The Bible According to Mark Twain: Irreverent Writings on Eden, Heaven, and the Flood by America

This book is fascinating. If you like Twain you will love this book that Dr. McCullough has put together.

The Bible According to Mark Twain is a wordy spoof that takes the reader to the very roots of creation. I can well imagine this narrative wasn’t embraced by all who picked it up as it pokes Twain’s humorous literary finger at the Old Testament. I enjoyed it for what it was and leave the theological complaints to others. It isn’t his best work but it does bear his unmistakable brand of humor. I particularly enjoyed the Excerpts From Adam’s Dairy as it showed that particular part of Genesis in a new light. This book has my vote. If you’re looking for a light hearted and different view of the most published and read book in the world, pick this one up and settle down for an amusing read.

Mark Twain is still funny even after a century. But, like the reviews say serious thoughts are behind the satirical remarks. Sometimes sweet and sentimental, sometimes indignant and scornful, the book contains a lot of Twain's unfinished work.
From "Extracts from Adam's Diary," comes the tender quote, "...it is better to live outside the Garden with [Eve:] than inside it without her."
From "Eve's Diary," comes Adam's lament at the grave of Eve, "Wherever she was, there was Eden."
From "Captain Wheeler's Dream Visit to Heaven," each person is asked their name, their former home's location, their denomination,& for their papers. Captain Wheeler being an old salt born & raised on the sea had no particular denomination he adhered to and had no papers upon arrival to heaven and so watched the people ushered in more and more dejectedly. He listened to each person with name, home, denomination, & papers inducted with the proclamation that over there or here were a neophyte's people, go & spend eternity in happiness with them, but do not stray from your people or that place for it has been set aside for those particular people forever. "Next an English Bishop got in; then a Chinamen that said he was Bhuddist; then a Catholic priest from Spain and a Freewill Baptist from New Jersey, and next a Persian Fire-eater and after him a Scotch Presbyterian. Their papers were all right, and they were distributed around, where they belonged, and entered into their eternal rest." Depressed and resigned to enter hell where he surely thought he belonged since he had no denomination, no one home, and no papers, he began to slip away, but "the Beautiful Personage" ushering the new inhabitants of heaven spotted him and asked him to come forward. He asks his name (Simon Wheeler), he asks where he is from ("I-well, I ain't from any particular place..."), & he asks his denomination to which Cpt. Wheeler apologizes, "I didn't know any better, your honor, but I was ignorant and wicked, and I didn't know the right way, your honor, and I went a-blundering along and loving everybody just alike, niggers and Injuns and Presbyterians and Irish, and taking to themmore and more the further and further I went in my evil ways..." Then he asks for his papers and Cpt. Wheeler begs ashamedly, "Have pity on a poor ignorant foolisg man, your honor, that has come in his wicked blindness without a denomination, without one scrapof a paper, without-" but is cut off by the angel who shouts out, "Rise up, Simon Wheeler! The gates of heaven stand wide to welcome you! Range its barred commonwealths as free as the angels, brother and comrade of all its nations and peoples, -for the whole broad realm of the blestis your home!"
From "Letters from Earth," Satan has been sent to Earth like a misbehaving child is sent to his room and writes his friends, the archangels Michael & Gabriel, about his observations on the curious new creature man. In one observation, he is perplexed on man's views of what heaven is like, "...I recall to your attention the extraordinary fact with which I began. To-wit, that the human being, like the immortals, naturally places sexual intercourse far and away above all other joys - yet he has left it out of his heaven!"
I can't say it better so I'll simply quote another reviewer.
"Still blasphemous after all these years. This is the Mark Twain least likely to be adapted into an attraction at Disneyland. Get your own copy before your local school board burns theirs."

There were some wonderfully witty and insightful moments sandwiched between some less than amusing pieces. Unfortunately, the witty came less often that I would have hoped.

HILARIOUS. I can't say enough about Twain-- his insights are right on the money, and he dissects things in a way I personally had never thought about, but makes so much sense immidietly upon hearing them.

The Bible According to Mark Twain is collection of his writings on the Eden, and God’s flooding of the Earth and Heaven, written over a period of nearly 40 years. I must confess, for my sins, that this is the first Mark Twain I have ever read, save for his countless quotations and aphorisms which litter books and websites of an atheistic bent.

The book is composed of two principle sections, the first is Twain’s understanding and re-working of the Christian creation myth through fictionalised diary accounts from Adam and Eve, the second concerns Heaven and the afterlife. Each piece begins with a short introduction by the editors, who place it in historical context, referring to either Mark Twain as the writer, or (his real name) Sam Clemens, when referring to his personal life.

The background reading provides an interesting account of how the pieces were composed. Some of them evolved over decades and we get an insight into Mark Twain’s battle with both the literature and the numerous re-writes and edits, but also how he wove personal tragedy, such as the loss of his young daughter, into this his musings on heaven and wrestled with the effects his writings would have on religious establishment.

Mark Twain weaves issues of the time from biology, technology and sociology into Adam and Eve’s account of their time in Eden and the ideas still resonate today. The Extracts From Eve’s Diary capture some of the real wonder and curiosity that many of us feel when observing the world around us and Adam’s grapple with ‘science’ the description of Eve’s love for nature and Adam are genuinely funny and affecting. A recurring theme in all the pieces is the objection to God’s punishing Adam for eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge with death, even though they would have had no concept of it as the Moral Sense, death and evil had not yet entered the garden.

A shorter third section, ‘Letters from Earth’, is a collection of letters written Satan recounting his visit to Earth and his wonder at the illogical nature of man and the God they create(d) to worship. This is Twain’s most devastating appraisal of Christianity as some of the wonderful allegory and story-telling of the previous works is stripped back to really hammer home some astutely observed and eloquently constructed arguments for the fallacy of man’s belief in God, particularly a personal one.

With these various writings, Mark Twain achieved the incredible feat of weaving together an extraordinary deconstruction of religion, with funny, touching fables that far exceed the morality and humanity of the source material.

This always makes me laugh. This man was a genius. I can read his writing over and over, getting a new insight every time.

THE BIBLE ACCORDING TO MARK TWAIN provides the reader with a reassuringly consistent picture of Samuel Clemens' view, not necessarily of God or of Heaven or of angels (if one believes in the existence of such things), but of such parts of the Christian Bible that he views as thoroughly ridiculous if applied literally. The concept of human souls reaching Heaven in their former mortal forms and haplessly flapping their non-aerodynamic bodies about on thoroughly inadequate wings comes in for quite a bit of treatment as does the earthly relationship between Eve and a rather surprised Adam, who is understandably curious as to what this new creature may be, a surprise and a curiosity that return when Cain shows up on the scene.

Other events that come in for acerbic examination are the building of the ark and its provisioning and voyaging, the unfair nature of the punishment meted out to Adam and Eve when they are driven from the Garden of Eden, and divine versus mortal time and space measurements. Clemens' (or Twain's if one prefers) tongue-in-cheek humor is, I feel, as enjoyable for the theistic as much as for the atheistic reader, for, as I have already noted, he is not critiquing the Deity as he is human perceptions of that Deity as expressed in the Old and New Testaments. Oh, I suppose that if the theist's faith insists that every word in those testaments was literally dictated by God, then he or she may be affronted by Clemens' treatment of those words, but any well-read theologian is going to chuckle over the mental imagery created by Clemens' writing.

The book is not, however, a continuous story to be followed without interruption from beginning to end. Rather, it is a collection of Clemens' jottings, notes, and thoughts relative to his perception of what men have named the Divine. A few of these writings, such as "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," are of decent duration so that the reader can be caught up in the story. "Extracts from Adam's Diary," also relatively lengthy, is utterly hilarious as the reader sees poor Adam's growing vexation with Eve, whose feminine wisdom definitely outstrips his masculine version but whose propensity to try to continually talk to him vexes him mightily (and plays upon a popular stereotype of women as wishing to communicate their thoughts and feelings verbally as contrasted with "strong and silent type" males). Numerous other selections in the book are quite brief and appear to have been jotted down by Clemens in case he could use them later in some other composition.

Most of the selections are prefaced by analytical commentary by the editors, often attempting to establish the time frame in which they were written. Although these prefaces may be helpful to the scholar studying Clemens' works, they are of marginal interest, if that, to the general reader whose interest is in the enjoyment of Clemens' creativity. The editors also chose to do one curious thing whose purpose, so far as I can ascertain, was merely to lengthen the book by a few pages. After printing "Autobiography of Eve" as it was published, they repeat it as an appendix, but now including additional passages that had been deleted before publication. The "unexpurgated" version could just as easily have been printed with the deleted passages in bold font as they are in the appendix, thus avoiding the repetition of printing it twice.

What we have here, then, is a book containing a variety of Clemens' writings, some quite brief, revealing his view of the literal interpretation of several major stories from the Christian Bible. As one would expect, these views are expressed in a delightfully imaginative manner that pokes great fun at the ridiculous results of such literal interpretations. The collection seems to have been designed for the academician studying, dare I say, the minutiae of Clemens' literary productivity, not for the general reader. Nonetheless, assuming the statements in some of the prefaces are accurate, many of these writings have not been published elsewhere, and the reader will discover them only here. The reader who knows that he or she enjoys the humor of "Mark Twain" will find much in this book to enjoy as well, and the Twain scholar will likely find it a useful resource. I would not, however, recommend it as an introduction to Samuel Clemens' writings nor as sole source on which to base one's opinions of this productive and influential author.