Reviewing The Bible as a work of literature.
Very strange book, quite the bizarre tale, and morally pretty icky. The protagonist, “God,” is plainly evil, narcissistic, genocidal, with the emotional range of a toddler. Which is something that *could *be done well, but nearly every character in the story fawns over him, praising him no matter how evil he is or how much he blunders, something I found unrealistic until Trump was elected to the oval office. In fact, the only character to call God out on his BS - a fellow named Lucifer - and tries to overthrow this brutal dictator gets punished by being made to be the prison warden of God’s version of the Guantanamo Bay prison, forced to torture political prisoners on God’s behalf. Which, as punishments go, is a really weird choice.
The protagonist also blames his own creations, mankind, for their own downfall, because he’s unable or unwilling to admit that he made a mistake in their construction. That is, if someone telling you that someone was lying to you and then telling you the truth being hidden from you, and subsequently acting on the truth, can be considered a mistake, which the writers clearly seem to have intended as the moral of that particular story. This is just one of the many reasons I wonder if the writers of this work were fascists, or would have been fascists if they lived today. The protagonist, God, is a textbook case of a fascist dictator, his rules being oppressive and largely illogical. In fact, almost half of the first book reads like Kim Jung Un sat down to write out a list of stuff he didn’t like. Plainly “God” had a bad case of Montezuma’s Revenge from a bad seafood platter once, as that’s one of the things considered just as bad to him as killing people (unless it’s in his name. Which, come to think of it, is never revealed in this book, “God” being a title).
If reading just the Old Testament, the story at least makes *that* much sense. But the sequel, the New Testament, muddies things a lot. Plainly written by an entirely different author or set of authors than the first, the protagonist’s personality completely changes, but in a strange way. It feels, actually, like an entirely different character is being grafted onto the original protagonist. It’s not presented, in the book, as the evil protagonist having an epiphany and trying to right his wrongs, but instead tries to claim that this evil narcissistic dictator is also this loving, gentle, kind being. The first book reads like an honest account of a corrupt and evil ruler who - in ways that are never really made clear - somehow also has the love of the people, possibly someone plagiarized the original manuscript and attempted some half-arsed, pro-God propaganda?
Also, there’s some kind of time travel involved, in which now the protagonist becomes his own father in a story that would make Oedipus raise an eyebrow, except that his mother somehow becomes pregnant without having sex. I guess the midichlorians are highly concentrated within her and her child? It’s never really explained, and the reader is left to wonder about that.
So the protagonist, who is now simultaneously up on his throne *and* down among the people to spread his new message of “love thy neighbor as thyself” also apparently gets captured and executed by the Romans in order to die as a sign that he forgives his human creations for his own mistake? I suppose that’s better than completely blaming them for something that was entirely *his* fault, but not by much.
The story is also riddled with plot holes, contradictions, pointless asides, an entire chapter of gratuitous pornography that contributes nothing to the plot, has less historical accuracy than an episode of Ancient Aliens, is harder to understand than Joyce’s Ulysses, is dull as dirt, and routinely advocates rape, incest, slavery, genocide, spousal abuse, and war crimes just as long as they’re done in God’s name, whilst simultaneously condemning lust, murder, lying, theft, and being cheeky to your parents. Seriously, this story is like the literary equivalent of sewing an octopus head to a giraffe’s neck, replacing two of the giraffe legs with alligator legs, and giving it flamingo wings. Then setting it on fire, but it won’t die, it just keeps running around like mad, burning and screaming in agony.
Further, as deities go, you’d be hard pressed to find one more evil, horrifying, and morally bankrupt than this “God” fellow without reading the works of Lovecraft. And even then, I’m not sure there’s worse.
In conclusion, this work is utter garbage in every respect, and I cannot for the life of me fathom how it got published at all. As a work of literature, it makes “Twilight” and “50 Shades of Grey” look like Pulitzer Prize winners by comparison. If the writers of this travesty were attempting to write the most nonsensical pile of literary crap in the universe, I’d say they deserve the gold medal. I don’t think Edward Bulwer-Lytton himself could have written worse crap even during the midst of an LSD-fueled waking nightmare. I could literally take a dump on a piece of paper and it would be a better story than this book. If you crossed “Mein Kampf” with Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and the story of Oedipus Rex, added in Voldemort from the Harry Potter series as a protagonist but halfway through the book tried to mix Harry Potter’s personality with Voldemort’s in an extremely slipshod manner, then threw in a collection of random fairy tales and a chapter from “50 Shades of Grey,” it would *still *make more sense than The Bible. Seriously, this book is like a fascist's mescaline-fueled wet dream.
This was cross-posted from http://alex-antonin.dreamwidth.org/286369.html
You can comment either here or there.
The protagonist also blames his own creations, mankind, for their own downfall, because he’s unable or unwilling to admit that he made a mistake in their construction. That is, if someone telling you that someone was lying to you and then telling you the truth being hidden from you, and subsequently acting on the truth, can be considered a mistake, which the writers clearly seem to have intended as the moral of that particular story. This is just one of the many reasons I wonder if the writers of this work were fascists, or would have been fascists if they lived today. The protagonist, God, is a textbook case of a fascist dictator, his rules being oppressive and largely illogical. In fact, almost half of the first book reads like Kim Jung Un sat down to write out a list of stuff he didn’t like. Plainly “God” had a bad case of Montezuma’s Revenge from a bad seafood platter once, as that’s one of the things considered just as bad to him as killing people (unless it’s in his name. Which, come to think of it, is never revealed in this book, “God” being a title).
If reading just the Old Testament, the story at least makes *that* much sense. But the sequel, the New Testament, muddies things a lot. Plainly written by an entirely different author or set of authors than the first, the protagonist’s personality completely changes, but in a strange way. It feels, actually, like an entirely different character is being grafted onto the original protagonist. It’s not presented, in the book, as the evil protagonist having an epiphany and trying to right his wrongs, but instead tries to claim that this evil narcissistic dictator is also this loving, gentle, kind being. The first book reads like an honest account of a corrupt and evil ruler who - in ways that are never really made clear - somehow also has the love of the people, possibly someone plagiarized the original manuscript and attempted some half-arsed, pro-God propaganda?
Also, there’s some kind of time travel involved, in which now the protagonist becomes his own father in a story that would make Oedipus raise an eyebrow, except that his mother somehow becomes pregnant without having sex. I guess the midichlorians are highly concentrated within her and her child? It’s never really explained, and the reader is left to wonder about that.
So the protagonist, who is now simultaneously up on his throne *and* down among the people to spread his new message of “love thy neighbor as thyself” also apparently gets captured and executed by the Romans in order to die as a sign that he forgives his human creations for his own mistake? I suppose that’s better than completely blaming them for something that was entirely *his* fault, but not by much.
The story is also riddled with plot holes, contradictions, pointless asides, an entire chapter of gratuitous pornography that contributes nothing to the plot, has less historical accuracy than an episode of Ancient Aliens, is harder to understand than Joyce’s Ulysses, is dull as dirt, and routinely advocates rape, incest, slavery, genocide, spousal abuse, and war crimes just as long as they’re done in God’s name, whilst simultaneously condemning lust, murder, lying, theft, and being cheeky to your parents. Seriously, this story is like the literary equivalent of sewing an octopus head to a giraffe’s neck, replacing two of the giraffe legs with alligator legs, and giving it flamingo wings. Then setting it on fire, but it won’t die, it just keeps running around like mad, burning and screaming in agony.
Further, as deities go, you’d be hard pressed to find one more evil, horrifying, and morally bankrupt than this “God” fellow without reading the works of Lovecraft. And even then, I’m not sure there’s worse.
In conclusion, this work is utter garbage in every respect, and I cannot for the life of me fathom how it got published at all. As a work of literature, it makes “Twilight” and “50 Shades of Grey” look like Pulitzer Prize winners by comparison. If the writers of this travesty were attempting to write the most nonsensical pile of literary crap in the universe, I’d say they deserve the gold medal. I don’t think Edward Bulwer-Lytton himself could have written worse crap even during the midst of an LSD-fueled waking nightmare. I could literally take a dump on a piece of paper and it would be a better story than this book. If you crossed “Mein Kampf” with Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and the story of Oedipus Rex, added in Voldemort from the Harry Potter series as a protagonist but halfway through the book tried to mix Harry Potter’s personality with Voldemort’s in an extremely slipshod manner, then threw in a collection of random fairy tales and a chapter from “50 Shades of Grey,” it would *still *make more sense than The Bible. Seriously, this book is like a fascist's mescaline-fueled wet dream.
This was cross-posted from http://alex-antonin.dreamwidth.org/286369.html
You can comment either here or there.