Review by MariaFesting -- Who Told You That You Were Naked?

[MariaFesting]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Who Told You That You Were Naked?" by William Combs.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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William E Combs' Who Told You That You Were Naked? A Refreshing Reexamination of the Garden of Eden is a semi-in-depth review of Scripture starting with the Garden of Eden story and going through the major Biblical stories (like The Exodus, Noah and the Flood, and parts of Jesus' Ministry) and how the action/consequence of Adam and Eve eating the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil resulted in the problems faced back then and continue to personally face us today and how to overcome that.

This book's target audience would be individuals who want a book/workbook to give to others to try and convince them to convert to the Christian Faith. Aside from the constant text style changes and font size changes (these are deliberate and used by the author to differentiate different components of the chapters) the book was well edited. I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars.

Far from the in-depth analysis one would expect from the title, this work is more suited to a Sunday Bible class or sermon than an individual who wants more objective understanding and scholarly research on this fascinating story. Set up more like a workbook, with study questions at the end of each chapter, this is more propaganda for the faith than anything else. Throwing the reader off initially, the first (and many chapters) begin with an imagined story and this would initially be very confusing because it is not expected. I believe the intention of these mini-stories is to allow the reader to relate to the characters on a more personal level, but the stories end up being distracting as more detailed commentary and analysis is tossed in before returning to the story. Additionally, there are also personal stories involving the author and/or his wife and used as anecdotal evidence through the book, further reducing the more objective analysis and turning the book more into personal propaganda. For the positive, I did like the initial analysis of exactly what it was the Fruit of Knowledge gave to Adam and Eve, and why they wished to cover their nakedness. However, the rest of the book was not able to maintain that level of novel insight, unfortunately, contributing to the lower rating. If looking for a Sunday workbook, this book would be ideal, but not if looking for deeper scholarly analysis and understanding.

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Who Told You That You Were Naked?
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