Strata: The Bible in the News: Like the Birds and the Bees … and the Bunnies

Maybe it was the warm weather, but a few words popped into my head recently: “birds do it, bees do it.” Then a few more: “even educated fleas do it.” Just one more line—“Let’s do it, let’s fall in love”—and I was in the midst of a characteristically clever Cole Porter tune. From there it was but a proverbial hop, skip and mental jump to an expression from the Book of Genesis that I had been much considering, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). What then could be more natural, at least for me, than to explore the myriad methods through which modern writers make use of these Biblical words in their accounts of everything from clementines to investments?

Especially near and dear to my heart is a story from London’s Guardian, which speaks to the many events that were scheduled to celebrate last year’s 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible: “Tonight a church in Preston has a nonstop reading, while over the coming weeks commemorative events will be fruitful and multiply.” May it ever be so.