Poet and translator David Rosenberg is best known for “The Book of J,” a best-seller that features the commentary of literary scholar Harold Bloom and Rosenberg’s fresh and felicitous translation of the portions of the biblical text attributed to the author who is known to Bible scholars by the letter-code “J.” I fear, however, that Rosenberg’s achievement as a Bible translator may have been unfairly overshadowed by Bloom’s intentionally provocative argument that J was, in fact, a woman.

If you put a copy of R. Crumb’s “The Book of Genesis Illustrated” (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., $24.95) on your coffee table during the upcoming holiday season, I promise you that it will catch and hold the attention of your guests and provoke some lively conversation. Where else, after all, will they find a version of the Bible that includes male frontal nudity, bare breasts in abundance, and men and women in a variety of imaginative sexual postures?