Perhaps it’s happened to you. You grow curious about something adjacent to the action in the Bible and you go online to find information. Instead you discover that Google (or Ecosia—plant trees!) searches round you up time and again into the biblical realm. It seems as if nobody is interested in exploring the world of the Bible not mentioned in the Bible itself. This has been an avocation of mine all along. After a while you get tired of hearing what yet another commentator has to say about the Bible itself and you start to want information on, say, places Jesus didn’t go. A startling apathy meets you online. If it’s not mentioned in the Good Book it’s not worth knowing. Now quite apart from sending me to the pre-biblical world for my doctoral work, this was also the impetus for Weathering the Psalms. Nobody seemed particularly interested in the larger picture.
I’m guessing this has improved somewhat in the academy, but it doesn’t translate well to the web, at least not the versions available in America. Searches for topics around the Bible always herd you back to the Bible itself, as if it is the only reason one might be asking about the weather, geography, or natural flora and fauna of Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria. Who’d possibly have such an interest for its own sake? Our bibliocentric culture seems to feed into search-engine algorithms and brings up Scripture time and again. Try this for maps, for example. You’ll come up with plenty showing places the Bible names. If it’s not named there, you won’t find much. Curiosity for its own sake isn’t encouraged.
This is related to the phenomenon of trying to search for something you don’t know the name of, I suppose. Those who post content on the web, if they want to be successful, anticipate what others are interested in. What of those of us who think differently? Some of us put unusual stuff on the web, but how do you find it if you can’t put it into words? Secular society doesn’t have much interest in the Good Book. I’ve suggested many times why I think this is misguided—the Bible is foundational for the American way of life, whether you’re religious or not. You might think curiosity would abound on related topics. The thing is you have to get through all the clutter to get there. I guess we need to be archaeologists of the web.
