Boring Bible?
1. ‘Go up you bald head’ (closely followed by sound of munching bear. Who’s laughing now, sonny?)
2.Samson killing 1000 men with a donkey’s jawbone. As you do.
3. Jezebel painting her face before the dogs eat her.
4.Elijah picking up his skirt and then casually outrunning a chariot.
5. Mary and Joseph losing Jesus for a DAY before realising he’d gone.
6. The disciples: sort of like Bert and Ernie but slower on the uptake.
7. Noah’s ark. Forget the children’s picture books with the giraffe sticking out of the chimney. And the Millennium Dome. And the Millennium Falcon. This my friends, was some piece of timber.
8. Paul boring a man to death (and then bringing him back )
9. Jesus whipping the moneylenders.
10. Paying off the tax man, Jesus-style (Matt 17:27)
What’s in your top ten?
Those dry bones given flesh!
The bit where Elijah is challenging the baal-worshippers – “Come on, where’s your god then? Maybe he’s on the toilet and too busy to come light your fire for you!”
Noah’s Ark always gets me laughing too!
Miriam and Aaron getting bleached white skin for being racist about Zipporah [Mrs Moses].
Haman “molesting” Esther just as the king walked back in from the balcony.
…these are Brilliant!
The bit in Judges 3 where the servants of King Eglon ‘waited to the point of embarrassment’ (before discovering him killed by Ehud) because they thought he was on the loo.
Judges 3 is a really good story – the description of just how fat Eglon was is incomparable.
I’ve always liked how funny this verse sounds: ‘And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.’ It’s not funny really, but it’s funny to think that the dead bodies got up and looked around and they were all dead :)
Rhoda and Paul – these are gospel gold!
The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden because the story of the first man in the garden paradise pre-dates the written Old Testament. When it circulated in Abraham’s country of Mesopotamia in the epic poem of Gilgamesh it had nothing to do with the origin of sin. Moreover, the naked woman was a heroine.
Eve, I agree that the Adam & Eve story is a Bible story that shows how wonderfully interesting the Bible is. The Adam-Eve-Paradise story is found in different forms all over the world – from ancient China through to South America, but I think what makes the Bible’s account so universally popular is that there is a lovely balance to the different elements. In many of the non-Biblical versions, the idea of sin gets twisted with ideas of sexuality and nakedness – but in the Bible nakedness is God’s good creation and sex is His command. It is a great story.
Thanks Eve – and Paul.
Whilst Eve (along with Adam!) is culpable for her disobedience, she’s also honoured as the mother of the promised Saviour. Villain and heroine both…along with her hubby!
Thanks Paul and Emma for interesting replies. Re: sex and nakedness in the Eden story, it was St Augustine of Hippo who equated sex and sin in Eden. However, in the pre-biblical epic of Gilgamesh – which records almost all the components of the Eden story including the first man to enter the garden paradise – the chronicle of the naked couple can be seen as an allegory preserving an inspirational evolutionary event in the human story. In polytheism it was sometimes necessary to flout the unethical gods in the name of progress.
In the revolution of monotheism, however, the meaning of this polytheist record is turned on its head – Eve’s disobedience over-riding all and being seen in terms of human downfall and disgrace.
Non boring questions to ask re: the story of Adam and Eve.
Why was it the serpent in Eden that spoke the truth? When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit they did not die on the day – Adam went on to live ‘an hundred and thirty years’, nor did the couple become mortal, for they were created mortal in the first place.
Eve picked a fruit to make one wise, but why would the Lord in Eden not want humans to become wise? In the ancient world wisdom was deemed to be ‘above rubies’ in worth.
Why was it that In the pre-biblical Mesopotamian story of the first man to enter the garden paradise he disobeyed his deity, but was upheld as a great hero?
Should we not question why the Lord in Eden said, ‘Behold, the man has become as one of us.’ In the ancient world there was no higher status than to become in some way godlike.
The answers lie in the matter of interpretation between history rooted in polytheism, and the same history rightly preserved in Genesis, but wrongly interpreted as literal truth. The Eden myth still guards an uplifting, non-boring and beautiful anthropological record of value to all human beings.
See: Eden: The Buried Treasure.
The devil definitely lied (John 8:44) and death definitely entered with Adam and Eve’s sin (Rom 5:12). They grasped after godlikeness – the opposite of Christ – the One who was in the form of God yet “emptied Himself” (Philippians 2:6-9).
The context for understanding these things is the Scriptures themselves as they speak of Christ. *He* reveals the true God and the true humanity.
Hi Glen,
Thanks for your comment. The story of Adam and Eve has at least four differing interpretations. At its Mesopotamian origins the story of the naked couple was an important and inspirational allegory recording an important event in the human story.
When the story was included in Genesis in the revolution of patriarchal monotheism it upheld Yahweh as the Creator of all human beings and underlined the creed, along with other Genesis stories, that disobedience to Yahweh would reap Divine retribution.
In Christian monotheism St Augustine of Hippo associated sex and sin in Eden.
Today, a creation account in which humans were created as instant adults, the female from the rib-bone of the male is not generally acceptable as a factual account of human generation. Hence the story is seen as myth.
But myth was an important form of history in the ancient world, though it cannot be understood in literal terms or without including the guidance of archetypal images such as the serpent and the tree.
At the time of Moses the serpent was seen as a symbol of life, wisdom and guidance – and Moses made miracles with his serpent staff. Association between the serpent and the Devil came after the earliest stories preserved in Genesis.
When the pre-biblical story of the naked couple circulated in the Gilgamesh epic, it was part of Mesopotamian history and may have been known to Abraham’s family. Its interpretation, however, had nothing to do with downfall and disgrace,or the Devil, but something far more uplifting.
(More info at: http://www.evewood-langford.co.uk)