781 Pearl, Pearls sus, his essence or mind, that followers needed to grasp. The result was that his sermons often con- tained references to the parables of Jesus found in the NT and, surprisingly for Peale, the Sermon on the Mount. Peale was a quintessential storyteller, and the parables yield themselves to being told as stories. Like other Protestants of his generation, Peale’s attachment to the Bible was primal. The book was inherited from his parents and his church, and its verses were learned and memorized at home. Even- ing meals were always started with prayers and Bi- ble readings, and bedtime prayers were typically ac- companied by favorite Bible verses. He could quote scripture as some other children might quote nur- sery rhymes. Most familiar were verses from the NT, but he also was well acquainted with the OT, and throughout his life he relied on Isa 40:31: “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (NRSV). A visitor to Peale’s New York office could be overwhelmed first by the sight of a handsome, groomed, once-live eagle atop a large perch, before even seeing Peale himself, and know that this sym- bol spoke of the person’s attachment to promise, new life, and possibility. And that was characteristic of the way Peale relied on the Bible in his ministry. He knew his Bible; he knew what was in it, though he would never admit to being a “student” of the Bible in the sense of studying it exegetically or grap- pling with its original languages. His sermons were based on biblical texts only in the broadest sense, as being the basis for three stories, or affirmations, of how individuals overcame their “weariness” and “renewed their strength.” The Bible was therefore not an expository source but a resource to support a contention about facing a problem in everyday life. Millions across America, and even throughout the world, found the message personally engaging. Each of his sermons had three illustrations, and each usually had a biblical reference he had drawn out, and it was left to the listener how much import to attach to the biblical support for the typically compelling story Peale told. It was a model others tried with less success to copy. His ministry at Marble eventually set him up for a clash with his colleagues and academic critics, who found his populist appeal to ordinary people across the country a distortion of traditional beliefs, and even “cultish.” He extended his message through a communication network that was sophisticated and modern for its time; radio, newspaper columns, popular books, lectures, television appearances, and more. Noting that men were a significant minority in most congregations, he cultivated a special rela- tionship with men, often those in very powerful places. 782 Bibliography: ■ George, C. V. R., God’s Salesman: Norman Vin- cent Peale and the Power of Positive Thinking (New York 2 2019). ■ Hatch, N., The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT 1989). ■ Meyer, D., The Positive Thinkers (New York 1980). ■ Peale, N. V., The Sermon On the Mount (New York 1955). ■ Peale, N. V., This Incredible Century (Wheaton, IL 1991). Carol George Pearl, Hymn of the / Thomas, Acts of Pearl, Pearls I. Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament II. Greco-Roman Antiquity and New Testament III. Judaism IV. Christianity V. Islam VI. Literature and Film VII. Sacred and Ritual Objects, and Visual Arts VIII. Music I. Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament Pearls are only rarely attested in the ancient Near East and the HB. Despite the abundance of jewelry that survives from ancient Egypt, including many varied types of beads (esp. shell and coral), “no fine pearl, the bead par excellence, earlier than the period of the Ptolemies, has been found” (Donkin: 42; see also Kunz/Stevenson: 6). The earliest known pearls have their origin in “Mesopotamia, the Iranian pla- teau, ꜥOma¯n, and the islands of Bah rain and Fail- aka, territories … within or to the north of the most celebrated and probably the most productive of all fishing grounds around the Persian Gulf” (Don- kin: 44). The archaeological evidence yielded by those regions, though considerable (see ibid.: 44– 47), does not indicate any broad interest in pearls prior to the Hellenistic period, starting ca. 300 BCE (Landman et al.: 104). From the first millennia of cuneiform documents (Uruk to Neo-Babylonian pe- riods), there is only a single putative literary trace of pearls, in a well-known vignette in the Sumerian/ Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh (see “Gilgamesh Epic”). Questing for immortality or rejuvenation, the epic’s eponymous hero learns that he must recover from the bottom of the sea a particular plant or flower that grows there. To do so, he employs the same technique known to have been used by Bahrain’s pearl divers (Bibby: 173): he opened a [channel] … Heavy stones he tied [to his feet,] And they pulled him down … to the Ocean Below. He took the plant, and pulled [it up, and lifted it,] Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception vol. 23 © Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2024