Customer Reviews

The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Publisher's Weekly review on this page describes this book as an "unexpectedly delightful (if juvenile) little book". It's a fair comment; I would stress the "juvenile" a little harder than PW did, though. That is to say, the subject of the book is fascinating, or more descriptively the several subjects of the book are all fascinating. If you've ever felt like there must be more behind the frequently terse, and occasionally quite puzzling, stories of the Bible, such as Abraham's seemingly odd, repeated denials that Sarah and he were married (in Genesis 26), or Job's bizarre response when his neighbors in Sodom threatened his angelic houseguests (Genesis 19), or many other cases, you'll find fascinating and informative (and brief!) discussions in this book. Some of the discussions involve conjecture and even guesswork, and the authors are pleasingly up front about what is a guess and what is more solid. More generally the discussions in this book cast a lot of useful light on the extent to which the translations that most of us read today are themselves guesswork; often Biblical passages include words whose proper translation is just not known for sure (often because a given word of ancient Hebrew is used only once or a few times throughout the Bible, providing little context for translations). Altogether, very valuable stuff for the lay reader such as myself.

But my goodness, they lay it on thick with the juvenile business. As the two primary authors (Kaltner and McKenzie) say in their acknowledgements, the book was composed in two stages: first they wrote the book, then they handed it off to the third author (Kilpatrick) to give their presumably academic prose a more popular, humorous style. It was a good idea, I suppose, and that sort of thing is fine in the proper amount, but I found the implementation here much too heavy handed. They seem to get a juvenile and, to be blunt, rather lame joke into every second or third sentence; juvenile I can deal with, but the jokes mostly just aren't that funny, and their frequency gets in the way of enjoying the main narrative, rather than enhancing it. I'm currently about two thirds of the way through and, while the subject matter is terrific (see above), the style is so bad I'm finding it hard to continue. On the whole I find the intrinsic interest of the material wins out over the lameness of the style, but it is a struggle.

I do recommend this book, but because of the style, guardedly rather than enthusiastically.

The Uncensored Bible is an intriguing and scholarly text that explores the myriad of possible interpretations of some Bible stories. It is written in an engaging and readable style, and the authors aptly realize that they are writing for a wide audience, not a bunch of scholars at a conference. Kudos to them for acknowledging that fact. This is a serious work, and I was greatly impressed by the rigorous standards that the authors gave to each "questionable' theory that they examined in the text. They are not trying to shock people, but rather to investigate the aspects of the Bible that are unseemly, and to come up with reasonable conclusions that are based on reliable research, and the Bible itself. Again, it is refreshing to read a work by a scholar that seems to be absent of the scholar`s personal biases and beliefs.
The main flaw with this text is the hideous amount of bad jokes. They are so many, and so lame, that they begin to detract from the text. Had the amount of bad jokes, puns, riffs, etc been reduced I would have given this text 4 stars.
If you know your Bible, and are open to thinking critically about it, then this is a quick and engaging read and worth your time.

Light reading, funny and illustrative. It was a good bargain and I definitively recommend this book if you are into humane interpretations of the bible. Though is not that daring as I would expected, it is very scholar without being boring.

I admit, I couldn't resist the title of this book and thought that it might take a fascinating foray into some of the more mischievous closets of the Bible - and perhaps even make obscure passages worthy of further examination. Of course, adding a little humor might also take the edge off some of the more risqué parts of the Good Book as well as expose (no pun intended) some additional meaning that would otherwise be overlooked.

While the Uncensored Bible does examine quite a few intriguing and puzzling matters, the extreme overabundance of infantile and patently sophomoric humor overwhelms anything the authors might have hoped to accomplish - I only finished the book because it was not only a quick (but tedious) read but also because I would look up the passages referenced and found that the authors, John Kaltner and Steven McKenzie ("Bible professors"), did seem to have a decent understanding of Biblical scholarship. Unfortunately, it appears as if the final writer, Joel Kilpatrick (a "journalist"), was employed to take the prose and add a bit of humor to it. That was, without question, a disastrous decision and resulted in turning a potentially fascinating book into 224 pages of non-stop locker-room banter befitting immature young men who have just gone through puberty and are still held captive by nearly-lethal doses of youthful hormonal imbalance - that well-known and documented male condition which causes acute cerebral failure whereby the brain is temporarily relocated to the nether regions of primal lust (located far south of the brain's normal placement).

It's really a shame that the Uncensored Bible failed so miserably in accomplishing anything the authors might have hoped for; had it done so, it would have been a truly interesting book. Instead, the book is a complete failure due to the inanely incessant humor that clutters nearly every single page (make that nearly every paragraph). The only reason I gave this book more than one star is due to the fact that it is possible to look up each Biblical passage that the authors refer to. Perhaps someday, someone will write a good book on the Good Book's most taboo topics. Oh well.

This little book has given me more chuckles than I bargained for. It provoked gales of laughter from a rather straight laced, born again, son in law. He ordered his copy the next day. Written by a team of highly respected, well educated Biblical scholars, it explores the Testaments in a definitely unique fashion. From what Adam's Rib actually was, to recommendations on brewing and drinking beer, no chapter nor verse is immune. No pressure to believe nor disbelieve! Just a whole lot of well thought out and researched possibilities. Read it and make up your own mind! But be prepared to laugh your fool head off while so doing.

Don't give this book to your fundamentalist friends, but do tell everybody else about it. It is education, interesting, and amusing.

This book by Kilpatrick, Mckenzie and Kaltner truly provides an insightful yet comedic interpretation to the controversial and sparsely famous passages in the Bible. So many of these passages are not often read in Church or Temple (for good reason...) but truly give an interesting and humanizing side to some of the most holy and widely read characters.

A great read.

The book really isn't very bawdy or naughty. Rather it presents new interpretations of various places in the Hebrew Scriptures. Each of 23 chapters looks at a passage to provide a new interpretation, for instance: "what bone was Eve made from," or "does knowledge of good and evil refer to intercourse?" These interpretations are not original from the authors, who however provide references to original scholars for each chapter. Questions usually turn on one or two rare Hebrew words for which clear meanings are unknown. Neither the common readings of these passages, nor the new interpretations are reliable translations; something the authors make perfectly clear. It is an interesting book of new insights, particularly for the reader unfamiliar with biblical interpretation.

The book convinced me of three things, which I am sure the authors did not intend. One, to claim literal interpretation of the Bible is laughable, because much of what is written can be read in various ways. Two, the Hebrew Scriptures have nothing to do with Jesus or Christianity, but are a legendary and mythical history of the Jewish tribes. Three, the god of the Bible does not exist.