I just wanted to post a quick update here. Yes, I have gone six days without posting. No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. My senior thesis is due in three weeks, three hours, and thirty-four minutes. Until then, I will be posting rarely, if at all. But never fear! I am still completely committed to finishing this project within a year, as planned. I will probably do several weeks of double-length posts to catch up, so you have that to look forward to and/or dread.

In order to tide you over until I resume my heresy, here’s a brilliant short film that Emma Kowal, a freshman at Harvard and member of the Harvard Secular Society, made for the first annual Harvard Interfaith Arts Showcase, which happened last night (and was awesome). As a jaded student in my last year of college, it’s good to be reminded why I came here in the first place: because understanding is, indeed, a kind of ecstasy.

Keep the faith,

Chelsea

This has a couple of implications.

1) I will probably graduate! It was touch and go for a while there.

2) Now I can respond to all the emails that have been languishing in my inbox for the past couple of weeks. If you’re one of those poor neglected souls, please accept my apologies.

3) It’s time to get Biblical again! This weekend, as promised, I’ll be publishing a couple of gargantuan catching-up posts. So grab some snacks or roll a joint or something, because we’re going to be here for a while.

OT: Exodus 15-19

Exodus 15

Moses & co., to celebrate the deaths of hundreds upon hundreds of their fellow human beings, sing a happy song! It goes a little something like this.

Yay! God drowned all the Egyptians!
God’s the man. He saved us. We like him.
Did I mention that he drowned all the Egyptians?
Sometimes he kills people!
He “shatters the enemy” and “burns them up like straw” (6-7)!
Isn’t that cool?
Also, he just drowned a bunch of people.
People were chasing us,
But he drowned them all.
Who else is as cool as God? Nobody!
He led us to safety.
He scared all our enemies away.
He brought us to our homeland.
He’ll rule forever.

For good measure, Miriam, Aaron’s and Moses’s sister, leads all the women in dancing and playing tambourines and singing along with the chorus (which is one of the many parts about how God just drowned a bunch of people).

The Moses leads everyone out into the desert. They go three days without finding water, which I’m pretty sure would kill them if this were real life. Then they find somewhere with water, but the water is “bitter” (23). They panic about what to drink. God shows Moses a tree, and Moses somehow intuits from this that he is supposed to throw the tree into the water. For some reason, when he does that, the water turns sweet.

God makes a rule that if the Israelites obey all his commandments, he won’t give them any of the diseases he tormented the Egyptians with. Isn’t that nice? Then the Israelites arrive at an oasis with exactly 12 springs and 70 palm trees, and they camp there. I’m guessing this is somehow symbolic of the fact that 70 members of Jacob’s family, including the 12 sons who founded the 12 tribes of Israel, migrated to Egypt back in the day. See? I’m paying attention.

Exodus 16

They leave the numerology oasis and relocate to the Sin desert, which is confusing because last time I checked they were nowhere near Nevada. By now they’ve been wandering in the desert for like six weeks, and everybody is yelling at Aaron and Moses, saying they were better off back in Egypt where they could sit down and cook their food like normal people and they should have look at a map before they left and we told them to pull over at the next rest stop but no they just had to wait until they got to the one with a Starbucks but here we are an hour later and we still have to pee and no Starbucks so where does that leave us? And Aaron and Moses are like well we only did this because you complained about the whole slavery thing every day so we’re doing this for you but you can’t be satisfied with anything and you were the one who wanted coffee in the first place and it’s your own fault we don’t have bread here because while we were out negotiating with Pharaoh and getting us set free your job was to pack up the food and jewelry and it certainly wasn’t us who told you wait until the last minute to make the bread and now you’re complaining because your bread is too flat and you don’t have coffee and you could feel free to take the lead any time but you’d much rather sit back and keep complaining and for god’s sake quiet down in the backseat because NO WE ARE NOT THERE YET!

Yes, this actually exists.

God sees Moses is in trouble so he’s like “I got you, Moses! I’m gonna make it rain bread.” So he rains bread down on the desert, and it covers the sand in thin flaky layers, like frost, which sounds like it would be really difficult to gather without getting sand all up in your bread. Everybody gathers it anyway and Moses tells them to eat it all and trust that God will send more in the morning, but some people save some just in case, but it becomes infested with worms, or melts in the sun. Gross. But then on sixth day Moses tells everyone to collect double weird-flaky-heaven-bread because tomorrow God is going to rest and won’t rain bread, so they save half and it doesn’t become infested, so they eat the rest the next day. Some people go out to look for more anyway, and God is like “OMG why can’t you just do what I say? I gave you double food for exactly this reason. Go home and rest.” So they do. Apparently the flaky magic bread, which the Israelites call manna, looks like cilantro seeds but tastes like honey wafers. Moses, on God’s instructions, saves a jar of the manna for posterity so future generations can see what the Israelites ate in the desert when they escaped from Egypt. They all wander the desert for forty more years and live off of manna until they finally get to Canaan.

Exodus 17

Wait, now we’re back to the whole wandering-the-desert part. Sigh. So they leave the Sin desert and they don’t have any water and they all complain to Moses and he’s like “why don’t you trust God?!” And they’re like “BECAUSE WE’RE FUCKING THIRSTY.” So Moses is like “God, you gotta help me out man!” So God’s like “go on ahead with some elders and use your magic stick to whack a rock and it will squirt water.” Then the Amalekites come fight with the Israelites. Moses tells Joshua to pick some strong men and go fight them, which he does while Moses sits on a hill with his magic stick to watch. Moses quickly figures out that whenever he puts his hand in the air (presumably the one holding the stick), the Israelites start winning the battle, but whenever he puts his hand down, the Amalekites start winning, which is a dumb system if you ask me, since God could just make the battle go however he wants without making Moses wave his hands around. Moses’s arms start getting tired so people get him a rock to sit on and help hold his arms up and then the Israelites win the battle. God tells Moses to write on a scroll that God “will completely wipe out the memory of Amalek” (14) and to read that to Joshua. Not sure why Moses needs to read it to Joshua, or why he can’t just tell Joshua verbally, or why God can’t tell Joshua himself. In any case, it makes no sense since the Amalekites are recorded right here in the Bible, keeping their memory alive for several thousand years. Fail?

Exodus 18

Jethro (Moses’s father-in-law, remember?) hears about what Moses has been up to, and comes to visit him along with Zipporah and her two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. (I think Moses sent his wife and children away to live with Jethro back when shit was getting real with Pharaoh.) Jethro & co. arrive at Moses’s tent and they all catch up with each other and have a grand old time. After the story of the escape, Jethro talks about how much he likes God and says, “Now I know that the LORD is greater than all the gods” (11), again supporting my polytheism theory. Jethro sacrifices to God, and everybody has dinner. The next day, Jethro sees Moses sitting around all day answering people’s questions about God and adjudicating their disagreements and teaching them the commandments. Jethro’s like, “Hey, Moses, this is way too much work for one person. You should pick some other smart people and put them in charge of smaller groups of people. They can bring big difficult questions to you, but mostly they can take care of this stuff without you.” Moses is like “yeah good idea” and appoints his judges accordingly, and bids Jethro adieu.

Exodus 19

This is probably why men can't touch women

Exactly three months after leaving Egypt, the Israelites get to Sinai and set up camp. Moses heads up the mountain and God tells him to tell his peeps that if they obey the commandments they’ll be his favorites. So Moses spreads the news. God tells Moses that, in three days, he’s going to come chat with Moses in front of everyone so they can hear what God says and trust Moses’s authority. In preparation for this, God tells Moses to ready the peeps for his visit by washing all their clothes and such, and tells him to keep the men from having sex with women in the days preceding. God also warns that anybody who touches the mountain during his visit must be put to death, as must anybody who touches the people who have touched the mountain, with stones or arrows. Three days later, God comes down, wrapped in a cloud as disguise; Moses gather the peeps around the mountain to watch while he ascends. God is chilling with Moses on the mountain, but he panics and worries about how many people will die from his own stupid rule about not touching the mountain. Instead of revoking it, like a responsible person, he’s like, “Hey Moses, make sure your peeps don’t touch the mountain!” And Moses is like “nah it’s all good they won’t do that!” And God’s like “Ok, bring Aaron here.”

Highlights

Jethro’s division of labor into lower courts and supreme courts (or what have you) is smart.

Lowlights

Celebrating genocide = not so classy.

OT: Psalms 15-17

Psalm 15

Who gets to chill with you, God? Only perfect people who do the right thing and tell the truth and are nice and hate the wicked and like the faithful and keep promises and lend money without interest. Those people are set for life.

Psalm 16

God, save me, you’re the only good thing in my life. As for those people who thought they were holy but worshiped the wrong God, please fuck them up. I’m not friends with them anymore. You’re all I want. You give me great advice and never lead me astray, so I trust you and I’m happy. You make things great.

Psalm 17

Listen to me! I’m needy! You know me, I don’t mess around. Other people suck but I always obey you. You always do what I want, so do that now! You’re the bomb and you protect your followers. So protect me from my enemies! They’re all around and they want to fuck me up. Kill them! Save me! Hurt them and nurture the people you like more. I know I’ll be rewarded for my awesomeness.

Highlights

Zip. Still hate the psalms.

Take THAT, stupid psalm narrator!

Lowlights

My favorite part of the whining in psalm 17 is, “Rescue me from these people whose only possession is their fleeting life” (14). I think Emily Dickinson responded well to this sentiment when she observed, “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” Emily Dickinson: 1; Psalms: 0.

NT: Matthew 22-23

Matthew 22

More parables. FML.

The kingdom of heaven is like a guy who is throwing a party. He invites a bunch of people and prepares a delicious feast for them but they are ungrateful jerks and don’t come and either ignore the invitation or kill the servants who came to invite them. The host gets angry and sets fire to the city where the people who slighted him live. Then he tells his (surviving) servants to go invite everybody they can find on the road to his party because those other people “weren’t worthy” (8). So a bunch of randos come to the party, and the host wanders around his guests. He finds one person who isn’t wearing party-appropriate attire, and asks how he got in. The guy has no answer, so the host tells his servants, “Tie his hands and feet and throw him out into the farthest darkness. People there will be weeping and grinding their teeth” (13). Wow, way to break the metaphor there, Jesus. At the end of this horrific parable, Jesus helpfully tells us the moral of the story: “Many people are invited, but few are chosen” (14). Also, God is a crazed psychopath, apparenty.

The Pharisees keep trying to trip Jesus up. So they ask him whether the law allows people to pay taxes to Caesar given that Jesus doesn’t support favoritism (not sure how those things are related). Jesus is like, “Why are you trying to fuck with me? Go bring me a coin.” So they bring him a coin and he’s like “Whose fucking head is on this fucking coin?” And they’re like, “Caesar’s.” And he’s like, “Great. Give Caesar what’s Caesar’s and give God what’s God’s. Fuck off.” So they do.

Remember their joyous posthumous reunion? Not part of Jesus's plan.

The Sadducees, who don’t believe in resurrection, come to ask Jesus a resurrection-related question. They explain that they knew of seven brothers who each married the same woman, all in a row, with the next one marrying her when the last one died. Eventually they all died and so did the woman, and none of them had any children. So, they ask, which of the men will the woman be married to after they are all resurrected? Jesus answers that “At the resurrection people won’t marry nor will they be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like angels from God” (30). The Sadducees freak out and leave.

The Pharisees try again, and ask Jesus what the greatest commandment is. He says that the most important is to love God as hard as you can, and that the next most important is to love your neighbor as yourself, and that the whole law depends on those two commandments. Then Jesus turns the Pharisees’ tactics on them. He asks them whose son the Christ is, and they say David’s. But Jesus quotes some passage from the Old Testament where David calls the Christ “lord,” and says, “If David calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” (45). Nobody can answer him and from then on nobody dares ask him any questions ever again. I’m not sure how exactly this was such a rhetorical knock-down punch, but okay.

Matthew 23

Jesus tells his followers to do what the Pharisees say but not what they do, because “Everything they do, they do to be noticed by others” (5). He points out that they really liked to be called “Rabbi” (i.e. “teacher”), and warns everyone that Christ is their only teacher and God is their only father, so no human should be called teacher or father because they are really brothers and sisters. He also talks again about how the low will be lifted up and the high and mighty will be brought low and the greatest will be servants and so on.

Jesus condemns the Pharisees and similar folks for their hypocrisy and general lameness. He calls them stupid and blind, and blames them for keeping people out of the kingdom of heaven. They follow the tiny busybody rules to the letter but totally miss the big picture – they tithe diligently but don’t understand justice, for example. He says that though they look righteous and pure on the outside, they are polluted inside (yes, this section was alluded to in this video). Finally, Jesus bemoans Jerusalem’s lostness and blindness and how God has tried so hard to save the people of Israel but they keep going astray.

Highlights

The condemnation of hypocrisy is pretty cool, and pretty ironic given the political climate of this country.

Lowlights

The most appealing part of the idea of an afterlife, to me, is the idea of being reunited after death with those whom you loved in life. And that certainly seems to be one of the components which most comforts people I know who believe in an afterlife. But Jesus puts the kibosh on that idea with the whole story of the seven brothers. Too bad.

Exodus 13

God tells Moses, “Dedicate to me all your oldest children. Each first offspring from any Israelite womb belongs to me, whether human or animal” (2). But I thought all the Israelites were already God’s peeps? What does it even mean to “dedicate” a kid to God?

Moses reminds everyone that, once a year, they should eat no leavened bread for a week to commemorate their escape. And he promises again that God is taking them to their home with milk and honey and such. Moses tells them the thing about dedicating their oldest children and animals to God. He elaborates that they should “ransom” all their oldest donkeys with a sheep, because if they don’t, they’ll have to break the donkeys’ necks. And they have to “ransom” their oldest children, too.

God leads the Israelites by “a column of cloud” (21) – a tornado? – during the day and by lightning at night. Instead of sending them by way of the Philistines where they might have to fight, he takes them the long route by the Reed Sea/Red Sea (depending on translation).

Exodus 14

God tells Moses to have the Israelites turn back and set up camp by the sea, so that Pharaoh (who I guess is tracking them) will think they’ve gotten lost, and will come after them. God gloats, “I’ll gain honor at the expense of Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD” (4). What does it even mean for God to “gain honor”?

Backtrack: Pharaoh changes his mind about releasing the peeps and chases after them with his army and catches up with them at the sea. Not sure what good it did them to turn around in that case, but okay. The Israelites see that they are trapped between the Egyptian army on one side and the sea on the other, and they start bitching at Moses about how it would have been better to stay slaves in Egypt than to die in the desert. Moses is like “Don’t worry, God has everything under control. Nothing is fucked.” God tells Moses to use his staff to part the sea so they can cross, and then he (God) excitedly repeats the bit about gaining honor a few more times.

The cloud column moves behind the Israelite camp so it stands between them and the Egyptians. Moses parts the sea and the Israelites start across the dry land in the middle. When the Egyptians follow them in, God has Moses close up the water again, killing Pharaoh and everybody in his army. The Israelites make it safely to the other side and look back to see all the dead Egyptians and get all excited and worshippy about their great genocidal God. Yay!

THE BEST

Highlights

I actually kind of like matzo. Especially matzo pizza. Mmmmm.

Lowlights

In what universe does it seem rational that God would be angry if you didn’t break a donkey’s neck?

Also, the whole killing-all-the-Egyptians-in-order-to-look-cool thing.

NT: Matthew 21

Matthew 21

This is probably how he did it.

Jesus & co. arrive at Bethphage (which just sounds to me like a cell that is going to eat poor Beth, whoever she is), and Jesus tells two of the apostles to go into the town where they will find a donkey and a colt tied up, and to bring them to him. Then Jesus fulfills a prophecy (a kind of silly one, IMHO) by sitting “on them” (7). Like, on both the donkey and the colt…at the same time, or does he alternate?

People get excited and spread clothes and palm fronds on the ground in front of Jesus as he enters Jerusalem triumphantly with one butt cheek on each of his steeds. Some of the onlookers are out of the loop and are like “who is that guy with one horse per butt cheek?” and those in the know are like “It’s the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee” (11). And then the Jerusalem hipsters add, “And I was into him before he was cool.”

Jesus puts his business face on and dismounts from his donkey[s] and throws a fit in the temple; people have set up a market in there, so he starts knocking tables over and throwing merchants out, raving about how the temple is supposed to be a house of prayer. The legal and religious experts get pissed off and they’re like “hey Jesus have you heard all these kids praising you as the Son of David?” and he’s like “Yeah what’s it to you?” and goes off to the town of Bethany for the night.

In the morning Jesus gets hungry and goes over to a fig tree for breakfast, but there’s no fruit on it, so he throws a hissy fit and curses it so it can never bear fruit again, and it shrivels up instantly. The apostles are amazed and Jesus is like “you too can shrivel up fig trees and even fling mountains around if you are faithful enough!” I’m still waiting on a demonstration of that particular phenomenon.

The legal and religious experts ask Jesus who gave him the authority to do his tricks and teach his lessons. Jesus says they’ll tell them if they can answer the question of where John the Baptist got the authority to do baptisms. The “experts” confer: they can’t say from heaven because then Jesus will ask why they didn’t believe him, and they can’t say from humans because the crowds love John the Baptist and will get pissed off and maybe hurt them. So they say they don’t know, and Jesus is like, “Well then I don’t have to tell you where I get my authority. Nah nah nah boo boo.”

Hos...

Jesus decides it’s time for another parable. A man tells his older son to go work in his fields, and the son refuses, but later changes his minds and goes to work; the man tells his younger son to go work, and the son agrees to, but never goes. Jesus asks which son did his father’s will, and the legal/religious experts say the older son. Jesus explains that “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you” because they believed John the Baptist but the experts didn’t believe him or change their hearts and lives.

Jesus tells another parable, about a landowner who employs tenant farmers in his vineyard while he is out of town. He sends his servants to collect his fruit, but the farmers kill the servants. So the landowner sends more servants for his fruit, and the farmers kill them too. Then the stupid landowner sends his own son, thinking the farmers will respect him, but of course they kill him. So Jesus asks the experts what the landowner will do when he comes home. They answer that he will kill the farmers and hire new ones who will do their jobs. Jesus basically tells them they’re stupid and quotes a psalm – “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” – and warns that God’s kingdom will be taken away from them (42-43). The experts get mad and want to arrest Jesus but can’t because the crowds think he’s a prophet and will riot if he’s arrested.

...before bros.

Highlights

I love when Jesus tells the self-righteous hypocrites that those who disgust them most, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes, are going to get into Heaven before them. It’s the kind of verse I wish more Christians would remember and focus on.

Lowlights

Um…I don’t really understand the point of the vineyard parable. The landowner is stupid, the farmers are cruel, and the servants and the son are dead. Who exactly is supposed to be the winner in this scenario…?

Exodus 11

God’s like, “Ok, Moses, this is the last plague, I promise, and after this Pharaoh will let you go because I’ll stop making him stubbornly refuse to let you go. Get all your peeps to ‘borrow’ expensive jewelry from their neighbors.” God makes the Egyptians super gullible so they give all their shit away. Also, Egyptian officials come honor Moses instead of being like “thanks so much for ruining our lives.” Moses warns everyone that the oldest child in every non-Israelite family will die at midnight. “Then you’ll be sorry!”

Exodus 12

WHYYYYY

God’s like “Ok, Moses and Aaron, get out your pencils or quills or whatever. The Jewish calendar starts NOW! This is the first month, and on the fourteenth day of this month, you all have to slaughter lambs and smear their blood all over your doors and eat their flesh with matzo and bitter herbs. Also you have to eat all this really fast. Bon appetit! Then I’ll come and kill the firstborn child in all the non-bloody houses, so make sure you don’t forget the blood part, because I am not smart enough to know which houses are which just from my whole omniscience thing, so I might get confused and murder your children if you don’t smear baby animal blood all over your house! The whole system is very intuitive. You’ll catch on. Also you have to celebrate this wonderful time every year by eating only matzo and no squishy bread.” Moses tells everyone about the plan and they are all like “yeah that makes a lot of sense” and worship God and follow the instructions.

Don't worry. It gets a lot more appetizing by the third or fourth glass of wine.

God kills a kid in every Egyptian house at midnight, and in the morning everyone is understandably quite upset. Pharaoh summons Moses and Aaron and is like “FINE. I GIVE UP. LEAVE. GO AWAY. GO FAR FAR AWAY. TAKE ALL YOUR ANIMALS AND CHILDREN AND WHATEVER. GO HAVE YOUR RAVE.” But before they leave he adds, “And bring a blessing on me as well!” (32). So all the Israelites have to pack up and leave stat, and for some reason every one of them is in the middle of making bread and has to take the dough with them before it has time to rise. Also they rob the Egyptians blind. The hundreds of thousands of Israelites flee into the desert with their animals and their dough and their stolen jewelry and travel to Succoth. God reminds Moses and Aaron that Jews have to celebrate Passover annually forever, and warns them that uncircumcised men are not allowed the pleasure of eating dry crackers and bitter herbs and saltwater with them. Bummer!

Highlights

Thank god we’re done with all the back and forth about the plagues.

Lowlights

The moment I stop sympathizing with the 430 years of slavery is the moment when a child in every single Egyptian household dies. Revenge != justice.

NT: Matthew 21-22

Sorry guys, my thesis is getting real since my draft is due on Friday. So we might end up with a big old New Testament pile-up on Saturday and Sunday. But never fear! We shall keep on keeping on!

OT: Exodus 7-10

Exodus 7

"Scared, Pharaoh?" "You wish!"

God’s like, “Ok, Moses, you and Aaron keep hassling Pharaoh, but I’ll make him stubborn so I can show off my magic tricks. I’ll attack and bring my peeps out of there, and then the Egyptians will know who’s boss. Moses, when Pharaoh asks you to do your tricks, tell Aaron to do the staff-turning-into-a-snake thing.” So they go do the snake trick for Pharaoh, but he gets his “wise men and wizards” together and they do the same trick because of their “secret knowledge” (11). It probably went like this. Moses’s stick-snake eats all the other guys’ stick-snakes, but Pharaoh’s unimpressed. God’s like, “Ok, plan B. Go tell Pharaoh to release the peeps, and when he says no, whack the Nile with your staff and it will turn to blood and smell bad and all the fish will die and nobody will be able to drink it. That’ll be cool.” So Moses does all that, and the river turns to blood, as planned. But Pharaoh’s magician friends can do the same thing, so Pharaoh remains unimpressed. One would think the magician friends would use their “secret knowledge” to turn the river back to potable water, but no, they just make more blood. Also, did it occur to God and/or Moses that the Hebrews need to drink the Nile water too? In any case, now everybody has to dig wells to get non-bloody water. Great.

Exodus 8

“Okay, plan C! Tell Pharaoh to release the peeps, and when he says no, I’ll rain frogs all over.” So Moses and Aaron tell Pharaoh to release the peeps, and he’s like “still no,” so Moses is like “Okay Aaron do the frog thing!” and then Aaron waves his arms around and then suddenly there are frogs all up in Egypt. But the Pharaoh’s magicians are like “look we can do it too!” and they add some more frogs. They really are just making things worse for themselves by doubling all the plagues. Anyway, Pharaoh is like, “Ok, Moses, this frog infestation is kind of gross, so if you pray to God to take the frogs away, I’ll let your peeps go to Burning Man.” Moses is like “Ok, when do you want me to pray for the frogs to go away?” Which seems like a stupid question, because obviously Pharaoh wants them gone as soon as possible, right? Wrong. Pharaoh asks Moses to pray tomorrow. Maybe he wants one more night to say goodbye to the frogs he’s befriended.

So Moses prays the frogs away. Except they don’t disappear; they all die. “Great,” Pharaoh thinks. “There’s no more hopping and ribbiting, but now my country is full of decomposing frog carcasses. Gross.” He changes his mind and doesn’t release the peeps.

God’s like, “ok, Moses, tell Aaron to use his magic wand to poke the dirt so lice show up everywhere.” I’m wondering why God doesn’t cut out the middleman and just talk to Aaron himself, or why Moses can’t do his own stunts. Anyway, Aaron does his thing, and “all the land’s dirt turned into lice throughout the whole land of Egypt” (17). Really? All the land’s dirt? If by “dirt” we mean “sand,” since this is Egypt, then the entire country is basically just made of lice now. I don’t think the society could continue to function. I’m pretty sure buildings built on writhing insect foundations would fall to the ground, people would be literally eaten alive, etc. In any case, the magicians once again try to make things worse by making lice of their own, except this time they can’t figure out how to do it, so they tell Pharaoh that this must be an act of God. But Pharaoh still refuses to release the peeps, which is pretty freaking stupid.

The Egyptians couldn't handle this kinky shit.

Next God sends insects of an unspecified nature on Egypt but spares Goshen to make it very clear who his favorites are. God calls Moses and Aaron over and he’s like, “Can’t your peeps just do their sacrifices right here?” And Moses is like, “No, because we’re going to be doing some freaky shit and when the Egyptians see it they will stone us to death. We need to go to the desert where nobody can see us.” Pharaoh is like, “Fine, you can go to the desert, but you can’t go too far, and you have to pray for me while you’re there.” Moses is like “Ok, it’s a deal. The bugs will go away tomorrow. You better not screw us over again.” So Moses goes and prays and God makes the bugs disappear but Pharaoh decides again not to release the peeps.

Exodus 9

God has Moses warn Pharaoh that if he pursues in his dickery, all the Egyptian livestock (but none of the livestock belonging to the Israelites) will be infected with a fatal disease. Pharaoh’s like “BRING IT.” So God brings it, and all the Egyptian livestock die. But Pharaoh still won’t release the peeps. Next God has Moses throw a handful of ashes into the air which turn into soot and cover all of Egypt which somehow causes all the Egyptians (but none of the Hebrews) to break out in blisters. But Pharaoh still won’t release the peeps. Next, God threatens to rain deadly hail down on Egypt. Some people have caught on to the whole whatever-Moses-warns-us-will-happen-actually-happens pattern, so they bring all their livestock inside and huddle under their roofs. But others ignore the warnings and hang out outside with their cows and shit. Then the hail falls everywhere in Egypt (except in Goshen) and destroys everyone and everything that’s outdoors. So Pharaoh summons Moses and Aaron and is like “okay! you win! you win! my bad! you can go! please stop the hail!” So Moses is like, “okay, as soon as I’m outside the city limits, I’ll make God stop the hail.” So he goes and stops the hail and then Pharaoh changes his mind and doesn’t let the Israelites leave. Which is kind of confusing, because didn’t Moses wait until he was outside the city? Did Pharaoh go bring them back? Can’t he wait to stop the hail until he gets way out into the desert instead?

Exodus 10

Imagine trying to breathe in this. Wait - don't. Oh, too late? Sorry.

Moses goes to Pharaoh and he’s like “Guess what’s next? Locusts! Locusts everywhere! Locusts eating all your trees! Locusts crawling all up in your homes! Locusts all over your children! Locusts! Locusts!” Pharaoh’s advisers are like “Um, Pharaoh, get with the program. It is time to release the peeps before Egypt is completely destroyed.” So Pharaoh calls Moses and Aaron and is like “Okay, go do your sacrifices! Who all is going?” And Moses is like “All of us need to go.” And Pharaoh is like “Yeah right! I’m not letting all of you go. That’s very suspicious. You’re plotting something crafty. Your men can go, but the women and children stay here.” So God sends a locust shitstorm, and Pharaoh is like “OH GOD MAKE IT STOP I’M SO SORRY PLEASE FORGIVE ME I MESSED UP PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.” So Moses sends the locusts away, at which point Pharaoh promptly changes his mind. So then Moses turns Egypt pitch-black (except where the Israelites live) so nobody can move or see or do anything. Except somehow they are able to summon Moses and Aaron, and Pharaoh tells them all the Israelites can go to the desert – even the children – but the livestock have to stay in Egypt. But Moses is like “nope, we need to take all the animals with us, every single one, because we have to sacrifice some of them but we won’t know which ones we’re supposed to sacrifice until we get there.” And Pharaoh is like “well that sounds made up.” And he decides he’s done with Moses’s bullshit and sends him away and threatens him with death if he ever sees him again.

Highlights

"I told you, the Knight Bus doesn't run on Columbus Day! Can you just keep looking for the Portkey? I'm sick of trying to outrun the wind!"

Magic staffs! Transfiguration! Freaky natural disasters! It’s like Harry Potter and The Happening by J.K. Shyamalan!

Also: Perseverance! Plucky underdogs! The American Dream!

Lowlights

At one point, somewhere between the blisters and the hail, God sends Pharaoh the following message through Moses:

By now I could have used my power to strike you and your people with a deadly disease so that you would have disappeared from the earth. But I’ve left you standing for this reason: in order to show you my power and in order to make my name known in the whole world. (15-16)

See, it’s easy to get carried away by the Passover story of slavery and abolition and magical retribution and hard-won freedom and the escape through the desert and so on. But the social justice narrative you usually hear is a far cry from the way the story is actually told in scripture. It’s not a battle of God against Pharaoh, or oppressor against oppressed; God makes Pharaoh stubbornly refuse to free the Israelites in order to achieve his real goal, which is to show off his power and “make [his] name known in the whole world.” In this light, God looks a little less like Abraham Lincoln and a little more like Tamburlaine.

OT: Psalms 13-14

Psalm 13

God, how long do I have to suffer? Why aren’t you helping me? Come back and save me from enemies! I still trust you because you’ve been faithful.

Psalm 14

Fools say in their hearts,
There is no God.
They are corrupt and do evil things;
not one of them does anything good. (1)

This seemed called for again.

God looks to see if there are any good humans – nope, zero. Those jerks attacking my faithful people must be stupid to not be on God’s side. Eventually they’ll freak out when they see how wrong they were. God’s gonna make us win in the end!

Highlights

Nope. I still hate the psalms.

Lowlights

Really, not a single person on earth is good? Psalm 14 says that God “look down from heaven on humans” to see if any of them are good, “but all of them have turned bad….No one does good – not even one person!” (2-3). But then in the next verse the narrator talks about “my people” (4), who are “the righteous generation” (5). Um…you might want to check your math there. Also, whenever Christians are like “don’t worry I’m not bigoted enough to think that atheists can’t be good people!” I’m like “okay well that’s nice of you but your God seems to disagree since he says that ‘not one of [us] does anything good’…but thanks?”

NT: Matthew 21

…is for tomorrow.

Exodus 5

All they wanted was to go to Burning Man.

Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and are all “Hey Pharaoh, God says ‘Let my people go party in the desert!’” And Pharaoh is all “Who is this God guy? Also, no.” And Moses and Aaron are all “Our God showed up and told us we need to go to the desert and sacrifice to him or else he’ll hurt us because he’s kind of a dick sometimes.” And Pharaoh is all “Why do you want the Hebrews to be slackers?” Pharaoh tells all the slave masters to stop giving the slaves the straw they need to make bricks, but to keep the brick quota the same, so the Hebrews have to gather the materials and make the same amount of bricks in the time it usually takes them to just make the bricks. That way, Pharaoh thinks, they’ll work harder and stop being lazy and thinking about running off to the desert for a rave. The Israelites are like “ummm this is kind of impossible why are you doing this?” and Pharaoh says “You are lazy bums, nothing but lazy bums” (17) and tells them to get back to work. The Israelites are like, “Way to go, Moses and Aaron, you guys just got us more work and made Pharaoh hate us more.” And Moses is like “Yeah, God, WTF?”

Exodus 6

RELEASE THE PEEPS!

God is like “Don’t worry Moses, I got this. I’m God, and I made a covenant with your ancestors, which I recently remembered when I heard you all screaming in agony – sorry about that – but any peep of yours is a peep of mine, so just tell all your peeps to chillax because they’re my peeps and I’ve got it under control and also did I mention that I’m God?” So Moses relays this reassuring message to his peeps, but they cannot chillax because they are fucking enslaved. So God’s like, “Moses, go tell Pharaoh again to release the peeps.” And Moses is like, “Dude, even the peeps won’t listen to me anymore, so why would Pharaoh?” Flashback to a lot of genealogy leading from Jacob’s kids to Moses and Aaron. Then we just repeat the whole thing where God tells Moses to lead his people out of Israel and to tell Pharaoh to release the peeps and Moses gets all glossophobic.

Highlights

Meh.

Lowlights

Why doesn’t Moses do his party tricks for Pharaoh to prove he’s got God on his side? Wouldn’t that be more effective than whining?

NT: Matthew 19-20

Matthew 19

Jesus goes from Galilee to Judea and heals his huge crowds of fans. The Pharisees come test him, asking if the law allows a man to divorce his wife for any reason. Jesus is like, “Remember how God said a man and his wife are one flesh? Humans can’t tear apart what God smooshed together.” The Pharisees are like, “Oh yeah? Well then why did Moses tell us to give our wife a divorce certificate if we leave her? WHAT NOW?” Jesus is like, “Moses let you divorce because you were stubborn dicks. But it wasn’t supposed to be that way originally. I’m telling you that if you divorce your wife for any reason other than adultery, you are committing adultery if you marry another woman.” His disciples are like, “Sheesh, why bother getting married at all then?” Then Jesus tells his disciples that not everybody is able to deal with this rule, which for some reason he tried to illustrate with a confusing example about eunuchs, basically saying that some are born eunuchs, some achieve eunuchhood, and some have eunuchhood thrust upon them. Gross.

Some people bring children to Jesus to be blessed, and the disciples scold them (why?), but Jesus is like “no it’s cool the kingdom of heaven is basically all children anyway” and he blesses them. Then a man asks Jesus what he has to do to live forever, and Jesus says to keep the commandments, but the man asks which ones, and Jesus says not to murder, steal, lie, or sleep around, and to respect your parents and love your neighbors. The man is like “yeah yeah I did all that what now?” And Jesus is like “well now you should sell everything you own and give the money to the poor” and the man gets sad and leaves because he’s rich and doesn’t want to give that up. Jesus then famously tells his disciples that “it’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom” (23). The disciples freak out and are like, “Dude, this kingdom of heaven is very selective. Who even gets in?” And Jesus says, “It’s impossible for human beings. But all things are possible for God” (26) – I guess meaning that no matter what you do, you won’t be worthy, so you can’t earn your way in; you just have to do your best and trust that God will work the miracle of letting your unworthy sinful ass into his magical palace. Peter says, “Look, we’ve left everything and followed you. What will we have?” (27), and Jesus is like, “Don’t worry, when I’m up in heaven in a throne, you all will be in twelve thrones over the twelve tribes of Israel. And if you left your homes and families and things to follow me, you’ll be rewarded with a hundred times than what you started with.” Jesus also claims that “many who are first will be last” and “many who are last will be first” (30), but we know this can’t be true because, in the immortal words of the Prophet Reese Bobby in the Book of Talladega Nights, “if you ain’t first, you’re last.”

Matthew 20

Oh good, another parable.

Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who hires people to work in his vineyard and promises to pay them one denarion each. He hires some in the morning, and some in the afternoon, and some in the evening, and at the end of the day he gives them each one denarion. The ones who were working all day are like “This is some bullshit, we’ve been working all day and we make the same amount as the people who’ve only worked an hour?” And the landowner is like “IT’S MY LAND AND MY MONEY AND I CAN DO WHAT I WANT AND SOME WHO ARE FIRST ARE LAST AND SOME WHO ARE LAST ARE FIRST MWAHAHAHAHAHA.”

Jesus and his twelve apostles are on their way to Jerusalem when Jesus stops to predict his own death again, telling them in third person that the Human One will be tortured and crucified and then will rise three days later. Then James’s and John’s mother show up to embarrass them in front of their cool friends by asking that Jesus place them at his right and left hand in heaven. Jesus asks if they can drink from the cup that he’s about to drink from (I guess asking if they can withstand torture for their beliefs?) and they say yes, and he’s like “Okay, you’ll drink from my cup, but I don’t have the authority to say who sits where at the heaven-table. That’s my Dad’s job.” The other ten disciples get angry at James and John, which seems uncalled for since Jesus didn’t say he’d give them special seats after all. But Jesus calms them down by saying that whoever wants to be great should debase themselves and serve others, just like the Human One does, and unlike the Gentile rulers who boss everyone else around.

On their way out of Jericho (when did we get to Jericho?), Jesus and the apostles and the crowd of fans are stopped when two blind men by the road start yelling and demanding mercy from the Son of David. Jesus is like “ok what do you want?” And they’re like “to see, duh,” and so he touches their eyes to make them see and then they follow him.

Highlights

Meh.

Lowlights

The parable of the landowner and the whole preceding conversation doesn’t make God sound just at all; it makes him sound power-trippy and flippant and condescending and heartless. And I don’t like the promise that if you abandon your family you’ll be rewarded with a hundred families. It’s as frustrating as in the Book of Job when Job gets a new family to replace the one that God murdered. Family love is about quality, not quantity. You don’t want a new family, or a hundred new families, you want those specific people because you love them. Why is God apparently incapable of understanding that?

Exodus 1

Joseph and all of Jacob’s other descendants – all seventy of them – are in Egypt now, breeding like rabbits. Soon, all Jacob’s sons are dead, but Egypt is chock full of Israelites, to the point where they outnumber the “real” Egyptians. A new Pharaoh comes to power and freaks out over all the Israelites, kind of like one of those jerks who panics about what will happen when white people are no longer a majority in America. So, according to this translation, Pharaoh says, “Come on, let’s be smart and deal with them” (10). But at least Pharaoh’s Final Solution is just slavery, not genocide – at first. After they’ve been enslaved for a while, he tells some Hebrew midwives to kill all the baby Israelite boys that are born, but let the girls live. But the midwives are like, “Yeah okay Pharaoh,” and then obviously don’t do what he says. But obviously Pharaoh catches on to the fact that there continue to be Israelite boy babies, so he calls the midwives in and is like, “um, what about that thing we talked about?” And the midwives are badasses and are like, “Oh, yeah, the problem is that Israelite women are just way tougher and cooler than Egyptian women – they squeeze out the babies early and fast, before midwives can get to them.” Instead of realizing that this would put them out of a job if it were true, Pharaoh’s like, “Oh, okay. Bummer.” God rewards the midwives for their badassery, but in the meantime, Pharaoh has a new solution: he orders all Egyptians to throw all baby Hebrew boys into the Nile.

Exodus 2

One day, a Hebrew woman has a baby boy, and she decides she’s had enough of this semi-genocide bullshit, because god damn it, she loves her kid. So she hides him for three months, but then realizes she can’t hide him any longer, so she puts him in a tar-sealed reed basket and sets him down in a clump of reeds at the riverbank. But his older sister (that’s going to be Miriam, right?) stays nearby to watch what happens to him.

When Pharaoh’s daughter comes along to bathe in the river, she finds the baby in the basket, crying, and feels bad for him. She figures out that it’s one of the Hebrew boys, right when the baby’s older sister, who’s been watching, comes over and asks if she should go find a Hebrew women to nurse the baby for her, and Pharaoh’s daughter says yes. So the smart awesome girl goes to her mother and explains the situation and brings her back. Pharaoh’s daughter offers to pay her to nurse the baby for her, and the mother obviously agrees. But once he’s weaned, she has to bring him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopts him and names him Moses.

I guess Pharaoh’s daughter was upfront with Moses about his origins, because one day when he’s an adult, he goes out and sees their hard slave labor and gets upset. When he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, he kills the Egyptian and buries him, which is a creepy detail I never hear about during Passover. Funny. So the next day he sees two Hebrew men fighting, and asks the one who started it why he would attack his fellow Hebrew. The guy pulls a “you’re not the boss of me” maneuver, and then taunts Moses by asking if he’s going to kill him like he killed the Egyptian. Oooooohhhh. Moses freaks out and realizes his murder isn’t a secret; Pharaoh finds out about it and tries to kill Moses, but he runs away to Midian (wherever that is). One day, Moses is chilling by a well in Midian, when seven sisters come to get water, but are chased away by some asshole shepherds. Moses defends the girls and draws their water for them and their sheep. When their father finds out about this, he invites Moses to come over for dinner, which turns into Moses living there. Usually that’s the worst kind of house guest, but apparently the host really liked Moses because he let him marry his daughter Zipporah, which is probably the best Bible name so far. Moses and Zipporah have a son named Gershom. Years go by and the asshole Pharaoh dies but the Israelites are still enslaved and cry out to God, who hears them and “remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (24), which maybe means he forgot before? Oops.

Exodus 3

Moses is taking care of Jethro’s (his father-in-law’s) flock when he sees a bush that is on fire but not burning up, and so he aptly thinks, “Let me check out this amazing sight and find out why the bush isn’t burning up” (3). Check out, really? Okay. So God calls Moses’s name from the bush, and Moses gives the same stupid answer that Abraham and everyone would always give when God would call them: “I’m here” (4). God tells Moses to take off his shoes because he’s on holy ground (apparently he’s on a special mountain called Horeb), and then tells Moses he’s God, so Moses averts his eyes in fear from the thing he went to “check out” a moment ago. God is like, “Moses, the Hebrews are in deep shit. You’re going to get them out of there and lead them to a land of milk and honey, aka Canaan.” Moses is like, “Who, me?” And God goes, “Yes, you.” And Moses goes, “Couldn’t be!” And God goes, “Then who?” Wait, just kidding. That was from that episode of Barney where they can’t figure out who took the cookies. Got my wires crossed.

God’s like “no it’s cool I’ll come with and make sure everything goes smoothly and then you’ll come back here and worship, okay?” Moses asks the weirdest possible question: “What if the Hebrews ask me what your name is?” But God, unfazed, replies, “I Am Who I Am” (14), and helpfully clarifies that Moses should tell people that he was sent by I Am. God promises that the Hebrews will listen to Moses, and tells Moses the plan: Moses will tell Pharaoh that all the Hebrews need to make a three-day religious pilgrimage into the desert to offer sacrifices, and then they’ll come back. God promises to manipulate the Egyptians (see?! no pretensions to free will!!) into lending the Hebrews a bunch of jewelry and riches, so they can rob the Egyptians when they don’t come back from their three-hour tour three-day pilgrimage.

Exodus 4

Moses is all, “What if they don’t believe me that I had a conversation with God in the desert?” And then God decides to do an epic mind-fuck: he asks Moses what he’s holding, and Moses is like, “A shepherd’s staff,” and God is like, “Throw it on the ground,” and Moses is like “I WON’T BE PART OF YOUR SYSTEM” and throws it on the ground where it TURNS INTO A SNAKE OMG EW. Moses is like “GAH WHAT THE FUCK” and God is like “Now pick it up!” and Moses is like “WHAT” but he picks it up and it turns back into a stick. So God is like “See? Isn’t that a great party trick? They’ll believe you now!” God also has Moses put his hand into his pocket and pull it out with a gross skin diseases, then put it back in and take it out again all healthy. And he tells him that if the other two magic tricks don’t work, Moses can throw some Nile water on the ground where it will turn to blood. Cool!

Then Moses keeps whining and whining and he’s like “But I’m not good at public speaking!” And God is like “Moses, who makes people good at public speaking? ME. Because I’m fucking GOD. You’ll be fine.” And Moses is like “I DON’T WANNA” and God is like “Ok I’m done with this. Aaron is coming to meet you now, and he can be your spokesperson. Now scurry along, and don’t forget your magic snaky stick. Have fun!” So Moses goes and tells Jethro he needs to go home to Egypt to find out if his family is still alive, and Jethro’s like “yeah okay.” God tells Moses it’s time to go back because everyone who wants to kill him before has died (how old must Moses be by now?!). So Moses gets his wife and his kids and his special stick and heads out on donkeys. On the way, God tells Moses what to do when he gets there: first, he should do his magic tricks for Pharaoh. “But,” God says, “I’ll make him stubborn so that he won’t let the people go” (21). Ummm…wouldn’t it be easier to not do that, so he just lets everyone go peacefully? That seems preferable in every possible way. Anyway, God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh that God says (seriously) that Israel is his (God’s) oldest son, and since Pharaoh wouldn’t let him/it/them go, now God is going to kill Pharaoh’s oldest son.

Then things get freaky, which is too bad, because so far Exodus has been so much better than Genesis. Anyway, everything about this paragraph is so weird that I can’t not post it in full:

During their journey, as they camped overnight, the LORD met Moses and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a sharp-edged flint stone and cut off her son’s foreskin. Then she touched Moses’ genitals with it, and she said, “You are my bridegroom because of bloodshed.” So the LORD let him alone. At that time, she announced, “A bridegroom because of bloodshed by circumcision.”

Ummmmmmmmmmmm………………………………………………….

what is this i don’t even

No words

Does not compute.

Ahem.

God tells Aaron to go meet Moses on God’s mountain, and Moses tells the whole story. They get all the Israelite elders together and do the magic tricks and tell the story and all and everyone believes and gets excited that God has decided to get up off his ass and do something about the whole slavery situation so they all worship him.

Highlights

It was so normal at first! People were nice and sane! The mother loved her child and was smart and tried to save it and the older sister was smart and saved it and the Pharaoh’s daughter was nice and everyone was doing great there for a while besides the whole slavery thing!

Lowlights

The foreskin situation. What. What. WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

OT: Psalms 11-12

Psalm 11

God protects me so I don’t need to run away from evil people, God sees everything. And the Least Self-Aware Juxtaposition Award goes to…

[God's] very being hates anyone who loves violence.
God will rain fiery coals and sulfur on the wicked. (5-6)

How is this not a Colbert Report-style ironic commentary or something!?!?

Anyway, God loves righteous people and fucks everyone else blah blah.

Psalm 12

Oh, this one’s good. David (or whoever) is complaining to God that all the faithful people are gone and the world is overrun with lying bragging atheist assholes. But God rescues the oppressed faithful (I thought they were all gone?) and protects them from the depraved atheists.

Highlights

ZERO

Lowlights

God hates violence! That’s why he BURNS PEOPLE ALIVE BY RAINING COALS ON THEM.

NT: Matthew 19

Eh…bedtime. Matthew 19 can be tacked onto tomorrow’s chunk. This is the kind of flexibility we’re going to have to be okay with if this blog is going to survive thesis season. Sorry folks.

Genesis 47

Joseph is like, “Hey Pharaoh, my family’s here in Egypt and/or upstate New York! Here are half my brothers.” Pharaoh’s like, “Ok dudes, what’s your bag?” They’re like, “We’re shepherds, and we came here cause we were hungry.” Pharaoh’s like “Cool, welcome to your new home.” Joseph’s like, “Great, thanks. And here’s my Dad.” Jacob blesses Pharaoh, who asks his age, and Jacob says he’s 130. Well, technically, he says, “I’ve been a traveler for 130 years” (9), invoking the popular image of life as a journey.

I actually really like that trope. I went to daily prayers this morning at our school chapel (because I’m churchy like that), and they always end the short morning service with a blessing that begins something like, “Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us,” which is a sentiment that every person on earth should be legally obligated to reflect on every single day.

I bet Egypt's incipient Tea Party was up in arms over this...or would have been, if tea existed in the Middle East back then, which I don't think it did.

Anyway, Jacob blesses Pharaoh again and goes back to settling into his new home. Then Joseph does some kind of political/economic shenanigans to take advantage of the famine to centralize power under Pharaoh’s (and his) control: he acquires all the farmland (except that belonging to the priests), and gives people seed to plant it in exchange for a 20% tax on all their crops (the priests are exempt from this tax). Meanwhile, Jacob lives a few more years, then realizes he’s about to die. After making Joseph swear (with his hand under his thigh again…ew) to bury him back home with his ancestors and not in Egypt, Jacob passes out on his bed (but doesn’t quite die yet).

Genesis 48

Joseph figures out that his father is dying – not because of the part where he passed out on the bed, but because someone told him – so he and his sons go visit Jacob. Jacob tells Joseph how God gave him Canaan for his descendants, then gets ready to bless Joseph’s sons (Manasseh and Ephraim). But we have a confusing situation with the blessings…again. Apparently, it’s very important to Joseph that Jacob bless Manasseh, the elder son, with his right hand, and Ephraim, the younger, with his left. So Joseph brings them over in such a way that Manasseh is next to Jacob’s right hand and Ephraim is next to Jacob’s left hand. But Jacob figures this out and crosses his hands in order to reverse Joseph’s intended hand placement. Joseph apparently spaces out while this is happening, because not until the blessing is over does Joseph notice the hand-crossing and shit a brick. He’s like “NO Dad you’re ruining it Manasseh is the older one!” And Jacob is like, “I know, he’s gonna have it good, don’t worry, but Ephraim will have it extra good.” Then Jacob’s like, “Joseph, I’m about to die, but don’t worry, you’re getting twice the inheritance of your brothers. Also you should go back to Canaan someday.”

Genesis 49

Jacob gets all twelve of his sons to gather around his bed so he can prophesy all up on them. This is his big dying speech:

Okay, listen up, dudes. Reuben, you’re the oldest and strongest, but you “violated my couch” (4), aka nailed one of my many wives, so fuck you. Simeon and Levi, you are violent assholes, and you “maimed oxen” (6) for fun, which is definitely one of the symptoms of psychopathy. Judah, you’re a badass, you wash your clothes in wine for some reason, and people are going to adore you. Zebulun, you’re going to live by the water. Issachar, you are sturdy like a donkey and you work hard. Dan, you will settle disputes, but also fuck people over? Gad, people will attack you, but you will show them who’s boss, like a bad roach. Asher, you will be Top Chef. Naphtali, you’re going to have hot kids. Joseph, you are just objectively better than your brothers. Benjamin, you are a wolf.

Then he blesses them all, even the ones who got shitty predictions, and asks them to bury him in the cave back in Canaan where his parents and grandparents are buried – not with his favorite wife, Rachel. Then he got comfy and died.

Genesis 50 AKA THE LAST CHAPTER OF GENESIS EVER

Joseph cries all over Jacob’s corpse, then has him mummified and mourns him for a couple of months. After the mourning ends, he gets Pharaoh’s permission to go home to Canaan to bury his father. A bajillion people go with Joseph, including every single one of Pharaoh’s servants. Apparently the children and livestock of Jacob’s family stayed in Goshen, completely unsupervised. So all these people go to Canaan and mourn some more and bury Jacob in the cave and then go back to Egypt. Joseph’s brothers suddenly worry that, with their father dead, Joseph will punish them for that time they plotted his death. So they tell Joseph that Jacob told them to ask Joseph’s forgiveness (it’s not specified whether he really did), then everyone cries, and the brothers bow down to Joseph, and he tells them not to worry about it because it turned out better in the end since he was able to save so many lives in the famine. So everybody lives happily in Egypt for a long time – long enough for Joseph to meet his great-grandchildren, some of whom were apparently “born on Joseph’s knees” (23). Gross. (Yes, yes, I know this probably just means that they sat on Joseph’s lap.) Eventually Joseph tells his brother’s he’s about to die, promises that God will bring them all back to Canaan one day, and tells them to bring his bones with them when they go. He dies at age 110 and gets mummified.

Highlights

IT’S OVERRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Lowlights

Now I’m just imagining afterbirth all over someone’s knees. Eeeeeewwwwwwww.

NT: Matthew 17-18

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to a mountain summit and then turns on his magical shiny powers. Moses and Elijah show up to chat with Jesus, and Peter awkwardly offers to build three shrines, one for each of them. Then a cloud talks to theme and says Jesus is his (its?) son and they should listen to him, so the disciples fall prostrate in awe. But Jesus touches them and is like, “get up, it’s all good,” and so they do and nobody’s there but Jesus. On the way down the mountain, Jesus tells them to stay silent about the vision until after the Human One is resurrected. The disciples are like, “why does everyone say Elijah has to come first?” And Jesus is like, “Oh, he was already here, but nobody recognized him, and they treated him like shit, just like they’re going to do to the Human One.” They figure out that he means John the Baptist.

They get back to where Jesus’s fans are waiting, and a man asks Jesus to heal his epileptic son because the disciples weren’t able to. Jesus calls everyone faithless for the billionth time and whines like a teenage girl: “How long will I put up with you?” (17). But he heals the boy – by casting a demon out of him, thereby setting up a stupid superstition that continues, to this day, to attach absurd stigmas to people with organic neurological disorders. The disciples ask why they were unable to exorcise the boy, and instead of explaining that anticonvulsants haven’t been invented yet, Jesus says it’s because they weren’t wishing hard enough: “I assure you that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Go from here to there,’ and it will go. There will be nothing that you can’t do” (20). Funny, I haven’t noticed any of the oh-so-faithful Republican candidates – or anybody else, for that matter – flinging mountains around with their eyes. Oh, wait, I forgot, everything is a metaphor and you can only understand the true meaning if God wants you to.

The disciples all get together in Galilee for a reunion and Jesus kills the mood by reminding them that he’s going to be killed soon. He also reminds them that he’ll be resurrected three days later, but they’re still bummed. Then they go to Capernum and the people are like “Hey Peter, everybody has to give a half-shekel to the temple; doesn’t your rabbi friend pay his taxes?” Peter’s like “OF COURSE HE DOES” but Jesus is like “Peter, who pays taxes to the king: strangers, or his own kids?” Peter’s like “Strangers, duh.” So Jesus is like “Well then I guess I don’t have to pay!” because Jesus is a nine-year-old attempting to rhetoric his way out of his chores. But then he decides he has an opportunity to show off  some more, so he tells Peter to throw a line into the lake and pull out the first fish he catches, which will have a shekel in its mouth to cover the tax for both of them.

Matthew 18

The disciples ask Jesus who the best person in the kingdom of heaven is, and Jesus says the people who humble themselves like little children are best, and that whoever welcomes a child is also welcoming him, Jesus. Then he says that whoever tempts believing children to sin is totally fucked, and reminds everyone that it’s better to amputate yourself than to sin. He says that God doesn’t want his children to stray into sin, just like a shepherd will always go looking for his lost sheep. Jesus then explains that if any of your own siblings (or, probably, anybody else, since every one is “brother” or “sister” too him) sins, and won’t listen to you or to the church and mend their ways, you should excommunicate them and treat them like strangers. But then Jesus touts the importance of forgiveness – but only in exchange for repentance. You can be forgiven, but only by groveling. To illustrate this, he tells a story about a king who forgives a servant’s debt, but then punishes him when he learns that the forgiven servant refused to forgive somebody else’s debt. In this case, we’re all the hypocritical servant, and God is the vengeful king.

Highlights

Moving mountains around and healing the sick sounds cool. Then again, if it were really possible, everybody would be doing it. I mean, who wouldn’t become a Christian in order to acquire Harry-Potter-like powers?

Lowlights

Everybody should forgive everybody all the time! But God is angry and vengeful! But also God is love! And everybody is made in his image! And he can stop people from sinning if he wants to but sometimes he decides to let them do it so he can torture them instead!

OT: Genesis 43-46

Genesis 43

Eventually, Jacob and his sons finish all the grain they got from Egypt in exchange for Simeon. Judah is like, “Dad, we can’t go back without Benjamin, or the guy will flip out.” Jacob is like “WHY DID YOU HAVE TO TELL HIM ABOUT BENJAMIN IN THE FIRST PLACE?!” And the sons are like “HE JUST ASKED US ABOUT OUR FAMILY HOW WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT WOULD LEAD TO A WEIRD RANDOM SCHEME?!” Judah’s like, “Look, I could have gone and come back by now. I’ll take care of him. But we have to go so we don’t starve.” Jacob’s like, “Okay, fine. Take Benjamin. And take back the silver you took before, and some more. And take some of this random shit we have lying around, like resin and honey and nuts that we aren’t eating for some reason.”

I hope they had miniature donkeys. Those are the cutest.

So they go back to Egypt and Joseph sees them coming and has dinner prepared for their arrival. He has them brought to his house, which freaks them out, and they worry that he is going to “make slaves of us, and take our donkeys” (18). OH NOES NOT THE DONKEYS. They tell Joseph’s assistant that they’ve brought back the silver they left with before plus more and that they don’t know how it got put back in their sacks to begin with, confirming commenter Jenin’s suspicion that Joseph was framing them for theft, not forgiving them. So much for forgiveness, then. The assistant is like, “It’s cool, I got the money.” Maybe Joseph paid for the grain himself? So yes to forgiveness, but also with sneaky framing?

The assistant reunites Simeon with his brothers and gives everyone refreshments. Joseph comes home and the dudes present him with their gift of souvenirs from Canaan or wherever, and bow to him. He asks if their father is still alive, which they confirm. Then he sees Benjamin and asks if that’s the younger brother, and when he’s told it is, he runs into the next room to cry because he loves Benjamin so much. Awww. Then he comes back and has dinner served, but the Egyptians have to eat separately from the Hebrews because everybody is racist. Also, Joseph gives Benjamin literally five times as much food as he gives to everybody else, which just makes me think of this.

Genesis 44

Joseph tells his assistant to put grain in the brothers’s sacks with their silver on top, and to put his (Joseph’s) silver cup on top of Benjamin’s sack. He sends them off, and then, a little while later, sends his men after them to stop them and accuse them of stealing the cup. When they catch up to the brothers, they’re like, “What are you talking about? We brought back the silver we mysteriously left with before, and we certainly didn’t take anything this time. You can check our sacks, and whoever has the cup you think we stole can be executed and the rest of us can become your slaves.” (You would think they’d remember what happened last time they didn’t pack their own sacks.) Of course the servants search and find the cup in Benjamin’s sack, so everyone freaks out and goes back to Joseph’s house. Instead of defending themselves or doing anything useful, the brothers are like “oh I guess we’re your slaves now, bummer!” Joseph says, “No, only the one with the cup will be my slave. The rest of you can go home.” Judah is like, “Look, dude, if we don’t bring Benjamin back, our father will plotz. Can I stay as the slave instead?”

Genesis 45

Goshen, Egypt

Joseph decides he can’t deal with his web of lies anymore, so he sends away all his servants and then bursts into tears and confesses that he’s Joseph. The brothers are all terrified of what he’ll do to them, but he’s like, “No, don’t worry, I’m not mad, God obviously sent me to Egypt to save lives by predicting the famine.” Because that’s definitely easier than just letting Pharaoh figure out his own dream, or maybe sending an angel to say “Hey Egypt, get ready for famine,” or maybe not causing a famine in the first place. Anyway, Joseph is like, “Look, go tell Dad what happened and how powerful I am here, and then you and he and all your family should move here and live in Goshen.” I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure Joseph means the Land of Goshen in Egypt, and not Goshen, NY, the shithole where some of my cousins live and whose website is partying like it’s 1996. Pharaoh hears about the plans and is excited that Joseph’s family is coming, and sends along extra wagons and supplies to make their move nice and comfy. They get home and tell Joseph everything, and he’s ecstatic and can’t wait to get to Egypt to see Joseph.

Genesis 46

Goshen, New York

Jacob & co. head out for Egypt. En route, Jacob stops to sacrifice to God, and God tells him in a dream that everything will be copacetic in Egypt. Then the narrator helpfully lists Jacob’s approximately nine trillion grandchildren, plus some confusing and questionable math. However many people went along with Jacob and his three-ish wives and his eleven sons minus Joseph and his one oft-neglected daughter, they all go to Egypt. Judah goes ahead to ask Joseph for directions to Goshen. When they get there, Joseph comes to meet them and is joyfully reunited with his father, who says he can die now. Joseph tells his family that when Pharaoh asks what they do, they should say they’re shepherds, because Egyptians think shepherds are beneath them and so will let them live in Goshen (as opposed to what?). Then Joseph goes to tell Pharaoh everyone’s arrived.

Highlights

It’s nice that they’re all one big happy family now.

Lowlights

What was the point of all the lying and kidnapping and ransoming and threatening?

OT: Psalm 10

God, where are you when the wicked are hassling the good? I hope their plans backfire.

WAIT. We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (hasty first-person summary of boring psalms) to share this excellent excerpt with you:

The wicked brag
about their body’s cravings;
the greedy reject the LORD, cursing.
At the peak of their wrath,
the wicked don’t seek God:
There’s no God—
that’s what they are always thinking.
Their ways are always twisted.
Your rules are too lofty for them.
They snort at all their foes.
They think to themselves,
We’ll never stumble.
We’ll never encounter
any resistance.
Their mouths are filled
with curses, dishonesty, violence.
Under their tongues lie
troublemaking and wrongdoing.
They wait in a place
perfect for ambush;
from their hiding places
they kill innocent people;
their eyes spot those
who are helpless.
They lie in ambush
in secret places,
like a lion in its lair.
They lie in ambush
so they can seize those who suffer!
They seize the poor, all right,
dragging them off in their nets.
Their helpless victims are crushed;
they collapse, falling prey
to the strength of the wicked.
The wicked think to themselves:
God has forgotten.
God has hidden his face.
God never sees anything!

[gnawing on a severed human leg] …Mmrph. Sorry, what was that? I was so busy hunting and eating innocents that I forgot you were there! Wait, shh! Get down behind this shrub. I think another Christian baby is about to crawl over here! [sharpening a spear]

But seriously, this very fair and accurate and not at all stereotyped or offensive characterization of atheists is only slightly marred by a minor contradiction. Are we “always thinking” to ourselves that “There’s no God” (per verse 4), or do we “think to [our]selves” that God exists but “has hidden his face” (according to verse 11)? Or are we so stupid that we believe both of those things without any cognitive dissonance? I just want to make sure I’m getting this right.

Anyway, the eloquent psalm-bitcher continues:

Blah blah atheists are stupid, you are God and you see everything, you’ll punish the wicked and help the oppressed.

Highlights

One less psalm left to read.

Lowlights

[sigh]

NT: Matthew 16

Those pesky Pharisees are at it again, and with the Sadducees in tow, too. They demand that Jesus show them a sign – because I guess they missed all the magical healings and such? Jesus is like, “You stupid Pharisees. You can tell the weather by looking at the sky, but you can’t see the other signs that are right in front of you.” He also says that only evil people demand signs (which is pretty unfair, because how else are we supposed to know what to believe?), and that they “won’t receive any sign except Jonah’s sign” (4). I learned in church today (another friend was preaching) that Jonah went to Nineveh to warn them of God’s punishment, and then the people of Nineveh abandoned their evil ways and God changed his mind about destroying them. So maybe Jonah’s sign is the thing John the Baptist and all the apostles have been doing about warning everyone that God will punish them if they don’t get their shit together.

DANGER WILL ROBINSON

The disciples get to the other side of the lake (I guess the Pharisees were on the boat with them? Why did they even let them on?) and realize they once again don’t have any bread. Jesus tells them to watch out “for the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (6). The disciples ignore this comment and confer amongst themselves, then uselessly announce out loud what they had collectively realized two verses earlier: “We didn’t bring any bread” (7). Jesus again calls them “people of weak faith” (8) and is like “Remember all those times I MADE FOOD APPEAR FROM NOWHERE? Also don’t you get that it wasn’t really about bread? It was all a METAPHOR. Now watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees.” Then the disciples have a belated epiphany: “Then they understood that he wasn’t telling them to be on their guard for yeast used in making bread. No, he was telling them to watch out for the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (12). First of all, duh. But second, to be fair, what does teaching have to do with yeast? Couldn’t Jesus just have easily have said “watch out for the teaching of the Pharisees” instead of “watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees”?

Jesus asks everyone who people say the Human One (or Son of Man) is, and they answer that popular theories include John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or other prophets. Then he asks who they think he is, and Simon/Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16). Jesus is like, “You’re lucky – you learned that from God, not from any human. You’re Peter [which means "rock"] and I will build my church on this rock and give you the keys to heaven.” Then he tells all his disciples not to tell anyone he’s the Christ, which still makes no sense to me.

Then Jesus starts telling everyone he’s going to have to go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed and then raised three days later. Peter is like “No, that can’t happen!” Then Jesus calls Peter Satan – which is a bit harsh since he was just being compassionate and compassion was basically the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount – and calls him “a stone that could make me stumble” (rather than the rock on which the church will be built) because he is “not thinking God’s thoughts but human thoughts” (23).

Let me just say that if God’s thoughts involve torture and sacrifice while human thoughts involve compassion and peace, I’m proud to be human.

Jesus tells his disciples they “must say no to themselves” (24) in order to follow him, and must be willing to give up their lives in order to truly gain life. He promises to repay them for their sacrifices – which makes said sacrifices not really sacrifices so much as loans, if you ask me (but why would you?).

Finally – and this is really interesting – he promises “that some standing here won’t die before they see the Human One coming in his kingdom” (28). In other words, Jesus seems to anticipate that his famed and glorious Second Coming will occur within the next century or so, at most. It sounds like Christianity wasn’t really supposed to be a millennia-long journey so much as a sprint to the finish. He’s kind of pulling a Harold Camping here. Speaking of which, he apparently retired after his most recent false apocalypse prediction. I bet his retirement is nice and comfy thanks to all those donations he got from the people who sold all their belongings in order to follow him – just like Jesus told everyone to do. Maybe Harold Camping is actually the truest Christian of them all for most closely following Christ’s example.

Highlights

Btw, if yeast is so bad, how is Christ our Risen Lord? Did he just use copious amounts of baking soda?

Remember that guy who became a YouTube sensation for his fairly unoriginal and arrhythmic spoken word piece about why he “hates religion but loves Jesus?” I already knew enough to figure out that his references to religious hypocrites in Jesus’s time are alluding to the Pharisees. But now that I’ve read that whole bit in Matthew 16 with the extraneous yeast metaphor, it just took on a new level of hilarity. The voice of our generation, bball1989, claims about two and a half minutes into his magnum opus that “Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums,” in that the former is the “cure” and the latter is the “infection.” So…Jesus is like an antifungal cream, or maybe just a glass of strong cranberry juice?

Lowlights

I’ve been liking Jesus less and less as the Gospel of Matthew goes on, but his creepy similarity to Harold Camping is the real dealbreaker.

Genesis 39

Joseph

Joseph does a good job as Potiphar’s servant (Potiphar is Pharaoh’s chief officer), so Potiphar makes him his head of household. God likes Joseph, so he blesses the household for Joseph’s sake. Now, Joseph, we are told, is “well-built and handsome” (6). Potiphar’s wife has the hots for Joseph and asks him to nail her. Joseph’s like, “Look, your husband trusts me and gives me complete control and denies me nothing but you; how could I screw him over like this and offend him and God?” (My response would be, “Because he bought you as a slave.”) Every day the crazy lady tries to seduce Joseph, but he keeps say no. One day when nobody’s around she grabs his clothes and is like “TAKE ME NOW.” He flips out and runs away, leaving her clothes in his hands. So she summons the other servants and is like, “Joseph tried to rape me but I screamed so he ran away but I grabbed his clothes for some reason!” Potiphar hears this and throws Joseph in jail. But God still likes Joseph so he makes the prison guard like him too. The prison guard puts Joseph in charge of all the other prisoners and trusts him as much as Potiphar did, which is some pretty unorthodox prison-guarding if you ask me.

Genesis 40

Pharaoh gets pissed off at his baker and his sommelier and sends them to jail, where they are put under Joseph’s supervision. One day they look upset, so he asks what’s up, and this is their answer: “We’ve both had dreams, but there’s no one to interpret them” (8). I’m pretty sure it was for situations like this that the hashtag #firstworldproblems was invented.

You know, this one. The dream of the 90s is alive on the top of his head.

Joseph tells them he’ll interpret their dreams for them. The wine steward (I’m going to go on assuming this means sommelier because it reminds me of that snooty sommelier who was on Top Chef a few years ago) tells Joseph he dreamed he saw a three-branched grape vine, and crushed the grapes into Pharaoh’s cup and gave it to Pharaoh. Joseph says the three branches are for three days, meaning that Pharaoh will give the sommelier an audience in three days and forgive and re-hire him, and he’ll put the cup in Pharaoh’s hand like the good old days. Joseph also asks the sommelier to put in a good word for him with Pharaoh to get him out of prison since he didn’t do anything.

The baker tells his dream: he had three baskets of bread on his head, but the birds were eating Pharaoh’s bread out of the baskets. Joseph delivers the following horrifying interpretation of this seemingly harmless dream: “After three days, Pharaoh will give you an audience and will hang you from a tree where birds will peck your flesh from you” (19). ?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Three days later happens to be Pharaoh’s birthday, so he throws a party for all his servants, which is a cry for help if I’ve ever heard one. He decides this would be the ideal time to hear the pleas of the imprisoned baker and sommelier, and to rehire the sommelier and hang the baker. Many happy returns! Also, the sommelier forgets all about Joseph in his joy. Oops.

Genesis 41 [just ten more you guys!!!!]

Two years later, Pharaoh dreams that seven healthy cows and seven emaciated cows climb out of the Nile, and then the skinny cows eat the fat cows. Then he dreams that seven shitty grain stalks somehow devour seven healthy grain stalks. None of Egypt’s “religious experts” (8) – or, alternatively translated, “magicians” – can figure out what this means. This whole debacle jogs the sommelier’s memory, and he’s like, “SHIT. I forgot all about that dream guy in jail!” He tells the story to Pharaoh, who summons Joseph from the prison and asks if he can interpret his dream. Joseph’s all “it’s not me, it’s God,” which he said before, too. Pharaoh’s like “yeah whatever just tell me what it means.” Joseph says it means that God is going to send seven years of prosperity to Egypt, followed by seven years of famine; he suggests that Pharaoh respond by reserving one fifth of the produce for the next seven years and saving it for the famine. Pharaoh’s impressed with this wisdom, so he makes Joseph second-in-command over all of Egypt, gives him a bunch of jewelry and fancy clothes, renames him Zaphenath-paneah (?!), and marries him to Asenath, a priest’s daughter.

Joseph, who’s 30 now, spends the next seven years traveling around Egypt and storing grain for the famine. Meanwhile, Asenath has two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. The famine strikes when predicted, and Pharaoh tells everybody to follow Joseph’s instructions, and everybody buys the grain that he stockpiled. The famine hits surrounding countries, too, and people come from all over to buy Egypt’s grain.

Genesis 42

I have no idea what this is, but it came up in Google images when I searched for spies.

Back in Canaan, which is also hit by the famine, Jacob learns that there’s grain in Egypt and sends his ten oldest sons to go buy some. He keeps Benjamin at home, probably since the last time he sent his youngest son along with the older ones, he never came back. When the ten older boys get to Egypt, Joseph recognizes them but they don’t recognize him, so he pretends not to know them. They bow down to him, like in his dreams back in the day. He asks where they’re from, and they say they’ve come from Canaan to buy food. He’s like, “I don’t believe you. I think you’re spies.” And they’re like, “No, Master, we’re your servants, we just want food.” And Joseph’s like, “SPIES.” And they’re like, “No, we’re twelve brothers! Except one is back in Canaan and one is gone.” And Joseph’s like, “SPIES!! Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll put all but one of you in prison until the other one brings back your youngest brother. If he comes and confirms your story, you’re free. If not, you’re SPIES!” But he puts them all in prison, and three days later he’s like, “Ok, look, one of you stay in prison, and the rest of you can take grain back home, but you’d better bring back your youngest brother.”

The brothers are getting ready to go, and they’re all like, “Shit, we are probably being punished for that time we sold our brother into slavery. Oops.” And Reuben is all “I TOLD YOU SO.” And Joseph is eavesdropping and cries. He takes Simeon and ties him up, and packs up grain and loads up the donkeys for the rest of them – and, when they’re not looking, he puts their money (which they had paid for the grain) back into their grain bags. They head out, and when they stop for the night, one opens his grain bag to feed his donkey, and he finds the silver inside, which causes everyone to flip a shit, for some reason: “Terrified, they said to each other, ‘What has God done to us?’” (28). They get home and tell Jacob the whole story. Then they find the silver in all the bags, and freak out again, still for unclear reasons. Jacob is like “Joseph’s gone, Simeon’s gone, and now you’re taking Benajmin? FML.” Reuben is like, “Look, I promise I’ll bring him back safe. If I don’t, go ahead and execute both my sons.” WTF?!?! How would it be their fault?! WHY DOES EVERYBODY SUCK? Jacob’s like, “No, I’m not sending Benjamin with you. If anything happened to him, I’d die.”

Highlights

It was nice of Joseph to give his mean brothers the grain for free. Yay forgiveness!

Lowlights

Reuben

Why would Reuben let his sons be sacrificed for his own failure? Why would he ever think Jacob would want to do that as punishment? Why was the baker hung?!

NT: Matthew 14-15

Matthew 14

Herod – the sneaky one, remember? – hears about what Jesus is up to, and concludes that John the Baptist has been raised from the dead and that “miraculous powers are at work through him” (2). Wait a minute, you’re thinking, since when is John the Baptist dead? At least, that’s what I thought. But then we go into flashback mode!

<FLASHBACK MODE>

Yuck

Herod’s brother Philip was married to a woman named Herodias, and Herod had a crush on her and wanted to marry her. I’m not sure whether or not Philip was still alive at this point, but in either case, John the Baptist was like, “Dude, not okay.” And Herod was like, “Ugh, John the Baptist won’t let me marry Herodias, so I wish I could kill him, but people think he’s a prophet so they’ll riot if I do. Oh well, I’ll just put him in prison since he’s annoying.” But then at Herod’s birthday party, Herodias’s daughter (and so probably his own niece?! ewww) danced for him, and “thrilled Herod” (6). GROSS. So Herod offered her anything she asked for. Herodias knew John the Baptist was all that stood between her and marriage to Herod, so she told her daughter to request John the Baptist’s head on a plate. So Herod had John the Baptist beheaded and gave the head to Herodias’s daughter, who gave it to Herodias. John’s disciples came to get the body and buried it and told Jesus what happened.

</FLASHBACK MODE>

Okay, so now John the Baptist is dead and Jesus knows about it and Herod thinks Jesus is zombie John the Baptist. When Jesus hears about John the Baptist, he rides off in a boat by himself to mourn. But people can’t leave him alone, so they go on foot to meet him at the shore, and he feels bad for them so he heals all the sick ones. His disciples are like, “okay, let’s send everyone home now so they can buy dinner,” and Jesus is like, “no, they can stay, feed them here.” The disciples are like, “um, there are approximately five thousand people outside, and we only have five loaves of bread and two fish.” Jesus is like, “NBD.” He blesses the bread and fish and then has the disciples break them apart and distribute them and the food magically amplifies and they all stuff themselves and still have leftovers.

Jesus sends the disciples back across the lake and sends everyone else home, then goes and prays on a mountain. In the morning, the disciples are still in the boat on the lake, and it’s storming. Jesus walks to their boat across the water, and the flip out, thinking it’s a ghost. Jesus says it’s him, and proves it by ordering Peter to walk on the water too, which he does. But then Peter gets scared of the storm wind and starts sinking and freaks out, but Jesus saves him and says, “You man of weak faith! Why did you begin to have doubts?” (31). They get back to the boat and the storm ends, and the disciples worship Jesus and conclude that he’s the son of God. The boat lands at Gennesaret, where all the sick people hear he’s there and come touch his clothes to be cured.

Matthew 15

Those phucking Pharisees whine to Jesus about how his followers don’t ritually wash their hands before meals and follow other old rules. Jesus is like, “You guys are a bunch of hypocrites. You’re breaking God’s command by following the letter but not the spirit of the law.” Jesus calls everyone over and is like, “Listen up people: God cares about what you do and say, not about what you eat and whether you follow the laws to the letter.” The disciples are like, “Um, you upset the Pharisees.” Jesus is like, “Don’t worry about them. They’re fucked. They’re the blind leading the blind. Look, whatever you eat, you’re going to shit it out and it’s going to end up in a sewer. Whatever. But the things you say come from your heart, and those are the things that can contaminate you if they aren’t pure.” And then he tells us that “eating without washing hands doesn’t contaminate in God’s sight,” and I know what he means, but the public health implications still frustrate me.

Jesus goes to Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman asks Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter, but Jesus ignores her. He says he’s only come for “the lost sheep, the people of Israel” (24). I guess all that shit about loving your neighbor as yourself goes out the window, or else it only applies to the neighbors who share your beliefs or ethnicity. The woman begs him to help, but he says, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (26). Turns out Jesus is mad racist, since I’m assuming the children are the Israelites and the dogs are poor people like this Canaanite woman who weren’t lucky enough to be born into God’s Chosen People of Superior DNA and General Excellence, and so will have to suffer. This woman is a badass and talks back to racist Jesus, pointing out that even dogs get to eat the crumbs from the table. Jesus is convinced and praises the woman’s faith and heals her daughter, finally.

Then Jesus gets all repetitive again and goes up a mountain and heals a bunch of sick people and then feeds thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and some fish. Not so impressive the second time around (or the millionth time around, in the case of the healing). Then he takes the boat to Magadan.

Highlights

It’s nice that Jesus is still using his powers for good by healing and feeding people…

Lowlights

…but it’s shitty that he only wants to extend those benefits to Jews. Why is he so racist? Why is he so mean to the Canaanite woman? And why does he have to discourage people from washing their hands?!