Image: Our Savior Lutheran Church I suppose that most of us who attended Sunday School or Hebrew School as children at some point wondered who actually wrote the books that were compiled into what we refer to as The Bible.  I do not remember much about what we were taught but have a vague recollection that we were taught that Moses wrote the Old Testament, that the disciples, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the Gospels, and the Apostle Paul wrote the Epistles.  It was pretty simple.   Image:  Amazon There were many Bible-story books and some pretty good stories.  None of the chronology or geography came into the picture, however.  It seems that the adults did not think it was important or more likely that they had no idea about these things. If you start asking too many questions, Sunday School teachers get very nervous.  I suppose I was an adult when I first seriously asked myself who actually wrote these books and how they were put together. The answers were enlightening. For t

Image:  The Conversation My contribution to Banned Book Week is a thank-you letter to some of the people who are responsible for my book habit. Just this morning we were discussing where I would put any more books.  That was timely since my last book acquisition just arrived in the mail a few minutes ago. I don't know when I first started buying books but I can recall the excitement in elementary school when the Scholastic book sale rolled around.  Who could ask for more? I guess the first person I should thank is my mother who taught me how to read when I was four years old.  Alice and Jerry and Mrs. Tiggy Winkle.  She had been a teacher so it was a natural thing for her to teach me how to read. Image:  Getty Images The next person was surely my maternal grandmother, Ida Mae Murrell Tatum.  She had been an English and Latin teacher and basketball coach and owned the first private library in a dedicated room I had seen.  I ended up with a lot of her books, including the Harvard Cla