The Back O' The Bible Returns!...........

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Jay Pinkerton is back with a long awaited installment of another series from his Back O' The Bible collection. This time, it's the Book of Jonah that gets the Pinkerton review...

An excerpt from the review of The Book of Jonah by Jay Pinkerton-

" Lo unto thee, Bible fans! As always, this week’s BotB installment explores the murky backlog of the Old Testament — specifically, the final dozen books penned by the minor prophets (or as I like to call them, “Guess What God’s Angry About Now?” Parts One through Twelve). This time around we'll be examining what is probably the most famous of the minor prophet Books — sorry, Haggai — the Book of Jonah.

Whether or not you've read B of J, chances are you're at least peripherally aware of the plot: there's this guy named Jonah, stuff happens, dude gets swallowed by a whale, more stuff, the end. (Perhaps you're familiar with the tale in its more current incarnation as Jonah: a VeggieTales Movie, a film that attempts to indoctrinate children to the Bible's teachings through the seductive glamor of a talking asparagus.) Prior to my research for this article, my awareness of the story started and ended with a childhood pop-up book where you got to feed Jonah to a whale by pulling on a paper tab. If executed properly, one could make it look like the whale was repeatedly barfing up Jonah before gobbling him back up again. I don't mind telling you it was completely awesome.

My background reading on BoJ uncovered that biblical scholars have evidently found weightier things to take away from the story than the theological implications of a God who would allow a whale to boomerang barf our hero for eternity. The Book of Jonah, it seems, is an allegory about how bad it is to hog all the good news about Christ, and that god-fearing Christians owe it to heathens to tell them exactly how displeased God is with them at all times. Gosh, that's nice of them. This is a lesson our hero Jonah learns firsthand — a lesson driven home, presumably, while gobbling up room temperature shrimp from the dank floor of a whale's stomach. I'll give God this — He knows a thing or two about wearing down the resistance of His subjects before making any points. After three days sitting within a few feet of an intestinal tract the diameter of a school bus, I bet I'd be all ears too. "

If you are easily offended by Bible parodies and jokes about the eternal inconsistencies of the Bible, then you probably won't think this is very funny.

Too bad, 'cause I think it's hilarious......