What the Bibles Say

Some stories are never written . . .

. . . and some just disappear.

On January 20, as I squinted at the small screen of my phone, watching the live-streamed Presidential Inauguration, I got a text message from my husband: Look at the Bible. I texted back: Can’t see much.

All I’d heard of the Biden family Bible was that it’s heavy. “Does yours have more Jesus in it than mine?” Stephen Colbert had joked during an interview the with the President-elect and the soon-to-be First Lady. Now, as Jill Biden held the five-inch-thick volume and Joe Biden raised his right hand, I saw that not only is it - figuratively - weighted with records of marriages, deaths, christenings and the like, but also with those of the nearly five decades of oaths sworn on it, but that it’s – literally – a serious, massive book. 

Another text message, this one accompanied by a photo: It’s identical to ours. I squinted again. He was right. We have one at home just like it.

In 1976, my husband’s maternal grandmother died. As relatives stepped forward to claim her belongings, he ended up with a few oddities from the attic. Along with a pair of Art Deco brass candlesticks and a thirty-inch-tall statue of the poet Sappho, he rescued the family Bible. When I got home, I lifted it from the coffee table. Yikes. A workout. Jill Biden must have good biceps. I set it down to examine it.

Aside from some slight water damage and wear to the spine, it was in excellent condition. Hard to believe it was printed in 1893. The gilded Celtic cross deeply incised into the thick leather cover and the silver latches showed little wear. The tissue-thin pages revealed no evidence that this Bible has ever been read. Why should it have been? The book was clearly intended for display; to be dusted, polished, admired, returned to the shelf. Was it brought out on Sundays, or when the priest came to visit? Why did it end up in the attic? A mystery.

I turned to the back of the book. Numerous spaces reserved for family photos were empty. At the front, the pages one always finds in family Bibles, filled with records of births, deaths, marriages, and – as with the Bidens, significant accomplishments – had  been carefully excised, Why?

Over the forty-one years we’ve been married, I’ve learned as much about my in-laws as my husband has learned about his. In other words, we know about as much as one might learn about War and Peace by reading a chapter or two in the middle, along with the novel’s first sentence. We all know it: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Did Tolstoy have a real-life model of a happy family?Maybe there’s a fictional one in that book. All I know is that War and Peace was exhausting to read, that its weight was comparable to the Bible in front of me, and that I’ve never met a single person who emerged from childhood unscathed. 

As a Scandinavian Lutheran, I come from a line of obsessive record-keepers. One of my  great-uncles spent years interviewing relatives, searching out Norwegian villages, obtaining church and courthouse documents. from Norwegian villages. His work resulted in a genealogical chart reaching back to the 1600s. Names recur. One son or daughter lives for a few days, and the next one is christened identically. “Died young,” is a common, heartbreaking theme. Marriages took place early, as viewed from our current cultural norms; unions produced far more offspring than we could manage without several generations living in one house. We read between the lines. A black mark: one forebear jailed for “killing a Lapp.” (He was later acquitted. Every family wants an outlaw. But a murderer?) Records vanish; suddenly, we are In the thirteenth century. Daughters marry princes and kings, all named Haakon.

Families, including, I’m sure – the Bidens – contain multitudes. Joe Biden placed his hand on a cleaned-up version. Filtered out are scandals, slights, snubs, resentments, quarrels and secrets: the juicy bits. Maybe Tolstoy just wanted to begin his novel with a dubious, if memorable, observation. Families function in ways that can’t be divined through the records. And I don’t believe the Biden Bible contains more Jesus than any other.

Those excised pages, and the history they contained, are gone. Someday, our kids – and grandkids, if we have them – may decide to track their ancestors down. I’m sure the research will be easier, the databases more complete. 

It would be nice to have those photos.