Bible Students: Have You Heard About Robert Crumb's "Genesis?"

If you don't know who Robert Crumb is, and aren't that familiar with comic books, just know that Crumb is the artist behind the lascivious "Fritz the Cat" cartoons and others. Here is a picture of Fritz:


Well, sorry, I didn't publish one because they are so often porno in nature. That's what Crumb is known for, anyways, in "Fritz" as well as his other comics. He is something of an underground phenomenon in US comic history, producing some X-rated stuff that is really bad--but...

Now he has taken on the book of Genesis from the Bible. And here is the amazing thing--he doesn't rake it through the mud of satire, he really tries to portray the text as it reads (with a feminist/liberal sensibility worked in very cleverly in some parts). This is really bizarre. Crumb doesn't believe the Bible, but he didn't think he could top the over-the-top stories of Genesis! To him, (even though the he doesn't believe the Bible is Truth) Truth is stranger than fiction! Here is a shot from his "Genesis."



If you know Ben Witherington (Asbury Seminary prof; contributor to Lee Strobel's "Case for Christ" (I think, might be "Case for Faith), he has this to say:

Now however this super-lapsed Catholic has decided to depict scenes from all 50 chapters of Genesis, with the emphasis on verbatim. Those of us who knew a bit about his snarky past were holding our collective breath, but Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, author of the well-titled book Up,Up, and Oi Vey (the history of how Jews had influence on the creation of fictional super-heroes) reassures us that Crumb has not given us a crumby treatment of Genesis. Of course the literal depiction of murder, incest, rape, and a host of the other things that go on in Genesis itself is enough to curdle one's milk and curl one's hair. Hide the babies and pack up the old ladies. But then alas, the Bible is hardly a G or PG book--- it tells it like it is, even when it comes to all our human falleness. It is thus not a surprise that in the 224 pages of this book (out today and published by W.W. Norton) some of these pen and ink drawings reflect the sensual and violent character of some of these stories. This is a comic book my Mom would not have let me read in the 9th grade! Indeed she would have said 'Exodus with this Genesis'.

I might order this book...well, not until investigating it some more!