The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book [Hardcover]

The Publisher's Weekly review on this page describes this book as an "unexpectedly delightful (if juvenile) little book". It's a fair comment; I would stress the "juvenile" a little harder than PW did, though. That is to say, the subject of the book is fascinating, or more descriptively the several subjects of the book are all fascinating. If you've ever felt like there must be more behind the frequently terse, and occasionally quite puzzling, stories of the Bible, such as Abraham's seemingly odd, repeated denials that Sarah and he were married (in Genesis 26), or Job's bizarre response when his neighbors in Sodom threatened his angelic houseguests (Genesis 19), or many other cases, you'll find fascinating and informative (and brief!) discussions in this book. Some of the discussions involve conjecture and even guesswork, and the authors are pleasingly up front about what is a guess and what is more solid. More generally the discussions in this book cast a lot of useful light on the extent to which the translations that most of us read today are themselves guesswork; often Biblical passages include words whose proper translation is just not known for sure (often because a given word of ancient Hebrew is used only once or a few times throughout the Bible, providing little context for translations). Altogether, very valuable stuff for the lay reader such as myself.

But my goodness, they lay it on thick with the juvenile business. As the two primary authors (Kaltner and McKenzie) say in their acknowledgements, the book was composed in two stages: first they wrote the book, then they handed it off to the third author (Kilpatrick) to give their presumably academic prose a more popular, humorous style. It was a good idea, I suppose, and that sort of thing is fine in the proper amount, but I found the implementation here much too heavy handed. They seem to get a juvenile and, to be blunt, rather lame joke into every second or third sentence; juvenile I can deal with, but the jokes mostly just aren't that funny, and their frequency gets in the way of enjoying the main narrative, rather than enhancing it. I'm currently about two thirds of the way through and, while the subject matter is terrific (see above), the style is so bad I'm finding it hard to continue. On the whole I find the intrinsic interest of the material wins out over the lameness of the style, but it is a struggle.

I do recommend this book, but because of the style, guardedly rather than enthusiastically.

"The Uncensored Bible" is an intriguing and scholarly text that explores the myriad of possible interpretations of some Bible stories. It is written in an engaging and readable style, and the authors aptly realize that they are writing for a wide audience, not a bunch of scholars at a conference. Kudos to them for acknowledging that fact. This is a serious work, and I was greatly impressed by the rigorous standards that the authors gave to each "questionable' theory that they examined in the text. They are not trying to shock people, but rather to investigate the aspects of the Bible that are unseemly, and to come up with reasonable conclusions that are based on reliable research, and the Bible itself. Again, it is refreshing to read a work by a scholar that seems to be absent of the scholar`s personal biases and beliefs.
The main flaw with this text is the hideous amount of bad jokes. They are so many, and so lame, that they begin to detract from the text. Had the amount of bad jokes, puns, riffs, etc been reduced I would have given this text 4 stars.
If you know your Bible, and are open to thinking critically about it, then this is a quick and engaging read and worth your time.

Light reading, funny and illustrative. It was a good bargain and I definitively recommend this book if you are into humane interpretations of the bible. Though is not that daring as I would expected, it is very scholar without being boring.