Blogging the Bible carries an R-rating
Lust and violence, and black humor, fill Old Testament
David Plotz was a not-very-observant Jew who had spent three decades largely avoiding the Bible until one day when, bored at a cousin's bat mitzvah, he began thumbing through a copy of the Torah. Landing on Genesis 34, he was captivated by the rape of Jacob's daughter Dinah, and the devious way her family wreaks payback: tricking the rapist's family into disabling themselves with circumcision, then massacring them.
It got Plotz to wondering what other high drama -- the ghastly and wonderful, the tragic and comedic -- he had been missing. Thus he began to read the Bible cover-to-cover and discovered, in his words, "a bawdy, violent, sexy, jokey, sarcastic, Quentin Tarantino of a book."
Realizing that writing concentrated his thinking and that "no effort that could turn to profit should be wasted," the 36-year-old deputy editor of the online magazine Slate began posting his earnest, irreverent musings. The idea: to see what happens when a self-proclaimed ignoramus spends a year actually reading the book upon which his religion is based.
Today "Blogging the Bible" is a cyberspace hit, and Plotz's inbox is filled with thousands of e-mails from readers. Intending to finish the Old Testament by summer, he has a book contract to document his endeavor.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/28/INGGNNNR6B1.DTLGenesis, Chapter 1You'd think God would know exactly what He's doing, but He doesn't. He's a tinkerer. He tries something out—what if I move all the water around so dry land can appear? He checks it out. He sees "that it was good." Then He moves on to the next experiment—how about plants? Let's try plants.
This haphazardness may be why Creation seems so out of order. If God made light on the first day, what was giving the light, since the sun doesn't appear until the fourth day? And God tackles the major geological and astronomical features during the first two days—light, sky, water, earth. But Day 3 is a curious interruption—plant creation—that is followed by a return to massive universe-shaping projects on Day 4 with the sun, moon, and stars. The plant venture is a tangent—like putting a refrigerator into a house before you've put the roof on.
Does the Lord love insects best? They're so nice He made them twice: On Day 5 He makes "the living creatures of every kind that creep." Three verses, and 24 hours later, He makes "all kinds of creeping things of the earth."
http://www.slate.com/id/2141712/entry/2141714/
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