Leviticus is an anagram for "Vice I Lust" - Just saying!

Leviticus is the shortest book of the Bible I've read so far so I have no excuse for the long wait between my last post and this one except that two weeks ago was midterms and last week was Spring Break. Obviously I was busy during midterms week and during Spring Break I was too busy breaking the laws in Leviticus to read them! (I kid! I kid! ...or do I? ...yes I do)

I've obviously read Leviticus by now and (I feel redundant saying this) it was so boring. If I ever become religious (and I won't) I'm going to become Catholic because A) I'm old enough to tell the truth so I'm safe from unwanted advances and B) the priest reads the Bible for you! Now that's what I'm talking about! But I digress. Let's get to my take on Leviticus.

LV 1:9, LV 1:13, LV 1:17, LV 2:2, LV 2:9, LV 2:12, LV 3:5, LV 3:16, LV 4:31, LV 6:21, LV 8:21, LV 8:28, LV 17:6, LV 23:13, LV 23:18 The first thing that really stood out to me was all these verses about "pleasing aroma[s] to the Lord." I didn't know the Lord was such a fragrance connoisseur! I thought about that and I realized there was a business opportunity here so I decided to contact someone about it. Check it out! As soon as I hear back from them I'll let you all know!!

Anyway, for those of you that aren't familiar with Leviticus, it's basically a book of laws for a few different things. One of them, as you may have guessed from the verses above, is sacrifices. For the first few chapters it just seems like you burn an animal or grain or throw some blood around and it's all meant for God. I thought all the sacrifice stuff was really primitive and superstitious (and it is) but that's all I really thought about it. Then I got to these verses, LV 5:13, LV 5:16, LV 6:16, LV 6:18, LV 6:26, LV 6:29, LV 7:6-10, LV 7:15, LV 7:31-34, LV 14:13, LV 24:9, and they all talk about how the priest or his sons are meant to have some of the sacrifices for themselves. To me, it's just blatantly obvious the priests put that in there so they could keep a little on the side for themselves. I mean, obviously I think they wrote all of it themselves but these verses really stuck out to me. How was this not obvious to the Hebrews?

LV 7:27, LV 17:10-12 Hey! God is infinitely good! He hates Twilight!

LV 8 Didn't we already go over this in Exodus 29?

LV 11:13-19 I'm not the first to point this out but I think it's important to do so. A bat is not a bird. Shouldn't an all knowing God, well, know that?

LV 11:35 It seems that God could have told the Hebrews about soap, or the use of heat for sterilization, what with his omniscience and whatnot, instead of telling them to just break things.

LV 13 Even better. How about some information on proper medical procedures, treatments, and prevention? Something other than just shutting them away for seven days!!

LV 13:41 Hair from the forehead? Really? Was that common back then?

LV 13:47-49, LV 14:37 Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like mold and/or mildew, not leprous disease. Again, seems like something God could have mentioned to the Hebrews.

LV 16:8, LV 16:10, LV 16:26 My guess is that Azazel is a goat demon based on LV 17:7 but I'm no Biblical scholar.

LV 18 I find it interesting that the vast majority of the Unlawful Sexual Relations are aimed at the men. Only LV 18:23 is aimed at women specifically and no where does it say a woman shall not lie with a woman as with a man. Ellen is off the hook!!

LV 19:19 Who knew God was such a fashionista?

LV 19:27 No sideburns? Is that what it's saying?

LV 23 Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me like all these Feasts of the Lord were really just built-in vacation time. "Hey! You should worship our Lord! You get all this time off throughout the year. It's great! We actually punish you if you work during that time! That's how seriously we take vacation time."

Finally, I've heard it said before that the Old Testament laws were meant as a way for the Hebrews to be set apart from other nations. I haven't seen that specifically written in the Bible so far but I'll accept that explanation for the time being. What bugs me about this though is that some of these laws are really extreme and/or odd. Are these really necessary for the Hebrews to set themselves apart? "Look. There's a medium over there. Oh, now look! There's a guy walking by her. Is he going to kill her? No. Nope. He's talking to her! Clearly he's not a Hebrew. Let's go kill the medium and then go try to convert that guy." I'm being facetious but that just seems like a really strange way to be set apart. That and things like not letting deformed people approach the altar, stoning someone to death for blaspheming, or not eating a hare amongst others. Couldn't God have just given these people a secret handshake or a flag or something? And what's so unholy about a deformity or a hare? I've said before that God being a jerk doesn't disprove he exists, but it certainly makes me question his motives.

There's probably more I could talk about (like how if you don't follow these laws or accept them you'll end up eating your own kids, thought it's unclear if God will make you do that or not) but I feel like I've written enough already. I'll do my best to make my next post on Numbers within the week.

-Nikko

Understanding the Skeptic: Small Changes with No Explanation

Exodus - Ten Plagues, Ten Commandments, Ten Hours of my life I wish I had back

I would love to do this post about how different Exodus is from the 1956 film "The Ten Commandments" but I haven't seen that movie since I was a kid so instead you can read about it for yourself here on Wikipedia.

Instead, I'll just do the usual and run through some stuff that I thought was funny, confusing, and/or disturbing.

EX 3:14 Popeye was stealing from God. Who knew?

EX 4:2, EX 14:15 I still don't get why an all-knowing being needs to ask questions. Dramatic effect?

EX 4:21, EX 7:3, EX 9:12, EX 10:1, EX 10:20, EX 10:27, EX 11:10, EX 14:4, EX 14:8 This was the hardest part of the Exodus for me to get past. God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh and ask Pharaoh to let his people go. But Pharaoh is a jerk and doesn't do it so God unleashes 10 plagues on Egypt, killing people in the process. In between each plague God has Moses ask Pharaoh again to just let his people go but Pharaoh never gives in. However, what these verses are suggesting (flat out saying?) is that God purposely made Pharaoh turn down Moses' requests. That seems a tad unfair. Granted, there are other verses that word it as though Pharaoh is hardening his own heart (EX 8:15, EX 8:32, EX 9:34) but the emphasis is on God being the force behind Pharaoh's heart hardening(?). I'm sure there's an explanation given for this but I don't know what it is. Perhaps someone could enlighten me.

EX 14:17 God does the same thing to the regular Egyptians, practically forcing them into the Red Sea himself.

EX 9:23-24 Is the "fire" in this verse supposed to be lightning or actual fire? It seems to me like they just thought lightning was fire "running down to the earth," which is an understandable thought for a relatively primitive culture. Except that later (EX 19:16) they refer to lightning as lightning.

EX 12:12 This is, to me, the most unmistakable example of henotheism so far. Why would God say he is going to execute judgement on the gods of Egypt if they don't exist? That's like saying you are totally gonna beat down some leprechauns.

EX 12:48 Wow! That's a lot to go through just to keep the Passover. I'd probably say something like, "No. That's ok. I don't like lamb anyway. I'm allergic."

EX 15 This has got to be the worst lyrics ever.

EX 16:14 Errrr....what?

EX 18:11 Some more henotheism. Notice that's it not "now I know that the Lord is the only god."

EX 18:21-22 "And the Lord created Middle-Management."

EX 19:16-18 Is it just me or is Mount Sinai a volcano?

EX 22:16 Here, virgin can also mean "a girl of marriageable age." Why does that not carry over to the NT? Or does it?

Most of the laws talked about in here I can understand as what was necessary at the time before modern courts and whatnot were established, but what's up with the young goat thing?

EX 24:8 Gross! I wonder if anyone was thinking, "You couldn't have just shown it to us!?!?"

What is up with the ridiculous detail about how to build all these various things and how to consecrate priests like they're Carrie? I'm not going to link to it, just take my word for it. It's crazy descriptive so there must be a reason for it to be in there. Someone help me out here.

EX 31:14 That just seems excessive. What if something really needed to get done?

EX 32:11-14 This was really weird to me. Moses asks God to lay off his people a little and not smite them for creating a golden calf. So naturally Moses turns around and orders the sinners killed. EX 32:27-28 Yeah. That makes sense.

EX 34:10-28 I couldn't pass this up even though I was already aware of it. Are these the real Ten Commandments or no? I've heard both sides argued and I'm still not sure. I mean, I get why the Ten Commandments that we know are the preferable ones, but the wording in these verses makes it seem like this was where God really wanted us to focus our energy.

So that's it. I've heard it said that there's no real evidence Moses ever existed or that the Hebrews spent 40 years in the desert or even that they were ever in Egypt. But, I'll accept that the story is fairly true in that there was probably a leader of the Hebrews at one point early on named Moses. All the supernatural/plague stuff though just sounds like either Moses was lying to his people (like how North Koreans think Kim Jong Il was the first man to land on the moon) or his people embellished or flat-out made things up about his life (like how we think George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and threw a coin across a river).

Anyway, up next is Leviticus. I'm sure I'll have a LOT of interesting things to say about that book! Stay tuned!

-Nikko

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Understanding the Skeptic: The god of Natural Selection