Reading The Bible

(Moved over from my LJ post September 28th - now that I have some spare time again, I'm going to continue this farage into the Bible)

I bought a copy of the King James Bible off've Ebay about a week ago. It turned up this morning. I've been reading it on and off all day.

I'm STILL reading Genesis. This things English is attrocious, narrative is almost non-existant and plot is ridiculous. I mean REALLY. Have you ever read this thing?

In the first two chapters ALONE, it manages to contradict itself quite hienously.

Genesis 1 through 31 describes the seven days and what god does on each of those seven days.

1:27 - So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

(Talk about a tautological statement!)

Then in chapter 2 he DOES IT ALL AGAIN, but with some changes.

2:18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

('make him an help meet'???)

2:22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Which of these am I suppsoed to be believing here? That man and woman were made on the same day, both in god's image, or that Adam was made first, god decided he needed a companion and then took one of Adam's ribs and made Eve?

Matt said something about, perhaps chapter 2 is just clarifying chapter 1. It IS NOT. I've read both chapters repeatedly now, and they are completely seperate bloody stories.

Oh - and then chapter 3 blithely goes on to paint Eve as the goddess of all evil. Lovely. Eve get's cursed with birthing pains, while Adam - as far as I can tell from reading the scripture - got cursed to eat bread.

3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

What? How is that fair? Adam was apparantly the worlds first Dobber-Inner, and he got cursed to eat bread?

Personally, I quite like bread. Could we swap?

Oh - and god apparently dislikes vegetarians.

4:3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.

4:5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.

So Cain kills Abel, and god kicks him out. Cain goes to Nod.

Pardon - where? Where was this Nod again? Has this place been mentioned before?

*re-reads previous chapters*

No - no it hasn't been mentioned before - but apparently it has plenty of humans in it, because Cain bags himself a wife!

Aaaand the next two chapters are a loooooong list of male heirs. You see how this can get boring.

Enter Noah and his sons. He's given a week to build a boat and collect two of each animal (or was that seven?)

6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee: they shall be male and female.

7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

Quite aside from the genetic degredation of this sort of thing - quite how did Noah and his sons manage to get two (or seven) of every animal species into the ark in only a week?

7:10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon them.

Fun. So - because he's a bit pissed off with his own creation, he kills EVERYTHING.

I wont get into the geological mystifications of this particular biblical story (I could, and at length, but I wont.)

Once that's all over and done with, Noah gets drunk, passes out naked and has to be rescued by his sons. The youngest of whom he then curses into slavery, because he saw his naked genetalia.

Um. This may be a silly question, but what particular moral is he espousing there?

'See your fathers genetals, forever be slave to your brothers!'

Yeaaah.

Anyway - then we have lots MORE male hiers. So much fun!

And that takes up the next three chapters.

Now - I don't know about you guys, but the story of Abram and his wife, to me, is just really silly.

Basically, because his wife is so pretty, he makes her pretend to be his sister - so HE isn't killed so other men can have her. (Doesn't it make it easier for them to take her, if she's his sister? Perhaps he's not thinking of HER at all, just himself...)

Because of this, the Egyptian Pharoh takes her in as his mistress, while heaping many pleasures and riches upon Abram.

Unsurprisingly, god get's antsy.

Surprisingly, instead of punishing Abram for his dishonesty and deciet, he punishes the unknowing Pharoh!

All Abram get's is a slap on the wrist and an escort from the country.

And that's as far as I've got so far. It makes tedious reading. It really does. I KNOW it's been translated a hundred thousand times, from arabic to latin to english and all over the place, but BLOODY HELL. Babelfish is far more amusing.

Christians are constantly telling me and fellow atheists to read the bible and let the words speak to us and so on so forth.

Well, I am.

And so far?

I've found it badly worded, badly written, badly emphasised, to contain bad or no morals, bad science, ridiculous history, crap geology and really REALLY anti women.

And that's just the first book!

What exactly do christians hope to achieve by forcing this down my throat? Or am I simply to read only the bits they TELL me to read?

I have little to no respect for the 'pick-and-choose' religionistas (either believe the whole thing was inspired by god, or don't - don't pick and choose which verses you like, that negates the whole POINT.)

Either way, I'm going to keep reading.

Lets see what else my old Vicar was hiding from us in the pews.