Jacob's Insane Life Story

And so we come to Jacob, the most badass motherfucker Genesis has to offer.

Here he is about to either kill or rape this angel.

Jacob is part of a select pantheon of Biblical "heroes" who just do not give a fuck what anyone thinks, proving themselves to be as awesome as they are utterly insane.  Along with such probable psychopaths as Joshua, Ehud and Samson, Jacob belongs to the club that takes the Old Testament to the level of crazy that kept Alex from A Clockwork Orange entertained in prison.  He's a shit-distuber on such an epic level that throughout the course of his story he tells genetics they can fuck themselves and, oh yeah, wrestles God to the ground.

Booyah.

It all begins with the story of Jacob and his freakishly hairy twin brother, Esau.  One day, Esau came in from the fields literally dying of hunger.  Why he didn't pack a granola bar or something before leaving that morning, who knows, but one day he came in and begged:

"Feed me, I pray thee, with some of that red pottage; for I am faint." - Genesis 25:30.

Pottage is like a vegetable stew, so I'm told, and it so happened that Jacob was fucking awesome at making it.  It should also be noted that Esau was literally about to die if he didn't get something to eat, like, right now.  So what did Jacob do?  He told Esau he could take his starvation and shove it, unless he gave Jacob his inheritance:

"And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright." - Genesis 25:31.

Yes, he refused to save his brother's life until Esau coughed up everything he would inherit upon the death of their father, Isaac.  Jacob is that kind of person (you know - a hero!).  Don't think that Esau is some kind of villain or anything, either.  He's done nothing to warrant this kind of treatment whatsoever.  His only fault is that he ended up with a raging dickwad for a brother.  Esau, not seeing any other option here, begrudgingly sold his birthright to Jacob so that he could, you know, not die.

Believe it or not, that's not even the worst thing Jacob did to his poor brother.  Genesis 27 tells the story of how Jacob also swindled Esau out of their father's blessing, which he was supposed to bestow on the elder twin from his deathbed.  That may not seem like much, but to Biblical characters receiving a blessing is a big fucking deal, and it's not like they can just give blessings out like Halloween candy - there's a limited supply of these things and having it stolen is like having some jerk steal your inheritance or someth--oh, wait.

And yet, the fact that Jacob does steal his brother's blessing isn't nearly as terrible as how he does it.  Remember that Esau was born a freakshow attraction on account of his being extremely fucking hairy.

Pictured: only known photograph of Esau.

So Jacob, on the suggestion of his mother, Rebekah, covered himself in goat skins to mimic Esau's cuddly softness.  Then he approached his blind, dying father, Isaac, served him soup and had him touch the goat skins to confirm that yes, this is my freakishly hairy child.  Then he blessed him, just in time for Esau to walk in and freak the fuck out that Jacob had not only stolen his blessing, but had also deceived their father.  (Did I mention he was fucking blind and dying?)  Isaac, in turn, freaked the hell out that he had just inadvertently made his younger, likely psychopathic younger son lord and master over the sane elder one.

But those are just Jacob's early years, and people in the Bible live for freaking ever (like, centuries), so he had plenty of time to rack up more crazy points.  When it came time for him to marry, Jacob set his sights on Rachel, the beautiful daughter of a chieftain-type dude named Laban.  Laban decided that he would allow Jacob to marry Rachel after he had worked for him for seven years.  And that Jacob did, slaving away seven years to finally marry the woman he loved.  Awww, what a beautiful tale of undying love and devotion.

Oh, wait, no.  We just haven't had our prescribed dose of batshit insanity yet.  The marriage went ahead as planned and the wedding night passed, but in the morning Jacob rolled over (presumably very hung-over) and realized that it wasn't Rachel beside him at all.

"And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah." - Genesis 29:25.

It was her sister.  Oh, shit.

You see, Leah was Rachel's elder, and it was a custom in Labanland (that is, it was his family's rule) that siblings marry in order of their ages.  So after slaving away all this time, Rachel couldn't marry Jacob at all.  Because Leah hadn't yet gotten hitched.

Kind of a fitting punishment for a trickster like Jacob, isn't it?  It would probably be a little awkward to be Leah (okay, maybe horrifyingly awkward), but for the guy who destroyed his own brother's life to have worked all this time to marry the wrong woman?  Priceless.  Though it does raise a few questions.  How did Jacob not notice he had married (and had sex with) someone who definitely was not Rachel?  Did Laban think Jacob wouldn't notice, or was he just hoping that once he was married to her, Jacob would just go "eh, close enough!" and keep her around?  What did Leah think about marrying a man who clearly wanted her little sister instead of her?

If you think any of these questions are going to be answered, clearly this is your first time here.

So instead of divorcing her, "accidentally" handing her off to Pharaoh ala Abraham, or, I dunno, demanding Laban to let him marry the woman he was damn-well working to marry, Jacob keeps Leah around and gets back to work.  His mission: marry fucking Rachel.  There are no more sisters in the way, so it should work this time around.  Another seven years pass (that's fourteen freaking years of hard labour, for those of you who are really bad at math) and finally, finally, Jacob and Rachel marry.

This might be romantic.  I mean, fourteen years is a really freaking long time to work to bone someone.  That shows some massive dedication (or insanity, I suppose) on Jacob's part.  Except that, you know, Jacob kept Leah as a second wife.  Yay, polygamy, which is expressly forbidden in Leviticus just two books from now!  Oh well, if there's one thing the religious right has taught me it's that we only listen to Leviticus when we want to anyway!  Hooray!

So Jacob and Leah and Rachel get it on, presumably in the kinds of kinky threesomes that we ignore are forbidden, getting into a baby-making contest that eventually culminates in the birth of ...

He was born this way.

But that's another story.

Before Joseph could prove himself to be Jacob's most fabulous son, Jacob had two more things to punch in the face: genetics and God.  (And, I suppose, logic in general.  So kind of three things.)

Laban, it seems, was a pretty rotten guy all around (in case pawning his older daughter off on Jacob wasn't a hint in that regard).  Jacob's flocks, you see, had grown rather large at Laban's expense, and so Laban decided to go through and take all of Jacob's striped cattle.  Jacob, for some reason, had major beef with plain-coloured cattle (pun totally intended).  He wanted striped ones instead.  So ...

"And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree, and piled white strakes in them, and made the white appear chich was in the rods.  And he set the rods which he had piled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink." - Genesis 30:37-38.

He took a bunch of stripey sticks and stuck them in the ground where his cattle were fucking, thus birthing ... striped cattle.  Now, one would expect this to fail miserably and for Jacob to learn some valuable lesson about how, I dunno, only God can decide what happens when animals fuck or something.  After all, ancient people may not have known about the nitty-gritty of genetic engineering, but they must have figured out that showing a cow a striped stick while it mated wouldn't produce a striped calf any more than standing in front of a mating cow would produce a baby minotaur.

But no.

"And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled and spotted." - Genesis 30:39.

It totally worked.  Instead of a lesson or something of value, we get misleading insanity.  (I can't help but wonder how many people tried to do this after hearing this story and wondered what the hell was wrong with their stripey sticks and/or cows).  Believe it or not, this isn't the only time this happens in the Bible.  I know, it's shocking.

Last, but certainly not least, we have the story that really puts the cherry on top of all Jacob's earlier madness: his wrestling match against God, which I believe qualifies as "Match of the Entire History of Everything."    It should probably be noted that the Bible doesn't come out and say that this is literally God Jacob is wrestling.  It could just be an angel or some other celestial being just representing God, but Jacob hints immediately afterward that he's just seen God "face to face" (Genesis 32:30), which is evidence enough for me.

Technicalities aside, Jacob totally kicked this being's celestial butt over the course of an entire goddamn night, and he absolutely refused to let the poor thing go until it blessed him:

"And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of day.  And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.  And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh.  And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." - Genesis 32:24-26.


And he did.  Thing-That's-Probably-God admitted that Jacob had gained power over the Lord himself, who it turns out is the endboss before you officially Win at Life.  Probably-God changed Jacob's name to Israel, the name all his ancestors would use to refer to themselves from this point on, and finally everyone got down to this whole "making a nation" thing that had been promised a few generations back.  That is, until Joseph had to go and move everyone down to Egypt where they all ended up enslaved.

Thanks, jerk.

But that's another story.

Burnt Offerings (Now Made With 100% Real Children)

Pictured: Isaac (almost)

Proving yet again that Abraham is a wonderful person and God is wise and just (/sarcasm), we have the story of Isaac's sacrifice.  I debated including this story because it's so well known, but hey, just because a story is famous shouldn't let if off the hook for being batshit, now should it?  Of course not!  Let's get started!

It all begins when God floats down from Heaven one day and orders Abraham to straight-up murder his only child, Isaac.  Why?  I guess there was nothing on TV that day, or maybe Lucifer ate the last Twinkie and didn't even bother to buy any more, and it put God in a bad mood.  Whatever the reason, God tells Abraham:

"Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." - Genesis 22:2.

Now, every child is precious to their parents (except Abraham's other son Ishmael, apparently), but Isaac is literally Abraham's gift from God.  The Big Man Himself promised Abraham and Sarah babies, and it cost them decades, every scrap of one Egyptian woman's dignity and one neglected teenager who rebels so hard he inadvertently founds a new religion before they finally got just one.  This is the golden boy, the child that Abraham and Sarah have spent their lives waiting for.  And God just told Abraham, who is now so old he's legally considered an antique and is therefore not having any more babies, to offer him up as a human sacrifice.  Holy crap, God!  Been schmoozing with the Aztec gods up in Heaven lately?

So let's put ourselves in Abraham's shoes for a moment.  How would you feel if God ordered you to strap your own child down and murder him like your normally would a cow?  Pretty confused and betrayed, and probably even crappier if he was also your magical holy child that God gave you to begin with after decades of procrastinating.  I wouldn't be surprised if most people just renounced their faiths altogether in the event of this happening and went on a crazy hedonistic sin-binge, running over elderly churchgoers on their way to their nightly pan-species orgies.  Because hey, if you go to hell, at least you're away from your lunatic god!

Here's how Abraham reacts:

"And Abraham rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him." - Genesis 22:3

In other words, he doesn't.  He just kinda says, "Oh, okay.  Cool," saddles his ass, grabs his young men and films a kinky porno rides off to burn his only child alive.  Jesus, Abraham.  You really want to be rid of your family members, don't you?  First you try to pawn your wife off on multiple kings, then when God says, "hey, kill your son!" you're just all over that shit like the Aztecs in drought season.

So Abraham abandons his men at the bottom of the mountain, runs over his human sacrifice checklist (Firewood?  Knife?  Son?) and hauls ass to the summit, though I use "haul ass" in the lightest way possible.  Abraham climbs the mountain, but he's not particularly weighed down because he has Isaac carry the wood that will feed the fire of his own sacrifice:

"And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together." - Genesis 22:6.

Nice, Abraham.  Keep it classy.

Then, to make it even worse, Isaac turns to his dad and asks:

"Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" - Genesis 22:7

Oh shit.  He's onto you, Abraham!  What do you do?

"And Abraham said, My son.  God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering." - Genesis 22:8

Uh ... a little sinister there, Abraham?  Telling Isaac that God will provide a lamb for slaughter - i.e. you, whom he provided to keep his promise to Abraham and Sarah?  That's a line that should be spoken in a menacing Vincent Price voice, while Abraham tents his spindly fingers and smiles in anticipation.  But little Isaac, proving that he is trusting if not particularly bright, accepts the paradox of God providing Abraham the means for his own sacrifice and continues merrily on his way.

At the summit of the mountain, Abraham sets up an altar and gets all set to slaughter his child and then burn the remains.  He ties Isaac down, grabs his knife, raises it ... And then gets faked out.

God, proving himself yet again to be the biggest jerk this side of the New Testament, stops Abraham in the absolute nick of time.  He had Abraham pack up his stuff, haul his ancient butt to the top of a mountain, tie down his own son and almost slit his throat, and why?

So he could prove his faith to God.  Yeah.  God wanted to test Abraham, a man whose life is pretty much behind him at this point.  I mean, I get testing a young man's faith if you want him to, say, go out and obliterate other nations or something.  But a guy who's a century old?  Really?  What does that get you, God, other than shits and giggles?

God, I hate to repeat myself but ... you're a jerk.

Hagar's Horrible Story

Meet Hagar:

The girl, not the kid.

She gets the award for "Most Unfortunate Genesis Character," which is impressive when you consider that the snake from Eden got its limbs ripped off and Lot had his angel-raping city destroyed by fire from the sky.  But while most characters suffer one or two misfortunes, poor Hagar'slife is just one big unfortunate mess.  When she was born, God apparently shone down upon the shiny new bundle of joy and said, "Yup, fuck that chick."  Then, as if that weren't bad enough, her parents gave her the same name as an incompetent viking in a mediocre comic strip.  So yeah, life pretty much sucked for her from the get-go.

 When we meet her, Hagar is the handmaiden of Sarai, whom you may remember as the evil harpy woman Abram was desperately trying to get rid of in an earlier post.  Through the story of Hagar, we learn that Sarai is even more of a keeper than we originally thought her to be.  See, by this point Sarai is seventy-six years old and she's finally accepted that she's not going to be having any babies any time soon.  The problem is, God has promised them so many kids they'll found their own nation, and they're getting a little up there in their years without any luck in the baby-making department.  So Sarai (again, seventy-six) turns to her husband one day, presumably while knitting and watching the ancient equivalent of Wheel of Fortune (which is like a stoning or something, I guess), and says:

"Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her." - Genesis 16:2

So yeah, she gives him permission to bone her maid so they can have them some babies.  Keep in mind that Abram is eighty-six years old at this point.  Then notice how there's no reference to anybody asking Hagar if she'd like to get knocked up by a man who is so old he's partially fossilized.  Commence screaming.

Have you gotten it out of your system?  Okay, good.  Abram forcably takes Hagar to be his second wife and inevitably she becomes pregnant.  The Bible pretty much judges the worth of a woman by her ability to breed, and so she gets a bit of an ego from it, eventually believing her status to be equal to Sarai's.  Sarai, being the heartless kindly old matron she is ... puts the girl in her place by doing something so awful she runs away.

"And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face." - Genesis 16:6

Poor Hagar, having dared to believe she was something more than a serving wench only to be torn down by Abram's screeching shrew of a wife, runs off into the wilderness.  No doubt she's cursing the awful people who did this to her and regretting ever leaving her family in Egypt to try and persue that circus career, or whatever leads a young Egyptian girl like Hagar to become a handmaid for some obscure, dusty old biddy in the desert.  Then this happens:

"And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wildnerness, by the fountain on the way to Shur.  And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou?  and whither wilt thou go?  And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai." - Genesis 16:8

Really, God?  You're going to play the angel card?  You're going to convince this poor girl to return to a home where her husband considers her lower than dirt so she can give the self-important jerk a son?  Ha!  I'd like to see you convince her!

"And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.  And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude."

Babies, babies - it's always babies!  I'll give you tonnes and tonnes of babies if you agree to go back!  I'll give you tonnes of babies if you worship me!  It's like you think women enjoy being pregnant or something, God.  You're such a man.

For some reason it actually does work (I suspect fear of being smote was involved, and that tends to go a long way) and Hagar does return to Abram.  She has her baby and names him Ishmael, as God directs.

If you're thinking that that wasn't so bad, that there have been worse stories of individual misfortune thus far, well, that's because it's not done.  Oh, it begins and ends at Genesis 16 and then moves on to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, tricking you into thinking you read something that wasn't really all that terrible in comparison to what's around it.  But it's just faked you out.  Yes, the freaking Bible has faked you out.  Hagar's story picks up again in Genesis 21, after Sodom is smitten for being rape-happy, Lot sexes up his daughters and Abram and Sarai have undergone their name changes to Abraham and Sarah.  And then it gets awful.


The second part of the story, like so many tales of the Bible, begins with God being a jerk:

"And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken.  For Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him." - Genesis 21:1-2

God decides all of a sudden that Sarah, now so old that if she lived in the modern world she'd constantly have to swat away archaeologists, is going to have a baby and so he "opens her womb," meaning that he makes it possible to conceive.  Let the implications of that sink in for a moment.  God has promised Abraham and Sarah a lot of babies, but for some reason he hasn't allowed Sarah to conceive.  Sarah and Abraham, getting antsy, decide to knock Hagar up to try and get the ball rolling.  God, knowing full well that they're doing it because he hasn't made a move to fulfill his promise yet, lets it happen.  If he wants Abraham and Sarah to wait until they were antiques before having their first baby, he could close Hagar's womb and prevent her from conceiving at all.  But he doesn't.  He lets this happen.

Keep this in mind.

Sarah has a son as well, Isaac, and naturally that makes things a little awkward in the family circle.  After all, Isaac is the son God promised Abraham and Sarah, whilst Ishmael is their attempt to get that promise fulfilled early.  It's exactly what happens when the elder sibling feels usurped by the younger, who sudden becomes everybody's darling, except worse because that younger sibling is also the fulfillment of a literal divine promise.  Ishmael, being a teenager now, reacts with the strongest weapon in a teenager's arsenal: passive-aggressiveness.

"And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which had been born unto Abraham, mocking." - Genesis 21:9.

So, all offended that this teenager dare sass her precious little holy baby, Sarah goes to her husband and tells him to straight-up banish Hagar and Ishmael, the child that - and I can't stress this enough - she suggested they have in the first place.  She's like the archetypal evil stepmother on a literally Biblical scale.  God, proving again that he's a jerk on a massive scale, approves the banishment:

"And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called." - Genesis 21:12

With that, Abraham loads Hagar up with some bread and a bottle of water and sends her on her way.  Remember - and I can't stress this enough either - that this whole thing would have been perfectly preventable if God hadn't been such a procrastinator and had given Abraham and Sarah a son at a reasonable age!

What comes next is positively heartbreaking (and I'm not a mushy person).  Hagar leaves the home of this awful family for the second time with hardly enough food to sustain herself and her child.  Eventually, she runs out of water:

"And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.  And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot; for she said, Let me not see the death of the child.  And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept." - Genesis 21:15-16

She puts her son (whom she is carrying despite him being 14, but we'll overlook that) in a shrub and goes to sit far away so she doesn't have to watch him starve to death. Then she cries her eyes out.  This whole situation is actually so sad it moves God.  God actually gets his holy butt off of his cloud and floats down to offer aid.  Aww, there's going to be a happy ending after all!

"And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar?  fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation." - Genesis 21:17-18

... What is with you and giving people a shit tonne of babies, God?  Do Hagar and Ishmael get a home?  A place to belong?  You know - food?

"And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer." - Genesis 21:20.

So, no.  But hey, at least he gets babies.

After reading this story, I was left wondering what the point of it was.  Ishmael doesn't really serve any purpose to the narrative beyond getting booted out of his father's inheritance to make way for Isaac, so how does this tale remain relevant in the modern world? 

The answer, as with Canaan's story, is racism.  Think of the world today, particularly what's going on in the Middle East.  Now guess who, according to legend, is a descendent of Ishmael?  I'll give you a hint: Ishmael and Isaac never got along.  Now, if Isaac represents the Jews, Ishmael represents ...

Muslims!  Yeah, according to Islam, Muhammad was a direct descendent of Ishmael, who, according to the Qu'ran, was God's promised child, not Isaac.  I probably don't need to explain any more, but you can bet idiots quote this story all the damn time as an excuse for why Muslims (often misidentified as Arabs) and Jews (and, by extension, Christians) are allowed to hate on each other.

Good thing religion preaches so much peace and love in between all these terrible racism-varifying stories or we might be a bunch of intolerant bigots on our hands, huh?  Oh, wait ...

Genesis Presents: More Fun With Incest! (Starring the Only Righteous Man in Sodom)

Every once in a while, the Bible likes to throw in a story so insane, so debauched, so completely and utterly disgusting that it outshines all of the other craziness around it like a corpse in a hoarder's basement.  You may have thought that Sodom's city-wide angel gang-rape was that story for Genesis.  You would be wrong.  That honor goes to the story immediately following Sodom's destruction, the delicately titled Sin of Lot's Daughters.

You may remember Lot as the guy who was unfortunate enough to have the entire city of Sodom show up at his door demanding he bring his angelic houseguests outside to be ass-raped in the street.  The reason he had angels staying at his house in the first place was because he was the only righteous man in the city, and so he got to be escorted out of Sodom before God shat on it.  Take a guess at how long that righteousness lasts.  Now half it, because this is the Old Testament and people are a little messed up by default.

Lot and his two daughters, whom you may remember as the virginal young girls he offered to the rapists in place of the angels (stellar guy, this Lot), shack up in a cave after the annihilation of their home.  Things are a little boring living in a cave, and so the girls want to find some way to entertain themselves.  Understandably, one girl turns to the other and says:

"Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father." - Genesis 19:32

Man, kids in 3000 BCE, am I right?  Always a handful, getting their parents smashed so they can sex them up in the night and -- what the flying fuck, Bible?  Just ... just what the fuck?

So this girl, who can't be more than fifteen, gets Lot so drunk he literally doesn't notice her having sex with him:

"And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose." - Genesis 19:33

Then, the next night, the younger daughter (who must therefore be less than 15) does the same thing:

"And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose." - Genesis 19:35.

And if you're thinking this is all to teach some kind of valuable lesson about sin, this is clearly your first time reading Zero Contradictions.  The story ends like this:

"Thus were both the daughters of lot with child by their father.  And the firstborn bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day.  And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day." - Genesis 19:36-38

That's it.  There's no divine punishment, no moral to the story.  In fact, this is the last time Lot appears in Genesis.  It just ends with them naming their sons/brothers and the reassurance that a couple of ancient Israel's neighbouring nations were founded on incest.

Now, I want to ask a few questions:

A) What the hell kind of father is okay with getting blackout drunk with his two teenage daughters?

B) What the hell kind of human being, even when drunk, doesn't notice that they're having sex with their own children?

C) What the hell kind of messed-up teenager wants to rape her father (since that's what it is really - rape) so she can get pregnant with her own sibling?

D) What kind of fucked up city was Sodom that the first thing the most righteous man living there does upon his escape is knock his own daughters up?

E) Whey the hell do they have so much wine in a goddamn cave?  Is that all they grabbed when they were leaving Sodom?  Leave all of our belongings, but save the wine?

All right, so maybe I understand wanting to save the wine, but what about the rest?  I can forgive things like God forgetting he's omnipresent and Cain magically having a wife, but this is one story so inexplicably awful that it needs a reason to exist.

I did look, and the best explanation I could find was the Catholic Encyclopedia's insistence that the Israelites just thought the Moabites and Ammonites were such terrible people that they created this myth to explain why.  So yeah, there is really no reason for it to have survived in a holy text to the present day.  It's just a disgusting, awful story whose only real purpose is to remind us that God has a twisted sense of humour.  And really, there are enough of those as it is.

The Sin of Sodom

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of those terrible myths of mass destruction that conservative religious folk like to whip out as a cautionary tale, waving it grotesquely around in the faces of us dirty liberals until we finally agree with them just so they'll tuck it away.  Why, with all of our sick, heretical ideas like religious tolerance, gay rights, legal abortions, racial equality and separation of church and state, we're practically asking God to take a big, fiery crap on us.  In fact, according to some (crazy) people, we've already unleashed the floodgates of diarrhea hellfire and it's only a matter of time before God gets serious.

But just what exactly did Sodom do that was so terrible, so mind-numbingly awful that God felt the need to personally obliterate them?  "It's sodomy, you clueless pinko!" you cry, leaping from your hummer with a Bible in one hand and a half-dead illegal immigrant in the other.  "Homosexuals were taking over!  Don't you know that?  It's got the sin right in the name!"

Actually, it's the sin that's named after the city, hypothetical right-wing extremist, but ... you know what?  Never mind.  Indeed, the knee-jerk reaction is to look at the name and decide that Sodom must have been filled with men having loving, consensual relations with one another all the goddamn time, and that God was just playing favourites when he smote Sodom over, say, Egypt or China or India or Sparta.  He's just kind of a jerk like that.

But no.  That's not the case at all.  The real story, if anyone religious could be bothered  to read it, is so terrible that when I first read it, I poked my eyes out and renounced society to live as a hermit in the wilderness.  (I got better.  Then I realized there are no Skittles in the wilderness, so I came back.)  The real sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is so awful that, were I a celestial being, I'd probably smite the holy bejeezus out of them too.  They'd be lucky that fire and brimstone was all they got off with.  "Enough with the suspense!" you cry.  "Tell us what it is!"  Well, hypothetical reader, the sin of Sodom was ...

Angel gang-rape.

Not "angel" like David Boreanaz, or "angel" like a baseball player from LA.  Angels.  Harps and halos and feathery wings.  The kinds of things that grandmas collect ceramics of.  A group of people wanted to rape those in the butt.  Let the sheer awfulness of that sink in for a minute.

I suppose I should offer some backstory.  To be fair, God has already decided that Sodom is going down in flames when the angels arrive in the city.  (We can only imagine what their previous sins were.)  They're there to escort the only good man in all of Sodom, Lot, out of the city before shit starts going down.  The angels are prepared to spend all night on the streets, but Lot insists they come inside and kick up their holy feet:

"And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face turned toward the ground; And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early; and go on your ways." - Genesis 19:1-2

There's a bit of back-and-forth about not wanting to inconvenience Lot (maybe they were molting) and Lot insisting that they stay (he could use the feathers to make history's softest down pillow, or something), but eventually the angels agree to come inside.  Then ... this happens:

"But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both young and old, all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night?  bring them out unto us, that we may know them." - Genesis 19:4-5

"Knowing" is the Bible's adorably quaint way of referring to sex.  So basically, this group of people show up at Lot's house in the middle of the night and ask him to bring his newly arrived house guests out into the street so that they can take turns raping them out in the open air.  Now, discerning readers may have noticed that this is a rather large group of people.  In fact, angel rape is such an event in Sodom that "all the people from every quarter" turned out to get in on the action.

Math time!  Let's assume that Sodom is a relatively modest city population-wise (so the numbers don't get too horrifying).  In the ancient Middle East, that's probably about 2000 people.  For a working number, we'll assume that 25% of that 2000 people are children under 15, which is close to what it is now (27%).  That leaves 1500 adults.  Now, only the men of the city are going to be raping, and assuming that the population of men and women are more-or-less equal, that means these angels are about to be raped 750 times each.  And that's a low estimate.  You may poke out your eyes and commence screaming.

For those of you not blind and insane, let's continue.  Oh, you thought that was the end?  Hardly.  So every man in the city shows up at Lot's house demanding forced angelic buttsex.  What the hell do you do in this situation?  Hand them over?  Beg the angry mob to leave?  Point out that what they're trying to do is more cartoonishly evil than burning down a puppy orphanage?  Well, Lot is the only good man in Sodom, so surely he has some wise words to disperse the crowd:

"And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.  Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes; only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof." - Genesis 19:6-8

Oh, of course.  Lot offers up his two young daughters to the crowd, asking that they rape them instead of his house guests.  ... Wait ...

Yep, this city is fucked up.

Anyway, if any of you haven't yet left this post to mutilate yourselves and/or retire to live in the woods, the mob refuses Lot's offer and the angels have to step in and strike them all blind.  A lovely end to a lovely story.

So the moral of today's tale is this: don't believe everything you hear from right-wing conservative nutjobs about the Bible, and if you see an angel and your first thought is to rape it, you totally deserve to go down in a horrible apocalypse of fire and brimstone.

Lies, Smiting and Pawning Off Wives

Believe it or not, hiding in Genesis between the instances of mass murder and questionable sexual exploits is the plot to a somewhat twisted romantic comedy.  It involves a young Abraham, his wife, the Egyptian Pharaoh, and a series of hilarious misunderstandings that dramatically escalate until they are happily resolved.  It's actually a pretty funny story that actually teaches a decent lesson about lying, which is presumably why Genesis feels the need to repeat it three times with various names changed.  What, did you think "rom-com hilarity" was weird enough to make it into this blog?  Nonsense!  We have room only for the biggest examples of what-the-fuckery the Bible has to offer!

Back when Abraham was an energetic young man of 75 (yeah, really), he had yet to earn the extra syllable in his name and was simply known as Abram.  He lived in Canaan with his wife, Sarai, until one day famine struck and they were forced to pack up and move to Egypt.  As the couple entered the land of the Pyramids, Abram turned to Sarai and said:

"Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon: Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, "This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.  Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee." - Genesis 12:11-13

Concerned that those crazy, heathen Egyptians would find Sarai so damn fine that they'd actually kill Abram to get a piece of her, Abram asks his wife to pose as his sister.  Because that can't go wrong at all.  Upon arriving in Egypt, the Egyptians take about 2 seconds to grab the Hebrew hottie and bring her to Pharaoh to be his ... pet sexy Hebrew chick.  Good call there, Abram.  Clearly telling everyone that your smokin' wife is really your sister works splendidly.

Pharaoh heaps gifts on Abram, who apparently accepts them without saying anything.  Wait a minute!  I see what you did there, Abram.  You're tired of your old lady, always nagging you to patch up the tent and repair the camel (it's been making funny sounds for weeks!), so you pass her off onto some guy who will give you mountains of stuff for her!  Then you can spend every day of the week at the driving range and nobody can criticize you!  You sly devil, you!  Unfortunately for Abram, though, God (feeling omnipresent that day, apparently) notices what's going on:

"And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram's wife.  And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me?  why did thou not tell me that she was thy wife?  Why saidst thou, She is my sister?  so I might have taken her to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way." - Genesis 12:17-19

Somehow, from a few of his family members dropping dead from plague, Pharaoh clues in to the fact that Sarai is Abram's wife, not sister.  He ships her back to her husband, asking him why the hell he would do such a thing in the first place.  Meanwhile, Abram's dreams of becoming a new bachelor are thoroughly squashed.  So really, it's a bit of a strange story, but it's not a bad story.  It's kind of funny, actually, with Abram's lie about Sarai being his sister getting him into all sorts of trouble.  In fact, it almost teaches us a good lesson: one little white lie can grow into an unmanageable mess quicker than you might think.  But Genesis is so proud of the fact that it almost told a good, entertaining story with a decent moral that it repeats it two more times.  The second time this story shows up, it's with our lucky couple ... Abram and Sarai?  Someone's either a little slow on the uptake here or he really does want to get rid of his old lady.

By this point, Abram has earned his "ham" and Sarai has had her name changed to Sarah.  Again, he does it because he's afraid people will kill him to have the hot piece of 65-year-old ass that is his wife.  (No, really, this man is obviously desperate to escape this evil harpy woman's clutches.)

"And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah." - Genesis 20:2

This time, God's up on Abraham's wife-ditching ways.  He's been watching, and clearly it's time to sit Abraham down and have a good, long talk about how lying is wrong and trying to dump your wife on other men is even more wrong.

Nah!  He just threatens the dude who took her with death.  And you thought for a second that there was a point to this!

"But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou has taken; for she is a man's wife." - Genesis 20:3

So Abimelech and God have a good chat about how Abimelech won't be smote as long as he returns Sarah to her actual husband.  He does so, and then asks Abraham the same question Pharaoh and the rest of us have all been wondering: why the hell would he do such a thing, especially knowing that he'd be bringing the wrath of God down on whoever unknowingly married another man's wife?  Well, Abraham?

"And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will slay me for my wife's sake.  And yet, she is indeed my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife." - Genesis 20:11-12.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up!  So he wasn't lying because Sarah actually is his half-sister?  That's more than a little twisted, Bible.  I mean, I know a lot of old stories involve siblings getting married, but this is the guy that three major religions - two of them accounting for half the world's spiritual beliefs (Christianity and Islam) - are based on.  And he married his sister.  I'm beginning to see why religion inspires so much insanity.

Anyway, Abimelech gives Sarah back to poor, desperate Abraham and they go on their way.  By the time this happens a third time, we all have wonder if someone shouldn't just invent divorce so these guys don't have to keep pawning their wives off on random kings.  This time, the couple are Isaac, Abraham's son, and Rebekah.  The king is ... Abimelech.  Oh, really God?  You're gonna do this to this poor guy again?

So by this point you know the drill.  There's a famine, so Isaac and Rebekah move to a place with food (Gerar, in this case).  He's afraid that the Godless heathens of Gerar will kill him to get Rebekah, so he calls her his sister.  This time, however, there's a twist: Abimelech isn't falling for it again.  He spots Rebekah from his window and just knows that this is a woman who's obviously posing as her husband's sister.  He calls to Isaac and asks him:

"What is this thou hast done unto us?  one of the people might lightly have lain with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us." - Genesis 26:10

Instead of waiting for a response (possibly because he's afraid of getting one as creepy as the reason Abraham gave), he lays down a law that says anyone who so much as touches Rebekah will be put to death, because he'll be damned if God's gonna threaten him with death and destruction again for something he has absolutely no control over.  Normally, I would assume that these are all simply different versions of the same story, with various retellings changing the details of who was involved and where it happened, but there are no contradictions in the Bible, so I guess we're just going to have to accept that God loves watching people misinterpret relationships and get caught up in their own poorly spun webs of lies.  In other words, God's a romantic comedy fan after all.  Who knew?

The Curse of Canaan

I feel for Sunday school teachers.  I really do.

I mean, you have to be a special kind of person to take a book that's essentially a thousand pages of torture, rape, murder, incest and general what-the-fuckery in between lists of largely irrelevant and contradictory rules and make it kid-friendly.  You can barely crack this sucker open without landing on a page where someone is killed or molested, which is why, I suppose, those spiritual molders of young minds have to cling to the least traumatizing stories they can find.  Ironically, one of their favourite kiddie stories is also the one where God kills fucking everyone.

Yes, I'm talking about Noah.  This story is so well known that even I, as a wee godless heathen child, knew the Noah's Ark story.  They make play-sets and picture books about this guy, and why not?  There's animals!  Kids love animals!  And Noah, why, look at him!  With that big long beard, he's practically a non-heretical version of Santa Claus!  What's that?  God mercilessly slaughters millions of helpless people in this story?  Hush, you!  God-approved Santa is tending to the fluffy animals!

Surprisingly, my Holy Beef is not with the Noah's Ark story.  The Great Deluge myth is found all over the world.  My Holy Beef is with Noah himself.  What, did you think a guy who was literally 600 years old at the time of the Flood didn't have any dirty laundry to air?  I know your nasty little secret, Noah, and I'm sharing.

See, after the destruction of all mankind, Noah settled down to become a raging alcoholic vinter.  One night, he got totally shitfaced drunk enjoyed the fruits of his labour a little too much and ... well, he passed out naked.  There's not really any eloquent way of putting that.

"And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent." - Genesis 9:20-21

Thanks, Bible.  You put the story of an old man turning to alcoholism to escape his post-traumatic stress disorder so bluntly it's almost poetic.

Now, Noah has three grown sons with children of their own at this point: Shem, Ham and Japheth.  Ham, presumably checking on the poor old drunk, suffers the soul-shattering horror of seeing the droopy, wrinkly old man ass of his literally ancient father.  Understandably traumatized, he runs off to tell his brothers to do something about it.

"And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers without." - Genesis 9:22.

Shem and Japheth, forewarned by their brother of His Royal Wrinkliness' personal bits flapping around in the open, averted their eyes as they entered the tent and threw a blanket over poor old Noah.  Noah slept it off, and when he came to he somehow knew what had gone down.  Now, the only positive to getting blackout drunk is that when you wake up, you're spared the memory of all the embarrassing shit you did.  Noah wasn't.  I think it's understandable at this point for Noah to be a little embarrassed and angry with himself.  After all, he wasn't just POD in front of anyone, but in front of his own kids.  That's got to be all sorts of humiliati--

"And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.  And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." - Genesis 9:24-25.

Whoa, back up there, Noah.  You're cursing who?  Your grandson, Canaan, who had absolutely nothing to do with anything?  Because your son saw you naked after you passed out naked in your tent?  It's not like he left you there; he told his brothers and they covered you up.  You know, to preserve your dignity.  You're a dick, Noah.  See if anyone helps you next time you get shitfaced.

No, really.  Noah curses his poor, innocent grandson to essentially be a slave in a world where literally everyone except this family has been murdered by God.  And why?  Because Canaan's dad accidentally saw Noah naked while he was hooched up.  That is a mind-blowingly dickwad move, Noah.  Frankly, I'm surprised anyone managed to survive so long on the ark with you without throwing themselves overboard, you old fart.

Try to attach a moral to this story.  Just try.  The only thing this story teaches us is that it's okay to curse family members into slavery when you're embarrassed about what you did while drunk, which is probably the worst lesson ever taught anywhere, and it's in the Bible.  This story is so terrible that some people actually use it to justify racism, saying that Ham's descendants are black and therefore have to serve Shem's white descendents for the rest of eternity.  (I never said they were smart people.)  And it's all because Noah, the Old Testament's most kid-friendly hero, said so.

Just ... just what the hell, Bible?

Mythic Insanity #1: The Death of Baldur

Don't think for a second that the modern religions are the only ones off their rockers.  Our beliefs have been crazy since the first man assigned a name to the sun.  That's why, periodically, I'll post a myth or legend that's just as crazy as the stories I find in the Bible and shares some sort of thematic similarity to a story I've covered recently. 

The only difference between us and our ancestors when it comes to religion is that our special brand of lunacy has managed to last a bit longer.


Baldur had it made.  Vikings pillaging and raping all over Europe hailed him as the god of light and good.  His daddy was Odin, the god of war and king of the Viking Mount Olympus, Asgard, and he was the baby brother of everybody's favourite god, Thor.  He had a super-hot, devoted wife named Nanna, and a son, Forseti, who surpassed every father's dream of seeing their child become a successful lawyer and became the god of freaking justice.  Life was good.

Then, one day, Baldur began suffering from terrible nightmares where he was dragged away by Hel, the goddess of the underworld.  Like any mighty Viking god worth his weight in plundered loot, Baldur complained about his nightmares to his mom, Frigga.  She knew just what to do: take the concept of overprotectiveness and beat the ever-living crap out of it.  Gathering up literally everything in the world, from fire and water to metal, diseases, stone and animals, she had it all swear never to do harm to Baldur.  Everything was happy to do so except the mistletoe plant, who refused.  Frigga, figuring that Baldur could probably handle himself against a puff of leaves and berries, decided that was good enough.

Flinging stuff at Baldur now became a favourite pass-time of the gods.  They'd gather around and toss spears, axes, swords, rocks, flaming wolverines, whatever they could think of at the god who couldn't be hurt.  Baldur took it in stride, considering it an honor to have all his friends and family attempting to good-naturedly murder him.  The only one who didn't get in on the fun was Hodur, Baldur's twin brother.  Hodur was the god of darkness and, proving Vikings had a cruel sense of humour (who knew?!), he was blind.

Enter Loki.  Loki was the god of trickery, mischief, fire, chaos and all-around douchebaggery.  Disguised as an old woman, Loki learned Baldur's weakness from Frigga and decided to grab some mistletoe and see what it did.  (If you're wondering why, there's no particular reason.  He's just a jerk like that.)  The next time the gods got together, Loki sidled up to Hodur and asked him why he wasn't getting in on the hilarious fun that was throwing shit at Baldur.

"I'm blind," Hodur told him, presumably while smacking him upside the head.

Loki took his hand and placed the mistletoe bough in it.  Assuring Hodur that this was just something he had to try ('cause seriously, flinging stuff at a god is even funnier when you can't see it!), Loki guided Hodur in aiming and throwing the mistletoe bough at the unsuspecting Baldur.

He straight up died.

After what was presumably the longest and most awkward silence in Viking history (with poor Hodur laughing and asking, "Did I get him?!"), another son of Odin, Hermod, agreed to ride down to Hel and bargain for Baldur's release.  He rode nine nights to the gates of Hel, whereupon he asked the goddess for Baldur's release.  She agreed, but only if all things, alive or dead, animate or not, wept for him.  If this seems a little demanding to you, clearly you aren't a Viking god.  Hermod agreed and returned to Frigga with the news.

Frigga was ready.  Sending out her messengers, the Elves, she organized the biggest day of mourning in the history of anything.  Everything, from men and animals to rocks and trees and presumably even that murderous bastard mistletoe cried their eyes out for the lost god of light.  There was one god, however, who refused to cry: Loki.

And so poor Baldur had to remain dead.

The gods were righteously pissed, and they set out to find Loki, eventually capturing him while he tried to escape disguised as a salmon (yeah).  Dragging him down to Hel, they lashed him to a rock and tied a poisonous snake over his head, who continually dripped acidic venom onto his face.  Loki's wife, Sigyn, faithfully stayed at his side, holding a bowl up to catch the venom before it could land on him and cause him inconceivable amounts of pain.  But every so often she had to leave to empty the bowl.  At those times, the venom caused Loki such unbearable pain that his writhing was felt all over the world.  So he will remain until Ragnarok, the end of the world.

And that, kids, is why there are earthquakes!  Sleep tight.

Oh, and Hodur?  Odin had another son, Vali, who was born and grew up in one day with the sole purpose of killing him.  If this strikes you as unfair, I have just one word for you: Vikings.

"Am I My Brother's Keeper?"

Romulus slew Remus.

Set slew Osiris.

Hodur slew Baldur.

And (spoiler alert!) Cain slew Abel.

Fratricide is just one of those things that happen when you're mythological.  In this particular example, Cain and Abel were the sons of Adam and Eve.  Cain was a farmer, and Abel a shepherd.  Both brothers gave an offering to God, who (proving himself to once again be a bit of a jerk) accepted Abel's offering of meat and rejected Cain's offering of vegetables, likely on account of him not also offering holy ranch dip.  This drove Cain into a jealous rage, causing him to murder the shit out of his unsuspecting brother.  Abel gets to become the Bible's first martyr, whilst Cain gets a big, juicy curse.

I don't have a problem with this story, aside from the nagging idea that God must have made Cain out to be a homicidal prick in order for this to happen in the first place.  (Consequently the same problem I have with Judas, but we'll get to that later.)  The problem I have with this story is what comes after Cain is cursed and banished from the land:

"And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.  And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch." - Genesis 4:16-17

I'll give you one minute to read that over and figure out what's off.

...

Okay, so ... Cain has a wife?  Anybody wondering where she came from?

Basically we have two options here.  One: there's now inexplicably a bunch of people unrelated to Adam and Eve, even though Adam was the first man in Genesis 2:5-7.  This brings us back around to the bizarre contradiction in creation stories found in Genesis 1 and 2.  Or two: Cain is boinking his sister.

Well, as weird and disturbing as it is, it must be option number two.  Genesis 2 says Adam was the first man, made out of dust, and that Eve his rib-wife was created to keep him company.  Setting aside that little stumble in Genesis 1:27 (covered in my second post), we've gone strong with the idea that there's only one family up until this poi-

"And Cain said unto the LORD, my punishment is greater than I can bear.  Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face I shall be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me."

Oh, goddamnit.

Who are you worried about, Cain?  Your dad?  'Cause he's the only other dude around now, remember?  No, you don't, do you?  That's okay.  We'll all just smile and nod because there are no contradictions in the Bible, right?

And just to prove that I'm not the only one baffled by this (and for laughs, totally for laughs), here's an actual, certified priest trying to answer the same question:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FcUzVKmLlk

Going to have to call the Pope, indeed.





As a little bonus story, Jewish Midrashic tradition (that is, a kind of set of Biblical footnotes that fill in some gaps in the text) says that Cain and Abel did each have sisters whom they were supposed to marry.  Cain had a twin sister, and Abel was one of a set of triplets with two sisters.  They each married their sisters, but Cain was jealous that Abel had an extra sister when he was the eldest (and therefore entitled to more incest, I guess.)  Cain's jealousy over this extra sister was another reason behind his murdering Abel.  I'm not sure if murdering your brother because you want to bone two of your sisters instead of just one is a better excuse for fratricide than because God rejected your veggie platter, but I'll leave that for you to decide.

And as another little aside, what I like to refer to as the extended fanfiction universe of the Bible (that is, all the traditions that have sprung up over the centuries that aren't in the actual book) tells a version of this story where Cain was actually the son of the snake from Genesis 3 - presumably from when Eve got really, really bored.  As I'm sure you're already aware, in the same extended fanfiction universe the snake is Satan in disguise.  So I suppose you could accept "He's the son of Satan" as an answer to the question, "Why did God make Cain a homicidal prick?" if you feel so inclined.  Just make sure to overlook the fact that, of the two of them, God has Satan outdone in the homicide department by a freaking landslide.  But that's a story for another day.

Vanishing Omnipresence

God's a busy guy.  I can only imagine how much crap this guy must put up with on a daily basis, what with being in charge of the entire universe.  Humans have a hard enough time taking care of one measly little planet, and there's six billion of us.  There's only one God.  I guess that's why, once in a while, God temporarily forgets that he's omnipresent.  Hey, it happens, right?

Genesis 3 is the first example the Bible gives us of God's vanishing cosmic power.  Eve, the rib-wife of the first man, is told by a snake to go munch fruit from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Eve's hesitant, but eventually the snake convinces her to do it (not by deceiving her, as is commonly believed, but by telling the truth: God doesn't want Adam and Eve to smarten up.)  So Adam and Eve do the most infamous lunch in history, God gets righteously pissed off, and the first couple get booted out of paradise, leaving all of us to wonder why the hell God put the forbidden tree in the middle of human territory in the first place if he didn't want anyone to touch it.

But tucked away in all that excitement is this:

The omnipresent God comes strolling through Eden, presumably whistling Stairway to Heaven or whatever songs divine beings listen to.  Adam hears him coming and, knowing that he's in deep shit, takes his wife and hides in a tree.

They hide from the Almighty ... in a tree.

Adam and Eve hide in a tree.  From the omnipotent, omnipresent God.

They hide in a TREE to escape GOD.

That's like being the target of a nation-wide FBI manhunt, and you hide in the White House.  By standing in the Oval Office with a lampshade on your head.

THEY HIDE IN A TREE TO ESCAPE GOD.

...

...

...

Okay.  Continuing on with the story:

"And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?" - Genesis 3:9

...

...

...

WHAT?!

Not only did Adam hide his stupid ass in a tree to escape the almighty, all-seeing LORD with a capital L-O-R-D, but it actually WORKED?!

No way.  No WAY.  Clearly I just overlooked some little detail, like the part where God points at Adam, laughs hysterically and yells, "Just kidding, I'm fucking omnipresent, bitch!  Seriously, get out of that tree and stop acting like an idiot."  I just need an actual church-goer to explain this to me, then it will all make sense:

"It's like if you have a kid who writes on the wall and you ask them, 'Did you write on the wall?' It might seem like a stupid question if you only have one kid. But you're just trying to get the kid to be honest with you. Of course you know the kid wrote on the wall.You're just trying to test their honesty." (By user M.Y. of Yahoo Answers)

Oh.  Okay.  Well, that would make sense if the question was this:

"... Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?" - Genesis 3:11.

But it's not.  Not yet.  God WALKS into Eden and asks Adam where he is.  He's omnipresent.  He's all-seeing and all-knowing, and he has to call out to Adam to find him.  That's what the words say.  You can't spin it any other way without stretching.

To be fair, it's a better explanation than what the professionals offer:

"The context of this verse is immediately after Adam had sinned.  ... Does this mean that God didn't know something?  Not at all.  Someone can easily ask a question to which they know the answer.  Usually, the reason to do that is to point something out or teach something.  Obviously, Adam and Eve had sinned.  God asked, "Adam, where are you?" Where was Adam?  He was hiding from God.  Adam's sin had destroyed his fellowship with the Lord.  God knew this and He was pointing it out to Adam.  It is a question we need to ask of ourselves.  Where am I?  Am I in fellowship with God or in rebellion against Him?" (from the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry)

Uh, right.  You shouldn't stretch so hard there, guys.  You might tear something.

Conflicted Creation

Continuing on with the wonkiness of Creation, let's skip ahead to Day 6.

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; and God saw that it was good.  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over the all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." - Genesis 1:24-26

Okay, so again fairly straightforward.  God creates man in his image and plunks him at the top of the food chain.  This must be Adam of Eden fame, the one whose rib/wife took the advice of a talking snake and got us all cursed.

But wait ...

"And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them." - Genesis 1:27

Wait.  What?  God makes man and woman at the same time?  So women aren't the spawn of man's bony bits?  This is kind of a big detail here, Bible.  This is explicitly stating that men and women were created equal!  No wife-subjugation for you!

Oh wait, this is promptly forgotten in Chapter 2.  Thanks, Bible.

Genesis 2 is the Adam and Eve story.  God makes Adam out of dust and sticks a soul into his nostrils, then plunks him in Eden with two trees he's not allowed to touch in the middle.  This the Biblical equivalent to making a Sim and then giving him a swimming pool with no ladder.  Adam complains that he's lonely, and God makes one of his ribs into a woman to keep him company.

But what happened to the man and woman who were created as equals in Genesis 1?  In fact, God says he'll let "them" have dominion over all the other animals, implying multiple people.  This makes sense when you consider that there are suddenly a bunch more people later on in Genesis 4.  But no, Genesis 2 makes it quite clear Adam was the first:

"And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.  But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." - Genesis 2:5-7.

That's Adam being created there.  After those other people have already been created.

I'm not really surprised by this, honestly.  Pretty much every ancient culture has a multitude of contradicting creation myths.  Stories change as they pass through generations with nobody to write down a hard copy, and with no mass communication, different groups living in different places, though technically members of the same religion, develop different myths.  Depending where you were in ancient Egypt, for example, you might believe that the earth was called into being by the craftsman god Ptah, or you might believe that it was pretty much ejaculated into being by Atum.  Considering what contemporary cultures were coming up with, the inconsistency in this ancient Jewish story isn't that bad.

Except that there are NO CONTRADICTIONS IN THE WORD OF GOD, right Bible?  Right.




As a side note, there's a medieval folktale that kind of bridges the two stories.  Though not Biblical by any means, a popular Jewish legend says that Eve was Adam's second wife, and that she was created to compensate his poor, bruised ego after the first ran away with an archangel.

Adam's first wife, created to be his equal, was Lilith.  Lilith, history's first feminist, refused to lie under Adam while they had sex.  Adam's pride just couldn't take the idea of having a woman on top, and so Lilith packed her bags and ran off to have a fling with Samael, God's naughtiest angel.  Samael is the angel of death in Jewish tradition; he basically exists to cause trouble and draw people to the Dark Side of the Force.  So yeah, this is pretty much the folkloric equivalent of dumping the jock to run away with the motorcycle-riding, chain-smoking bad boy.  Lilith refused to return to Eden, choosing to appear in approximately umpteen billion 20th century vampire stories instead.

Let There Be Light ... Again?

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Even if you've lived under a rock for the past few centuries, you're probably familiar with that first line of the Bible.  You probably also know that the first chapter of Genesis is about God creating the entire universe in under a week, which is impressive when you consider that most creation stories involve multiple gods and unfathomable stretches of time.  Maybe its the fact that God was working alone that causes things to get a little, well ... wonky.

"And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And the evening and the morning were the first day." - Genesis 1:3-5

Pretty straightforward.  On the first day, God makes light and darkness, night and day.  After all, if he wants to get everything done in seven days, creating the concept of a day is a good place to start.  But wait, on Day 4 ...

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.  And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made stars also.  And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.  And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good." - Genesis 1:14-18.

... he makes the day and night again?  Well, he makes the sun and moon, which I suppose might not have been there before (though exactly what was making the light before the sun and stars?  A giant, holy light bulb?  God's divine patio lanterns?) but then it specifically says he made the lights to divide the day from the night, the light from the darkness.

But this is Day 4. Days and nights have already existed for, well, four days.  Specifically, four "evenings" and "mornings" have passed, with light and darkness already created and separated on Day 1.  To be fair, most people would probably make a few doubles if they had to create the entire universe out of nothing (why else would there be 8000 different species of ants?), but day and night?  You'd think that one would be fairly obvious.

More Genesis shenanigans to come.