Tomfoolery Blog

Archive for the ‘the bible’ Category

Last time, I covered Genesis up to Noah leaving the Ark. I’ve already mentioned the ridiculous cursing of Canaan, so lets move on. After a long list of the descendants of Noah, we get to the Tower of Babel. Apparently, all these descendants of Noah spoke the same language, and got together to build a Tower to reach the heavens. Therefore God decided to confuse their languages so that they couldn’t understand each other, and then scatter them everywhere. So, clearly God does not want everyone to get together and understand each other, he clearly wanted to put the brakes on human society.

Then, Abram (later Abraham) appears. He has a nephew called Lot, and a wife called Sarai. Abram ends up in Egypt, the Pharaoh fancies his wife, God punishes Pharaoh for this, etc.

What I find bizarre is the morals involving Sarai. In Genesis 16, it is revealed that Sarai has not had children, so she allows Abram to have sex with her maidservant Hagar. God is apparently fine with this (he does nothing to stop it) so is having children more important than loyalty to your wife?

Genesis 17 brings in the requirement of circumcision, but gives no explanation as to why. Is there any reason why God doesn’t like foreskins? Who knows.

For now I’ll finish off by giving my take on Sodom and Gomorrah. These two cities were supposedly doing wicked things. What I find very interesting, is that 18:20 tell us that God hears rumours about these cities, then says that he will go down and check. Now, I’m no theologian, but surely an omnipotent being doesn’t need to ‘go down and see’, they would just know.But anyway…

God sends two angels to check out Sodom. Lot insists that they stay at his house, and the people of Sodom show up at his house to demand that they can have sex with them (19:5).  Even though Lot offers his virgin daughters instead, the people are determined to have some hot angel action. So the angels blind them, and Lot and his family escape. God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah with sulphur. Lot’s wife looks back, and is turned into a pillar of salt.

There is no explanation for why Lot’s wife is punished this way, and it seems very weird, but not half as weird as what happens to Lot and his daughters…

I’ve decided to embark on a personal ‘challenge’: I will be reading the Bible from cover-to-cover. I’m hoping to get a better understanding of it than most Christians, and I want to see if it really is evil as many atheists say it is. I’ve chosen to read the New International Version (NIV). This isn’t because of accessibility issues or anything like that, it’s simply because it’s one I happen to have in the flat.

So then, Genesis, the first book of the Bible. God makes everything in six days. Doesn’t go into details, and doesn’t mention anything either true or useful. However, it does repeatedly say that animals reproduce ‘according to their kinds’, which must be where the creationist term ‘kind’ comes from. Of course, it makes no mention of what a kind is. Although Genesis is clearly a book of a primitive people trying to understand the world, so no surprises there.

I’ll spare you the details of the oft-told tale of Adam and Eve, but I am amazed that people don’t take issue with how long people live. Adam supposedly lived till he was 930, Seth till he was 807, and Methusalah till he was 969! I’d love to hear Rowan Williams explain that.

Then comes the flood. Not much to add here, although how a 600 year old man can build a ship that houses every ‘kind’ of animal is beyond me. Way more interesting is what happens afterwards. Noah gets drunk, and falls asleep naked (we’ve all done that). His son Ham sees him, and because of this Ham’s son Canaan is cursed to be a slave to his brothers. Nice.