Nobel Laureate Slams the Bible, Calls It "A Catalogue of Cruelties"

LISBON, Oct 21 (IPS) - After a nearly two-decade truce, Portuguese Nobel literature laureate José Saramago has returned to the charge against the Catholic Church. This time his target is the Bible itself, which he describes as "a manual of bad morals," and a "catalogue of cruelties and of the worst of human nature."

"About the holy book, I tend to say: read the Bible and you'll lose your faith," said the first, and so far only, Portuguese-language writer to receive the Nobel Literature Prize, which he won in 1998.

In a meeting with the press Wednesday, Saramago repeated the ideas he expressed at an event Sunday in the northern Portuguese town of Penafiel, held to launch his latest book, "Cain", which retells the story of Adam and Eve's first-born son in a light-hearted, irreverent tone.

According to Saramago, there is nothing "divine" in the Bible. And although "Cain" has offended the Church, it won't offend Catholics, he said, because "they don't read the Bible."

It took "a thousand years and dozens of generations" to write the Bible, which depicts a "cruel, spiteful, vengeful, jealous and unbearable God," said the writer, who recommended people not to trust "the God depicted in the Bible."

He said he would not have to settle accounts with God, because "the human brain is a great creator of absurd notions, and God is the most absurd one of all."

Catholic Church officials lashed out at the writer's statements, especially when he said that "without the Bible, we would be different, probably better, people," and that he could not understand how the Bible became a "spiritual guide, when it's so full of horrors, incest, betrayals and slaughter."

"I'm not looking for controversy, but I have a few convictions and I say certain things. None of this is free: Cain has kept me company for many years," Saramago responded to a question from IPS.

Writing this book "was an exercise in freedom for me," said the polemical, provocative writer, who at the age of 86 maintains his rebelliousness intact – the same rebelliousness he showed when he joined the Communist Party, which was driven underground by Portugal's 1926-1974 dictatorship, in 1969.

Saramago has ruffled many feathers over the years. He made Israel furious when he compared the Israeli military campaign in the besieged Palestinian West Bank to Auschwitz, and irritated Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi when he described him as "this thing, this illness, this virus (that) threatens to become the cause of the moral death of the country of Verdi" and could "end up corroding the veins and destroying the heart of one of Europe’s richest cultures."

He also had a few choice words for Pope Benedict XVI, saying "Ratzinger has the nerve to invoke God to reinforce his universal neo-medievalism."

In addition, he distanced himself from the Communists when he said Cuba "has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, cheated my dreams."

Another of his provocative ideas, expressed in one of his books, is that Portugal and Spain will one day merge into a united Iberia.

The 181-page Cain, which he wrote in four months and which hit the bookshelves simultaneously in Portuguese, Spanish and Catalonian on Monday, is according to Saramago, "an insurrection, an exhortation for everyone to dare to look for what is on the other side of things," aimed at getting readers to think and reflect, because "we are manipulated all the time. We have to fight against that."

His latest work also aims subtle barbs at contemporary issues, like the global economic crisis and its effect on unemployment, the rights of gays and lesbians, and the accumulation of wealth "in the name of the Lord."