From Creation to the death of Joseph, here are all 50 chapters\nof the Book of Genesis, revealingly illustrated as never before.\nEnvisioning the first book of the bible like no one before him, R.\nCrumb, the legendary illustrator, reveals here the story of Genesis\nin a profoundly honest and deeply moving way. Originally thinking\nthat we would do a take off of Adam and Eve, Crumb became so\nfascinated by the Bible’s language, “a text so great and so strange\nthat it lends itself readily to graphic depictions,” that he\ndecided instead to do a literal interpretation using the text word\nfor word in a version primarily assembled from the translations of\nRobert Alter and the King James bible.
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Now, readers of every persuasion—Crumb fans, comic book lovers,\nand believers—can gain astonishing new insights from these\nharrowing, tragic, and even juicy stories. Crumb’s Book of Genesis\nreintroduces us to the bountiful tree lined garden of Adam and Eve,\nthe massive ark of Noah with beasts of every kind, the cities of\nSodom and Gomorrah destroyed by brimstone and fire that rained from\nthe heavens, and the Egypt of the Pharaoh, where Joseph’s embalmed\nbody is carried in a coffin, in a scene as elegiac as any in\nGenesis. Using clues from the text and peeling away the theological\nand scholarly interpretation that have often obscured the Bible’s\nmost dramatic stories, Crumb fleshes out a parade of Biblical\noriginals: from the serpent in Eden, the humanoid reptile appearing\nlike an alien out of a science fiction movie, to Jacob, a “kind’ve\ndepressed guy who doesn’t strike you as physically courageous,” and\nhis bother, Esau, “a rough and kick ass guy,” to Abraham’s wife\nSarah, more fetching than most woman at 90, to God himself, “a\nstandard Charlton Heston-like figure with long white hair and a\nflowing beard.”
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As Crumb writes in his introduction, “the stories of these\npeople, the Hebrews, were something more than just stories. They\nwere the foundation, the source, in writing of religious and\npolitical power, handed down by God himself.” Crumb’s Book of\nGenesis, the culmination of 5 years of painstaking work, is a\ntapestry of masterly detail and storytelling which celebrates the\nastonishing diversity of the one of our greatest artistic geniuses.\n.
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