Bill Cosby brings his comedic touch to the Bible

Like many Americans, Bill Cosby owns multiple Bibles — eight, in fact. And, like many Americans, he doesn’t read any of them regularly.

But for a half-century or more, Cosby’s been looking for funny nuggets from the Bible, particularly the book of Genesis. He’s had audiences roaring, imagining poor Noah struggling to build his ark with pairs of animals and cubits of wood.

“Am I on ‘Candid Camera’?” Cosby’s Noah asked.

At 74, the iconic comedian has tackled the Bible again. In his new book, “I Didn’t Ask to Be Born (But I’m Glad I Was),” Cosby devotes a lengthy chapter to what he calls “The Missing Pages” of the story of Adam and Eve.

“Why did God need a rib to make a woman?” he wonders.

And, he says, he can’t figure out how the couple managed to use leaves to cover themselves once they realized they were naked in the Garden of Eden.

“There have to be some missing pages, because the writers don’t say anything about where Eve got the needle and thread to sew the leaves together,” Cosby writes.

The star of “I Spy” and “The Cosby Show” and creator of “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” will see his 1964 comedy album, “ I Started Out As A Child,” entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012.

Though he takes two comic looks at the Bible, he doesn’t think it’s generally a funny book.

“I don’t see much comedy in the Bible, where people are writing about funny people,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s not there. This is not Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.”

But Cosby, who grew up in a Philadelphia housing project named for AME Church founder Bishop Richard Allen, appreciates the Bible’s lessons on a range of human behavior.

Take the story of Naaman, an army commander from the book of 2 Kings, who didn’t want to follow God’s detailed instructions for being cured of leprosy.

“I know and I’ve met people like that, who you send them to do something and it’s for their benefit and they come back and they didn’t do what you told them to do because they were impatient or whatever,” Cosby said.

“That, to me, is a human behavior that I find hilarious.” [more]

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RNS via Washington Post