Suppose you want to read the Bible… but you don’t really want to read the Bible. It’s long. It has a few too many “begats.” You don’t want to get bogged down by unnecessary details.

William Pocock has a solution for that. He condensed the Bible down to the good stuff and wrote it plain English. It’s called Bobo’s Bible:

In the excerpt below, we learn about the trouble with Cain and Abel:

Adam and Eve had sex at least twice. Eve gave birth to two sons, Cain and Abel. The first family had a farm where Abel took care of the sheep and Cain ploughed the earth to raise crops. Both sons, for some unexplained reason, thought gifts to God were in order. God liked Abel’s sheep offering, but not Cain’s food from the field. God’s fussiness made Cain angry. So, while God was on another smoke break, Cain killed Abel. When God returned, he asked, where’s Abel? Cain gave God full attitude with, am I my brother’s keeper? God figured out what happened right away. On the carpet, God told Cain he would always be a lousy farmer and a no good, wandering bum. So, Cain took off to the land of Nod and miraculously found a wife. Nobody knows how this happened. Even with the curse of God on his head, Cain was the luckiest guy in the world. Cain and his wife begat what must be some sort of incestuous family line having children and grandchildren with names like Enoch, Irad, Methujael, Lamech, Adah, Zillah, etc. Meanwhile, Adam and Eve had sex again, begetting a third son, Seth. This is when things got really strange with the first family. Somehow Seth had a son named Enos. Now, as Eve was the only woman around, I’m afraid Seth could only have had sex with his mother.

Believe it or not, even as condensed as it is, it’s a freakishly long read, coming in at over 650 pages. But it’s a version of the Bible that’s humorous without being satirical. Think of it as a pleasant alternative to the Bibles you’ll find in church.



