In pursuit of the trivial and the significant / When the canape table chatter turns theological, be prepared

“Schott’s Original Miscellany” was a bestseller in 2003, though it had no plot, no character development, no “Da Vinci Code”-like twist or mystery. Nothing. All it offered was information in the same riveting format found on a Chinese takeout menu or a parking ticket. Yet, with 2 million copies in circulation worldwide, the book and its siblings -- on food and drink, on sporting and gaming -- have demonstrated that what many readers love is raw, unadorned trivia.

Now there’s “A Theological Miscellany.” An amateur church historian, T.J. McTavish has culled the last 2,000 years to save you from possible future embarrassment: “How many times,” he asks in the preface, “have you been at a swanky dinner party when the conversation has turned to the popes who have served the shortest terms ... or famous bald men in the Bible .... ?”

Sure, all the time. But even if this never happens, it’s still fun to flip through McTavish’s listings on the origins of the term “devil’s advocate” (the person appointed to raise objections against a candidate for sainthood), the angels named in the Bible (Gabriel, Michael and Raphael) or the only U.S. president who was a minister (James A. Garfield; he was a lay minister -- never ordained -- in the Disciples of Christ).

In the field of intriguing facts, of course, the Roman Catholic Church is an enormous, bejeweled treasure chest, and McTavish devotes considerable space to saints and practices, councils and popes, such as those with the shortest reigns (Urban VII, for 13 days in 1590) or those with children. (Lucrezia Borgia was the daughter of Alexander VI, who reigned from 1492 to 1503.)

McTavish’s miscellany is not without its humor. Shield your kids from “The Amazing Santa” on Page 98, in which he launches a surface-to-air-missile at jolly St. Nick’s sleigh and explains why this means of gift delivery is scientifically impossible. To reach every child on the planet, he explains, Santa’s sleigh would have “a payload of 321,300 tons.” You get the point. Reading “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” will never be the same.

Some entries are a bit silly even for a trivia book (from the section “Christian Pickup Lines”: “I think God was showing off when he made you”) or culturally naive (Zipporah isn’t an unusual Jewish name, although it’s found under “Least Popular Biblical Names”). But that’s the nature of trivia lists. Reading them is a higher form of channel-surfing -- ignore what you want, skip to the next page and thank McTavish the next time a dinner party guest says to you, “Yesterday I was thinking about the great preachers throughout Christian history.... “ *