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Introduction
A Testament. The Book of Gynesis. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
The Book of Exit-us. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
The Book of Leave-it-alone-icus. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
The Book of Daughteronomy. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
The Book of Joshin' Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
The Book of Noodges. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
The Book of Sam(esex)ual. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
The Book of Queens. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Take This Job and Shove Him. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
PCalms. PCalm 1
PCalm 2
PCalm 23
PCalm 51
PCalm 100
PCalm 103
A Different Testament. The Gospel of the Hysterical Jesus. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Affirmative Acts. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
The First Letter of Paul to Everybody in General (lest anybody feel left out) Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Paul's Second Letter to Everybody in General. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
The Letter of One of Several Guys Named James. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
The Revelation of Joan. Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Satire is accounted in the Holy Scriptures an honorable thing and to be considered worthy in the sight of all men (and women), if I may paraphrase a familiar wedding liturgy. Second Isaiah's lampoon of Babylonian idolatry in Isaiah chapter 44, Proverbs's burlesque of the drunkard in chapter 23, verses 29-35, Matthew's parody of people who act pious in public for the sake of applause (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16) are still side-splitting as we read them today! My favorite biblical humorist has got to be Luke, the author of Acts. Get this: in chapter 12, Peter is on Death Row, his execution imminent. The faithful are gathered at Mark's mom's house, praying for his release. In fact, Peter is miraculously released and shows up at the door to tell them so. But when they hear the news, it does not so much as occur to them that their prayers might have been answered with success: no, Peter must have been killed already, and it must be his guardian angel, i.e., his ghost at the door! What a riot! What a picture of an utter lack of faith, of prayer reduced to a pathetic charade! And Luke's got a million of them! Ask Eutychus!
This book is a little different: it is a parody of scripture. Or is it? Maybe not, despite appearances. Let me explain how it came about, what motivated it. I had been a fundamentalist, then an evangelical, and I believed very strongly in biblical authority. I knew the danger of citing verses out of context and of reading into the text what you wanted to find there, though I guess I was not yet aware of how often or easily we do that. It was important to avoid such abuses as far as you could, since the goal was to find out what the Bible really said and do it, or believe it. I didn't yet realize the difficulties attached to that aim either. But I thought I knew cheating when I saw it. My fundamentalist pals and I used to deride the way Jehovah's Witnesses would mistranslate (we thought) John 1:1 in order to fit their Christology, to make Jesus merely "a god." I thought that was about as low as you could sink. That was just making the Bible into a ventriloquist dummy. That was just writing your own Bible. Little did I suspect that what I thought was an exception would soon prove instead to be the rule! For here came various Bible versions that were wholesale ideological rewrites!
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Basically, the idea for this book arose from the realization that even such extensive retooling as the Bible received at the hands of its politically correct censors must represent only the beginning of a Newspeak Bible, since the 1990 New RSV still fell far short of total political correctness. If the goal was to create a Bible that would embody and so reinforce liberal PC orthodoxy, much more work, more extensive retooling must lie ahead. Not that it will, mind you. It's just that it would have to. I mean to poke fun at the whole enterprise by depicting the Bible as it would have to look to satisfy liberal ideologues. And of course not even they will ever dare to go so far. Why? Just because it would look as ridiculous as it does in this book! Or very nearly so. The NRSV is already pretty hilarious.
I am grateful to my colleagues at the Jesus Seminar for their knee-slapping reception of portions of this book as I read them to the Saturday evening banquet audience twice a year. A few fragments of the text have appeared before in The Door, First Things, and elsewhere, sometimes without my knowledge or permission! But that's okay: to me it just meant some folks liked it enough that they could not wait to share it. Finally, don't get me wrong, and, my conservative friends, don't take too much comfort from these pages. I have plenty of ideas for a companion volume: The Fundamentalist Bible.
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