Review: the Bible

The Holy Bible

By: King James

 The author didn’t even believe enough in his work to put his name on it. And King James as a pseudonym? There’s only one King James and he’s missing free throws down in Miami.

“Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.” -Proverb 4:1

The Bible starts without much of an introduction really. In fact, throughout most of the book, you find yourself wondering how something with so little standard structure works and has continued to work throughout time. You would feel the most influential, best selling book of all time would leave its mark on the writer’s world and today, we would be seeing many more books like the bible...but alas, such is not the case.

Apparently, you’re supposed to read the Old Testament first...but I just didn’t. Since this is the front of the book, I figure this is the start of the book. This ain’t a fucking choose your own adventure...though what if it was?

Just trademarked it. R.L. Stein is on to co-write it.

Anyways, the Bible starts speaking of God and how he made the world in seven days. You know, light and darkness, ocean and land. Nice guy. He goes on make Adam, gives him some ballin stuff and a few toys (Eve) and just lets the party roll. Eve goes ahead and decides she hates parties, and thus the term “fuck bitchs get money” became eternal. Eve gets all of humanity for the rest of time fucked, gets them kicked out of paradise, and has a bunch of kids.

As you go on the first few pages of the Bible, you tackle all of sorts of things. Cain and Able, Noah’s ark, that silly snake and apple. And they’re all seriously like, two perhaps, tops. So how people make those into full-length feature films is beyond me. Cain and Able is literally like... “Cain kills Abel”. I guess imagination helps... I would not know, I gave that shit up to beat the third world in Contra 3.

As you go deeper and deeper into the book, you find the path becomes more complicated. Unnecessarily, mind you. You can tell the author has ripped off J.R.R Tolken when there is literally entire pages that say, “Tom is the father of mike who is the father of Chris” and so on.

Obscenely paraphrased.

To make the matter worse, as far as I could tell, there was no reason for most of these characters to even be manifested. Their names seem to come up once just for the sake of making sure you’re well away you’re reading a book with a lot of characters, then they wander off the discard pile.

I found many references to Talisman throughout the game too as well, though I guess since Talisman is so dated, the author feels they can get away with taking some stuff. Clever. But we all know where the real Holy Grail came from

Now, after spending half the book establishing the universe and setting, near 300 pages in total, the main Jesus centric plotline starts and no further reference is made to it at all. I can tolerate a lot from a book, but it feels like the book is intentionally wasting my time, time that could be better spent playing video games or reading literally any other piece of written word, in existence, ever, even milk jug ingredient lists.

 Spoiler alert: lactose intolerants beware

 I was fairly deep in when I decided I needed to listen to music. I proceeded to find Neutral Milk Hotel as the most appropriate band to keep me in the mood. Likely, you haven’t heard of them. They’re pretty underground. And they were only really good before they were famous. Which is now. Because I just made them famous. Because you hadn’t heard them before like two sentences ago. In any case, this is all you need to know about them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Ypi_7jVR0

Honestly, I found the book’s protagonist, Jesus, to be an altogether uninteresting, unrelatable character. I mean, having a main character without flaws just makes for a boring read. What’s more, Jesus was obviously rimmed of from CS Lewis’ the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’s Aslan character, but at least Lewis had the literary foresight to make him a background character as well as a massive murderous lion to keep the book from stagnating.

Maybe Jesus could have a drinking problem. He can turn water into wine, seems like the logical outcome.

The book also doesn’t take many chances, big surprise the Romans are the bad guys. Just once I’d like to read a book or see a movie where the Roman Empire is portrayed as something other than an evil corrupt conquering horde.

Seriously Italian government, you’ve kept Sylvio Berlesconi in office for 12 years, you clearly have the PR department to do it. Get on it. 

Overall, the bible is a fun book. Scary, but fun. This Jesus guy sounds pretty ballin, like an older version of Jay-Z crossed with Leonardo DiCaprio. SPOILER ALERT: He actually ends dying, but then coming back, but then dying again. There’s many ways you an interpret this, and for all the highly religious furries out there, I am going to say it’s because Jesus was at least a little cat. I mean, WALK on water... Makes sense right? Cats would walk on water if they could. . . what terrifying creatures they would become.

A surprising amount of blatant anti-semitism here. I’m surprised there hasn’t been any backlash from the Jewish community.

For being the best selling book of all time, the Holy Bible has a few fundamental errors. It is lack of typical plot devices and structure is both its weakness and strength. 8.6/10. I would like to see what the author has up his sleeve for a sequel.

Next week: the Talmud