The Bible Belongs in the Classroom…as Literature

Following a diktat from state superintendent Ryan Walters, all teachers in Oklahoma will now be required to incorporate the Bible (including the Ten Commandments) into their curricula. This comes shortly after Louisiana passed a similar law requiring all classrooms to display a poster of the Ten Commandments. 

It remains unclear what exactly Ryan Walters means when he says “the Bible,” but his choice to single out the Ten Commandments shows that the Hebrew Bible — what Christians call the “Old Testament” is at the heart of this new mandate. 

Let’s be clear — this is about the culture war, not religion. If liberals fill classrooms with Pride flags, Christian conservatives will fill them with Bibles. 

Still, Oklahoma’s law is less easily dismissed than Louisiana’s. Mandating the display of religious posters seems plainly unconstitutional, but there is a serious case to be made that the Bible should be part of school curricula — as literature. 

Part of what it means to be an educated person is to be conversant with the texts that have shaped the minds of those who have shaped history. Knowing the stories of Adam and Eve and King David will certainly serve students more in the long run than reading, say, “Ethan Frome.” 

One does not need to be religious to find meaning in the Hebrew Bible. As an observant Jew and soon-to-be ordained rabbi, the Hebrew Bible’s primary significance to me is religious, but I have also fallen in love with it as a literary work. Not a week goes by when I am not stirred by its poetry and complexity.

One does not need to be religious to find meaning in the Hebrew Bible. Not a week goes by when I am not stirred by its poetry and complexity.

As for potential church and state issues, teachers in Oklahoma should be advised to avoid questions of divine authorship versus human authorship. Instead, they should focus on the words themselves. This will give them more than enough to discuss. 

The Hebrew Bible is filled with lacunae and seeming contradictions which demand interpretation. Its stories interlock together through repeated words and motifs, rewarding the attentive reader. 

When the young Moabite Ruth arrives in Bethlehem, Boaz — a wealthy Israelite — says to her, “I have been told of all that you did for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband, how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth and came to a people you had not known before” (Ruth 2:11).

There is a clear echo here of an earlier story. In the book of Genesis, God uses nearly identical language when speaking to Abraham, saying “Go forth from your country, from the land of your birth, from the house of your father — to a land that I will show you” (12:1). 

This subtle thread connects these two narratives of sojourn, linking the humble Moabite convert with the great prophet Abraham. 

With stunning economy, it is a masterpiece of characterization on par with Shakespeare. When Esau returns home famished after a hunt and sees his mild brother cooking lentils, he exclaims “Let me gulp some of that red red.” The dialogue is so evocative and idiosyncratic. Esau is masculine, alive, animal — the very qualities that make him both the enemy of the story and its sympathetic victim. 

If the state superintendent is intending to inject traditional Christian Conservative values into the classroom, he may find that the Hebrew Bible has its own agenda. It defies all boundaries and challenges all orthodoxies. As the rabbis often said of verses that challenged their own assumptions, “Were it not written in the Torah, we could not say it ourselves!”

If the state superintendent is intending to inject traditional Christian Conservative values into the classroom, he may find that the Hebrew Bible has its own agenda. It defies all boundaries and challenges all orthodoxies. 

When students in Oklahoma open this letter from the ancient world, they will no doubt be enriched by the encounter, but as to what they find there — a historical document, a literary epic, or holy scripture — that will be up to each reader to determine.

As Ben Bag-Bag said in Mishnah, “Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.”

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.