Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

In Critique of the Bible, Meletios Semertzides says the Bible is evidence of a cult system because its writers keep giving human domination a divine source. His target is the scribal method: once Yahweh speaks, ordinary human acts are recast as sacred duty. The reader is trained to accept what would otherwise look like human coercion because the text says God has authorized it. Sacred speech takes power away from ordinary human argument and places it behind a god no believer is permitted to question. For the author, that recurrence proves authorship, not revelation. The book’s message is that Yahweh functions as the cult’s ultimate instrument, a sacred name used to make submitting feel righteous, while the scribes present their own rule as heaven’s will inside the believer’s own inner life.

Meletios Semertzides’s Critique of the Bible is courageous and is incredibly important right now, in a day and age where multiple systems of power are being questioned by those who aim to subjugate. The author studies biblical writers who turn fear into worship and make punishment serve national formation. I found the writing straightforward and easy to follow, and the author explains each verse before describing its religious function. There's quite a lot that is original, like a reading of Genesis 34, where the author argues that circumcision becomes a tactical weapon against Shechem’s men. Another appears in Song of Songs, where secular love poetry exposes older Canaanite life. Christian or Christian-curious, everyday readers may learn that biblical criticism can connect the Bible to lived religion. For example, Jeremiah’s Queen of Heaven dispute shows household worship, while Jonah’s Nineveh episode shows repentance changing an announced judgment. Readers interested in biblical criticism will appreciate this book, where scripture is treated as literature shaped by an actual agenda, and its significance reaches public history as much as devotion. Very well done.