Therefore His Name Was Called Perez

Snide people like to say in the offhand: “The Bible is a great work of fiction,” with that extra bit of emphasis on the last word to let it be known that they’re smarter than the troglodytes. Now that I’ve actually started reading it, I have to say I disagree: it’s really not that good a work of fiction. It has its passages here and there, grand poetic lines on occasion, especially at the start, but mostly it just goes on and on and on. It tells the history of a man or a society over a chapter or two in a drone, like a child improvising a story, starting each sentence with “And then … And then …,” inserting all sorts of tangents and irrelevant details.

There’s very little of the grandeur/glory/profundity to the language that I was expecting. Jose Saramago’s “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” had much more beauty to its writings (though granted, that’s New Testament, this is Old), and before you jump on me with a “The Bible was translated from a dead language, heathen,” Saramago’s good book was translated from the Portuguese. And Portuguese is also a dead language, for all I care. Screw Brazil. Soccer sucks, too.

But strip the Bible of its divinity, of that sense that it must be good because of its Author, and I think Harry Potter would have a real shot at surpassing it on the all-time best seller list. Speaking of best seller lists: what’s the number one selling book in all the Australian book stores I’ve seen? Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” How about that.