Interview with Jason Boyett, author of THE POCKET GUIDE TO THE BIBLE

A few months ago a friend of mine was reading a book about end times stuff called The Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse and kept going on and on about how funny it was. I thought to myself, how funny can the apocalypse be? Then I read it and my life hasn’t been the same since. Well, ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic but I enjoyed it immensely. Jason Boyett gave a great overview of all of the official stances as well as some not-so-official ones in a way that was clever, funny, and culturally relevant. I was thrilled when I heard Jason was doing a Pocket Guide to the Bible.

 The following is an interview with Jason about his newest release that I think you will greatly
enjoy. By the way, please visit, www.jasonboyett.com to gain access to all of Jason’s work.
 

Todd Bragg: Who are you? Tell me about why      you do what you do and how you’ve come to this point in your journey.

My name is Jason Boyett. I’m a decent husband (of Aimee), a world-class father (of Ellie and Owen), a mediocre musician (drums, guitar, dulcimer), and a moderately talented writer (of books and magazine articles and answers to interview questions).

I do what I do because, for some reason, God gave me the ability to string words together in interesting and occasionally humorous ways. And because this sort of thing comes naturally to me, I feel some obligation to put it to use as often as I can, out of gratitude for the gift. My first writing job came as an advertising copywriter.

I spent my days writing newsletters for retirement homes, and radio spots for cellular phone companies, and print ads for pharmaceutical compounding. Then I got sorta tired of the corporate grind and had the chance to drop out of that world. I downsized and took a job as communications director for my church. And at some point in that process, I hooked up with a fledgling media company called Relevant Media Group. A half dozen books later, here we are.

 What was your inspiration for the Pocket Guide series? Did you know you wanted to do all of them, or did you do one then get the idea for the next one?

It started with me trying to come up with some good ideas for books. My goal was to write religious books for a twentysomething readership that wasn’t necessarily religious. The beginning of it was this thought: I want to write a spiritually themed book that a place like Urban Outfitters would sell…a book that didn’t compromise my Christian beliefs, but was cool enough and funny enough and, uh, relevant enough to gain entry into a hipster venue like that. And one of the first ideas that came from that little brainstorming session was The Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse—a tongue-in-cheek exploration of eschatology, that refused to sugarcoat all the crazy doomsayers and Antichrist-fingerpointers in the Christian tradition.

 That previous paragraph sounds so marketing-driven, though. I guess I should also mention that I’ve always had a passion for teaching, for helping others understand what they believe and why. I’ve always been an advocate of thinking hard about our faith tradition, and asking tough questions, and trying not to be ignorant about things. And part of me was growing annoyed—thanks to the Left Behind phenomenon—that most believers I spoke to seemed to think Tim LaHaye’s dispensational premillennialism was the only way to interpret the book of Revelation. When, in fact, it was just the newest way. I wanted to do a little educatin’ and do it with some flair. Thus the idea.

 The new book, Pocket Guide to the Bible, came from the same mindset. As Christians, we remain pretty ignorant about the Bible. We’re familiar with the stuff Paul wrote, and the Christmas passages in the Gospels, and a handful of Psalms and the first couple chapters of Genesis, but other than that? Clueless. (And I’m speaking personally here, at least before the research and writing began.) So I guess it stems from a twin desire to entertain people and teach people and make the whole process painless.

 To answer your question, though, I originally thought of the Apocalypse book as a one-off. But then it sold pretty well, so we started asking what would be the logical follow-up? We landed on the original source material: the Bible.

 Describe for me what the Pocket Guide to the Bible is and why you think I, or anyone, should read it.

 Dang. I think I already did that. I should read all the questions first and then answer them instead of working this on the fly.

You know how, as Christians, we supposedly base our faith on what we’re taught in the Bible? And how every family in the U.S. owns at least one Bible, and usually more? And how the Bible is the bestselling book ever? All that being true, then why don’t we read it more often?

 I’ll tell you why: because most of it’s so foreign to us. We don’t understand it. All those Levitical laws about mildew are just…strange. The whole fascination with circumcision makes us wince. The violence and the drama and the obscure prophetic metaphors are, generally, way beyond our understanding. So we don’t read it, or we only read certain parts of it (see answer to #2 above). So to make an already long explanation a wee bit shorter, I realized that, personally, I needed to be more familiar with the Bible—all of the Bible. If you feel the same way, you should read it. My book has a lot of the same information as you might find in a big, thick, serious Bible handbook…but PGTTB is a lot more interesting and fun to read. Also, it contains the word tallywhacker.

 Do you hope that one day the PGB will replace the Bible all together? The PGB is so much quicker to read than the Bible.

 Yes! In fact, that’s my dream, because think of the royalties! I’m not sure, though, that I would want to bear any personal responsibility for a religion that used my dorky thoughts and run-on sentences as its inspiration. The Bible is messy, and occasionally hard to understand, but it’s got all that tradition and inspiration backing it up. It’s got credentials. My book? PGTTB has only been out a week, and so far its only averaging a meager 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon.com, thanks to one or two disgruntled readers. Let’s wait until it moves closer to 5 stars before canonizing it.

 Writing this book must have required quite a bit of research. What did that entail and did you do this alone or with a team?

 I have a highly trained team of theologians, linguists, archeologists and ninjas waiting patiently for me to dole out research assignments and/or biblical passages to read and summarize. You might be wondering where the ninjas fit in. I’ll tell you: they bring the humor. Them ninjas is funny dudes.

 Actually, I’m a one-man team. And yes, Pocket Guide to the Bible involved a serious amount of research—I read a lot of Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias and commentaries and religious history books. Also, I spent significant time reading, you know, the actual Bible.

 Spiritually, it was a great project for me. But physically, it was exhausting. The books I put together are easy to read and fun to write, but the research is killer. I keep promising myself, next time, that I’m gonna start with a simpler subject. You think there’d be a market for a book called Pocket Guide to Tube Socks? [Editor’s Note: apparently there is a market for this sort of thing.]

 What was your favorite book or section of the PGB to write?

 The two-chapter “Cast of Characters” was a lot of fun to put together, just because it felt like being reintroduced to all those old characters from my childhood Sunday School classes. In those chapters, I give a brief introduction to each character, then list the high points and low points of their lives. And, let me tell you, that’s encouraging, because most of those Bible guys were major screw-ups.

 As David Plotz has recently pointed out on Slate.com (his “Blogging the Bible” series is excellent, by the way), every major character in Genesis is pretty much either a sexual deviant, a chronic liar, or an immoral schemer. The only patriarch who consistently shows any decency is Joseph, except he sucks up to just about every authority figure he meets. None of these guys is especially impressive, and wouldn’t you know that God promised to bless all nations through them. Despite their failures. Despite the fact that they rarely “got it.” That’s good news—that’s the story of grace—and the cool thing about the Bible is that the Big Themes like grace and mercy and undeserved love are visible all the way through it, from Genesis to Revelation.

 What was the most interesting bit of knowledge or history that  you came across while writing the PGB?

 That would definitely be the chapter on the history of Holy Writ, in which I track the closing of the canon and the process of biblical translation leading up to the King James Version of the Bible (otherwise known as the Authorized Version) in 1611. The amount of reformers who actually died trying to translate the Bible is surprising. People were declared heretics and got burned at the stake, by the Church, for the crime of trying to translate the Bible into a language the common people could read—a move which would have shifted power away from the Church authorities. Don’t let that love-one-another crap fool you. The Church back then was MEAN. 

But there was such demand for an English Bible that individual pages of William Tyndale’s early English translations were being smuggled across the country in hay bales. And yet, most believers today couldn’t find the book of Obadiah if their Old Testament came equipped with GPS navigational system.

 Have you gotten any flack from the square community about the PGB being sacrilegious or, in this case, pocket-rilegious?

 That’s possibly the most tortured and least effective pun I’ve ever encountered, Mr. Bragg, and I’m known for making stupid jokes. Yes, a few reviewers have taken issue with my humor. This is because it is apparently shameful to a) acknowledge that there’s a lot of sex in the Bible; b) consider certain parts of the Bible, like the story of Balaam, to be funny; c) use contemporary slang in explaining matters of theology to, well, contemporary readers; or d) use the word “beeyotch” in describing Jezebel.

 Do you believe in the Illuminati? If so, did you have any weird things happen while writing this book that you suspect were tied to them? 

Is “the Illuminati” one of those Native American words for Bigfoot? Because I definitely believe in the existence of Bigfoot. In fact, one of my ninja assistants is a big-time Sasquatch hobbyist.

 (Whoa. That last sentence is quite possibly the weirdest combination of words I’ve ever written.)

 As for weird things happening during the writing of this book…well, I didn’t notice anything unusual at the time. But there was this one afternoon when a hulking albino monk showed up at my door selling magazines. He gave off a bad vibe, and I didn’t need yet another subscription to Field & Stream, so I sent him on his way. In retrospect, this was probably a good call.

 What sort of impact would you like to see the Pocket Guide to the Bible make on the reader, or culture at large?

 I’d like the individual reader to buy the book, enjoy the process of reading it, and find themselves intrigued enough by the Bible to, upon finishing my book, crack open the source material. If my book were to be considered a biblical appetizer, I’d be thrilled.

 As for the culture-at-large, I’d like it to have the same impact as The Da Vinci Code—which is to say, I want it to be so powerful it makes Tom Hanks grow his hair weird. That’s not overly ambitious, is it? Am I aiming too high?

Have you thought of making a Pocket Guide that actually fits in your pocket?

 Have you thought about buying pants with bigger pockets? It’s time to scrap those dungarees, Todd, and graduate to cargo pants.

Are there any plans for future pocket guides? If so, what are they?

 Ideally, I’d like to follow this book with one more religious-themed Pocket Guide, though the subject matter hasn’t been finalized. There are plenty of elements in Christian history, however, that would make perfect book subjects. The weirder, the better. Currently I’m drawn to the subject of relics and sainthood. I’d invite your readers to comment if they think that would make a good Pocket Guide. Or, should any of you have other suggestions, leave those too. I’m wide open, and my research ninjas are getting bored with all the housework.

 © 2006, Todd Bragg & Jason Boyett.