In a survey of belief in the Bible, which sampled 1,028 American adults aged 18 and older in interviews conducted May 8-11 of this year, 28 percent said they believed the Bible was the “actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.” That percentage is down from the peak of about 40 percent seen in similar surveys in the late 1970s and just above the all-time low of 27 percent reported in Gallup surveys in 2001 and 2009. (NPR June 5).

If native Americans scribes, rather than the Hebrews, had written down their tribal history and the doings of their goda and prophets two thousand five hundred years ago, then it is very possible that 28 per cent of Americans would now believe that feathered head-dresses were holy, the buffalo was blessed, and totem poles were the work of god. One hopes that they might, however, have checked their writings in order to tell consistent stories and include chiefs who actually existed. This would be more than the Hebrew scribes managed to achieve. Epicurus would no doubt consider the old testament a unique and interesting, if unreliable, document, but belief in its provenance as the literal work of god to be rather silly.