Saturday, January 17, 1998

Students square off over Bible lore

By MAUREEN HAYDEN / Scripps Howard News Service

Quick: Who lost his strength when his head was shaved while he was asleep?

If you answered "Samson!" before you even reached the end of the question, you could make one fine Bible Quiz contestant.

The season of Scripture competition is upon us, and in churches and Christian schools all over the country students are preparing to put their knowledge of the Bible on the line.

Like television game shows, the competitions are fast-paced and fun, and they come with "quiz-masters," electronic buzzers and sudden-death playoffs. But instead of trivia, the content of the contests is the ancient texts of the Old and New Testaments.

"It's a wonderful competition," said Shelley Main. "It's not just about memorizing your Bible; it's about really understanding it as well."

Mrs. Main teaches history and literature at Evansville Christian School in Evansville, Ind., and coaches two teams of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from the school who will compete both regionally and nationally this year in Bible quiz competition.

Like many teams that compete, Evansville Christian students spent the fall semester preparing for competition and will spend the coming semester taking part in it.

The students have already qualified to compete in the annual Youth Evangelism Association Bible Quiz contest in April in Denver. The interdenominational competition attracts more than 60 teams from across the nation.

Many of the teams that go to Denver are made up of high school students, Mrs. Main said. Evansville Christian will field one of the youngest teams.

"It's the cream of the crop who go," she said. "We feel pretty good about competing against the 'big' kids."

Bible quiz competitions aren't just for Christians, though. Jewish students also compete in Bible quizzes, which test their knowledge, said Rabbi David Feder of the Adath B'nai Israel Temple in Evansville.

There is no local competition, Feder said, but Jewish students who compete successfully in other regions can end up going to a worldwide competition in Israel each year.

Students must not only learn their scriptures, but must know how to compete as well.

In the Denver competition, students compete as teams, and to indicate they have the answer, one of the members must trigger an electronic buzzer by leaping out of his chair.

"When you get to that level of competition, you're lucky if the first word of the question gets out before somebody is already out of their chair," said Mrs. Main.

Most competitions focus on a portion of the Bible. In Denver this year, for example, teams will be quizzed on the contents of Romans and James.

To prepare, Mrs. Main first went through the texts with her students and then discussed the central ideas in each. For Mrs. Main, the lessons of the Bible take precedence over its memorization.

"A lot of people memorize the Bible," said Mrs. Main. "But they never really work at understanding it."

(Maureen Hayden is a staff writer at The Courier in Evansville, Ind.)