Much has been made of Abraham's piety in almost sacrificing his favorite son, Isaac, but not enough has been made, in my opinion, of whatever quality in Isaac prevented him from trying to murder Abraham after the execution was called off. Precisely how Isaac responded to his near-slaying is left unrecorded, suggesting that he did little, which leaves one to wonder at his forgiving nature. Or perhaps he was just extremely passive, Isaac, and disinclined to do anything to anyone, no matter what anyone had done to him. In any case, his submissiveness seems superior to that of his father, who'd met with God so often that obedience probably came easy to him. Isaac, however, barely knew the deity, first encountering Him while bound with cords and lying on a bed of firewood. That he remained faithful following this horror is one of the Bible's greatest emotional miracles.
Another one of the Bible's emotional miracles comes a bit later, when Isaac is awarded that rarest and finest of human experiences: truly mutual romantic love. When Rebekah first glimpses him from atop her camel after being being recruited as his bride, she isn't aware of who she's ogling. Luckily, given the surge of passion she feels, he turns out to be the husband she's been pledged to. Had this not been the case -- had Isaac been someone else and had Rebekah been smitten with him instantly -- the Bible might have stopped right there, with an intractable conflict of the heart that even God might have despaired of solving.
But it's all for the best. The wedding night goes splendidly, marking the first instance in the Old Testament of two people getting exactly what they want in the precise manner that they want it, without a lot of turbulence and testing. That the happy deflowering takes place in the tent of Isaac's late mother, Sarah, heightens the sense of symmetry and rightness. Indeed, the whole love story seems slightly implausible -- prince seeks princess, secures one through intermediary, and not only is delighted by the results but finds that she's delighted, too -- making it the Bible's first full-fledged fairy tale.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
That's Torahtainment! -- Bible Study, Night Six
ABRAHAM INTERRUPTED
So far the Genesis story has been straightforward, proceeding in a simple, linear fashion, but now the tale grows complicated and layered. Like a TV serial melodrama, the focus is on one family, the House of Abraham, but the narrative splits our attention between subplots, including the perils of Lot, the fate of Sodom, the ongoing warfare between regional kings, and the sexual power struggles of Abraham's women. The overlapping structure grows so dense, in fact, that an ingenious device is introduced to give the reader a breather now and then: repeated, rhythmic appearances by God, either in visions or by way of angels. And Now a Message from Our Heavenly Sponsor...
The message in question is ever the same: Hang tough. Over and over, as though he risks forgetting a cosmic promise delivered from on high that's sometimes accompanied by bursts of flame, Abraham is assured of a bright future revolving around extensive real estate holdings, many descendants, and an exalted name. As if to keep grabbing his Favorite Son's attention, God exaggerates the math involved, telling Abraham that his heirs will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the dust specks covering the ground. God also keeps Abraham in keen suspense as to when these heirs will start appearing. When barren Sarah finally grows so frustrated that she turns over her reproductive function to Hagar, her servant, who brings forth Ishmael, Abraham's situation becomes so tense that he probably wishes he'd stayed childless. Not only does the birth occasion a cat fight between the two main women in his life, his child is born emotionally disabled. Ishmael, a so-called "wild man" whose "hand will be against every man," suffers from Oppositional Disorder.
Two steps forward, one step back. That's how it continues to go for Abraham, turning his arduous, good news-bad news life into history's original soap opera. Lot, his beloved brother, achieves prosperity, but chooses to settle down in sinful Sodom. God gives Abraham everlasting influence, but on the condition he mutilate his penis (and all the penises of those around him). God grants him and his people a great homeland but also makes known that before they can enjoy it they will be slaves in Egypt for four centuries. Sarah bears Abraham a normal son, but God instructs him to kill the boy.
What's a put-upon patriarch to do?
Hang tough.
The content of this primitive cable series has to do with the origins of Judaism, but the form of the drama is equally important, seeing as it prefigures the modern potboiler and its characteristic effect, the cliffhanger. This is to say that not only does All Abe's Children predict the founding of Israel, it also presages, in aesthetic terms, a not-unrelated development: the birth of Hollywood.
So far the Genesis story has been straightforward, proceeding in a simple, linear fashion, but now the tale grows complicated and layered. Like a TV serial melodrama, the focus is on one family, the House of Abraham, but the narrative splits our attention between subplots, including the perils of Lot, the fate of Sodom, the ongoing warfare between regional kings, and the sexual power struggles of Abraham's women. The overlapping structure grows so dense, in fact, that an ingenious device is introduced to give the reader a breather now and then: repeated, rhythmic appearances by God, either in visions or by way of angels. And Now a Message from Our Heavenly Sponsor...
The message in question is ever the same: Hang tough. Over and over, as though he risks forgetting a cosmic promise delivered from on high that's sometimes accompanied by bursts of flame, Abraham is assured of a bright future revolving around extensive real estate holdings, many descendants, and an exalted name. As if to keep grabbing his Favorite Son's attention, God exaggerates the math involved, telling Abraham that his heirs will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the dust specks covering the ground. God also keeps Abraham in keen suspense as to when these heirs will start appearing. When barren Sarah finally grows so frustrated that she turns over her reproductive function to Hagar, her servant, who brings forth Ishmael, Abraham's situation becomes so tense that he probably wishes he'd stayed childless. Not only does the birth occasion a cat fight between the two main women in his life, his child is born emotionally disabled. Ishmael, a so-called "wild man" whose "hand will be against every man," suffers from Oppositional Disorder.
Two steps forward, one step back. That's how it continues to go for Abraham, turning his arduous, good news-bad news life into history's original soap opera. Lot, his beloved brother, achieves prosperity, but chooses to settle down in sinful Sodom. God gives Abraham everlasting influence, but on the condition he mutilate his penis (and all the penises of those around him). God grants him and his people a great homeland but also makes known that before they can enjoy it they will be slaves in Egypt for four centuries. Sarah bears Abraham a normal son, but God instructs him to kill the boy.
What's a put-upon patriarch to do?
Hang tough.
The content of this primitive cable series has to do with the origins of Judaism, but the form of the drama is equally important, seeing as it prefigures the modern potboiler and its characteristic effect, the cliffhanger. This is to say that not only does All Abe's Children predict the founding of Israel, it also presages, in aesthetic terms, a not-unrelated development: the birth of Hollywood.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Abraham, Best of Breed and Best in Show -- Bible Study, Night Five
He kind of sneaks up on you, this Abraham. At first he seems like just another figure in a long and tortured genealogy whose members (Arphaxad, Serug, Reu, etc) turn out to be pontoon bridges across Time, structures to be discarded and forgotten once they've afforded passage to his seed. Then, out of nowhere, he suddenly breaks out, surpassing and marginalizing those who sired him. It's almost as though (or it's precisely as though) all history before Abraham was whelped were just a complicated breeding program that yielded a couple of good dogs and lots of bad ones but no all-around, enduring champions. And Abraham is certainly a show dog, since what is his distinctive trait? Obedience. He comes when he's called. He heels. He sits. He fetches. Canine Abraham is God's best friend.
It's tempting to think of Abraham as virtuous, but morality, in the sense of tenets and principles whose difficult application exalts the soul, doesn't really exist yet in the world. What matters at this juncture is God's favor, which is obtainable through lots of licking (in the form of building altars). As Abraham's adventures prove, if Master loves you you can do no wrong, and if He doesn't you can do no right.
Consider poor Pharaoh, who Abraham deceives by pretending that Sarah, his wife, is really his sister. The trusting Egyptian, acting in good faith and motivated by honest masculine instincts, takes lovely Sarah into his grand household and reimburses her 'brother' handsomely for his willingness to pawn her off, showering Abraham with asses and camels, all of which he cheerfully accepts. Pharaoh's reward for showing such generosity to a guest in his kingdom who ran a con on him rather than thanking him for his hospitality is to be beset by plagues. When the potentate uncovers the ruse and, understandably, vents his grumpy puzzlement (What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst tho not tell me that she was thy wife?), Abraham doesn't even bother to answer him, that's how cocky he's grown from knowing God has his back. Abraham doesn't return the asses, either. Or the gold. Or the silver. Or the cattle. He departs with his loot and once he's in the clear, his wife at his side after serving as sultry bait in history's riskiest-ever pimping scheme (exactly what happened to Sarah in Pharaoh's harem-room is left provocatively unaddressed), he meets up with God at a spot they picked out earlier and the two of them basically high-five each other.
Operation Egyptian Honey Trap complete!
It's tempting to think of Abraham as virtuous, but morality, in the sense of tenets and principles whose difficult application exalts the soul, doesn't really exist yet in the world. What matters at this juncture is God's favor, which is obtainable through lots of licking (in the form of building altars). As Abraham's adventures prove, if Master loves you you can do no wrong, and if He doesn't you can do no right.
Consider poor Pharaoh, who Abraham deceives by pretending that Sarah, his wife, is really his sister. The trusting Egyptian, acting in good faith and motivated by honest masculine instincts, takes lovely Sarah into his grand household and reimburses her 'brother' handsomely for his willingness to pawn her off, showering Abraham with asses and camels, all of which he cheerfully accepts. Pharaoh's reward for showing such generosity to a guest in his kingdom who ran a con on him rather than thanking him for his hospitality is to be beset by plagues. When the potentate uncovers the ruse and, understandably, vents his grumpy puzzlement (What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst tho not tell me that she was thy wife?), Abraham doesn't even bother to answer him, that's how cocky he's grown from knowing God has his back. Abraham doesn't return the asses, either. Or the gold. Or the silver. Or the cattle. He departs with his loot and once he's in the clear, his wife at his side after serving as sultry bait in history's riskiest-ever pimping scheme (exactly what happened to Sarah in Pharaoh's harem-room is left provocatively unaddressed), he meets up with God at a spot they picked out earlier and the two of them basically high-five each other.
Operation Egyptian Honey Trap complete!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Disciplining The Bad Puppy That is Man and Why The Internet is Doomed -- Bible Study, Night Four
Reading My Late Mother's Bible
THE TOWER & THE TONGUE
I think I'm finally getting a handle on Genesis: God, when He created the human race, saddled himself and the world with the equivalent of a very intelligent, very defiant puppy. It ate stuff it shouldn't have in the Garden of Eden and was banished to the backyard. In the backyard, it bit and killed a litter mate, fouled the grass, and generally ran wild until it was sprayed with a garden hose as punishment. Then it shaped up for awhile. But just awhile. And then, because it was a puppy with hands, not paws, and because it wasn't really a puppy at all but a tool-using hominid endowed with language, it erected the Tower of Babel.
The Tower was bad, one sinful stack of bricks, but why it was bad, the reason, I find surprising. I used to think I knew the reason. Before last week, when I started reading the Bible instead of just quoting from it and alluding to it and smugly assuming I'd absorbed it merely by sleeping at night in its vicinity and having several friends who vote Republican, my sense of what made the Tower of Babel abominable was the excessive pride that it expressed, the narcissism behind it, the arrogance. Wrong, it turns out. What made the Tower offensive -- or not offensive, but deeply threatening -- was the amazing teamwork of its builders.
For those who believe that capitalism and corporatism are systems beloved of God, I have bad news: except for those that He personally authorizes such as the assembly of the ark, He dislikes big projects, especially big, costly ones, and particularly ones whose execution depend on complicated communications. He dislikes them because, for a being of such vast powers and undisputed cosmic alpha status, He's ridiculously insecure. He may even fear for his job, to hear Him talk:
"And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they all have one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."
There is palpable panic in this verse. It's almost as though, as the Tower rose and rose and the sound of its architects, engineers, and laborers conferring and conversing reached His ears, God could feel human beings coming for Him, could begin to imagine them turning on their master. He seems not to have to have foreseen such competition, but once it materializes, He acts immediately; acts in the frustrated manner of an eight year-old who suddenly finds himself losing at a board game. He demolishes everything from the building itself to the universally-shared language that permitted its construction.
We all saw what happened in New York City ten years ago. Now I fear that the Internet is on borrowed time.
[To catch up with this project, see prior posts]
THE TOWER & THE TONGUE
I think I'm finally getting a handle on Genesis: God, when He created the human race, saddled himself and the world with the equivalent of a very intelligent, very defiant puppy. It ate stuff it shouldn't have in the Garden of Eden and was banished to the backyard. In the backyard, it bit and killed a litter mate, fouled the grass, and generally ran wild until it was sprayed with a garden hose as punishment. Then it shaped up for awhile. But just awhile. And then, because it was a puppy with hands, not paws, and because it wasn't really a puppy at all but a tool-using hominid endowed with language, it erected the Tower of Babel.
The Tower was bad, one sinful stack of bricks, but why it was bad, the reason, I find surprising. I used to think I knew the reason. Before last week, when I started reading the Bible instead of just quoting from it and alluding to it and smugly assuming I'd absorbed it merely by sleeping at night in its vicinity and having several friends who vote Republican, my sense of what made the Tower of Babel abominable was the excessive pride that it expressed, the narcissism behind it, the arrogance. Wrong, it turns out. What made the Tower offensive -- or not offensive, but deeply threatening -- was the amazing teamwork of its builders.
For those who believe that capitalism and corporatism are systems beloved of God, I have bad news: except for those that He personally authorizes such as the assembly of the ark, He dislikes big projects, especially big, costly ones, and particularly ones whose execution depend on complicated communications. He dislikes them because, for a being of such vast powers and undisputed cosmic alpha status, He's ridiculously insecure. He may even fear for his job, to hear Him talk:
"And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they all have one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."
There is palpable panic in this verse. It's almost as though, as the Tower rose and rose and the sound of its architects, engineers, and laborers conferring and conversing reached His ears, God could feel human beings coming for Him, could begin to imagine them turning on their master. He seems not to have to have foreseen such competition, but once it materializes, He acts immediately; acts in the frustrated manner of an eight year-old who suddenly finds himself losing at a board game. He demolishes everything from the building itself to the universally-shared language that permitted its construction.
We all saw what happened in New York City ten years ago. Now I fear that the Internet is on borrowed time.
[To catch up with this project, see prior posts]
Monday, November 28, 2011
Jehovah Swallows his Pride -- Bible Study, Night Three
Reading The Bible My Late Mother Left Me
NOAH & THE FLOOD
It's the big do-over, this part of Genesis, and all that goes before it is a false start, proving that God isn't perfect, after all, and that His creation passed through a first-draft stage before being disposed of and revised. I like God for this; He's a writer too, it seems. I admire His willingness to swallow his pride. To gaze down upon all the characters He'd made and deem only one of them worth keeping must not have been easy. I sympathize.
O, lucky Noah! But his sons were luckier. Simply by virtue of being the descendants of the only man in history who'd managed to win approval from Boss God (other than Enoch, who God was so in love with that He snatched him straight up into heaven before the fellow even died), they were spared from the world's first genocide. Along with their mother and their wives, of course, who were the luckiest ones of all. They sure married well, those women. By accident? Or did they see something in the Noah men that told them to ignore all other suitors? I'd love to know, but I guess I never will. At this point in the Bible wives and daughters are basically just anonymous wombs for boys. (Is there a counter-Genesis somewhere, still buried in a desert cave, perhaps, in which all these women actually have names? If not, some clever feminist should write one -- or what are Women's Studies departments for?)
The ark is built, is filled, the rains arrive, and Noah, his family, and the beasts float off for what must have been the wildest adventure ever, as well as the most claustrophobic domestic drama in the annals of the genre. Strangely, we're told very little about this interlude, which must have been marred by endless shouting matches and, if human nature was human nature then, numerous threats by Noah to park the ark and let one or more of his kin get off and swim. But instead of this unimaginably rich material we get a lot of dry and technical details about the precise duration of the deluge, the depth of the waters, and the rate at which the flood subsided after the storm had ceased. God may be a great writer, but not his scribes. The greatest melodrama of all time they left unexplored in favor of meteorology.
The best part of the narrative is the epilogue, which gives one a sense of all the crazy business that must have gone on during the cruise. Noah, having survived his awful voyage, understandably goes into business growing wine grapes. He promptly gets drunk on his own product, only to fall asleep naked in his tent. Shem and Japheth, two of his three sons, alerted by their brother Ham, find him in this condition and cover him up, and when he awakens he does something God-like: he destroys someone's life for a minor lapse of conduct. This would be Canaan, Noah's grandson by Ham, who didn't assist him during his cold night of slovenly, forgetful intoxication and gets made a slave or servant to Uncle Shem. All for the crime of not being co-dependent.
Thus did dysfunction come into the world.
[For more about this project, see prior posts]
NOAH & THE FLOOD
It's the big do-over, this part of Genesis, and all that goes before it is a false start, proving that God isn't perfect, after all, and that His creation passed through a first-draft stage before being disposed of and revised. I like God for this; He's a writer too, it seems. I admire His willingness to swallow his pride. To gaze down upon all the characters He'd made and deem only one of them worth keeping must not have been easy. I sympathize.
O, lucky Noah! But his sons were luckier. Simply by virtue of being the descendants of the only man in history who'd managed to win approval from Boss God (other than Enoch, who God was so in love with that He snatched him straight up into heaven before the fellow even died), they were spared from the world's first genocide. Along with their mother and their wives, of course, who were the luckiest ones of all. They sure married well, those women. By accident? Or did they see something in the Noah men that told them to ignore all other suitors? I'd love to know, but I guess I never will. At this point in the Bible wives and daughters are basically just anonymous wombs for boys. (Is there a counter-Genesis somewhere, still buried in a desert cave, perhaps, in which all these women actually have names? If not, some clever feminist should write one -- or what are Women's Studies departments for?)
The ark is built, is filled, the rains arrive, and Noah, his family, and the beasts float off for what must have been the wildest adventure ever, as well as the most claustrophobic domestic drama in the annals of the genre. Strangely, we're told very little about this interlude, which must have been marred by endless shouting matches and, if human nature was human nature then, numerous threats by Noah to park the ark and let one or more of his kin get off and swim. But instead of this unimaginably rich material we get a lot of dry and technical details about the precise duration of the deluge, the depth of the waters, and the rate at which the flood subsided after the storm had ceased. God may be a great writer, but not his scribes. The greatest melodrama of all time they left unexplored in favor of meteorology.
The best part of the narrative is the epilogue, which gives one a sense of all the crazy business that must have gone on during the cruise. Noah, having survived his awful voyage, understandably goes into business growing wine grapes. He promptly gets drunk on his own product, only to fall asleep naked in his tent. Shem and Japheth, two of his three sons, alerted by their brother Ham, find him in this condition and cover him up, and when he awakens he does something God-like: he destroys someone's life for a minor lapse of conduct. This would be Canaan, Noah's grandson by Ham, who didn't assist him during his cold night of slovenly, forgetful intoxication and gets made a slave or servant to Uncle Shem. All for the crime of not being co-dependent.
Thus did dysfunction come into the world.
[For more about this project, see prior posts]
Sunday, November 27, 2011
God Rages On -- Bible Study, Night Two
[My mother Millie, who died three months ago, left me her King James Study Bible, annotated in red ink and in her eccentric all-caps script. I have decided to read the the book straight through in the hope of consoling myself for my deep loss. I'll let you all know what I think of what I find. I'm attempting to do this with a wiped-clean mind, although I must admit I have my prejudices. I don't, for example, believe the scriptures to be the perfect, literal Word of God, but I'm willing -- indeed I'm eager -- to be surprised.]
CAIN & ABEL
If the first few chapters of Genesis were the anatomy of a drug bust (see prior post), the chapters concerning Cain and Abel appear to describe a bad spell on a plantation ruled by a capricious, ill-tempered master who reserves the right to treat his slaves with irrational favoritism -- because He feels like it. Cain, the farmer, Adam's clueless firstborn who's operating on no real knowledge at all (it's not like there's a Bible for him to read yet), presents to God an offering of produce that, for no reason that God sees fit to mention, fails to please Him as much as Abel's offering, which consists of a sacrificed live animal. I can only imagine Cain's confusion: why should his gift, whose harvest required no violence, be deemed so roundly inferior to one that necessitated the shedding of blood and the destruction of one of God's own creatures?
Cain seems to conclude from this episode, quite logically, that God prefers offerings involving carnage, and so he, quite logically, kills his little brother. God, the supremely inconsistent one, frowns. Slaughtering a lamb or a goat is good, Cain learns, but slaughtering the slaughterer of a lamb or goat is some sort of unforgivable atrocity.
God punishes Cain in the same manner that he recently rebuked his parents: by kicking the poor offender off his land. Then, in an act of punitive piling on that shows God to be not just wrathful but horrible, not merely firm but borderline sadistic, He takes away Cain's power to grow crops anywhere. Finally, in a seeming act mercy that comes off as more of a boast about His power to do anything He damn well pleases, God scars or brands Cain in a fashion that will cause anyone who sees the mark to realize he's God's private property and not hurt him.
Events grow unintelligible now and we enter the hard part of the Bible, the part that requires an atlas, a genealogy, and a notebook for writing down all the rules. Cain drifts to the land of Nod, where other people live, and takes a wife, whose existence is unaccounted for. Soon afterward, Eve has a son, replacing Abel. His name is Seth and he also has a son.
So far, in the line of Adam, there have been only sons, no daughters.
Huh.
CAIN & ABEL
If the first few chapters of Genesis were the anatomy of a drug bust (see prior post), the chapters concerning Cain and Abel appear to describe a bad spell on a plantation ruled by a capricious, ill-tempered master who reserves the right to treat his slaves with irrational favoritism -- because He feels like it. Cain, the farmer, Adam's clueless firstborn who's operating on no real knowledge at all (it's not like there's a Bible for him to read yet), presents to God an offering of produce that, for no reason that God sees fit to mention, fails to please Him as much as Abel's offering, which consists of a sacrificed live animal. I can only imagine Cain's confusion: why should his gift, whose harvest required no violence, be deemed so roundly inferior to one that necessitated the shedding of blood and the destruction of one of God's own creatures?
Cain seems to conclude from this episode, quite logically, that God prefers offerings involving carnage, and so he, quite logically, kills his little brother. God, the supremely inconsistent one, frowns. Slaughtering a lamb or a goat is good, Cain learns, but slaughtering the slaughterer of a lamb or goat is some sort of unforgivable atrocity.
God punishes Cain in the same manner that he recently rebuked his parents: by kicking the poor offender off his land. Then, in an act of punitive piling on that shows God to be not just wrathful but horrible, not merely firm but borderline sadistic, He takes away Cain's power to grow crops anywhere. Finally, in a seeming act mercy that comes off as more of a boast about His power to do anything He damn well pleases, God scars or brands Cain in a fashion that will cause anyone who sees the mark to realize he's God's private property and not hurt him.
Events grow unintelligible now and we enter the hard part of the Bible, the part that requires an atlas, a genealogy, and a notebook for writing down all the rules. Cain drifts to the land of Nod, where other people live, and takes a wife, whose existence is unaccounted for. Soon afterward, Eve has a son, replacing Abel. His name is Seth and he also has a son.
So far, in the line of Adam, there have been only sons, no daughters.
Huh.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
My First Night of Bible Study -- A Brief Report
At last I understand: the Eden story in Genesis is about a drug bust and its aftermath. It begins by discussing the prohibition of a potent psychedelic substance: a plant or a fruit that grants those who ingest it personal access to divine capacities. Most damningly to those who wrote the story (with the goal, I suppose, of consolidating their hold on law-giving and other 'holy' prerogatives), this prohibited substance sensitizes the mind to the presence of 'good' and 'evil, essentially making priests of those who take it. (And making other, conventional priests redundant.)
Then the people take the stuff. As it happens, the creature who assists them dwells as close to nature, to the soil, and as far from hierarchies and sky gods as it is possible to get. The serpent, by virtue of living on its belly, is a most earthy, egalitarian animal.
The rest of the story concerns the people's punishment for unlocking their latent godliness through commerce with the psychoactive plant. Banishment and hard labor are some of their punishments. And shame, of course, which is the fiercest lashing of all because the people give it to themselves.
How weird, how unexpected and how weird, that the establishing myth or narrative of Jewish and Christian morality deals not with murder, deceit, or theft but with altered consciousness, with tripping. How strange to learn that our Original Sin -- at least in the minds of those who wrote the Bible -- was closer to taking mushrooms than taking a life.
Then the people take the stuff. As it happens, the creature who assists them dwells as close to nature, to the soil, and as far from hierarchies and sky gods as it is possible to get. The serpent, by virtue of living on its belly, is a most earthy, egalitarian animal.
The rest of the story concerns the people's punishment for unlocking their latent godliness through commerce with the psychoactive plant. Banishment and hard labor are some of their punishments. And shame, of course, which is the fiercest lashing of all because the people give it to themselves.
How weird, how unexpected and how weird, that the establishing myth or narrative of Jewish and Christian morality deals not with murder, deceit, or theft but with altered consciousness, with tripping. How strange to learn that our Original Sin -- at least in the minds of those who wrote the Bible -- was closer to taking mushrooms than taking a life.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)