In Hotels are the Gideon Bibles meant to be taken?

[Vox_Imperatoris]

@gaffa

Not necessarily. I live in a majority Middle Eastern neighborhood in Chicago, and the Muslim equivalent of the Gideons left an English translation of the Koran in a plastic bag on my doorknob. It was accompanied by sheet of paper with a request to treat it respectfully. Until it appeared, I had never experienced any Islamic prostelization.

Translations of the Koran are not the Koran in the eyes of Islamic scholars, though, so I doubt they’re considered sacred.

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

[please921]

@elmwood

Cool! This gets me thinking … has anyone ever seen a Torah/Tanakh or Koran in a hotel room? I have my doubts about a Koran, because of the protocol about how the physical book is to be treated; there’s no guarantee it would not be abused. As for a Torah/Tanakh, there’s not the same protocol, but in Judaism it’s generally taboo to take a prayer book into a bathroom.

I doubt you would find a Torah in a hotel room in America, seeing as Judaism doesn’t actively seek converts and Jews don’t proselytize.

As for finding the Torah in a hotel room in Israel, it can be argued that perhaps a religious group would place one in every room in order to reach irreligious Jews. However, I never came upon one in my many hotel stays in Israel, but I can’t say that I looked through every drawer.

[Bill_Door]

@Wendell_Wagner

Does anyone have a copy of a Gideon Bible? Don’t they actually say in a preface that you can take the Bible if you wish? Yes, they expect the bible to be there a long time and they hope that the people in the room will read it and leave it, but they say explicitly (if I recall correctly) that if you really want to you can take the Bible home with you.

The one I’m looking at right now says on the inside front cover:

this Bible
is placed by The Gideons

If you desire to contact Gideons in this area,
please consult the local telephone directory

The facing page has:
HELP IN TIME OF NEED

And below it are listed relevent verses dealing with salvation, loneliness, sorrow, suffering, decision, danger, fear, turmoil, weariness, temptation, indifference, and conviction.