Article: 63884 of alt.atheism Newsgroups: alt.atheism Path: lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk!pavo.csi.cam.ac.uk!doc.ic.ac.uk!daresbury!keele!uknet!pipex!sunic!EU.net!uunet!tekbspa!iphasew!hwoo From: hwoo@iphasew.com (Hsien-Chung Woo) Subject: A joke from rec.humor Message-ID: Organization: Interphase Corporation, Santa Clara CA Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 19:56:50 GMT Lines: 68 Just an interesting joke that you guys may enjoy. Cheers Hsien ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BIBLE HUMOR Edgar Pearlstein, Lincoln, Nebraska To appreciate this as humor, you have to imagine yourself and your companions as the biblical-days equivalent of a group of racist, sexist, good-old-boys hanging out at the general store: Abraham was a sly fellow. When he went to Egypt he spread word that his beautiful wife, Sarah, was actually his sister. This led the Pharoah to give Abraham lots of gifts, as part of his wooing of Sarah. Poor Pharoah got punished by the god for taking Sarah, but he was really an innocent victim of Abraham's lying. When Pharoah found out about the deception, he didn't kill Abraham; he merely sent him and Sarah away and didn't even take back the gifts! (Genesis 12:20) The scam worked so well that Abraham pulled it again with another king, Abimelich (Genesis 20), who was sucker enough to give Abraham still more wealth (Genesis 20:14). Honest Abe! Abraham must have told his son Isaac about all this, for Isaac pulled almost the same stunt (Genesis 26:6-14), apparently with the same Abimelich, who must have been a real dunce. Abraham dickered with the god about how many righteous people in Sodom it would take to justify sparing it (Genesis 18:22-32). This has to be the first recorded case of what is now pejoratively called "Jewing-down". When Lot was a very old man, he had sex with his daughters, and they both became pregnant (Genesis 19:31-38). According to the Bible, Lot was a "righteous man" (2 Peter 2:8), and the excuse for his committing incest was that he was so drunk at the times that he didn't know what he was doing. Performing sexually while very old and dead drunk? If you believe that, you'll believe anything. A girl gets raped, and because she is too stunned to cry out, is herself punished (Deut 22:24). (A big "hee-hee" for the male chauvinists!) David wanted to have Saul's daughter for a wife. Saul demanded as payment 100 Philistine foreskins. David instead got him 200 (1 Samuel 18:25- 27). Gross! David, a really horny character, got a peek at Bathsheba bathing herself, and had the hots for her. But she was already married to Uriah. So David arranged to have her husband sent off to war and get killed, in order that he, David, could have her. Now that's worth a couple of snickers, but it gets even better: the god didn't like that, so he punished David by having all his wives raped in public! (II Samuel 11:2-12:12). A real knee-slapper! Did the god MOON Moses? (Exodus 33:23) Look it up! Judah had sex with his daughter-in-law, thinking she was a whore. When he later found out who she was, he wanted her to be burned to death. But she outsmarted him by proving that it was he who had sex with her (Genesis 38:13- 27). So here was a case where the woman outsmarted the man. Yuk yuk; who said those bible-day boys couldn't laugh at themselves? Ruth, upon Naomi's instructions, sidled up to Boas at night in order to gain favors (Ruth 3:3-18). (giggle). Another case where a woman gets the better of a man. Jesus preached that we should give to the poor. But he dismissed that idea when his own comfort was at stake, with the wisecrack "The poor ye have with you always" (Mark 14:7, Matthew 26:11, John 12:8). It's always a good guffaw when a pious one commits hypocrisy. And it's doubly funny when that person is fond of calling other people hypocrites! Jesus was hungry, and came upon a fig tree. Unfortunately, there wasn't any fruit on the tree, since it was the wrong time of the year. Jesus got so furious that he cursed the tree! (Matthew 21:18-20, Mark 11:12-21) Can you picture that? (The tree up and died, but there is no indication that the curse on fig trees lasted "to the tenth generation", as did some biblical curses.)