Don’t Even Bother

Old Testament
Book Four: Numbers
Israel in the Wilderness of Sinai (cont’d)
Chapter 5: A boring appendix of unrelated regulations
Chapter 6: The boring appendix continued
Chapter 7: Boring offerings of the tribal leaders at the consecration of the Tabernacle
Chapter 8: Another boring collection of miscellaneous materials

It’s really kind of pointless to try to find things to talk about for these chapters. Fortunately, the story is about to pick up again. In chapter 9, Israel moves once again. But for the time being, these chapters are mostly a rehashing of the rules from Exodus and Leviticus about adultery and malignant skin disease.

I visited a class one time that had a guest lecturer who was a rabbi. He said Judaism is the perfect religion for someone who is obsessive. Every minute detail means something. I can see how that would be true, reading these books. If one wanted to, one could spend a long time analyzing the minutia of how these rules differ from one iteration to the next, and theorizing about the difference. I just don’t care that much. It’s interesting, but it’s not something that is available to a first-time reader.

One or two moments are interesting. First is a long passage on how to handle a jealous husband accusing a wife of cheating when there is no proof. It’s impossible not to think about Terry Jones in Holy Grail explaining to the peasants how to tell if a woman is a witch. This method is not significantly less ignorant. But basically, if there’s no proof, then you wait till the baby is born (apparently that’s what we’re talking about--the wife gets pregnant and the husband doesn’t think it’s his). If it’s a miscarriage, then she cheated. If it’s born alive, then she did not cheat. Barbaric? Certainly. Ignorant? Absolutely. The Bible? Right on.

The second one concerns when a man has devoted himself to the Lord. Such a man is not supposed to shave, nor touch dead bodies. The burning question is, what happens if such a man is walking down the street, and a pedestrian drops dead and falls into him?! Well it takes two full columns of text to explain the procedure for this important, common situation.

Chapter 7 is an incredibly long (89 verses) and tedious description of the head of each of the twelve tribes giving gifts to the priests. Each one gives almost exactly the same thing, yet each one is described individually. The notes say the point here was apparently to emphasize that it’s important to give gifts to the priests.

Verse 89 of chapter 7 is one of those interesting moments of biblical scholarship. After all the above description, suddenly Moses heard “the Voice speaking from above the cover of the Ark.” It has nothing whatever to do with the surrounding text. The notes again say this is apparently a fragment with no relation to the surrounding context. The archaeology of the text is always fascinating to me, how these different pieces of text survived from different times. And, of course, it proves conclusively how utterly absurd it is to think of the Bible as anything other than an ancient set of mythologies, same as any other.


--bibletoenail