I know I haven't. But I went to church every Sunday as a kid and went to lots of Sunday Schools and Bible Camps and Jesus Discos and all the rest of it. So I feel like I know the Bible pretty well. I even read a comic-book version of the whole Old Testament (Spoiler alert: Jesus dies in the end. And the Jews did it, in the billiard room, with the cross.)
But despite that exhaustive research, there are still some fun bits I missed somehow. For instance, there's a whole section of Exodus that lays out about a hundred amendments to the Ten Commandments.
Some are great. Exodus 22:25 states "If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest." So basically, all bankers are breaking God's law. Awesome!
Some are not so great. Exodus 20:21-22 states "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, because the slave is his property." Hmmm. So those people who think homosexuality is a sin because of a few Bible passages ... they obviously must also be in favor of beating slaves within an inch of their lives, no? Or perhaps this Exodus passage is a metaphor. A metaphor for ... ummm .... c'mon, liberal preachers, do something with this one. Stretch this somehow into a lesson about modern life.
No, but really, a lot of this stuff was really revolutionary for its time. You gotta remember what ancient life was like. It was brutality spiced with sadism, with a little mauling on the side. Rome was the most advanced civilization of the ancient world, and it was a place in which entertainment meant watching lions eat people. The Roman gods and other related polytheistic systems didn't really impart morality at all -- they were just more powerful versions of humans whose whims you supposedly had to appease if you wanted to get anywhere.
A lot of the Exodus rules represent a definite step forward from all that. Exodus 21:12: "Anyone who strikes a man and kills him will surely be put to death." So despite the harsh punishment, it implies some value to human life. Or here's a better one -- Exodus 22:21: "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt." (But Mexicans, of course, they're a different story. You can oppress them all you like. After all, they're not from Egypt!)
So yeah, anyway, I don't have any great overarching point here -- I'm just saying that the Bible is fun. It's totally dope, kids! Word!
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First off, not to spoil your spoiler, Ed, but Jesus didn't die in the end. If you'd kept reading, you'd see that he dies near the end, but comes back to life in the next chapter.
I got a Bible from our priest when I graduated from high school, and I vowed to read it from cover to cover. I only got to Isaiah. I'd already been losing steam getting through Proverbs (here are some highlights of Proverbs: "Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying." (19:18); "It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house." (21:9); or, to combine those two into one tidy proverb: "A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping." (19:13)).
And Isaiah is like 70+ chapters, so I despaired and gave up. Looking at the list now, I missed out on all the prophets, which is a shame. Maybe I'll get back to it one of these days. I mean, it's the most important book in the history of mankind, right? Shouldn't more people read more of it?
In the meantime, I'm continuing with my other literary vow: to read all of Dickens' novels. I'm about halfway through Little Dorrit, which just leaves David Copperfield and Martin Chuzzlewit to go. Then it's off to the prophets!
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