The Bible by God - PPPP

The Bible is not a comedy.

But it is billed as, “The world’s most awesome story ever.”

While that designation unquestionably belongs to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, I figured that it was about time to strip down to my skivvies and dive into arguably the most important and influential book ever written, to see what all the fuss was about.

Having said that, the Bible is like 10,000 pages long with a font so tiny that you need a magnifying glass to read it. Any book over 250 pages sounds like a chore to a person of my academic level, so there was no fucking way in Hell that I was actually gonna read the real deal.

Thank God for The Picture Bible by Iva Hoth, with illustrations by Andre LeBlanc. It’s, “God’s Word brought to life in pictures.” Many thanks to Mrs. Hoth for not only boiling the Bible down to a digestible 795 comic book pages, but also for dumbing it down. It was a breeze and delight to get through!

Now while the Bible is not a comedy, I actually laughed out loud an impressive 9 times.

Right off the bat, Mrs. Hoth included the following on a special ‘Did You Know’ page about the Flood and Noah’s Ark:

“Only eight people—Noah and his family—are saved … in the whole world!”

While this wasn’t one of my 9 LOL’s, I found it kinda funny that Noah and his seven family members repopulated the entire world. Clearly, the rampant incest that ensued finally explains to me why no less than half of the population is irretrievably retarded.

But this next bit between brothers Jacob and Esau did make me laugh out loud.

Esau comes home hungry. “I’m starved… Give me some stew.”
Jacob: “Will you trade your birthright for it?”
Esau: “Give you the right to rule our tribe someday? Sure. You can have it!”
Jacob: “Here is the soup.”

This next bit also made me laugh out loud and drives home a theme of the Bible that really struck a chord with me: People are idiots.

Babylonian King Nebuchadnezar: “I had a strange dream, but I have forgotten it. Tell me what it was and what it means.”
Adviser: “We can tell you what a dream means, sir, but no man can tell you what you dreamed.”
King Nebuchadnezar: “What good are advisers if they can’t tell me what I want to know? Put these men to death—And every wise man in my kingdom!”

God bless you, King Nebuchadnezar!

So while the Bible is not a comedy, or even a story, what it seems to be is a historical account of Jewish history in the first half (Old Testament), then the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and the early spread of Christianity in the second half (New Testament) —> with lots of fake news (i.e. divine punishments and miracles) weaved in to get people to buy into the religion via fear and awe.

Apparently, that’s been pretty effective. It seems pretty obvious and scamy to me, but I guess its popularity ballooned before there were things like science, and later generations have just been cool with believing what their parents tell them to. Good kids, them.

But frankly, if the Bible were fact, if it were Truth, we’d have some serious reckoning to do concerning the Holocaust. Either God is the Biggest Asshole in the Universe for letting it happen, or the Jews did some serious disobeying of Him in the early 1930s. Because in the Bible, whenever something bad happened to the Jews, like the burning of Jerusalem, it was because they had disobeyed God, usually by worshiping idols (i.e. other Gods like Baal). They had always brought God’s punishment on themselves. So if that is true, what in God’s name did they do to suffer the Holocaust? Were they worshipping Ganesh or Greta Garbo or something?!

Anyhoo, while we’ve established that the Bible is not a comedy, it can be interpreted as a parody of people. As mentioned above, a main theme is that humans are idiots, and in the Bible, God does not go easy on us. He lampoons the hell out us. No matter how many times He tells His chosen ones to obey His laws, they continuously disobey Him by worshiping golden calves and the like. And even when God or Jesus specifically tells them that they are going to disobey or deny Him, they refuse to believe it, swear that they won’t, and yet still wind up doing it. There’s just no explanation other than utter retardation. People are dumb. So so dumb.

To sum up, The Picture Bible delivers a surprising amount of LOL’s while skewering us dim-witted humans. And because it summarizes arguably the most important, most influential book in the world, while offering the same enjoyable reading experience as Marmaduke, I highly recommend it to everyone. 4 pearls.

Lastly, while it seems to me that religions have caused more harm in this world than good, I have nothing but love and admiration for The Golden Rule. That one simple sentence is all the religion any of us need. What a wonderful world it would be if we all followed it.

Bonus Quote (Anyone who’s been to church or temple as a kid can certainly relate to this): “After weeks of travel and visiting churches along the way, Paul reaches Troas. He has so much to tell the people that he talks far into the night. Overcome by sleep, a young man falls out of a third story window.”