The full title of this book is Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. A mouthful, right? It's so long that it actually summarizes the entire book perfectly. For example, the bizarre: after Jonah was swallowed by the whale, he was actually spit back on a beach and continued on his merry way. Did I learn this in Sunday school? I can't remember. I have a vague notion that Jonah and the whale was somehow miraculous, but really this tale is nuts.
The hilarious: Now, this assumes that David Plotz is not pulling his readers' legs (and since most of us will probably never undertake such a close reading of the Bible, I suppose it would be easy enough for him to do), but Plotz writes that in 2 Kings 2, "As Elisha is walking to Bethel, a group of boys - 'small boys' - starts mocking him: 'Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!' ... Elisha turns around and curses the taunting kids in the name of the Lord. After his curse, 'two she-bears came out of the woods and mangled forty-two of the boys.'" I should note that this is also highly disturbing.
Plotz's writing is lively and, frankly, hilarious throughout and so Good Book is a quick and enjoyable read, right up until you realize "twenty-five hundred years later and it's the same fights, the same land, the same people." Or, in Biblical terms, Judges 11: Do you not hold what Chemosh your God gives you to possess? So we will hold on to everything that the Lord our God has given us to possess." As Plotz concludes, "And there, my friends, you have practically the entire history of Israel, of the Middle East, and of planet Earth, in two short sentences."
That sounds laugh-out-loud funny. I did not learn the end of the Jonah story in Sunday school. I don't even remember the moral of the story. I do remember Job, but everything else is a blur of lions' dens and loaves of bread and amazing technicolor dreamcoats.
ReplyDeleteHave you read "The Year of Living Biblically"? I listened to the audiobook on a drive back to Michigan and laughed hysterically pretty much the whole way. It's about a guy who decides to do exactly what the Bible says, from growing his beard to stoning adulterers.
Yes, literally laugh-out-loud funny. Ben took it to PR and was cracking up reading on the beach, so I knew I had to read it when he was done. Plotz references Year of Living Biblically a couple of times, and in amusing ways, so I was already considering reading in. Now it's a must-read.
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