We're quoting the Bible every time we say:

Someone is "a man after my own heart" (I Sam. 10:4); or is "one in a thousand" (Job. 33:23) with whom we "see eye to eye" (Isaiah 52:8) because, thankfully, he is "in his right mind" (Mark 5:15). On the other hand he or she may be "a thorn in your side" (Judges 2:3).We may explain that we "escaped with the skin of my teeth" (Job 19:20); or that a wise saying may come "out of the mouths of babes" (Psalms 8:25); or that our work may be just "a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah 40:15) even if it is "a labour of love" (I Thess. 1:3). We refer to "the powers that be" (Romans 13:1) who, in these election times, may have "fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:4).

Most of us will use all these phrases (and many, many more) easily, without an inkling that they come down to us through centuries or even millenniums of time. Such is the influence of the Bible on our everyday life, so pervasive are its teachings that it is at the core of Western tradition and thought.

The Bible is the most widely read book in history, of which more copies have been sold than of any other publication.

That we even have the Bible on our bookshelves is a miracle in its own right. Viewed dispassionately, it is a collection of writings from an ancient culture that thrived in the era of pharaohs and emperors. The Greeks used the word biblia to mean books. The English word Bible comes from biblia.

The Bible endured because it speaks directly to the soul of its readers. Many of those early readers then devoted their lives to transmitting it down to us in future ages.

Every year in the week that contains Thanksgiving we acknowledge our debt by setting the week aside as a national Bible study week. When the Encyclopedia Britannica surveyed the influence of the Bible on Western civilization, it declared that it has become the most available, familiar, and dependable source and arbiter of intellectual, moral and spiritual ideals in the West, and that it would be impossible to calculate the effect of its underlying moral suppositions on Western government, social institutions and even economic theories.

The Bible has done all of this because of its basic message of God's relationship with men, often stormy, always loving. The books of the Bible contain a wealth of imagery and stories. They also contain poetry, songs, hymns, riddles, letters, history, proverbs and, above all, the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Of the four standard works of the Church, the Bible was the first known to the world. Its passages encouraged Joseph Smith to seek answers to his religious questions directly from God, leading in turn to the restoration of the gospel and, eventually, to the emergence of other scriptures.

As Church members, we owe an enormous debt to those scholars and scribes whose careful work brought the Bible to our age. Their scholarship and intelligence preserved for us the words of Moses and Jesus alike. We honor their work through reading it, and we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly.

We also reaffirm our support of the King James Version of the Bible, a version that has been called one of the great treasures of the English language.

The LDS edition of the King James Bible, first published in 1979, includes chapter headings with doctrinal explanations, cross-references to all of the Standard Works of the Church, an extensive topical guide, an LDS Bible dictionary, maps with an explanatory gazetteer, and passages from the Joseph Smith Translation.

In a statement earlier this year, the First Presidency explained: "The most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical passage is not by comparing different texts, but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern-day revelations.

"While other Bible versions may be easier to read than the King James Version, in doctrinal matters latter-day revelation supports the King James Version in preference to other English translations." The First Presidency also encouraged all members to have their own copies of the complete standard works and to use them prayerfully, both in personal study and in Church meetings and assignments.

It's important that we do so, not only for our spiritual growth, but also because that is the way the Bible's traditions have come down to us. In a way, for thousands of years, each generation has reaffirmed its commitment to the eternal truths of the Bible.

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A THOUGHT FROM THE SCRIPTURES

We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. . . . - Articles of Faith 8

"Let me tell you one of the goals that I made when I was still but a lad," President Spencer W. Kimball, then of the Council of the Twelve, said at April 1974 general conference.

"When I heard a Church leader from Salt Lake City tell us at a conference that we should read the scriptures, and I recognized that I had never read the Bible, that very night at the conclusion of that very sermon I walked to my home a block away and climbed up in my little attic room in the top of the house and lighted a little coal-oil lamp that was on the little table, and I read the first chapters of Genesis. A year later I closed the Bible, having read every chapter in that big and glorious book.

" . . . Now I am not telling you this story to boast; I am merely using this as an example to say that if I could do it by coal-oil light, you can do it by electric light. I have always been glad I read the Bible from cover to cover."