" in Genesis 3, but the fact that Hatcher even quoted them shows that he does not yet understand that what biblical writers B and C may have thought or believed doesn't necessarily mean that writer A agreed with their theological views. Now if Hatcher can find some textual indication in the Garden-of-Eden story that the Genesis writer thought that the serpent was Satan or the devil, we want to see it. We aren't at all interested in what Hatcher or other biblical writers may have thought he meant.
That applies even to what Martin Luther may have thought. Hatcher said that Luther "correctly noted" that "(t)he devil was permitted to enter beasts, as he here entered the serpent," but that was merely Luther's opinion, for which Hatcher offered no supporting evidence. Space won't permit me to discuss them, but Luther had religious views that were completely absurd. So the fact that he thought that the devil was in the serpent that conversed with Eve neither surprises me nor impresses me. Hatcher will have to find something far more substantial than this if he expects me to be convinced.
Hatcher said that "(t)he real question of evidence is answered by looking at the evidence," so at last he said something that I can agree with. Now all he has to do is show us some evidence that would prove that the Genesis writer meant for his readers to understand that the serpent was Satan. In "How the Snake Slithered into Eden" on pages 8, 11 of this issue, William Sierichs, Jr., traced the origin of the snake myth back to Babylonian and Sumerian mythology. Perhaps Hatcher can tell us why we should not suspect that these myths explain how the Garden-of-Eden story found its way into the Bible for reasons entirely different from the spin that biblical fundamentalists have given to it. I recommend too that Hatcher read Josephus's account of this story (Antiquities of the Jews, 1:1.4). If he will do that, he will find that as late as the first century A. D. at least some Jews understood the story in Genesis 3 to be nothing more than an explanation of why there is a natural enmity between humans and snakes. If the meaning of the story is what Hatcher claims, I wonder why Josephus, having grown up in the family of a prominent Jewish priest in Jerusalem and having been educated in Jewish culture and traditions (The Life of Flavius Josephus, 2:7-12), would not have known that the serpent in this story was Satan. Hatcher talks about "evidence" but gives none himself to support his claims. Apparently, he believes that giving evidence is the duty of only his opposition.
Of all the bald assertions in his letter, none is more absurd than his claim that "archaeology supports [that] the Bible is the inerrant word of God." This is an often-repeated claim of Bible inerrantists, but I suggest that Hatcher read the article about what archaeology has proven about the accuracy of the Bible (front page, this issue) and then tell us if he is willing to defend this position in future exchanges.
Believe It or Not...
Regarding Dave Matson's reference to the veracity of Robert Ripley, despite claims of accuracy, Ripley's Believe It or Not feature probably contained more questionable "facts" than appear in the Christian Bible. Maurice Horn, in his World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, has this to say: "Its facts... are not always accurate (every critic has a favorite error or fallacy from Believe It or Not... but this never fazed Ripley). Good newspaperman that he was, he knew that unadorned facts and bare statistics make for poor copy, and his aim was to entertain, not to enlighten. Indeed, much more accurate fact panels, such as John and Elsa Hiz's Strange as It Seems and R. J. Scott's Did You Know? have not even approached the success of Ripley's feature."
Richard S. Russell wrote, "(A)lmost every sentence you write or speak is unique. Neither you nor anyone else has ever spoken that exact combination of words before or is likely to do so again." To quote the immortal words of Rube Goldberg, "No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney." The use of identical sentences occurs hundreds, if not thousands, of times during the course of a year. To cite an example, cartoon editors frequently receive drawings with identical gag lines from widely separated parts of the country. Although in some cases plagiarism may be suspected, in others the duplication is purely coincidental as the drawings in question have not yet been published and their creators did not know each other.
As for there being 800 thousand words in the English language, many hundreds of these are peculiar to a particular discipline and, therefore, would not be used in everyday speech or writing, even by writers considered erudite.
Finally, a few words regarding the Court-Matson discussion regarding the definition of miracles. No doubt modern inventions such as the telephone and television would have been regarded as "miracles" by the citizens of the ancient world. At least one of the biblical miracles performed by Jesus, that of turning water into wine, can be explained by the use of a container with a false bottom. Such vessels have been discovered by archaeologists during excavations in the Near East.
A mathematician would be able to determine the "odds" against a certain event occurring, ranging from 50-50 to 99-1 against. Raising the dead would rate in the latter category, but considering the progress medical science has made since the days of Hippocrates, who is to say that it absolutely could not happen.
(R. S. Craggs, 25 McMillian Avenue, West Hill, ON, Canada M1E 4B4)
EDITOR'S NOTE: It should be pointed out that Dr. James D. Price was the one who introduced Ripley's Believe It or Not; Matson was merely reacting to Price's claim that the extraordinary has been routinely accepted in the case of Ripley's famous cartoon series. Cragg's comments show that gullibly accepting extraordinary claims like Ripley's will result in mass deception, so it still seems like a good idea to demand extraordinary proof for extraordinary claims.
On the matter of linguistic uniqueness in the formation of sentences, I recall having on my desk, when I was still teaching, a copy of The American Heritage Dictionary, which contained an introductory article about the extensiveness of the English vocabulary. The article reported the results of an experiment that was conducted at a university. A professor distributed to his classes copies of a cartoon that showed a bear in a countryside booth talking on a telephone while an impatient motorist waited outside. The professor asked his students to write a brief description of what the cartoon was about. He found that all of his students handed in papers that accurately described the scene but that no two students had used sentences that were exactly like. The professor then had a computer expert to analyze the content of the cartoon and the English language in terms of vocabulary, syntax, and grammar rules and then predict how many students would have to describe the scene before two would submit identical descriptions. The verdict of the computer was 19.5 billion, which would be three times the population of the earth.
In the case of modern medical science perhaps being able some day to resurrect the dead, Mr. Craggs should remember that even if this should ever happen, it wouldn't affect the Bible's many claims of resurrection, because the claim is that these events happened before there was anything even close to "modern medical science."
By the way, if Mr. Craggs or anyone else knows of sources I could consult to find information on containers from ancient times with false bottoms, I'd like to have them.
A Little Logic Helps...
Enclosed is my check for another year's subscription. I read the latest issue yesterday in one sitting. The article by Steve Carr about how the Bible has been changed over and over again was especially interesting. I hope you print more articles on that subject. I read the article on Bible miracles by inerrantist Roger Hutchinson with great humor. One of the best things I ever did for myself was to learn logic. When I see fundamentalists like Hutchinson continually make errors of logic, such as assuming the truth of what they seek to prove, I just crack up. How can they expect us to take them seriously?
I too was a fundamentalist until I started asking questions about problems I noticed and finding out that there were no answers, only dogma. Keep up the good work, because your publication provides real answers to religious questions.
(Ed Unger, 13800 Toonigh Road, Canton, GA 30115)
EDITOR'S NOTE: How can fundamentalists expect us to take them seriously? Beats me. Maybe Hutchinson or some other fundamentalist would like to answer this question.
Those who would like to investigate how the Bible has been changed over and over may like to read a new booklet on this subject by A. J. Mattill, Jr. See Polluted Texts on the backside of this issue for further details.
Correspondence Wanted...
I was pleasantly surprised to find an atheist/freethought publication so close to home. Please begin my subscription to The Skeptical Review immediately. I would greatly enjoy correspondence.
(Andrew Delunas, 3664 Neosho Street, St. Louis, MO 63116-4315)
Books Recommended...
Enclosed is my renewal for 2 years. I really enjoy your publication. Recently, I've been doing some reading about discoveries of the early days of religion and Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. Two very interesting books are In the House of the Messiah by Ahmed Osman and Who Wrote the New Testament? by Burton Mack (1995). I've gotten most of the books from the Barnes & Noble mail-order catalog. Keep up the good work.
(Polly Dunne, P. O. Box 348, Blowing Rock, NC 28605-0348)
A Christian Reader's View...
Enclosed is a check for $6 to renew my subscription to The Skeptical Review. As a Christian who is committed to the truth on any subject (John 8:32; 18:37), I look forward to receiving every issue of TSR. I have been a subscriber since the summer 1995 issue, and I ordered all of the back issues and all of your study aids. Your material is very informative, very interesting, and the greatest challenge to Bible inerrancy I have seen.
As an oral debater you are very good, but as a writing debater you are the best I know of. (I have 48 debate books in my library, and I have participated in some debates, so I know something about the subject.) Vincent Lewis is the best oral debater I know of. In your July/August issue you mentioned a possible debate with him. Please bring your readers up-to-date on this.
(Don Robertson, 644 Walnut Street, Rock Hill, SC 29730)
EDITOR'S NOTE: An admirer of Vincent Lewis wrote and asked me to debate Lewis. I accepted the invitation, and Lewis and I negotiated and signed propositions and debating rules. The debate is to be organized by Lewis and a colleague, but I have heard nothing from him or the colleague since the signing of the propositions several months ago. If this debate materializes, I will publicize it in TSR.
Lot's Daughters...
Of special interest to me in your September/October issue was your lead essay, "Keep Them Barefooted and Pregnant." In it, you recounted the story of Genesis 19, wherein god sends two angels to Sodom to warn Lot of the impending destruction of the city. This reminded me of a recent letter to the editor in the Denver Post from a fundamentalist outraged over a previously published letter that stated being gay was not a biblical sin. The angry writer offered the biblical story you mentioned in your column as proof of god's disapproval of homosexuality: how the men of Sodom surrounded the house and insisted that Lot send out the men "so that we can have sex with them," but Lot went out and offered his two virgin daughters to the crowd instead. (What a swell dad!) The letter writer ended by stating triumphantly that this was absolute proof that "clearly the `gay lifestyle' is viewed by God as a perversity and a sin."
I read his letter in amazement. Obviously, in his hatred of gays and inability to view the bible objectively, the writer could not see the extreme disparagement of women that this anecdote portrayed. I immediately sat down and wrote to the Denver Post:
As a woman, I too am enormously frustrated at the seeming inability of women as a group to cast off religious brainwashing. As a member of various groups for some years now, I find more women willing to join us, but much more needs to be done. I hope you'll keep exposing the misogyny in that tome known as "the good book," and your readers will copy those articles and give them to the women in their lives. I have done just that with many articles from various sources over the years, and now I'm happy to say that my 80-year-old mother is an adamant atheist.
(Sandra Feroe, 1400 Pheasant Run, Berthoud, CO 80513-8419; e-mail SLFeroe@aol.com)
EDITOR'S NOTE: Lot's willingness to sacrifice his daughters to save his male visitors from gang-rape was not just a one-time event in the Bible. Judges 19 tells the story of a man in the town of Gibeah who offered to a crowd of homosexuals his virgin daughter and the concubine of his male visitor to quell their demands to send the male visitor out to them. When the crowd refused the "compromise," the male visitor sent his concubine out to the crowd. So here is another biblical story that puts a higher value on the sexual honor of men than women. Like the story of Lot, it also shows that fathers were willing to sacrifice the honor of their own daughters in order to protect men from abuse.
Nontheistic Religions...
While going through the November/December 1997 issue of The Skeptical Review, one short passage from Roger Hutchinson's article "Biblical Miracles" caught my eye. This was: "For the religious person, there can only be one true religion and one true God; all other Gods, and the miracles attributed to them, must be false."
This point of view (aka the fallacy of the false dilemma) may be valid among religions such as the Abrahamic triad of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but it is by no means true of the other "world" religions. In particular, it definitely isn't true of either Theravada Buddhism or Jainism, two Indic religions which get along quite nicely without any conception of "one true God" in the Western sense of a being or entity who is responsible for the creation and continuing existence of the universe. Likewise, there is no perceived dichotomy of valuation between "brands" of miracles. They are all relegated to the manipulation of natural forces operating (albeit infrequently) within the universe.
As far as the question of truth goes, neither of these two religions maintain that they have an absolute monopoly on that commodity. The Buddha, for example, is often recorded as pointing out that it is wrong for a wise man to say that "(t)his alone is truth, and everything else is false" (Canki Sutta, #95 of the Majjhima Nikaaya, and elsewhere). At another place in the canon, he says, "To be attached to one thing (to a certain view) and to look down on other things (views) as inferior--this the wise men call a fetter" (Sutta Nipata, verse 798). The Jain stance is remarkably similar.
I had thought that narrow-minded provincialism and cultural chauvinism were fast becoming relics of the past as the 20th century draws to a close, but I find myself being disappointed, time and again, as pockets of insularism, particularly in matters of religion, continue to crop up where one would logically least expect to find them.
(Joseph Crea, P. O. Box 10576, Parker, FL 32404-1576; e-mail Joseph. Crea@worldnet.att.net)
A Bone to Pick...
I've just read Roger Hutchinson's article, "Sins of the Fathers and Other Matters." His reasoning reminds me of a dog chasing its tail--a lot of circular motion that gets nowhere and accomplishes nothing. Regardless of whether the child was killed because David had committed adultery or because David's deed had given the enemies of the Lord occasion to blaspheme, the Bible says clearly that God forgave David but struck the child so that it became sick and died and that God did this because of what David had done (2 Sam.12:13-18). God punished a child because of the father's sin, and no amount of circumlocution can change that.
Now I have a bone to pick with both Hutchinson and Till. Both referred to David and Bathsheba committing adultery. Bathsheba did not commit adultery. She was raped! The Bible (2 Sam. 11:4) says clearly that David sent messengers and took her. David was a king, not a figurehead or constitutional monarch like kings and queens today. He could order the death of people who displeased him. Bathsheba's husband was away at war, so she had no protector. When a man who has the power of life and death over a woman orders her to have intercourse with him, she is a rape victim and most definitely not an adulteress. Even the Bible, which shows little regard for women's rights, did not speak of Bathsheba's sin but only of David's sin. Show a little fairness, fellows
(Carol Faulkenberry, 1308 Crest Avenue, Gadsen, AL 35904; e-mail, alncarol@internetpro.net)
EDITOR'S NOTE: Ms. Faulkenberry became a new subscriber with the January/February 1998 issue of TSR, so she didn't see my article "Inerrantist Tail-Chasing" in the last issue of 1997 in which I used the same analogy to describe the way that Roger Hutchinson thinks. I'm tempted to say that our use of the same metaphor only goes to show that great minds think alike, but maybe I had better not, since she has a bone to pick with me in the matter of Bathsheba's relationship with David. She prefers to think that David raped Bathsheba, but I find this hard to justify solely on the grounds that the biblical text says that David sent messengers and "took her." If we assume that there is any degree of historical accuracy in this story, then we have to wonder why Bathsheba was bathing in a place where David could see her from his palace roof (2 Sam. 11:2). One could easily surmise that she was familiar enough with her surroundings to know that she could be seen from the palace and that, being aware that she was "very beautiful to look upon," she was trying to send a message to David. At any rate, whether David used force on Bathsheba or not, she certainly had no scruples against using her influence on him to rise to the status of favorite wife. At the end of David's life, she was powerful enough to persuade him to name their son Solomon his successor to the throne rather than Adonijah, David's son by another wife, who had already taken steps to secure the throne for himself. As this story is told in 1 Kings 1:5-40, we see that Nathan the prophet (the one who had condemned David for his relationship with Bathsheba) understood that Bathsheba had enough influence on David to make him act from his deathbed to keep Adonijah from securing the kingship. The ploy worked when Bathsheba at Nathan's biding went into David and made him promise that Solomon would be the king. David issued orders for Zadok the priest to anoint Solomon as king in a coronation ceremony. When I read this story, I find it hard to have much sympathy for Bathsheba. If she was truly forced into the relationship with David, she adapted to her circumstances quite well.
Freedom from Ideological Constraints...
I was glad to see William Sierichs' article, "If Dr. Price Denies Zeus, He's Irrational," which amplified the inconsistency of the inerrantist position. One of the reasons I abandoned Christianity is that there is no reason, outside of faith, to justify believing one virgin birth over another, believing one resurrection story over another, believing one holy book over another, etc. Furthermore, when I observe the mental gymnastics and ra- tionalizations of inerrantists in an attempt to maintain a belief in a god- inspired inerrant book, I am confident that I made the right decision to abandon ship.
I don't think it's possible for an inerrantist to understand the intellectual freedom people experience once they have released their minds from ideological constraints, including that of an inerrant and literal interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentalists can never be true freethinkers as long as they force upon themselves the limited framework of ancient writings.
The more inerrantists attempt to defend their position, the more inept and ridiculous they appear. Of course, this comment is probably feeding some persecution syndrome of inerrantists. Nevertheless, I think it would be safe to say that if a Muslim employed the type of rationalizations and postulated absurdities of inerrantists, the inerrantist would waste no time pointing out this fact to the Muslim.
(Michael Koller, 1995 Galeshead Circle, Germantown, MD 20876-6311; e-mail, koller@freethinker.org)
The Result of Reading the Bible...
Recently a subscriber to your magazine sat in on a debate between a coworker and me on the subject of erroneous biblical scripture. He immediately brought to my attention your work. Needless to say, after reading through his TSR collection, I am very impressed and eager to join your mailing list. Please sign me up for your free one-year subscription trial offer. I find your magazine very insightful and have already ordered several of the books you listed in your arguments. It is refreshing to know that someone is promoting intelligent discussion and encouraging like thought. I have all too often run into quibbling debates with biblical apologists who would rather embrace blind faith than consider intelligently exploring their faith and what they hold to be true. Many a skeptic has been proven wrong on a subject, but at least we examine the evidence and make a fact-based decision. The nature of our race is reasoning. Why do some choose to hide from this? Is the wise man the one who reads and believes? Or reads and understands?
In closing, I will share with you my mother's question concerning my belief in biblical errancy and my response. "How can you believe that the bible isn't true? You've read it... I made you." "Exactly, did you expect me not to learn from it?"
(Aaron L. Ring, 1609 McGraft Street Muskegon, MI 49441; e-mail, Iwnt2BGod @aol.com)
EDITOR'S NOTE: If a mother wants her children to believe the Bible, the last thing she should do is require them to read it. Those who read it just may see the absurdity of believing it.
Disastrous Effects of Religion...
I enclose the amount of $20 for the renewal of my subscription as well as in payment of that of the current year, giving up the free first year's subscription. As a Spanish citizen, I suffered in my childhood the disastrous effects of a Catholic religious education, in the context, as usual, of a political dictatorship.
My horrible English is not an obstacle, so I encourage you to continue in so necessary a work as that of the Enlightenment in the way of the big thinkers of our Western culture, from Montaigne to Popper or Bertrand Russell.
Please, I request that you correct the syntax of this letter if you decide to publish it.
(Dr. Rafael Sartorio, Jacinto Benavente 10, 8 B, 12580 Benicarlo, Castellon, Spain; e-mail, rafasar@rocketmail.com)
EDITOR'S NOTE: Only a couple of syntactic changes were necessary in Dr. Sartorio's letter. It's encouraging to hear from another person who has recognized the damaging effects that religion has on young minds.
A Saint's View of Women...
Your very interesting article in the September/October 1997 issue of The Skeptical Review entitled, "Keep Them Barefoot[ed] and Pregnant," brought to mind the remarks of St. Alban (4th century C. E.) on the difficulties of finding a wife: "To find a virtuous women is like finding the one eel in a bag with 500 venomous snakes. And if you grope in the bag and find the eel you have but a wet and slimy eel by the tail."
I look forward to further articles.
(Ross Firestone, 188 Mary Street, Winnetka, IL 60093; e-mail, rffphd@interaccess.com)
EDITOR'S NOTE: Obviously, St. Alban was a Bible reader.
