The Book That God Wrote, Leviticus

How in the bloody hell is the book named after the Levites the most boring one I've read so far? The Bible sure is full of some crazy twists huh? Hey remember those mean psychopaths that killed 3,000 of their own people last chapter? This chapter is named after them, hooray! Get ready for ... excruciating boredom. What? How does that work? This book is so boring, in fact, that I have no idea how to make it entertaining to anyone ... well, that's not true, as you'll see, I just have my work cut out for me here. Actually, I think maybe two things happen in this book, two actual stories, and they both involve people being killed, so that's very Levite like right? Yes, except that the body count here is a meager three people, hardly the feat that the Levites would write home about, hell even Shakespeare read this book and chuckled to himself, "Amateurs, at least kill off a few people by courier to up that death count." Yeah ok, that was a major stretch, I'm really reaching here. Seriously, read on, if anything it'll be a few paragraphs of me making light of what the Bible is famously known for: its skull numbing, brain melting, coma inducing boredom (not to mention my favorite passages that will exemplify my unabashed immaturity once and for all). Hey, I don't have to link to the introduction or the story so far because they're on the side there, fancy that [Also, I'm dropping the book abbreviations whenever I cite passages, you know what book we're in, if I decide to venture into other books then I'll use them].

God, the Wild Lawman:

So, Leviticus starts off with God going into even more asinine detail about even more excruciatingly boring things. First, God goes on and on and on and on about all the different offerings the Israelites are supposed to make. Here's all the rules for a burnt offering, and a sin offering, and a guilt offering, and a friendship offering, and really they're all pretty much the same. You take an animal, put your arms on its head in front of the tabernacle, slaughter it and throw its blood all over the place, either on the altar or on your face or on your clothes. It sounds very heathen to me, and actually reminds me of that shocking juxtaposition shot at the end of Apocalypse Now. Then here's what the priests are supposed to do and how they're supposed to do it and who they're supposed to be. Aaron is still the head priest, strangely his hand in creating a brand new god hasn't demoted him from this position, which is kind of like a CEO getting a bonus for helping to crash the economy. Apparently, God hates the handicapped, I mean he mentions that the animals sacrificed to him must be without defect, but later on he says the same thing about Aaron's decedents being priests. What do you mean by that God? "No man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles (21:18-20)." You even hate midgets? But everyone likes midgets, you're mean God. And wait, eye defects? Does that include us with glasses? I didn't wanna be one of your dumb ole priests anyway. Though I will say he does allow these people to live at least, "He may eat the most holy food of God, as well as the holy food; yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary (21:22-23)," so it's not quite Sparta over here. So I guess that's not terrible for an ancient culture after all. And yes, there's a distinction between most holy and just plain holy foods, but don't ask me what the hell it is, 'cause I haven't the foggiest.

So Moses gets to consecrating God's first priests, and it actually sounds kinda fun, in a demented psychotic sorta way. To do it Moses slaughters a few animals, pours their blood, guts, and gore all over the altar, the priests, himself, and pretty much anyone in the first ten rows (it's the very first Sea World, *gasp* it's Red Sea World, ok I'm stopping now). Then Moses takes the remaining meat, and after waving it around and (in my mind) dancing all heathen style (he's wearing the bones of Joseph after all, again my own addition) he places it all neatly on the altar. Then WHOOSH God comes down in a gigantic ball of fire and devours all the meat, and the Israelites fall on their face, they just saw a fucking fireball consume their altar food, wouldn't you?. Oh I see now, no wonder God has been so grumpy, he must have been fucking starving. He finally has people who can follow his precise instructions so that he can eat whenever he wants. Whew, maybe he'll start to calm down some now. Well unfortunately no, but this is God we're talking about, maybe it takes him a few centuries to finally get full. This also isn't the only time he whooshes down in a giant ball of fire to consume/destroy things. Did you ever wonder what would happen to someone who didn't follow God's maddeningly precise instructions to the fucking letter? Aaron's older sons found out, they bomb into the tabernacle one day and light up the altar in some kind of way that God doesn't like and WHOOSH now they're both pillars of ash. Well now we know, I love what happens immediately after, "Moses then said to Aaron, '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."' Aaron remained silent. (10:3)." Heh, I bet he did, but Moses, in his head, he was calling you a dickless piece of shit, I guarantee.

So okay, Leviticus isn't all that boring really, in fact in contains some of my favorite passages, as I've hinted at twice already, that is Leviticus Chapter 18 which in my translation is entitled "Unlawful Sexual Relations." I know, I know, and I don't care, I think this is fucking hilarious. This chapter lists off everyone you can't have sex with and a little blurb saying why it's unlawful. For example, stuff like: Do not have sex with your mother, that dishonors your father. Do not have sex with your sister, that's an abomination. Do not have sex with your father's sister, she's your aunt, and that's gross. Don't have sex with a woman on her period, it's extra gross and makes your penis unclean. And on and on through just about any immediate family combination you can think of (cousins seem to be ok though) plus a few side notes of interest (i.e. no period sex, which seriously, why the fuck would you want to?). Now I know what you're thinking, "Duh, who wants to have intercourse with someone during her period, but there's other things we can do for those few days right?" Wrong, you can't even touch a woman's bed when she's on her period, you can't touch anything she fucking touches, so nope, you can't even kiss your girlfriend when she's menstruating, sorry (See 15:19-23). Also, you can't have sex with a girl and then go sleep with her mother, i.e. no Mrs. Robinson action allowed. Same is true with sisters, no Jacob action, or making it with twins, sorry fellas. Also, absolutely no animals, sorry all you farm boys, you're outta luck too.

Hey, here's another note of interest: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable (18:22)." Yep Leviticus is one of the books quoted by the gay haters club, and this same thing is repeated in 20:13: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death." So, there it is, in black and white and very simple English, if you have gay sex then you get the death penalty. But at the same time, let's look around at the surrounding chapters for some context. Ah yes, "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material (19:19)," oh and then there's, "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves (19:27-28)," and who could forget, "If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death (20:9)." See there's many laws here that we don't follow anymore, and, more exemplary to my point, that don't make any sense in modern times. For those of you who take this as the word of God and feel it should be taken literally, i.e. it's why you think homosexuality is wrong, all I'm going to ask is this: Are you perhaps wearing a shirt made of polyester and cotton? Are you clean shaven? Do you perhaps have a tattoo? And don't you dare say I'm reaching or taking things out of context here. How do you justify taking one verse in this book 100% literally while completely ignoring thousands of others? If you can't tell by now, I'm a huge supporter of gay rights, and I'm starting to see that, yes, the Bible does condemn homosexuality, but it also condemns touching a woman on her period, shaving your beard, and planting two different kinds of seeds in your field (19:19). Where is the line? Which laws do we bring into modern times with us? Well I guess we should start with what Jesus actually says, but we'll have to wait until much later to see that. Oh and the Bible, so far, says nothing about a woman lying with another woman, so sounds like lesbians are safe. I guess even the Israelites thought lesbians were hot.

Ok, what else happens in Leviticus? I promised two stories right? Right, well, there's this dude, he's the son of an Israelite woman and Egyptian man, so he's a dirty little half-breed with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. Yeah, I like that, I'm gonna call him Chip (the Bible doesn't give him a name, though his mother was named Shelomith). So Chip bombs out into camp and some Israelite spits and screams,
"Hey Egypt boy, why don't you go back to Egypt."
"Hey God boy, why don't you go fuck yourself."
And so the brawl begins (with this song playing in the background of course, St. Patrick's day is coming soon after all). The Israelites circle around them rooting for their Israelite homeboy. I'm assuming the Israelite got in a good punch because Chip, as the "good" book puts it, "Blasphemed the Name with a curse (24:11)." In other words he takes a good hit to the nose and screams, "Argh Goddamnit!" Gasp, the entire mob is shocked into silence, Chip is holding his broken nose thinking "Wtf?" So they all grab him and take him to Moses where he's put in custody until Moses can decide what to do. Well God, thinking Moses hadn't killed enough people last week in Exodus says, "If anyone curses his God, he will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him (24:15-16)." Wow, harsh, but what's completely ridiculous about this is that in the very next verse God says, "If anyone takes a life of a human being, he must be put to death (24:17)." Wait, so the mob is going to stone the blasphemer to death ... then they'll all be put to death for killing the blasphemer? No, that's obviously not what God means, but maybe this isn't the best time to say that huh, just a thought. So Moses and some Israelites take Chip outside of camp and stone him to death. Stoning is such a vicious punishment, can't you just behead him or something? I guess the Israelites are hurting for things to do and just watching an execution isn't enough, they need to participate, yikes.

What I Learned From Leviticus:

Yeah, I'm mixing the Leviticus entry with the "What I Learned" entry, there just isn't enough here to write two whole entries. Actually I take that back, there's enough here for many entries, but only if you're in divinity school, but no, we're not going to dwell on this boring ass book any longer than we have to. So, what I think is actually pretty interesting about Leviticus is it starts to display how clever the ancient Jews were. The Hebrews were very smart when it came to personal hygiene and cleanliness. In Leviticus you can read about which animals are ok to eat, basically the kosher laws. What's neat about these is it isn't just God giving them pointless dietary restrictions (well not completely). Back in the day non-kosher animals were fairly hard to clean, and with their technology I imagine it was almost impossible to be confident in the safety of certain meats. Unclean animals also include animals that are actually unclean, pigs for example as well as bottom feeders. So the Hebrews had very healthy diets. There are other things too, restrictions about mildew and infectious skin diseases (which btw, their go to word for all of them was "leprosy," but they weren't all leprosy). These methods they have for checking such things are primitive at best, but for what they had it wasn't so bad (in other words you wouldn't use the Bible as a medical handbook today, but it's still pretty impressive for the time I think). There are many other things that the Hebrews had on point when it came to cleanliness centuries before, say, the black plague ravished through Europe which was caused solely by filthiness. Many of them are found in other books though, but in any case I find it fascinating.

Now I know I harped earlier on the people who take this book literally, but I'm not done, not by a long shot. See here's what I wonder, those of you out there who base your political views around this book would probably consider yourselves Rupublicans correct? Ok, what's your view on immigrants? I know we can't just let anyone in this country sure, but how do you feel about the people already here? You know the one's "taking our jobs" as you like to put it. I wonder what the Bible has to say about it? Oh right, "When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt (19:33)." And this is the mean Old Testament God, oh and it's not the first time he said this either, he also said it two times before in Exodus (22:21 and 23:9). Now I'm hardly the kind of person to use the Bible as my guide for political views, but if you do then how you do you justify this? Ok, ok, how do you feel about welfare? Does the Bible say anything about it? "If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you (25:35)," and it goes on to say, "You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit (25:37)." Again, this was that mean bastard Old Testament God saying this. Now I know I ranted earlier that we can't just take any old scriptures out of context like this and use it as the basis of our arguments. I'm not saying these things because I may or may not support these issues. No, I'm trying to drive home my point that I've been screaming for what feels like years, if you say you take this book 100% literally and you use it as your voting compass, then you're lying to yourself, or you're being lied to. That traditional Christian values were somehow tacked on to the Republican doctrine is so baffling to me, there are so many inconsistencies in Leviticus alone that you just can't use the Bible to help you vote (at least not the literal Old Testament), pure and simple.

Yikes, ok, rant over. I hate to make things political, but it's been bothering me as of late. Sorry, what else did I learn from Leviticus? Not much that I can think of right now, but hey do you want to hear my favorite law in  Leviticus? Before I thought it was all of the sex laws, but I found an even better one, "Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God (19:14)." Damn, the Israelites were assholes if they had to be told this. I mean cursing the deaf, that's mean sure, but they can't hear it so whatever. But putting shit in front of blind people for them to trip over? That's ... that's just evil, I'm certainly glad that's against the law, but I'm kind of worried that God had to say anything at all. So that does it for Leviticus, thank God, it's time to move on to Numbers. Which hey, it has a really boring sounding name so maybe it'll be really exciting? You know, maybe it keeps the inverse relationship rolling, please? God I hope so, until next time fellow traveler.