Bible Study
By Bock Jul 18th, 2010 | | Category: Religion, cricket
I have an old leather-bound King James bible that’s been in the family forever, and occasionally I flick through it at random. I’ve always loved the sonorous language, which is so powerful and so much richer than the insipid, watered-down new bibles of the twentieth century.
Now don’t get me wrong. I haven’t lost my marbles and gone all religious, but those crazy people from Castlebar got me thinking. Remember them? The lunatics denouncing gays with quotes from the Old Testament.
I was a bit rusty on my Old Testament. It was time to read it again.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy for a start.
Holy shit!
I now realise that the deities in those days did a lot more job-sharing than they do in latter times. There was less demarcation. It’s quite obvious that the God of the Old Testament was actually Satan double jobbing. This guy loves blood. He loves slaying and smiting and going in unto virgins.
He’s mad. The God of the Old Testament is Colonel Kurtz.
The whole biblical world is full of people beset by unclean spirits that have to be cast out. Out to fuck there, ya bastard unclean spirit, says the Prophet. Fuck off out of it!
I remember when I was a lad, asking a religion teacher about the five books of the Pentateuch, as we called it, or the Torah as it’s known to the Jews. Why don’t you tell us about Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy?
Ah, he said, that’s a bit boring. It’s all laws and things.
It sure is. Laws about when a rape victim should be killed and when gays should be killed, and when people who work on the Sabbath should be killed. And when everyone in your defeated enemy’s land should be killed, including babes in arms, all men and all married women, but making sure to keep the young virgins alive so that you can go in unto them.
This is the word of the Lord.
A fucking maniac.
Genesis, a book most sane people would read as a fairy-tale is the basis for the Sarah-Palin creationist fundamentalists in the US.
Even in this book, God is a demented homicidal maniac. When he realises that Man is a nasty bastard, and that creating such despicable creatures was a mistake, he decides to kill everyone. But he doesn’t stop there. A recurring theme throughout the book is God’s delight in seeing animals suffer, so he decides to drown everything. Cats, dogs, pigs, cows, sheep, goats. He doesn’t explain how he proposes to drown the fish, the ducks, the swans, the otters, the seals, the walruses, the shags, guillemots and cormorants, but we can only assume it was by magic. In those days, God didn’t really think things out.
He had wrath issues.
Anyway, he didn’t kill Noah who was six hundred years old at the time, and feeling every second of it. God commanded the old guy to build a ship 150 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet deep. A very dodgy design, in my opinion, likely to induce severe seasickness, but who am I to question God?
Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t tell Noah to take two of every animal into the Ark. He took fourteen of some, but only two of the unclean ones. Every animal in the world, all packed into a small boat. Imagine the smell.
Genesis tells us that it rained for forty days and that the waters rose fifteen cubits, which is twenty-two feet, covering all the twenty-two-foot mountains in the world. Yetis and alpacas breathed a sigh of relief, not to mention every non-aquatic bird in the world. It was a bit of an intelligence failure for God in many ways, but he set up a focus group for the debrief and they all learned from their mistakes.
Anyway, that was God’s first mass murder. The first of many in the Old Testament. He goes on to kill everyone in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and to fuck with Abraham’s head by telling him to kill his son Isaac.
God is a nasty piece of work in Genesis, obsessed with murder and sex. He kills poor Onan for having a wank.
It gets worse in Exodus, when the children of Israel leave Egypt looking for the land of Canaan which hath been given unto them by God, who doesn’t care that people live there already. The plan is to kill them all, which is pretty much what Charlton Heston does as he leads his people in a journey of conquest and ethnic cleansing.
God starts to get his kicks by killing babies, and smites the first-born of all the Egyptians, from the Pharaoh to the servants, and even their animals. Mwoohahahaha!! says God, in a little-known passage from Exodus.
He also starts to hand down laws.
A bull that gores somebody must be stoned to death. Not stabbed. Stoned, for maximum pain. If it happened due to the owner’s carelessness, he has to be stoned as well. Of course, if the gored person is only a slave, the bull’s owner has to pay the slave’s owner, but the bull still gets stoned.
Children who curse their parents must be killed, along with those who lie with animals.
Lie.
It reminds me of something my good friend Parkenstein says: I’m great in bed. Two minutes and I’m off to sleep. Not a peep out of me.
If they killed people who only lay with animals, I wonder what they did to people who fucked animals?
Obviously, working on the Sabbath gets you killed, but that goes without saying.
The thing that amazes me about it is how violent Moses turns out to be, killing people for the slightest offence, but on mature reflection, maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise. Look how influential he became in the NRA.
I was going to talk you through the rest of the Torah, but in truth, the whole thing is more of the same. Smiting. Slaying thine enemies. Taking unto thyself thine enemy’s women. Slaying thine enemy’s first-born. Sacrificing herds of cattle, the smoke sweet unto God. Pestilence. Plague. Slaying. Smiting. When and to whom thou may sell thine daughter.
I trudged on through the Prophets, the Psalms, Judges, Ecclesiastes, endless slaying and smiting.
Smiting, slaying and pestilence.
Jesus Christ, I was longing for the kind and tolerant New Testament, but Jesus seems to have little trouble with the things the old-timers said. In fact, he seems to be your standard, orthodox Imam that anyone might expect on the TV these days in gold-rimmed glasses defending some beheading in the name of Allah.
In fairness, at least there’s a comic side to Jesus.
My favourite story so far is the one about the Gadarene swine. Do you remember it?
Jesus goes into a town of the Gadarenes, and he meets a fellow possessed by unclean spirits. As I said, everyone was possessed by unclean spirits in those days, but in this story, Jesus becomes Brian. He casts out the evil spirits, whose name is Legion, and they fly into a herd of 2000 pigs. The pigs go apeshit and jump off a cliff into the sea where they’re all drowned, and Jesus is delighted.
Look, he says. They’re gone, the bastards.
Unfortunately, the people of the town aren’t so happy.
They come unto Jesus, and beseech him, saying , Would you kindly fuck off out of here and not come back, you mad bastard. All our fucking pigs are drowned.
Ah, this Bible study is great.
“the God of the Old Testament was actually Satan double jobbing.”
Precisely what many Gnostics believed. They took a close look at the world, and – since they could not imagine one without a creator – concluded that he/she/it was an egregious bar-steward.
Does the Good Book explain what the Jews were doing with 2,000 porkers? – was the above BC, before crubeens, or AC, after crubeens?
Brilliant!
Not something I say easily.
But this piece was one of your best!
I’m looking forward to your review of the third instalment of the thora, that is, the Koran/Qouran. Same stuff with new twists. I have one here, but unfortunately no time to study it properly and write about it. But the three monotheistic religions (jewish, christian, islam) all have the same roots in an authoritarian god with issues. The similarities, as far as I kind of studied it, is quite striking.
Poor ould Onan-he was just using the withdrawal method so he would’nt get his sister in-law knocked up-no evil contraceptives for Onan- and gets called a wanker for his troubles (and then struck down by God on top of that)
Dorothy Parker named her budgie Onan, because he spilled his seed.
“God of the Old Testament was Satan.” Really Bock?
@ idf.soldiergirl: ““God of the Old Testament was Satan.” Really Bock?”
This was the belief of the Gnostic Christians – and based on the text of the Torah/OT, it’s hard to disagree. And what happened to those people? Hmmm – let’s see: they were massacred in the Albigensian Crusade by our friends in the Catholic Church (who then went on to butcher other undesirable flavours of Christians, then Muslims, as well as Jews). The phrase “Kill them all, let God sort them out” came form this ignominious episode. Thanks, POPE@!
Then again, given your nick……why should your comment be so surprising? If you’re implying (in a TEDIOUS PAVLOVIAN KNEE JERK) that Bock is anti-Semitic, then might I suggest you re-read his post, which also includes traditional Christianity as part of the Desert Death Cult Clusterfuck…room enough for Jahweh, Jesus and Allah. Equal opportunity Satanism. I’m an Aleister Crowley man myself.
Reading comprehension: Try It sometime.
“God starts to get his kicks by killing babies, and smites the first-born of all the Egyptians, from the Pharaoh to the servants, and even their animals.”
Typical that, isn’t it. The poor average Egyptian worker getting caught up in and industrial dispute between the boss and an immigrant worker’s trade union. Let my people go! honestly, in a recession everyone has to tighten their belts. They were were they were.
Anyway, I think you have to remember that it was a different time, way back at the formation of the earth, 12,000 years ago. Back when a god could really work out his issues without bottling his (for god is most definitely he) emotions up. That’s not healthy.
Nowadays you throw a lightening bolt and some bureaucrat starts pissing on about energy effeciency.
Bock reading back over the Book did it help you to understand the mindset of a certain current middle eastern state that sometimes thinks itself European?
No doubt, as a Jew currently living in Limerick I find certain topics and comments on this local website insultive. As a result I rarely comment, but instead just browse the articles my partner contributes to this site.
My personal opinion of Bock is just that, my personal opinion. I won’t respond to assumtions/accusations of strangers against my personality.
Definition of reading comprehension: Bock = dermotmoconnor?!
This post is interpreted by me as a piece of comedic interpretation, And for me it works.
The ” double jobbing ” held no intendres for me other than to reinforce comedically the amount of violence in the old testament.
I’d have to say that, going on the evidence in the Old Testament, God’s behaviour in those times is considerably more Satanic than benign, unless you think that encouraging rape, mass murder and torture are all acceptable attributes in a just deity.
There have been posts on Christianity and Islam here as well, at which people took offence. But this post is not about Jews. I haven’t got around to that yet. This post is about the old and New Testaments. The Old Testament, as far as I know, is shared by several religions, all of which sprang from these stories.
Ah those were the good old days when smiting was all the rage.Everyone was at it!!.Anyhow reading through this thread has confirmed what I always suspected religon to be.Nothing but fucking devil worship wrapped up in fake piety and “goodness”.Religeous nuts and their followers have brought nothing but evil and suffering to the world.In fact it seems to be their mission on earth.Interesting to know that at least there were some christian sects who were honest enough to admit it was satanic worship.I think there is one of those sects somewrere in Iraq as well,They were smited by a suicide bomber not so long ago if I remember correctly.
@ IDF Girl
The only reference that could be considered to be related to Judaism, is that he speaks of the god of the Old Testement, which is pretty much the Torah. It actually smacks of arrogence that you would assume that is was a reference to Jews in particular. The Old Testiment is also the basis for the christian and muslum faiths. Thus, in one fell post, he has offended all three. After all, one in the Torah is worth two in the Talmud.
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I think I remember reading aan article on a study made by Psychologists of the bible. They found that god wasa Sociopath. I think that’s where their funding ended too.
As regards saying the god of the old testiment was Satan, I’m sure Dermot would agree, As above, So below.
I’m not sure what that Dermot O Connor bit is about.
Bock – “’I’m not sure what that Dermot O Connor bit is about.”
Dermot O Connor – I’m an Aleister Crowley man myself.
While Crowley didn’t coin the phrase “As Above, So Below” he did make it famous.
ROFL…
What really puzzles me is that a dodgy manuscript (by yet another small tribe of Arabic people, a long time ago), is being used by fanatics and lunatics all across Planet Earth to spread destruction and oppression. There’s history, of course. When the Roman Empire was bolloxed, the Romans needed a new angle to spin the idea of one emperor, one god (silly, isn’t it!!!!).
Just burn the friggin book and get on with life.
Great post Bock.
Can’t wait to get home and get the good book out.
FT Duck,
Don’t forget to Burn After Reading!
The bible is more f*cked up than Anglo Irish Bank