Benjamin Franklin, who never professed to be a Christian, still understood how excellent and valuable the Bible is. According to one story, he was in Paris, representing the new American Republic. Franklin was dismayed to hear supposedly educated Frenchmen ridiculing the Bible. Some even expressed contempt for anybody who would read it.
Franklin decided he’d test how well they knew the book they condemned. He told some of them that he had obtained a copy of an ancient manuscript. He invited they to come to his apartment one evening where he would have a dramatist read the manuscript. Those polished and educated people came. The reader read the “manuscript“ with great ability. When he finished, Franklin’s guests gushed with praise for the old manuscript. The most critical man among them proclaimed it was a better story than anything they had ever read or heard. They asked how to get copies.
Franklin shocked them beyond belief when he said, with a twinkle in his eye, they had heard read one of the 66 Biblical books for which they had such contempt.
They had heard read the book of Ruth, with God’s name omitted, and a few other minor alterations so they wouldn’t suspect it was the Bible that was being read to them.