Bible history 101.

Bible history class was but one of many September grammar school start-up rituals of my childhood. From fourth through eighth grade, the students of St. Cajetan Grammar School on the far Southwest Side of Chicago were brought to the church every Tuesday morning at 11 a.m. for Bible history.

Several hundred students, all warned to be on their best behavior for the pastor, were ushered into the pews by the many sisters and one lay teacher who staffed the school. The pastor, Father John Sharp, would make his appearance only after all the classes were in their assigned pews. He always had a well-worn book in hand and usually walked up and down the church's main aisle as he read to us and offered his own extensive commentary on many things.

The book in Father Sharp's hands, Bible History by Bishop Richard Gilmour (no known relation to me), was the pastor's road map for these weekly classes. Far slimmer than the Bible, written in 1869 and published by the venerable Catholic publishing house, Benziger Brothers, Bible History is an artifact from another century but was still considered useful in the Catholic world of the early 1950s.

Father Sharp was a strong believer in the absolute historicity of the Bible. He was convinced that Noah's ark would one day be found by archaeologists. It was the godless Communists who were preventing this discovery, since Noah's boat no doubt rested on a mountaintop somewhere in the Soviet Union.

His "historical" tour de force was a yellowed newspaper clipping he kept in his Bible History, which he would brandish every year when we got to the story of Jonah and the whale. The newspaper article related an incredible story about a man who fell overboard from a Russian whaling vessel. A short time later the ship's crew caught a whale. Inside the whale was the man overboard, a little worse for the wear, but alive. This article, in the pastor's view, was proof positive that the Book of Jonah and, by extension, the entirety of the Bible was neither myth nor story but documented history.

Although Bible history was the subject and Bible History the road map, the pastor took frequent side trips. His absolute favorite story, repeated often, was of Abraham Lincoln, shining his shoes one morning when Secretary of State William Seward entered and exclaimed, "Mr. President, you should not be shining your own shoes." Lincoln responded, "Whose shoes should I shine?" This story apparently had taken on biblical proportions in the pastor's mind.

As Catholic schools across the nation gear up for yet another academic year, Bible history classes taught by pastors using Bishop Gilmour's tome are but memories of a bygone era. But nostalgics can find a copy of Bible History offered for sale on eBay every so often. The current crop of Catholic grammar school students will spend a lot more time reading the Bible rather than hearing about the Bible. I just hope they don't forget to shine their shoes.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.