Old Testament
Book Two: Exodus
Israel Enslaved in Egypt
Chapter 1: Pharaoh orders all male newborn Israelis drowned
Chapter 2: Moses floats
Chapter 3: God approaches Moses with a job offer
Chapter 4: Moses reluctantly accepts the job, then God tries to kill him
Wow, God really gets Exodus off with a bang! I knew that Exodus was primarily a book of rules, including the ten commandments, and I was expecting it to be really boring. I think that is still coming, but it starts out with the same excitement as the stories in Genesis, with an addition: God has gone from being a genocidal maniac to a homocidal psychopath! This time it's personal.
I got something else wrong about this story as well. I knew that Moses was found in the reeds by the side of the river in a basket. Actually, I don't think it's me that got this story wrong, I think this is the story that most people know about Moses. The conventional wisdom, as I understand it, is that Moses was an orphan, abandoned by his mother and found floating, left to die, on the banks of the Nile.
But that's not what happened at all. First, Joseph died, and then the Pharaoh died, and the new king didn't know anything about Israel. And they were thriving so much the Egyptians became worried that they would rise up and take over Egypt, so they enslaved them. It's a little odd that somehow the story of the biggest famine and economic success in the history of Egypt somehow was never told to the new king, but hey, this story is real, so that must be true.
The Egyptians beat the Israelis regularly, but the Israelites continued to get stronger. So the new king got drastic, and told the Hebrew midwives, of which there were two, to kill all male-born Israelis. The midwives couldn't do this. The king got mad, and the midwives told him that Israeli women have babies so quickly that the midwives never get there in time! (That explains why there are only two midwives!) They said, "Hebrew women were not like Egyptian women. When they were in labor they gave birth before the midwife could get to them" (Exod. 1.19). That can only mean one thing. Remember the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" "Big vagina" episode with Mo Collins and the cell phone? The king believes them, and God rewards the midwives for their dedication. As reward, God gives the midwives homes of their own. Just note that--what power God does in fact have--he can give the midwives anything they want. He just gives them homes and families, like that, a snap of his fingers. Just keep that in mind when we are reading about Israel wandering through the desert for FORTY YEARS. Ask yourself, why?
So, here's what really happened to Moses. The king ordered all the male Israeli babies killed. One of the Israeli women hid her baby from the Egyptians. Another baby born out-of-incest--"A descendant of Levi married a Levite woman who conceived and bore a son" (Exod. 2.1). The child's sister put the baby in a basket in the Nile, then hid to see what would happen. Pharaoh's daughter found it. (She was bathing in the river while her slave girls watched--another very scintillating scene.) Everyone in the bible is conniving. God likes you more the more conniving you are. The child's sister immediately sprang out of the bushes and said, "shall I find a Hebrew wet nurse for the baby?" And Pharaoh's daughter said yes, so the sister took the baby back to its mom! That's hardly a harrowing story of rescue and holy intervention. When the boy got older Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and named him Moses. (The note thinks the name might be related to Rameses: Ra (king?) Moses.)
Then there's another random story about what dicks the Israelis are. Moses sees an Egyptian beating some Israeli slaves. So Moses kills the Egyptian. Then the Israelis threaten to tell Pharaoh about it! So Moses has to run away, and he runs away to Midian. "Now, the priest of Midian had seven daughters!" (Exod. 2.16). Stop salivating. Unfortunately Moses only gets one of them.
Bible lesson on picking up women: You have to hang around down by the well. When the hot shepherdess girl comes to water her sheep, help her with it. Nothing turns on a shepherd girl like helping her with the water. You will get in her pants in no time. The amazing thing is, if you help her with the water, her dad will give her to you rather than chasing after you with a shotgun. It's another unrealistic thing about the bible. If shepherd girls were really this easy, there'd be a hundred guys milling around the wells every day waiting to help with the water. But that never happened.
The girl Moses gets is named Zipporah, and she gives him a son, whom he names Gershom.
Chapter 3 and 4 are when God hires Moses to go talk to the Israelites and lead them out of Egypt. I'll talk about it more later. It's a funny story, because Moses isn't the brightest bulb in the pack. I think if Jacob was Owen Wilson, Moses was maybe Mike Tyson--marble-mouthed and dopey. He told God that he couldn't speak good, he couldn't tell the Israelis what to do. Anyway, more on that, the long and short of it is that Moses enlists the help of his brother Aaron.
One more aside on this story before I get to the best part of this section. Remember Moses moved to Midian, right? He ran away from Egypt and settled in Midian? Moses is tending to his father-in-law's flocks. (His father-in-law is named Jethro, by the way.) So he takes the flocks to "Horeb, the mountain of God" (Exod. 3.1). This is where God hires Moses. God tells him to go get the Israelis out of Egypt, and then bring them here and they will all worship--this is the mountain where Moses gets the ten commandments. What I want to point out is that it takes the Israelis FORTY YEARS to go for this walk that apparently takes Moses a couple days to do!
Anyway, here's the passage I want to share with you. Moses reluctantly takes the job, and starts back to Egypt. What happens next is too insane for me to recount. You have to read it for yourself. Now remember, God had just hired Moses and told him to go to Egypt to talk to Pharaoh and get the Israelis. The very next paragraph: "During the journey, while they were encamped for the night, the Lord met Moses, meaning to kill him, but Zipporah picked up a sharp flint, cut off her son's foreskin, and touched him with it, saying, 'You are my blood-bridegroom.' So the Lord let Moses alone. Then she said, 'Blood-bridegroom by circumcision" (Exod. 4:24-26). There is so much insanity packed into those few words it's difficult to unpack. God has obviously completely lost it. He follows Moses and tries to kill him! Wtf?! And what is his wife's brilliant idea? Here, let me take the opportunity to cut off the end of our son's penis--that will distract God. Well, I guess it would. It is a common tactic for avoiding attack: act completely insane--pee in your pants, hit your head against the wall, jump up and down. Be more crazy than your assailant, and it will freak him out. It worked, and the Lord leaves Moses alone. But that's not the end of the story. Zipporah must have really gone insane with the insanity of cutting off her son's penis like that, because she even plays with the foreskin--this is the foreskin that she just cut off the baby's penis--she touches the foreskin to the baby's face! Then, after God has left, she is still maniacally mumbling to herself, "blood-bridegroom by circumcision, blood-bridegroom by circumcision."
The note is wonderfully understated: "this obscure passive"--obscure indeed. This obscure passive, the note says, is apparently "a fragment from a once independent tradition." The note says that the name "Moses" did not appear in the "MT" (that is some ancient source text--I haven't been able to find what MT stands for yet). They add the name Moses when they include this story in the present context. The note says that is the reason it appears to be Moses who is threatened. That's great: the only way they can claim that God is not a raging lunatic is to claim that God did not write the bible.
I used to think the giants in chapter 6 of Genesis were the craziest thing in the bible, but I think this passage tops it. I can't get the image of the gore of that scene out of my mind! God the raging homicidal maniac, and the only way to stop him is to mutilate your own son. That's drama!
--bibletoenail
Future Topic:
Moses and the burning bush. --Exod. ch. 3
Moses' way with words. --Exod. ch. 3
Why Pharaoh is hard-hearted. --Exod. ch. 4
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
To be continued . . .
Well, school started this week, so I got behind immediately. Hopefully I can continue! I still have about 50 more chapters before I reach the farthest point I have ever gotten to. But I have finished Genesis!
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Joseph in Egypt (cont'd)
Chapter 47: Pharaoh acquires everything
Chapter 48: Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh
Chapter 49: Jacob blesses all of his children
Chapter 50: Joseph's dreams come true, and he dies
There are also many bizarre, random, unexplained moments in the Bible. One of them happens at the beginning of Chapter 47. At the end of Chapter 46 Joseph tells his brothers, "whatever you do, don't say you're shepherds!" (Lying is a real theme, almost a virtue, in the old testament.) Then he takes them to see Pharaoh. What's the first thing they say? "We're shepherds!" There's no explanation for it, no consequences.
In chapter 47, the famine is getting really bad. Joseph continues feeding the people with his stores, but he keeps exacting a dearer and dearer price, until the entire country has sold themselves into slavery in order to eat. Then it's time for Jacob to die. He makes Joseph promise to bury him in the Abraham cave where Sarah is buried. Joseph agrees.
Chapter 48 is another story that is completely foreign to modern audiences, concerning rules of inheritance (which again, although they are in the bible no longer obtain). Joseph stands in front of Jacob with Ephraim on one side and Manasseh on the other. But when Jacob blesses them, he reaches across and blesses the wrong one. (This is reminiscent to me of how Jacob tricked Isaac.) This cross-blessing explains, according to the note, Ephraim's emergence to a position of great power in Israel. The note says that this story is another "manifestation of God's mysterious freedom" (Gen. 48:17-19n). Whatever.
Now we are very close to the end of the story of Genesis. One fascinating thing about this story, something that I cannot think of another example of literature, is the arc of this story. It is not the story of one human--it is the story of generations of humans. The main "character" is not a person, it's a whole group of people, Israel, and how they relate to God. It's a fascinating thing. The motivations of any one character in the bible is just to deal with God for his time, to secure the promise of God one more time for his descendants. I just thought of one example, sort of, where the story spans generations and yet one of the characters lives throughout the whole time: Lord of the Rings--Gandalf never gets older as he deals with generation after generation in Middle Earth. Now I can think of more. Highlander is similar. Dracula. But even most of these stories really involve one generation. The concept that the character at the end is behaving relatively independently of the earlier generations is very unusual.
Chapter 49 is Jacob's long blessing to all of his 12 sons. We're wrapping up. This is like the end of Return of the King, when the story ended about 30 minutes ago, but we're still going on. It's interesting that each of the twelve children represent a real tribe in Israel, each with different fortunes. And it's interesting that they put all that in the bible. (Notice that the notes always just assume the bible was written AFTER these events. The story about Judah, for example, was written and inserted because later on his branch of the family becomes important. Same here. They wrote this chapter to fit with what they later find out happens to the tribes. The note for vv. 8-12 says that it refers to the reign of David, which gives a clue as to when it was written. It is very refreshing to me to read this edition of the Bible, which blithely and unquestioningly implies that the book is man-made.
It's cool how powerful Joseph became. All of Egypt mourned for 70 days when Joseph's father Jacob died. One last moment of tension. After Jacob died, Joseph's brothers become afraid that he will now exact his revenge. Joseph says no, and they all start to cry, and they prostrate themselves before him. And so Joseph's dream from the beginning comes true on the last page. It's actually pretty good writing--there was foreshadowing and everything. How to explain this? Why would God be a decent writer at some points and a terrible writer at others?
Joseph died, and made his children promise that when Israel leaves Egypt they will take his bones with them. They agree. The end of book one of the holey bible.
--bibletoenail
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Joseph in Egypt (cont'd)
Chapter 47: Pharaoh acquires everything
Chapter 48: Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh
Chapter 49: Jacob blesses all of his children
Chapter 50: Joseph's dreams come true, and he dies
There are also many bizarre, random, unexplained moments in the Bible. One of them happens at the beginning of Chapter 47. At the end of Chapter 46 Joseph tells his brothers, "whatever you do, don't say you're shepherds!" (Lying is a real theme, almost a virtue, in the old testament.) Then he takes them to see Pharaoh. What's the first thing they say? "We're shepherds!" There's no explanation for it, no consequences.
In chapter 47, the famine is getting really bad. Joseph continues feeding the people with his stores, but he keeps exacting a dearer and dearer price, until the entire country has sold themselves into slavery in order to eat. Then it's time for Jacob to die. He makes Joseph promise to bury him in the Abraham cave where Sarah is buried. Joseph agrees.
Chapter 48 is another story that is completely foreign to modern audiences, concerning rules of inheritance (which again, although they are in the bible no longer obtain). Joseph stands in front of Jacob with Ephraim on one side and Manasseh on the other. But when Jacob blesses them, he reaches across and blesses the wrong one. (This is reminiscent to me of how Jacob tricked Isaac.) This cross-blessing explains, according to the note, Ephraim's emergence to a position of great power in Israel. The note says that this story is another "manifestation of God's mysterious freedom" (Gen. 48:17-19n). Whatever.
Now we are very close to the end of the story of Genesis. One fascinating thing about this story, something that I cannot think of another example of literature, is the arc of this story. It is not the story of one human--it is the story of generations of humans. The main "character" is not a person, it's a whole group of people, Israel, and how they relate to God. It's a fascinating thing. The motivations of any one character in the bible is just to deal with God for his time, to secure the promise of God one more time for his descendants. I just thought of one example, sort of, where the story spans generations and yet one of the characters lives throughout the whole time: Lord of the Rings--Gandalf never gets older as he deals with generation after generation in Middle Earth. Now I can think of more. Highlander is similar. Dracula. But even most of these stories really involve one generation. The concept that the character at the end is behaving relatively independently of the earlier generations is very unusual.
Chapter 49 is Jacob's long blessing to all of his 12 sons. We're wrapping up. This is like the end of Return of the King, when the story ended about 30 minutes ago, but we're still going on. It's interesting that each of the twelve children represent a real tribe in Israel, each with different fortunes. And it's interesting that they put all that in the bible. (Notice that the notes always just assume the bible was written AFTER these events. The story about Judah, for example, was written and inserted because later on his branch of the family becomes important. Same here. They wrote this chapter to fit with what they later find out happens to the tribes. The note for vv. 8-12 says that it refers to the reign of David, which gives a clue as to when it was written. It is very refreshing to me to read this edition of the Bible, which blithely and unquestioningly implies that the book is man-made.
It's cool how powerful Joseph became. All of Egypt mourned for 70 days when Joseph's father Jacob died. One last moment of tension. After Jacob died, Joseph's brothers become afraid that he will now exact his revenge. Joseph says no, and they all start to cry, and they prostrate themselves before him. And so Joseph's dream from the beginning comes true on the last page. It's actually pretty good writing--there was foreshadowing and everything. How to explain this? Why would God be a decent writer at some points and a terrible writer at others?
Joseph died, and made his children promise that when Israel leaves Egypt they will take his bones with them. They agree. The end of book one of the holey bible.
--bibletoenail
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
The Applie-Pie Hubbub
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Joseph in Egypt (cont'd)
Chapter 43: The sons of Israel return to Egypt with Benjamin
Chapter 44: Joseph sets up his brothers again
Chapter 45: Joseph discloses his identity
Chapter 46: Jacob and his family move to Egypt
This is going to be a short entry. I just have a couple general comments to make, and one on what God is up to at this time in the bible.
First, I was thinking last night about these stories and the people who claim every word of the bible is literally true. It is an outrageous and absurd claim. We've talked about many reasons why that is so, but something new occurred to me last night, something more fundamental than some of the others. Remember how excited I was by the moment when Sarah acted like an actual human being, dissembling when God asked her if she had laughed? Here's what is wrong with the rest of this book except for that small moment with Sarah. Except for Sarah at that moment, no one acts even remotely like an actual person would behave. There is simply no way these stories are true because people simply do not act the way they do in these stories. I will give you an example in a moment.
The second thing is the claim that God wrote this book. God is an unbelievably bad writer. How does one explain that? Most of the stories in this book would be laughed out of a freshman writing workshop. First, for the reason mentioned above that the stories simply don't ring true. But secondly, they are badly written. The bible is mind-numbingly repetitive. In the passage I read for today, Joseph sends his brothers back to Jacob to get Benjamin. The brothers recount to Jacob everything that happened in Egypt. Jacob relents and send all the brothers back to Joseph. Joseph plants some merchandise in their bags in order to test whether they will sell Benjamin into slavery as they had Joseph. After they are caught and brought back before Joseph, Judah intervenes to plead with Joseph. He repeats the entire story to Joseph, and the text quotes him telling the entire story! We have to read the same story two or three times. Chapter 44 is three times longer than it should be. It would be far more powerful if it were better written.
How can this be if God wrote it? Wouldn't God be by definition the greatest writer humans have ever seen? Wouldn't the bible be like watching both Godfathers and all three Star Wars movies at the same time? (Let's try to forget Episodes 1, 2, and 3 ever happened.) Instead the bible drones on and on, and repeats itself endlessly. It is simply bad writing. Now, coincidentally, the art of writing itself has developed significantly in the last 6000 years. People are simply better at telling stories today than they were 6000 years ago. Isn't it odd that God wrote like they wrote back then? Shouldn't the bible read like Nabakov or Salinger or Joyce or Steinbeck or [fill in your greatest writer here]?
Back to my first complaint, here is an example of how the characters in the bible do not act even remotely as they would in real life. The first time Joseph's brothers went to Egypt, on their way home they discovered that someone had filled their bags with silver. They didn't do it; they knew someone had either tricked them, or made a mistake, or something. They didn't know how the silver got there, it had appeared unbeknownst to them.
So a while later they return to Egypt. (By the way, I'm not saying I'm any brilliant writer, but do you see how much better I can write than God? I SUMMARIZE. I try to FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANT DETAILS! It reminds me of the Steve Martin routine where he talks about the various books he's written. His second book was "The Apple Pie Hubbub." He said, "That book was a real breakthrough for me, because for the first time I used verbs. My writing really livened up after that." God writes like Steve Martin before he started using verbs.
So a while later they return to Egypt. Before they leave, Joseph has his servant once again hide silver in their bags. They leave town, and Joseph has his servant chase after them to accuse them of stealing silver from Joseph again. Now, what would you or anyone else on the planet think at that moment? What would you say? You'd say something like, "Are you kidding me? Someone is playing a trick on us. We swear we didn't steal any silver, but if it's in our bags it's because someone planted it on us again."
Instead Joseph's brothers say, "we swear we didn't steal the silver. If any one of us is found with [Joseph's sacred goblet], he shall die" (Gen. 44:9). Now, you KNOW the silver is there! And they promised to kill themselves if the silver is found! It's simply absurd. Completely unrealistic. No person in the history of the world would behave the way they do in this story. It's okay (mediocre) as a story, because it moves the plot forward. But a chronicle of actual events? Give me a break.
One last thing about what a vicious sadistic monster God is. The narrative of Genesis does sharpen significantly as we move through it. This entire story of Joseph is to set up Israel in Egypt. The brothers selling Joseph to Egypt, him coming to power, Pharaoh inviting all of Israel to live in Egypt, and them coming. All of that, Joseph says, was God's plan. And God specifically promises Jacob, "Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you a great nation. I will go down with you to Egypt, and I myself will bring you back again without fail." God sets up Israel to go to Egypt, knowing that they will be enslaved! And then when he delivers Israel out of Egypt after wandering in the desert for 40 years, God takes credit for the miracle! And Jews and Christians are grateful to a merciful and gracious God for delivering them from slavery!
It's an enormous, centuries-long case of abused spouse syndrome. The abuser can do no wrong, and any kindness at all from the abuser is seen as a sign that the abuser loves the abused. As I have said before, the question is whether the God character in this book exists is irrelevant, because no one in their right mind would want to have anything to do with him.
--bibletoenail
Book 1: Genesis
Joseph in Egypt (cont'd)
Chapter 43: The sons of Israel return to Egypt with Benjamin
Chapter 44: Joseph sets up his brothers again
Chapter 45: Joseph discloses his identity
Chapter 46: Jacob and his family move to Egypt
This is going to be a short entry. I just have a couple general comments to make, and one on what God is up to at this time in the bible.
First, I was thinking last night about these stories and the people who claim every word of the bible is literally true. It is an outrageous and absurd claim. We've talked about many reasons why that is so, but something new occurred to me last night, something more fundamental than some of the others. Remember how excited I was by the moment when Sarah acted like an actual human being, dissembling when God asked her if she had laughed? Here's what is wrong with the rest of this book except for that small moment with Sarah. Except for Sarah at that moment, no one acts even remotely like an actual person would behave. There is simply no way these stories are true because people simply do not act the way they do in these stories. I will give you an example in a moment.
The second thing is the claim that God wrote this book. God is an unbelievably bad writer. How does one explain that? Most of the stories in this book would be laughed out of a freshman writing workshop. First, for the reason mentioned above that the stories simply don't ring true. But secondly, they are badly written. The bible is mind-numbingly repetitive. In the passage I read for today, Joseph sends his brothers back to Jacob to get Benjamin. The brothers recount to Jacob everything that happened in Egypt. Jacob relents and send all the brothers back to Joseph. Joseph plants some merchandise in their bags in order to test whether they will sell Benjamin into slavery as they had Joseph. After they are caught and brought back before Joseph, Judah intervenes to plead with Joseph. He repeats the entire story to Joseph, and the text quotes him telling the entire story! We have to read the same story two or three times. Chapter 44 is three times longer than it should be. It would be far more powerful if it were better written.
How can this be if God wrote it? Wouldn't God be by definition the greatest writer humans have ever seen? Wouldn't the bible be like watching both Godfathers and all three Star Wars movies at the same time? (Let's try to forget Episodes 1, 2, and 3 ever happened.) Instead the bible drones on and on, and repeats itself endlessly. It is simply bad writing. Now, coincidentally, the art of writing itself has developed significantly in the last 6000 years. People are simply better at telling stories today than they were 6000 years ago. Isn't it odd that God wrote like they wrote back then? Shouldn't the bible read like Nabakov or Salinger or Joyce or Steinbeck or [fill in your greatest writer here]?
Back to my first complaint, here is an example of how the characters in the bible do not act even remotely as they would in real life. The first time Joseph's brothers went to Egypt, on their way home they discovered that someone had filled their bags with silver. They didn't do it; they knew someone had either tricked them, or made a mistake, or something. They didn't know how the silver got there, it had appeared unbeknownst to them.
So a while later they return to Egypt. (By the way, I'm not saying I'm any brilliant writer, but do you see how much better I can write than God? I SUMMARIZE. I try to FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANT DETAILS! It reminds me of the Steve Martin routine where he talks about the various books he's written. His second book was "The Apple Pie Hubbub." He said, "That book was a real breakthrough for me, because for the first time I used verbs. My writing really livened up after that." God writes like Steve Martin before he started using verbs.
So a while later they return to Egypt. Before they leave, Joseph has his servant once again hide silver in their bags. They leave town, and Joseph has his servant chase after them to accuse them of stealing silver from Joseph again. Now, what would you or anyone else on the planet think at that moment? What would you say? You'd say something like, "Are you kidding me? Someone is playing a trick on us. We swear we didn't steal any silver, but if it's in our bags it's because someone planted it on us again."
Instead Joseph's brothers say, "we swear we didn't steal the silver. If any one of us is found with [Joseph's sacred goblet], he shall die" (Gen. 44:9). Now, you KNOW the silver is there! And they promised to kill themselves if the silver is found! It's simply absurd. Completely unrealistic. No person in the history of the world would behave the way they do in this story. It's okay (mediocre) as a story, because it moves the plot forward. But a chronicle of actual events? Give me a break.
One last thing about what a vicious sadistic monster God is. The narrative of Genesis does sharpen significantly as we move through it. This entire story of Joseph is to set up Israel in Egypt. The brothers selling Joseph to Egypt, him coming to power, Pharaoh inviting all of Israel to live in Egypt, and them coming. All of that, Joseph says, was God's plan. And God specifically promises Jacob, "Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you a great nation. I will go down with you to Egypt, and I myself will bring you back again without fail." God sets up Israel to go to Egypt, knowing that they will be enslaved! And then when he delivers Israel out of Egypt after wandering in the desert for 40 years, God takes credit for the miracle! And Jews and Christians are grateful to a merciful and gracious God for delivering them from slavery!
It's an enormous, centuries-long case of abused spouse syndrome. The abuser can do no wrong, and any kindness at all from the abuser is seen as a sign that the abuser loves the abused. As I have said before, the question is whether the God character in this book exists is irrelevant, because no one in their right mind would want to have anything to do with him.
--bibletoenail
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
She was a temple prostitute
I'm embarrassed to say I cannot add 4 to 37, and so I somehow thought I needed to read through chapter 42 today. No wonder it was so long. But that's okay, it means I'll end Genesis evenly. Wow, almost done with book one!
"Joseph was handsome and good-looking!" --Gen. 39:6
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Joseph in Egypt
Chapter 37: Joseph sold into slavery
Chapter 38: Judah tries to continue his line
Chapter 39: Joseph laid low by a femme fatale
Chapter 40: Joseph interprets the butler's and the baker's dreams
Chapter 41: Joseph interprets the Pharaoh's dreams
Chapter 42: Joseph's dreams come true
Well, Genesis just keeps getting better and better. Joseph's story is really good, and it doesn't even involve sex and incest--just a little. It's long and complicated, but it's a single cohesive unit.
However, thrust into the middle of Joseph's story is another of my favorite stories, so Joseph is going to have to wait for a future topic. I told you I love the story of Lot and his daughters, I love the story of Jacob and his four women. The story of Judah and Tamar might be the best of them all. An interesting note about this story. It is chapter 38, it's been inserted right into the middle of the story of Joseph. It's completely out of place, and in fact, in Judah's story--chapter 38--he leaves his brothers and travels south, has an entire family that grows to adulthood and gets married, and ultimately they (sort of) have their own children, in chapter 39 he's back with his brothers! The story is completely out of place. The note says that later on King David rises to prominence, and plays a big role in this old testament story. Problem is, he's from the tribe of Judah! But in Genesis he had a very small role. So they just inserted a story about Judah into the middle of Joseph's story. But here's why that is so important. The timeline once again belies the human nature of the bible. When Genesis was written, Judah was unimportant. Only after David became important did they go back and add this story about Judah. If God had written it, wouldn't he already have known about David? Alternatively, if God had decided Joseph was the line--and that is clear--the entire story of Jacob, and Joseph's birth is leading in that direction. Jacob tricks Isaac to get his blessing in order to secure God's promise, then after a long struggle Rachel finally conceives and gives birth, again to carry on the line and God's promise. If Joseph is the one with the line, then why would God make David important? Why not have David be born of Joseph's line, or have someone else become king than David? It just doesn't work, huh?
But that doesn't matter, I think there are many more problems with this. Joseph is going to marry an Egyptian girl--he's not even related to her! And if I remember right, Moses is an orphan, but we'll have to wait a couple days for that story.
Anyway, the Judah story is fantastic. You tell me how to reconcile the morality and rules of this story with what we today believe are God's morality and rules.
Judah has three children: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er married Tamar. But Er was wicked in God's sight, and he killed Er (Gen. 38:7). Just keep that in mind, because God set the entire following sequence of events in motion. Why did he kill Er in particular? Aren't people wicked all over the place? And by the way, what exactly was God's promise after the flood--I mean what was the intention of it? Of course the actual promise was that he would never again kill everybody. But what exactly does he mean by that? What exactly was he apologizing for? Was it killing everybody that was the problem? If he had left 100 here, 100 there, then he'd have been okay with that? Is that what God meant? Mass murder, genocide are okay with God, but only not 100% complete mass murder?
Or is it that after he killed everyone he realized that it was wrong to kill people because they were wicked, and he would never do it again? Well, that is obviously the only defensible moral position, isn't it? Any other apology God could have made would be completely meaningless--he thinks it's okay to kill 1000s, just not everyone? What exactly is the moral rule there? Yet he clearly did mean exactly that--not 12 chapters later he destroys two entire cities! And here again he kills Er. If someone could articulate the morality that God espouses I would love to hear it. If it's okay to kill Er, why would he regret the floods?
Anyway, Er never had kids with Tamar. So Judah tells his next son Onan to go have sex with Tamar! But he didn't want to get Tamar pregnant, so whenever he slept with his brother's wife (yes, that's the language of the text--Gen. 38:9--this is something he did often)--whenever he slept with his brother's wife, he pulled out and ejaculated onto the ground instead! That was wicked in the Lord's sight.
We have to pause there. It's pretty obviously wicked, right? Uh, I think so? He's spilling his seed, that's wrong, every sperm is sacred, right? But wait, he's sleeping with his brother's grieving wife! And grieving because God killed her husband, no less. Is that what is wicked? Maybe pulling out is the right thing to do if you're going to have sex with your brother's wife?
Well, we're both wrong. According to the note in my book at least, "the offense was in the unwillingness of Onan to insure posterity for the deceased" (Gen. 38:10n). Sleeping with your brother's wife? God had no problem with that. Coming all over your brother's wife? God had no problem with that. But REFUSING TO MAKE YOUR BROTHER'S WIFE PREGNANT?! That was something that God could not allow to stand. I will be using this story to teach my children how not to get pregnant. "See, daughter? It's right there in the bible. Have him come on your face, or your boobs, or the carpet, just not inside you. There's a good girl." "See, son? If you really love the girl you will pull out and come on her mother's living room floor, not in her. Now run along." "Mr. Anderson, the bible told me that was the right thing to do! . . . How's Mrs. Anderson?"
I've said this a hundred times already, but this passage must be reconciled with the fundamentalist Christian's understanding of God and the bible. What is God's morality that he gave to us? It obviously isn't marriage! It isn't monogamy. NONE of the things that we imagine are universal truths of the bible--not only are they not in there, but the bible clearly has vastly different ideas about it than Christians pretend.
These stories are always repetitive--can you guess what God did about it? That's right, he killed Onan too!
What to do? Judah still wants Tamar to get pregnant. There's one son left, but he's only about 12. Well, these biblical people have to draw the line somewhere. I'm sure little Shelah would have more than happy to step up to the plate, but no, that would be wrong. So Judah told Tamar to go stay in her father's house and wait until little Shelah is old enough to impregnate her. (You must be saying to yourself at this point, "come on, he's making this up." I wish I had this much imagination. Genesis chapter 38. Read it yourself. Send it to Penthouse Forum--you'll probably get published. No wonder so many of stories are signed "Name and Address Withheld"--they were written by God! "I always had trouble believing the veracity of the letters you publish in your magazine until God killed my older brother and my father told me to go have sex with his wife." And, "I was only 12 when God killed my older brother for pulling out and coming on her chest when he had sex with my oldest brother's wife, rather than making her pregnant. God had killed my oldest brother a couple years before, and now, my dad said, it would be up to me to have sex with her as soon as I turned 18."
Well, little Shelah did grow up, but Judah broke the poor little boy's heart by forgetting to send for Tamar for him to have sex with! Later Judah did go looking for her. When Tamar heard he was coming, she dressed herself up and sat down at the fork in the road. Judah came by, thought she was a prostitute, and had sex with her. There's a very middle-eastern detail here that I like--Judah thought she was a hooker even though she wore a veil (Gen. 38:15). Hookers show their faces, proper women don't. But Tamar wore a veil, and so Judah couldn't tell who she was. Judah said he'd give her a goat in return for sex (how would that translate into baht?). But here's something else cool--he was going to sleep with her on credit! He didn't have the goat with him, he said he'd send it to her later. She asked for a pledge until that time (consideration in other words). (By the way, in modern times this contract would be unenforceable because you can't contract for illegal activity--but there's also a mistake of fact here, right? She's actually not a hooker. But wait, whatever the state of contract law at the time, this activity wasn't illegal anyway.) She told him she wanted his seal and its cord, and his staff." He agreed and gave them to her, and slept with her, and she got pregnant. Finally. With her husband's father's child.
When Judah got home he sent his friend to give the goat to the woman. He asked around the town for the temple-prostitute by the fork in the road, but they all said that no temple-prostitute lived there.
This passage needs a little explanation, huh? The note helps out. Picture what's going on here. There's a man wandering around the town with a goat, looking for the whore that his friend had slept with so he could give her the goat! Well, it turns out all religions are not created equal, and I have finally found one that I like. The reason Judah's friend asked around for a temple whore was so that the people of the town would know that Judah had not slept with some common whore--he would never do that! That would be wrong, immoral, disgusting. But the Canaanite religion had temple-whores, that the religion respected, whores that were doing God's work! What is all this Catholic B.S. about nuns being chaste and virginal?! If they love God so much, why don't they work for him? God needs to keep up on the payments on his Caddy, and that new 50" plasma TV he just bought. He got to get his chains out of hock. Daddy needs a new grill, baby! Come on, baby, how much you make tonight? Is that all? Shee-it. You gotta work for this brotha. Don't he buy you those nice wigs? Those sexy dresses? You get out there, and don't come back till you made daddy some money.
But this was a poor town, and they didn't have a temple-prostitute. (I'll bet the new reverend that just moved in promised them one in no time.) Judah said, well, fine, let her keep the pledge then, because he didn't want to get a bad name. (Not for sleeping with a whore, but for not paying her.)
Then a few months later he hears that Tamar has been acting like a whore, and is now pregnant with the child of one of her johns. Judah says, well, go get her so that she may be burnt. (Yes, that's what he said. Gen. 38:24. I told you this is a good story.)
Tamar sends Judah's things--the seal and cord and staff--to him and says, "these belong to the guy that got me pregnant. Do you recognize them?" At the beginning of this story it seems like this is another story where the woman is just an object being tossed around. But it turns out here, Tamar is as desperate to get pregnant with a Judaean man as Judah was for her to.
When Judah sees the things, he realizes the woman had been Tamar, and admits that she was in the right because he had never sent Shelah to have sex with her.
But the story's not over yet! Tamar has twins. Here is another scene in the movie where a close-up of the woman's vulva will be necessary--let's see you read what I'm about to tell you without imagining Tamar's pussy in detail. When she gives birth, first one baby sticks his hand out of her vagina. The midwife takes a red ribbon (which she must keep on hand for such occasions) and ties it around the baby's arm. The baby then pulls his arm back into Tamar's womb, and then the other baby comes out first! She names him Perez. Then the baby with the ribbon comes out, and she names him Zerah. May I invite you to take a moment to really think about the logistics of that? Zerah had to have stuck his hand out of her uterus, through the cervix and all the way out her vagina, then pulled it all the way back in, and moved out of the way so Zerah could go through. Uh, wow.
"Dear Penthouse-- I have always doubted the veracity of some of the letters you publish, until I was traveling to Timnath. My wife had just died, and when I saw a prostitute sitting next to the road, I had to have her. All she wanted was a goat, and she let me give her an IOU! Well, God had killed my two older boys a while ago, the first one because he was wicked, and the second one because he pulled out whenever he had sex with the first one's wife. I had promised her that she could have sex with my 12-year-old son as soon as he turned 18, but I forgot about it. Well, it turns out the whore was my daughter-in-law! I'll call her Candy. Candy had a cute face and a perfect body. 36-24-36, with nipples the size of pencil erasers."
--bibletoenail
Future topics:
Joseph's coat of many colors. --Gen. ch. 37
The legality of slavery--Joseph's brothers sell him to Egypt. --Gen. ch. 37
Joseph and Potiphar's wife. Joseph has to be played by Owen Wilson. --Gen. ch. 39
Joseph's dream interpretation. --Gen. ch. 40
Joseph's solution: socialism. --Gen. ch. 41
"Joseph was handsome and good-looking!" --Gen. 39:6
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Joseph in Egypt
Chapter 37: Joseph sold into slavery
Chapter 38: Judah tries to continue his line
Chapter 39: Joseph laid low by a femme fatale
Chapter 40: Joseph interprets the butler's and the baker's dreams
Chapter 41: Joseph interprets the Pharaoh's dreams
Chapter 42: Joseph's dreams come true
Well, Genesis just keeps getting better and better. Joseph's story is really good, and it doesn't even involve sex and incest--just a little. It's long and complicated, but it's a single cohesive unit.
However, thrust into the middle of Joseph's story is another of my favorite stories, so Joseph is going to have to wait for a future topic. I told you I love the story of Lot and his daughters, I love the story of Jacob and his four women. The story of Judah and Tamar might be the best of them all. An interesting note about this story. It is chapter 38, it's been inserted right into the middle of the story of Joseph. It's completely out of place, and in fact, in Judah's story--chapter 38--he leaves his brothers and travels south, has an entire family that grows to adulthood and gets married, and ultimately they (sort of) have their own children, in chapter 39 he's back with his brothers! The story is completely out of place. The note says that later on King David rises to prominence, and plays a big role in this old testament story. Problem is, he's from the tribe of Judah! But in Genesis he had a very small role. So they just inserted a story about Judah into the middle of Joseph's story. But here's why that is so important. The timeline once again belies the human nature of the bible. When Genesis was written, Judah was unimportant. Only after David became important did they go back and add this story about Judah. If God had written it, wouldn't he already have known about David? Alternatively, if God had decided Joseph was the line--and that is clear--the entire story of Jacob, and Joseph's birth is leading in that direction. Jacob tricks Isaac to get his blessing in order to secure God's promise, then after a long struggle Rachel finally conceives and gives birth, again to carry on the line and God's promise. If Joseph is the one with the line, then why would God make David important? Why not have David be born of Joseph's line, or have someone else become king than David? It just doesn't work, huh?
But that doesn't matter, I think there are many more problems with this. Joseph is going to marry an Egyptian girl--he's not even related to her! And if I remember right, Moses is an orphan, but we'll have to wait a couple days for that story.
Anyway, the Judah story is fantastic. You tell me how to reconcile the morality and rules of this story with what we today believe are God's morality and rules.
Judah has three children: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er married Tamar. But Er was wicked in God's sight, and he killed Er (Gen. 38:7). Just keep that in mind, because God set the entire following sequence of events in motion. Why did he kill Er in particular? Aren't people wicked all over the place? And by the way, what exactly was God's promise after the flood--I mean what was the intention of it? Of course the actual promise was that he would never again kill everybody. But what exactly does he mean by that? What exactly was he apologizing for? Was it killing everybody that was the problem? If he had left 100 here, 100 there, then he'd have been okay with that? Is that what God meant? Mass murder, genocide are okay with God, but only not 100% complete mass murder?
Or is it that after he killed everyone he realized that it was wrong to kill people because they were wicked, and he would never do it again? Well, that is obviously the only defensible moral position, isn't it? Any other apology God could have made would be completely meaningless--he thinks it's okay to kill 1000s, just not everyone? What exactly is the moral rule there? Yet he clearly did mean exactly that--not 12 chapters later he destroys two entire cities! And here again he kills Er. If someone could articulate the morality that God espouses I would love to hear it. If it's okay to kill Er, why would he regret the floods?
Anyway, Er never had kids with Tamar. So Judah tells his next son Onan to go have sex with Tamar! But he didn't want to get Tamar pregnant, so whenever he slept with his brother's wife (yes, that's the language of the text--Gen. 38:9--this is something he did often)--whenever he slept with his brother's wife, he pulled out and ejaculated onto the ground instead! That was wicked in the Lord's sight.
We have to pause there. It's pretty obviously wicked, right? Uh, I think so? He's spilling his seed, that's wrong, every sperm is sacred, right? But wait, he's sleeping with his brother's grieving wife! And grieving because God killed her husband, no less. Is that what is wicked? Maybe pulling out is the right thing to do if you're going to have sex with your brother's wife?
Well, we're both wrong. According to the note in my book at least, "the offense was in the unwillingness of Onan to insure posterity for the deceased" (Gen. 38:10n). Sleeping with your brother's wife? God had no problem with that. Coming all over your brother's wife? God had no problem with that. But REFUSING TO MAKE YOUR BROTHER'S WIFE PREGNANT?! That was something that God could not allow to stand. I will be using this story to teach my children how not to get pregnant. "See, daughter? It's right there in the bible. Have him come on your face, or your boobs, or the carpet, just not inside you. There's a good girl." "See, son? If you really love the girl you will pull out and come on her mother's living room floor, not in her. Now run along." "Mr. Anderson, the bible told me that was the right thing to do! . . . How's Mrs. Anderson?"
I've said this a hundred times already, but this passage must be reconciled with the fundamentalist Christian's understanding of God and the bible. What is God's morality that he gave to us? It obviously isn't marriage! It isn't monogamy. NONE of the things that we imagine are universal truths of the bible--not only are they not in there, but the bible clearly has vastly different ideas about it than Christians pretend.
These stories are always repetitive--can you guess what God did about it? That's right, he killed Onan too!
What to do? Judah still wants Tamar to get pregnant. There's one son left, but he's only about 12. Well, these biblical people have to draw the line somewhere. I'm sure little Shelah would have more than happy to step up to the plate, but no, that would be wrong. So Judah told Tamar to go stay in her father's house and wait until little Shelah is old enough to impregnate her. (You must be saying to yourself at this point, "come on, he's making this up." I wish I had this much imagination. Genesis chapter 38. Read it yourself. Send it to Penthouse Forum--you'll probably get published. No wonder so many of stories are signed "Name and Address Withheld"--they were written by God! "I always had trouble believing the veracity of the letters you publish in your magazine until God killed my older brother and my father told me to go have sex with his wife." And, "I was only 12 when God killed my older brother for pulling out and coming on her chest when he had sex with my oldest brother's wife, rather than making her pregnant. God had killed my oldest brother a couple years before, and now, my dad said, it would be up to me to have sex with her as soon as I turned 18."
Well, little Shelah did grow up, but Judah broke the poor little boy's heart by forgetting to send for Tamar for him to have sex with! Later Judah did go looking for her. When Tamar heard he was coming, she dressed herself up and sat down at the fork in the road. Judah came by, thought she was a prostitute, and had sex with her. There's a very middle-eastern detail here that I like--Judah thought she was a hooker even though she wore a veil (Gen. 38:15). Hookers show their faces, proper women don't. But Tamar wore a veil, and so Judah couldn't tell who she was. Judah said he'd give her a goat in return for sex (how would that translate into baht?). But here's something else cool--he was going to sleep with her on credit! He didn't have the goat with him, he said he'd send it to her later. She asked for a pledge until that time (consideration in other words). (By the way, in modern times this contract would be unenforceable because you can't contract for illegal activity--but there's also a mistake of fact here, right? She's actually not a hooker. But wait, whatever the state of contract law at the time, this activity wasn't illegal anyway.) She told him she wanted his seal and its cord, and his staff." He agreed and gave them to her, and slept with her, and she got pregnant. Finally. With her husband's father's child.
When Judah got home he sent his friend to give the goat to the woman. He asked around the town for the temple-prostitute by the fork in the road, but they all said that no temple-prostitute lived there.
This passage needs a little explanation, huh? The note helps out. Picture what's going on here. There's a man wandering around the town with a goat, looking for the whore that his friend had slept with so he could give her the goat! Well, it turns out all religions are not created equal, and I have finally found one that I like. The reason Judah's friend asked around for a temple whore was so that the people of the town would know that Judah had not slept with some common whore--he would never do that! That would be wrong, immoral, disgusting. But the Canaanite religion had temple-whores, that the religion respected, whores that were doing God's work! What is all this Catholic B.S. about nuns being chaste and virginal?! If they love God so much, why don't they work for him? God needs to keep up on the payments on his Caddy, and that new 50" plasma TV he just bought. He got to get his chains out of hock. Daddy needs a new grill, baby! Come on, baby, how much you make tonight? Is that all? Shee-it. You gotta work for this brotha. Don't he buy you those nice wigs? Those sexy dresses? You get out there, and don't come back till you made daddy some money.
But this was a poor town, and they didn't have a temple-prostitute. (I'll bet the new reverend that just moved in promised them one in no time.) Judah said, well, fine, let her keep the pledge then, because he didn't want to get a bad name. (Not for sleeping with a whore, but for not paying her.)
Then a few months later he hears that Tamar has been acting like a whore, and is now pregnant with the child of one of her johns. Judah says, well, go get her so that she may be burnt. (Yes, that's what he said. Gen. 38:24. I told you this is a good story.)
Tamar sends Judah's things--the seal and cord and staff--to him and says, "these belong to the guy that got me pregnant. Do you recognize them?" At the beginning of this story it seems like this is another story where the woman is just an object being tossed around. But it turns out here, Tamar is as desperate to get pregnant with a Judaean man as Judah was for her to.
When Judah sees the things, he realizes the woman had been Tamar, and admits that she was in the right because he had never sent Shelah to have sex with her.
But the story's not over yet! Tamar has twins. Here is another scene in the movie where a close-up of the woman's vulva will be necessary--let's see you read what I'm about to tell you without imagining Tamar's pussy in detail. When she gives birth, first one baby sticks his hand out of her vagina. The midwife takes a red ribbon (which she must keep on hand for such occasions) and ties it around the baby's arm. The baby then pulls his arm back into Tamar's womb, and then the other baby comes out first! She names him Perez. Then the baby with the ribbon comes out, and she names him Zerah. May I invite you to take a moment to really think about the logistics of that? Zerah had to have stuck his hand out of her uterus, through the cervix and all the way out her vagina, then pulled it all the way back in, and moved out of the way so Zerah could go through. Uh, wow.
"Dear Penthouse-- I have always doubted the veracity of some of the letters you publish, until I was traveling to Timnath. My wife had just died, and when I saw a prostitute sitting next to the road, I had to have her. All she wanted was a goat, and she let me give her an IOU! Well, God had killed my two older boys a while ago, the first one because he was wicked, and the second one because he pulled out whenever he had sex with the first one's wife. I had promised her that she could have sex with my 12-year-old son as soon as he turned 18, but I forgot about it. Well, it turns out the whore was my daughter-in-law! I'll call her Candy. Candy had a cute face and a perfect body. 36-24-36, with nipples the size of pencil erasers."
--bibletoenail
Future topics:
Joseph's coat of many colors. --Gen. ch. 37
The legality of slavery--Joseph's brothers sell him to Egypt. --Gen. ch. 37
Joseph and Potiphar's wife. Joseph has to be played by Owen Wilson. --Gen. ch. 39
Joseph's dream interpretation. --Gen. ch. 40
Joseph's solution: socialism. --Gen. ch. 41
Sunday, January 6, 2008
The Rape of Dinah
If you've never heard (of) Eddie Izzard talk about religion, or anything else, you should. He is one of the most talented comedians ever, so funny, so smart, also completely clean and non-offensive, for those of you who like that sort of thing. Here he is on the Church of England: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope-1Zb5t-k
"Is our sister to be treated as a common whore?" --Gen. 34:31
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Jacob and Esau (cont'd)
Chapter 33: Jacob and Esau go their separate ways
Chapter 34: The Rape of Dinah
Chapter 35: Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin
Chapter 36: The descendants of Esau
Wow, the bible really starts off with a bang, huh?! There has not been a moment's rest in 32 chapters. Finally we reach a kind of lull before Joseph's story starts. Dinah's story is interesting, but it sort of hangs out there by itself, it doesn't seem to fit in with the general shape of the narrative. One of the purposes of the bible that has been lost on us is as some kind of record of the times. It's not about GOD the way the new testament is--it's about the people, who was who, who came from where, and so on. One of its main functions seems to be as folk descriptions for the various tribes and people who lived in the area at the time. So if you said you were Canaanite, everyone would know what that meant, where you came from and so on. Apparently all the other tribes had their own versions of these same stories. Many of them were actually legends or myths or whatever--it's interesting that the stories themselves were shared among all the different people, and incorporated into the bible. (And once again, it gets a little monotonous to keep repeating this, but that fact belies the fictional nature of the bible.)
Even this story of the rape of Dinah is actually "ancient." Understand what this means. These stories didn't actually "happen" to the characters in the bible--who knows if Jacob even really had twelve sons plus Dinah? The authors wanted to include all these stories, so they put the stories onto the characters they had available. (Often they didn't even do a very good job, when two stories conflicted, or they put two different stories on the same person, they just threw it all together, like the two creation stories.)
Going along with stories of where did these peoples come from, the stories are designed to explain animosities between various tribes. I find that interesting--"why is it we hate the Levites again? Oh that's right, because of the rape of Dinah." These are the same ancient hatreds that we see now played out in the middle east, or in Africa. Something that I have never heard is where these books of the old testament came from. At some point they were written down. What I imagine is that for centuries the "priests" had the job of keeping these stories of the history of the people, and they were probably passed down from generation to generation through them. But we learned to write, and at some point they were written down. (One more reason it's nonsensical to say "God wrote the bible"--which version of the game of telephone, exactly did he write?) But even after it was written down, these were still ancient times, and some got lost and so on. At some I think much later date they were compiled into a text with a purpose, to tell a particular story about God. This is, I believe, what is meant in the notes by "ancient tradition" versus the "priestly writers" and so on. These later writers filled in the gaps and sewed the stories together to make the point they wanted to about the delayed realization of God's promise to Abraham.
That's interesting to contemplate as well. At some point the writing of the bible changes from recording tradition to creating intention--descriptive versus persuasive. That is always the moment where you have to wonder who is actually talking, and why.
The rape of Dinah is an interesting story, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. As I said, if I were a better feminist scholar I could write a paper about this, but with my low ambitions, I will be satisfied with an entry in a blog.
By the way, something I've been meaning to say, I just want everyone to know that I invented blogs and blogging. In 1995, the internet was just barely getting off the ground. Netscape was the biggest company, Yahoo was starting, ebay might have started already, and that was about it. e-commerce was hardly heard of--no one used credit cards on line. I was just finishing (well, that's not the right word. I was stopping) school at the University of Florida, and I was going to drive across the country to San Francisco with my girlfriend. We fought all the time, and I thought it would be an interesting idea to keep a journal of our trip, the miniature moving soap opera of my car as we drove, and post it online. My friend at the time Megan said she thought it was a terrible idea--why would anyone want to read about your trip across the country? She was a real visionary, huh? My problem is I can sometimes be influenced too easily, and I took her brilliant opinion to heart, and never wrote it. So that trip, the story of my girlfriend's and my road trip from Florida to San Francisco, is the first ever, although unwritten, web log. I will add an entry about that in wikipedia to make it true.
Dinah's story is another one of those that is wrong and contradictory in so many ways it's hard to keep them straight. Dinah goes to visit the women in the country, and Shechem, son of Hamor the local prince, sees her. It's important to see exactly the language the bible uses to describe what happens next: "he took her, lay with her, and dishonoured her" (Gen. 34:2). Does that sound familiar? It is exactly how both Isaac and Jacob began their relationships with their wives. So is that rape? Of course we're not told whether it was consensual, but neither were we with Rachel or Rebecca or Leah. Shechem, it says, remained true to Dinah: he loved her and comforted her (Gen. 34:3). That also sounds just like Isaac and Jacob: rape first, marry later.
He tells his father he wants to marry the girl. Then again Jacob hears that Shechem had "violated" his daughter. Finally the passage says what is apparently the real crime of Shechem: her brothers were grieved and angry "because in lying with Jacob's daughter he had done what the Israelites held to be an outrage, an intolerable thing." They can't possibly mean that rape itself is an outrage and an intolerable thing. The only possible reason for their outrage, I think, is that a Canaanite man had sex with an Israelite woman. (There's so much mixing of the tribes in these pages that I can't keep them straight. I'm sure there is animosity between the Israelites and the Canaanites, and yet I am also sure that God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham. I think that's the point--that God promised to Abraham this land--Canaan--that is not naturally theirs. It's also important, I think, to picture what life was like in this place. [For an amazing book on life in the middle east, read "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)--or watch the movie even. The book can get boring, but the way these people live is amazing. Remember Akabah? These people really do live in the desert. They can set off across the desert and arrive at the one watering hole for hundreds of miles ten days later. I think these characters, Jacob's children, Hamon's children, they may have been living in the same area, but that doesn't mean they were neighbors. It's very much like the old west stories between the cattle ranchers and the sheep herders. The tribes are just out living in tents in the vast open wilderness. As Jacob and Esau did in chapter 33, the clans just have to separate, to spread out over the land to give each herd room to graze.]) So it's not odd that the Israelites would be living among the Canaanites--it was a vast open country, one group living in one valley, the next in the next.
So although they could live near each other in peace, it was apparently an outrage for a Canaanite man to sleep with an Israelite woman. This is the reason for the outrage, nothing to do with the wishes or violation of Dinah herself. Despite the name of this passage, she is not a character in the story. It's the story, as always, of men fighting over the woman as a possession.
Hamon offers Jacob anything--he literally says name your price--to allow Shechem to marry Dinah. Jacob agrees. His price? All the men of Hamon's clan must get circumcised, then Shechem may marry Dinah. In another bizarre moment in the bible, all the men agree! Every man gets the end of his penis cut off so Shechem can continue having sex with Dinah.
This passage strikes me as blasphemous. It is using this sign of God's covenant with Abraham in a very base and sinful way. So again, is it? If it's here, it must be our understanding of morality that is completely wrong. Morality must be malleable--it is the only way to make sense of these stories.
And then, after Shechem's family agrees to it and does it, again this seems very disrespectful to God and his holy desire to have all our penises mutilated. Then two days later, while all the men were still in great pain, Simeon and Levi attacked the city (?) and killed every male. They grabbed Dinah and took her back with them. Then the rest of Jacob's sons came and looted and pillaged over the dead bodies of the men.
In usual Bible justice, Jacob gets mad only at Simeon and Levi. He says they brought trouble upon him, and "have made my name stink among the people of the country" (Gen. 34:30). Simeon and Levi replied, "Is our sister to be treated as a common whore?" (Gen. 34:31)
Sadly, Rachel dies during childbirth in chapter 35, giving birth to Benjamin.
--bibletoenail
"Is our sister to be treated as a common whore?" --Gen. 34:31
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Jacob and Esau (cont'd)
Chapter 33: Jacob and Esau go their separate ways
Chapter 34: The Rape of Dinah
Chapter 35: Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin
Chapter 36: The descendants of Esau
Wow, the bible really starts off with a bang, huh?! There has not been a moment's rest in 32 chapters. Finally we reach a kind of lull before Joseph's story starts. Dinah's story is interesting, but it sort of hangs out there by itself, it doesn't seem to fit in with the general shape of the narrative. One of the purposes of the bible that has been lost on us is as some kind of record of the times. It's not about GOD the way the new testament is--it's about the people, who was who, who came from where, and so on. One of its main functions seems to be as folk descriptions for the various tribes and people who lived in the area at the time. So if you said you were Canaanite, everyone would know what that meant, where you came from and so on. Apparently all the other tribes had their own versions of these same stories. Many of them were actually legends or myths or whatever--it's interesting that the stories themselves were shared among all the different people, and incorporated into the bible. (And once again, it gets a little monotonous to keep repeating this, but that fact belies the fictional nature of the bible.)
Even this story of the rape of Dinah is actually "ancient." Understand what this means. These stories didn't actually "happen" to the characters in the bible--who knows if Jacob even really had twelve sons plus Dinah? The authors wanted to include all these stories, so they put the stories onto the characters they had available. (Often they didn't even do a very good job, when two stories conflicted, or they put two different stories on the same person, they just threw it all together, like the two creation stories.)
Going along with stories of where did these peoples come from, the stories are designed to explain animosities between various tribes. I find that interesting--"why is it we hate the Levites again? Oh that's right, because of the rape of Dinah." These are the same ancient hatreds that we see now played out in the middle east, or in Africa. Something that I have never heard is where these books of the old testament came from. At some point they were written down. What I imagine is that for centuries the "priests" had the job of keeping these stories of the history of the people, and they were probably passed down from generation to generation through them. But we learned to write, and at some point they were written down. (One more reason it's nonsensical to say "God wrote the bible"--which version of the game of telephone, exactly did he write?) But even after it was written down, these were still ancient times, and some got lost and so on. At some I think much later date they were compiled into a text with a purpose, to tell a particular story about God. This is, I believe, what is meant in the notes by "ancient tradition" versus the "priestly writers" and so on. These later writers filled in the gaps and sewed the stories together to make the point they wanted to about the delayed realization of God's promise to Abraham.
That's interesting to contemplate as well. At some point the writing of the bible changes from recording tradition to creating intention--descriptive versus persuasive. That is always the moment where you have to wonder who is actually talking, and why.
The rape of Dinah is an interesting story, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. As I said, if I were a better feminist scholar I could write a paper about this, but with my low ambitions, I will be satisfied with an entry in a blog.
By the way, something I've been meaning to say, I just want everyone to know that I invented blogs and blogging. In 1995, the internet was just barely getting off the ground. Netscape was the biggest company, Yahoo was starting, ebay might have started already, and that was about it. e-commerce was hardly heard of--no one used credit cards on line. I was just finishing (well, that's not the right word. I was stopping) school at the University of Florida, and I was going to drive across the country to San Francisco with my girlfriend. We fought all the time, and I thought it would be an interesting idea to keep a journal of our trip, the miniature moving soap opera of my car as we drove, and post it online. My friend at the time Megan said she thought it was a terrible idea--why would anyone want to read about your trip across the country? She was a real visionary, huh? My problem is I can sometimes be influenced too easily, and I took her brilliant opinion to heart, and never wrote it. So that trip, the story of my girlfriend's and my road trip from Florida to San Francisco, is the first ever, although unwritten, web log. I will add an entry about that in wikipedia to make it true.
Dinah's story is another one of those that is wrong and contradictory in so many ways it's hard to keep them straight. Dinah goes to visit the women in the country, and Shechem, son of Hamor the local prince, sees her. It's important to see exactly the language the bible uses to describe what happens next: "he took her, lay with her, and dishonoured her" (Gen. 34:2). Does that sound familiar? It is exactly how both Isaac and Jacob began their relationships with their wives. So is that rape? Of course we're not told whether it was consensual, but neither were we with Rachel or Rebecca or Leah. Shechem, it says, remained true to Dinah: he loved her and comforted her (Gen. 34:3). That also sounds just like Isaac and Jacob: rape first, marry later.
He tells his father he wants to marry the girl. Then again Jacob hears that Shechem had "violated" his daughter. Finally the passage says what is apparently the real crime of Shechem: her brothers were grieved and angry "because in lying with Jacob's daughter he had done what the Israelites held to be an outrage, an intolerable thing." They can't possibly mean that rape itself is an outrage and an intolerable thing. The only possible reason for their outrage, I think, is that a Canaanite man had sex with an Israelite woman. (There's so much mixing of the tribes in these pages that I can't keep them straight. I'm sure there is animosity between the Israelites and the Canaanites, and yet I am also sure that God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham. I think that's the point--that God promised to Abraham this land--Canaan--that is not naturally theirs. It's also important, I think, to picture what life was like in this place. [For an amazing book on life in the middle east, read "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)--or watch the movie even. The book can get boring, but the way these people live is amazing. Remember Akabah? These people really do live in the desert. They can set off across the desert and arrive at the one watering hole for hundreds of miles ten days later. I think these characters, Jacob's children, Hamon's children, they may have been living in the same area, but that doesn't mean they were neighbors. It's very much like the old west stories between the cattle ranchers and the sheep herders. The tribes are just out living in tents in the vast open wilderness. As Jacob and Esau did in chapter 33, the clans just have to separate, to spread out over the land to give each herd room to graze.]) So it's not odd that the Israelites would be living among the Canaanites--it was a vast open country, one group living in one valley, the next in the next.
So although they could live near each other in peace, it was apparently an outrage for a Canaanite man to sleep with an Israelite woman. This is the reason for the outrage, nothing to do with the wishes or violation of Dinah herself. Despite the name of this passage, she is not a character in the story. It's the story, as always, of men fighting over the woman as a possession.
Hamon offers Jacob anything--he literally says name your price--to allow Shechem to marry Dinah. Jacob agrees. His price? All the men of Hamon's clan must get circumcised, then Shechem may marry Dinah. In another bizarre moment in the bible, all the men agree! Every man gets the end of his penis cut off so Shechem can continue having sex with Dinah.
This passage strikes me as blasphemous. It is using this sign of God's covenant with Abraham in a very base and sinful way. So again, is it? If it's here, it must be our understanding of morality that is completely wrong. Morality must be malleable--it is the only way to make sense of these stories.
And then, after Shechem's family agrees to it and does it, again this seems very disrespectful to God and his holy desire to have all our penises mutilated. Then two days later, while all the men were still in great pain, Simeon and Levi attacked the city (?) and killed every male. They grabbed Dinah and took her back with them. Then the rest of Jacob's sons came and looted and pillaged over the dead bodies of the men.
In usual Bible justice, Jacob gets mad only at Simeon and Levi. He says they brought trouble upon him, and "have made my name stink among the people of the country" (Gen. 34:30). Simeon and Levi replied, "Is our sister to be treated as a common whore?" (Gen. 34:31)
Sadly, Rachel dies during childbirth in chapter 35, giving birth to Benjamin.
--bibletoenail
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Jacob wrestled an angel, and the angel was overcome
"[Jacob] fixed the peeled rods upright in the troughs at the watering-places where the flocks came to drink; they faced the she-goats that were on heat when they came to drink. They felt a longing for the rods and they gave birth to young that were striped and spotted and brindled." --Gen. 30:38-39
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Jacob and Esau (cont'd)
Chapter 29: Jacob falls in love with Rachel, has five children with her sister Leah
Chapter 30: Jacob has children with Bilhah, Zilpah, and Rachel, then proves evolution
Chapter 31: Rachel has her period
Chapter 32: Jacob tries to make up with Esau
Jacob's story is really great. It has everything--wild sex, intrigue, deceit, chases, fights.
Jacob meets Rachel in much the same way his father met Rebecca--at a watering hole. Rachel is totally hot and he falls in love with her immediately. But he's not half the man his father was--rather than dragging her off to a tent and taking her virginity right then he actually introduces himself and asks to meet her father! What a wuss. Well, no good deed goes unpunished, and Laban (Rachel's father) makes him work for him for seven years before he can have sex with her! Don't worry, God makes it up to him, and after that seven year wait he has more sex than any mortal man could survive.
Laban is as deceitful as any of the Abraham clan (but he is part of the Abraham clan after all--he is Abraham's nephew--his brother Nahor's son, right?) After Jacob works for SEVEN YEARS in order to win Rachel's hand in marriage, Laban sends his daughter to Jacob. Once again, of course, they don't get MARRIED--she just goes into his tent to have sex. But Laban, it turns out has two daughters, Leah and Rachel. Leah is older and plain, Rachel is younger and hot.
I love that this unfortunate girl is named Leah. In my whole life I have known exactly one girl named Leah. I went to grade school with her, and every time I read this story I laugh at how the Leah I knew fit the Leah in this story. It is amazing, isn't it, how even in grade school, there are the cool kids, the nerdy kids, the pretty girls, the plain girls, and the role we adopt in grade school continues through our entire lives. What a sad tragedy of human existence that is, isn't it?! Anyway, Leah was a very plain girl in grade school. I have no memory of what happened to her after that, if she moved away, or perhaps we even went to high school together, but one thing I know without a doubt is that she's still the plain girl.
Of course this rule isn't universal. Another kid I went to grade school with was named Harvey. Want to take a guess which group he belonged to? With a name like Bible Toenail, which group do you think I belonged to? I was one one of the nerdy, dorky kids. I wasn't horribly disliked, but I was never exactly popular. Anyway, one of the low points in my entire life--to this day I don't know what made me do this. The bullies were always threatening to beat me up, and so one day I picked Harvey and threatened to beat him up! It's so bizarre, I would never do something like that today. But then, I think, I got a rush of reversing roles--terrorizing someone else instead of being terrorized. I don't know what poor Harvey thought--"wtf is going on? Now my fellow dorks are beating me up?!" Anyway, unlike Tim and Andy, the head bully and his retarded sidekick, I actually did hit Harvey. To this day I feel immensely guilty about it. It's an interesting moment in my life for me to contemplate--I think it shows how unformed our psyches are as children. We all have the capacity to become good or bad people, and any one of us can easily fall on either side of that fence. Tim may be a great guy now, who knows. This incident with Harvey may be the moment of truth in my life, when I teetered and did fall onto the good side. When Harvey's dad came down the hill to complain to my dad about what his son had done, I couldn't even explain why to my dad--I didn't know why. Because of how you treated me, Dad? Or Tim? Who knows?
Anyway, several years later, one summer when I was back from college, I saw my grade school friend Brent at a record store talking to this muscle bound guy who reminded me of Max Weinberg. It was Harvey! He had enormous muscles, and could have squeezed me like a pimple. Was it that time I hit him that made him decide he needed to be able to defend himself? Or what other indignations had he suffered? Or was it just to get girls? That day probably 10 years after hitting him I was so uncomfortable. I still knew what I had done, and I'm sure he did to. The point is, Harvey turned out not at all to be the dorky kid he had been in grade school. I have probably changed a lot less than Harvey! So maybe Leah is hot now, who knows.
But anyway the tradition in Laban's culture was that the older sister had to get married before the younger. So after Jacob had worked for him for seven years, Laban sent a woman into Jacob's tent to have sex, only Jacob discovered the next morning it was not Rachel! Laban made a deal with Jacob that if he would work another seven years for Laban, he could have Rachel too. Jacob agreed, and after the wedding started sleeping with Rachel too.
God saw that Leah was not loved, and made Rachel barren. Here's another great moment in the bible. You'd think that meant that Jacob was ignoring Leah, and only sleeping with Rachel, right? No, no, no. Remember this is the bible we're reading. Jacob never stops sleeping with Leah, he just doesn't love Leah! So Leah immediately becomes pregnant.
Ultimately Jacob ends up with 12 children, who become the twelve tribes of Israel. This story might be the greatest male fantasy of all time. Rachel and Leah are both jealous of the other. Leah is jealous because Jacob doesn't love her, so she has children. Then Rachel is jealous because she can't have children, so she sends Bilhah her servant to Jacob so he can have sex with her. Bilhah gets pregnant, then Leah gets jealous of that because she stopped having kids, so she sends her own slave girl Zilpah. So Jacob has FOUR women vying for his affections! He spent those seven years running from one tent to the next trying to keep all of them satisfied.
Since it's probably important, here are Jacob's twelve children, by four different women, in order:
Leah: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah.
Bilhah: Dan, Naphtali
Zilpah: Gad, Asher
Leah: Issachar, Zebulun.
That's ten. Then Leah also bore Dinah, another important figure for a feminist reading of the bible.
Rachel: Joseph
Now, those are, or become, the twelve tribes of Israel. The only problem is, there are only eleven of them (Dinah of course doesn't count). Rachel has one more child, Benjamin, but not until much later, in chapter 35. Benjamin is the only full brother of Joseph, and plays an important part in Joseph's story.
Now we really get into it. Jacob goes to Laban and says he wants to take his wives, slaves, children, and flocks and leave. The question is how to split up Jacob's flocks from Laban's? Jacob makes Laban what is ostensibly a very generous offer--he says he will take only the black sheep, and the "spotted and brindled" goats, Laban can have the rest. Most sheep are white, and most goats are black (according to the note), so this was hugely in Laban's favor, and he accepts right away.
The time frame here is confusing to me, apparently after the deal Jacob stays with several more years with Laban before leaving. In the mean time, Jacob is still in charge of Laban's flocks. What does he do? This is very important. Read Gen. 30:35-43. This story simultaneously destroys any claim Christians have that evolution does not exist, and at the same time belies the complete lack of real science in the bible. For some reason I've never heard a fundamentalist Christian discuss this story.
What Jacob does is he takes long sticks, and whenever one of the sheep is in heat, when the sheep comes to the watering trough he put the sticks in front of the sheep. Then the sheep "felt a longing for the rods and they gave birth to young that were striped and spotted and brindled" (Gen. 30:39). According to the note on this verse, "many people, ancient and modern,
have believed that a fetus can be affected by the visual impressions of the mother" (Emphasis added, Gen. 30:39n). By showing the sheep stripes when she became pregnant, the author of the bible believed, Jacob could make striped sheep!
How could the God who designed and invented our reproductive systems believe in something so outlandish? How do people who think the bible is literally true explain this? It's not simply poetic license like the windows in the sky letting in the rain. These actions of Jacob's are central to the story--they are the turning point of the story. I imagine some Christians might say something along the lines of "God works in mysterious ways," meaning it was really God who made the sheep striped. God could certainly do that, but the story doesn't make sense, for a couple reasons. First, why? Why did Jacob do this, rather than just praying to God? Why have Jacob go through the exercise at all? But more importantly the narrator of the bible is omniscient--she knows the thoughts of God as well as those of the characters on the ground. (Examples are God's feelings about A&E eating from the tree, his reaction to the Tower of Babel, his reaction to Sodom and Gomorrah, his heart softening toward Hagar, etc.) If it is true that God did this with the stripes, why doesn't the bible say so? It would be completely out of whack for God to have had a hand in this particular episode and the bible not to have mentioned it. Furthermore, the point the fundamentalists make is that we are wrong to read into the bible or extrapolate, or take the stories figuratively rather than literally. But that works both ways. If we can't claim a story is only a parable, we certainly can't claim God did something the bible didn't tell us about!
Anyway, that's only the first part of it. Let's grant to Jacob that he can make striped sheep by showing the mothers the rods. What he does next, I think, is even more significant. He doesn't show the rods to all of the sheep that are in heat. He only does so for the strong sheep. The weak sheep he leaves alone, so that in a couple generations all the strongest sheep were striped and brindled, and all the white sheep--Laban's--were weak.
Has the significance of this passage sunk in? Even 5000 years ago, when the people were so ignorant they believed absurd wives' tales about visions affecting pregnancy, even these people already had observed that strong parents have strong offspring, and weak have weak: even during the time of Genesis, when the people and the authors knew almost nothing about real science, for even them natural and artificial selection was so obvious that they could use it for breeding purposes. Fundamentalist, "intelligent-design" Christians deny that even this process is possible. It's right there in black and white, Gen. 30:41-42: Jacob put the rods in front of the more vigorous goats, and did not for the weaker goats, "Thus the weaker came to be Laban's and the stronger Jacob's." The entire point, the driving narrative force of this story is evolution.
I'm rather astounded no one ever talks about this passage in connection with evolution. (Of course there are such conversations on the internet! Here's an interesting one: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-38678.html but I've never heard it mentioned in the popular press. [At the same time, none of these wonderful stories are mentioned in the popular press--they are something of an embarrassment, I imagine. Although, none are significantly more "embarrassing" then chapter 1 and 2, so why are they so willing to embrace those stories?])
I'll stop here. I didn't have time for Rachel's big moment, and the big camel chases a la Seven Pillars of Wisdom. They will have to be in the future, along with Jacob wrestling an angel (Gen. 32) Here is U2 singing about that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J2uYVdC6S4
--bibletoenail
Future topics:
Laban chases after Jacob in the desert like T.E. Lawrence. --Gen. ch. 31
Rachel's big moment, and Laban's "household idols." --Gen. ch. 31
Jacob tries to make up with Esau. --Gen. ch. 32
Jacob wrestles with an angel, and changes his name to Israel. --Gen. ch. 32
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Jacob and Esau (cont'd)
Chapter 29: Jacob falls in love with Rachel, has five children with her sister Leah
Chapter 30: Jacob has children with Bilhah, Zilpah, and Rachel, then proves evolution
Chapter 31: Rachel has her period
Chapter 32: Jacob tries to make up with Esau
Jacob's story is really great. It has everything--wild sex, intrigue, deceit, chases, fights.
Jacob meets Rachel in much the same way his father met Rebecca--at a watering hole. Rachel is totally hot and he falls in love with her immediately. But he's not half the man his father was--rather than dragging her off to a tent and taking her virginity right then he actually introduces himself and asks to meet her father! What a wuss. Well, no good deed goes unpunished, and Laban (Rachel's father) makes him work for him for seven years before he can have sex with her! Don't worry, God makes it up to him, and after that seven year wait he has more sex than any mortal man could survive.
Laban is as deceitful as any of the Abraham clan (but he is part of the Abraham clan after all--he is Abraham's nephew--his brother Nahor's son, right?) After Jacob works for SEVEN YEARS in order to win Rachel's hand in marriage, Laban sends his daughter to Jacob. Once again, of course, they don't get MARRIED--she just goes into his tent to have sex. But Laban, it turns out has two daughters, Leah and Rachel. Leah is older and plain, Rachel is younger and hot.
I love that this unfortunate girl is named Leah. In my whole life I have known exactly one girl named Leah. I went to grade school with her, and every time I read this story I laugh at how the Leah I knew fit the Leah in this story. It is amazing, isn't it, how even in grade school, there are the cool kids, the nerdy kids, the pretty girls, the plain girls, and the role we adopt in grade school continues through our entire lives. What a sad tragedy of human existence that is, isn't it?! Anyway, Leah was a very plain girl in grade school. I have no memory of what happened to her after that, if she moved away, or perhaps we even went to high school together, but one thing I know without a doubt is that she's still the plain girl.
Of course this rule isn't universal. Another kid I went to grade school with was named Harvey. Want to take a guess which group he belonged to? With a name like Bible Toenail, which group do you think I belonged to? I was one one of the nerdy, dorky kids. I wasn't horribly disliked, but I was never exactly popular. Anyway, one of the low points in my entire life--to this day I don't know what made me do this. The bullies were always threatening to beat me up, and so one day I picked Harvey and threatened to beat him up! It's so bizarre, I would never do something like that today. But then, I think, I got a rush of reversing roles--terrorizing someone else instead of being terrorized. I don't know what poor Harvey thought--"wtf is going on? Now my fellow dorks are beating me up?!" Anyway, unlike Tim and Andy, the head bully and his retarded sidekick, I actually did hit Harvey. To this day I feel immensely guilty about it. It's an interesting moment in my life for me to contemplate--I think it shows how unformed our psyches are as children. We all have the capacity to become good or bad people, and any one of us can easily fall on either side of that fence. Tim may be a great guy now, who knows. This incident with Harvey may be the moment of truth in my life, when I teetered and did fall onto the good side. When Harvey's dad came down the hill to complain to my dad about what his son had done, I couldn't even explain why to my dad--I didn't know why. Because of how you treated me, Dad? Or Tim? Who knows?
Anyway, several years later, one summer when I was back from college, I saw my grade school friend Brent at a record store talking to this muscle bound guy who reminded me of Max Weinberg. It was Harvey! He had enormous muscles, and could have squeezed me like a pimple. Was it that time I hit him that made him decide he needed to be able to defend himself? Or what other indignations had he suffered? Or was it just to get girls? That day probably 10 years after hitting him I was so uncomfortable. I still knew what I had done, and I'm sure he did to. The point is, Harvey turned out not at all to be the dorky kid he had been in grade school. I have probably changed a lot less than Harvey! So maybe Leah is hot now, who knows.
But anyway the tradition in Laban's culture was that the older sister had to get married before the younger. So after Jacob had worked for him for seven years, Laban sent a woman into Jacob's tent to have sex, only Jacob discovered the next morning it was not Rachel! Laban made a deal with Jacob that if he would work another seven years for Laban, he could have Rachel too. Jacob agreed, and after the wedding started sleeping with Rachel too.
God saw that Leah was not loved, and made Rachel barren. Here's another great moment in the bible. You'd think that meant that Jacob was ignoring Leah, and only sleeping with Rachel, right? No, no, no. Remember this is the bible we're reading. Jacob never stops sleeping with Leah, he just doesn't love Leah! So Leah immediately becomes pregnant.
Ultimately Jacob ends up with 12 children, who become the twelve tribes of Israel. This story might be the greatest male fantasy of all time. Rachel and Leah are both jealous of the other. Leah is jealous because Jacob doesn't love her, so she has children. Then Rachel is jealous because she can't have children, so she sends Bilhah her servant to Jacob so he can have sex with her. Bilhah gets pregnant, then Leah gets jealous of that because she stopped having kids, so she sends her own slave girl Zilpah. So Jacob has FOUR women vying for his affections! He spent those seven years running from one tent to the next trying to keep all of them satisfied.
Since it's probably important, here are Jacob's twelve children, by four different women, in order:
Leah: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah.
Bilhah: Dan, Naphtali
Zilpah: Gad, Asher
Leah: Issachar, Zebulun.
That's ten. Then Leah also bore Dinah, another important figure for a feminist reading of the bible.
Rachel: Joseph
Now, those are, or become, the twelve tribes of Israel. The only problem is, there are only eleven of them (Dinah of course doesn't count). Rachel has one more child, Benjamin, but not until much later, in chapter 35. Benjamin is the only full brother of Joseph, and plays an important part in Joseph's story.
Now we really get into it. Jacob goes to Laban and says he wants to take his wives, slaves, children, and flocks and leave. The question is how to split up Jacob's flocks from Laban's? Jacob makes Laban what is ostensibly a very generous offer--he says he will take only the black sheep, and the "spotted and brindled" goats, Laban can have the rest. Most sheep are white, and most goats are black (according to the note), so this was hugely in Laban's favor, and he accepts right away.
The time frame here is confusing to me, apparently after the deal Jacob stays with several more years with Laban before leaving. In the mean time, Jacob is still in charge of Laban's flocks. What does he do? This is very important. Read Gen. 30:35-43. This story simultaneously destroys any claim Christians have that evolution does not exist, and at the same time belies the complete lack of real science in the bible. For some reason I've never heard a fundamentalist Christian discuss this story.
What Jacob does is he takes long sticks, and whenever one of the sheep is in heat, when the sheep comes to the watering trough he put the sticks in front of the sheep. Then the sheep "felt a longing for the rods and they gave birth to young that were striped and spotted and brindled" (Gen. 30:39). According to the note on this verse, "many people, ancient and modern,
have believed that a fetus can be affected by the visual impressions of the mother" (Emphasis added, Gen. 30:39n). By showing the sheep stripes when she became pregnant, the author of the bible believed, Jacob could make striped sheep!
How could the God who designed and invented our reproductive systems believe in something so outlandish? How do people who think the bible is literally true explain this? It's not simply poetic license like the windows in the sky letting in the rain. These actions of Jacob's are central to the story--they are the turning point of the story. I imagine some Christians might say something along the lines of "God works in mysterious ways," meaning it was really God who made the sheep striped. God could certainly do that, but the story doesn't make sense, for a couple reasons. First, why? Why did Jacob do this, rather than just praying to God? Why have Jacob go through the exercise at all? But more importantly the narrator of the bible is omniscient--she knows the thoughts of God as well as those of the characters on the ground. (Examples are God's feelings about A&E eating from the tree, his reaction to the Tower of Babel, his reaction to Sodom and Gomorrah, his heart softening toward Hagar, etc.) If it is true that God did this with the stripes, why doesn't the bible say so? It would be completely out of whack for God to have had a hand in this particular episode and the bible not to have mentioned it. Furthermore, the point the fundamentalists make is that we are wrong to read into the bible or extrapolate, or take the stories figuratively rather than literally. But that works both ways. If we can't claim a story is only a parable, we certainly can't claim God did something the bible didn't tell us about!
Anyway, that's only the first part of it. Let's grant to Jacob that he can make striped sheep by showing the mothers the rods. What he does next, I think, is even more significant. He doesn't show the rods to all of the sheep that are in heat. He only does so for the strong sheep. The weak sheep he leaves alone, so that in a couple generations all the strongest sheep were striped and brindled, and all the white sheep--Laban's--were weak.
Has the significance of this passage sunk in? Even 5000 years ago, when the people were so ignorant they believed absurd wives' tales about visions affecting pregnancy, even these people already had observed that strong parents have strong offspring, and weak have weak: even during the time of Genesis, when the people and the authors knew almost nothing about real science, for even them natural and artificial selection was so obvious that they could use it for breeding purposes. Fundamentalist, "intelligent-design" Christians deny that even this process is possible. It's right there in black and white, Gen. 30:41-42: Jacob put the rods in front of the more vigorous goats, and did not for the weaker goats, "Thus the weaker came to be Laban's and the stronger Jacob's." The entire point, the driving narrative force of this story is evolution.
I'm rather astounded no one ever talks about this passage in connection with evolution. (Of course there are such conversations on the internet! Here's an interesting one: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-38678.html but I've never heard it mentioned in the popular press. [At the same time, none of these wonderful stories are mentioned in the popular press--they are something of an embarrassment, I imagine. Although, none are significantly more "embarrassing" then chapter 1 and 2, so why are they so willing to embrace those stories?])
I'll stop here. I didn't have time for Rachel's big moment, and the big camel chases a la Seven Pillars of Wisdom. They will have to be in the future, along with Jacob wrestling an angel (Gen. 32) Here is U2 singing about that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J2uYVdC6S4
--bibletoenail
Future topics:
Laban chases after Jacob in the desert like T.E. Lawrence. --Gen. ch. 31
Rachel's big moment, and Laban's "household idols." --Gen. ch. 31
Jacob tries to make up with Esau. --Gen. ch. 32
Jacob wrestles with an angel, and changes his name to Israel. --Gen. ch. 32
A savory dish of the kind your father likes
Brief rumination* on Adam: The Garden of Eden story still puzzles me. Adam and Eve were naked, and they were innocent. In that state supposedly they were pure, in paradise, devoid of evil. Then they eat from the tree of knowledge, and what happens? They realize they are naked and that it is bad. Which means it always was bad. I just can't grasp the meaning of this story. If I understand it right, the Garden of Eden was a den of unapologetic sin. People walking around naked shamelessly, not caring in the least about the lascivious nature of their behavior. And this is how God liked them. When A&E ate from the apple, they realized what they were doing, and they covered themselves. And God was angry because it ended his free show! I defy you to find another meaning to this story. They were always sinful, the only difference before the apple was they didn't realize they were sinful.
The notes of my NEB say several times that one of the major themes of Genesis is man rebelling against God--trying to exert their free will--Eden, Babel, Sodom. God at all times is the antagonist of the old testament. And that is a fantastically more satisfying rendition of our relationship with God than the Christian one. That is a story that makes sense--it fits with our general understanding of how things and people work. I love the idea that we humans are all in this together, siblings plotting against an overbearing and abusive parent. That is the true love of this world. It is when Christians start saying that we must love God that it all falls apart. This idea that God created us, and is constantly frustrated by us because we keep reaching beyond the bounds of what he intended, that's a cool story! It is kind of brilliant on God's part that the way he finally wins, in the new testament, is not to force us into submission, but to trick us into believing this absurd whiny story about how he sacrificed his only begotten son, and we should feel sorry for him and appreciate what he's gone through. "I worked my fingers to the bone! And this is the thanks I get?": guilt trips have been an effective parenting technique for centuries.
* "rumination" is a great word. "Remunerate" is a word I always have trouble with, so I wanted to be sure I had rumination right. It means literally to "chew the cud." Ruminate is what cows do when they stand their chewing and thinking for hours on end. Cows are a kind of animal called a "ruminant", which is an animal that ruminates. A ruminant is: "an even-toed ungulate mammal that chews the cud regurgitated from its rumen." If that doesn't describe me, I don't know what does! "The ruminants comprise the cattle, sheep, . . . and their relatives." Hey, it's the Christians!
"A savory dish of the kind your father likes." --Gen. 27:9
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Abraham and Isaac** (cont'd)
Chapter 25: Jacob and Esau are born
Chapter 26: Isaac gives his wife to Abimelech
Jacob and Esau
Chapter 27: Jacob and Rebecca trick Isaac
Chapter 28: Jacob's Ladder
** One thing I do like about my NEB is that it has these headings for the sections of each book. I will start adding these; they come from the NEB, not me.
Here begins the next great story in the bible, the story of Jacob and Esau. I must say, first, I have always felt sorry for Isaac. He is the original miracle baby--which is more miraculous, to impregnate a fertile virgin? or to impregnate a 90-year-0ld barren old woman?--and yet he has almost no role in the bible. He is the prototype for Jesus, but his only story is as the original victim of child abuse. (In this way is he not also a prototype for Jesus?) He is only seen as a victim, never given his own voice.
One of my favorite images in the bible is that of two twins fighting in the womb. It happens twice in Genesis, here is the first one. Esau and Jacob struggle in Rebecca's womb. (Interestingly, the NEB spells her name the normal American way. This isn't Devine Respelling like Sarai to Sarah, it's just a change.) God tells Rebecca that her first-born will be servant to her second born. Esau is born red and hairy--I imagine David Caruso would play him in the movie. Then here is a brilliant image: as Esau comes out, Jacob grabs hold of Esau's heel. Even as they were born Jacob was struggling to the last. (It's also interesting to me how explicit the bible is. It would be impossible to make a movie out of this story without showing a close-up of Rebecca's vulva with a baby arm sticking out of it--get that past the MPAA. You know that website that rates Hollywood movies for their heathen content? This is another obvious observation (but one that the believers never seem to grasp!), but they never seem to turn that chaste eye toward their own work, huh?)
Anyway, Jacob must be a son of God, because he's a real a-hole, just like Abraham. Esau comes in from work one day exhausted and asks Jacob for a drink (this is Gen. 25:29-34). Jacob refuses to give him a drink until Esau signs over his birthright to him. Esau is dying, and so agrees. Well, by this time you should be able to figure out all that's wrong with that "contract." It was signed under duress, and so is no contract at all. The writer herself at this point is actually very harsh--she says this story shows how little Esau cared about his birthright! The real point is what a jerk Jacob is, and how so far every step of the way the covenant God made with Abraham has been achieved through cheating, lying, oppression and abuse.
Chapter 27 is the beginning of the really great story between Jacob and Esau, when Rebecca helps Jacob dress like Esau by putting fur on his hands (how great is that?) so Isaac will promise the birthright of the first-born to him instead of Esau. But I'm unfortunately again out of time. I'll put it in Future Topics.
--bibletoenail
Future Topics:
Jacob and Rebecca trick Isaac. Gen. ch.27
Jacob's Ladder. (Jacob's dream.) Gen. ch. 28
Conditional promises: Jacob's vows are brilliant--they too are never enforceable. His are always conditional. If God does this and that, then I will do this. Gen. ch. 28
Textual Notes:
- Gen. 25:6 --Abraham had children with concubines. It's easy for bible apologists to say it was a different time, but this cannot be nearly so easily dismissed as that. The ten commandments say no adultery. Christian fundamentalists say that humanity would have no morality without God, and that the laws of this country are derived from the ten commandments. Whether this is the morality that God created for us, or it existed before God (see my previous posts on Adam and Eve) is unclear, but either way, God has murdered millions of people, committed global genocide in the name of protecting those morals. And yet one of the three or four most important figures in the bible, the father of Israel, hence the father of all Christianity, had concubines, had children with those concubines, married twice, slept with his wife's slave girl. This was the man chosen by God to be the patriarch of the chosen people. How can we explain this? Again, whether God exists or not is an irrelevant question--the bible is so contradictory, and God so untrustworthy and capricious, to follow him if he does exist would be folly. Having "faith in God" has two meanings--it means one, having faith that he exists. Let's grant that. It is impossible for a rational person to have faith in God, faith in his love, faith in his justice, the way, say, you have faith that your mother will always be there for you, or faith that your best friend has your back.
An aside, Angela Carter wrote a book called The Bloody Chamber where she rewrote fairy tales from the point of view of the women involved, taking the stories serious, just how nightmarish some of the things that happened in those stories were. A similar study of the bible would be very interesting. Hagar would be a definite hero (she's Sarah's slave, that gave birth to Ishmael--"where are you going, where have you been").
- Gen. 25:33n --The notes say the point of this story is to explain why the Israelites (Jacob) prospered while the Edomites (Esau) did not. The Edomites were later subdued by David (2 Sam. 8:13-14). The note says they were apparently securely established in their area before Israel.
- Gen. 26:7 --Oh, I was wrong above when I said Isaac had no further stories in the bible. He did have one. Any guess what it was? That's right, he goes with his wife to Abimelech and tells her she's his sister so he can have sex with her without killing him. The patriarchs of the chosen people really had a thing for wife-swapping, didn't they?
But I really like Abimelech in the bible. He didn't fall for it this time either. He is a good person in this story. Again he finds out before anyone actually has sex with her, and reprimands Isaac for it.
- Gen. 26:33 --The bible is full of annoying little details like this that really break the willing suspension of disbelief. Isaac makes a treaty with some guys, then his slaves come and say they found a well. Isaac calls the well "Shibah," which means "Oath." The bible says, "That is why the city is called Beersheba to this day." "Beersheba" means Well of an Oath. That's all fine. The only problem is, in the beginning of this passage, Gen. 26:23, "Isaac went up country from there to Beersheba." The town was already called Beersheba! In a freshman writing workshop, that would be seen as simply sloppy writing or editing. For a book that was written by committee and gone over time and again for decades or centuries, such a mistake is bizarre, unexcusable, and unexplainable. But for God to have written this passage?! Well, come on. How would that even be possible? Is he an idiot? Certainly not omniscient? Or does he in fact exist at all? Which is it?
- Gen. 27: By the way, here's another kind of voidable contract due to defect in the bargaining process. The last one was voidable due to fraud (when Jacob would not give Esau water until he promised his birthright). This time it was fraud. It is interesting, isn't it, that modern common law would not enforce any of these contracts (by modern, I mean in the last couple hundred years), but these ancient traditions would? Our understanding of contract formation seems to be much more sophisticated than that in the bible, doesn't it? Yet the bible is God's law. Is our contract law BETTER than God's? How can that be? If it is not better, then what are we doing? Just so you know, every time you go into court to void a contract because the other party tricked you (say, for instance, false advertising), you are going against God's wishes. Whose law are you going to follow--God's, or ours? Biblical law is the antithesis of modern law, not its foundation.
- Gen 27:40n --During the Solomonic period (1 Kgs. 11:14-25), Edom revolted against Israelite domination. (See the note on Edom and Israel above.)
- Gen. 28:2 --Third generation of inbreeding. Isaac tells Jacob to go marry one of Rebecca's nieces--his first cousin.
- Gen. 28:9 --Not to be outdone, Esau goes to Ishmael and marries Mahalath, Ishmael's daughter. Remember Ishmael is Isaac's brother, so Mahalath, Isaac's niece, is also Esau's first cousin. (And Esau had other wives as well.)
Quotables:
"The first came out red, hairy all over like a hair-cloak." --Gen. 25:25
"His brother [Jacob] was born with his hand grasping Esau's heel." --Gen. 25:26
"Make me a savory dish of the kind I like." --Gen. 27:4
"[Isaac said,] 'Bring me some venison and make it into a savory dish." --Gen. 27:7
"I will make them into a savory dish for your father, of the kind he likes." --Gen. 27:9
"[Rebecca] made them into a savory dish of the kind that his father liked." --Gen. 27:14
"She handed her son the savory dish." --Gen. 27:17
"[Esau] too made a savory dish." --Gen. 27:31
"Ah! The smell of my son!" --Gen. 27:27
"A curse upon those who curse you; a blessing upon those who bless you!" --Gen. 27:29
"By your sword shall you live, and you shall serve your brother; but the time will come when you grow restive and break off his yoke from your neck." --Gen. 27:40
The notes of my NEB say several times that one of the major themes of Genesis is man rebelling against God--trying to exert their free will--Eden, Babel, Sodom. God at all times is the antagonist of the old testament. And that is a fantastically more satisfying rendition of our relationship with God than the Christian one. That is a story that makes sense--it fits with our general understanding of how things and people work. I love the idea that we humans are all in this together, siblings plotting against an overbearing and abusive parent. That is the true love of this world. It is when Christians start saying that we must love God that it all falls apart. This idea that God created us, and is constantly frustrated by us because we keep reaching beyond the bounds of what he intended, that's a cool story! It is kind of brilliant on God's part that the way he finally wins, in the new testament, is not to force us into submission, but to trick us into believing this absurd whiny story about how he sacrificed his only begotten son, and we should feel sorry for him and appreciate what he's gone through. "I worked my fingers to the bone! And this is the thanks I get?": guilt trips have been an effective parenting technique for centuries.
* "rumination" is a great word. "Remunerate" is a word I always have trouble with, so I wanted to be sure I had rumination right. It means literally to "chew the cud." Ruminate is what cows do when they stand their chewing and thinking for hours on end. Cows are a kind of animal called a "ruminant", which is an animal that ruminates. A ruminant is: "an even-toed ungulate mammal that chews the cud regurgitated from its rumen." If that doesn't describe me, I don't know what does! "The ruminants comprise the cattle, sheep, . . . and their relatives." Hey, it's the Christians!
"A savory dish of the kind your father likes." --Gen. 27:9
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Abraham and Isaac** (cont'd)
Chapter 25: Jacob and Esau are born
Chapter 26: Isaac gives his wife to Abimelech
Jacob and Esau
Chapter 27: Jacob and Rebecca trick Isaac
Chapter 28: Jacob's Ladder
** One thing I do like about my NEB is that it has these headings for the sections of each book. I will start adding these; they come from the NEB, not me.
Here begins the next great story in the bible, the story of Jacob and Esau. I must say, first, I have always felt sorry for Isaac. He is the original miracle baby--which is more miraculous, to impregnate a fertile virgin? or to impregnate a 90-year-0ld barren old woman?--and yet he has almost no role in the bible. He is the prototype for Jesus, but his only story is as the original victim of child abuse. (In this way is he not also a prototype for Jesus?) He is only seen as a victim, never given his own voice.
One of my favorite images in the bible is that of two twins fighting in the womb. It happens twice in Genesis, here is the first one. Esau and Jacob struggle in Rebecca's womb. (Interestingly, the NEB spells her name the normal American way. This isn't Devine Respelling like Sarai to Sarah, it's just a change.) God tells Rebecca that her first-born will be servant to her second born. Esau is born red and hairy--I imagine David Caruso would play him in the movie. Then here is a brilliant image: as Esau comes out, Jacob grabs hold of Esau's heel. Even as they were born Jacob was struggling to the last. (It's also interesting to me how explicit the bible is. It would be impossible to make a movie out of this story without showing a close-up of Rebecca's vulva with a baby arm sticking out of it--get that past the MPAA. You know that website that rates Hollywood movies for their heathen content? This is another obvious observation (but one that the believers never seem to grasp!), but they never seem to turn that chaste eye toward their own work, huh?)
Anyway, Jacob must be a son of God, because he's a real a-hole, just like Abraham. Esau comes in from work one day exhausted and asks Jacob for a drink (this is Gen. 25:29-34). Jacob refuses to give him a drink until Esau signs over his birthright to him. Esau is dying, and so agrees. Well, by this time you should be able to figure out all that's wrong with that "contract." It was signed under duress, and so is no contract at all. The writer herself at this point is actually very harsh--she says this story shows how little Esau cared about his birthright! The real point is what a jerk Jacob is, and how so far every step of the way the covenant God made with Abraham has been achieved through cheating, lying, oppression and abuse.
Chapter 27 is the beginning of the really great story between Jacob and Esau, when Rebecca helps Jacob dress like Esau by putting fur on his hands (how great is that?) so Isaac will promise the birthright of the first-born to him instead of Esau. But I'm unfortunately again out of time. I'll put it in Future Topics.
--bibletoenail
Future Topics:
Jacob and Rebecca trick Isaac. Gen. ch.27
Jacob's Ladder. (Jacob's dream.) Gen. ch. 28
Conditional promises: Jacob's vows are brilliant--they too are never enforceable. His are always conditional. If God does this and that, then I will do this. Gen. ch. 28
Textual Notes:
- Gen. 25:6 --Abraham had children with concubines. It's easy for bible apologists to say it was a different time, but this cannot be nearly so easily dismissed as that. The ten commandments say no adultery. Christian fundamentalists say that humanity would have no morality without God, and that the laws of this country are derived from the ten commandments. Whether this is the morality that God created for us, or it existed before God (see my previous posts on Adam and Eve) is unclear, but either way, God has murdered millions of people, committed global genocide in the name of protecting those morals. And yet one of the three or four most important figures in the bible, the father of Israel, hence the father of all Christianity, had concubines, had children with those concubines, married twice, slept with his wife's slave girl. This was the man chosen by God to be the patriarch of the chosen people. How can we explain this? Again, whether God exists or not is an irrelevant question--the bible is so contradictory, and God so untrustworthy and capricious, to follow him if he does exist would be folly. Having "faith in God" has two meanings--it means one, having faith that he exists. Let's grant that. It is impossible for a rational person to have faith in God, faith in his love, faith in his justice, the way, say, you have faith that your mother will always be there for you, or faith that your best friend has your back.
An aside, Angela Carter wrote a book called The Bloody Chamber where she rewrote fairy tales from the point of view of the women involved, taking the stories serious, just how nightmarish some of the things that happened in those stories were. A similar study of the bible would be very interesting. Hagar would be a definite hero (she's Sarah's slave, that gave birth to Ishmael--"where are you going, where have you been").
- Gen. 25:33n --The notes say the point of this story is to explain why the Israelites (Jacob) prospered while the Edomites (Esau) did not. The Edomites were later subdued by David (2 Sam. 8:13-14). The note says they were apparently securely established in their area before Israel.
- Gen. 26:7 --Oh, I was wrong above when I said Isaac had no further stories in the bible. He did have one. Any guess what it was? That's right, he goes with his wife to Abimelech and tells her she's his sister so he can have sex with her without killing him. The patriarchs of the chosen people really had a thing for wife-swapping, didn't they?
But I really like Abimelech in the bible. He didn't fall for it this time either. He is a good person in this story. Again he finds out before anyone actually has sex with her, and reprimands Isaac for it.
- Gen. 26:33 --The bible is full of annoying little details like this that really break the willing suspension of disbelief. Isaac makes a treaty with some guys, then his slaves come and say they found a well. Isaac calls the well "Shibah," which means "Oath." The bible says, "That is why the city is called Beersheba to this day." "Beersheba" means Well of an Oath. That's all fine. The only problem is, in the beginning of this passage, Gen. 26:23, "Isaac went up country from there to Beersheba." The town was already called Beersheba! In a freshman writing workshop, that would be seen as simply sloppy writing or editing. For a book that was written by committee and gone over time and again for decades or centuries, such a mistake is bizarre, unexcusable, and unexplainable. But for God to have written this passage?! Well, come on. How would that even be possible? Is he an idiot? Certainly not omniscient? Or does he in fact exist at all? Which is it?
- Gen. 27: By the way, here's another kind of voidable contract due to defect in the bargaining process. The last one was voidable due to fraud (when Jacob would not give Esau water until he promised his birthright). This time it was fraud. It is interesting, isn't it, that modern common law would not enforce any of these contracts (by modern, I mean in the last couple hundred years), but these ancient traditions would? Our understanding of contract formation seems to be much more sophisticated than that in the bible, doesn't it? Yet the bible is God's law. Is our contract law BETTER than God's? How can that be? If it is not better, then what are we doing? Just so you know, every time you go into court to void a contract because the other party tricked you (say, for instance, false advertising), you are going against God's wishes. Whose law are you going to follow--God's, or ours? Biblical law is the antithesis of modern law, not its foundation.
- Gen 27:40n --During the Solomonic period (1 Kgs. 11:14-25), Edom revolted against Israelite domination. (See the note on Edom and Israel above.)
- Gen. 28:2 --Third generation of inbreeding. Isaac tells Jacob to go marry one of Rebecca's nieces--his first cousin.
- Gen. 28:9 --Not to be outdone, Esau goes to Ishmael and marries Mahalath, Ishmael's daughter. Remember Ishmael is Isaac's brother, so Mahalath, Isaac's niece, is also Esau's first cousin. (And Esau had other wives as well.)
Quotables:
"The first came out red, hairy all over like a hair-cloak." --Gen. 25:25
"His brother [Jacob] was born with his hand grasping Esau's heel." --Gen. 25:26
"Make me a savory dish of the kind I like." --Gen. 27:4
"[Isaac said,] 'Bring me some venison and make it into a savory dish." --Gen. 27:7
"I will make them into a savory dish for your father, of the kind he likes." --Gen. 27:9
"[Rebecca] made them into a savory dish of the kind that his father liked." --Gen. 27:14
"She handed her son the savory dish." --Gen. 27:17
"[Esau] too made a savory dish." --Gen. 27:31
"Ah! The smell of my son!" --Gen. 27:27
"A curse upon those who curse you; a blessing upon those who bless you!" --Gen. 27:29
"By your sword shall you live, and you shall serve your brother; but the time will come when you grow restive and break off his yoke from your neck." --Gen. 27:40
Friday, January 4, 2008
I'm back
I'm back at school now. It took me a couple days to get settled. I hope you haven't lost interest in God while I was gone. I have a difficult decision to make now. Originally I was only reading the NAB version of the bible on line because my Oxford Study Edition of the New English Bible was here at school. Now I'm back, but I have grown to kind of like the NAB, and it's nice to read it side by side as I write this blog. I think I will give my NEB a try for now, but might go back to the NAB. The chapters look longer in my NEB!
I am taking Constitutional Law and Legislation this semester (along with Property and Philosophy of Law), so I will have a lot to say about topics such as flag burning, school prayer, abortion, the death penalty, all the issues that are just so important to us in the 21st century.
I promise not to give up on this blog, because after becoming a lawyer I am planning on making a run for the white house on my credentials blogging for Jesus, same as Romney and Huckabee are doing now. (When I finish this blog, I'm going to send it to Oral Roberts and Bob Jones Universities. I'm hoping one or both of them will give me an honorary degree for my bible scholarship, so I can claim to be a reverend. I've always wanted to be called Rev. Toenail.)
And with a first name like "Bible," I'm a shoe-in. Anyway, where we left off Esau and Jacob were about to be born, to begin the next really great story in the bible. I will finish the post tomorrow morning, I promise.
--bibletoenail
I am taking Constitutional Law and Legislation this semester (along with Property and Philosophy of Law), so I will have a lot to say about topics such as flag burning, school prayer, abortion, the death penalty, all the issues that are just so important to us in the 21st century.
I promise not to give up on this blog, because after becoming a lawyer I am planning on making a run for the white house on my credentials blogging for Jesus, same as Romney and Huckabee are doing now. (When I finish this blog, I'm going to send it to Oral Roberts and Bob Jones Universities. I'm hoping one or both of them will give me an honorary degree for my bible scholarship, so I can claim to be a reverend. I've always wanted to be called Rev. Toenail.)
And with a first name like "Bible," I'm a shoe-in. Anyway, where we left off Esau and Jacob were about to be born, to begin the next really great story in the bible. I will finish the post tomorrow morning, I promise.
--bibletoenail
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Note: A very insightful reader pointed out to me that making Isaac carry the wood up to his sacrifice foreshadows Jesus carrying his cross up to his crucifixion. That's very good.
Very exciting news!: Bibletoenail has his first official blog friend. "See You on the Other Side" has added a link to this blog on her blog. So, welcome all readers of See You on the Other Side. And as I said yesterday, after reading the crap here please go to her blog to see what we're actually supposed to be taking away from these passages.
Very exciting news!: Bibletoenail has his first official blog friend. "See You on the Other Side" has added a link to this blog on her blog. So, welcome all readers of See You on the Other Side. And as I said yesterday, after reading the crap here please go to her blog to see what we're actually supposed to be taking away from these passages.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Who's pickin' the banjo here?
"Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son." --Gen. 22:10
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 21: Sarah is again vicious to Hagar
Chapter 22: God tells Abraham to kill Isaac
Chapter 23: Abraham buys Sarah a grave
Chapter 24: Abraham buys Isaac a wife
This story of God telling Abraham to kill Isaac can be read in many ways. First it reveals, I think, for the first time how truly demented and vicious God is. This is abuse that would be shocking if we heard about it on the evening news. We've all had the conversation a dozen times. First the exclamation of shock, then the exchanges of "how could anyone do that?" But it's in the bible, so no one is allowed to question the obvious nastiness of this story.
Then there is Abraham. If we read the story in the light most favorable to him, the argument is that he knew all along that God would not make him go through with it (and he does tell Isaac that God will provide a sacrifice for them on the mountain). But Abraham ties down his son, throws him on top of the pile of wood, and approaches him with knife drawn before God intervenes. If you've ever heard a child scream in terror when they think, for instance, their mom is lost in the supermarket, Isaac's screams must have made those screams sound like whimpers. The bible doesn't mention this, nor do any followers of this book. The emotional harm that Abraham does to Isaac on this day is unfathomable.
Should Abraham have done this? Of course not. The most important thing about this story is that this is the moment when it is made clear that it doesn't matter whether God exists or not. It doesn't matter whether you believe, whether you have faith, whether he sent his only begotten son to die on the cross for your sins. Who cares? God in this story is one of the most vicious, evil characters in all of literature. Any moral person who would read this story could have only one possible reaction: I don't care whether God exists or not. I only hope he doesn't, because I want nothing to do with him. I would rather spend eternity in hell than spend one day pretending to love someone who would do this to a 13-year-old boy.
That is exactly what Abraham should have said and done. He should have refused to do this to his son, not because he did not have faith in God, but because it was wrong. It is unforgivable.
Do you think God needed to do this, to make sure Abraham was faithful before he bestowed on him the promise of making his descendants as countless as the stars in the sky? (Gen. 22:17) Think about this story, and everything we've read so far seriously. First of all, God had already promised Abraham exactly that. If he has now placed a condition on that promise, that modification is unenforceable. It means by definition that God has already, before we've even begun, broken his promise to the "chosen people." This is another reason to believe nothing he says. Even if you are not as repulsed by God's behavior as a moral person would be, God clearly is a liar and cannot be trusted. So again, how can you spend your life having faith that this time he is telling the truth? There is only one way to treat such an untrustworthy person: cut them out of your life.
But there's another thing here. Let's take the story at face value: God had no intention of killing Isaac, Abraham knew he had no intention, and so both were just pretending. Then what is the point of the whole exercise? If Abraham really knew that God would not let him do it, then this was no test at all. God discovered nothing. But also, if God is omniscient, he would already know whether Abraham is devoted to him or not--what is the point of testing him? There can be no possible explanation except God's sadism. Unless God isn't omniscient, which is the feeling we have had at several points already in the bible so far.
At any rate, the stories up to this point have been fun, maybe a little silly, some a little scandalous. But all forgivable, or at least dismissable. This story goes far beyond that. All these questions Christians and atheists fight over--proof of God, faith, and so on, mean nothing after this point because no moral person, even in the face of everlasting damnation, would respect or worship God after this episode.
--bibletoenail
PS. I forgot to mention, there is one more important element to this story, and that is how it foreshadows God sacrificing his own son for our benefit. First of all, after what God does here he should sacrifice his own son as retribution, which makes it no kind of favor to us at all, but what he owes us for what he did to Isaac. Secondly, it's interesting, I think, how Christian's focus on Jesus' suffering, and never mention what Isaac went through. Oh, third, of course, and I'm sure we'll have many more opportunities to talk about this, since Jesus was God, God wasn't sacrificing his son at all, but himself. As God, Jesus chose to be on the cross. That's more chance than Isaac was given. But most importantly, if this story foreshadows what happens to Jesus, let's look at that a moment. In this analogy, Abraham == God, Isaac == Jesus. That part is obvious. Abraham did it for God, God in the Jesus incident did it for us, so that means in the latter story God == humans. There are many enormous problems with this analogy. First of all, in the first story God commanded Abraham to kill his son. We humans never ever asked anything like that of God. In fact, from what we have read so far in Genesis, we humans simply want to live our own lives without interference from God, and it is his constant meddling that causes all the trouble. I find it very hard to believe that if we had actually talked about it, that humans ever would ask God to sacrifice his son for us. We humans, for all our faults, simply are not that vicious or evil.
Of course in the end God in the first story told Abraham to stop, and we humans in the second story did not tell God to stop. Or did we? Well, Pontius Pilate certainly did! Pilate begged Jesus to stop this madness, and he insisted on doing it nonetheless. No one killed Jesus, he chose to die. He could have stopped it at any time and he did not.
This Jesus story holds no moral weight whatsoever. God put himself and his son in this situation, and Jesus chose to die, no one forced him. Humans, if we'd been given the chance, would not have asked God to do what he did. And an unsolicited favor is no favor. I can't go over to your house at midnight to scoop your drive, then ask you for $20 in the morning. I didn't ask you to do it, and if you'd asked me I'd have told you no.
One of the major themes of this blog so far is that it is irrelevant whether God really exists or not, because no rational, and certainly no moral person would have anything to do with him whether he did or not. The question of whether God exists is fundamentally unimportant. We should not be afraid to have God taught in school, we should teach God in school--that would end the problems we have with the religious right quicker than anything.
Textual notes:
- Gen. 21:17 --There's no doubt that God is not alone up in heaven (Oh, and here is a mention of heaven as well--it might be the first)--he has a lot of messengers. Here, and in the previous story about Lot. So maybe when he created the world he was telling his messengers what to do. Also, one of these messengers must be the one with the hot wife that sunbathes in that skimpy bikini.
- Gen. 21:19 --God actually performs quite a miracle here, one of the biggest, I would say, to date (discounting all the destruction that he is so fond of). He apparently makes a well appear before Hagar.
- Gen. 21:30 --Here's a real case of consideration for a promise or bargain. Abraham complains to Abimelech that his men had taken one of Abraham's wells. Abimelech says he knew nothing about it. Abraham takes seven ewes from a flock and gives them to Abimelech, that he "may have [Abimelech's] acknowledgement that the well was dug by Abraham."
- Gen. 22:6 --I love that Abraham made Isaac carry the wood for his own sacrifice. That's hardcore.
- Gen. 22:21 --I love Nahor and Milcah's sons, Uz and Buz.
- Gen. 22:22 --Nahor's other children included Bethuel.
- Gen. 22:23 --And Bethuel becomes the father of Rebekah. It's important to keep straight exactly the familial relationship between Isaac and Rebekah. Because guess who marries Isaac. So Rebekah's grandfather is Nahor. Nahor is Abraham's brother. So Abraham is Rebekah's great-uncle. So Isaac and Bethuel are first cousins. So Isaac and Rebekah are first cousin's once removed. Another generation of incest in the chosen people's family tree!
- Gen. 22:24 --Oh, and Nahor had a concubine as well, who bore Nahor four children also. Remember that Abraham has two brothers (Gen. 11:26), Nahor and Haran. Haran is the father of Lot (Gen. 11:27). So Abraham and Nahor both had children by their slave girls, Lot has children with both of his daughters, and Isaac marries his first cousin. All this in the space of two generations. Click here to see a movie about Abraham's family. Abraham is pumping the Gas, Isaac is the one on the porch.
- Gen. ch. 23 --This is an interesting little story about Sarah's grave sight. Abraham wants to buy a plot of land from the Hittites, but the Hittites want to give it to him for free. They argue for quite some time, Abraham wanting to pay, the Hittites refusing to accept. It's the second time we've seen this setup--the first was Gen. 14:21-23. The king of Sodom tries to give Abram some goods, but Abram refuses, saying "I have sworn to the Lord . . . that I would not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap from anything that is yours, lest you should say, 'I made Abram rich." It's an interesting aspect of these stories, there's a lot of emphasis on bargaining, and on contract, and on paying for something to keep from being indebted to the other person. It's interesting to consider that in light of what God does to us by sacrificing Jesus, isn't it? That is exactly the situation Abraham was always trying to avoid--letting someone give you a gift, then claiming you are indebted to them. Well, we, you reading this and I, certainly never had a chance to refuse God's gift, and we can certainly not be obligated because of it.
- Gen. 23:4 n. 2 --This note explains Abraham's insistence on paying for the land in this way. As a "resident alien" in the Hittite land, he was not allowed to own land. By purchasing the land rather than receiving it as a gift, he established a right of ownership to this parcel of land, though small, in the country that God had promised Abraham they would one day inherit as their own. The note also points out the technical legal terms used in this passage.
- Gen. 24:2 -- "Put your hand under my thigh." Another great moment in the bible. My Oxford Study Edition says that "thigh" was a euphemism for his balls!
- Gen. 24:10-20 --This is a very sweet story of how Abraham finds Isaac's first cousin Rebekah for Isaac to marry.
- Gen. 24:35 --By the way, I haven't mentioned this before, but what's up with all the slaves? Not very Christian nor moral.
- Gen. 24:10-50 --Brilliant writing. First we watched the servant pray for it to happen, then we watched it word-for-word happen, now we are listening to him recount word-for-word how it happened. This is the longest chapter so far, and it consists of the same story three times.
- Gen. 24:67 --Another sexy story. Rebekah the virgin agrees to go meet Isaac. When they meet, without saying a word he takes her into his tent and does her right then! She'd only been gone from her family about a day. But, the bible says, he was still grieving from the death of his mother, and having sex with this anonymous virgin comforted him.
Quotables:
"The girl was very beautiful, a virgin, untouched by man." --Gen. 24:16
"Here is Rebekah, ready for you." --Gen. 24:51
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 21: Sarah is again vicious to Hagar
Chapter 22: God tells Abraham to kill Isaac
Chapter 23: Abraham buys Sarah a grave
Chapter 24: Abraham buys Isaac a wife
This story of God telling Abraham to kill Isaac can be read in many ways. First it reveals, I think, for the first time how truly demented and vicious God is. This is abuse that would be shocking if we heard about it on the evening news. We've all had the conversation a dozen times. First the exclamation of shock, then the exchanges of "how could anyone do that?" But it's in the bible, so no one is allowed to question the obvious nastiness of this story.
Then there is Abraham. If we read the story in the light most favorable to him, the argument is that he knew all along that God would not make him go through with it (and he does tell Isaac that God will provide a sacrifice for them on the mountain). But Abraham ties down his son, throws him on top of the pile of wood, and approaches him with knife drawn before God intervenes. If you've ever heard a child scream in terror when they think, for instance, their mom is lost in the supermarket, Isaac's screams must have made those screams sound like whimpers. The bible doesn't mention this, nor do any followers of this book. The emotional harm that Abraham does to Isaac on this day is unfathomable.
Should Abraham have done this? Of course not. The most important thing about this story is that this is the moment when it is made clear that it doesn't matter whether God exists or not. It doesn't matter whether you believe, whether you have faith, whether he sent his only begotten son to die on the cross for your sins. Who cares? God in this story is one of the most vicious, evil characters in all of literature. Any moral person who would read this story could have only one possible reaction: I don't care whether God exists or not. I only hope he doesn't, because I want nothing to do with him. I would rather spend eternity in hell than spend one day pretending to love someone who would do this to a 13-year-old boy.
That is exactly what Abraham should have said and done. He should have refused to do this to his son, not because he did not have faith in God, but because it was wrong. It is unforgivable.
Do you think God needed to do this, to make sure Abraham was faithful before he bestowed on him the promise of making his descendants as countless as the stars in the sky? (Gen. 22:17) Think about this story, and everything we've read so far seriously. First of all, God had already promised Abraham exactly that. If he has now placed a condition on that promise, that modification is unenforceable. It means by definition that God has already, before we've even begun, broken his promise to the "chosen people." This is another reason to believe nothing he says. Even if you are not as repulsed by God's behavior as a moral person would be, God clearly is a liar and cannot be trusted. So again, how can you spend your life having faith that this time he is telling the truth? There is only one way to treat such an untrustworthy person: cut them out of your life.
But there's another thing here. Let's take the story at face value: God had no intention of killing Isaac, Abraham knew he had no intention, and so both were just pretending. Then what is the point of the whole exercise? If Abraham really knew that God would not let him do it, then this was no test at all. God discovered nothing. But also, if God is omniscient, he would already know whether Abraham is devoted to him or not--what is the point of testing him? There can be no possible explanation except God's sadism. Unless God isn't omniscient, which is the feeling we have had at several points already in the bible so far.
At any rate, the stories up to this point have been fun, maybe a little silly, some a little scandalous. But all forgivable, or at least dismissable. This story goes far beyond that. All these questions Christians and atheists fight over--proof of God, faith, and so on, mean nothing after this point because no moral person, even in the face of everlasting damnation, would respect or worship God after this episode.
--bibletoenail
PS. I forgot to mention, there is one more important element to this story, and that is how it foreshadows God sacrificing his own son for our benefit. First of all, after what God does here he should sacrifice his own son as retribution, which makes it no kind of favor to us at all, but what he owes us for what he did to Isaac. Secondly, it's interesting, I think, how Christian's focus on Jesus' suffering, and never mention what Isaac went through. Oh, third, of course, and I'm sure we'll have many more opportunities to talk about this, since Jesus was God, God wasn't sacrificing his son at all, but himself. As God, Jesus chose to be on the cross. That's more chance than Isaac was given. But most importantly, if this story foreshadows what happens to Jesus, let's look at that a moment. In this analogy, Abraham == God, Isaac == Jesus. That part is obvious. Abraham did it for God, God in the Jesus incident did it for us, so that means in the latter story God == humans. There are many enormous problems with this analogy. First of all, in the first story God commanded Abraham to kill his son. We humans never ever asked anything like that of God. In fact, from what we have read so far in Genesis, we humans simply want to live our own lives without interference from God, and it is his constant meddling that causes all the trouble. I find it very hard to believe that if we had actually talked about it, that humans ever would ask God to sacrifice his son for us. We humans, for all our faults, simply are not that vicious or evil.
Of course in the end God in the first story told Abraham to stop, and we humans in the second story did not tell God to stop. Or did we? Well, Pontius Pilate certainly did! Pilate begged Jesus to stop this madness, and he insisted on doing it nonetheless. No one killed Jesus, he chose to die. He could have stopped it at any time and he did not.
This Jesus story holds no moral weight whatsoever. God put himself and his son in this situation, and Jesus chose to die, no one forced him. Humans, if we'd been given the chance, would not have asked God to do what he did. And an unsolicited favor is no favor. I can't go over to your house at midnight to scoop your drive, then ask you for $20 in the morning. I didn't ask you to do it, and if you'd asked me I'd have told you no.
One of the major themes of this blog so far is that it is irrelevant whether God really exists or not, because no rational, and certainly no moral person would have anything to do with him whether he did or not. The question of whether God exists is fundamentally unimportant. We should not be afraid to have God taught in school, we should teach God in school--that would end the problems we have with the religious right quicker than anything.
Textual notes:
- Gen. 21:17 --There's no doubt that God is not alone up in heaven (Oh, and here is a mention of heaven as well--it might be the first)--he has a lot of messengers. Here, and in the previous story about Lot. So maybe when he created the world he was telling his messengers what to do. Also, one of these messengers must be the one with the hot wife that sunbathes in that skimpy bikini.
- Gen. 21:19 --God actually performs quite a miracle here, one of the biggest, I would say, to date (discounting all the destruction that he is so fond of). He apparently makes a well appear before Hagar.
- Gen. 21:30 --Here's a real case of consideration for a promise or bargain. Abraham complains to Abimelech that his men had taken one of Abraham's wells. Abimelech says he knew nothing about it. Abraham takes seven ewes from a flock and gives them to Abimelech, that he "may have [Abimelech's] acknowledgement that the well was dug by Abraham."
- Gen. 22:6 --I love that Abraham made Isaac carry the wood for his own sacrifice. That's hardcore.
- Gen. 22:21 --I love Nahor and Milcah's sons, Uz and Buz.
- Gen. 22:22 --Nahor's other children included Bethuel.
- Gen. 22:23 --And Bethuel becomes the father of Rebekah. It's important to keep straight exactly the familial relationship between Isaac and Rebekah. Because guess who marries Isaac. So Rebekah's grandfather is Nahor. Nahor is Abraham's brother. So Abraham is Rebekah's great-uncle. So Isaac and Bethuel are first cousins. So Isaac and Rebekah are first cousin's once removed. Another generation of incest in the chosen people's family tree!
- Gen. 22:24 --Oh, and Nahor had a concubine as well, who bore Nahor four children also. Remember that Abraham has two brothers (Gen. 11:26), Nahor and Haran. Haran is the father of Lot (Gen. 11:27). So Abraham and Nahor both had children by their slave girls, Lot has children with both of his daughters, and Isaac marries his first cousin. All this in the space of two generations. Click here to see a movie about Abraham's family. Abraham is pumping the Gas, Isaac is the one on the porch.
- Gen. ch. 23 --This is an interesting little story about Sarah's grave sight. Abraham wants to buy a plot of land from the Hittites, but the Hittites want to give it to him for free. They argue for quite some time, Abraham wanting to pay, the Hittites refusing to accept. It's the second time we've seen this setup--the first was Gen. 14:21-23. The king of Sodom tries to give Abram some goods, but Abram refuses, saying "I have sworn to the Lord . . . that I would not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap from anything that is yours, lest you should say, 'I made Abram rich." It's an interesting aspect of these stories, there's a lot of emphasis on bargaining, and on contract, and on paying for something to keep from being indebted to the other person. It's interesting to consider that in light of what God does to us by sacrificing Jesus, isn't it? That is exactly the situation Abraham was always trying to avoid--letting someone give you a gift, then claiming you are indebted to them. Well, we, you reading this and I, certainly never had a chance to refuse God's gift, and we can certainly not be obligated because of it.
- Gen. 23:4 n. 2 --This note explains Abraham's insistence on paying for the land in this way. As a "resident alien" in the Hittite land, he was not allowed to own land. By purchasing the land rather than receiving it as a gift, he established a right of ownership to this parcel of land, though small, in the country that God had promised Abraham they would one day inherit as their own. The note also points out the technical legal terms used in this passage.
- Gen. 24:2 -- "Put your hand under my thigh." Another great moment in the bible. My Oxford Study Edition says that "thigh" was a euphemism for his balls!
- Gen. 24:10-20 --This is a very sweet story of how Abraham finds Isaac's first cousin Rebekah for Isaac to marry.
- Gen. 24:35 --By the way, I haven't mentioned this before, but what's up with all the slaves? Not very Christian nor moral.
- Gen. 24:10-50 --Brilliant writing. First we watched the servant pray for it to happen, then we watched it word-for-word happen, now we are listening to him recount word-for-word how it happened. This is the longest chapter so far, and it consists of the same story three times.
- Gen. 24:67 --Another sexy story. Rebekah the virgin agrees to go meet Isaac. When they meet, without saying a word he takes her into his tent and does her right then! She'd only been gone from her family about a day. But, the bible says, he was still grieving from the death of his mother, and having sex with this anonymous virgin comforted him.
Quotables:
"The girl was very beautiful, a virgin, untouched by man." --Gen. 24:16
"Here is Rebekah, ready for you." --Gen. 24:51
I extend an olive branch
I wrote this to her. Awaiting the response of my first ever blogspot friend:
Hi--
God sent me to your blog this morning. I clicked on "next blog" at the top of my blog, for the first time ever, and your blog came up. I have added a link to your blog on my blog. Can we exchange? Could I be one of your blog friends, please? My blog is http://yearofgod.blogspot.com.
Thanks,
bibletoenail
Hi--
God sent me to your blog this morning. I clicked on "next blog" at the top of my blog, for the first time ever, and your blog came up. I have added a link to your blog on my blog. Can we exchange? Could I be one of your blog friends, please? My blog is http://yearofgod.blogspot.com.
Thanks,
bibletoenail
The Living God
Happy New Year. The greatest thing just happened. If this isn't proof that God is here, involved in our lives on a daily basis, nothing is. I clicked on the "Next Blog" link at the top of this page to see what would happen. It took me to this blog. That's so funny. Unfortunately, I discovered, "next blog" is random--I'm not actually next to her. I would give anything if I were--you just can't choose your neighbors! She must think the neighborhood is really going downhill.
Anyway, I didn't want to lose that wonderful blog, so I have added a link to her (I assume it's a her) on the right side of the page here. So after reading the crap in this blog, you can go there to see what you're really supposed to be thinking. Do I have the nerve to ask her to exchange links with me? Of course I do, but the question is, will she? We'll find out!
Anyway, I didn't want to lose that wonderful blog, so I have added a link to her (I assume it's a her) on the right side of the page here. So after reading the crap in this blog, you can go there to see what you're really supposed to be thinking. Do I have the nerve to ask her to exchange links with me? Of course I do, but the question is, will she? We'll find out!
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