I am enamoured with the Bible.

Please do not think badly of me being enamoured with a book that is so full of sex and violence. I just can’t stop myself from liking it. And you, hypocrite, probably watch The Game of Thrones which is just as bad.

But I do like this book. I like to quote it on Twitter and in my novels. It is just too enticing to stay away from. “Beware, the Lord is about to take firm hold of you and hurl you away, you mighty man,” said the Prophet Isaiah. I mean, how cool is that!

I still have my first Bible. It has a zipper! I was so excited to get it and it was so much fun to clasp the little cross attached to the slider and zip and unzip the book. Zip—unzip—zip—unzip. As a kid it gives you something interesting to do in church, and it also added to the fun of turning those noisy onion skin pages.

My Bible was second hand, (just call me Second-hand Rose LOL), and whoever owned it before me may have been perfectly crazy having underlined a whole lot of stuff in the New Testament using mostly a red pencil crayon. He or she, (but likely he), didn’t seem too interested in the Old Testament. Maybe it was too scary with all its monsters and cannibalism and what-not. Anyway, following with the tradition, I underlined a bunch of stuff too.

The previous owner underlined: “Let a woman learn in silence with all subjection.” Timothy 2:11  So I underlined, “Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Luke 11:42 Ha! Ha! Jesus wins! Paul sucks! (Did you notice that Paul seemed to have some serious sexual issues?)

But I should tell you about the pictures. Yes, my Bible has pictures! They are not exactly Leonardo Da Vinci if you know what I mean, but as a child they were better than no pictures. There’s Noah with a dove and rainbow, and Moses, real angry and ready to whip that piece of rock right at those idol worshipers’ heads. And there is also Jesus looking not like you would expect him to look, but instead looking like a blonde catalogue model. Even in one of the best Bible scenes when Jesus is chasing those greedy no-good sons-of-dogs out of the Temple, in the picture, he’s looking like a ridiculous goofball. That’s just not right. I would draw a mustache on those pictures, but he already has one.

Years ago, there was a man I went to listen to a few times who was a bit of a Bible expert. He wrote a book all about the Bible. His name was Northrup (I know how funny is that!) Frye, and the book was called “The Great Code.” It’s an interesting book, and the ending is quite good. Spoiler Alert! Here is the ending:

“Man is constantly building anxiety-structures, like geodesic domes, around his social and religious institutions. If Milton’s view of the Bible as a manifesto of human freedom has anything to be said for it, one would expect it to be written in a language that would smash these structures beyond repair, and let some genuine air and light in. But of course anxiety is very skillful at distorting languages…The normal human reaction to a great cultural achievement like the Bible is to do with it what the Philistines did to Samson: reduce it to impotence, then lock it in a mill to grind our aggressions and prejudices. But perhaps its hair, like Samson’s, could grow again even there.”

…and you got to admit, Samson’s hair was very very sexy!