From a knowledgeable netfriend (you’ll figure out his comments as distinct from the original):

March 27, 2007

Can You Pass the Religious Literacy Test?

Dr. James Emery White

Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department of Boston University, has written a new book titled Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and Doesn t. For the last two years, Prothero has administered a fifteen-question quiz he gives his undergraduate students – one which they consistently fail.

I wonder how many points he requires to pass.

Game to give it a try?

You could make this a CGI application or an AJAX application and do real scoring at a web-site somewhere. That would be more interesting than including the answers at the end of the post. That way you would not have to take our word for it when we say we did well;)

Here s the test (answers below):

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Directions: Tally your points and multiply by two to get your score out of 100.

1 point each:

a.. Name the Four Gospels.

Better wording would be “name the four _canonical_ Gospels”. There are others, you know. Unfortunately, they have to high a reputation, especially in the wake of the hysterically inaccurate press reports concerning the so-called “Gospel of Judas”.

[snip]

1 point:

a.. President George W. Bush spoke in his first inaugural address of the Jericho road. What Bible story was he invoking?

Are you expecting people to remember the title given to the story by Stephen Langton in the Vulgate, which titles for the basis for the titles in most modern Bibles?

[snip]

a.. God helps those who help themselves. Is this in the Bible? If so, where?

Your own answer was mostly correct, but had problems. See below.

[snip]

a.. Name the Ten Commandments.

This is a trick question, since they occur in different forms in Deuteronomy and Exodus, and are divided differently by different groups. Surely a test for literacy should consider _this_ knowledge literacy as well.

4 points:

a.. Name the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

And this is _all_ he asked about Buddhism? What about the five sins forbidden to Buddhist laity (taking life, sexual immorality, falsehood, drinking alcohol, theft)? What about the distinction between ‘deeds’, ‘word’, and ‘thought’? Or that between ‘sekizen’ and ‘yokei’? What about the meaning of ‘Bodhisatva’? Or even ‘Nirvana’? What about why Buddhism welcomes syncretism so much more easily than Christianity? What about the meaning of the word ‘sutra’? Or that of ‘karma’, which is _so_ badly misudnerstood in popular culture?

And what about the difference between the Buddhist notion of ‘salvation’ and the Christian one?

Surely all these are about as basic to Buddhism as the “Four Noble Truths”. They throw much light on what the Four Noble Truths themselves mean in practical life.

[snip]

Answers to the Test:

[snip]

* Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (Mt. 7:12) Or a similar statement from Rabbi Hillel or Confucius.

Hillel and Confucius made similar statements, true, but it is still a good idea to obseve the distinction. As they stated it, it was not so Golden. Christ really did make a dramatic improvement to the statement just by putting it in _positive_ form.

Love your neighbor as yourself is not the Golden Rule.

As you say, it is not. It is, however, the Royal Law (James 2:8). So it should be included in a “basic literacy test” as well.

*No, this is not in the Bible. In fact, it is contradicted in Proverbs 28:26. He who trusts in himself is a fool. The words are Ben Franklin s.

Some of us would find Franklin’s endorsement of the ‘proverb’ reason enough to disbelieve it;)

This is, however, the answer where I think you have missed something important. Yes, Proverbs does warn against “self-trust”; and the Proverb you name is only one of several places the divinely inspired author gives this warning. But he _also_ says:

The soul in labor labors for himself; for he is driven by his own mouth (Prv 16:26).

Although this is no endorsement of ‘self-trust’, it _could_ be read as an endorsement of “help yourself that God might help you”, which is getting pretty close to Franklin’s sentiment. And in any case, it _certainly_ points out our need to labor: we must not sit back and wait for God to do everything for us. This would be a tragic misinterpretation of the command against self-trust.

So no, the exact proverb of Franklin’s is _not_ in the Bible, but one _can_ make the case that a very similar expression _is_. It is not as cut-and-dry as you make it out to be.

Surely basic literacy must not make out to be cut-and-dried, what is by no means so cut-and-dried.

[snip]

*Ramadan is a Muslim holiday characterized by a month of fasting.

Basic literacy should include at least some knowledge concerning why this month moves around in the year so much, at least that it is based on a lunar calendar, not a solar calendar.