The Bible Reexamined: Eve Is a Hero, Mary Is Not a Virgin, Jesus Is Not the Way

This book presents several counterintuitive interpretations of classical biblical texts: Creation as a parable, not exposition. Eve as a hero, not a villain. Love, not Jesus, as the way the truth and the life. The gospels as sectarian tracts, not history. The book also includes an account of the gradual formation of the Bible from an assorted collection of ancient Jewish scrolls into a single book and its eventual idolization and weaponization by Protestants as THE WORD OF GOD in the sixteenth century. I debunk that notion. This book presents Genesis 1 (the seven-day creation story) in a fresh and novel way-as a parable, not a literal, or cosmological account. It shows that Genesis 1 is an inappropriate contender against evolution. Pitting those two against each other is like putting a pit bull and a potted plant in a ring and expecting a fight. That's no fight. It's an exhibit. I show how fundamentalists and evangelicals have misinterpreted Genesis 1 and many other iconic, biblical passages to the great detriment of millions of people. For example, the dogma that baptism is the cure for "original sin" (attributed to Eve) is an ecclesiastical scam to terrorize people into submission. That, too, is debunked.