The Bible

 

Page 1

1 “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Check

2 “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Hold it. The earth was void? That means it didn't have anything in it. No form, nothing in it; not much of an earth; where's the deep?

 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Wait, what? We've got heaven and we've got earth, but the earth has no form, nothing in it, but somewhere there's waters, so apparently the earth is made of water? Unless the deep is in heaven—don't know yet, although wherever they are, the spirit of god is moving around on them. Another puzzle: it isn't god moving around, just his spirit. Odd.

The universe looks like a sex ed diagram. Anyway,
3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. No problem there. Go, god. 

4And God saw the light, that it was good: okay. and God divided the light from the darkness.
Wait, what? First we had darkness, over the deep, then he created light, but the light wasn't separate from the darkness? How is that possible? Did he make it first as kind of twilight, and then later divided the light into one spot? This is weird.

5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. Good names there, god. And the evening and the morning were the first day. 

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
All right, that clears up about the waters. He's got a firmament, “the arch or vault of the sky” in the waters, so the waters are not in earth, they're in heaven, and heaven is apparently in the sky. Got it.

7And God made the firmament, uhhh, you already said that. Presumably he didn't make two firmaments. I sure hope not. and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
 

8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. Hold it. He created heaven, that had water in it, or was made of water, and he called it 'heaven'. In the middle of it he put this 'firmament' thingy, and says the firmament is 'heaven'. Is heaven still 'heaven' too? How do I tell them apart? 

9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven The 'heaven' heaven or the firmament 'heaven'? be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Huh? The waters coalesce into one lump, and reveals dry land, right up there above the earth. The earth is land, so “the dry land” was already there. Shouldn't he have said “let more dry land appear?” confusing. 

10And God called the dry land Earth; Oh, no! This again? Is god just trying to confuse me? Does he mean the moon? If the moon is 'earth'; what's earth?


and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. That's beginning to be a matter of opinion.

11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
On which earth? Either all this shit is on the new dry land and the original earth is underneath it, or, there's a huge blob of dry land up in the sky with a lot of plants growing on it. Does NASA know about this? 

12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 

13And the evening and the morning were the third day. So now, after three days, earth (one of them) has
(a) grass, (b) herbs that bear seeds (c) fruit trees, (d) no water (e) darkness on earth, light is somewhere else. How do these plants live?

14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven WTF? You want lights in the what? The firmament you now call heaven has a firmament inside it? Lights Where? What?
to divide the day from the night; The fuck?? Day and night have been divided since the first day. God said so already. and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven (wherever that is!) to give light upon the earth: (the original one or the fruity moon one?) and it was so. so that light he made on the first day wasn't on the earth at all. What good was it? 

16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: Huh? He already made lights for the earth. Why's he need another one? Maybe there's two suns? Why the hell not, he just made another moon to go with the fruits & herbs one. he made the stars also. Now that would impress me,ordinarily. I'm getting a little jaded. 

17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven (@#@*#&!!) to give light upon the earth,
18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: (didn't he already do that? and God saw that it was good. Well, at least somebody likes it. 

19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 

 
Ohhhh, kay!
And that's more than we need to know about this book.

Koranic Sign Language

Hallelujah, brother. The Quran talks about Jesus for twenty or thirty lines starting at 3:33. Line 55 says he died a natural death, and he didn't rise from the dead neither, so suck it, Christians. Nyah nyah. Mo got a lot of his stuff from old Jewish stories, like the Gospel of James, cuz how was he gonna know which books would get included in the bible later? It's not like he's some kind of prophet who could tell the future. Oh, wait.

Anyhow, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas tells how the baby Jesus, when he was just a little boy, 'bout up to his daddy's knee, he breathed into some clay birds and made them come to life. Who could doubt that? I knew muslims believe in the bible, so I Wikipedia'd Islam's holy books (yeah I'm lazy), and they mention a bunch of other books I've never heard of, but not these ones.

This chapter is called 'the family of Imran'. He was the father of Moses, but line 35 says his wife was Mary's mother. I ran my laser eyes over this whole same story back in chapter 19, and I didn't even notice this, but if these are the same people somebody'd have to be 1400 years old. Y'see how observant I am? It's controversial. I don't care.

Here's something else to not care about. Zacharaiah was Mary's gaurdian, and he asked the Lard for a sign, and the Lard agreed to send him a sign, and guess what it was? Split the heavens? Nah. Sprout a beer volcano? Nah. Get this, are you ready? His Powerfulness tells old Zach what

3:41. ... "The token will be," was the reply, "that you will speak to no man for three days except by signs.

LMFAO! Talk about cheap-ass Dollar Store omens, his crappy token was an order to keep his mouth shut. Lazy slacker Lord couldn't even be bothered to get up off his godly ass and strike him dumb even, he had to do it himself. So wtf, talking in sign is a token from the lawrd? LOL, I've gone for weeks at a time doing that, and nobody ever got pregnant. Hell, I know deaf people who spend their whole life talking in sign. They'd be popping out babies like a popcorn machine!

Naturally I looked for the koran in sign language, and I had a helluva time finding it. The Islamic Research Academy says you can't translate the Koran into sign, so I guess that means all my deaf friends will go burn in hell, and they're fine with that. FUCK YOU Islamic Research Academy. I managed to find the first sura in British SL, but I can't view it. I never noticed it before, but the BSL sign for the letter Y looks like an ASL word for clitting off, LOL. Thought I'd share.

Back to being dignified, here's a prayer in Saudi Sign Language. 

It's from the SignWriting website, which is nerdy fun.

Finally, I found somebody signing the koran! Hooray! It's Arabic SL, so I can't understand what he's saying, but it looks pretty cool anyway. Turn the sound off to watch it; those cats mating in the background are really distracting.

Sources II

Speaking of sources, here we go again with the plagiarism. Remember when Mo got the two cow stories mixed up? Well here he does it again, even worse, like having Goldilock's fairy godmother give her glass slippers.

2:60 And remember Moses prayed for water for his people; We said: "Strike the rock with thy staff." Then gushed forth therefrom twelve springs. Each group knew its own place for water. So eat and drink of the sustenance provided by Allah, and do no evil nor mischief on the (face of the) earth.

He told this same story in 7:160, but the schizophrenic old bible tells it three different ways. The twelve springs were at a place called Elim, and all they did there was camp (Exodus 15:27). Then Moses raps his rod on the rock at Rephidim, (Exodus 17:1-6 ) with lots of details, but no mention of twelve springs. Later he knocks his rock at Kadesh (Numbers 20:2-13), but still only one spring. Tradition is that Moses wrote these stories, so these are first person accounts by the actual rock-knocker himself, who oughta know.

The koran wants me to believe the bible versions (2:41). At the same time it wants me to believe the koran version is what really happened, it's in god's diary up in heaven, Moses was just bullshitting and shrunk it in the telling, from twelve springs to only one. That's likely, people always un-exagerate.

What I'm not sposed to believe is that a guy didn't know some old stories very well and got mixed up: that never happens.

Mo Stays On Task

Chapter 12 tells a story from the Bible, and Whoo-Hooo! Mohammed stays on one topic for a whole chapter! Gold star! Just when I'd gotten used to changing the subject every line or three. Here's what he says about the story.

3. Through the revelation of this Qur'an We narrate the best of histories of which you were unaware before.
102. This is news of the unknown We reveal to you
111. ... This is not a fictitious tale, but a verification of earlier Books

With Jews and Christians were around Mecca like fleas on a camel I dunno why he insists no one knew this story, but he wasn't trying to plagiarize. He's still trying to surf along on the old holy books, but he gets some of the details wrong so once again he ends up contradicting instead of verifying. Here's the tale.

Story of Joseph, Cliff Notes

His brothers try to kill him by dumping him down an old well. Somebody finds him, sells him into slavery in Egypt. Something about the boss's wife, prison time, and his cell mate eventually lands him a job with the Pharoah. His brothers show up, he jacks them around some and then invites the whole family over for dinner and a happy ending.

Notice the plot goes a little vague there in the middle? Yeah me too, because a good chunk of this version goes to explaining how Joseph was proved innocent of screwing the bosses wife, and then we cut to Joe in prison. Wait, ...what? Why? For what? All Ali says is “they found it proper for a time” Who? What? Pickthal's translation is a little better:

(35) And it seemed good to them (the men-folk) after they had seen the signs (of his innocence) to imprison him for a time.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. This is what passes for logic in CSI: Olde Araby ? The only reason I've EVER found for why he's in prison is here on some crazy Christian site I can't find again, and it was to protect him from the wife! Seriously. Such an Epic Fail at logic gives me a license to speculate, so here's my explanation, tactful like always.

Mo and all these other religion freaks were a herd of Male Chauvinist Pricks, that's a given, and most accounts agree Mo wasn't that great a story-teller. My theory is, when he came to the part where a Mighty Penis-Bearing Male was accused of wrong-doing by a lowly Boob-bearing Dick Holster, he couldn't avoid repeating all the standard excuses to ensure all blame fell on the females, leaving the Merit of the Mighty Male beyond reproach, as required by his Male Chauvinist Prick-mind. To wit,

23 With her husband RIGHT IN THE NEXT ROOM, the lady of the house
24 tried to rape him—against his will of course—and
25 ripped his clothes off as he runs out. (wink. Y'know how us studly dudes put up with this shit all the time, right?) Then she cried rape ®
26 It was all her fault ®, obviously, since
27-9 his shirt was torn in back instead of in front (! CSI: Olde Egypt !).
28 Bitches always lie®, and hubby was all
29 “it's cool Bro. And you, you fucking slut, you'll be sorry®”.
30 Then, people gossiped about her,
31 so she set up a meeting, and they said “Damn, girl, he's a hunk!”
32 She's all “Screw me or go to prison**” and
33 he opts for prison.
34 But god shut them bitches down.

[**you think I make this shit up? It says: (32) “I tried seducing him but he refused. If he does not do what I order him, he will be put in prison.” A standard pickup line you hear women using in bars everywhere, no?]

So Mo waxes eloquent about the evil wimmins until he realizes he completely destroyed his story line, then he mumbles line 35 real quick and gets back to the Bible story hoping no one will notice. Well I did, and I had to go back to the Bible to find out how the story is supposed to go: the boss believes his wife and tosses Joe in the clink. Logical. I never thought I'd say this, but read the Bible, it's a lot better.

There are a few other little mistakes. Mo has the Egyptian buying Joe with non-existent coins, “a few dirhams” which were money in Mo's day, but back in Joe's time coins hadn't even been invented. Also, the Bible calls the Egyptian guy Potiphar, but the Koran calls him Aziz, so we get silly Christians arguing with Moslems about which holy book is Teh Troof. It's never Aziz, it's al-Aziz and al is the definite article so Aziz isn't a name it's a title, so I'll come down with the Moslems on this one. I'll even cut Mo some slack on the dirhams—it's an easy slip to make in oral story telling. But I won't let him get by with having dead parents come to visit.

99. When they went back to Joseph he gave his father and mother a place of honour, and said: "Enter Egypt in peace by the will of God."
100. He seated his parents by his side on the throne; and they fell down before him in homage.

Trouble with this is, Genesis says his mom died in childbirth (35:18), and his step-mom was planted in a field in Canaan (49:31). I guess that's the reason they fell down—corpses do that unless you prop them up. I use baling wire.

Weirder is the magic shirt Mo puts into the story. He has Joe say this to his brothers,

93. “Take my shirt and put it on my father's face; his eyesight will be restored”

WTF? Five verses later they do, and it does! This guy talks to trees, believes in djinns that eat shit, why not magic shirts that cure blindness? I'll ask my doctor about it. His version of Joe's old man doesn't deserve to be cured anyway. When the brothers came home without Joe, he didn't go looking for him, didn't mourn like in the bible, he didn't do a damn thing. Then when they take his other son and THEY DO IT AGAIN, all he has to say is

83. "No," said (the father). "You have made up the story; but patience is best; God may bring them back to me. He is all-knowing and all-wise."

What great fucking parenting. Patience isn't best, you asshole, a search party is! In the Bible, he gets all upset, mourns and shit, but Mo forgot all that part, another example of Mohammed's inability to muster up ordinary human emotions. Look at the twisted way he has Joseph, his model of the wise and righteous man, respond when they prove he's innocent.

53. But I do not wish to absolve myself, for the soul is prone to evil, unless my Lord have mercy.

Doesn't he want justice? Nah, this is bad S&M porn; “Only if it pleases you Master”, “Punish me if it pleases you, Master.” It doesn't matter if he's innocent or what's right or wrong, only that his Master is happy. Religion in a nutshell.

Sura 20, boobs

Chapter 20, named Ta Ha (two random letters), starts out saying the Koran is a warning, then retells the the stories of Moses and Adam again. These versions contradict the Biblical accounts, and also the other versions in the koran: for example in chapter 7 it blames the golden calf incident on Aaron, like the bible, but in this version some guy named Samiri was behind it all (85-87).
Mo also mixed his stories up with older myths. All of them had a tree of life, and the Babylonian Enuma Elish and the Akkadian Adapa both have a food of immortality that the heroes didn't eat. But in verse 120 Mo has Adam eat it. Whoops!

As soon as they ate, “their hidden parts were exposed to each other.” Before that Adam's dangly bits were not exposed? How did that work? And until they ate, Adam never noticed Eve's boobs, but then he was suddenly grossed out, the way men always are by things like this. The whole point of the Bible story was a made-up tree of knowledge that could show those horny old pagans, who thought sex was OK, that it was really OMG DirtyNastyShameful! It seems to have escaped Mo's notice that immortality wouldn't do that.

Sad, Really Really Sad.

Chapter 38 is called “Sad,” which it is, but the name comes from another of those typos they were too dumb to take out. This time it's the Arabic letter Saad. Another Miracle!! WHOOO-HOO!


The first time I read chapter 38 I thought 'this is totally incoherent.' I thought it might be translation problems. Then I looked everything up, reread it and studied it, and now that I understand it I know it is totally incoherent. It's a lot of bible stories, all reduced down to bare bones, and all the same: a prophet turns up → people don't believe him → god kills everybody. The exception is Solomon. God let him live, and I was all “What? Why aren't you killing him? You don't let people live!” I guess I'm finding the author's mood. When the hero not committing senseless genocide puzzles you, there is something very basically wrong. Counting the verses in this chapter and the next, they devote 4% to heaven, and 50% to damnation. And the stories don't have any logic.

Take David: Two guys ask him to settle an argument and he says “You've got a million sheep and you're taking the only one he's got. It's not fair.” So far so good. The next sentence David is down on his knees begging forgiveness. You see the nice smooth flow of logical narrative there? Or are you like me screaming at the monitor “BEGGING FORGIVENESS FOR WHAT, for God's sakes?

I admit I forgot the bible story about David. OK, I suck. All I remembered was he killed some big dude with a sling. So I reread the bible and remembered that David had some guy killed so he could get his wife Bathsheeba, and god was pissed and sent an angel, who told the sheep story--and then I got it. Sheep = women, the one ewe = Bathsheeba, David = murdering scumbag, NOW it makes sense!! If I hadn't read the Torah's version I never would have got it. So the moral is that without the Torah the koran is useless, but according to moslems all these other scriptures are corrupted and unreliable.

Same thing with the first verses. It gloats vaguely about some unidentified prophet “turning many gods into one” → people don't believe him → god kills everybody. Turns out there are hadith about this that explain it as a garbleation of Mo's meeting with the leaders of his tribe. Once again if all you read is the koran, you have no idea what it's about. It's like telling a punch line without the joke. Or how about Ishmael, Al-Yasa and Dhul-kiffle? Especially that last guy dull kiffle? History has exactly jack and shit to say about him except for two passing mentions in the koran; he “observes patience” (21:85), and he's “among the best” (v48), whoever he is.

So, bottom line, the single book we need to know how to life our lives is completely worthless without a lot of supplementary materials that either don't exist or have been corrupted. Just shoot me.

It's sort of a puzzle why, but twice in this chapter, v65 and 86-7, Mo says he's only a 'warner' and he's not asking any compensation for doing the lord's work. He insists on this in other places too that I'm too lazy to look up. My guess is it's to divorce himself from the priests in the Meccan Megachurch, who would have been milking the people for all they were worth—whereas Mo was poor and selfless, y'unnerstand. Hmf.

Brother Mo's Travelin' Salvation Show (end of Surah 53), in which I say something good about the koran!

All these allusions to nature get to my soft spot. Even I have to admit that the earlier chapters can make great poetry. That's subjective, but you can Google up translations of ch100, “The Chargers”, that are really evocative and stirring. Poetry's not my thing; shit even reading poetry criticism makes me gag, so I'll condense J. Rodwell :

The contrast between the earlier and later Suras is very striking. Up to chapter 54 we can't help but notice the entire preeminence of the poetical element, a deep appreciation, as in 91, of the beauty of natural objects, brief fragmentary and impassioned utterances, expressed for the most part in lines of extreme brevity. In 53 however, Muhammed openly assumes the office of 'public warner' and it becomes more prosaic and didactic as the Missionary gradually replaces the Poet. Descriptions of natural objects give way to Jewish and Christian histories and disputes with the enemies of his faith. The admonisher and persuader of Mecca becomes at Medina the legislator and warrior, who dictates obedience, and uses other weapons than the pen. (rephrased with apologies to Rodwell)

We have every reason to believe them when they say the original Arabic is outstanding in a poetical sense, and it even sounds really good sometimes when it's sung. OMFG I've committed blasphemy! It's forbidden to sing koranic verses, according to some fuckwit. Sorry, but if certain types of modern music I won't name are 'singing', this sure n the fuck is, and it sounds kind of nice. Could use a little backup, but when you consider the lyrics, the only kind of music that's really appropriate would be Death Metal, and that's a really scary image.

Finishing off ch53, by v36 Mo's got the spirit, and Hallaujah, he preaches smitin and destroyin, and judgement day, he thumps the Good Book with the best of them;

36. Has he not heard what is contained in the Book of Moses,
37. And of Abraham who fulfilled his trust?

Whoa! The Book of Moses was written by Joseph Smith in 1830, part of founding Mormonism. This must be another Quranic prophecy fullfilled, but let's not bring it to their attention, K?

Probly Mo means the Five Books of Moses, aka the Jewish Bible, but they don't really say much about any afterlife. The Book of Daniel does say there's a book of who's naughty and nice, & a judgment, so maybe that's where it came from. By all accounts he'd been to see those Jewish and Christian preachers, and undoubtedly he picked up some Powerpoint tips from watching them. So he incorporated it into his own rant, and it seems to have worked. Already noted how he preached so good the Ethiopian peeps came home.