But Mr. Gomes also defended the Bible from critics on the left who called it corrupt because passages had been used to oppress people.
Jeffress was referring to a Bible story in which critics of Jesus ask him if it was right to pay taxes to the Roman government, which controlled Israel at that time.
At another point, in the early 1970s, he turned to religion – not as a believer, but a literary critic – examining Bible stories using state-of-the-art narratology, many of whose techniques he had himself patented.
In a review of the first volume, "The Five Books of Moses, Robert Alterr, the literary critic and Bible translator, approved of the "Hebrewness" of the work but grumbled about Fox's "monogamous attachment to the Hebrew, often at the cost of the English".
In courting the grass roots of the Republican Party, she inhabits an alternative universe to the one where many of her critics live: Bible-bashing, Fox Newhitetching white America, a land where all too many eagerly accept the notion that East Coast élites are busy selling hard-working Americans down the drain for the price of a Wall Street campaign contribution or a hat-tip from George Clooney.
Echoing a Bible verse, he suggested that critics ought to remove the speck from their "own eye before judging someone for the splinter" in theirs.
Critics of the Bible should find consolation in the fact that many people do not have a clue what is in it.
Its shows have been regularly covered by international critics and industry bible Artforum.
Scott Foundas, chief critic of Hollywood bible Variety, was fulsome in his praise, describing Interstellar as "an exhilarating slalom through the wormholes of Christopher Nolan's vast imagination".
Following its broadcast, "Simpsons Bible Stories" received mixed reviews from critics.
