Bible Babble

So I'm back, after a couple of months of celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus and other such activities.

I am currently reading The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. The basic premise is that this fellow, A.J., has committed himself to living according to Biblical rules for an entire year. It's a clever little book, written by a clever little man, and although I am not learning quite as much bizarre Bible lore as I had anticipated, I am finding some curious little nuggets. And it's always a pleasure to be reminded of the delightfully bizarre rules that appear throughout the text. For example, according to Deuteronomy 25:11-12: "If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity."

That's right. If that little bitch goes for the balls, off with that hand.

However, I am more impressed with the subtle nuances of some of the more basic rules... e.g. the Ten Commandments. These are mistranslated all over the place. First of all, "thou shall not steal." This should actually be translated into "thou shall not kidnap [and sell into slavery]." So don't worry, kids, as long as you're not part of the black market slave trade, you're good to go. Then there's the adultery issue. The biblical definition of adultery is being a man and having sex with a married woman. If you're a married man who has sex with an unmarried lady friend, though, it's no problem. And the graven images thing? To be specific, you're really not allowed to make any images of anything at all, provided that it is either in heaven, on earth, or in the sea. Which kind of covers the bases. However, humans are crafty little beings, as demonstrated by the Birds' Head Haggadah, the oldest surviving Ashkenazi illuminated manuscript (c. 1300), where all of the heads of the human figures have been replaced by birds' heads. I do think it's safe to say that human-bird mutants were not in existence in heaven, on earth, or in the sea. Very clever.

Anyway, I'm only halfway through the book at this point, so I'll be back with some more tidbits of Bible knowledge at a later hour.