Genesis 21
So it came to pass that God impregnated Sarah. I mean, Abraham impregnated Sarah. Yah, that’s the ticket.
Anyway, however it happened, Sarah had a son. Feeling somewhat roped into God’s suggestion because of the whole Miracle Birth thing, Abraham named the son Isaac, even though he had been secretly hoping his first legitimate son would be called Bluto.
Abraham then lopped off part of “Little Isaac” in deference to God’s command, and then gave the baby to Sarah to breastfeed. Given that Sarah was an old crone by this point, she likely was giving Isaac powdered milk. At any rate, she managed to keep the kid alive until he could be weaned, and Abraham threw a party because of it.
Sarah saw Hagar, who was busy minding her own business, and decided to heckle her for daring to have Abraham’s illegitimate son, even though Sarah herself had told Hagar to do so. Sarah heckled Hagar so much that she felt compelled to leave, and took off with her son Ishmael for greener pastures.
Unfortunately for her they were in the Middle East, and there were no greener pastures for hundreds of miles. She wandered around for a while until she ran out of water, and eventually gave up. Since she assumed her and her child were about to die, she did the logical thing and dumped the baby in a bush so she wouldn’t have to actually see him kick the bucket.
Fortunately for Hagar, God decided life would be boring without Muslims and decided to save Ishmael. So, God moved some branches out of the way and showed Hagar a well, and thus Ishmael was saved. God took Ishmael under his wing and taught him to be an archer, which would come in handy when God demanded Ishmael sacrifice all those sheep later on.
It came to pass that Abimelech (Remember him? The sucker who couldn’t get it up for Sarah earlier?) found Abraham still hanging out on his land, and begged Abraham not to lie to him again. Abraham agreed, but then started bitching about a well that he had been using until some of Abimelech’s people had decided to take it away from him. So, to recap, Abimelech gave Abraham a bunch of shit so he would stop trying to get Abimelech cursed by God, and instead of being happy with what he got, Abraham starts bitching about a well. Right on, Abraham.
Anyway, Abimelech promised to dig another well for Abraham in exchange for some sheep. Since the well’s water was of high enough quality to use in the brewing of some choice booze, the land it was on was called Beersheba.
Genesis 22
So it came to pass that God got bored one day, and decided to tell Abraham to sacrifice his only legitimate son Isaac. To add insult to injury, God ordered Abraham to travel for a long ass time and climb a giant mountain and sacrifice his son there. Abraham, not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, obeyed without question. His son, on the other hand, was a little quicker on the draw and asked his dad what was up. Like any good father, Abraham lied and told Isaac they were just going to sacrifice some sheep. When Isaac asked where the sheep were, Abraham claimed that God himself was going to provide them and stop asking questions. Assuming that God just happened to like Abraham’s grilling technique, Isaac accepted this explanation and went along with his father.
At the top of the mountain, Abraham pulled the old switcheroo and bound Isaac up, piled wood on him, and prepared to fricassee his own son.
Deciding that enough was enough, an angel of the Lord jumped out at the last minute, shouted “April Fools!” and told Abraham to take his son and take off down the mountain because God was totally satisfied that Abraham was a mindless sycophant now that would not hesitate to do anything he was asked.
So Abraham went back to Beersheba, and some unknown person showed up to tell him a bunch of boring information about his various relatives, none of which is of even the slightest importance.
Genesis 23
After sticking to God’s previously mandated lifespan of 120 years (okay, 127 years, but who’s counting), Sarah croaked. Abraham, being a habitual mooch, asked the sons of Heth for a place to bury his wife. The children of Heth, knowing what happened to people who messed with Abraham, offered him any tomb he could find.
So, Abraham picked a cave to bury Sarah in, and offered Ephron (apparently the real estate agent) four hundred shekels of silver for the property. Ephron, not wanting to risk eternal damnation, told Abraham the land was crap anyway, so no payment was needed. Suddenly deciding he should start paying for the stuff he took, Abraham paid Ephron anyway, and planted his dead wife in a cave that he now owned free and clear.
Genesis 24
It came time for Isaac to get hitched. Abraham, being an unrepentant racist, sent one of his servants to his own country to find a wife of their own kind, rather than allowing his son to marry one of those filthy degenerate Canaanites. So, the servant went off and wandered for a while. Eventually, he found a watering hole. Apparently sick of looking, the servant told God he would take the next woman who showed up at the oasis and bothered to show even the slightest modicum of respect to him and his camels.
Luckily, before long, Rebekah showed up. She not only gave the camels some water, but also had a superfluous “h” in her name, and thus was clearly the right choice for Isaac’s wife.
Abraham’s servant gave Rebekah a bunch of gold jewelry and asked for lodging for the night. Rebekah ran off to ask her brother Laban if the strange man who was giving out jewelry could stay at their house. Noticing the fancy jewelry, Laban decided to let the servant stay.
In need of some filler, the servant proceeded to tell Laban and Rebekah the purpose for his visit in incredibly long-winded fashion. Seriously, he repeated stuff that happened earlier in the chapter almost verbatim.
After hearing a bunch of nonsense about how this strange man had come out of nowhere to take their daughter to some other unknown person, and that she should marry this unknown person, Rebekah’s family did the logical thing and immediately agreed to let her go in hopes of getting some of that choice bling Rebekah had been given. The servant gave them all a bunch of jewels and took off with Rebekah.
So, Rebekah agreed to go wandering off to some strange land for a husband. After many hours of camel riding, Rebekah showed up at Isaac’s place. Rebekah and Isaac then did the deed, after which Isaac didn’t feel so bad about his mother kicking the bucket earlier, thus proving that a good screw makes everything better.
Genesis 25
Deciding he had had enough of the single life, Abraham took another wife. Unlike Sarah, his new wife was capable of having kids without God intervening, and so she bore him lots of little mouths to feed. However, despite all the kids he had, he would only allow his estate to go to Isaac. Oh, and Abraham also took on a bunch of concubines and gave the kids they had some gifts and kicked them out of the house. Classy.
After 135 years, which is close enough to God’s age limit, Abraham died and he was buried next to his first wife. The Bible then takes an interlude for a bunch of “begats”.
As it turns out, Isaac’s wife Rebekah turned out to be barren just like Sarah was. Luckily, God wasn’t in the mood to mess around this time like he did with Sarah, and just let Rebekah conceive anyway. Rebekah became puzzled because it felt like two kids were having fistfights in her womb, so she asked God about it. God, obviously not an obstetrician, told her that she had twins in her womb, and they would come out of her bowels. Honestly, what is with God’s obsession with bowels?
Anyway, God told Rebekah that her sons would be heads of great nations, and the older would serve the younger. Having thus been told the entire story of her sons’ lives before they were born, and without even the benefit of a “Spoiler Alert” warning from God, Rebekah had her kids. Esau came out first, and was covered in red hair, which had to make Isaac look sidelong at the orangutans that were always hanging out around Rebekah’s tent. Jacob was born next, and he was hanging on to Esau’s heel, which is supposed to be some sort of omen, but might have just been because Jacob had a foot fetish.
Esau and Jacob grew older. Esau became a hunter and killed stuff for a living, while Jacob grew crops. Since Isaac shared God’s thirst for blood, he liked Esau better, but Rebekah liked Jacob better because he hung around at home and watched soaps with her while he waited for his crops to grow.
Esau, after a long day of hunting, came home one day really hungry. He saw Jacob was making some soup, and asked for some. Jacob, reiterating the moral of the Cain and Abel story (all farmers are evil), demanded Esau sell him his birthright in exchange for some food. Esau, who apparently wasn’t a good enough hunter to even feed himself, acquiesced and sold his entire inheritance in exchange for a bowl of lentil soup and some bread. Esau: negotiator extraordinaire.
Genesis 26
Once again, there was famine in the land. All these famines had to make Isaac wonder if God was doing him a favor promising him all this land, but rather than complain about it he just decided to go mooch off the Egyptians like his father had. Unfortunately, God showed up and told him not to go down to Egypt, but rather to go mooch off Abimelech instead.
So it came to pass that Isaac went down to Gerar, where he was hassled by some bullies who wanted his lunch money and his wife. Not wanting to be killed, he followed in his father’s footsteps and told these men Rebekah was his sister, not his wife.
Of course Abimelech was not about to get plagued again, and demanded to know what Isaac’s game was with claiming his wife was his sister just like his shiftless father had. Isaac whined that he didn’t want to die, so Abimelech told all his people not to touch Isaac’s wife, because he really was in no mood to deal with a bunch of women who couldn’t have kids again.
Isaac spent a bunch of time in Abimelech’s land, and became ridiculously rich, which made all his neighbors jealous. In retaliation, the Philistines filled all the wells Isaac had dug with dirt. Eventually, Abimelech told him he was too rich to be hanging out there, so if he could bugger off, that would be just great.
So Isaac wandered off and started digging wells in various other locations. Unfortunately for him, every time he dug a well some group of ruffians would show up to take it from him. Eventually, everyone that wanted a well had gotten one courtesy of Isaac, and he was finally able to dig a well and keep it for himself.
Since he had finally found a well that no one else wanted, Isaac made the logical choice and left it in order to go back to Beersheba and hang out with God for a while. God spent some time repeating the same old promises he had made to Abraham, and Isaac built an altar and dug yet another well.
Seeing that Isaac was God’s favorite (sort of a “deity’s pet”), Abimelech went to visit him and kiss a little ass. After a feast and a good night’s rest, Isaac sent them on their way.
Also, Esau took on two wives, which Isaac and Rebekah were none too pleased with. While the Bible doesn’t say so, we can assume Isaac was primarily pissed off because he hadn’t thought of the whole multiple wives thing first.
Genesis 27
Eventually, Isaac got old and was about to die, so he sent for his favorite son Esau. Isaac told Esau he was about to die, but before he did he would really like a nice venison steak. So, if Esau could just go and hunt up some venison for him and prepare him a nice meal, he would bless Esau, which apparently was a big deal. So Esau went off to hunt up some grub for his dying father.
Meanwhile, Rebekah, who had been eavesdropping, told Jacob to stop watching Days of Our Lives for a second and go try and steal Esau’s blessing. Figuring Isaac was too stupid to figure out the difference between venison and goat meat, Rebekah told Jacob to go kill one of their goats and cook him up. In order that Isaac would think Jacob was really his half-ape brother Esau, Rebekah glued a bunch of goat fur to Jacob. She also told him to wear Esau’s clothes, and took him to Isaac.
Now, at this point you might be asking how someone could mistake a guy covered in glued-on goat fur and reaking of goat meat for his favorite son. What you’re forgetting, though, is that Jacob also was wearing Esau’s clothes. Also, Isaac was functionally retarded.
Anyway, Jacob brought the goat meat to Isaac and pretended to be Esau. Isaac was amazed that his son, known throughout the land as the world’s shittiest hunter, had managed to bring home a dead animal so quickly. After seeing the Robin Williams-esque body hair and the ratty clothes, though, he trusted that the person in front of him was Esau, and immediately blessed him.
Shortly thereafter, the actual Esau came back and brought in some venison for his father. Isaac, feeling very guilty for accidentally blessing the wrong son, nonetheless said the system wouldn’t allow him to really correct the situation since all blessings were final, and so too bad for Esau. After some girlish sobbing and whining from Esau, Isaac finally acquiesced to giving Esau a blessing too. So he told Esau that he would be destined to serve his brother until he could manage to gain the upper hand.
For some reason, Esau was upset about this, and vowed to kill his brother. Unfortunately, he said this in his outside voice, and Rebekah, who just happened to be hanging out outside the tent with her ear pressed against the fabric, told Jacob to skedaddle before Esau found him.
Before Jacob left, though, Rebekah told him not to go carousing with those harlot daughters of Heth, because Rebekah was totally pissed off at Heth, and if Jacob ever married one of them she would just DIE. Thus was the reputation of the Jewish mother established.
Genesis 28
Before Jacob could run for his life from his brother Esau, Isaac called him in and told him not to go out and marry any of those filthy Canaanites, thus carrying on his father’s racist ways. Instead, Isaac told Jacob to go find someone in his mother’s family to marry, because apparently inbreeding is preferrable to hanging out with a bunch of degenerates.
Jacob, ever the obedient son, went off to find one of his mother’s relatives that might be up for a little carnal knowledge. Meanwhile, Esau saw all this and, just to spite his father, went off and married one of Ishmael’s daughters.
So Jacob went toward Haran, and decided to pack it in for the night. He took some stones and used them for pillows and went to sleep. Because stones make lousy pillows, Jacob had a really bizarre dream involving a ladder going up to Heaven. In the dream, God came to him and told him that the land he was laying on would be given to him, and he would have tons and tons of descendants. Further, God told Jacob that even if his descendants scattered all over the world, they would eventually end up back there. Luckily for them, no one else was ever going to live there, so they would have absolutely no problem coming back and reclaiming the land. Or something like that.
Impressed by God’s promise, Jacob built a mighty temple (okay, he stacked a few stones and put oil on them, but it’s the thought that counts) and promised that so long as God would keep blessing him, he would keep following God. Of course, the flipside of this is that as soon as God stopped heaping on the blessings, Jacob was going to drop him like a hot rock.
Oh, also Jacob promised to give a tenth of everything he earned to God. So yah, tithing. Stupid Jacob.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Genesis 11-20
Bible.com is one of those things you type into your web browser half expecting to see some truly nasty porn. As it turns out, however, it actually is a way to read the actual Bible. Since that fortuitous discovery, I’ve been using bible.com as my source for the King James Bible, which is the source for the translation of the Bible you’ve been enjoying on this site. Unfortunately, my Internet connection has sucked donkey balls lately, so I’m forced to find an alternate source for Bibley goodness. Luckily for me, as a recovering Mormon I am in possession of a Quad. As a (once) good Mormon, this Quad is even personalized with my very own name in gold leaf on the cover. It also has a lot of dust and spider webs on it.
For those of you who are too stupid to figure out how to use Google to figure out what a Quad is, it’s a collection of the major works of scripture in the LDS church: the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. While using this particular source for the Bible makes me feel the irresistible urge to expand my work to include all of these books, I will resist for now. I also pledge not to use any of the Church’s annotations in this book to aid in my translation. As a recovering Mormon, I’m well aware that many of these annotations exist solely to try to create parallels, beyond the obvious outright plagiarism from Isaiah to 3rd Nephi, between the various Mormon scriptures and the Bible, and I prefer to use my own indoctrination, not the Church’s.
With that out of the way, I’d like to start with the latest installment of the Bible in Plain English. However, before we start, I’d just like to explain a little bit why this particular installment starts out midway through Chapter 11 of Genesis rather than at the beginning of a chapter. Well, throughout this little experiment I’ve tried to avoid translating the boring “begat” sections of the Bible, of which there are several. However, it turns out that the “begat” section at the end of Chapter 11 actually contains some fairly important information, so I’m going to give a quick little overview of it. With that said, on to the good stuff:
Genesis 11 (continued)
So there was a guy named Shem (not to be confused with Shemp, who walked with Moe and Larry). Anyway, despite all that nonsense that God spouted earlier about man living to only a hundred and twenty years, Shemp…er, Shem…lived way way longer than that, and poked many a Stooge in the eyes, except when God would inspire said stooge to put his hand up in front of the bridge of his nose. Thus was written Stooge law: One shall be wary of the eye poking, and must be ever ready with the hand of thwarting to protect the eyes from the evils of the fingerpoke. Amen.
Anyway, despite the fact that God had very clearly stated that men weren’t supposed to live beyond 120 years, many generations of Shem’s children lived far longer than that. Eventually, Terah was born. Terah has no relevance to our story, except that he was Abram’s father and Lot’s grandfather. Abram, as we shall see, turned out to be kind of a big deal.
So Abram had a brother named Nahor, who got himself a wife and raised some kids. Abram, on the other hand, decided to marry Sarai, who it turns out was barren. Bummer.
So it came to pass that Terah brought the primary characters in our little story (Abram, Sarai, and Lot) to Harad, which was just beyond Canaan. He then lived well beyond God’s chosen lifespan, and finally keeled over well after anyone had stopped caring about what sort of inheritance they could expect.
Genesis 12
So it came to pass that God went to Abram and told him that he needed to leave Harad and go to some other place, to be determined later. In return, God promised to make Abram’s offspring great and powerful, which had to be a little bit of a slap in the face to Abram, given that his wife was incapable of baby making.
Since Abram knew a good deal when he saw it, he decided to listen to God, and took off for greener pastures with his wife and Lot, who has to come along because he has a key plot point in a later chapter (foreshadowing!). He found a mountain, built an altar, and kept on walking.
Unfortunately for Abram, there was a great famine on the land, and he was forced to find some rich folk to beg from. Fortunately for him, he was close to Egypt, which was ruled by the Pharaoh, who was about as rich as you could get back then.
Since Abram saw that his wife was a hotty, and also because he didn’t necessarily want to shut himself off from any choice Egyptian poontang, he told his wife to pretend like she was his sister. This she dutifully did, and was immediately taken to the Pharaoh’s house for a little bouncy bouncy. For the privilege of boning his sister, Pharaoh gave Abram lots of livestock and food. Unfortunately for him, God wasn’t too happy about this arrangement, and started plaguing the hell out of poor Pharaoh. Pharaoh, not knowing what else to do, kicked Abram and Sarai out of his kingdom. From then on, Pharaoh and the Jews lived in perfect harmony…or did they? (foreshadowing again!)
Genesis 13
Abram left Egypt with his wife and Lot (who tagged along because he was a major plot point), and settled in the general vicinity of the altar he built in chapter 12. Abram was filthy rich from the stuff he took from Egypt, and he and Lot set about building their own little livestock empires. Before long, they ran into all sorts of border disputes involving their hired hands, and they decided to split up. Lot went to Jordan, which included the cities of Sodom and Gommorah (even more foreshadowing!). Abram went to Canaan.
And it came to pass that God told Abram that he and his line would have dominion over all the land he could see. Of course, given that Abram couldn’t see anything beyond the horizon, that land probably didn’t exceed 10 square miles, but the point is God was promising Abram something. As it turns out, this promise would never be in the least controversial, and would certainly never result in three major religions fighting endlessly over the same spot.
Anyway, Abram eventually got sick of Canaan and moved to Hebron. As was his habit, he built another altar to God and set up camp and hung out for a while.
Genesis 14
It came to pass that a bunch of kings (or in today’s terms, warlords) did proceed to kicketh each others’s asses. In the melee, Lot was captured. Some busybody ran off and told Abram that his nephew was taken prisoner, and so Abram took a bunch of servants and went to go kick some ass. He and his servants kicked aforementioned ass, and got Lot back.
In order that the Mormons would have someone to name their high priests after, Melchizedek showed up to bless Abram. Like any good priest, he also extracted tithes from Abram and his clan. The King of Sodom offered help to Abram, but Abram refused, except to take provisions for his servants, because apparently Abram feels stealing is wrong unless you’re stealing from those filthy Egyptians.
Genesis 15
God came to Abram in a vision and attempted to comfort him. Abram, not being a total moron, asked God why he would bother to promise all this great stuff to Abram’s seed, when Abram’s wife was not capable of bearing children, and his only heir up to this point was not actually related to him.
God, displaying a stunning lack of understanding of the human anatomy, promises that the heir to Abram will spring from Abram’s bowels (a new and more literal definition of “dropping the kids off at the pool” perhaps?), and will not be some schmo Abram decided to name because he didn’t have any kids. God furthermore told Abram that he would have countless offspring, which would populate this land the Lord had given him.
God, being an insatiable carnivore, commanded Abram to kill a bunch of helpless animals for a sacrifice. Abram did just that, and then sat around waiting for God to show up, chasing away vultures along the way because God was taking his sweet time getting there.
At this point, God puts Abram to sleep, the better to talk to him without any sassmouth, and tells him his people will end up in bondage for a few hundred years, after which they’ll totally get that land they were promised. Pinky swear.
During the same night, God promised Abram and his seed all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates. And since then, no one has ever disputed that claim, and Abram’s offspring have lived there in perfect harmony. Just kidding.
Genesis 16
So it came to pass that Sarai started feeling guilty about not being able to bear children. In order to appease her husband, she offered to let him bone her servant Hagar (who was apparently not that horrible. Oh yah, I went there) in order to get some kids. Unfortunately for her, the plan worked, and Hagar got preggo. Upset about this whole thing, which she brought on herself, Sarai decided to bitch to Abram. Abram told Sarai to deal with Hagar however she wished, and by the way stop bothering him in the middle of Wheel of Fortune.
So, Sarai made the logical choice and started beating the hell out of Hagar. Hagar took off in fear, and an angel of God caught up with her and told her to go back. Thus, God’s pro-domestic-violence stance was established.
At any rate, God told Hagar she would bear a son, and that son would be a holy terror. That son was called Ishmael. He later went on to hunt the Great White Whale, but that’s a different story.
Genesis 17
God came back to Abram to micromanage a little more. Feeling that Abram needed something of a brand rehabilitation, God decided to rename him Abraham and his wife Sarah. This event established the fact that a superfluous “h” makes any name better.
Not content with just giving away land, however, God changes the terms of the contract here, suddenly demanding that anyone he would accept into his convenant must have the tips of their tallywhackers lopped off. Not wanting to piss off God, Abram (ahem, Abraham) went along, and sacrificed what he was supposed to sacrifice.
God further went on to tell Abraham that he and his wife Sarai (who he now had to refer to as Sarah due to God’s micromanagement) would bear a child together called Isaac. Of course, since Abraham and his wife were by now decrepit old trolls, Abraham had a big laugh about this. In the meantime, Abraham went and circumcised every male member of his household, no matter how old they were, including his own son Ishmael, who was 13 at the time. Others, including Abraham himself of course, were a lot older when they elected to chop off part of their penises to appease God’s Holy Fetish.
Genesis 18
The Lord, feeling lonely, showed up at Abraham’s door again in the guise of three men. Abraham, not wanting to be rude, ordered his wife to cook up some bread and invited the men to hang out for a bit. In the meantime, he went off and slaughtered a cow for a barbecue. Not much is said as to what the three men did during the entire time Abraham was killing, dressing, and cooking a cow, but we assume foosball was involved.
Midsentence, the three men turn into one guy (God, of course), who says Sarah will bear a son. Sarah, having been through menopause, laughs heartily at this, which puts God right on the defensive.
In order to change the subject, God starts talking about the nastiness going on in Sodom and Gommorah. He muses that he should probably just destroy these cities, forgetting the lessons he learned a few chapters back about the inherent evil in Man.
Abraham, in an attempt to prove that all used car salesmen spring from his lineage, goes on to try and convince God to spare these cities through the power of bargaining. Initially, God says that he will spare the towns if he can just find 50 righteous people within them. After hours of mind-numbing negotiation, God eventually agrees to spare the city if at least 10 righteous people can be found.
Genesis 19
In order to find righteous people, two angels went door to door in Sodom. They found Lot, who took them in and gave them bread, as was the custom of the time. Unfortunately, these angels were apparently fine pieces of man meat, and so the other villagers came to Lot’s house and demanded he hand over the angels, so the mob might bone them senseless. Not wanting to subject his houseguests to rape, Lot made the next logical choice: He offered the crowd his daughters to rape instead.
Unfortunately, before this transaction could be completed, the angels pulled Lot back into the house and told him to gather up his entire extended family and belongings and leave the city. No one but his wife and daughters would listen though, and so he took his immediate family away from Sodom, so that God could feel free to destroy it without any hard feelings. God ordered him to flee far away, and never look back. Unfortunately, Lot’s wife realized at the last moment that she might have left the stove on, and glanced back in the direction of Sodom looking for any stove fires, and POOF, she was a pillar of salt.
Once Lot had left, God, deciding to go ahead and destroy evil men no matter what Friends had to say about it, proceeded to rain fire on Sodom and Gommorah, and destroyed them both.
In the meantime, Lot took his two daughters (who apparently weren’t all that perturbed about the fact that their father had tried to hand them over to a mob of rapists earlier) and lived in a cave. The daughters, concerned about their father’s prostate health, conspired to get him loaded and sleep with him. After two nights in which Lot’s daughters slept with him while he was loaded, they both got knocked up. They eventually had sons, who we assume had webbed feet and six toes, both of whom went on to have a ton of other kids.
Genesis 20
Abraham, apparently never content to stay in one place for long, went off to the land of Gerar. As was becoming something of a habit for him at this point, he gave his wife over to the king (Abimelech) so that he could ravish her while Abraham went off and did his thing. In order to grease the wheels of love, he told the king Sarah was his sister, not his wife, so don’t feel guilty about it or anything. God shows up in Abimelech’s bedroom and threatens to kill him for sleeping with a woman he was told to sleep with. Luckily for Abimelech, Sarah was a nasty old troll and he had run out of Viagra that morning, so he hadn’t actually done the deed yet. Appeased, God tells Abimelech to give Abraham back his wife, and in return no one would be killed.
Abimelech goes to lecture Abraham about why you shouldn’t go around encouraging people to sleep with your wife. Abraham, always a quick thinker, tells Abimelech that he didn’t actually lie per se, since Sarah was, in addition to being his wife, also his half sister. So if you think about it, it was really Abimelech’s fault for just assuming that just because someone offers you his sister to get down with, that must mean that sister isn’t also his wife.
For some crazy reason, Abimelech accepts Abraham’s explanation and gives him a bunch of money, livestock, and slaves to go away. Abraham, satisfied that the extortion had worked nicely, prayed to God to remove the curse over Abimelech’s house and let his women bear children again. Oh, did I mention that God had prevented all the women in the vicinity from having children because of the whole deal with Abimelech and Sarah? Well, he did. The Bible likes to leave these minor details to the end sometimes.
For those of you who are too stupid to figure out how to use Google to figure out what a Quad is, it’s a collection of the major works of scripture in the LDS church: the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. While using this particular source for the Bible makes me feel the irresistible urge to expand my work to include all of these books, I will resist for now. I also pledge not to use any of the Church’s annotations in this book to aid in my translation. As a recovering Mormon, I’m well aware that many of these annotations exist solely to try to create parallels, beyond the obvious outright plagiarism from Isaiah to 3rd Nephi, between the various Mormon scriptures and the Bible, and I prefer to use my own indoctrination, not the Church’s.
With that out of the way, I’d like to start with the latest installment of the Bible in Plain English. However, before we start, I’d just like to explain a little bit why this particular installment starts out midway through Chapter 11 of Genesis rather than at the beginning of a chapter. Well, throughout this little experiment I’ve tried to avoid translating the boring “begat” sections of the Bible, of which there are several. However, it turns out that the “begat” section at the end of Chapter 11 actually contains some fairly important information, so I’m going to give a quick little overview of it. With that said, on to the good stuff:
Genesis 11 (continued)
So there was a guy named Shem (not to be confused with Shemp, who walked with Moe and Larry). Anyway, despite all that nonsense that God spouted earlier about man living to only a hundred and twenty years, Shemp…er, Shem…lived way way longer than that, and poked many a Stooge in the eyes, except when God would inspire said stooge to put his hand up in front of the bridge of his nose. Thus was written Stooge law: One shall be wary of the eye poking, and must be ever ready with the hand of thwarting to protect the eyes from the evils of the fingerpoke. Amen.
Anyway, despite the fact that God had very clearly stated that men weren’t supposed to live beyond 120 years, many generations of Shem’s children lived far longer than that. Eventually, Terah was born. Terah has no relevance to our story, except that he was Abram’s father and Lot’s grandfather. Abram, as we shall see, turned out to be kind of a big deal.
So Abram had a brother named Nahor, who got himself a wife and raised some kids. Abram, on the other hand, decided to marry Sarai, who it turns out was barren. Bummer.
So it came to pass that Terah brought the primary characters in our little story (Abram, Sarai, and Lot) to Harad, which was just beyond Canaan. He then lived well beyond God’s chosen lifespan, and finally keeled over well after anyone had stopped caring about what sort of inheritance they could expect.
Genesis 12
So it came to pass that God went to Abram and told him that he needed to leave Harad and go to some other place, to be determined later. In return, God promised to make Abram’s offspring great and powerful, which had to be a little bit of a slap in the face to Abram, given that his wife was incapable of baby making.
Since Abram knew a good deal when he saw it, he decided to listen to God, and took off for greener pastures with his wife and Lot, who has to come along because he has a key plot point in a later chapter (foreshadowing!). He found a mountain, built an altar, and kept on walking.
Unfortunately for Abram, there was a great famine on the land, and he was forced to find some rich folk to beg from. Fortunately for him, he was close to Egypt, which was ruled by the Pharaoh, who was about as rich as you could get back then.
Since Abram saw that his wife was a hotty, and also because he didn’t necessarily want to shut himself off from any choice Egyptian poontang, he told his wife to pretend like she was his sister. This she dutifully did, and was immediately taken to the Pharaoh’s house for a little bouncy bouncy. For the privilege of boning his sister, Pharaoh gave Abram lots of livestock and food. Unfortunately for him, God wasn’t too happy about this arrangement, and started plaguing the hell out of poor Pharaoh. Pharaoh, not knowing what else to do, kicked Abram and Sarai out of his kingdom. From then on, Pharaoh and the Jews lived in perfect harmony…or did they? (foreshadowing again!)
Genesis 13
Abram left Egypt with his wife and Lot (who tagged along because he was a major plot point), and settled in the general vicinity of the altar he built in chapter 12. Abram was filthy rich from the stuff he took from Egypt, and he and Lot set about building their own little livestock empires. Before long, they ran into all sorts of border disputes involving their hired hands, and they decided to split up. Lot went to Jordan, which included the cities of Sodom and Gommorah (even more foreshadowing!). Abram went to Canaan.
And it came to pass that God told Abram that he and his line would have dominion over all the land he could see. Of course, given that Abram couldn’t see anything beyond the horizon, that land probably didn’t exceed 10 square miles, but the point is God was promising Abram something. As it turns out, this promise would never be in the least controversial, and would certainly never result in three major religions fighting endlessly over the same spot.
Anyway, Abram eventually got sick of Canaan and moved to Hebron. As was his habit, he built another altar to God and set up camp and hung out for a while.
Genesis 14
It came to pass that a bunch of kings (or in today’s terms, warlords) did proceed to kicketh each others’s asses. In the melee, Lot was captured. Some busybody ran off and told Abram that his nephew was taken prisoner, and so Abram took a bunch of servants and went to go kick some ass. He and his servants kicked aforementioned ass, and got Lot back.
In order that the Mormons would have someone to name their high priests after, Melchizedek showed up to bless Abram. Like any good priest, he also extracted tithes from Abram and his clan. The King of Sodom offered help to Abram, but Abram refused, except to take provisions for his servants, because apparently Abram feels stealing is wrong unless you’re stealing from those filthy Egyptians.
Genesis 15
God came to Abram in a vision and attempted to comfort him. Abram, not being a total moron, asked God why he would bother to promise all this great stuff to Abram’s seed, when Abram’s wife was not capable of bearing children, and his only heir up to this point was not actually related to him.
God, displaying a stunning lack of understanding of the human anatomy, promises that the heir to Abram will spring from Abram’s bowels (a new and more literal definition of “dropping the kids off at the pool” perhaps?), and will not be some schmo Abram decided to name because he didn’t have any kids. God furthermore told Abram that he would have countless offspring, which would populate this land the Lord had given him.
God, being an insatiable carnivore, commanded Abram to kill a bunch of helpless animals for a sacrifice. Abram did just that, and then sat around waiting for God to show up, chasing away vultures along the way because God was taking his sweet time getting there.
At this point, God puts Abram to sleep, the better to talk to him without any sassmouth, and tells him his people will end up in bondage for a few hundred years, after which they’ll totally get that land they were promised. Pinky swear.
During the same night, God promised Abram and his seed all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates. And since then, no one has ever disputed that claim, and Abram’s offspring have lived there in perfect harmony. Just kidding.
Genesis 16
So it came to pass that Sarai started feeling guilty about not being able to bear children. In order to appease her husband, she offered to let him bone her servant Hagar (who was apparently not that horrible. Oh yah, I went there) in order to get some kids. Unfortunately for her, the plan worked, and Hagar got preggo. Upset about this whole thing, which she brought on herself, Sarai decided to bitch to Abram. Abram told Sarai to deal with Hagar however she wished, and by the way stop bothering him in the middle of Wheel of Fortune.
So, Sarai made the logical choice and started beating the hell out of Hagar. Hagar took off in fear, and an angel of God caught up with her and told her to go back. Thus, God’s pro-domestic-violence stance was established.
At any rate, God told Hagar she would bear a son, and that son would be a holy terror. That son was called Ishmael. He later went on to hunt the Great White Whale, but that’s a different story.
Genesis 17
God came back to Abram to micromanage a little more. Feeling that Abram needed something of a brand rehabilitation, God decided to rename him Abraham and his wife Sarah. This event established the fact that a superfluous “h” makes any name better.
Not content with just giving away land, however, God changes the terms of the contract here, suddenly demanding that anyone he would accept into his convenant must have the tips of their tallywhackers lopped off. Not wanting to piss off God, Abram (ahem, Abraham) went along, and sacrificed what he was supposed to sacrifice.
God further went on to tell Abraham that he and his wife Sarai (who he now had to refer to as Sarah due to God’s micromanagement) would bear a child together called Isaac. Of course, since Abraham and his wife were by now decrepit old trolls, Abraham had a big laugh about this. In the meantime, Abraham went and circumcised every male member of his household, no matter how old they were, including his own son Ishmael, who was 13 at the time. Others, including Abraham himself of course, were a lot older when they elected to chop off part of their penises to appease God’s Holy Fetish.
Genesis 18
The Lord, feeling lonely, showed up at Abraham’s door again in the guise of three men. Abraham, not wanting to be rude, ordered his wife to cook up some bread and invited the men to hang out for a bit. In the meantime, he went off and slaughtered a cow for a barbecue. Not much is said as to what the three men did during the entire time Abraham was killing, dressing, and cooking a cow, but we assume foosball was involved.
Midsentence, the three men turn into one guy (God, of course), who says Sarah will bear a son. Sarah, having been through menopause, laughs heartily at this, which puts God right on the defensive.
In order to change the subject, God starts talking about the nastiness going on in Sodom and Gommorah. He muses that he should probably just destroy these cities, forgetting the lessons he learned a few chapters back about the inherent evil in Man.
Abraham, in an attempt to prove that all used car salesmen spring from his lineage, goes on to try and convince God to spare these cities through the power of bargaining. Initially, God says that he will spare the towns if he can just find 50 righteous people within them. After hours of mind-numbing negotiation, God eventually agrees to spare the city if at least 10 righteous people can be found.
Genesis 19
In order to find righteous people, two angels went door to door in Sodom. They found Lot, who took them in and gave them bread, as was the custom of the time. Unfortunately, these angels were apparently fine pieces of man meat, and so the other villagers came to Lot’s house and demanded he hand over the angels, so the mob might bone them senseless. Not wanting to subject his houseguests to rape, Lot made the next logical choice: He offered the crowd his daughters to rape instead.
Unfortunately, before this transaction could be completed, the angels pulled Lot back into the house and told him to gather up his entire extended family and belongings and leave the city. No one but his wife and daughters would listen though, and so he took his immediate family away from Sodom, so that God could feel free to destroy it without any hard feelings. God ordered him to flee far away, and never look back. Unfortunately, Lot’s wife realized at the last moment that she might have left the stove on, and glanced back in the direction of Sodom looking for any stove fires, and POOF, she was a pillar of salt.
Once Lot had left, God, deciding to go ahead and destroy evil men no matter what Friends had to say about it, proceeded to rain fire on Sodom and Gommorah, and destroyed them both.
In the meantime, Lot took his two daughters (who apparently weren’t all that perturbed about the fact that their father had tried to hand them over to a mob of rapists earlier) and lived in a cave. The daughters, concerned about their father’s prostate health, conspired to get him loaded and sleep with him. After two nights in which Lot’s daughters slept with him while he was loaded, they both got knocked up. They eventually had sons, who we assume had webbed feet and six toes, both of whom went on to have a ton of other kids.
Genesis 20
Abraham, apparently never content to stay in one place for long, went off to the land of Gerar. As was becoming something of a habit for him at this point, he gave his wife over to the king (Abimelech) so that he could ravish her while Abraham went off and did his thing. In order to grease the wheels of love, he told the king Sarah was his sister, not his wife, so don’t feel guilty about it or anything. God shows up in Abimelech’s bedroom and threatens to kill him for sleeping with a woman he was told to sleep with. Luckily for Abimelech, Sarah was a nasty old troll and he had run out of Viagra that morning, so he hadn’t actually done the deed yet. Appeased, God tells Abimelech to give Abraham back his wife, and in return no one would be killed.
Abimelech goes to lecture Abraham about why you shouldn’t go around encouraging people to sleep with your wife. Abraham, always a quick thinker, tells Abimelech that he didn’t actually lie per se, since Sarah was, in addition to being his wife, also his half sister. So if you think about it, it was really Abimelech’s fault for just assuming that just because someone offers you his sister to get down with, that must mean that sister isn’t also his wife.
For some crazy reason, Abimelech accepts Abraham’s explanation and gives him a bunch of money, livestock, and slaves to go away. Abraham, satisfied that the extortion had worked nicely, prayed to God to remove the curse over Abimelech’s house and let his women bear children again. Oh, did I mention that God had prevented all the women in the vicinity from having children because of the whole deal with Abimelech and Sarah? Well, he did. The Bible likes to leave these minor details to the end sometimes.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Genesis 2-11
Okay, so I have a little bit of a confession to make: I've never actually read the Bible the entire way through. Sure, in my wild and misspent youth I would occasionally decide to make a pact with myself to read the entire Bible cover to cover, but I would rarely make it out of Genesis before giving up. My personal record is all of Genesis and about two thirds of the way through Exodus.
However, I don't feel all that guilty about that though, because I have a dirty little secret that will rock the foundations of religion itself: Nobody has ever read the Bible front to back. Ever. Not even the Pope. It's boring as hell. Sure, some people might claim to have read the whole thing, but then they give themselves away by spouting some nonsense about how God is love or whatever. They can't fool me, because as someone who has personally read almost two entire books in the Bible, I can tell you God is kind of a dick sometimes. Hell, if you're talking Old Testament only, he's a dick most of the time.
Anyway, now that we have that out of the way, I present to you Genesis Chapters 2 through 11:
Genesis 2
So finally God had finished his work, and he decided to take a day off. In order to avoid being called a lazy bastard by all the other gods, he decided to declare the seventh day a day off for everyone. That way, people would be too busy jet skiing in Lake Heaven to harp on God's lack of work ethic.
After that, though, God had his work cut out for him. You see, it turns out that although God is great at the creating stuff thing, he sucks at planning ahead. Since he had failed to make it rain and had likewise failed to create some creature smart enough to work the fields for him, he had to do all that shit himself. So, because God didn't want to have to keep working the fields himself (I swear I am not making this up), he created Man. Then, he planted a garden specifically for the man to toil over. He also created a bunch of rivers, and put Man in the middle of everything to keep the place up, so as to protect the Divine Resale Value.
In order that Man should have lots of shade, God planted tons of trees. God told Man he could eat whatever he wanted, but please don't go near the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because that's where God kept his porn stash. Then, although God had already formed every beast and bird on Earth in the previous chapter, he decided to do so again for no readily apparent reason, and brought them all to Adam (oh, did we mention Man's name was Adam? No? Oh, well it is). The wording of this passage suggests he was really bringing forth all these animals so Adam could pick one to do the nasty with, but unfortunately Adam wasn't big on bestiality, so he found no "help meet for him". Seriously, that's what it says.
Frustrated with Adam's high standards, God chloroforms him and takes out one of his ribs and forms a woman with it, modeled in the image of God's Real Doll.
Genesis 3
Lo and behold, it turns out that God had decided to make snakes along with all the other animals. Not just any snakes mind you, but talking snakes. So, eventually one of these talking snakes decides to talk to the woman and convince her that God is a filthy liar, and that eating from the tree of knowledge actually won't kill anyone, but will instead only allow them to know the difference between good and evil. As it turns out, the serpent is actually telling the truth and God was in fact lying through his immaculate teeth, but we're still supposed to consider the serpent a villain. Okey dokey then.
Anyway, the woman decided to not only eat, but also rope her husband in as well, and thus they both learned the horrors of knowledge: Suddenly, instead of gallivanting around in the buff all over the garden, they decided they shouldn't really be seeing each others' naughty bits. Not only that, they began to suspect this whole naked people in a garden thing was really just a way for God to make some extra cash with a webcam peep show, and thus decided to start hiding themselves from God. Of course, this made God and his accountant very angry, so he came down to see what the deal was.
Upon being confronted by God, Adam immediately rats out his wife, and the wife blames the snake, who by this point has escaped with God's porno to a knothole in the Tree of Life for a little alone time. In response, God curses Adam for being stupid enough to listen to his wife, and curses his wife for being a disobedient bitch.
Then, to make matters worse, God dispatches a couple of angels with giant swords to keep Adam and Eve (the wife's name is Eve, by the way, although we didn't find that out until a couple of verses ago) from eating from the Tree of Life, which supposedly would make them live forever. However, since God has already been shown to be something of a fibber, the Tree of Life more than likely would have just given them herpes or something.
Genesis 4
So it came to pass that Adam and Eve did fucketh, and out of their loins came Cain and Abel. Abel took care of sheep for a living, which is a fairly easy job. Basically, you let the sheep eat grass, and you make sure they don't go wandering off a cliff, and you're all set. Cain, on the other hand, busted his ass growing crops in the ground. Anyway, Abel decides to murder an innocent sheep to sacrifice to God, while Cain sacrifices some of the crops he's worked his ass off on for months. Unfortunately, God is a carnivore, and tells Cain he needs to come up with some meat pronto, or no blessings for him. So, since Cain didn't raise animals, he made the next logical choice: He made meat out of his brother.
So God found out about this, and instead of being pleased with the sacrifice of human meat, he cursed Cain to go live away from his family in misery in a land called Nod, which apparently existed even though the bible said there were only four people on Earth at this point. I mean seriously, what the fuck guys. We went from four people on the whole planet to suddenly a whole other country where Cain could hang out, meet a wife, and pop out some kids. The rest of the chapter is just a bunch of nonsense about how all these previously nonexistent people went on to have more kids, and so on and so forth.
Genesis 5
A bunch of people had a bunch of kids. A bunch of people lived for a ludicrously long amount of time. Eventually, Noah was born. Yay.
Genesis 6
At this point, God decided the population was getting out of hand, and decided to decree that men would only live to 120 years old. Also, he was about to go on vacation, so if someone could maybe feed the cats every so often, that would be great, and he would see everyone in a few millennia.
Also, there were giants on the earth. For whatever that's worth. I don't know, someone thought it was worth mentioning. Also, sometimes daughters of men would have kids with these giants and they would be great men whose births must have hurt like a motherfucker.
Anyway, God eventually decided that men were a bunch of evil bastards, probably because not enough of them were sacrificing sheep to him, and decided to destroy everyone and take a mulligan on this whole Earth thing. Unfortunately, God owed Noah a big favor, and couldn't just kill him along with everyone else. So, God told Noah to make a three story ship and cram two of every living thing into it, because even though God wanted to destroy men, he was really in no mood to go through that whole creation thing again. So Noah, who apparently didn't mind the overpowering stench of animal feces, agreed to build the boat.
Genesis 7
God, apparently deciding Noah agreed a little too quickly for his liking, changes the rules a bit in this chapter. Instead of Noah bringing two of every animal, now Noah has to bring seven of every clean animal, including birds, and two of every unclean animal. Noah, being a six hundred year old man (seriously!) was nevertheless one hell of a trouper, because he did everything God asked him to, and in return he got to spend 190 days (40 days of rain, and another 150 to wait for things to dry off) in a rickety wooden boat with thousands of smelly animals (such as his sons and their families. Zing!)
Anyway, everything else on Earth died. Sucks to be them.
Genesis 8
Eventually, God remembered he had sent this Noah guy to drift around on a boat, and decided to dry up the waters and let the boat crash into a mountain. For a month or two, Noah sent out various birds to find dry land. Eventually they did, and Noah released all the animals. Then, Noah decides to take several of the animals he's been carting around all over the world for 6 months and burn them to make God happy. Because if there's one thing God loves, it's a barbecue. After a long night of beer and burnt goat flesh, God agrees not to destroy the whole Earth again because, as the very special episode of Friends he had watched the previous Thursday had taught him, man was inherently evil, and as the creator of Man it was not cool for him to punish them for the nature he himself hoisted on them in the first place. And thus God learned a valuable lesson. Filmed in front of a live studio audience.
Genesis 9
After the flood, God told Noah and his family that they should go out and eat whatever animals they wanted, and don't worry because PETA wasn't going to be invented for several thousand years yet. He also decided that his previous promise not to destroy the Earth wasn't good enough, so he brought forth a little bling in the form of a rainbow as a symbol of his promise not to go drowning everyone again.
So it came to pass that Noah decided to make wine and, being the first person to have come up with the idea of fermenting grapes, got pretty loaded and fell asleep naked in his tent. One of his sons, Ham, found him that way and told his brothers, who covered him up. Noah, waking up with the mother of all hangovers, learned that his son Ham had seen him naked and, as any reasonable father would do, sold Ham's entire family line into slavery under his brothers as punishment. Noah lived a whole helluva lot longer, and finally kicked it. End of Chapter 9.
Chapter 10
A whole bunch of generations were born, and evidently lots of time passed. For whatever reason, people developed different languages and someone got the bright idea to name one of their kids Nimrod, thus inventing the wedgie. That's about all that's going on in this chapter.
Chapter 11
At this point the whole Earth all spoke one language. Wait a minute, didn't the last chapter just say that people developed their own tongues? What the fuck happened to that?
Anyway, as usually happens when you get a large group of people together, some really crazy ideas took shape. The people decided to build a big tower so as to reach Heaven, since God was no longer returning anyone's phone calls. God, not liking the idea that these uppity humans could come up with a clever idea if they worked together, destroyed the tower and confused everyone so they all started speaking different languages. This made the Tower of Babel Reunion Party a real ordeal.
However, I don't feel all that guilty about that though, because I have a dirty little secret that will rock the foundations of religion itself: Nobody has ever read the Bible front to back. Ever. Not even the Pope. It's boring as hell. Sure, some people might claim to have read the whole thing, but then they give themselves away by spouting some nonsense about how God is love or whatever. They can't fool me, because as someone who has personally read almost two entire books in the Bible, I can tell you God is kind of a dick sometimes. Hell, if you're talking Old Testament only, he's a dick most of the time.
Anyway, now that we have that out of the way, I present to you Genesis Chapters 2 through 11:
Genesis 2
So finally God had finished his work, and he decided to take a day off. In order to avoid being called a lazy bastard by all the other gods, he decided to declare the seventh day a day off for everyone. That way, people would be too busy jet skiing in Lake Heaven to harp on God's lack of work ethic.
After that, though, God had his work cut out for him. You see, it turns out that although God is great at the creating stuff thing, he sucks at planning ahead. Since he had failed to make it rain and had likewise failed to create some creature smart enough to work the fields for him, he had to do all that shit himself. So, because God didn't want to have to keep working the fields himself (I swear I am not making this up), he created Man. Then, he planted a garden specifically for the man to toil over. He also created a bunch of rivers, and put Man in the middle of everything to keep the place up, so as to protect the Divine Resale Value.
In order that Man should have lots of shade, God planted tons of trees. God told Man he could eat whatever he wanted, but please don't go near the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because that's where God kept his porn stash. Then, although God had already formed every beast and bird on Earth in the previous chapter, he decided to do so again for no readily apparent reason, and brought them all to Adam (oh, did we mention Man's name was Adam? No? Oh, well it is). The wording of this passage suggests he was really bringing forth all these animals so Adam could pick one to do the nasty with, but unfortunately Adam wasn't big on bestiality, so he found no "help meet for him". Seriously, that's what it says.
Frustrated with Adam's high standards, God chloroforms him and takes out one of his ribs and forms a woman with it, modeled in the image of God's Real Doll.
Genesis 3
Lo and behold, it turns out that God had decided to make snakes along with all the other animals. Not just any snakes mind you, but talking snakes. So, eventually one of these talking snakes decides to talk to the woman and convince her that God is a filthy liar, and that eating from the tree of knowledge actually won't kill anyone, but will instead only allow them to know the difference between good and evil. As it turns out, the serpent is actually telling the truth and God was in fact lying through his immaculate teeth, but we're still supposed to consider the serpent a villain. Okey dokey then.
Anyway, the woman decided to not only eat, but also rope her husband in as well, and thus they both learned the horrors of knowledge: Suddenly, instead of gallivanting around in the buff all over the garden, they decided they shouldn't really be seeing each others' naughty bits. Not only that, they began to suspect this whole naked people in a garden thing was really just a way for God to make some extra cash with a webcam peep show, and thus decided to start hiding themselves from God. Of course, this made God and his accountant very angry, so he came down to see what the deal was.
Upon being confronted by God, Adam immediately rats out his wife, and the wife blames the snake, who by this point has escaped with God's porno to a knothole in the Tree of Life for a little alone time. In response, God curses Adam for being stupid enough to listen to his wife, and curses his wife for being a disobedient bitch.
Then, to make matters worse, God dispatches a couple of angels with giant swords to keep Adam and Eve (the wife's name is Eve, by the way, although we didn't find that out until a couple of verses ago) from eating from the Tree of Life, which supposedly would make them live forever. However, since God has already been shown to be something of a fibber, the Tree of Life more than likely would have just given them herpes or something.
Genesis 4
So it came to pass that Adam and Eve did fucketh, and out of their loins came Cain and Abel. Abel took care of sheep for a living, which is a fairly easy job. Basically, you let the sheep eat grass, and you make sure they don't go wandering off a cliff, and you're all set. Cain, on the other hand, busted his ass growing crops in the ground. Anyway, Abel decides to murder an innocent sheep to sacrifice to God, while Cain sacrifices some of the crops he's worked his ass off on for months. Unfortunately, God is a carnivore, and tells Cain he needs to come up with some meat pronto, or no blessings for him. So, since Cain didn't raise animals, he made the next logical choice: He made meat out of his brother.
So God found out about this, and instead of being pleased with the sacrifice of human meat, he cursed Cain to go live away from his family in misery in a land called Nod, which apparently existed even though the bible said there were only four people on Earth at this point. I mean seriously, what the fuck guys. We went from four people on the whole planet to suddenly a whole other country where Cain could hang out, meet a wife, and pop out some kids. The rest of the chapter is just a bunch of nonsense about how all these previously nonexistent people went on to have more kids, and so on and so forth.
Genesis 5
A bunch of people had a bunch of kids. A bunch of people lived for a ludicrously long amount of time. Eventually, Noah was born. Yay.
Genesis 6
At this point, God decided the population was getting out of hand, and decided to decree that men would only live to 120 years old. Also, he was about to go on vacation, so if someone could maybe feed the cats every so often, that would be great, and he would see everyone in a few millennia.
Also, there were giants on the earth. For whatever that's worth. I don't know, someone thought it was worth mentioning. Also, sometimes daughters of men would have kids with these giants and they would be great men whose births must have hurt like a motherfucker.
Anyway, God eventually decided that men were a bunch of evil bastards, probably because not enough of them were sacrificing sheep to him, and decided to destroy everyone and take a mulligan on this whole Earth thing. Unfortunately, God owed Noah a big favor, and couldn't just kill him along with everyone else. So, God told Noah to make a three story ship and cram two of every living thing into it, because even though God wanted to destroy men, he was really in no mood to go through that whole creation thing again. So Noah, who apparently didn't mind the overpowering stench of animal feces, agreed to build the boat.
Genesis 7
God, apparently deciding Noah agreed a little too quickly for his liking, changes the rules a bit in this chapter. Instead of Noah bringing two of every animal, now Noah has to bring seven of every clean animal, including birds, and two of every unclean animal. Noah, being a six hundred year old man (seriously!) was nevertheless one hell of a trouper, because he did everything God asked him to, and in return he got to spend 190 days (40 days of rain, and another 150 to wait for things to dry off) in a rickety wooden boat with thousands of smelly animals (such as his sons and their families. Zing!)
Anyway, everything else on Earth died. Sucks to be them.
Genesis 8
Eventually, God remembered he had sent this Noah guy to drift around on a boat, and decided to dry up the waters and let the boat crash into a mountain. For a month or two, Noah sent out various birds to find dry land. Eventually they did, and Noah released all the animals. Then, Noah decides to take several of the animals he's been carting around all over the world for 6 months and burn them to make God happy. Because if there's one thing God loves, it's a barbecue. After a long night of beer and burnt goat flesh, God agrees not to destroy the whole Earth again because, as the very special episode of Friends he had watched the previous Thursday had taught him, man was inherently evil, and as the creator of Man it was not cool for him to punish them for the nature he himself hoisted on them in the first place. And thus God learned a valuable lesson. Filmed in front of a live studio audience.
Genesis 9
After the flood, God told Noah and his family that they should go out and eat whatever animals they wanted, and don't worry because PETA wasn't going to be invented for several thousand years yet. He also decided that his previous promise not to destroy the Earth wasn't good enough, so he brought forth a little bling in the form of a rainbow as a symbol of his promise not to go drowning everyone again.
So it came to pass that Noah decided to make wine and, being the first person to have come up with the idea of fermenting grapes, got pretty loaded and fell asleep naked in his tent. One of his sons, Ham, found him that way and told his brothers, who covered him up. Noah, waking up with the mother of all hangovers, learned that his son Ham had seen him naked and, as any reasonable father would do, sold Ham's entire family line into slavery under his brothers as punishment. Noah lived a whole helluva lot longer, and finally kicked it. End of Chapter 9.
Chapter 10
A whole bunch of generations were born, and evidently lots of time passed. For whatever reason, people developed different languages and someone got the bright idea to name one of their kids Nimrod, thus inventing the wedgie. That's about all that's going on in this chapter.
Chapter 11
At this point the whole Earth all spoke one language. Wait a minute, didn't the last chapter just say that people developed their own tongues? What the fuck happened to that?
Anyway, as usually happens when you get a large group of people together, some really crazy ideas took shape. The people decided to build a big tower so as to reach Heaven, since God was no longer returning anyone's phone calls. God, not liking the idea that these uppity humans could come up with a clever idea if they worked together, destroyed the tower and confused everyone so they all started speaking different languages. This made the Tower of Babel Reunion Party a real ordeal.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Genesis 1: Translated
Genesis 1
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. God created heaven because he needed a place to live, as the '76 Pacer he was living in at the time was getting a little cramped. The reasons for creating the earth are thus far unexplained.
The earth in its initial design was formless and generally uninteresting. So, God decided to create light. He created night and day, and wisely decided to let the whole thing sit for a 24 hour "burn-in" period, just to make sure everything was kosher.
On the second day, God created the firmament, which he called Heaven. Since he already created a heaven on the first day, we have to assume this second Heaven was something of a do-over. As we'll see throughout the Bible, God is a big fan of do-overs, at least when he's the one screwing up. God makes a special point to keep water up there in Heaven, because he's a big jetskier. This concludes the second day.
On the third day, God decided to create dry land that would rise above the water that he had apparently created at some earlier point. God called the land Earth, and the water Sea, which shows He has something of a creative flair. But then again, what would you expect from a god named God?
Having decided creating all that land wasn't enough for one day, God decided to go ahead and plant some trees while he was at it. He created grass and other various plants. He also created hayfever, since, as we will see many times over the course of the Bible, God has something of a sick sense of humor. So ends the third day.
On the fourth day, God created two lights in the sky to rule over day and night. This is despite the fact that he had already created light, and had already differentiated between day and night. Furthermore, one of these lights, as we would later find out, wasn't really an independent light source at all. Actually, it was just reflecting the light from the first source (the Sun). We can only assume this was done because God is lazy. So endeth the fourth day.
On the fifth day, God created a bunch of sea creatures and birds. Other than His apparent affinity for whales (is that a fat joke directed at Mrs. God?), nothing else interesting happened on the fifth day. Oh, except God tells all the sea creatures to get it on. But really, what's so interesting about whales humping?
On the sixth day, God created all the land animals, including cows and spiders. Not a lot of detail as to what was created here, but since this is Friday, and God tends to check out around noon on Fridays, this is not surprising.
Later that same day, God decided to create humans in his own image. We assume this is because it was already getting late, and he was eager for the weekend and didn't want to come up with some entirely new design. Since they were in his own image, he decided unilaterally to give humans dominion over everything. This is what nepotism gets you, people. No mention is made of ribs or creating male before female or anything like that. God just popped out a couple of kids and called it good.
Thus ends Genesis Chapter 1.
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. God created heaven because he needed a place to live, as the '76 Pacer he was living in at the time was getting a little cramped. The reasons for creating the earth are thus far unexplained.
The earth in its initial design was formless and generally uninteresting. So, God decided to create light. He created night and day, and wisely decided to let the whole thing sit for a 24 hour "burn-in" period, just to make sure everything was kosher.
On the second day, God created the firmament, which he called Heaven. Since he already created a heaven on the first day, we have to assume this second Heaven was something of a do-over. As we'll see throughout the Bible, God is a big fan of do-overs, at least when he's the one screwing up. God makes a special point to keep water up there in Heaven, because he's a big jetskier. This concludes the second day.
On the third day, God decided to create dry land that would rise above the water that he had apparently created at some earlier point. God called the land Earth, and the water Sea, which shows He has something of a creative flair. But then again, what would you expect from a god named God?
Having decided creating all that land wasn't enough for one day, God decided to go ahead and plant some trees while he was at it. He created grass and other various plants. He also created hayfever, since, as we will see many times over the course of the Bible, God has something of a sick sense of humor. So ends the third day.
On the fourth day, God created two lights in the sky to rule over day and night. This is despite the fact that he had already created light, and had already differentiated between day and night. Furthermore, one of these lights, as we would later find out, wasn't really an independent light source at all. Actually, it was just reflecting the light from the first source (the Sun). We can only assume this was done because God is lazy. So endeth the fourth day.
On the fifth day, God created a bunch of sea creatures and birds. Other than His apparent affinity for whales (is that a fat joke directed at Mrs. God?), nothing else interesting happened on the fifth day. Oh, except God tells all the sea creatures to get it on. But really, what's so interesting about whales humping?
On the sixth day, God created all the land animals, including cows and spiders. Not a lot of detail as to what was created here, but since this is Friday, and God tends to check out around noon on Fridays, this is not surprising.
Later that same day, God decided to create humans in his own image. We assume this is because it was already getting late, and he was eager for the weekend and didn't want to come up with some entirely new design. Since they were in his own image, he decided unilaterally to give humans dominion over everything. This is what nepotism gets you, people. No mention is made of ribs or creating male before female or anything like that. God just popped out a couple of kids and called it good.
Thus ends Genesis Chapter 1.
The Bible in Plain English: Introduction
So a while back I had this grandiose idea to translate the entire Bible into language the average imbecile could understand. Since, as a recovering Mormon, I have the unshakable belief that the King James Version is the only true Bible, I had my work cut out for me. After all, who would possibly tackle translating a 17th century text into modern English, other than the thousands who have tried before me? No one, that's who.
So, I wrote up a quick translation of Genesis 1. I hope it will inspire you as it has inspired me. But first, a translation of the preface to the King James version of the Bible:
Dear King James,
You are the greatest. Seriously, don't ever change. Here is the manuscript of the translated Bible you ordered. Since you are so magnificent, it can't possibly hold a candle to your awesomeness. Seriously, have you been working out?
Anyway, enjoy the book. And please don't kill us.
So, I wrote up a quick translation of Genesis 1. I hope it will inspire you as it has inspired me. But first, a translation of the preface to the King James version of the Bible:
Dear King James,
You are the greatest. Seriously, don't ever change. Here is the manuscript of the translated Bible you ordered. Since you are so magnificent, it can't possibly hold a candle to your awesomeness. Seriously, have you been working out?
Anyway, enjoy the book. And please don't kill us.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
All the good names are taken
I was going to name this blog "Sensible Madness" because I like that name, but the URL was taken. So, I went with the 100% guaranteed to be accurate Babelfish French translation of "Sensible Madness". Because really, what's funnier than French? Nothing, that's what.
Coincidentally, nothing is precisely what I have in mind for this thing. Maybe it will be abandoned. Maybe it will become the one true source of brilliance on the Internet. Only time will tell.
Coincidentally, nothing is precisely what I have in mind for this thing. Maybe it will be abandoned. Maybe it will become the one true source of brilliance on the Internet. Only time will tell.
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