Tuesday 7 April 2009
I'm back... I think
OK, going to restart this. I've got most of the way through the O(T)T so will go back and get it on with the Genesis. Erm. Could be fun.
Thursday 7 February 2008
Genesis 19.1 – 22.24
And now… the main event… ladies and gentleman, in the red corner weighing in at 2 cities of several thousand people we have Sodom and Gomorrah… facing them, in the blue corner, weighing in at exactly nothing, ‘The Creator’… God… of the Desert!!!
Right, here we go again, more alleged morality from the man who knows most. 2 angels turn up and are guested by the rather unfortunate Lot, when they are accosted by ‘the men of the city’ – implication being ‘all the men of the city’. This, I’ll happily say, is a bad thing. Not sure whether there will still be 10 innocent left as the above wager suggested but I think we can let that fly. At this point Lot offers his own virgin daughters to the lecherous mob whom were refused. Gang of rapists – BAD! Prostituting your own daughters to save 2 angel’s arses – GOOD!
The mob are struck blind. Fair enough, works for me. Now it’s time to flee, without some sons-in-law-to-be who unfortunately think that this is some kind of joke. Bad move, along with Lot’s wife who made the crime of looking back when told not to. Admittedly I’d take being turned into a pillar of salt over having to put up with these loonies on a regular basis.
Just to add a final icing to this confection of depravity, the virginal sluts aka Lot’s daughters decide to get their father pissed and screw him as they seem to think that there are no other men, period. If this is a normal family I’ll be horrified, otherwise god’s antics have really played havoc with these poor people.
Back on the road with Abraham, Gen 20 sees him pulling the same ‘she’s my sister’ stunt to the king of Ga’rer. However, god is in a better mood by now and warns the poor chap not to touch her because she’s already married. For some reason this gets him in a flap about sin, and the fact that his kingdom is in this state because – same story – he’s been lied to by the prophet. Again Abraham gets handed a pile of produce, and then ‘cures’ the house because god had made them sterile due to the almost sinning (20.6). I don’t get that. God stopped him from sinning but still punished his entire house for sinning. Not a fantastic advert for moderation there, then.
More family problems are on the cards. Abe becomes a father again aged 100 – good work if you can get it – but his now satisfied wife now throws her ex-servant & Abe’s son out. The rest of 21 is a little muddled, god after having told Abe to allow the expulsion decides to take pity on the evictees, and 22+ seems to involve a well dispute with the king he ripped off in the last chapter. A strange combination of topics.
One of the more famous chapters is next – 22, the aborted sacrifice of “[Abraham’s] only son, Isaac” (conveniently forgetting the son of the ex-servant who by now is a pretty good archer allegedly). God demands the sacrifice, Abe almost seals the deal but is then halted, and the spontaneous appearance of a ram means that all go home happy. The chapter then degenerates in to more dynastic lists and comes to an untidy end not far later.
Now, we need to get this into some sort of context. The test is pretty basic – Is Abraham willing to obey anything that he is told to do? He passes this with flying colours. As a reader what are we to make of the situation. The standard line is that god is merciful for saving Isaac. To my uneducated eyes this is ‘saving’ in the same way that pulling a child that you’ve been dangling over a precipice is ‘saving’ them. Should that child have been put in that situation in the first place? I think we can call this sort of stunt ‘pulling a Michael Jackson’…
Sacrifice is a word that gets a lot of use in Genesis. We’ve had blood sacrifice of animals but at no previous time has human life been requested. If this was a punishment then something terminal would have happened so we cannot look at this event in this light. If god was truly merciful I would have imagined that a test of this nature could have been avoided, and maybe Abraham’s life alone would be put in the balance.
Unfortunately I can only come to the conclusion that this is an example for the reader – follow orders to the end, and be thankful if those orders aren’t unpleasant or immoral… and if they are, well, tough luck. I find it somewhat ironic that this fine example of ‘only following orders’ comes from the holy books of a people who were annihilated by a very efficient enemy that used exactly the same moral defence of their own actions. I also have to take the view that any Christian preacher who extols the virtues of Abraham is looking for you to suspend your own judgement in the face of a higher calling.
This is nothing, I repeat, nothing about mercy. If any other agent had made the request we would look at it as immoral. But it was god’s request, nothing god can do is immoral, god is always right. Millions of victims of Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot would certainly appreciate that line of though, a sentiment that we can trace back to the more insane of the Roman Emperors and beyond.
Right, here we go again, more alleged morality from the man who knows most. 2 angels turn up and are guested by the rather unfortunate Lot, when they are accosted by ‘the men of the city’ – implication being ‘all the men of the city’. This, I’ll happily say, is a bad thing. Not sure whether there will still be 10 innocent left as the above wager suggested but I think we can let that fly. At this point Lot offers his own virgin daughters to the lecherous mob whom were refused. Gang of rapists – BAD! Prostituting your own daughters to save 2 angel’s arses – GOOD!
The mob are struck blind. Fair enough, works for me. Now it’s time to flee, without some sons-in-law-to-be who unfortunately think that this is some kind of joke. Bad move, along with Lot’s wife who made the crime of looking back when told not to. Admittedly I’d take being turned into a pillar of salt over having to put up with these loonies on a regular basis.
Just to add a final icing to this confection of depravity, the virginal sluts aka Lot’s daughters decide to get their father pissed and screw him as they seem to think that there are no other men, period. If this is a normal family I’ll be horrified, otherwise god’s antics have really played havoc with these poor people.
Back on the road with Abraham, Gen 20 sees him pulling the same ‘she’s my sister’ stunt to the king of Ga’rer. However, god is in a better mood by now and warns the poor chap not to touch her because she’s already married. For some reason this gets him in a flap about sin, and the fact that his kingdom is in this state because – same story – he’s been lied to by the prophet. Again Abraham gets handed a pile of produce, and then ‘cures’ the house because god had made them sterile due to the almost sinning (20.6). I don’t get that. God stopped him from sinning but still punished his entire house for sinning. Not a fantastic advert for moderation there, then.
More family problems are on the cards. Abe becomes a father again aged 100 – good work if you can get it – but his now satisfied wife now throws her ex-servant & Abe’s son out. The rest of 21 is a little muddled, god after having told Abe to allow the expulsion decides to take pity on the evictees, and 22+ seems to involve a well dispute with the king he ripped off in the last chapter. A strange combination of topics.
One of the more famous chapters is next – 22, the aborted sacrifice of “[Abraham’s] only son, Isaac” (conveniently forgetting the son of the ex-servant who by now is a pretty good archer allegedly). God demands the sacrifice, Abe almost seals the deal but is then halted, and the spontaneous appearance of a ram means that all go home happy. The chapter then degenerates in to more dynastic lists and comes to an untidy end not far later.
Now, we need to get this into some sort of context. The test is pretty basic – Is Abraham willing to obey anything that he is told to do? He passes this with flying colours. As a reader what are we to make of the situation. The standard line is that god is merciful for saving Isaac. To my uneducated eyes this is ‘saving’ in the same way that pulling a child that you’ve been dangling over a precipice is ‘saving’ them. Should that child have been put in that situation in the first place? I think we can call this sort of stunt ‘pulling a Michael Jackson’…
Sacrifice is a word that gets a lot of use in Genesis. We’ve had blood sacrifice of animals but at no previous time has human life been requested. If this was a punishment then something terminal would have happened so we cannot look at this event in this light. If god was truly merciful I would have imagined that a test of this nature could have been avoided, and maybe Abraham’s life alone would be put in the balance.
Unfortunately I can only come to the conclusion that this is an example for the reader – follow orders to the end, and be thankful if those orders aren’t unpleasant or immoral… and if they are, well, tough luck. I find it somewhat ironic that this fine example of ‘only following orders’ comes from the holy books of a people who were annihilated by a very efficient enemy that used exactly the same moral defence of their own actions. I also have to take the view that any Christian preacher who extols the virtues of Abraham is looking for you to suspend your own judgement in the face of a higher calling.
This is nothing, I repeat, nothing about mercy. If any other agent had made the request we would look at it as immoral. But it was god’s request, nothing god can do is immoral, god is always right. Millions of victims of Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot would certainly appreciate that line of though, a sentiment that we can trace back to the more insane of the Roman Emperors and beyond.
Wednesday 6 February 2008
Genesis 10.1 – 18.33
After the breathless excitement of the last chapter, Gen 10 is another mind-numbingly dull family tree. We don’t really get much of a sense of scale, mind you, all seems rather local and how any of these descendents got to Papua New Guinea is beyond me. Maybe that’s just my lack of faith speaking. I’d never have guessed.
God’s being a git again. Men decided to build a tower, and in what can only be called a fit of jealousy (11.6 “… only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be possible”) he scatters humanity and mixes up the languages. It’s almost like our great deity wants mankind to live in eternal strife. Now, if I was going to start making moral judgements on the behaviour of ‘him upstairs’ I would find it somewhat lacking and I’m only 8 pages into the book. I much prefer the Greek way of looking at their gods – they knew that they were a bunch of capricious maniacs and spent their time hoping that they wouldn’t have to deal with them!
11.27 gives us the first sniff of Abram, who’s already stuck with a barren wife. In an ominous hint of things to come, 12.7 is where god promises the land of Canaan to Abram’s descendents. The obligatory altar is erected and god appears rather then just speaks. We don’t have any falling on faces but we can assume that happened.
From 12.11 there’s a very odd story about A’s missus masquerading as his sister, and ending up in the Pharaoh’s house – implication that ‘house’ means ‘bed’. Good work. Just as well she can’t have kids, innit? This obviously pisses god off who instead of taking it out on Abram who’s idea it was, sticks it to the Egyptians instead. This is depressing. The scene is already set for blatant hypocrisy with the innocent party getting screwed over whilst god’s mate walks off with the cash (and flocks, herds, tents & etc).
Again, just to rub salt in the wound (ahem), Abe & Lot have so many possessions that Lot has to bugger off to Sodom (ahem 2). We get a bunch of confusing information about a war, and the fact that the plain on which the cities were built had bitumen, ending with Abraham leading 318 of his men on an assault against the raiders and the recovery of Lot. The possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah are also returned which is nice of god as they’ve already been branded as sinners…
Gen 15 sees Abe a little irritated that he hasn’t had kids, but instead of being smited he gets promised a load of them and has a nice little sacrifice to celebrate. We also get promises of oppression, and that the land between Egypt and the Euphrates will be Abe’s descendents. That’s fine, apart from the fact that there are a variety of such claimants and the whole region went to shit millennia ago. Anyway. At this point (16) we get the servant been given as surrogate, followed by the birth of Ishmael, which should give us some sense of incompatibility between what’s written here and how we view life today.
Gen 17 has god on his weird order path again. First he change’s Abe’s name to Abraham, promises to be the god of Abe’s descendents, and for the honour requires circumcision – down to and including male slaves. There’s also more divisive mutterings with Abe’s son & son to be – they will be treated differently by the sounds of it and we know how well that went for Cain & Abel.
The scene is now set for fire & brimstone. We’ve not been told why god doesn’t like the cities of Sod & Gom, or have actually had ‘sin’ defined in any way, shape or form. The bet is made, and if 10 good men aren’t found in the cities then they’ll be the target of a fair old battering.
I’m leaving it here tonight. This is all more long winded then I thought it would be. As far as it goes I’m getting the idea that the god of the desert is not a very pleasant entity. Arbitrary is hardly the word for some of his actions, we have the acceptance of slavery (well, that all started with naked Noah), and god seems to be both scared and jealous of his creation. The destruction of the tower was very telling.
The morality behind the sister/wife/Egypt episode is disturbing. You are lied to by god’s favourite and you suffer the consequences. The impregnation of servants is slightly less so (as long as you accept slavery, that is) but what I find rather intriguing is the sentence “and I will be their God” statement in 17.8. We know that this is a monotheistic statement, but I can’t help pondering the alternative – are other men entirely godless or are there other gods that they worship that are beyond the scope of the book? “their god” is not necessarily the same as “the god” is it? I will return to this question in the future.
More when I can see the screen properly again…
God’s being a git again. Men decided to build a tower, and in what can only be called a fit of jealousy (11.6 “… only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be possible”) he scatters humanity and mixes up the languages. It’s almost like our great deity wants mankind to live in eternal strife. Now, if I was going to start making moral judgements on the behaviour of ‘him upstairs’ I would find it somewhat lacking and I’m only 8 pages into the book. I much prefer the Greek way of looking at their gods – they knew that they were a bunch of capricious maniacs and spent their time hoping that they wouldn’t have to deal with them!
11.27 gives us the first sniff of Abram, who’s already stuck with a barren wife. In an ominous hint of things to come, 12.7 is where god promises the land of Canaan to Abram’s descendents. The obligatory altar is erected and god appears rather then just speaks. We don’t have any falling on faces but we can assume that happened.
From 12.11 there’s a very odd story about A’s missus masquerading as his sister, and ending up in the Pharaoh’s house – implication that ‘house’ means ‘bed’. Good work. Just as well she can’t have kids, innit? This obviously pisses god off who instead of taking it out on Abram who’s idea it was, sticks it to the Egyptians instead. This is depressing. The scene is already set for blatant hypocrisy with the innocent party getting screwed over whilst god’s mate walks off with the cash (and flocks, herds, tents & etc).
Again, just to rub salt in the wound (ahem), Abe & Lot have so many possessions that Lot has to bugger off to Sodom (ahem 2). We get a bunch of confusing information about a war, and the fact that the plain on which the cities were built had bitumen, ending with Abraham leading 318 of his men on an assault against the raiders and the recovery of Lot. The possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah are also returned which is nice of god as they’ve already been branded as sinners…
Gen 15 sees Abe a little irritated that he hasn’t had kids, but instead of being smited he gets promised a load of them and has a nice little sacrifice to celebrate. We also get promises of oppression, and that the land between Egypt and the Euphrates will be Abe’s descendents. That’s fine, apart from the fact that there are a variety of such claimants and the whole region went to shit millennia ago. Anyway. At this point (16) we get the servant been given as surrogate, followed by the birth of Ishmael, which should give us some sense of incompatibility between what’s written here and how we view life today.
Gen 17 has god on his weird order path again. First he change’s Abe’s name to Abraham, promises to be the god of Abe’s descendents, and for the honour requires circumcision – down to and including male slaves. There’s also more divisive mutterings with Abe’s son & son to be – they will be treated differently by the sounds of it and we know how well that went for Cain & Abel.
The scene is now set for fire & brimstone. We’ve not been told why god doesn’t like the cities of Sod & Gom, or have actually had ‘sin’ defined in any way, shape or form. The bet is made, and if 10 good men aren’t found in the cities then they’ll be the target of a fair old battering.
I’m leaving it here tonight. This is all more long winded then I thought it would be. As far as it goes I’m getting the idea that the god of the desert is not a very pleasant entity. Arbitrary is hardly the word for some of his actions, we have the acceptance of slavery (well, that all started with naked Noah), and god seems to be both scared and jealous of his creation. The destruction of the tower was very telling.
The morality behind the sister/wife/Egypt episode is disturbing. You are lied to by god’s favourite and you suffer the consequences. The impregnation of servants is slightly less so (as long as you accept slavery, that is) but what I find rather intriguing is the sentence “and I will be their God” statement in 17.8. We know that this is a monotheistic statement, but I can’t help pondering the alternative – are other men entirely godless or are there other gods that they worship that are beyond the scope of the book? “their god” is not necessarily the same as “the god” is it? I will return to this question in the future.
More when I can see the screen properly again…
Genesis 1.1 – 9.29
And so we begin… or something equally prophetic, profound, or more likely Pythonesque. Anyway, it can’t be worse then Dan Brown. I digress…
The start is rather cryptic. We have heavens, earth, and a somewhat mysterious deep that seems to be spread both above and below. This all gets separated, and we get plants, although oddly we get these springing up before the Sun, Moon, and stars. Animals are brought forth from the water - again, it seems that we only get birds & fish on day 5 but land animals and our good selves have to wait until day 6.
1.27 throws us on a curve already “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” then gives them the ‘be fruitful/multiply/dominion’ spiel before the end of day 6. Apart from a huge amount of needless repetition the main area of interest is that men and women have been created simultaneous…
This gets all the more confusing after his day of rest (2.1) – why does a being that powerful need to rest? – when 2.4 starts with a different creation story. 2.4 same day earth was created, 2.5 no plants, 2.6 mist watering ground, 2.7 man formed from dust, 2.8 Garden of Eden, 2.9 good stuff and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The rest of 2 involves the creation of animals and finally woman from man.
Now, correct me if there’s something fundamentally incorrect with the above. We have 2 conflicting stories, which even if you take story #1’s man/woman part at the most flexible you still have birds being created out of turn (with fish for #1, with animals for #2).
You’ve got to love creationists. Next time you speak to one ask them which is correct – Gen 1.20-23 or Gen 2.19-20. They are contradictory. End of story.
Gen 3 is god’s first strop, and women are to blame (this becomes a recurring, and rather tiring, theme). God’s already created something – man – and then given orders, I dare say knowing full well that they’ll be broken, and punishes duly. It gets worse with Gen 4, when god isn’t pleased with Cain’s agrarian offerings. Of course Cain got pissed off, and it seems that god’s definitely prodding the poor lad. Seems like another excuse for a creative punishment to be handed out.
The rest of 4 and 5 gives us wives appearing out of thin air – well, thin air if you accept creation #2, maybe not if you accept the first go… We get a lot of generational nonsense (which goes a long way to explaining the creationist timeline) and by the time we hit Gen 5 Noah is on the scene.
Somehow by 6.5 man was continually evil. Great job, god, you made a fantastic creation! Now let me think… do I detect a throwing of toys from the pram? Er, yeah, what else do you think’s going to happen. 7 gets us saddled up, and it looks like a very selective 150 day bath that does away with animals – flesh - but not plants. Spooky. I suppose that explains the olive leaf. What also impresses me is that as soon as the boat land, 8.20, Noah builds an altar and sacrifices a whole bunch of the animals that he’s just saved. Nice. The fact that god likes the smell (no stomach, has god, another on-going theme) is equally disturbing.
Gen 9’s pretty entertaining. We get more rules, including the kosher one, and the creation of the rainbow to remind god not to drown everything again. Can’t have heard of global warming at that point. Noah now invents wine, and also ‘getting pissed and passing out naked’. I like this man. Ah, hold that a second, he also curses his son Canaan to be a slave for walking in on the unclothed drunk and telling his brothers. With god having wiped out the rest of the human race I suppose that there’s no-one else around to be a bastard to. This is yet another one of these all too familiar themes…
Here endeth the first lesson.
The start is rather cryptic. We have heavens, earth, and a somewhat mysterious deep that seems to be spread both above and below. This all gets separated, and we get plants, although oddly we get these springing up before the Sun, Moon, and stars. Animals are brought forth from the water - again, it seems that we only get birds & fish on day 5 but land animals and our good selves have to wait until day 6.
1.27 throws us on a curve already “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” then gives them the ‘be fruitful/multiply/dominion’ spiel before the end of day 6. Apart from a huge amount of needless repetition the main area of interest is that men and women have been created simultaneous…
This gets all the more confusing after his day of rest (2.1) – why does a being that powerful need to rest? – when 2.4 starts with a different creation story. 2.4 same day earth was created, 2.5 no plants, 2.6 mist watering ground, 2.7 man formed from dust, 2.8 Garden of Eden, 2.9 good stuff and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The rest of 2 involves the creation of animals and finally woman from man.
Now, correct me if there’s something fundamentally incorrect with the above. We have 2 conflicting stories, which even if you take story #1’s man/woman part at the most flexible you still have birds being created out of turn (with fish for #1, with animals for #2).
You’ve got to love creationists. Next time you speak to one ask them which is correct – Gen 1.20-23 or Gen 2.19-20. They are contradictory. End of story.
Gen 3 is god’s first strop, and women are to blame (this becomes a recurring, and rather tiring, theme). God’s already created something – man – and then given orders, I dare say knowing full well that they’ll be broken, and punishes duly. It gets worse with Gen 4, when god isn’t pleased with Cain’s agrarian offerings. Of course Cain got pissed off, and it seems that god’s definitely prodding the poor lad. Seems like another excuse for a creative punishment to be handed out.
The rest of 4 and 5 gives us wives appearing out of thin air – well, thin air if you accept creation #2, maybe not if you accept the first go… We get a lot of generational nonsense (which goes a long way to explaining the creationist timeline) and by the time we hit Gen 5 Noah is on the scene.
Somehow by 6.5 man was continually evil. Great job, god, you made a fantastic creation! Now let me think… do I detect a throwing of toys from the pram? Er, yeah, what else do you think’s going to happen. 7 gets us saddled up, and it looks like a very selective 150 day bath that does away with animals – flesh - but not plants. Spooky. I suppose that explains the olive leaf. What also impresses me is that as soon as the boat land, 8.20, Noah builds an altar and sacrifices a whole bunch of the animals that he’s just saved. Nice. The fact that god likes the smell (no stomach, has god, another on-going theme) is equally disturbing.
Gen 9’s pretty entertaining. We get more rules, including the kosher one, and the creation of the rainbow to remind god not to drown everything again. Can’t have heard of global warming at that point. Noah now invents wine, and also ‘getting pissed and passing out naked’. I like this man. Ah, hold that a second, he also curses his son Canaan to be a slave for walking in on the unclothed drunk and telling his brothers. With god having wiped out the rest of the human race I suppose that there’s no-one else around to be a bastard to. This is yet another one of these all too familiar themes…
Here endeth the first lesson.
Tuesday 5 February 2008
Intro & stuff
'Morning. For some reason I have decided to do a bit of reading, more precisely a Harper Collins edition of the Bible, Revised Standard Edition. Part of what kicked me off was a legal situation that required swearing an oath... now I have no problem with that apart from the swearing on the bible bit. Sorry... takes my sense of irony a little too far that does, confirming that something you believe is true is so, while you don't feel the same about what you swear the oath by. All resolved thanks to the 1977 Oaths Act but that's beside the point.
However, this, and several other episodes in the near past, got me thinking.
I was Christened when little, are nominally CofE, spent 10 years as a Scout, yadda yadda yadda. What, exactly, does all this mean? As far as I can see not much. I've always been pretty skeptical over sweeping unsubstantiated claims, and have no idea how books several thousands of years old hold such, in some cases literal, sway over us.
So, I don't believe in anything. The older and uglier I get, the less I do. Now, this is the bit that confuses the religious nuts amongst us - I don't know so I choose not to believe. I don't want to fall into the trap that religious belief lays for us as an explanation for life, the universe and everything. Call me arrogant, fine, but that's somewhat hypocritical in my view. I also hate god in the way that I hate invisible unicorns - hate, or any other emotion, is useless when used against nothing.
By a somewhat circuitous route I've come here. I decided to read t'bible from start to finish. I aired the idea that I'd blog it on a forum that I've now been banned from (oops) which had some encouraging responses so what the hell (...?), why not?
Now, I've made it as far as Numbers, but I'll go back and comment on the first books anyway to keep everything in order. Suffice to say the plot has thickened and several genocides have been committed with Moses, Joseph, Abraham and God getting pretty medieval on a wide variety of asses. Still no sign of any afterlife, mind you, with God being pretty content to allow his favourites to live a long life (usually after fucking with them royally) and also making his enemies die in a variety of interesting ways.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
Any commentry I make about 'x doing y' or 'I think a of b' where I mention any characters from the texts (up to and including, El, LORD, or whatever he calls himself) will be in the literary sense. By saying 'god can't have been happy with the Egyptians' I am in no way implying that 'god' exists outside the pages of the book.
Just so you know.
Enjoy!
However, this, and several other episodes in the near past, got me thinking.
I was Christened when little, are nominally CofE, spent 10 years as a Scout, yadda yadda yadda. What, exactly, does all this mean? As far as I can see not much. I've always been pretty skeptical over sweeping unsubstantiated claims, and have no idea how books several thousands of years old hold such, in some cases literal, sway over us.
So, I don't believe in anything. The older and uglier I get, the less I do. Now, this is the bit that confuses the religious nuts amongst us - I don't know so I choose not to believe. I don't want to fall into the trap that religious belief lays for us as an explanation for life, the universe and everything. Call me arrogant, fine, but that's somewhat hypocritical in my view. I also hate god in the way that I hate invisible unicorns - hate, or any other emotion, is useless when used against nothing.
By a somewhat circuitous route I've come here. I decided to read t'bible from start to finish. I aired the idea that I'd blog it on a forum that I've now been banned from (oops) which had some encouraging responses so what the hell (...?), why not?
Now, I've made it as far as Numbers, but I'll go back and comment on the first books anyway to keep everything in order. Suffice to say the plot has thickened and several genocides have been committed with Moses, Joseph, Abraham and God getting pretty medieval on a wide variety of asses. Still no sign of any afterlife, mind you, with God being pretty content to allow his favourites to live a long life (usually after fucking with them royally) and also making his enemies die in a variety of interesting ways.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
Any commentry I make about 'x doing y' or 'I think a of b' where I mention any characters from the texts (up to and including, El, LORD, or whatever he calls himself) will be in the literary sense. By saying 'god can't have been happy with the Egyptians' I am in no way implying that 'god' exists outside the pages of the book.
Just so you know.
Enjoy!
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