(no subject)

[sadie_cocopuff]

it's only been 10 days, but so far i'm keeping up with my bible-in-a-year project (it will be amusing if the first time i manage it is in french). genesis is awfully interesting - lots of things in there that tend to get glossed over in the lectionary. lots of incest, in fact. for example, lot's family was just plain screwed up. i mean, it was nice that he didn't want god to destroy sodom and gomorrah because he thought he could find X number of righteous men there, but then the two angels who are supposed to carry out the smiting narrowly avoid getting raped by the townspeople, and lot's two daughters as well because he offers them in place of his guests (fortunately the angels saved everyone, which i'm hoping was god's way of saying "hey lot, that's a really bad idea, i don't think you actually understood the morality of the situation"). and then his married daughters get burned up with the city because his sons-in-law don't listen, his wife gets turned into a pillar of salt because she has to have one last look at the destruction, and he ends up fathering sons on his remaining two daughters while they're living in an isolated mountain cave because they scheme to get him drunk so they can assure the family line carries on - that is an awfully twisted notion of family pride/loyalty. even abraham and sarah were half-siblings (same father), a fact that i do not remember being frequently mentioned. also it strikes me as odd that, given the existence of ishmael, the story of the (almost) sacrifice of isaac talks about him as "your son, your only son, whom you love." and then abraham has several concubines after the death of sarah and fathers a bunch more children on them. and yet we pretty much only remember isaac. go figure. so yeah, all in all, the old testament is bordering on salacious.