#ericreadsthebible

Have you ever wanted to know something about someone's true feelings or motives, but you can't ask them directly because you know they'll lie? To solve this, you might pretend to go along with it to lure them into a sense of comfort in the conversation where they may be broken down to confessing, afterwhich you can jump out and tell them how sick and twisted they are. For instance, you might say, "Hey bf/gf, want to go to that orgy down the street?" and if they say, "Of course not!" then you can proudly say, "Good, I was just testing you." Congratulations! You have the same manipulation tactics as God. How lucky.

God wants to know if Abraham is the real deal, and you would too if you were selecting the leader of your brand new tribe of humans that don't suck as much as the last batch. And what better way to test someone's faith than to have him nearly burn his son alive on the top of a deserted mountain? (God is actually particular about which mountain it is, too ... maybe he just wants a good view or something)  If I were Isaac, I'd give my father a second thought every time he asked if I wanted to get ice cream with him henceforth. Basically, Abraham leads his son Isaac on top of a mountain under the impression that they'll be sacrificing a goat or something (a perfectly normal father-son bonding activity), and when Isaac asks what animal they're going to light on fire, Abraham is just like "Oh here, have a seat on this pile of spindle while I inconspicuously light this torch." Seriously Abraham? And Isaac doesn't even realise he's the sacrifice. Way to walk into that one. But Abraham is the hero in this story. Why? Because God told him to do something and he did it. He was willing to let his son be collateral damage just to prove to God that he believes real hard. What kind of world would we live in if we blindly did what God told us, regardless of the consequences? But this is The Bible, and people seem to love their Yahweh. 

Anyway, Abraham later dies old and happy. Isaac marries Rebekah and they have two children: Esau and Jacob. It's important to note that, even at birth, Esau was like super hairy, like a garment, apparently. We can now conclude that within the Canaan bloodline, there is just a touch of Wookie. The Bible basically says that Jacob is dull, as he is "a plain man, dwelling in tents" (Genesis 25:27). Can you say underachiever? Because of the this, Isaac has a higher affinity for his eldest furball Esau rather than his boringly hairless other son. Esau becomes the hunter of the family and is generally in charge of finding food--maybe it's the Wookie in him. One day, Esau is hungry to point of near death and he begs Jacob for food. Jacob is like, "Oh sure, sure. Just give me your inheritance." So ... his brother is basically dying on his stoop, and Jacob uses this as leverage to get Esau's inheritance. Interesting.

It turns out that their mother, Rebekah, was more into Jacob than she was Esau, and damn it she wants to make sure both her sons get blessed equally. One day, when Isaac is all old, blind, and dumb, he decides he wants to bless his eldest son (the Wookie). Isaac is blind and all but hey, what could go wrong? Well basically, Rebekah decides that Jacob is really more deserving of Isaac's blessing so naturally she tries to trick her husband into thinking that Jacob is really Esau. There is a problem, however: Esau is part Wookie, and how does a regular hairless human impersonate a Wookie? The clear answer, and the one that Rebekah and Jacob concluded, is to put on a hairy disguise. Now, where this hair came from is a little unclear and when Isaac felt his son's hairy arms, I'm sure he wouldn't have wanted to know where it came from either. So Isaac accidentally blesses the wrong son, and as everybody knows, blessings cannot be undone. So even when Isaac finds out his little shit of a son pretended to be the eldest Wookie, he's like "Oops no takesies-backsies." Jacob essentially stole his brother's blessing, which is a really shitty thing to do. I mean, it is a little unfair that Isaac was going to pass along God's Holy covenant and all exclusively to his older brother  ... but that's no excuse for lying! Esau later comes home, finds out about the stolen blessing and gets pissed--and you should never upset a Wookie ... They've been known to rip people's arms right out of their sockets. Jacob, like the courageous and noble spirit he is, flees, taking his father's blessing with him. It is again unclear if he ever took the hair off of his arms.

Things get a little boring for a while after Jacob runs away. He's apparently a hot commodity, as two women fight over him (later giving birth to a whole ton of children, so that's great). His daughter gets raped by some random dude, so he of course says he will allow their marriage so long as the rapist and all the members of his tribe get circumcised, which, okay, in that time was a pretty good punishment when you consider their age and what surgical tools and techniques were available to them. But even so, Jacob's sons kill them all. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. Sometimes you rape, sometimes you get circumcised, and sometimes you kill an entire village for one man raping one woman.

Among Jacob's many sons is Joseph. If you're familiar with Andrew Lloyd Webber's classic musical, then you're already set for the story. If not, Joseph is basically Jacob's favourite. Jacob gives Joseph this super bright and colourful coat (definitely not gay tho). The brothers get jealous, and like any rational sibling, they sell him into slavery and tell their father that he's dead. Maybe the coat was Gucci or something, I dunno. Even as a slave, Joseph is a charming fellow and eventually gets on the Pharaoh's good side. Joseph begins having dreams and becomes known as an interpreter/fortune teller. The Pharaoh elects him to a higher position. Joseph predicts a major famine, which--surprise!--comes along. But then his brothers, unbeknownst to them, come begging for food. There's an epic Pretty Woman moment when Joseph finally reveals to his grovelling brothers that he's all famous and all! Ah, revenge.

I love this one. Is it an anecdote? Is it a metaphor? Who can say. 

So God is pissed because His favourite creation, mankind, is running amok on the very Earth He created for them. It's like if your entire Sim family rebelled against you and started killing each other, but multiply that by a few thousand and make it real. Once again, I have to side with God on this one. But, you know when you're with someone on an argument and you're like "Yeah we're in this together!" but then they go off and take it a little too far and you're like, "Whoa, shit..." This is one of those cases. Instead of giving mankind a simple timeout, God decides to wipe out the entire human race, along with all the plants and animals. This is my "Whoa, shit..." moment with God. As any loving God would do, he plans to set a cataclysmic flood upon the Earth and drown every living thing in its wake. Maybe God got the same feeling you get when you tell your Sim to go swim in the pool and once they get in you remove the ladder and watch them drown. I don't know. 

But God worked really hard on mankind and he doesn't want to have to to start completely from scratch, so he selects one man whom he deems to be righteous: Noah. Now, I wonder why he needed to do this at all. Because of Eve, we already know that all of mankind is intrinsically sinful no matter what, so if God is going through the effort of wiping out the entire human race save for one special man, why not go one step further and get rid of mankind completely, then start fresh? And hey, maybe this time God could hire some pest control and get rid of the damn snake. Or why not just avoid planting the Tree of Knowledge altogether and lock Adam and Eve 2.0 in a playpen? Okay, we'll call that one creative licensing because what would the rest of the 1700 pages in this book possibly be about if it weren't for Adam and Eve's misfortune. I digress.

So God selects Noah as his righteous man and warns him of the impending flood. He gives him instructions to build a giant ark, which is really pretty nice of him. God is like the weatherman. So Noah builds the ark (wouldn't you?), but before he does, God adds an additional clause: Oh yeah, Noah you have to take a male and a female of every single animal and take them with you on your ark so that they can repopulate the Earth once the flood is over. Okay ... This changes the blueprint slightly. Luckily, Noah's ark didn't meet the same fate that other grandiose vessels have in the past (maybe his ark didn't star Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet). Let's just pause here for a second. Noah, the only righteous man in the entire world according to God, is tasked to take not just one but two of every single animal on the entire planet, shove them in an ark built by Noah and Noah alone in a time before welding and house them and feed them for forty days and forty nights and somehow prevent them from eating each other. Alright, I'm going to say it: God is a pretty unrealistically demanding parent. Oh and one more thing: Noah is six hundred years old. Six hundred. That old woman from Titanic was only a hundred and she could barely muster the energy to throw the necklace into the ocean. Come on, Bible. 

Thankfully God let Noah bring his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Oh, he could also bring his wife, but her name isn't worth mentioning (remember--she is a woman). The sons brought their wives as well, who are also not worth mentioning. Somehow Noah rounded up all the animals, including the "creeping things." Now, tell me how an ancient six hundred year old man without a degree in biology can distinguish a male centipede from a female one. Or an ant for that matter. And how did he catch all the birds? Also--without evolution (it's a lie), how could the two of each animal he brought somehow "become" (don't call it evolution) all the new species we see? Unless he went all over the world, lugging his massive ark with him, collecting all the zebras and flamingos, this seems implausible unless some kind of force (it's not evolution) was acting. 

Anyway, he did it (obviously, we're still here are we not? Thanks, Noah!) and for forty days and nights Noah ignored the drowning people of the Earth. We can only assume that Noah and his family sustained themselves by eating a species that we'll never see thanks to them. So the rain stops, the lands clear and Noah unloads the troop off the ark where they then proceed to have a giant orgy to repopulate the Earth. Then Noah proceeds to offer God burnt sacrifices of the clean animals he "saved." One might wonder, then, what the point of all this was. I have an inclination that I'll be wondering this a lot. God is once again delighted by the smell of burnt animal carcass and he is hit with an epiphany. He realizes it's not so cool to be so destructive and he vows to never smite anyone again (somehow I don't see this sticking). This demonstrates that God is capable of emotional growth, which seems to contradict his eternal wisdom and perfection. But hey, any vow to smite no more is fine by me. Maybe that's why I haven't been smote yet for writing this? God materializes this vow with a rainbow, as the symbol for the loving relationship between man and God. NONE of this gay shit. Just God and Noah and the rainbow.

Like any good prophet, Noah gets drunk and falls asleep naked. His son Ham freaks out and gets his brothers to cover him with a blanket, which gets him cursed, you know, the usual stuff. And the curse is to extend to all of this son's descendants, the Canaanites. Then we get some filler pages with more genealogy stuff. Turns out, a particular group from these descendants gets cocky and decides to build a tower to reach heaven. God gets pissed and scatters them across the nation, changing their languages so they can never work together again. If you've ever struggled to learn Japanese, you can blame God for that.

With Noah long dead, we meet Abraham. Or should I say Abram, because only later does God forcibly change Abram's name to "Abraham," you know, for holy reasons. Abram is a descendant of Noah's son Shem, and they are called Semites. God whispers to Abram that if he follows His command, God will make sure all of his descendants get the divine treatment. Duh! Who wouldn't take God up on that. Abram takes his wife Sarai (finally! A name!) and his son Lot and they hang out in Egypt for a while. Abram gets rich via mysterious methods and peaces out of Egypt. There isn't a ton of interesting stuff going on here (for the fundamental prophet, he's pretty dull so far) until God tells Abram that the sacred covenant between God and his followers shall be represented in the holy act of ... Cutting one's foreskin off. Ah, yes. I seal most of my deals with circumcision, so I am totally with God on this one. God then decides that "Abram" is so outdated, and that "Abraham" is more appropriate. God also decides to rename Abraham's wife to "Sarah." I think I'm seeing a pattern here: God likes to add h's to people's names. If/when God speaks to me, I imagine he'll change my name to "Erich." I await thee. Abraham goes and circumcises all of his followers, which makes me wonder what the men at the time thought of this. I mean, how many men in our time would allow a 99 year-old man with a pair of scissors anywhere near their penises? 

Speaking of penises, we now come to Sodom and Gomorrah. As far as wicked places go, this was pretty much the height of it. Lots of shit went down there, and we can only assume it was something like the biblical equivalent of Las Vegas. So God sends two angels to do some investigating. Think CSI when they enter a crack den and look around critically--can you say angel out of heaven? So they're out patrolling when Lot, Abraham's son, steps out of his house and convinces the angels to come in for dinner. And then a mob of angry townspeople surround the house and demand Lot to hand over the angels. I know what you're thinking: the townspeople are upset by the angel's judgmental attitude and they want to evict them. That would make sense and probably be more proportional to the situation, but no. No, the townspeople demand the angels ... so that they can rape them. Now Lot, not wanting to be the guy who let two angels get raped on his watch, instead offers his own two virgin daughters for the townspeople to rape. Okay, so this place is maybe a little worse than Vegas, but in what world would offering your two daughters to be raped somehow be more moral? I get it, they're angels and everything but given their divine status one would hope they'd be able to fend for themselves. And Lot is supposed to be the good guy in all of this, yet he really isn't the one who is going to be dealing with the emotional trauma of being raped by an angry mob like his daughters would. So that makes me question this guy's problem-solving skills. The angels at this point have seen enough and they confidently report back to God that the place has indeed gone to shit (again, where God was during all of this is undisclosed). So God decides to destroy the city. Fair enough. He allows Lot to take his wife and two daughters with him and haul ass out of there. Once they've left the city, God does his thing and showers the city in brimstone and fire. The angels tell Lot's wife not to look back as the city is destroyed, but of course once she's told she shouldn't do something she just has to go and do it. For the split second it took for her to watch as her home is destroyed by God's wrath, she is turned into a pillar of salt. Yes, a pillar of salt. I get that she wasn't supposed to long for her old home because she's on God's path now or whatever, but the pillar of salt, come on God. She raised her children there, give her a second to grieve before turning her into salt. 

Now, Lot decides to live in a cave for some unknown reason ... Maybe the city of Zoar smelled like New York, I dunno. While he's in the cave with his daughters, they get a funny idea. Because caves are lonely places and there aren't a lot of suitors roaming the mountains, the two daughters decide that the seed of their righteous father, the guy who offered them to the angry mob to rape, must be preserved. Instead of, oh I don't know, finding him a new wife in Zoar, they decide it would be more appropriate to get him drunk and have sex with him themselves. Right. Apparently they just can't get enough of Abraham's seed because it isn't enough that they're already his daughters; no, they must also have his son so their offspring is like doubly more righteous. 

The stink of incest is a great place to leave off, I think.

This section of Genesis has been particularly rape-y for some reason, and I can't say I'm thrilled. God isn't very useful here--he always seems to show up at the last minute to say "Ah yes I knew all along okay let me smite them brb." I'm sure he's a busy guy, but to my knowledge this Abraham is pretty important. Shouldn't God already know that? Why is God always surprised by how loyal Abraham is? And why would God need to send angels to check out Sodom and Gomorrah if He knew the townspeople would try to rape them? 

I'm starting to think a lot of these situations present a strong case of Stockholm syndrome. I mean, if my father offered me to an angry mob of rape-obsessed townspeople, I really wouldn't trust the guy anymore and I especially wouldn't live alone with him in a cave. Severe psychological distress is really the only explanation for the daughters' actions. He's their father! Why would anyone do that. Come on, Bible. 

So the obvious argument is that these stories are all metaphors. Okay, sure. The ark thing has to be a metaphor because no mildly educated person could possibly believe that story really happened--I can't even begin to list all the reasons why this story is implausible. So let's interpret this as a metaphor. What is the message here? It seems to be one of obedience. Noah didn't question the ark request but instead went right to work. He also diligently rounded up all those animals. Noah comes off looking great, I mean he's loyal, he's faithful, and he's righteous in a time of evil. God, on the other, comes off looking like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Why did he have to go and kill every living thing? What did the squirrels do! It's humans that pissed Him off. Up until this point, it seems that humans keep fucking shit up. Adam and Eve, Cain, Noah's sons, Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's daughters--really not painting a nice picture of humanity. So the only morality that can be driven of this story is ... People are fundamentally bad and only in unquestioning obedience to God can we hope to be redeemed, and in disobedience we can only expect mass death. But what doesn't make sense is how human God is portrayed. God can learn? God can make mistakes? What?

The fundamental problem with all this is that God did not create us in His image; we created Him in our image and he must therefore suffer all of our faults. And if that's true, why bother at all?

Okay, so Genesis. Literally the beginning of all things. It's a pretty difficult task the Bible is up against. "How did the universe begin?" I mean, we're even still a little stumped on that one. I for one would love some clarification because this whole big bang thing just sounds too sciencey.

So God makes the Earth in six days, and contrary to the questionable theory I've heard people put forth that, "Oh it's not six days it's more like six eons so science still works here"--Unfortunately no, it does not, because God creates Night and Day before he creates the stars and the moon. But anyway. Six days go by, we've got everything you see on Earth--land, oceans, birds and even spiders. God takes a rest on the seventh day because damn it, he deserves it. I can barely write a term paper in six days, let alone create the entire universe, so I would say God is pretty justified on this one.

After God creates the universe, throws some plants and animals on it, he calls it a day and creates man. Enter Adam. Literally the first person ever--that's a pretty cool title, I think. God has created this dope garden called Eden that Adam can just run around in, but this bores God pretty quickly so he gives Adam some company. If you've ever played The Sims, you know that there's only so many times you can see your Sim eat dinner alone before you decide to give him a wife. Enter Eve. Eve has literally been created by the rib of man--so there you go, women are intrinsically in debt to men. Sorry, it's like, in the Bible. God tells the two lovebirds that he has created the garden just for them, and they can run around and frolic as they please, so long as they don't eat from The Tree of Knowledge. Ooooh, sounds spooky. I don't like the insinuation here that trying to acquire knowledge about yourselves and about the world is the only thing God doesn't want you to do, so I will definitely be docking marks for that. 

Okay ... this brings us to the snake. I have got to talk about this snake. So Eve is off somewhere doing her thing and then, get this, a talking snake slithers up to her and tells her to defy God's command and eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Now, Eve is very easily enticed by the snake--remember, she is a woman--and goes ahead and not only does she eat the fruit herself, but she even gives some to Adam! Poor Adam, he was pure and good, but Eve ruined it all. Obviously God gets pretty pissed and banishes them from the garden forever (which, we will see, is a very long time since Adam lives to be 930 years old). But His wrath is not yet fulfilled. As an added 'fuck you' to Eve, he curses her with the pain of menstruation and the agony of child birth and even goes as far to say that all women are to forever be property of their husbands. So there you have it. Sorry ladies, but God is not impressed with you. And gentlemen? Well you just bend too easily to your wives.

But what of the snake? Well here's where I get a little confused. His punishment for the snake is that the snake has to slither on its belly and eat dust for the rest of its life, but ... Is that not what snakes already do? So basically, the snake's punishment is to be a snake. "And snake, your curse shall be that you go on snake-ing! HA!" Hmm. I'll give God the benefit of the Divine Doubt here. But why is the snake even there? Whose idea was it to put the evil snake inside the garden of Eden? What kind of paradise is wrought with evil snakes? 

Despite all this, Adam is still cool with Eve and they have two children: Cain and Able. The brothers do their own thing for a while, and then decide to thank the Lord. Able slaughters a sheep and presents it to the Lord, and God is delighted. Good work Able. Cain, on the other hand, grabs some fruit of the ground--maybe a carrot or something--and presents it to God. This time? Not so thrilled. I would be pissed too if someone gave me a carrot or a potato for my birthday so it makes sense why God is a bit offended. Able is smug about the whole thing, so Cain does what any brother would do: He murders Able. God apparently missed this whole ordeal though, and when he gets back from whatever it was he was doing, he's all "Cain, where's your brother?" and Cain is like, "I know not, Am I my brother's keeper?" I just love this part. Cain is a such a bitch! TO GOD. Like, WOW. Rude much? Who has the audacity to be sarcastic to God? I mean really. I guess here we also see the genesis of sarcasm. God of course curses Cain, I mean who wouldn't, and once again man has demonstrated himself to be intrinsically flawed. 

Then the next couple pages are just a list of genealogies. The gist of it is that everyone lives to be about 900 years old. Seems reasonable. I think what happened is the writers wanted to convey the passage of time, but they ran out of names for each generation so they just made everyone live a really really long time. Problem solved!

This brings us to Noah. There's so much I need to say about Noah that I'll save it for another entry. As a teaser: God is PISSED at humanity because we just suck so much and can't stop killing each other, so he decides to wipe out, not just mankind, but all the animals too. Even the kittens! Bastard.

I would've like more elaboration on the origins of the Earth. It's very impressive that God could do so much in so little time, but I just have so many questions! I guess that's just the remnants of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (thanks, Eve) in me. I can see why people have been shifty about women all these years, I mean if you read this book it basically says that the first woman ever cursed all of humanity forever. This snake really didn't have to do much convincing. I would've like her to put up a bit of a fight, or at least reconsider listening to the advice of a talking snake. So I suppose maybe she kind of deserved it. According to God, the only solution is to have her be forever in debt to her husband just to keep her out of trouble. I guess you could say there's some sexism going on. These verses are essentially saying that a woman should be completely obedient to her husband, and that her purpose is to serve him, because only a man could keep a woman out of trouble--you know, so men are really doing women a favour.