The Holy Bible (Old Testament) -- An Abstract -- Part 1

As a Public service, I hereby present this summary of the Hebrew Scriptures, otherwise known as "Tanakh" to the Jews and "Old Testament" to the Christians.

I read the Bible, so you don't have to.

The bsic gist of this work is that a Deity, variously called YHVH (an unpronounceable collection of Hebrew letters) or "Elohim" (pretty weird to use a plural form for a God who insists that there's only One), for some unexplained reason, starts creating a unverse, culminating with a creature vcalled a "Human" created in the Deity's image. Which isn't very helpful, because the Deity isn't described very well.

Anyway, as the story develops, we do find out more about the Deity (whom we shall refer to as "God"). For one thing, if humans are created in God's image, we soon find out that from their behavior that God is (1) likes to make direstions more difficult than they need to be, and (2) is incapbale of follwing those directions. This comes from the first woman, who, in the garden, makes the world's first chumrah ("yessir, snakee, not only did God tell us we couldn't eat this fruit, he told us we couldn't even touch it!"), and then goes ahead and eats the fruit anyway.

From this inauspicious beginning, we get the first murder, and then the human race goes downhill from there to the point that God decides to kill everybody. (I don't want to invoke Goodwin's Law, but I wonder who else had a similar idea? We'll, "created in God's image," I guess.)

However even after saving the only righteous man of his generation (who then proceeds to get drunk), God ends up being totally pissed, because humans, in the end, abandon worshipping God in favor of worshipping idols.

So finally one nutcase (who just happened to be Jewish, wouldn't you know) decides to worship God. God is so overwhelmed that finally he's got a follower that he decides that this guy's descendants should have an unconditional covenant with the Divine. Now, given this history that transpired, I don't know why God bothered doing this. God, becing omniscient, would easily see all the mishigass that this nutcase's descendants would do, stuff that should obviously disqualify them from any sort of covenant, even with Bilaam's Ass. But, who knows the ways of God? After all, humans are created in God's image, and we all know what they are like.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Abraham's (that's Mesopotamian for "nutcase") descendants end up as slaves in Egypt, and God futzes around for a couple hundred years before He gets around to freeing them, the process of which condemns the Jews to have to eat matzah for 7 days a year for all eternity.

Not that the Israelites (that's Egyptians for "ungrateful clueless wretches") are such a great bargain for God. Despite the fact that these people personally see God trash the greratest empire the world has known, free them from slavery, and guide and feed them in a barren wilderness, these bozos are still incapable of following directions. "Thou shalt not make any graven images," and what's the first thing they do when the boss goes on vacation? Right. They make a graven image.

This mishugass goes on for 40 years, you would think that God might get the message and choose some other people, but then maybe they'ree all no good, after all they're all created in the image of a God who can't follow directions. But despite that, God decides to allow the Israelites to disposses the people living in Canaan and commit war crimes on them, after a practice session with the Midianites.

But it doesn't end. Two Israelite spies go into the Land to spy it out before the divine conquest, and where do they go, despite having heard all of the Torah, oral and written, including the Shulchan aruch and all of the statements by various rabbis concerning Nossom Slifkin" These guys who have personally heard the word of God, end up in a whorehouse!

And with that note, we end part 1, "The Torah."

Stay tuned for Part 2, or "Why I am not a Zionist," coming soon to a heretical web site near you.