Paperbacks offer new take on bible

If Sunday isn’t the best day to discuss my religious library, let she who has the worst arm cast the first stone.

Thanks to my cousins, Chef Juandel and The Anglo Mariachi Cowboy, and me repeatedly joining the Quality Paperback Book Club (QPB) — and faithfully completing the introductory requirements before canceling and re-joining — I have amassed a small library of religiously-researched works.

Included are:

“The Other Bible” containing scriptures which, for practical and political reasons, never made the Bible.

Karen Armstrong’s “The Bible” in which the former nun describes how, when and by whom the Bible was written and how over the centuries it has been re-written to advance various agendas.

“Jesus, Interrupted” by Bart Ehrman, a fundamentalist bible college graduate, which reveals that many of the Bible’s books were written in the names of the apostles by authors living decades later, and that central Christian doctrines were formulated by even later theologians.

Other QPB works gathering dust include “The World Treasury of Modern Religious Thought,” “World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present” and “The Intellectual Devotional.”

My most graphic-friendly book is “Look! It’s Jesus,” containing revealed images of Jesus in frying pans, toast, tortillas, pierogis, oyster shells, Cheetos...

I do confess that my favorite inerrant midnight-meditation is “Pot Stories for the Soul.”

Just consider it a little pre-July 4th fireworks.