Published 30+ years after the DeVoto edited collection (Letters from the Earth), the Baezhold/McCullough collection is a great addition to any Twain library. The two collections only have a few works in common, and most of those are different versions. This collection also has additional notes and annotations that help put the works in context. A reader just does NOT know Clemens/Twain without experiencing at least one of these collections. You may have more luck finding a copy of Baezhold/McCullough than DeVoto. If you can, try to experience both.

Just curious

Engaging dialogue throughout the book, it feels like you conversing with Twain directly. I enjoyed his witty humor immensely.

Twain's writings on the Bible are of varying quality, but his sure humorous touch is present throughout.

Twain at his Irreverent Best

I've tried to read this but enough! The start of it is awfully boring Notes on the texts and Twain's writings aren't as good as I expected. However I did give up at page 57 maybe it gets better but I don't care anymore to find out.

If Mark Twain believed in God, it was not the God of the Bible or the God preached from the pulpit, but a God big enough to have created the universe that modern science was revealing at the turn of the Twentieth Century. The biblical God was petty, jealous, and did not deserve the praise heaped upon him. The modern God, on the other hand, was too big to care about, let alone meddle in, life on our tiny dust speck of a planet.

Parts of this collection will be familiar to people who have read Letters from the Earth. Other sections had not been published before. The diaries of Adam, Eve, and Methuselah satirize both the events in the Bible and aspects of Mark Twain's day, such as American imperialism and baseball. Letters from the Earth, on the other hand, is a searing attack on the Bible, much influenced by Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.

It's all worth reading, but the Letters portion stands out most powerfully, to my mind. Like the Bible, you can pick and choose your favorite parts.

No wonder he didn't want this published during his lifetime.

Should be required reading for Christians, Jews, Atheists, and Agnostics alike...Great Great stuff

Mark Twain is the greatest. His sharp wit, brutal cynicism and sardonic social commentary all come to play in this collection of Twain's "religious" writings. Biblical interpretations and re-telling of classic Christian tales in a way only Twain could do it. Highly recommended is the essay "Letters from the Earth". Jesus himself would laugh at this.

Need to read more Twain

I'm not sure what all of the praise for this book is about.