No One Should Have
To Read The Bible...
...But...***
Ronald Hendel writes:
If we think about the book of Genesis (which I enjoy doing), it is worth remembering that many aspects of our laws & culture are rooted, directly or indirectly, in debates about the meaning of Genesis.
The Civil War, for instance, has been described as the result of a crisis in biblical interpretation, in which the biblical position on slavery -- for or against -- was settled at the cost of massive bloodshed & trauma.
Slave owners used a (mis)interpretation of the story of Noah's curse of Ham to justify slavery.
But the last & best word was spoken by Abraham Lincoln, who referred to the Garden of Eden story in his Second Inaugural Address: "It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces."
In Genesis 3, God says to Adam: "You shall eat bread by the sweat of your face."
Lincoln relied on Genesis to say that slavery violates this rule of the human condition.
Lincoln was thinking with & through Genesis, consulting it as a register of cultural & religious values.
& by invoking Genesis, Lincoln sounded the mystic chords of religious memory, which bring a larger vista onto daily reality.
This is why we should still read the Bible.
It's not a newspaper or a history book or a science book.
But it is a book that lies at the heart of western culture, & it still has a claim on us, whether we believe in it or not.
We still define ourselves & our world in relation to it.
Even if we reject it, we are taking a stand & acknowledging its presence.
It's like the 800 pound gorilla in the middle of the room.
You can try to ignore it, but you still have to walk around it.
In recent times, religious conservatives have claimed that their interpretation of the Bible is the only valid one.
This is incorrect.
The idea of biblical inerrancy is a relatively recent idea, an anti-modern reaction against the rise of science & biblical scholarship.
It's time to reclaim this book as a cultural icon that belongs to all of us.
It is still our root & branch, a book of magical realism in whose shadow we still dwell.
In this blog, we'll be summarizing Genesis, so if you've read thru all the blogs so far, your work here is basically done.
I just like to see how far we've boiled down this longass 1st book of the Bible from its verbiose verbosity to something, maybe(?) readable. At the end of this blog, I hope to have made it all the way thru Revelation (although I have already considered simply including it in its entirety, what with it being so weird & possibly worth reading in its entirety) & then we'll maybe have a (normal-sized) book that someone outside the church might voluntarily decide to read some day.
This is sounding more & more far-fetched the more I think about it.
W/o further ado, I give you Genesis, circumcised.
In the beginning, God created the heaven & the earth.
& God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
A talking snake, who's very existence calls into question God's
omnipotence, pisses God off so God is all, "Hey Talking Snake,
you jerk! Because thou hast done this, thou art curst above all
cattle, & above ev'ry beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go."
& God chortled, smugly. But there was something caught in his teeth,
so he looked ridiculous. "Why did I even create a talking snake?"
God wonder'd.
Cain rose up against Abel his brother, & slew him, asking God,
"Am I my brother's keeper?"
Cain knew his wife, who logically could only have been his own mother,
& she conceived. His dad, Adam, lived 930 years. All the days of
Methusaleh, however, were 969.
& it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth,
& daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the
daughters of men that they were fair; & they took them wives of all
which they chose. There were giants in the earth in those days; & also
after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men,
& they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were
of old, men of renown.
Talking to humans, God or the Gods are all: "Every moving thing
that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given
you all things."
& the whole earth was of one language, & of one speech,
& the LORD said, "Behold, the people is one, & they have all one
language & now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have
imagined to do. Go to, let us go down to confound their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech.
So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the
earth. Therefore is the name of it Babel; because the LORD did there
confound the language of all the earth: & from thence did the LORD
scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
P.S. - "The uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not
circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken
my covenant."
Yada, yada, yada, Lot's daughters rape him & bear his children. & it came
to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, & said unto him,
"Abraham: Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest,
& get thee into the land of Moriah; & offer him there for a burnt offering
upon one of the mountains which I tell thee of.
& Abraham rose up early in the morning, & saddled his ass, & took two of
his young men with him, & Isaac his son, & clave the wood for the burnt
offering, & rose up, & went unto the place of which God had told him.
Isaac is all like, "What's up with the fire & wood, Dad? Where's the lamb
for the burnt offering?"
Abraham stretched forth his hand & took the knife to slay his son--
God intervenes at the last second: "Lay not thine hand upon the lad,
neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest
God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
Onan jerks off instead of fucking his dead brother's wife & God's so
pissed he not only kills him but makes masturbation a sin & the last
fifty or so chapters of Genesis are all about how you'll go blind if you
touch yourself.
***Message to Christians: The author of this blog is not anti-Christian, nor is he anti-Christianity. In fact, he is quite a fan of Jesus Christ & what he was about. In fact, he tries to live his life like Jesus said to live. However, the author of this blog has a most serious objection to the way in which organized followers of Jesus Christ have behaved over the centuries.
