As the best-selling book of all time, the Bible’s place of prominence in world culture continues to increase. Famous biblical scenes are quoted by politicians and the media on an almost daily basis. This influx of biblical satire and stereotypes has skewed social perception of the Bible, said Leonard Greenspoon, Klutznick chairman in Jewish civilization and professor in classical and near eastern studies at Creighton University.

Greenspoon will give a lecture Monday called “Media-ting the Torah: The Hebrew Bible and/in the Popular Press,” which will focus on the translation of the Bible by popular culture.

“I’m particularly interested in references in the daily press to the Bible,” Greenspoon said. “Look at how the press portrays various aspects of the Bible and what they assume the general public knows. We don’t know if you have higher faith in life, you can misjudge your audience.”

Greenspoon believes the press has a way of getting stories out to sound unique, often using quotes from the Bible that may not apply to the situation.

“There’s a pretty well-known expression, ‘to be as wise as Solomon.’ Look at all the different places where that reference occurs,” Greenspoon said. “When you’re writing stories, you want to give the facts but then you also want to be somewhat clever – try to get people interested.”

Iowa State’s Hector Avalos, associate professor in religious studies, shares similar beliefs with Greenspoon – that the media takes hold of certain events and doesn’t follow through with them thoroughly. He uses the example of the “Jesus box.”

“In the fall of 2002, this bone box was discovered or was announced to the world, and it has an inscription that referred to James, the brother of Jesus,” Avalos said. “A lot of the media jumped on, saying this is the earliest evidence for Jesus. It turns out the Israel Antiquities Authority thinks this is a forgery. So there’s a propensity in the media to jump on the discoveries and there’s not much follow-through on whatever happened afterwards.”

With respect to journalists, however, Avalos said it is not entirely the media’s fault.

“Most journalists aren’t trained in a particular field, so they’re never probably going to get a story as accurately as experts in that field will,” Avalos said.

When looking at other forms of media, Greenspoon said comic strips are a great source of trends.

“Comic strips are still valuable as a source about popular culture,” he said. “In the comic-strip world, ‘Peanuts’ would often have Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus, Snoopy and whatever characters say something from the Bible and also add in the chapter and verse.”

Greenspoon’s lecture will cover these situations and more, followed by a question-and-answer session. He said he hopes to give a Jewish perspective to a campus mainly composed of Christians.

Greenspoon said the solution to the problem is referencing – making sure your audience knows what you are trying to explain.

“Sometimes you wonder if when they use [biblical references], maybe – if it doesn’t break the flow of an article – they could simply put a little references to where it happens in the Bible, which occasionally happens,” he said.