Fifty Shades of Grey is a bestseller with 70 million copies of the book sold so far in 37 countries. However, the 2011 novel by E.L. James, pales in comparison to the best-selling book of all time - the Holy Bible, which sells yearly 100 million copies worldwide.

And it seems that it is not only in number of copies sold that the two books are competitors. Even in the areas of sex and violence, the Bible could give Fifty Shades a run for its money.

But competing with Scripture was not on the mind of author Matthew Stillman who wrote the book Genesis Deflowered, based on the first book of the book revered by many Christians.

Source: Amazon.com

Huffington Post, which reported that some people who didn't like Mr Stillman's book for being blasphemous and wrote graffiti on his Harlem home's brownstone on Friday, described the book as 50 Shades of the Bible.

The graffiti is only part of the negative response of some people to the book published in August. Mr Stillman also received hate mails, including from a person who practiced what the Bible taught.

"You're still my enemy, but lucky for us ... the Bible says to love your enemies," the author quoted the letter.

Mr Stillman insisted he did not intend to degrade the Scriptures when he wrote Genesis Deflowered, with the last word a reference to the flowery English of the 17th century that he used to write the controversial book.

"The writing is chaste and poetic and helps enrich the stories ... If I wanted to make a splash in the world of erotic literature, writing in Elizabethan English is not the way to do it," he explained.

Mr Stillman said that religion and love go well together, but religion and sex don't. Since the Holy Book has some sort of this flirtation and "to be able to feel this more deeply and to speak it in the original Elizabethan English would be a way to have that conversation happen and have people connect to it in a new way."

He said that Genesis alone has about 500 examples of suggested sexual activity, so he focused on scenes involving famous Biblical characters such as the spouses Abraham and Sarah as well as little known ones like the wife of Noah.

Mr Stillman is expecting more controversy since he is writing another erotic book based on the Scripture's second book, aptly titled Exodus Deflowered.