When i said missionaries, i was referring to the Israeli ones who know Hebrew. You’re correct that the goyim usually don’t know it at all.
Shimon – no one’s saying not to know tanach. It’s a mitzvah. And an obligation. What I’m saying is that it’s not the main thing in practice due to our inability to take from it what was intended. Its STUDY is definitely not the “foundation” of Torah, because you won’t learn anything about normative yiddishkeit from reading a blank tanach. Quite the opposite; you’ll come away with twisted ideas and misunderstandings of the text, such as the examples i gave. But you’ll also, like the chasam sofer said, minimize people like shaul, dovid, who made errors. You’ll think they’re not different than you.