Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible

by David Plotz

  In Genesis 1, God was the mighty and remote king of the universe, shaping the galaxies and pouring the ocean. But now He is increasingly like a father—or should I say like a dad? He’s an exasperated, down-to-earth deity. He peevishly hunts all over the Garden of Eden to find Adam and Eve, more like a frustrated parent who has lost his kids at the mall than all-knowing, all-powerful Yahweh.

  When God finally locates the first couple and quizzes Adam about eating from the tree, Adam immediately sells out Eve. Adam says, “The woman You put at my side—she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” What kind of husband is this? Adam’s supposed to be her master, but he won’t even take responsibility for his own sin and just blames her instead.

  Oh, and that fruit from the tree? We’ve been duped. It’s not an apple. The Bible just calls it a “fruit.” According to a history of the apple I happen to be reading, it actually couldn’t have been an apple, because there weren’t any apples in that part of the world in those days. So what was it? A fig? A pomegranate? Me, I’d risk divine punishment for a really great mango.

  chapter 4

  The first murder—that didn’t take long. Cain offs Abel. I never realized there was a vegetarian angle to the killing. Cain presents God with an offering of fruits and veggies, while Abel brings the choicest meat. God scorns Cain’s vegan platter, so Cain jealously slays his carnivorous brother.

  The story of Cain and Abel suggests a more charitable interpretation of God’s parenting style. Maybe He’s not lax. Maybe He’s laissez-faire. His job is to prod His kids in the right direction, but ultimately, He understands that they must be free to make mistakes. When God rejects Cain’s green offering, He doesn’t threaten Cain, but instead advises him about self-improvement. “Sin couches at the door; its urge is toward you, yet you can be its master.” Not that Cain pays attention: he kills his brother in the very next verse.

  God’s advice would be more persuasive if He actually gave Cain any incentive to master sin. On the contrary, Cain gets off scot-free after his fratricide, and goes on to a happy life as the father of all mankind. In fact, rather than punish Cain, God gives him special protection, the “mark of Cain” on his skin. I always thought the mark of Cain signified disgrace. But it’s the opposite: the mark indicates that God is looking out for Cain and will take “sevenfold vengeance” on anyone who harms him.

  chapters 6–10

  The story of Noah that I remember from school and from kids’ television is pretty jolly: Dr. Doolittle grows a beard and takes a cruise, and then it rains. But it turns out that the actual Bible tale is so much grimmer than the Sunday school version that I’m astonished anyone manages to teach it at all.

  As it begins, God is deciding man’s wickedness is so great that He’s got to kill us all and start over. (The animals will be collateral damage.) This immediately presents us with a mystery (an urgent mystery if you’re a person who wonders if God might do this again). The mystery is: what did humans do that was so terrible? It has been a very short time since the Creation—how much evil could man have learned? Why would God give up on man so easily? The Bible is frustratingly vague about the nature of our sin, but let’s try to figure it out. Earlier chapters suggest that men had learned agriculture and metalwork and built cities. Perhaps, as they mastered the world, they felt they didn’t need God. They came to see their laws, achievements, and prosperity as their own, accomplished independently of God. Perhaps the point of the Flood is not to restore ordinary moral behavior—day-to-day decency, law, etc.—since Genesis offers no evidence that such everyday social morality has failed. The Flood must instead be intended to restore faith, or at least fear. We thought we didn’t need God, and that was what made Him angry. Noah is a good man—the only good man—yet even he finds himself subjugated to God’s awesome power. The Flood is supposed to remind us (or at least to remind the one righteous man permitted to live) that we are never in de pen dent of God, but always floating alone, vulnerable, at His mercy.

  Somehow I do not find this reassuring. When I have quizzed Christian friends about Noah and the planetwide devastation, they have given me some version of this answer: The Flood is just God teaching a lesson; He’s giving us a powerful reminder to obey Him; etc. But aren’t there more efficient ways to “send a message” than global genocide? Until now, God has been a little scatterbrained and inconsistent. But now I’m wondering if He’s just cruel.

  My favorite detail: All Earth’s creatures except those on the ark have died. But what is the very first thing Noah does after landfall? He makes an animal sacrifi ce.

  Then Noah plants the first vineyard and naturally soon becomes the first person to get falling-down drunk. He passes out naked on the floor of his tent. His youngest son, Ham, sees this sorry spectacle but doesn’t do anything to help Dad. The two elder sons, Shem and Japheth, cover Noah up. Noah curses Ham, proclaiming that Ham’s descendants (the Canaanites) will be slaves to his brothers’ descendants. This is just the first of many Bible stories about children disappointing their parents and parents embarrassing their children.

  chapters 12–17

  Here come the patriarchs. God calls Abram—soon to beAbraham—and announces: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.”

  Why Abram? There is no obvious reason. Unlike Noah, he’s not a “righteous man.” He’s seventy-five years old and hasn’t done anything with his life. He isn’t pious, rich, or accomplished. He’s not a king, a chief, a prophet, a genius, or a warrior. He’s completely ordinary, and I suppose that’s the point. Abram isn’t special: it is God’s choosing him that makes him special. He is a regular man touched by God—just as any of us could be.

  Abram and his wife, Sarai, travel to Egypt to avoid a famine. To trick Pharaoh, Sarai pretends to be Abram’s sister. The Egyptian ruler, clearly hoping to score, admires Sarai’s beauty and presents her and Abram with livestock. At this point God, perhaps warming up for the ten Egyptian plagues to come, “afflict[s] Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of Sarai.” This seems unfair of the Almighty. It’s Abram and Sarai who tricked Pharaoh—why should the Egyptian get punished for ogling Sarai? A few chapters later, the couple (now Abraham and Sarah) pull exactly the same “she’s my sister” con: This time the mark is King Abimelech. He’s about to seduce Sarah when God appears to him in a dream and tells him that Sarah and Abraham are actually married and Abraham is a prophet. Abimelech begs forgiveness and buys off Abraham and Sarah with land, livestock, and silver. (Not explained—why would Abimelech want to seduce Sarah, who is at that point nearly ninety years old?)

  God makes a covenant with Abraham, promising him “all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting holding.” God is a kind of celestial Donald Trump: He can’t go a chapter without a new real-estate deal. By my count, He promises land to Abraham at least four times, and each time the boundaries are different. (Promised land, indeed.)

  The covenant imposes only one obligation on Abraham and his heirs: circumcision. That’s it. That is God’s single requirement. It’s an inspired choice. Circumcision is painful enough that no one will undertake it lightly. It’s visible, and so it obviously demarcates you from others. And it’s irreversible.

  chapter 18

  Wait a minute: Jews had the three wise men before Jesus! Three strangers visit Abraham, and he welcomes them hospitably. One of the strangers—who are God’s messengers—announces, “I will return to you next year, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” So the story of the Nativity is a rip-off. In the popular Christmas tale, it’s impossible for Mary to have a child because she’s a virgin, but she does, and the messengers herald the miracle birth. Here it’s impossible for Sarah to have a child because she’s postmenopausal (as we are told very directly: “Sarah had stopped having the periods of women”)—but she will, and three supernatural visitors herald the event. The big difference: We Jews do not have any good songs about this incident.

  Later the Lord stops by Abraham’s tent to let the patr
iarch know that He’s considering the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, because “their sin [is] so grave!” (I love the way God just drops in, like a nosy neighbor in a sitcom.) The king of kings is very enthusiastic about His plan, but then Abraham starts rebuking Him: “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” Abraham asks if the Lord should destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if even fifty innocent people are living there. The Lord grudgingly agrees that He must spare these twin cities if there are even fi fty innocents. What if there are forty-fi ve, Abraham demands? OK, not if there are forty-five, either, God says. Forty? asks Abraham. No, God concedes. Thirty? Twenty? Ten? God agrees that if there are even ten innocents, he will spare Sodom and Gomorrah.

  I can’t tell you how happy this story makes me. I came to the Bible with the notion that it was overflowing with righteous heroes, but so far Genesis has been one evil act after another, from the murder of Abel to the Flood to Abraham and Sarah’s grifting. But in this tale Abraham emerges as a moral hero, unafraid to challenge even Almighty God to do right. Isn’t something upside down when God is the villain of holy scripture and man is the hero? To my modern eyes, though perhaps not to the Bible’s authors, collective punishment is the great moral conundrum of the Torah (the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Egyptian plagues, etc.). And God is always on the wrong side of the question.

  chapter 19

  This chapter makes The Jerry Springer Show look like a Cabbage Patch picnic. God does destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, despite his conversation with Abraham, and Genesis 19 tells how it happens. Two male angels visit Lot’s house in Sodom. A crowd of men (“Sodomites,” natch) gather outside the house and demand that the two angels be sent out, so the mob can rape them. Lot, whose hospitality is greater than his common sense, offers up his virgin daughters instead. Before any virgin-raping can be done, the men in the mob are blinded by a mysterious flash of light. In the confusion, the angels escort Lot, his wife, and their daughters out of the city, and God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah with brimstone. Lot’s wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. (God may have listened to Abraham’s criticism in the preceding chapter, but He surely didn’t heed it. What of all the innocent children murdered in Sodom and Gomorrah? What of Lot’s innocent wife?)

  And the horror show isn’t over. After the attempted gay gang rape, the father’s pimping, the urban annihilation, and the uxorious saline murder, it looks as if Lot and his daughters are finally safe, holed up in a cave in the mountains. But then the two daughters—think of them as Judea’s Hilton sisters—complain that cave life is no fun because there aren’t enough men around. So, one night they get Lot falling-down drunk, have sex with him, get pregnant, and bear sons: Moab, who becomes the patriarch of the Moabites; and Ben-Ammi, the patriarch of the Ammonites. This is a fantastic in-joke: the Bible’s Israelite authors are tracing the ancestry of enemy tribes to father- daughter incest. Even so, Genesis 19 poses what I would call the “Sunday-school problem”—how do you teach this in Sunday school? What exactly is the moral lesson here?

  chapter 22

  Over and over Genesis reminds us that the only thing Abraham wants is to have a son with Sarah. Isaac’s birth is a miracle, foretold by angels. Isaac is always described as Abraham’s “favored” one. So when

  God tells Abraham to take Isaac to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him, the command seems impossibly cruel. The precise, cinematic detail of the story compounds its horror. This bit of dialogue between father and doomed son as they walk up the mountain is particularly stunning:

  Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he answered, “Yes, my son.” And he said, “Here are the fi restone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” And Abraham said, “God will see to the sheep for His burnt offering, my son.”

  As a father, I find this nearly impossible to read. The repetition of “my son” is devastating. Abraham does not try to distance himself from Isaac, to separate himself from the child he must kill. Isaac remains “my son,” “my son.”

  My initial reaction to the near- sacrifice was: How cruel and manipulative of God! How jealous He is of human love! But that indignation has mellowed into something slightly more resigned. After all, testing fealty by demanding the most painful sacrifice is an ur- idea, running through myths, religions, and fairy tales from the beginning of civilization till today. Since God is offering the greatest of rewards to Abraham (His love), why shouldn’t He demand that Abraham prove his complete faith? And the Lord does let Isaac live, providing a ram at the last minute to replace the boy.

  This is, of course, another story adopted and repurposed in the New Testament; but in the Christian version, God does sacrifice the son. I’m a sucker for a happy ending, so I’ll take the Genesis tale, complete with the deus ex machina and the spared child.

  chapter 23

  Sarah dies, a passing that’s taken care of in two quick verses. These are followed by eighteen verses explaining Abraham’s protracted, confusing negotiations to buy a burial site for her in Hebron. Real

  estate, again! It is the strangely dominant theme of Abraham’s life. Nearly every chapter about him is crammed with details about land—who owns it, who can buy it, whether God is giving it, whether it’s a temporary deal or a permanent one. There’s more about real estate than there is about the Lord.

  And how little has changed in 3,500 years. The burial site Abraham purchased—called the Cave of the Patriarchs—remains the most contentious spot on the West Bank. Jews consider it the second-holiest place on Earth, but Hebron is an Arab town. Hebron’s few ultra-religious Jewish settlers and thousands of neighboring Palestinians live cheek by jowl, always unpleasantly, often violently. In 1929, Arabs massacred sixty-seven Jews in Hebron. In 1994, a Jewish settler slaughtered twenty-nine Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs.

  chapter 25

  Abraham dies at age 175, “a good ripe age, old and contented.” Why do people live so long in Genesis? Before the Flood, they routinely live more than 600 years. After the Flood, they still live at least 100 years. Ishmael, for example, dies later in this same chapter at age 137, which is just about the youngest age at which anyone dies. The obvious answer, and the one I believe, is “It’s not true, that’s why.” But I wonder why the authors of the Bible believed it to be true. At the time Genesis was written down, 1,000 years after Abraham was supposed to have lived, the Israelites who drafted it had normal life spans. Why did they credit their ancestors with such superhuman health? Was their theory that man got weaker the farther he got from the Creation? Modern scholars of folklore would probably attribute the exaggerated life spans to the normal pro cess of mythmaking. As stories tumble down through the centuries, the heroes grow grander and grander and their achievements more and more extraordinary. Their towers reached the sky; they fought giants and met angels; and they lived almost forever.

  Of course such a theory of exaggeration doesn’t satisfy biblical literalists. Modern-day Bible fundamentalists, who are among the most imaginative people I’ve ever met, have concocted some extremely ingenious explanations for the long lives in Genesis. My favorite of these is the “vapor canopy.” Before the Flood, according to this theory, enormous amounts of water in the atmosphere protected Methuselah et al. from disease and life-sapping solar radiation. The Flood washed out the canopy, shortening our lives to three score and ten. I don’t know about you, but I’d happily take a few very cloudy days if it added eight centuries to my life.

  chapters 25–26

  In the middle of Genesis 25, a verse announces: “This is the story of Isaac.” But it’s not. The “story of Isaac” is actually the stories of his wife, Rebekah, and his twin sons, Esau and Jacob—of everyone except him. Isaac is a cipher, the Harpo Marx of Genesis. During a long and dramatic chapter about Abraham’s effort to find a wife for Isaac, for
example, the groom himself doesn’t say a word. He has a bit part in his own marriage. He shows up only at the end, to silently escort his bride, Rebekah, home. After Esau and Jacob are born, Isaac again disappears as the boys take the limelight. Almost all we hear about Isaac is that he preferred Esau to Jacob, because Esau was a hunter and Isaac “had a taste for game.”

  The Lord appears to Isaac only once—while Abraham was chatting with God daily. And when He does appear to this minor-league patriarch, it’s clear that Isaac doesn’t really matter to Him. God promises Isaac prosperity, but not because of anything Isaac has done—it’s only because his father, Abraham, had obeyed the Lord. Isaac doesn’t even get to think up his own tricks. He and Rebekah pull exactly the same ruse on King Abimelech—“She’s my sister”—that Abraham and Sarah pulled on both Abimelech and Pharaoh.

  chapter 27

  My son Jacob is still too young to understand Bible stories, but I’ve been looking forward to the day when I can talk to him about his namesake. There’s something solid and decent about the name Jacob.

  My wife’s family name is Jacob. My boss is a Jacob. You can trust a Jacob. The biblical Jacob I remember from childhood wrestled an angel, fathered the twelve tribes of Israel, adored his children, honored his mother, and made peace with his wicked brother. This is why I’m fi nding the real story of Jacob so incredibly disturbing. It turns out I have saddled my son with a blight of a name, because the original Jacob actually had no moral compass, no filial feeling, and the heart of a con artist.

  Jacob’s very first act, in Genesis 27, is to rip off his older twin, Esau. He gives his hungry brother a bowl of lentil stew, and demands Esau’s birthright in exchange. Then Jacob and his mother, Rebekah, devise an elaborate scheme to bamboozle Isaac and further dispossess Esau. Isaac, blind and dying, is preparing to issue his paternal blessings. Rebekah proposes to trick Isaac into mistaking Jacob for Esau and blessing him instead. At first, Jacob is reluctant to help with his mother’s scam, though not for ethical reasons—he just fears he will get caught and “bring a curse” upon himself. But Rebekah, the original Lady Macbeth, shushes him, and says, “Just do as I say.” While Esau goes hunting, she cooks goat stew for Jacob to give Isaac, since Esau was instructed to bring meat to his father. She concocts the idea of covering Jacob’s hands and neck with goat skins, so he will feel as hairy as Esau. Jacob warms to the fraud as it continues, eagerly playing the role of Esau. When Isaac asks him how he hunted down the animals for the stew so quickly, Jacob cavalierly invokes God with his lie: “Because the Lord your God granted me good fortune.” Isaac, believing Jacob is Esau, grants him his grand blessing—making him master over his brothers and promising him wealth and power. When Esau returns, there are no backsies. In a heartbreaking moment, poor, innocent, stupid Esau weeps and begs, “Bless me, too, Father!” But Isaac can’t undo his prime blessing and offers Esau only a lame substitute benediction instead.