Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible [Paperback]

“Hilarious. . . . It’s Cliff Notes for Scripture—screenplay by Plotz, story by God. . . . In the end, though, the book is made by the spirit of the writer.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Like the Bible itself,Good Bookcontains multitudes—it is by turns thought-provoking, funny, enlightening and moving.” — A. J. Jacobs, author ofThe Year of Living Biblically

“Plotz is a genius writer.” — Franklin Foer, author ofHow Soccer Explains the World

A whip-smart, laugh-out-loud tour through the most important book in the world, a book most people have never read: the Bible.

Like many Jews and Christians, David Plotz long assumed he knew what was in the Bible. He read parts of it as a child in Hebrew school, then at-tended a Christian high school where he studied the Old and New Testaments. Many of the highlights stuck with him—Adam and Eve, Cain versus Abel, Jacob versus Esau, Jonah versus whale, forty days and nights, ten plagues and commandments, twelve tribes and apostles, Red Sea walked under, Galilee walked on, bush into fire, rock into water, water into wine. And, of course, he absorbed from all around him other bits of the Bible—from stories he heard in churches and synagogues, in movies and on television, from his parents and teachers. But it wasn't until he picked up a Bible at a cousin's bat mitzvah—and became engrossed and horrified by a lesser-known story in Genesis—that he couldn't put it down.

At a time when wars are fought over scriptural interpretation, when the influence of religion on American politics has never been greater, when many Americans still believe in the Bible's literal truth, it has never been more important to get to know the Bible.Good Bookis what happens when a regular guy—an average Job—actually reads the book on which his religion, his culture, and his l³)