Reading Rambo

In 1895, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, then 80 years old, published the first part of a project she and the other women working on it called The Woman's Bible. One of its main purposes was to argue against the idea that women should be subservient to men, and to trample upon the notion that it was God's will they be so.



This book is startling, shocking, and astonishing. It reads like an essay by 1960s radical feminists (except when Stanton uses words like "tergiversation"). It seems that when they can, they use the Julia Smith translation, which I'd never heard of, for reasons explained in that Wikipedia article. Side note, but I'd like to point out that that translation apparently retails for appx $20,000 because there are basically no copies of it.

The Woman's Bible was published in two parts, in 1895 and 1898, and looks at the women in the Bible, as well as verses that have been used for centuries to justify their subjugation. As Clara Bewick Colby points out…

So if you'll remember from the other day, Jacob stole his twin Esau's birthright, which means he gets all the firstborn son stuff. Not cool, Jacob. In the second half of Genesis, their father Isaac (son of Abraham, let's keep this patriarchy line straight) does THE SAME THING HIS DAD DID and when he's in a foreign country with his wife, he's like "Oh, that's my sister," and the king's like "Oh, your sister's pretty attractive" and then he sees "Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah" and is like "Wtf why did you say she was your sister??" I don't get why this is a repeated story in Genesis, but it seems really important to them. Maybe it was really, really funny back then -- I don't know what senses of humor were like 3000 years ago.



So then it's time for Jacob to for-real steal Esau's inheritance, and it's messed up because Isaac's like "I'm dying. Esau, go hunt something and then make m…

Genesis is the book of the Bible for the lazy man. It's the first one, and it has some of the best stories, so they're most of the ones that've gotten bandied about in popular culture for centuries. But there're 50 chapters in Genesis, so it's a bit long, and not everything became famous and I AM HERE TO HELP.



Genesis obvs starts with the creation of the universe. BOOM. Made. But there are two creation stories (oops) in Genesis 1 and 2, so first you have the big one where it talks about seven days, and where it's like LIGHT. WATER. LAND. PLANTS. STARS. BIRDS AND FISH THINGS. OTHER ANIMALS. MAN. NAP TIME.

That's the order of stuff.

But then the second creation story's just like "There was NOTHING except a bunch of dirt. Then some water. Then God made man out of the dirt and put him in this big perfect garden that you can never go back to sorry."

With Adam and Eve, the special things people usually point out are 1) No mention is made of an apple…

I've been trying to read through the Bible in its entirety for forever, mainly because as a Christian I am EMBARRASSED that I cannot check it off those Books I've Read lists. No. Forget that noise.

Over the years, I've made it up to 2 Samuel, which is the tenth book of the Old Testament. NOT IMPRESSIVE, YOU SAY? Try reading the parts of Exodus that're like "Wait, let me give you exact sewing instructions; these are important for your spiritual growth."



You have to be interactive with the text, or it's impossible to get through. I posted here years ago about a bit in Exodus where Moses's brother Aaron's sons are killed by God because they "offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, contrary to his command," and when Moses basically says "Yeah, well, they should've been not doing that," Aaron says nothing. The text specifically points out he says nothing. Because yeah, God's justice, etc, and maybe Aaron's sons were t…

Hey, you know in Leviticus when Moses's brother Aaron's sons, the priests of the Ark of the Covenant (you TOTALLY know what I'm talking about -- EVERYONE knows about Nadab and Abihu) defiled the sacred place around the Ark through some Jewish law I'm unclear on and then it says God killed them with fire and then Moses said:
"This is what the LORD spoke of when he said: 'Among those who approach me I will show myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honored.'"
So basically that they should have known better. Remember that? Do you know what immediately follows it?
"Aaron remained silent."
Some scribe like four thousand years ago chose to include that, which is amazing.
I mean, because this is the Bible and crazy-old and part of a long-distant culture, who knows if this meant something else. Maybe when your sons died in godly fire you were SUPPOSED to say nothing when your brother did a shitty job comforting you. But if we're terri…

I just looked up "thunder bible" in google image search, looking for...I don't know, some kind of picture of God with impressive looking storm stuff around him, but instead I got this picture of Zeus, so that's what you're getting:




I'm an iconoclast, but I'm not one of those nasty iconoclasts who breaks into your 14th century home with a mallet and starts smashing up all your lovely pictures of the Virgin Mary. I am just personally not into having images of God around. Except obviously in blog posts.
I had a purpose to this post, but got distracted by Zeus's weird, kind of elfin headpiece. And I mean a real elfin headpiece, not the kind this dude over to the right's wearing. Because that's just for silly Christmas elves, not badass Tolkien ones. 
So I'm trying to read through the Bible in a year. Other people have done it, so why can't I? Turns out because other people obviously had a longer attention span and a greater endurance for Exod…