Leviticus: A Victimless Crime

Hello and welcome back. I’ve had some time to get the ick out of my head from my last post, and I’m prepared to move on with Leviticus. But even finding that there’s plenty of stuff worth commenting on doesn’t really make the format of Leviticus any easier to deal with, what with the lists of rules that basically take up the whole book. But I soldier on and try to make it interesting to read if I can.

So when I ended the last post, we were in the middle of the section on rules for priests. Since they’re mostly ritual rules that probably aren’t going to apply to 99.9% of anyone reading this, I’m not going to waste much time on going over them in any detail. I’ll just bring up a few interesting details if they catch my attention as something worth talking about.

Anyhow, the first thing that caught my attention was still in the section on the chief priest, where it states that he shall not go out of the sanctuary (i.e. temple). At this point in the story, complying with that demand would be pretty damn hard, since the Jews are traveling between Egypt and Canaan, and the sanctuary tent as described is way too damn big to transport without taking it apart. Maybe that command will make sense once they settle, but where it’s placed in the story it doesn’t.

The next interesting thing was that none of Aaron’s descendants (the priesthood is, apparently, hereditary) are allowed to bring God’s offerings to him if they “have a blemish,” or are disfigured, maimed, or disabled in any way because that would be profane. Many of the conditions they listed are the sort that people could be born with or acquire accidentally, so it seems like kind of a dick move for God to create people with inborn conditions that he considers profane. It’s like, just fucking with people because he can.

A little later, we get some more details about the portion of the sacrifices that priests are allowed to eat. Non-priests are not allowed to eat it, because it’s holy and they’re not. But a priest’s slaves are allowed to eat it. So just to recap. Being born blind or lame: profane. Owning other people: not profane. Good one.

So after the bit about priestly rules, there’s a little bit about what constitutes an acceptable sacrifice. It basically amounts to that, with a few narrow exceptions, they have to be physically perfect just like the priests making them.

We move on to a recap on holidays that have been mentioned haphazardly earlier in the Bible. So we get a reminder that nobody is allowed to work on the Sabbath, and that Passover is supposed to be celebrated every year (complete with the seven-day-long Feast of unleavened Bread). There’s also the Feast of Firstfruits, in which the best products of the first harvest of the year are to be offered, and nobody is allowed to eat of the harvest until this has been done. Seven weeks later there’s another holiday (Feast of Weeks) that involves making more offerings to God. Then we get introduced to a holiday to occur on the first day of the seventh month (of the Jewish calendar) that is supposed to be signaled with a blast of trumpets. The text doesn’t name this holiday, but the “handy” headings the translators provided call it the Feast of Trumpets. I’ve never heard of it. The tenth day of the same month sees a Day of Atonement when they’re supposed to “afflict themselves,” which is a phrase alternately translated in an earlier passage as “fast.” And on that day anyone who doesn’t “afflict themselves” should be shunned, and anyone who does any work should be killed.

The last holiday we get introduced here is the Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles, depending on translation), which starts on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. It’s a seven-day celebration, with daily food offerings to God (i.e., feeding the priests for free). And everyone is supposed to live in booths (tabernacles) for the full seven days. It’s a statute forever. So why have I never seen anyone move into their church/temple/synagogue for a week in midsummer?

Moving on, more about the lamp to be lit in the sanctuary, and bread for the offerings, yadda, yadda, yadda…

Wow, this is boring. Fortunately, the Bible can sense my waning interest, and decides to perk things up a bit with a story. It’s a fun one about the son of an Israelite woman (but whose father is Egyptian), who gets in a fight with another Israelite man in the camp. Tempers flare, and in the course of the argument he says something interpreted as cursing the name of God (the exact words weren’t recorded, but I like to think it was something pithy along the lines of “To Hell with Yahweh!”).

So anyway, the people confine him until God has a chance to weigh in on what should be done. Moses consults, and God gives the unsurprising verdict that the young man should be stoned to death. He then goes on to clarify that this is a general rule: anyone who blasphemes against God is to be put to death, including non-Jews living among them.

From here there’s a brief lecture about how any injury done from one person to another should be repaid in kind.

“Lev 24:19 if anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him.”

Now, this actually doesn’t seem like a horrifically unreasonable code. As a rough rule, I can see some value in it. I’m just struck by the tremendous irony that this instruction is given immediately after God decrees a death sentence, and just before the people carry it out, for the crime of saying some mean words about God!

Just an aside for those people who think US law is based on the law of the Bible: not only is this kind of thing not contained in American law, it is explicitly forbidden as one of our highest national principles. In fact, if American law can in any way be said to be based on the Bible, it would only be in the sense of being based on explicitly repudiating it as much as possible. Because many of these laws are barbaric trash.

I am also reminded at this point of a bumper sticker someone was telling me about. Quite apropos to the situation: Blasphemy is a Victimless Crime.

Anyway, that’s the end of storytime, and the Bible goes back to listing more rules. In a striking illustration of non-sequitur, after that diversion from holidays into punishing blasphemy it jumps right back to holidays. But we can get to that when I get back in my next post.

Take care all!

Leviticus: The Aflac Method

This book is proving to be kind of a challenge to write about. Because a great deal of it is pretty much list upon list of rules and laws loosely organized into paragraphs. It’s really dry, and any given section doesn’t necessarily have a theme to talk around. Plus, since I’m trying not to leave out important details, I’m sort of harnessed into following the lists of rules format while at the same time trying to at least be interesting to read. Naturally, this kind of leads me toward condensing the laws as much as possible. I hope that it’s not too much drudgery for you to read it.

But to continue from where we left off, God had just laid down a whole bunch of laws about who you’re not allowed to have sex with. Then he moves on to commanding Moses to tell the people to be holy. This followed by another list of rules that is basically a repetition of laws already laid down earlier, now with the added innovation of repeating “I am Yahweh” every second or third line like some sort of product placement deal (brought to you by Carl’s Junior). So we are reminded that the people are supposed to revere their fathers and mothers, keep the Sabbath, not make idols, etc. Priests must eat their portions of sacrifices within two days and then destroy what’s left, and eating it on or after the third day profanes it (somehow – more likely this is one of those things meant to keep people from accidentally eating spoiled food disguised as a mandate from God).

Then we move on to some stuff of more practical value. These include instructions to leave a portion of the food from your fields for the poor and sojourners to gather for themselves (“I am Yahweh”). Don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t defraud, don’t swear falsely by God’s name (“I am Yahweh”). Don’t oppress your neighbor, or rob him, and don’t withhold payment from your servants. And don’t fuck with cripples (“I am Yahweh”). Don’t commit perjury, or slander people (“I am Yahweh”). Don’t hate your neighbor, or seek vengeance, or bear grudges. Love your neighbor as yourself (“I am Yahweh”). What are the royalties on all that product placement?

So there’s some good stuff in there. I’ll cop to it without reservation. But this is the Bible, so it can’t make sense for too many verses in a row. So then we get into… don’t crossbreed your cattle, don’t grow two crops together, don’t make garments from two kinds of material. Oddly, in the middle of this talk about farming practices, there’s a bit about how if a man sleeps with another man’s slave woman, they shouldn’t be punished because she wasn’t free. Instead, the man has to make an offering of a ram to God, then all is forgiven.

Back to the farming practices, briefly, before running off into random stuff again. Really, there’s no organizing principle here at all. So you get admonitions not to interpret omens or turn your daughter into a prostitute mixed in with advice on how long you should wait after planting a fruit tree before you start harvesting fruit for food. And all of it accompanied by that “brought to you by God” advertising plug (the theological equivalent of the Aflac duck).

At this point, I think I’m going to give up trying to list all the rules except in the most general sense. It’d be tedious to read (and write), and you can always look them up in the Bible if you’re really that interested. So I’ll just stick to what catches my attention for comment.

And the next thing to catch my attention is the admonition against sacrificing your children to Molech. It doesn’t mention any other god, just Molech. Presumably it’s OK to sacrifice kids to other gods, and we know from the Abraham story that Yahweh himself explicitly demands the level of devotion required to sacrifice your own children (even if he did actually put a stop to it… that time – more on that in a later post). So… yeah.

We move on to find later…

“Lev 20:9 For anyone who curses is father or mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.”

Now at first this seems a little harsh. Has there ever been a child who ever lived who did not at some point say “Fuck you, dad!?” And yet clearly Jewish and Christian parents haven’t killed every child who ever lived, so what gives? Well… based on the context, I suspect that there may be a bit more to it than that. See, this verse immediately follows a repetition of the admonition not to consult with mediums or necromancers (who are also supposed to be put to death). So it may be that when they say not to curse your mother or father, they’re talking about casting a harmful magic spell on them. And that might account for the harshness of the punishment if those things were real. But since they’re not, it’s just outrageously and violently stupid.

Remember earlier when there was that discussion on forbidden sex partners? Well, the Bible finally gets around to proscribing punishments for them. For most it’s death for everyone involved, because apparently in the Bible whenever you break the rules something has to die. And of course there’s the famous Lev 20:13 that claims homosexuality (among men – women aren’t mentioned) is deserving of death. But remember that banning of the mother/daughter fantasy? They must’ve felt pretty strongly about that – not only does everyone have to die, but they have to die by fire! That’s some hardcore stuff right there.

Oh yeah… sleeping with your sister is supposed to result in you being cut off from your people… except that the people being specifically referred to in these laws (the Israelites) are descended from a guy sleeping with his sister (Abraham and Sarah).

Then there’s a section on how the priests are supposed to keep themselves holy, and instructions on how to do so. Among those things are not touching dead people except for close relatives, only marrying virgins, burning their daughters to death if they try to become prostitutes (wtf?), and this little gem, which may only apply to the chief priest (the one who is consecrated to wear the holy garments):

“Lev 21:11 He shall not go in to any dead bodies nor make himself unclean, even for his father or for his mother.”

Umm… what the…? If you’ve been paying attention in previous passages, the phrase “go in to” is frequently used in the Bible as a euphemism for having sex. Now… this admonition does not show up in the sections for the general populace, just for the priest. And the phrase “…even for his father or for his mother,” as if, were this not specifically spelled out, the priest might otherwise think that this proscription does not apply to his father or mother.

Please… somebody… tell me this is a case of ambiguous translation or language. Please tell me this doesn’t imply what I think it implies about the Israelite funereal practices. Because… mind… bending… horror…

I think I’ll be trying my best to unsee that. And call it a day, because I don’t know that I can really concentrate on going further until I get that particular thought out of my head. You guys take care.

Leviticus: On Scapegoats and Uncovered Nakedness

Welcome back to my Bible slog… erm… I mean blog. In our last installment we realized that God has an attitude toward life and death possibly more appropriate to a preteen emo Goth chick than the almighty, all-loving creator of the universe. The whole life is icky, death is purity thing. On the broader scope, we’re in the middle of Leviticus, and had just gotten through the section on how horribly impure reproductive fluids and giving birth are.

Next, the Bible recounts how God instructed Moses to tell Aaron after his two sons died that he couldn’t enter the Holy Place until… can you guess? C’mon… it’s a pretty simple answer if you’ve been paying attention. I’ll give you a second…

Yes, that’s right, not until he kills more animals and sprinkles their blood around. Then burns them for that pleasing aroma of burning flesh that God keeps going on about. In this case, it will be a bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. But these are just for himself – he also has to grab a couple goats and a ram as (respectively) a sin offering and a burnt offering for the people of the congregation.

Why two goats for the people instead of one? Glad you asked. The Bible is about to give us the concept of the scapegoat.

“Lev 16:8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for Yahweh and the other lot for Azazel. 9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for Yahweh and use it as a sin offering, 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before Yahweh to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.”

Later, this is clarified to say that Aaron is going to confess all the iniquities of the people over the live goat to put them on it so it can carry those sins out into the wilderness. That’s what the scapegoat is.

But who or what is this Azazel character? There’s no explanation at all, and it’s never been mentioned before in the Bible. So, back to the internet where I discovered (as seems to happen most of the time when there’s something that’s not clearly defined in the text) that nobody agrees on what it means. Common answers seem to be another god, some kind of goat-demon, or maybe just a Hebrew word that means “to go absolutely away.”

Personally, I like the last explanation, since it doesn’t seem to be within the character of the god described in the Bible so far to in any way allow an offering to go to some other god. But that’s just my opinion.

After all the details of how to conduct the sacrifices and scapegoating, God also makes it a statute forever that on the tenth day of the seventh month, nobody can do any work and must “afflict themselves” (alternately translated as “fast”), while the priest must make atonement for them before God. Interestingly, this law is specifically called out as applying to non-Jews living among them as well (I guess that for some reason forcing a fast – or afflicting themselves - on sojourners doesn’t count as oppressing them, which I believe we discussed as being specifically forbidden in earlier laws).

Also forbidden is making sacrifices in any place other than the altar of tabernacle. This is specifically stated to be so that they can’t go sneaking off to make sacrifices to “goat demons” under the guise of making sacrifices to God. This is another law that applies to non-Jews living among them, which for many people of the time probably amounts to specifically forbidding non-Jews to practice their own religions when living in Jewish territories. By modern American standards, at least, that would count as oppression.

Eating blood was also forbidden to Jews and non-Jews alike, and they must pour out and bury the blood of any animal killed while hunting. Eating any beast killed by other animals makes you unclean.

With that out of the way, the Bible moves on to everybody’s favorite subject: sex. Specifically, forbidden sex, starting with incest.

“Lev 18:6 ‘None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am Yahweh.’”

Firstly, what the hell is the point to throwing a self-introduction into that? Just in case Moses (who’s supposedly receiving this dictation) forgets who he’s talking to? A little stroking of God’s own ego? It’s kinda stupid IMO.

Secondly, “uncover nakedness” seems like a little bit of odd phrasing. So I looked it up, and apparently it’s a euphemism for “have sex.” And that raises the point of the inherent stupidity of laying down a law in euphemism. If you don’t understand the particular cultural context, then a literal reading of the text implies that it’s still permissible to have sex with your close relatives, so long as they’re clothed when you do it!

Anyway, the Bible moves on to defining who those close relatives are that you’re not allowed to bone. They include: your father, your mother, your father’s wife (remember that multiple wives are allowed, so you’re not allowed to sleep with your father’s wives that aren’t your mother), your sister, your granddaughter, your father’s wife’s daughter (if she’s brought up in the same household as you), your aunt, your uncle or his wife, your daughter-in-law, and your sister-in-law. And these generally seem to be a pretty good idea. But here’s a fun and ironic verse:

“Lev 18:9 ‘You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether brought up in the family or another home.’”

Now you may recall that Abraham, the wonderful founder of the religion who God routinely praised for keeping his laws and statutes, did exactly that! Abraham married his sister, and in fact every one of the people God is (at this point in the story) leading to become the great nation he promised to Abraham is directly descended from that forbidden act of incest.

There are, of course, some more restrictions. You can’t sleep with a both a woman and her daughter (sorry for any believers with MILF fantasies), or with a woman and her granddaughter. And you can’t be married to two sisters at the same time (you mean… like Jacob did with Rachel and Leah?). Menstruating women are forbidden, and your neighbor’s wife, other men (because “it is an abomination,” which seems to amount to saying “because it’s icky,” as opposed to for any logical reason), and animals.

God then goes on to explain that these forbidden acts are abominations practiced by the people whose lands they are on their way to steal, that by doing them those people have made their lands unclean, and that because of it the land is about to “vomit them out” in favor of the Israelites. Aside from the fact that it makes no damn sense whatsoever that land should “become unclean” as a result of whom the people living on it are having sex with, it’s already been made pretty clear that the Israelite invasion supported by God is what’s going to drive those people out of their lands. The land itself won’t be doing jack about it.

Nonetheless, God warns that if the Israelites take up these sexual activities, then the land will vomit them out as well.

Well, since this seems to be the end of God’s monologue on sexual restrictions, and I’ve gone on for a bit, it seems like a good place to call it a day. This law stuff is becoming about as dry as I’d feared it would, so I sure hope it won’t go on much longer. Guess we’ll find out!

As always, take care out there.

Leviticus: Unclean!

OK, you may have noticed that I put a whole bunch of posts all at once recently. That’s because we just moved, and I was without internet access for several days. But I was still reading and writing, so I had a backlog when access was restored. But now, hopefully back to a more regular posting schedule.

Anyway, when last we left we’d just completed the bloody, traumatic, and homicidal process of consecrating Aaron and two of his sons as God’s priests at the cost of the lives of two other sons. And now we’re moving on to more laws, starting with what is and isn’t unclean.

God begins by telling Aaron and Moses to pass on his strictures regarding what animals the people can and cannot eat. This is a good bit of the basis for the kosher rules for food, such as why Jews aren’t allowed to eat pigs. Though it might surprise you some of the things that are on the list and why. For example, everything with parted hooves, cloven feet, and that chews cud is OK to eat. So the reason pigs are unclean is because, while they have cloven feet and parted hooves, they do not chew cud. Not for any logical reason like because they’re likely to carry trichinosis. Rabbits are also unclean because they don’t have cloven feet or parted hooves, but chew cud (actually, they don’t chew cud or anything like it, though to ignorant goat herders in the ancient world it might appear that way).

Also, anything in the water with fins and scales is allowable. Which leaves out shrimp, lobster, and scallops. So you pretty much know that this god is evil because that’s the only possible reason to make those things and then forbid people to eat them. The fact that combining these rules renders scallops wrapped in bacon completely out of the question is all the reason anyone should ever need to abandon the worship of the Abrahamic God.

There’s also a list of birds that are (literally) off the table, which for some reason includes bats in spite of the fact that bats are not birds in any sense. Though maybe the Hebrew word for “bird” used to include everything that flies and isn’t an insect, which only goes to show how fallible a tool written language is for communicating the supposedly eternal word of God.

Speaking of flying insects…

“Lev 11:20 ‘All winged insects that go on all fours are detestable to you. 21 Yet among the winged insects that go on all fours you may eat those that have jointed legs above their feet, with which to hop on the ground. 22 Of them you may eat: the locust of any kind, the bald locust of any kind, the cricket of any kind, and the grasshopper of any kind. 23 But all other winged insects that have four feet are detestable to you.’”

Is this a really complicated way of saying “you can eat nearly any winged insect,” or of saying “God doesn’t understand such a ridiculously, visibly obvious fact about the insects he made as that they have six fucking legs?!” It’s doubly stupid, because not only is this something that an all-knowing god should know, it’s visibly obvious to even the most ignorant cock-up who might be writing a book impersonating a fictional god. There is no excuse whatsoever for this passage other than that someone wasn’t really even trying.

Moving on, anything with paws and all the “things that swarm on the ground,” are unclean – things like rats, mice, and geckos (good thing, or else they might not have survived human predation long enough to sell us car insurance).

So not only are unclean things off the dinner table, they also communicate uncleanness through contact with their corpses. So touching a dead “unclean” thing makes you unclean for a period of time (rather than until you wash).

Interestingly, in the bits about consecrating the altar it was said that anything that touched it would become holy. But here we see that anything that touches the carcass of an unclean animal becomes unclean. What happens when you touch the carcass of an unclean animal to the altar? Would they mutually annihilate?

God finishes the section on the law about clean and unclean animals by blowing his own horn a bit with some verbal masturbation about how awesome and holy he is. Then he moves on to childbirth, where we learns that a woman is unclean when she menstruates, is unclean right after childbirth, and is unclean twice as long for giving birth to a girl as she is for giving birth to a boy. So making more people is bad, but making more female people is really bad.

Also, after giving birth and completing her month (or two) of purification afterwards, she’s required to take a burnt offering and a sin offering to the priest to “make atonement for her.” Which kind of implies that the so-called “miracle of birth” is a sin for which the mother owes God an apology.

The Bible then goes on at great length for fifty-nine verses about how the priest should identify leprous disease in people and garments. Then another thirty-two verses on what to do about it. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t really comment knowledgeably about the medical value of most of it. I suppose that in a primitive culture with practically no medical knowledge at all, advice to wash on occasion and quarantine people who might have communicable diseases is at least some improvement over nothing at all.

Then there’s a section that talks about “cleansing” the person of leprous disease by taking two birds, killing one, dipping the other in its blood, and releasing it. The Bible catches a lot of shit for claiming that this is a cure for leprosy. But I don’t think that’s really the case. It seems to be instructions for after the person has already healed from the infection on his own (actually, there are no instructions for helping the guy at all – just quarantining him). The appearance is that the bird procedure is for a kind of spiritual cleansing to purify them so they can once more approach God at the tabernacle. So it’s still bullshit, but it’s at least not medical bullshit.

Then there’s a brief section on “leprous disease” in a house, which sounds more like mold on the walls from the description. The cleansing ritual, as usual, involves killing animals and doing stuff with their blood.

Now, since talking about skin disease and animal blood wasn’t quite unappetizing enough, the Bible moves on to talking about bodily discharges. As in, when you get sick and your body starts leaking stuff it shouldn’t. Well, those and perfectly normal things like semen and menstrual blood that are kinda dropped into the same category. And basically, whatever comes in contact with those discharges, or the person having them, becomes unclean. Here’s a fun little subset of that bit:

“Lev 15:18 If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of semen, both of them shall bathe themselves in water and be unclean until the evening.”

Yes, nothing says romance like making love to someone and then going “OK, God says I need to wash your filth off of me now, and even then I won’t be clean.” Not that I’m opposed to regular bathing, or even bathing after sex (heck, I’m a proponent of bathing while having sex if I can arrange it). But pay attention to the wording. Even after you’ve washed up, the act of having had sex has polluted you to such a degree that you remain unclean for a period of time thereafter.

I also love how the woman’s period is referred to as her “time of menstrual impurity.” Now, if you believe the Bible, God made humans and therefore made their reproductive systems. Women menstruating is nothing more than part of the normal function of that system, and is not something over which she has a choice (short of radical medical interventions). For that matter, so is the system in which the man has to “lie with a woman and have an emission of semen.” The idea, therefore, that the normal function of a process God himself designed (and is necessary to fulfill his command to multiply) is inherently “impure” makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

And why is it, exactly, that blood and semen associated with the most life-giving process there is (reproduction) are impure, and the blood associated with death (that of sacrificed animals) is required to purify stuff? Could it be that the assholes who wrote this book (or God, if you believe in that) are just in love with death?

Life is icky, death is purity. It’s a pretty fucked up mindset.

Sigh. Bit of a rant there, but all this law stuff is so dry that it kinda gives the mind time to wander into tangents about the implications. But we can hear more law stuff in the next post. Y’all take care!

Leviticus: My Temple, My Slaughter House

Welcome to the third book of the Bible: Leviticus. This is the book famous for all of the laws that it lays down, and as such I’m sort of expecting it to be a bit of a dry read. Although it’s also kind of famous in some circles for how horrible many of those laws are, so maybe there’ll be enough outrage to keep things interesting. Guess we’ll find out!

We start out with God calling Moses to the tent of meeting. Presumably this is somewhere on the journey after the Israelites left Mount Sinai, but the actual setting is never specified and I’m not sure it matters. But anyway, the reason for the meeting is that God has some laws to lay down about burnt offerings, which can be either bulls, male sheep or goats, or birds (specifically turtledoves or pigeons). And although the text spells out the process for each of those three categories separately, I’ll just give you the one for bulls since it’s pretty much identical to the one for sheep. The birds are a little different because the anatomy is different, but you’ll get the idea.

“Lev 1:4 He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be acceptesd for him to make atonement for him. 5 Then he shall kill the bull before Yahweh, and Aaron’s son the priests shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting. 6 Then he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces, 7 and the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. 8 And Aaron’s sons the priests shall arrange the pieces, the head, and the fat, on the wood that is on the fire on the altar; 9 but its entrails and its legs he shall wash with water. And the priest shall burn all of it on the altar, as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to Yahweh.”

This “pleasing aroma” theme gets repeated in all the descriptions of burning animal sacrifice to come as well. It’s apparently very important to understand that God loves the smell of burning flesh. Also… did you get a good visual of the entire blood volume of a bull getting splashed over the sides of the altar?

Next God moves on to grain offerings. These can take many forms, either fine flour mixed with oil, or mixed with oil and baked in an oven, or cooked on a griddle or in a pan. But regardless of form, it must be unleavened, and only a portion is burnt while the remainder the priests get to keep and eat. Free food for priests! Oh, and it must always be salted (I toss that in like an afterthought because the Bible does the same). Offerings of firstfruits should be roasted.

Next we move onto peace offerings, whatever they are. The choices are bulls, sheep, or goats, and each follows essentially the same procedure with slight variation for anatomy. Once again, the person making the offering kills the animal at the entrance to the tent of meeting, and the priest splashes its blood against the altar. In this case the whole animal doesn’t get burned, but rather just “the fat covering the entrails, and all the fat that is on the entrails, and the two kidneys with all the fat that is on them at the loins, and the long lobe of the liver…” It’s specified that all the fat belongs to God, and as a statute forever the people shall not eat fat or blood.

Notice how there’s a lot of that animal that’s not accounted for? What do you suppose happens to it? We’ll get to that, since the Bible will graciously spell it out in a bit. But first… more types of sacrifices.

Next on the list is sin offerings – to be made whenever someone does something God told them not to, but does so unintentionally. The offering is different depending on who committed it. If a priest (or the entire assembly) commits a sin, the offering should be a bull. Same procedure as a peace offering, but a portion of the blood gets taken inside the tent to get smeared on the corners of the incense altar and sprinkled in front of the veil of the sanctuary. The rest of the blood gets poured at the base of the altar instead of splashed on it. And the leftovers get taken outside the camp to be burned. When a leader sins, the same thing is done with a male goat. For common people, it’s a female goat or lamb. There’s also a list of specific sins for which anyone of any station must sacrifice a female goat or lamb or, if he can’t afford those, a pair of turtledoves or pigeons. Or if he can’t afford those, then flour.

Then there’re guilt offerings, which are apparently performed for breaches of faith or touching “unclean things,” or for sins committed unknowingly but discovered later. In addition to paying restitution for any ill-gotten gains from the breach of faith, the guilty party must offer a ram which gets the same treatment as a sin offering.

Anyone else notice that the tabernacle is a fucking abattoir?

God then moves on to talking about how the priests are to deal with the offerings. Stuff like how he has to put on his priestly robe and underwear to remove the ashes of burnt offerings from the altar, but then change into other garments to actually take them out and dispose of them. Oh, and all the leftover bits of the animals (which in many cases includes the vast majority of the meat) that I mentioned earlier? The priests get to eat them. They also get to keep the hides, which are all kinds of useful and can represent significant wealth in a primitive society.

Hmmm… convenient how the God that only Moses can talk to in person has set up a system of sacrifices that provides the priests (i.e. Moses’ immediate family) with free food and wealth.

Oh, at the end of all this, the Bible finally mentions that these laws were handed down on Mount Sinai. I love how the Bible is so awesome at scene setting that you often don’t know where something is happening until after the event.

OK, so now that it’s established how the priest class can leech food off the people of Israel, it’s time to actually create the priest class. Yep, time for the ordination ceremony for Aaron and his sons.

So Moses gathers everyone around the tent of meeting for the start of the ceremony. Now, I’ve never been to an ordination ceremony myself, but this one started out in what I can only imagine is a fairly typical fashion: dressing the new priest in his holy robes, spreading about some holy anointing oil, killing a bull and two rams then splashing their blood all over the altar then setting the carcasses on fire and sprinkling blood on the priests-to-be. Y’know, the kind of shit I’m sure we’re all accustomed to seeing at religious ceremonies. Then Aaron and his sons were sequestered in the tent for seven days. It’s not clear exactly what they were doing in all that time – maybe trying to bone up on the ridiculously complicated ceremonial rules. As we’ll see, mistakes were made…

On the eighth day, they emerge for the next portion of the ceremony. This involves Aaron giving offerings for his ordination (a bull calf and a ram), and then making offerings on behalf of the people (a male goat, a calf, a lamb, an ox, and a ram). All of these animals were slaughtered, and their blood poured out on and around the altar, and then the carcasses burned. And when all of this was done, Aaron and Moses went into the tent. When they emerged they blessed the people, and the glory of God appeared and consumed the offerings in a ball of fire.

Now this is the point where one of those aforementioned mistakes occurs. Two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, put burning incense in their censers to offer before God. The text doesn’t say why – there certainly doesn’t appear to have been any call for incense in censers at any point in the ceremony, so it’s not like they got something out of order. Maybe they were just caught up in the excitement of the moment and decided to embellish a little. It was a historic occasion, after all, and I imagine they were pretty excited. Anyway, this being the first time this ceremony has ever been performed, and it’s pretty fucking complex, one might expect a mistake or two and a bit of patience and understanding about the whole thing.

Or one might have been paying attention up to this point, and realized that that’s not the kind of God being described in this book.

“Lev 10:2 And fire came out from before Yahweh and consumed them, and they died before Yahweh. 3 Then Moses said to Aaron ‘This is what Yahweh has said “Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.”’ And Aaron held his peace.”

Oh, and just to add insult to injury, Moses declared that while the people were allowed to put on mourning displays for the dead men, Aaron and his remaining sons weren’t. I must admit, I’m quite impressed with the superhuman self-control with which Aaron did not turn and kick his brother in the nuts at this point until he vomited up his own intestines. Or maybe it was just shock.

At this point God speaks up – not to acknowledge the horror he’d just perpetrated, but to declare that the priests were, as a statute forever, not allowed to drink alcohol when going into the tent of meeting, or they’d die. From this point Moses shuffles the ceremony onward, instructing Aaron and his surviving sons to eat their portion of the offerings that had been given on the altar. So they sit down and eat it. But then Moses notices that the goat, which they had been supposed to eat, had accidentally been burned up completely on the altar. So he got pissed at Aaron and his sons and demanded to know why they’d messed that part up.

“Lev 10:19 And Aaron said to Moses, ‘Behold, today they have offered their sin offering before Yahweh, and yet such things as these have happened to me! If I had eaten the sin offering today, would Yahweh have approved?’ 20 And when Moses heard that, he approved.”

I’m pretty sure that’s Bible-speak for Aaron going “Really? You wanna fuck with me right now? If I ate your fucking goat, would God give me my sons back?” followed by Moses shutting the fuck up before he got his ass curb stomped in front of God and everybody.

And that seems like a good, happy place to bring today’s post to a close. Catch you next time – there’s more laws!

Exodus: What Are the Ten Commandments Again?

Welcome back to the supposedly inspiring story of the Israelites' migration from Egypt to Canaan. When last we checked in on God’s chosen people, they had gotten restless and made a golden calf to worship, so Moses had three thousand of them slaughtered. Now they are getting ready to leave Sinai.

The Bible takes a moment to discuss the tent of meeting, which is a tent that Moses would set up outside the encampment where people could go to seek God. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, people would go stand at their tent doors and watch him until he entered. I imagine they are trying to convey an air of reverence about this little ritual, but in light of recent events I suspect the feeling would be more of terror and dread anticipation. The people watching the fanatical leader who’d just had thousands of them butchered, much like they might watch a rabid dog to see if it was going to attack. I bet they all breathed a huge sigh of relief every time he entered the tent without ordering any exectuions.

Anyway, whenever Moses entered the tent, a pillar of cloud would descend to the tent door and God would speak with Moses. Meanwhile, all the people stood at their own doors worshipping (cowering?).

“Ex 33:11 Thus Yahweh used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend…”

Once again, we see someone described as seeing God face-to-face.

In one of these conversations, Moses manages to convince God to travel with the Israelites after all. Just as, you know, a personal favor. Moses also asks to see God’s glory, to which God responds that Moses cannot see his face because none can see it and live (I guess all that stuff about people seeing God in person was just poorly written description of events, or maybe just complete bullshit). But God does promise to arrange things so that Moses can watch him pass by and see his back. Whoop-de-doo!

So then God commands Moses to go back up the mountain for another forty days with a couple stone tablets, and God will write the words of the covenant on them to replace the ones Moses broke earlier. Nobody else is allowed to go up with him, nor is anyone allowed to graze their flocks opposite the mountain (probably so no one can see Moses himself doing the carving, since it seems kinda ridiculous that it should take a deity capable of fashioning a world in six days forty days to carve some words on some stone).

While Moses is on the mountain, he gets that promised glimpse of God.

“Ex 34:6 Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed ‘Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’”

Hooowee! There’s something very godlike in that proclamation. Specifically, the godlike balls it takes to identify yourself as merciful and gracious and forgiving in the very same sentence where you brag about punishing people for stuff their ancestors did four generations back.

So after a little more begging from Moses that God will continue to travel among them, Yahweh proceeds with the renewed covenant to be written down on the new set of tablets. It’s worth reminding at this point that God had said he would put the same words on these tablets that had been on the first. Now… I’m going to jump ahead to the end of the section, because I have a point to make that might be easier if I do these next sets of quotes out of order.

“Ex 34:27 And yahweh said to Moses ‘Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.’ 28 So he was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.”

Now, the point I want to make is about the Ten Commandments. As you’ll recall, I quoted them in full a few posts back. And you may also recall that I’ve mentioned that the publishers of the translation I’m using have included handy bold-faced headings (not from the original text) to identify what’s going on in any given section. Well, the Ten Commandments I quoted earlier were identified by one of those bold-faced headings. There was nothing in the actual Bible text identifying them as such. In fact, that quote I just posted right above this paragraph is the only textual reference to the Ten Commandments I’ve seen so far. And from reading it, you might get the impression that the commands that immediately precede that verse are the Ten Commandments. So now… let’s take a look at those commands.

“Ex 34:12 Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst.

13 You shall break down their pillars and cut down their Asherim 14 (for you shall worship no other god, for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god) 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, 16 and you take of their daughters for your sons , and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.

17 You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal.

18 You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib, for in the month Abib you came out from Egypt.

19 All that open the womb are mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. 20 the firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. And none shall appear before me empty-handed.

21 Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing and in harvest you shall rest.

22 You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruit of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. 23 Three times in the year shall all your males appear before Yahweh, the God of Israel. 24 For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before Yahweh your God three times in the year.

25 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the Feast of Passover remain until the morning.

26 The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of Yahweh your God.

You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

And I’ll point out that those commands there represent the entire Bible text between God’s declaration that he’s remaking the covenant and the end of Moses’ second forty-day tenure on top of Mount Sinai. There are no other commands in this portion of the story. As far as I can tell, a straightforward reading of the Bible says that those are the Ten Commandments, and if we didn’t live in a culture that taught us that other set practically from birth, nobody would think otherwise.

You know what I think? I think somewhere along the line somebody saw the line “the Ten Commandments” and thought “That’s a pretty catchy title. Too bad the actual commandments it refers to are pretty stupid, mostly apply only to the specific situation the Israelites were in at the time, and if we tried to generalize them could only result in a state of perpetual open warfare with the adherents of every other religion on the planet. Let’s apply the title to these other ones over here that are a bit more general.”

I’m also concerned with the phrasing that says all the firstborn belong to God, but sons should be redeemed with a lamb. Because things that are supposed to be given to God are supposed to be sacrificed on his altar, and not all firstborn children are sons. Now, I know that in some languages all nouns have gender, and that when a plural noun refers to a group of mixed gender the language defaults to using the male form. I don’t know if ancient Hebrew is one of those languages, but I really, really hope so (as in, the word for “sons” can be read as “children of either gender,”) because otherwise the implications are disturbing.

Anyway, once the very important divine commands about destroying other people’s religious icons and not boiling young goats in their mothers’ milk were done with, Moses went down to the people with his new tablets. This time, apparently, his face was glowing as a side effect of his talking directly with God. So after he finished passing on God’s infinite wisdom to the people, he put a veil over his face. And from then on whenever he went to talk to God he would take off the veil, when he came out and recited God’s words to the people he would reveal his glowing face, and when he was done talking he’d put the veil back on.

That must’ve been damn handy for doing some nighttime reading before hitting the sack.

Moses assembled all the people again to make good and sure that everyone understood that you’re not supposed to work on the Sabbath. And that anyone who did so should be put to death. He even specified that they weren’t to do so much as light a fire in their homes on the Sabbath. I suppose that last bit may seem a reasonable restriction when you live at the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean – it becomes somewhat problematic for, say, winters in fucking Poland.

Anyway, after that Moses asked for contributions of the materials to actually build the tabernacle. And the people gave so generously that he collected more than was needed and eventually had to tell them to stop giving him stuff. God had appointed some guys named Bezalel and Oholiab to oversee the construction, and filled them and all their craftsmen with the skill to do so (I guess they didn’t get it from the normal route of years of training and practice?).

Now, you know how I’d said before that God specified the construction of the tabernacle in exhaustive detail? Well, the next eighty-some verses are spent repeating those details in the construction phase. You could pretty much take the original description and replace every instance of “You shall build…” with “He built…” And while there may or may not be subtle variations between the two descriptions, I really couldn’t tell you because my eyes totally glazed over in reading this section. I’m just not going to compare them line-by-line. You can, if you have the mental stamina, but I don’t think it’s important. Suffice to say that the tabernacle got built, along with the ark, altars, tables, lampstands, etc., etc., and an account is given of the amount of material it took.

Then we get the same shit with the construction of the priestly robes.

And when it’s all built, God orders that the tabernacle be set up, and everything consecrated with the holy oil and incense and all. And when it was all done the glory of god filled the tabernacle, and holy cloud settled over the tent of meeting. And from that point on, whenever the cloud lifted from the tent the Israelites would travel, but if the cloud stayed on the tent they would stay encamped that day.

And this, finally, brings us to the end of the Book of Exodus. Two books down, and… only about sixty-five or so to go. 8% done, according to the app. Join us next time when we wade into Leviticus. In the meantime, be well!

Exodus: All Hail Mooby!

Welcome back to my ongoing commentary on the so-called word of God. So far it’s been instructional, if not especially inspirational (even the parts that are supposed to be). And now we rejoin Moses and his merry band on the slopes of Mount Sinai. God has just been laying down some law about interior decorating and blood sprinkling, and Moses is about to come down off the mountain to see what the Israelites have been up to under Aaron’s supposed leadership. He’s not gonna be pleased.

So as has been covered before, Moses was up on the mountain getting instructions for forty days. And while he was gone, the Israelites started getting restless with the need to worship something. So they go to Aaron and complain that they need a god, and nobody knows what’s become of this Moses guy, so could Aaron please make them a new god? So Aaron, God’s chosen fucking priest, goes “Sure thing! Gather up your gold jewelry and I’ll see what I can come up with.”

“Ex: 32:3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’”

First of all: gods? It’s one fucking idol. How does it get to be multiple gods? Whatever. Chalk it up to inconsistent storytelling. Nobody really understands this shit anyway, and it’s not the most important thing about the scene.

But that brings me to the second point here: given the context, is this actually reasonable? If the story is to be believed, we have here all these people who have personally witnessed multiple miracles performed by Yahweh. Several of them have met him in person, and supposedly they’ve all heard his voice. He’s threatened death on multiple occasions for worshipping anything other than him, and they have seen him kill the shit out of thousands of people. Aaron himself has been directly carrying out the guy’s orders. Furthermore, they are standing in the shadow of the guy’s mountain where Yahweh has just been putting on a stunning pyrotechnic display, and is currently hanging out at the mountaintop in a perpetual cloud. Now… we’re supposed to believe that these people, having been witness to all of that, believe they can just whip up a god from whatever fucking jewelry they have lying around and think that it’s just as good?! REALLY?! Does that sound at all like something that ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED?!

Say what you want about ancient people. They may have been ignorant, superstitious, and savage. But this scene asks us to accept that, on top of all of that, they were also dumber than a bag of hammers. Sorry, but I’m just not buying it.

If there’s any historical accuracy to this book at all, this event right here seems like a pretty strong hint that the God stuff is complete bullshit. Because in the minds of these people, there was no demonstrable difference between Yahweh and just any old god they had been accustomed to inventing out of thin air. Which means very likely that all the stuff that looks like explicit in-person manifestation of this Yahweh guy were either exaggerated versions of natural occurrences the author couldn’t explain (and so attributed to his favorite god), hallucinations, or completely made up out of whole cloth. That’s exactly how made-up gods work, and the Israelites couldn’t tell the difference between this god and any other made-up one.

But to get back to the story, after Aaron had made the golden calf and the people declared it their god, Aaron built an altar in front of it and declared that the next day they would have “a feast to the LORD.” Assuming the same substitution of “LORD” for “Yahweh” in the translation is in effect (and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be), that seems to imply that these ignorant folks thought the golden calf actually was Yahweh.

Meanwhile, up on the mountain, God tells Moses what is happening and tells him to go back down to the people. Then he adds that he wants to be left alone to nurse his rage at the Israelites for a bit before he just wipes them out and starts over on this whole scheme to give Abraham’s descendants a great nation using only Moses. But Moses pleads with God not to do it, basically arguing that God wouldn’t want the Egyptians going around saying he’d only taken the Israelites out of slavery in order to kill them. I guess God is vain enough to care what the Egyptians are saying about him, because he relents and agrees not to kill all the Jews.

Then Moses heads back down the mountain with his assistant Joshua and the stone tablets God carved for him with the laws of the covenant engraved on them. They hear the sounds of the people celebrating the feast day Aaron had declared for their new golden idol as they approach. when they come into view of the celebration, Moses flies into a rage and smashes the tablets. Then he takes the calf, burns it, grinds it into powder, scatters the powder in water, and makes the people drink it. I’m not exactly sure how one burns and grinds into powder a ductile metal like gold, but maybe it’s just a translation artifact. He could, I suppose, have melted it down, then shaved it into flakes, which would accomplish the same thing.

After this he turns to Aaron and demands to know what the people had done to him to make him commit such a sin. And Aaron turns into such a weasel you can actually picture whiskers sprouting from his face. He basically says “Hey, you know how evil these people are? They told me to make them gods. But all I did was throw the gold they gave me into the fire and out popped this golden calf!” I’m pretty sure Moses didn’t buy it, though. And Moses isn’t done expressing how pissed off he is, either:

“Ex 32:26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said ‘Who is on Yahweh’s side? Come to me.’ And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. 27 And he said to them ‘Thus says Yahweh the god of Israel, “Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.”’ 28 And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand of the people fell. 29 And Moses said ‘Today you have been ordained for the service of Yahweh, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing on you this day.’”

Now firstly, it may be worth noting that although Moses said these were orders from Yahweh, the Bible doesn’t actually record God giving the order. So it’s rather ambiguous whether God wanted this done or not. But he certainly shows no disapproval of the action.

Secondly, although it says that all the sons of Levi responded to this order, that can’t really be what happened. After all, “sons of Levi” literally means that these people were descended by blood from Levi. So you couldn’t possibly have “all the sons of Levi” killing their literal brothers, since that would mean everybody responding to Moses’ order was simply killing each other and nobody would be left for him to bless at the end of it all. So the wording here is ambiguous at best.

Thirdly, this is a slaughter roughly equal in magnitude to the 9/11 attacks. Only carried out up close and personal with swords instead of anonymously with airplanes, against people the killers knew and cared for personally and who knew and cared for them in return. Just to put things in perspective.

Lastly, think about the situation here. You have an angry god. You have followers of that god killing people in order to propitiate the god and/or earn a blessing from him. There is a term for this behavior. Can you beat me to it? Do you know what it is? I know it’s one that Christians love to shy away from when it comes to their god, so it might not spring readily to the mind of any believers who read this.

Human sacrifice.

Now don’t go jumping to conclusions: I’m not just spinning this in the worst possible light in order to toss out that nasty phrase. There will be more explicit examples in later posts, so you’ll eventually see how this is a justified claim even if it isn’t immediately obvious now.

Anyhow, after this act of barbarism Moses tells the people that he has to go up to the mountain again and meet with God to atone for their horrible sin (because killing three thousand people wasn’t atonement enough, I guess). So he goes up and begs God to forgive their sin, or else “blot me out of your book,” which I presume to mean destroy him utterly. But God tells him he will blot out whoever has sinned against him, but for now Moses should go lead the Israelites to the land he promised them. Then he sent a plague to the people and told Moses it was time to depart from Sinai. Lastly, he told Moses that he wouldn’t travel among them anymore because, basically, the Israelites were so stubborn and disobedient that if he was forced to put up with their company constantly he’d just kill them all.

Yeah… this is the same god that they keep describing as slow to anger, and full of steadfast love for his people. I think that’s kind of in the same spirit in which Celtic pagans sometimes referred to clearly malevolent faeries as “the Good Folk,” in the hopes that kissing a little ass would convince them to be a little less evil.

From that point on the Israelites stripped themselves of their jewelry. Although the Bible says “from Mount Horeb onward,” despite the fact that these events took place at Mount Sinai. Gasp! Could that be an error?!

Anyway, this seems to have gone on long enough for today. I’m pretty sure that the next post will manage to close out Exodus. As always, take care and be well!