I have quite a collection of Bibles on my shelf ( several of which, no doubt, the AmazingGrace BaptistChurch would add to their bonfire next week ) and quite a few notebooks with my own translations.  One or two of these have illustrations in – like the classic 1960's Good News for Modern Man (remember that one?) and the more recent Manga Bible. But a new version of Genesis is about to be published: Robert Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated.

Apparently Mike Judge, of religious think-tank the Christian Institute, said that Crumb's comic book was  "…turning the Bible into titillation. It seems wholly inappropriate for what is essentially God's rescue plan for mankind. If you are going to publish your own version of the Bible it must be done with a great deal of sensitivity. The Bible is a very important text to many many people and should be treated with the respect it deserves…
Representing it in your own way is all very well and good but it must be remembered that it is a matter of people's faith, their religion.
Faith is such an important part of people's lives that one must remember to tread very carefully."

But the liberties Crumb takes seem to be nothing much more than including sex and nudity. A comic-strip Genesis would have a lot of blank pages if you left out the dodgy bits.  Genesis is packed to the gills with dysfunctional families, polygamy, adultery, sex, more adultery, incest, rape, cheats, liars and dodgy double dealers. I'm not sure what Mr Judge means by "treading carefully" but I don't think it enhances a reading of Genesis to sanitise it.

I tend to think that illustrated versions can limit, rather than expand, the interpretative and imaginative possibilites of the big Bible sagas. I'd love to see an author like Patrick Gale or Salley Vickers re-tell it. But if you are a collector of Bibles, you will want this one for your collection.