As biblical scholarship goes, this seems fairly iffy. As art, on the other hand, it’s pretty wonderful ... His evenhanded pace of four small panels on each page keeps the tone understated, and he gets a lot of comedic mileage out of rendering biblical dialogue into modern vernacular ... But Brown zeros in on the human drama in each story — his images of David silently regarding Bathsheba make very clear the way power flows between them — and his visual craftsmanship is as sharp as it’s ever been.
...this graphic interpretation of tales of sex and personal politics from the Bible is revelatory and brilliant. That Brown is an excellent artist is a given, but the research and documentation here is scholarly and insightful. Might not be for everyone, but for those who can get past their piety into the human aspects of the Bible and history, it’s a deep dive well worth taking.
This book of lay Biblical scholarship is simultaneously idiosyncratic, meticulous, imaginative and heretical. It's also deeply emotional, which may come as a surprise to readers of Brown's last book, Paying For It ... he makes compelling cases for a whole gamut of unconventional claims. Regarding prostitution, he asserts that Mary, Jesus' mother, was a prostitute, that the early Christians practiced prostitution, and that stories like the Parable of the Talents were pro-prostitute. Equally absorbing is Brown's contention that the Bible lends itself to a 'mystical,' rather than legalistic, interpretation.
