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

by David Plotz

read by The Author

(Newark: Audible, Inc., 2009)

MP3 Audiobook, 145.1 MB, 10.5 Hours, Nonfiction

ISBN: N/A, US$24.95

“Whoa, good Bible.” —Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly episode 6, “Our Mrs. Reynolds”

From the Cover: 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, and then attended 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 Book is what happens when a regular guy—an average Job—actually reads the book on which his religion, his culture, and his world are based. Along the way, he grapples with the most profound theological questions: How many Commandments do we actually need? Does God prefer obedience or good deeds? And the most unexpected ones: Why are so many women in the Bible prostitutes? Why does God love bald men so much? Is Samson really that stupid? Good Book is an irreverent, enthralling journey through the world’s most important work of literature.

My Review: It should come as no surprise, to those who know me at least, that I read and listen to Slate.com. One of the podcasts that I subscribe to is the Slate Political Gabfest, in which David Plotz, who is also the editor of Slate participates. It was through the Gabfest that I was first introduced to Plotz’s book—Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible—and it was as a loyal listener of the Gabfest that I was “rewarded” with a free download of Good Book from Audible.com (the Gabfest’s sponsor).

Needless to say I jumped at the chance to download an audio book for free, though this can often be a crapshoot. However, in this instance I was well rewarded. David Plotz’s Good Book is one of the best books that I have read/listened to this year. Hands down. To set it up, Plotz—a Jew—was at a family member’s bat mitzvah and bored and so picked up a copy of the Torah and opening up to a random passage, started reading. What he came across was the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob/Israel. If you do not know the story, it is in Genesis 34. If you do know the story, then you can understand why Plotz would be shocked and dismayed at reading the story and wondering why he had never heard it before. It was, in Plotz’s experience conveniently left out of both the Hebrew school he attended and the Episcopalian school he attended. It was then that the seed of Good Book was planted. Plotz began to wonder what other stories in the Bible he did not know were in there, and so, he started reading and began chronicling his discoveries and reactions at Blogging the Bible, from there, it turned into Good Book.

(One caveat up front, as a Jew, Plotz skips the New Testament and reads only the Torah or Old Testament, so when he says “Bible,” he means the Hebrew Bible.)

Anyway, what I liked most about Good Book was Plotz’s openness to the stories and messages in the Old Testament. Much of what is in there is very different from the Sunday School versions we are all taught (which are often “cleaned-up” for young ears) and which we think we know. Plotz approaches the Bible as something in which he doesn’t really believe, but which he respects and which he can understand why people treat it the way they do. He is respectful of other’s beliefs in the Biblical stories, even if those beliefs are not his own. I bring this up and emphasize it because I find it very agreeable. At about the same time I started listening to Good Book, Bill Maher’s Religulous arrived in our mailbox via Netflix. Unlike Plotz, who approaches religion from a standpoint of respectful skepticism, Maher’s supposed documentary and inquiry into religious beliefs across the world is not respectful in the least. Maher comes at religion from a stance of complete disbelief ad disrespect. There is no courteousness in Maher’s approach. He treats all those in every religion he “investigates” as insane and stupid for their beliefs. We turned it off after about 20 minutes.

Back to Plotz. In spite of my own belief in God and the stories in the Old Testament, I found Plotz’s experiences with and commentary on his reading of the Old Testament to be enlightening, fascinating and refreshing. Just for my own background, I am LDS (Mormon) and, as a Sunday School/Gospel Doctrine teacher have taught the Old Testament at least three times over, so I guess you might say I am relatively knowledgeable about the Bible and Old Testament. So, to hear Plotz’s take on these 39 books was, as I said, refreshing, because unlike a lot of other books about the Old Testament, Plotz came to it as a complete neophyte. By his own admission, his past experience with the Torah was very limited, and so when he decided to read the Bible from cover to cover, he eschewed all Biblical commentary and extraneous reading and decided to take the Old Testament on, mano-a-mano. Good Book contains only Plotz’s and his Bible and his own personal reactions to and thought on the stories he is reading.

It was a fascinating listen, especially since it is Plotz himself who reads the audio edition, and really, would you want anyone else reading such a personal book? Plotz has a friendly and likeable style that greatly adds to the engrossing tale he is telling as he goes chapter by chapter through the books of the Old Testament.

His style is made all the more likeable due to the “every man” reaction he has to the stories he is relating. In describing Biblical stories, figures, events, and laws, Plotz endlessly makes references to pop culture and modern life, including (in no particular order): 9½ Weeks, Abercrombie & Fitch, The A.C.L.U., Adam Smith, After-School Specials, All About Eve, Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Bar Scene, Big Brother, Bob Dylan, The Branch Davidians, Brokeback Mountain, Bugsy Siegel, The Byrds, Casablanca, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Cinderella, Cold Fusion, The Congressional Medal of Honor, Cormac McCarthy, C.S.I., David Koresh, Divorce Lawyers, Doctors Without Borders, Donald Trump, Edgar Allan Poe, Entourage, Ernest Hemingway, Flowers in the Attic, Frat Rushes, Freddy Krueger, The Gap, George Orwell, The Godfather, Gone with the Wind, Good Cop-Bad Cop, Grifting, Hippies, How To Win Friends and Influence People, Hustler Magazine, Jack Nicholson, Jane Austen, Judge Dredd, The Justice League, K-Rations, A Knight’s Tale, Last Tango in Paris, Law & Order: SVU, The Life of Brian, The Lifetime Network, “The Lottery,” Macrobiotic Diet, Madame Bovary, The Madness of King George, Maoist Economics, Married, with Children, Martha Stewart, Mata Hari, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Midnight Cowboy, Michael Jackson, Miss Manners, The Miss Universe Pageant, Monty Python, Morgan Freeman, Muhammad Ali, The New Yorker, Nixon’s Historic Visit to China, Oprah Winfrey, Penélope Cruz, Penthouse Forum, P.E.T.A., Pete Seeger, Pimp My Ride, Pol Pot, Portrait of a Lover, Pretty Woman, Project Runway, Pro-Wrestling, Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Real Estate Deals (Crooked and Otherwise), Restraining Orders, Rogaine, Salma Hayek, The Saw Franchise, Self-Help Books, Shirley Jackson, Soap Operas, Sports Talk Radio, Stage Moms, Stephen King, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Three Dog Night, The Three Stooges, Total Home Makeover, Ty Pennington, Viagra, William Shakespeare, Woody Allen, The X-Men, “Yo Momma” Jokes, Yuppies, and in what is quite possibly my favorite statement in the book, Plotz refers to Ezekiel as “the Groovy Whole-Grain Hippie Prophet,” and, even more amazingly, he makes it all work and seem natural to the stories of the Bible.

Another fun aspect of Good Book is Plotz’s Appendix, which contains Useful, and Not-So-Useful Bible Lists:

• The Bible’s 12 Best Pick-Up Lines
• The 11 Best Miracles in the Bible and 1 Very Lame One
• The Bible’s 13 Most Spectacular Murders
• The Bible’s 9 Best Parties
• 10 Bible Prostitutes
• 11 Biblical Heroes You Don’t Want to Be Named After
• 9 Truly Hellacious Biblical Punishments
• The Bible’s 8 Trippiest and Most Important Dreams
• 9 Weird Biblical Laws
• The Bible’s 6 Most Important Business Deals
• 6 Abuses of Animals Rights in the Bible
• The Bible’s 10 Most Important Meals

These are pretty self-explanatory lists and actually a lot of good-natured fun with the Bible.

My only complaint in all of what Plotz has to say about the Bible was his over use of the word “feckless” (which, according to dictionary.com, is defined as: “1. ineffective; incompetent; futile 2. having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy”) in describing at least five Bible personages that I can think of off the top of my head, and there is possibly more that I can’t remember. It is not because it was in any way offensive to the person, or my personal belief about them, they were all apt descriptions of these people, it was just an overexposure to the word that I took a dislike to. Kind of like Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” … it was alright the first time you heard it at the end of Titanic, but after it played on the radio ad nauseum you were sick of it, and it grated every time you heard it. That’s the way it was with the word “feckless” in Good Book.

Other than that one, little nitpick, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent listening to Good Book, and I found the conclusions that Plotz makes upon finishing his reading of the Bible to be very inspiring and thought-provoking, coming as they do from a starting place of disbelief and no faith and even skepticism. It made me rethink my belief in the Old Testament and the stories it tells, not in a bad way, but in a way that challenges my faith and makes me want to strengthen my own conclusions about God and the Old Testament’s teachings, moral and otherwise, and those things I took on “blind faith” and what I thought the Biblical story was saying and teaching.

I don’t care whether you’re religious or not, skeptic, atheist or believer, whether your belief is Christian, Jewish or Whatever … Good Book, at the risk of a cliché, has something for everyone, and I guarantee you’ll enjoy the journey of one man’s quest to read “every single word of the Bible.” (And for a real treat, you have to try it out on Audio. Plotz’s intimate reading is a wonderful experience.)

This review can also be found at Bryan's Book Blog.