Surveys show many Americans struggle to name the first book of the Bible, the four gospels or the Ten Commandments. (In a “Tonight Show” classic, an interviewee told Jay Leno that one of the commandments was “freedom of speech.”)

Proponents of a Kentucky Senate bill promoting instruction about the Bible in public schools rightly point out that students who don’t know basic Bible stories are ill-equipped to understand much of the Western heritage.

How to understand Abraham Lincoln’s reference to the nation on the eve of the Civil War as “a house divided” without knowing Jesus’ proclamation that such a house falls?

How to understand the suffering of the main figures in Herman Melville’s novel “Billy Budd,” Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Old Man and the Sea” or Marc Chagall’s painting “White Crucifixion” without knowing the archetypal imagery of the suffering of Jesus’ death on a cross?

How to understand politicians’ references to America as a “city on a hill,” a phrase used by Jesus to describe a bold public witness?

How to understand a song that never seems to leave the radio waves — U2’s “Until the End of the World” — without knowing the imagery of Judas betraying Jesus with a kiss?

How even to understand the latest Washington buzzword, “Snowmageddon”?

…The Senate bill, now pending in committee, calls for the Kentucky Board of Education to establish guidelines for an elective course on the Bible’s literary structure and its influence on “literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy.” Some Kentucky schools already have such courses, according to curriculum producers, but the bill would encourage more.