Here is a collection of Amazon.com bible reviews. Who knew bible reviews could be so funny?
Here are a few as a sample:
Frankly, I was disappointed. I expected more from God. Definitely not his best work.
* * *
It’s a great starter book. After which, by the time you’re around 12, I recommend some Mark Twain, working your way up to Milton at around 17, and then never looking back, except to read the Book of James to your war mongering Christian friends.
* * *
I give this two stars instead of one simply for the historical importance of The Bible, which is the most compelling reason I can think of for reading it. It won’t help you to understand Christians particularly, as they haven’t read it. It won’t entertain you particularly, and will at times bore you to unconsciousness. It won’t lift your morality as such, as most of the “heroes” are fairly immoral/amoral which befits the fact that they worship an immoral/amoral deity.
* * *
A supernatural thriller to the core, the monster in this book will thrill and chill you! A demonic entity named Yahweh sets humanity up with the perfect trap: the Tree of Life. Knowing they’ll eat the otherwise purposeless fruit, he slaps them with a generational curse that binds them to his malevolent will! What follows is the most twisted tale of evil ever written! Yahweh, egotistical and ragingly jealous, uses those under his control to rape and pillage cultures that don’t worship him. Men, women and animals alike were slain in these bloodthirsty raids. The only hope you had was being a virgin woman whom Yahweh encourages to be conquested [Deuteronomy 21:10-13], [Deuteronomy 20:13-16].
If you have a hard time reading about cruel animal and human sacrifices, perverted sexual references and the murder and abuse of children I suggest not picking this up. This is a true tale of horror and our villian is far from tactful! However, Yahweh’s not a transparent, homocidal manaic. To be so would be far too predictable and I commend the author on his skillful character development. What makes Yahweh so fiendish is that he commits his violent acts under the veneer of love! To fool humanity futher he sent down a hippy version of himself and later set that person up to die, quenching his bloodlust once again. But, that’s not where the horror ends! I hate to give away the ending but it’s far too devious to go unmentioned! In the end his cult followers will be sucked into an alternative dimension where they will toil and praise his ego to neverending extents. Those who choose not to accept his conditional, unconditional love will find themselves in a sadistic torture pit of his making.
It’s interesting how different people can look at the same book so differently. Even in my own life, I have swung from breathless reverence to amusement to complete disgust, depending on the story.
What’s your review of the Bible?
If you enjoy Tolstoy, The Bible is a must-read!
Read this and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” in the same weekend. Just make sure you have a prescription for Cymbalta or Effexor handy.
I want to see some in-depth analysis of the similarities between yahweh and Cthulu.
Wow! Those reviews are hard to top!
Here’s mine:
The philosophical implications of this book of mythos, taken with other great works of mythos (such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Homeric epics) shows that humans living thousands of years ago had important questions about their existences, but alas, no answers. And after thousands of years, what can we take away from this book? The fact that we STILL don’t have any answers and that we never will. Ultimate reality, if such a thing exists, is not accessible to human beings, despite all the stories we tell ourselves. Yet, these stories, taken with the stories of other cultures does show that humans have a desire to know and also a desire to act based on what they know. In this way, this book and others have helped to form the basis of how we construct reality and morality for ourselves, even if we give the credit to an overarching, “perfect” form (eidos) of rationalilty/morality.
What’s my review? It’s sucked. I would never thought, that there are so many weird and akward things in so called holy book
To quote Douglas Adams:
“it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate”
I love this!
haha, this got me curious, so I checked out the reviews myself from Amazon. Here’s a pretty good one I found:
“Who wrote this book? And most importantly, who allowed it to be publised?
This book contains a multitude of dangerous ideas that will allow individuals to escape responsibility for their actions. It can be used to justify just about anything – sexism, racism, slavery, genocide … the list goes on!
If the popularity of this book spreads global wars will follow! The book (which pretends to be a documentary) already describes so many atrocities, and it has the potential to cause more.
This book does not even deserve one star, but the rating system will not allow me to give it zero. So, one star it is.”
Daniel had a good point in that how can different people look at the book so differently. So what is it that sucks people in? I think its a few things:
1) The a priori assumption that this is the Word of God which leads to a willing suspension of disbelief. I think this was a big part of it for me. It just made sense to me that God would leave us an instruction book, and this must be it.
2) Written in a serious and authoritative voice. A good salesman will always sound like he is the expert on what he is trying to sell you – and the Bible does that well. If you listen to the tone while overlooking the content, it is easy to get lost in it. The Bible must know what it is talking about because it sounds so confident!
3) Commonality. For all the genocides, the Bible is still a history of a people and their lives – successes and misfortunes. So it is easy to find many things in the Bible that fit us and our lives.
wintermute, thank you for your honest, sensible answer to my question. I have many more, but I get the impression that open inquiry is not welcome here by some individuals, so I’ll let it go.
gore, sex and talking donkeys. what’s not to like?
MilitantAtheist:
Thanks for your comment. Now I have coffee all over my screen!
The bible: something for everyone. The bible is an anthology of ancient myths and tales that has it all. Whether you like murder mystery, war stories, contemplative poetry, geneological biographies, stories of kings, stories of the common man, incoherent poetry, or slightly perverted thrillers, the Bible has has it all. The bible is not recommended for reading in its entirety as the editors have left gaping holes in logic, many contradictory statements, and general bad sequencing. Pros: free at any hotel, lots of stories to choose from. Cons: may make you dizzy, sleepy, or Christian.
I hesitate to compete with the reviews you posted. Well chosen bits. I like them a lot.
But I will dare to give it a shot.
The Bible is compilation of short stories that can be rather entertaining, if you can manage to remember that it is historical fiction. Keeping that in mind be challenging, however, since the Book has proven, again and again, to have powers to hypnotize folks into believing it is all true.
The problem with the Bible is that, while it is childish enough to be easily embraced by kids, along with the fun stories you can find x-rated material about murders, vengeance, destruction, and promiscuity that children should not be exposed to.
In short, the Bible has some historical and entertainment value, but it should be read with caution.
You might hesitate to pick up this book. All this controversy that has surrounded it for centuries.
But if you look beyond the badly constructed chapters and the over the top violence and moralisation and don’t think it’s actually historic, it’s kind of ok.
If there was a writer, who would take the stories and actually write them in a more creative way, you would have an awesome fairytale book which has it’s own life lessons.
Though the biggest problem is that it’s seriously dull, repeats itself and just the knowledge that it’s been edited (and not for the best!) so many times that we don’t even know who wrote the first version makes it a book of which i agree with anybody who would hesitate to pick it up.
What’s black and white and misread all over?
The Bible!
This collection of various myths and legends will seem familiar at first with anyone who’s familiar with the mythology of ancient times, from Greece to Rome and beyond, this book has a smattering of everything.
The best thing about this book is that it doesn’t matter how you feel about anything mentioned in the book! If you love or hate killing children, this book says that it’s admirable AND wrong to do so!
If there are any parts of this book that you have a problem with, you can just do what many others do the world over, and ignore those parts, only reading and taking to heart the parts that you want to!
It’s certainly undeniable that there are many readings and interpretations of the books that comprise the Bible.
What are we to make of this? Does it follow that because a writing can be misinterpreted that it is not true? Are all of these interpretations true? Is there a correct way to interpret the books of the Bible? Does it follow that if there are many possible readings that a text could not possibly reflect God’s thoughts?
Here’s mine:
This blockbuster is the latest by God, whose previous works include that monster bumper fun tome, the Bhagavad Gita.
What makes this book different from all the rest is firstly that the author is writing under His own name. Previously, He has been heard to make pronouncements under the pseudonyms “Jupiter”, “Thor”, and many many others. Now the mask is down, and He speaks under his own exegis.
The second point of differentiation is that this book will be preserved, incorrupible and complete, to be passed down to further generations through the miracle of printing.
This book has it all: Angels, demons, plots and coups, set against the rough-and-tumble backdrop of a primitive society. Louis L’Amour admirers will find it comforting in its formula, Stephen King fans will find a drop or two of morbid horror, and L. Ron Hubbard fans will find another kooky group with whom they can surely sympathize. Ann Rice fans will find … well, nothing much, to be honest. But ever since finding Jesus Ann isn’t any fun any more, so they might as well read this work instead.
Yes, there is much to reccomend The Book of Mormon, especially if you’ve read prior fiction by the Author.
Dear Sir:
As Vice President of Save Our Sperm (and Eggs) I am writing to PROTEST you’re publishing this piece of filth!!!!! You are…COMPLETELY BAD and glorifying EVIL. Yes, Onan gets his cumuppance but SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT UNSAID!!!!!!!! thionk of the children.
For the Love of CHRIST,
Yermovintofasttoshoot@sos.com
Spare a thought for God! Alone and lonely throughout eternity, he copes with the mind-numbing monotony by creating subject peoples whom He will love, and who will love Him back. But what mortal vessel can ever live up to the expectations of divine perfection? In THE BIBLE—an account of just one of Yahweh’s myriad failed experiments—human beings sin and fall short of His glory almost as soon as they draw their first breaths. They may be brief candles alongside the Immortal one, but they sure are ungrateful, and yet again God has to unleash his righteous anger upon one of his creations.
And what upsets God most? You guessed it … SEX!! Those humans are really only interested in each other’s naughty bits. It’s true God made the penis, the vagina, the foreskin, the anus, the clitoris, the ear lobe, the G-spot, the nipple and all those other erogenous zones chock-full of sensitive nerve endings… BUT HEY! He didn’t expect anyone to actually do anything with them! Sure enough, those humans have a million sexual permutations imagined before you can say ‘Holy Covenant’. And to God’s chagrin he discovers he’s pretty fixated on human sex as well. Porn? Yahweh the ultimate voyeur found it first, and he feels dirty (and left out–one Nazarene virgin doesn’t relieve the pressure for long). So what does our frustrated big boy do? He smites left and right, and he makes up ridiculous rules about which orifices are in and which are out. But will those humans listen? The news is all bad and you’ll find it in THE BIBLE … chapter and verse.
Yes, THE BIBLE is the book for you if you like reading about lonely, sexually repressed, irrationally angry and hate-filled deities taking it out on their creations. It’s a book with every deviant thing the modern potboiler craves–mass burnings, mass drownings, mass rapes, genocide, suicide, patricide, matricide, eco-terrorism, racism, sexism, slavery and more sexual repression than you can [ahem] shake a stick at. Not suitable for children, the mentally unstable, the mentally stable, or anyone who likes a little consistency, natural justice or true morality.
PS The real deity is in the Old Testament. There’s an attempt to sugar coat the OSB (Old Smiting Bastard) in the New Testament–but ignore the androgynous god-son and the sanctimonious epileptic and flick on to the Book of Revelation where the OSB reappears even crazier than ever. Once you’ve read THE BIBLE, you’ll be praying you never get to heaven.
I can’t compete with some of those.
So, not creating anything that original, I am reduced to letting Omar Khayyam speak his poetic piece:
Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin,
Beset the road I was to wander in;
Thou wilt NOT with predestination round enmesh,
And then impute my fall to sin!
i like the first one…short, simple and seriously funny..i spit coffee on my laptop…
Why did god make Shakespeare a better writer them himself?
The Bible is an interesting story for those who have the time to read it. It entails the story of young Yahweh, a ultra powerful God who demands sacrifice through worship. He, in his almightiness, does lots of shit and fucks the world up. Very fun read, although I find a lot of bookstores accidentally put it in the nonfiction section.
The reasons I can’t 100% recommend this book is the graphic violence and total strangeness of it. Why does God create light before he makes the sun and stars? Why does he create a tree that makes his children evil bitches? Why does he kill the world with a flood instead of just not being a bastard?
I’ll check sparknotes.
It’s a horrifying tale of immorality and high body counts. Definitely made for a niche audience.
I thought the 4th review was hilarious! People have such wonderful ideas. I would have never thought of posting a review on amazon, this made my night.
Okay, as others have said, it will be hard to top the talent on Amazon (and here) but here goes:
The thematic content of this tome is not only random, but also lacking in creativity. Same old territory, different tour director. I’d rather sit through re-runs of Dynasty while being forced to eat boiled beets than have to read through the contradictions and allusions of grandeur and lack of originality that makes up this book. Skip it. Take yourself out to the dollar cinema for the latest Jim Carrey flick. You’ll be philosophically challenged on a much higher scale.
That’s funny. I never thought to check out reviews on Amazon. My favorite so far is the plain and simple “It sucked”. Can’t get much more clear an opinion. Here’s my review.
It’s got everything. Sex, violence, kings and queens, history and prophecy, flawed humanity and divine intervention. Not for the faint of heart, its a book that must be read and re-read to catch nuance. There are parts of utter monotony that require a certain personality to truly appreciate. The author does not sugarcoat its characters but reveals both good and bad. There are ideas left open for debate, leaps of faith or rejection giving the reader the freedom to make up his own mind as to its importance and impact on his life. Overall a good read especially if you choose to approach it as a piece to be studied and revealed over time.
yep, but christians love to cite all the violence, bloodshed, twisted ‘relations’ etc. as God showing us that Jesus came out of a sordid history – so that we can also be reassured that God can create something wonderful out of us and all the horrible things in the world, because they’re a part of his ‘unfathomably great plan’. In other words, God killed all those people etc. because he (altogether now) ‘loooooovvvvvesssss uuussssssss’.
Not unlike the way my friend’s christian flatmate says that the more expensive fish in her fish tank have more personality and are more lovable (therefore their lives are more meaningful to her) than the other ‘generic’ fish that just fill the tank. It seems ‘God’ feels the same way about humans.
Here’s my effort, although it’s never going to be as good as the ones on amazon:
A tale of bronze age goat-herders and their attempts to make sense of their existence on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. The book starts off with a bang (not a particularly big one though) with incest, the death of one quarter of all humans, and a seafaring saga with even more deaths. It then has a number of repetitive tales of capture, war, barbeques, genocide, travel and slavery, though not necessarily in that order. It then goes into a bit of a break by including some correspondence about what the earlier pages mean before the confusing apocalyptic climax at the end.
This anthology by many authors contains nearly enough blood, sex, gore and talking donkeys to overcome the long, dull genealogical and legislative passages, some seriously soppy poetry and its many inconsistencies. Could have been better if properly edited, plus it is difficult to recommend a tome that book clubs have been meeting weekly for nearly two millennia to discuss and still cannot explain coherently.
Coming soon – God’s next blockbuster the Koran! Writing as Allah, God packs in almost more blood, guts and misogyny than he does in his first work! Though short on lucidity and anything resembling relevance, this is an explosive read – literally!
I’d like to ask you a question. If it’s your right to believe what you want, why isn’t it okay for others to believe differently? Why mock someone you don’t know for their belief system? Seems rather hypocritical if you ask me.
1. Preheat the oven at 350 degrees.
2. Place the Bible on a greased cookie sheet.
3. Next to the Bible, place a meatloaf.
4. Cook both items for 90 minutes
5. Discard the Bible.
6. Eat the meatloaf.
7. Enjoy.
Good point Johnny. Also, my kids recommended using 451 degrees, thus burning the Bible, but I fear they missed the point! THAT WOULD ALSO BURN THE MEATLOAF!
An often dreary book with occasional flashes of horror and brutality that describes the petty goings on of families and tribes wandering the Middle East deserts.
Many of the tales (e.g. the story of Jacob son of Isaac son of Abraham) read like the transcript of a Jerry Springer show. I suspect that two thousand years from now people will be unable to tell the difference.
Not one for the kiddies.
Here’s my review: Blood, blood, and more blood. A perfect read for admirers of mass murder, mayhem, misogyny, misogamy, misology, misoneism, and misanthropy.
Well, if the followers of the text are supposedly guided by the same “holy spirit” yet come to such wildly different conclusions, and the text is supposedly divinely inspired yet contains so many contradictions and omissions, is it a surprise that anyone finds it to be more human than divine?
If the bible were written or divinely-inspired by god, you’d think that it would be a book of such stunning beauty, precision, and clarity that there would be not be any dispute about its interpretation.
Instead, you have a book that’s so thoroughly inconsistent that it can be interpreted to mean just about anything you want. Or more accurately–impossible to actually figure out. It makes many claims about the world that are proven to be untrue and displays cruelty, violence, and suffering beyond comprehension. These are all things you’d expect from primitive authors who knew very little about the true nature of the world around them and made their best attempt at explaining things given their limited understanding.
Similarities:
They are both worshiped by cults. Fanatics and secret societies help them and live for their coming again. The fanatics worshiping them kill for their beliefs. They are both VERY BIG.
Difference:
Chthulhu was powerful.
Chthulhu was actually seen by people, both followers and some non-followers.
Go, Johnny, go!
Well said. All of it.
bullseye
Let’s see I’m following you here; correct me if I’m not. The mere fact that there are many interpretations, some of which are ridiculous, is evidence to you that God did not write the Bible. Does it follow then that if a book were written by God, it would be near impossible for us humans to misinterpret it?
Definitely the finest.
Thanks claidheamh mor. yahweh is supposed to be a jealous god. For some reason, I picture Cthulu being a lot more self-assured.
mrs marshall! That was great!
I was a fan of Dallas back in the day. Never got into Dynasty either!
“Take yourself out to the dollar cinema for the latest Jim Carrey flick. You’ll be philosophically challenged on a much higher scale.”
he he he!
Sharon, if people kept their beliefs to themselves and quietly respected the rights of others to believe differently or not at all, I’d have no problem with that. But I object to people with often very narrow beliefs who are able to impose those on others, particularly when it means some people are treated with hate or as second class citizens. Therefore, I object to any sort of religious extremism, whether it leads to the honour killings of young girls, genital mutilations, death sentences against novelists, laws that say atheists can’t hold public office, or that one person can’t love and commit to another because they happen to be of the same sex.
I can’t speak for others, but I mock the bible because I believe that read literally and interpreted rigidly it promotes hypocrisy and double standards. Sarah Palin remains my case in point. She believes we live in the end times, she belongs to a church that prays for the second coming of christ to happen quickly, for the faithful to be raptured and for the final tribulations to descend upon the world. I find this frankly ridiculous, but i wouldn’t care about it if she hadn’t come alarmingly close to having control of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
When extreme religious beliefs, ones which promote intolerance and eagerly anticipate earthly destruction, seem about to take control of the world’s most powerful nation, then I can’t ignore it.
Aside from that, I grew up immersed in bible teachings, so I believe I’ve earned the right to have an opinion about it. And my opinion is that it is an awful book that perverts minds and communities, and it would be hypocritical of me if I didn’t speak out and say that I don’t think any child should be exposed to it.
You don’t agree with most of the premises of most of the people of this site.
Quit pretending you don’t know what people mean and phrasing your disagreement as a question.
I see through it.
A manipulative tactic is to make people repeat what they said. It’s straightforward if a speaker/writer is unclear, or the listener/reader is unclear. But that is not the case with you, as you ask questions every time. It’s obvious that you are not genuinely, truthfully unclear about something every damn time you post. Therefore, it’s likely to be manipulation.
Another possibility is that it is a challenge. Challenges are not unfair, but yours are transparent and obvious.
You don’t agree with the site’s premises; most of the people on the site don’t remotely share your premises.
Go find a fundie site.
Because I agree with many of this site’s premises, it is predictable that I would call a fundie site a cluster-fuck. And fundies can call this site that – but I think “ours” is much more thoughtful and well-reasoned.
“We” (I and probably most others here0 are never going to buy the premises upon which your beliefs are based.
(I think it’s because we’re thoughtful and well-reasoned.)
No, it does not follow. God might be an incompetent author.
But assuming that he’s god a passing skill with words, and given that he’s generally supposed to be omnipotent, it seems fairly obvious that if he wanted to write his memoirs in a way that people would not kill each other, because that’s what they thought it told them to do, he’d be able to write unambiguously.
So, either the author of the bible is incompetent, or he actively wanted to cause discord, strife and confusion.
Jesse,
Let’s forget the interpretations and just focus on the actual things that the bible states. I claim that it is internally inconsistent. Perhaps you can prove me wrong on that count. I’ll even make it easy by challenging you to factually resolve only a single discrepancy. How about you resolve, say, timeline of the crucifixion in the 4 gospels, or perhaps do the same for the timeline and list of witnesses of the resurrection? Hint: the gospels aren’t consistent with each other on these topics.
I claim that the bible displays cruelty violence, and suffering. Perhaps you can explain the god-sanction slaughter of innocents in, say, the book of joshua? It’s okay by me if you use modern concepts of human rights and justice in your explanation. After all, we’re supposedly made in god’s image, so if we can grasp these concepts, presumably god can too.
I claim that the bible contains information that is proven to be untrue. Perhaps you can explain why the bible says that bats are birds when in fact they are mammals?
I’ve got to call Occam’s Razor on you here. The book reads exactly like it was created by humans who were largely ignorant of the true nature of the world around them and just made stuff up in an attempt to explain things that they really didn’t understand. That’s the most efficient explanation that matches the evidence.
Oh Chthulhu, I forgot that!
Chthulhu isn’t jealous at all. But then he doesn’t need to be. He is all-powerful and there is none like him. He is unchallenged.
(No one needed to fabricate a Chthul-Satan.)
He does not have emotion. Except anger when crossed. That is his only similarity to God: the anger when crossed. Well, that, and they both kill when crossed, Chthulhu less wantonly. The rest are differences.
HPL, you are loved.
Jim,
I wonder if you could use the bible on a charcoal grill for smoking the meatloaf instead of using wood chips… Oh, never mind, the meatloaf would probably come out tasting all bitter and toxic (like its contents). I think maybe hickory wood chips would be better.
This is why you need to be careful where your pronouns go.
No kidding. It was one of those “Doh!” moments right after hitting the Submit button. Hopefully everyone understood that I was refering to the bitterness and toxicity of the bible and not the meatloaf. LOL.