The Book of Genesis (comics) was brought up Catholic, and thus is familiar with the more common Bible stories, but gave up the Catholic faith when he was 16. He went through a phase when he was 15 where he "[went] to church a lot, receiving communion, saying the Rosary, praying", but when he started to scrutinize it, "it just fell apart so quickly." Crumb says he is spiritual, gnostic, and not an atheist; he is "interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things." He believes there is a God, but "I don't believe [the Book of Genesis is] the Word of God.
In the Shadow of the Sword (book) or 'Muslim' is looked upon with suspicion." Another critic, Sarah Annes Brown, believes it is impossible to find any Islamophobic content in the book, while the historian Glen Bowersock criticized it for lack of historical accuracy, saying he has "not seen a book about Arabia that is so irresponsible and unreliable since Kamal Salibi's "The Bible Came from Arabia" (1985)." Dan Jones, writing for the "Telegraph", gave the book a favourable review calling it a "complex story" which Holland "made his own". He describes Holland as "one of the most distinctive prose stylists writing history today, and he drags his