• [I'm closing my livejournal account, and copying over this biblical entry] I just finished reading the bible, all the way from "In the beginning" to "Amen". It's taken me about a year, on and off. Here are some thoughts. (SPOILER WARNING) First, apologies for anything blasphemous I might say. I'm just a born and raised atheist trying to figure out what all the fuss is about. Also, sorry this message is so long. (Hey, it's much shorter than the bible). On the whole, the bible was a great read. I skimmed through the really boring parts, like the genealogies, most of Leviticus, and the measurements of the temple. There was a lot of blood, and plenty of wackiness. I think that's what makes it so deeply "human" - so evocative of all the brutality, yearning, and confusion of human existence. Many familiar stories had a twist I wasn't aware of. For example, # Lot offered his daughters to a crowd of rapist. Later he impregnated them in what sounds to me like a flimsy excuse for pedophilia. # Samson was really stupid. # What's up with the lion and the donkey in 1Kings 13:23-30? # Elijah was nuts. # Psalm 137 is famous for Boney M's cover "By the rivers of Babylon", but less famous for the vindictive ending "happy is he ... who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks". # After Daniel miraculously survived the lion's den, his false accusers and their wives and children were thrown in to their deaths. # After his fish adventure, Jonah delivered God's message of doom to the city of Nineveh, and soon "every man and beast" was wearing sackcloth and calling urgently on God. Thus God changed His mind about destroying the city, much to the annoyance of Jonah, who felt he'd gone to a lot of trouble for nothing. I couldn't help but like King David. He made some mistakes, but went on with good humor. He liked harp music to calm his melancholia. On the down side, he committed genocide (which God liked) and had Uriah killed so he could marry Bathseba (which God punished by killing the resulting son and having David's wives publicly raped). From about Isaiah on, the Old Testament got a bit wearing. God was really angry with people for worshipping the wrong gods, and kept sending prophets to describe in detail what horrible things He was going to do. The prophets seemed to be ignored at the time, except for the previously mentioned story of Jonah and his spectacular success in converting all 120,000 residents of Nineveh. [New testament next...]

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