The Eleven Commandments, written by two journalists for the Avvenire bishops' daily paper, is dedicated to exposing the "equivocations and lies" contained in the Bible and traditional Christian teaching.
Based on their study of original sacred texts, Elisabetta Broli and Roberto Beretta's book carries a preface by Gianfranco Ravasi, a member of the Vatican's cultural committee, congratulating the writers "who, like hounds, have gone in search of these pseudo-biblical truffles, as malodorous as they are delicious".
Some of the myths exploded in the new book are likely to cause shock for some churchgoers, however.
Among them, it reveals that Jesus Christ was born neither on December 25 nor in a manger with an ox and an ass for warmth. Furthermore, he was short and - according to modern aesthetics - not very nice to look at.
Jesus lived into his forties, around 10 years longer than the Bible suggests, and his father Joseph is more likely to have been an affluent and well-respected architect than a humble carpenter.
The 10 commandments were neither dictated to Moses by God, the book says, nor were they ever engraved on stone tablets.
Joshua could not have brought down the walls of Jericho with his light trumpet batallion, since archeologists have shown that the town was already a ruin by the time he was born.
Jonas was never swallowed by a whale, the Israelites never crossed the Red Sea, David did not kill Goliath, Saint Peter was not crucified upside-down, Saint Paul did not fall off his horse on the way to Damascus and, if Eve ate a fruit in the Garden of Eden, it was an orange or a fig, not an apple. - Sapa-AFP
