Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 31.
Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 20, “Intellectuals” (p. 86)
“… the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.”
Quotes 2000s, 2004, Interview by Wallace Shawn, 2004
Context: You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible - not only did He order His chosen people http://www.bible.org/netbible/1sa15.htm to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful.
Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)
M - R, Steven Nadler
“The Bible is the most brutally honest book that does not whitewash or sugarcoat history.”
Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016
“The book of the Bible which most obviously resembles the Taoist classics is Ecclesiastes.”
But at the same time there is much in the teaching of the Gospels on simplicity, childlikeness, and humility, which responds to the deepest aspirations of the Chuang Tzu book and the Tao Teh Ching.
"A Note To The Reader".
The Way of Chuang-Tzŭ (1965)
“The Bible is most dangerous book ever written on earth, keep it under lock and key.”
From Why You Should Never be a Christian (1987) by Ishaq 'Kunle Sanni and Dawood Ayodele Amoo.
Misattributed
Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 47
Source: Isaiah's Job (1936), IV
Context: One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of a prophet's attempt — the only attempt of the kind on the record, I believe — to count up the Remnant. Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job. He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat. The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him the True Faith could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to; """"and as for your figures on the Remnant,"""" He said, """"I don't mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are.""""
Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, p. 304
