I love the representation of the snake in Robert Crumb's illustration.

I'm not religious, but this does look fascinating. I shall follow the thread with interest.

I was raised Armstrongist, so I have some familiarity with Wolverton's work for the WWCOG. Neither my parents nor myself ever actually owned any books with his illustrations, but his work's quite infamous among the ex-Armstrongite community; his illustrations for 1975 in Prophecy in particular had a traumatizing effect on many members, especially the younger ones.

I have the Wolverton book as well as the Crumb volume. Both masterful, and I think Crumb's is one of the best books I read last year.

I'll add to the list a well-illustrated but not too challenging take from DC, drawn by Joe Kubert.

The Kingstone Bible #1 (2014) “The Beginning”



Creative Team: Written by Art Ayris and Ben Avery. Penciled by Danny Bulanadi, Jeff Slemons, Mike Lilly, Geof Isherwood. Inked by Bulanadi, Slemons, Jeff Huet, and Joe Rubinstein

Not a bad line up of artists, eh? And the cover is pretty cool. Note that the angel doesn't have a skirt. Those are folded wings, and he has four heads. This is from the book of Ezekiel, chapter 1.


Page one takes a brief detour into systematic theology to describe the divine Trinity:



The creation story is handled in the usual straightforward fashion, with God creating different elements of the heavens and earth on the separate days. The nature scenes are well rendered. Adam and Eve are tempted by a dragon-looking serpent whose short, stubby legs are removed as penalty for his role in the Fall of Man. The Bible text doesn’t actually say that the serpent ever had legs. I myself am enamored of the notion that the serpent, like the seraphim later in the Bible, was actually a winged creature. The words “serpent” and “seraph” are even cognates, from a word root meaning “burning.” Anyway, enough speculative theology. Kingstone gets bonus points for the forbidden fruit not being an apple. It looks a little scrotal, maybe.



Note that every page has a Bible reference at the bottom. The marriages between Adam and Eve’s children, as well as the later taboo against incest, are specifically mentioned in the section on pre-Noahic humanity. The section on Cain and Abel is a good example of how this rendition walks the line of portraying the Bible’s frank narrative without giving it the full “Rated R. Crumb” treatment. Abel is later shown lying on the ground dead, with blood on his neck. It’s closer to Wolverton than to the Action Bible.



As in the Bible, Noah gets a lengthy treatment, starting with a humorous montage in which he goes to great effort to make a single board for the ark. According to the Bible, the Ark took 100 years to build.



Noah’s three sons are depicted as born into the life of his boat-building, and they endure jeers from mocking citizens (and also insistent offers from prostitutes, a detail not in the Bible) of a nearby town. During their year on the ark, they debate whether to eat the livestock when their own food supplies dwindle. The animals are well rendered, of course. That’s kind of a “better not mess it up” moment in every Bible storybook.



“Children’s Bibles” don't usually include the story of Noah getting drunk, and then his son Ham rudely ogling Noah’s naked body. But Kingstone gives three pages to that vignette, albeit non-explicitly.



The Tower of Babel episode finds men breaking into modern languages, which obviously is not literally what happened in the ancient narrative, but it does capture the gist for modern readers.



Issue #1 concludes with the story of Job (with art by Jeff Slemons), which is believed to depict a pre-Abrahamic society. A double splash page shows Satan presenting himself before God to challenge Job’s piety.



You know the rest, I assume. Job’s children are all murdered and his riches stripped away, he contracts a disfiguring illness, and he endures a lengthy debate with three associates who are convinced that the whole thing is somehow Job’s fault.



Finally God appears, rebuking both Job and his friends for their attempt to rationalize the actions of the Divine. The behemoth and leviathan are depicted as land and sea dinosaurs, respectively. Job’s health and fortunes are restored.

I've never seen this in the flesh, but it looks pretty impressive... and, damn, now that I think of it, why didn't I think of this for last week's cover contest!?



Nestor Redondo drew the stories...
 


And there were these comics from the 40s and 50s:

Despite not being religious, I am finding this topic fascinating. The art being shared is tremendous!

Issue #3 “The Ten Commandments” (March 2014)



Creative Team: Art Ayris wrote it. Comixology lists Danny Bulanadi as the sole penciler and inker. Can that be right? My collected volume doesn’t say. Also, Comixology’s release date of March 2014 means it was released a year before Issue #2. Not sure how accurate that is either. I suppose it’s possible they were released out of order.

The first two issues were spent on just one of the Bible’s sixty-six books, giving the origin story for both the universe and Abraham’s family. This issue covers the book of Exodus, which describes the family’s expansion into the nation of Israel, and its rescue from centuries of slavery in Egypt and eventual entry into Canaan, as described in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Judges. It starts with infanticide, as Pharaoh decides his slaves need to be taken down a peg.



Baby Moses escapes this fate. He’s adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, spends forty years growing up in Pharaoh’s court, then must flee to the desert for forty more years after committing manslaughter.



While in the Desert, Yahweh appears to Moses, speaking from a burning bush, and appoints him as instrument of his people’s deliverance. Moses' ties to both the slave population and the royal house of Pharaoh make him uniquely suited as a mediator, despite his previous disgrace. Also during this period Moses marries a Midianite woman and has a son. Exodus 4 contains a curious story snippet in which God nearly kills Moses for unclear reasons, and his wife circumcises their son to save Moses from God’s wrath. The meaning of this vignette has puzzled readers for millennia, and Bible storybooks usually omit it. But this one includes the story and offers captions to read between the lines of what happened.



Note also that the previous panel places the date of the Exodus in the mid 1400s BC. This date is widely accepted among American Evangelical theologians by working backwards from other dates in the Bible, though some favor a date in the 1200s BC on archeological grounds. Egyptian sources tell us that in the mid 1400s BC, Pharaoh Amenhotep II suddenly ended his military efforts, and his son did not succeed him.

Next, a series of miracles in which Yahweh shows his supremacy over the various gods of Egypt. If you haven’t read the Bible, have you seen “The Prince of Egypt”? Moses’ staff turns into a snake and gobbles snakes released by Pharaoh’s wizards. The Nile River turns to blood. Plagues of frogs, lice, flies, boils, golf-ball sized hail (see below), and finally the deaths of the firstborn sons of families who reject Yahweh’s protection from the Angel of Death. Lots of room here for cool double splashes. All of this is intended to pressure Pharaoh to “let me people go.”



Finally Pharaoh allows the Israelites to depart, but then he festers in his rage, assembled the army, and chases them down. Everybody knows that ultimately Pharaoh’s army was killed when the parted waters of the Red Sea came crashing down on them. But even before that is an oft-neglected Big Moment in which God’s angel holds back the chariots of Pharaoh so the Israelites can get further away. “Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night.”



The honeymoon between Yahweh and his ransomed people ends quickly, as they start complaining about the lack of food and water in the deep desert. God provides sustenance, but then the people grouse about a monotonous diet. They fend off a major Amalekite attack. Moses’ own brother and sister contemplate a coup. Moses is exhausted with adjudicating the complaints of the people all day, so he recruits tribal leaders to help him settle the endless disputes that arise when resources are limited. The Hebrews trudge to Mount Sinai, where Moses makes several (not just one) trips up and down the mountain to consult with Yahweh and receive the Law, which is depicted with scattered examples.



Idle hands become idol-making hands while Moses is otherwise engaged, and Moses busts some heads (3,000 of them, literally) as well as the Ten Commandments (not good, and his temper gets him into more trouble later) when he comes down from 40 days on the mountain to find the people having an orgy around a Golden Calf.



Finally the Hebrews arrive at the Promised Land, but their scouts bring back a terrifying report of the military opposition they will face, and the people refuse to follow Moses’ leadership and enter Canaan. God gives them what they want, sort of: The Israelites wander the desert until all the adults have died, and their children are given another chance to follow God’s instructions. During that period, external attacks and armed internal uprisings threaten Moses' leadership. God uses plague, hordes of snakes, and massive earthquakes to quell the various insurrections. Moses himself is forbidden to enter the Land of Promise due to his bad temper, exemplified by an episode in which he smacked a rock rather than simply speaking to it to bring forth a spring of fresh water.



Then it’s on into the Book of Joshua. Moses’ lieutenant Joshua was one of the twelve spies who spied out Canaan during the Exodus. Now he’s the leader of Israel, an appointment directly confirmed by God. He sends spies into the walled city of Jericho, where they are sheltered by the prostitute Rahab. So far my 7 year old son has not asked me to explain “prostitute.” Rahab becomes one of the ancestors of King David and thus of Jesus Christ. This is deemed a point in favor of the Bible’s veracity; a king’s lineage would not fabricate a prostitute ancestor.



This new generation of Hebrew men are circumcised shortly before going into battle; we saw back in Genesis how this impairs combat efficiency. But God makes up for that by personally tearing down the walls of Jericho. Its inhabitants are to be “devoted to the Lord,” a euphemism for “executed rather than taken captive as slaves.” This aspect of the books of Joshua and Judges has provoked alarm in modern readers from the Enlightenment onward, but it was Standard Operating Procedure in ancient times. This lesson is hammered home when a man named Achan tries to hide some treasure for himself and God allows the whole nation to suffer a military defeat at the hands of an inferior foe, the army of Ai. Achan and his family are quickly executed, and the next battle against Ai goes much better.



The rest of the book of Joshua mainly details various military campaigns. Sometimes the Israelites won; sometimes they made treaties despite God’s instructions not to do so. Cohabitation with other peoples invariably led to intermarriage and idolatry. The scene below depicts an episode in which God made the daylight last extra-long so that a battle could be concluded successfully. Note that Joshua is depicted as a strapping young warrior. But he was already an adult when the Israelites left Egypt forty years prior, so he should be at least in his sixties by now.



Whew! It’s a whole lot of plot, much of it given in summary, making a summary of the summary difficult. The story of Moses is one of the world’s oldest biographies and its tone differs dramatically from the hagiographies usually associated with celebrity biography both then and now. It’s a “warts and all” portrayal, consistent with the mixed pictures which the book of Genesis gave for figures like Noah, Lot, Abraham, and Jacob. Message: God is faithful, but his human representatives often are not. As a later Psalm says, “Do not put your trust in princes.”