Have you ever read Ken Smith's notorious Ken's Guide to the Bible ? It's a short but sweet romp through the Bible, with all its contradictions and incredibilities, and it's our Humanist Book Club light reading selection for August
Here are a few knowledgeable but succinct reviews of the book, from Amazon.com.
Ken's Guide to the Bible,
July 23, 2004
Religious fanatics have been selectively quoting the Bible for two thousand years. It is about time this ambiguous book, written and promoted by zealots for so long is exposed for what it really is - an implausible, unverifiable explanation for what men couldn't and didn't understand about the workings of the universe. People who fantasized about a Supreme Being and later His "Son," deities who were somehow supposed to be in charge of all things - but for some reason had to permit mortal men to kill the Son to save mankind?
Ken exposes the Bible as a collection of stories, many of which have nothing to do with one another, none of which can be verified independently and all of which have been translated and changed to suit the translator's version of events, many times over the centuries.
Ken?s Guide to the Bible is excellent, accurate and easy to read.
Read the Bible! You'll see Ken's right!,
May 13, 1998
This book is an attempt to read the Bible as it is. It does not try to interpret or skew the actual description in the Bible by historical understanding of the times, and takes everything at its face value (fundamentalism at its extreme, you might say). And it's fun! Makes you want to actually look into the Book. Hey, no disrespect or anything, but who in the history of Christianity has ever made Bible reading into something fun? Not Martin Luther, it's Ken.
More fun than Sunday school,
May 8, 2001
Ever wanted to get the short, short version of the Bible in a highly humorous fashion? Then this is the book for you. Easily readable in a day, this book gives a brief synopsis of all the books in the bible and then proceeds to highlight those passages they probably didn't assign you in Sunday school. All Ken's comments are clearly marked for easy reference with such enjoyable symbols as the sign of the bull for bunk. The best sections are the overviews of the prophets, virtually all of whom are exposed as the insufferable doom-sayers that they were.