Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!

The author reimagines the biblical stories, in some cases adding motivation to the strange behaviors. The stories are presented in modern language (with occasional tongue-in-cheek use of faux-King James English when characters are speaking, lots of thee and thou). The take on them is mostly irreverent and amusing. While the blurb on the back cover suggests that they show us the universality and timeliness of the Biblical stories, I would suggest they actually do otherwise. By taking out the high sounding poetic language, they bring the stories down to what they actually say, and present fully how ludicrous most of them are, and how not relevant to modern times is a story about David providing 100 (make that 200) foreskins of Philistines show more in order to pay the bride price for his (first) wife. Recommended reading for anyone who insists that the Bible is full of nothing but high minded morality and rules for good living. show less

The Bible! suffers from the sin of repetition, especially if you read more than one story a day. The stories all have the same deadpan wit, which becomes a trifle monotonous. There's a lot of good in Goldstein's stories - at times, he achieves the transcendent satire of early period Woody Allen at his most surreal - but when placed all together, they can be exhausting.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! takes commonly known Bible stories and puts a more human spin on them. The blurbs on the back cover call the author, Jonathan Goldstein, “hilarious” and “one of the funniest”. I found this book to have some humorous qualities in some of the stories. Goldstein modernizes and expands on the well-known Bible characters’ personal thoughts and actions. My favorite story was Cain and Abel. We all know Cain’s motive for murdering Abel was jealousy. Goldstein dissects Cain’s feelings of jealousy and makes him less of a monster and more a flawed human being. This was a quick read that I enjoyed very much.

The book jacket claimed this was hilarious...I didn't think so. The Joseph story at the end was very creative and the David story wasn't terrible, but neither were hilarious. I feel that so much more could have been done with these stories...

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Worth it for Joseph's story alone.

I loved this, but maybe mostly because I wish I had been required to read it my freshman year of high school instead of the actual Old Testament. Here's a YouTube video of maybe my favorite story, just in time for Christmas!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGMPP4v1Q8