>I am back again; it is nice to be home.

I also would like to welcome you back. I hope you are enjoying your Summer as much as I am enjoying mine. Now that I am back, I hope to post on a regular basis. I may be gone another week later on in the Summer, but nothing has been decided yet.

Before I went on vacation, I left a puzzle on the hidden books of the Bible. I received several emails with the answers. Unfortunately, many of you were short on the number of books you discovered in that paragraph.

There are sixteen books of the Bible hidden in that paragraph. To discover them, you had to eliminate punctuation and combine words in order to form the names of books. Here are the names of the biblical books that appear in that paragraph:

Mark
Luke
Kings
Acts
Revelation
James
Ruth
Numbers
Job
Amos
Esther
Judges
Titus
Lamentations
Hebrews
Peter

Once you discover the names of the books and, if you emphasize the names, the paragraph will look as follows:

“I once made the reMARK about the hidden books of the Bible. It was a luLU; KEpt people looKING So hard for the fACTS . . . and for others, it was a REVELATION. Some people were in a JAM, ESpecially since the names of the books were not capitalized. But the tRUTH finally struck home to NUMBERS of our readers. To others, it was a real JOB. We want it to be A MOSt fascinating few moments for you. YES, THERe will be some really easy ones to spot. Others may require JUDGES to help them. I will quickly admiT: IT USually takes a minister to find one of them, and there will be loud LAMENTATIONS when it is found. A little lady says sHE BREWS a cup of tea so she can concentrate better. See how well you can comPETE. Relax now, for there really are several names of books of the Bible in this paragraph.”

The first two readers who emailed me with the correct number of books were Chris Walter and Joseph Matos, both of them my former students. Thank you for your outstanding work.

I want to congratulate Marc Findlay who was persistent enough to work until he discovered all the sixteen books. Honorable mention also should go to all the readers who found all sixteen books and to those readers who sent their list but fell short of finding all sixteen books.

I hope that all of you who took the time to find the hidden books of the Bible, those who sent me an email and those who did not, had a lot of fun solving this puzzle.

Again, it is nice to be back.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary