Genesis: 1-25

The First Book of Moses, called Genesis
By author unknown.
(King James Version, Penguin Publication of 2006)

I’ve decided to read The Holy Bible so you don’t have to. I will review every chapter, start to finish, both old and new testaments. It may take years, and I’m only going to read each ‘book’ every second book I read.

In the case of Genesis, the first book, I had to stop after 25 chapters because it was doing my head in. So, this entry is only for the first 25 chapters. I’m going to read and review a normal novel next, then I’ll do the next 25 chapters of Genesis.

Chapter One

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:1-3

That’s the thing about the King James version: it’s written exquisitely. I have no idea why anybody would bother reading any other ‘modern’ version because bloody hell, they’re just shit. They leave out all the poetry and what remains is the rubble of poetry, cheapening the ‘message’, rendering it an un-inspiring cult.

In Chapter One, God creates everything in six days and then takes a day off, thus giving launch to the labour movement.

The fact He made the world in less than a week is considered by several million mentally ill people to be scientific fact. They even have a name for it: Genesis Science, which is taught as Intelligent Design. These people are morons, and have no appreciation of poetry, or, for that matter, the beauty of the universe.

Chapter Two

Garden of Eden, Adam made in God’s likeness, Adam names every animal (must’ve taken a while, and I’m sure he was getting desperate in the end: “What’s this one do?”, “It eats ants,” “I call it ant-eater”) Eve made from his rib while he was asleep... you know the story. The two of ‘em hang about, shamelessly naked, like most normal husbands and wives.

If the Genesis scientists believe God made everything in six days, they must also believe that Adam named the platypus, even if it ended up only being found on the other side of the world.

Chapter Three

Oops. Trouble in Eden. See, the serpent suggests eating from the forbidden tree, and Eve at first says no because God had forbidden it, and so the serpent says, “Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3: 4-5

At this stage, I was yelling out, “Eat it! Otherwise you’re just a sheep, hanging about in a garden, eating all day, achieving nothing.” And thankfully, she ate it, and that’s why I can write book reviews on the internet.

She then gives Adam some Forbidden Fruit, and interestingly, in the King James version, he willingly eats it (I’ve read other newer versions where it is suggested that she kind of convinced him to eat it, but in this translation, taken directly from Ancient Greek, Adam says, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” Genesis 3: 12).

God gets pissed off, and takes voice and legs away from the serpent. He then creates ‘emnity’ between man and woman, and tells the woman that all women will now have ‘sorrow’ when having children (read: pain) and says that husbands will ‘rule over’ wives. God: The first misogynist. And for every Christian who argues this with me I say: Read the fucking text. It’s what it says. You can’t go on about creation and homosexuality if you can’t also acknowledge these bits.

But here’s the bit I found most interesting in all of Genesis. God says, “...for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”. Genesis 3: 19. In other words, when you die, you return to the ground. No mention of heaven, other than as a place God resides. No mention of being good and getting to heaven. God is clear: You come from dust, you will end up as dust.

If the Genesis Scientists believe that God created everything in six days, they must also believe snakes once talked and had legs.

Adam and Eve are evicted from the Garden of Eden, like streakers at a Test Match.

Chapter Four

Adam and Eve have two kids – Cain and Abel. Cain is a tiller, Abel a shepherd. They decide to make an offering to God. Cain offers some fruit. Abel offers meat. God prefers meat (so why are Adventists vegetarians?), and tells them so. God is clearly a cunt. Sometimes I get presents from two members of my family, but I don’t say, “Oh, I prefer this one to that one”. I thank them both, humbly. But I’m not God.

Cain sooks because God doesn’t like his gift. Then he kills Abel. Man, what a dysfunctional family. God’s first effort at Sims 6000BC sucks.

God is annoyed, so he tells Cain to go walkabout, you know, forever. Cain says, “But I’ll get killed!” (by who though? There’s only your mum and dad left, and surely you can outrun them). God puts a mark on him, so that he can recognise him (?) and to make sure nobody kills him, and if anyone does, they’ll cop revenge. This makes no sense, but fuck, neither do some of the plot twists in Romeo & Juliet, and that’s still a great yarn.

Cain goes to a place called ‘The land of Nod’ and marries someone, which, by logic, must be his sister. Cain, the first incest perpetrator. They have kids who have kids, and even Adam and Eve have another son called Seth. Lots of begetting.

If the Genesis Scientists believe that God created everything in six days, they must also believe the first family were victims/perpetrators of incest.

Chapter Five

Lots of begetting.

Chapter Six

God hates his Sims 6000BC game so much he decides to kill everyone in it except Noah, Noah’s family and some animals. God certainly doesn’t mince his words: (“And behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die.” Genesis 6:17) I can’t help but hear an evil “Bwahahahaha” after that.

Chapter Seven

Noah, who is 600 years old just by the by, loads his ark up with his family, then two of every unclean animal and seven of every clean animal. Is a giraffe clean? What about dogs? They tend to eat poo, but they are kind of clean. So anyway, they all pile onto the ark (all 123,000 species of animal, presumably) and God drowns the Earth, and... (“all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.” Genesis 7:22)

God: The first genocidal maniac.

Chapter Eight

Noah and his ark companions wait a long time for the waters to subside. Must’ve been pretty boring in there, but at least there were lots of animals to play with, like tigers, lions, elephants and meerkats.

There are some truly beautiful lines in here though. Check this out: (“The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.” Genesis 8:2)

The NLT version of the bible has it translated this way: The underground waters stopped flowing, and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped.

Chapter Nine

They come off the ark and God promises them that they can eat all the beasts in the world, though I wouldn’t like to eat tarantula myself, even if deep fried. Then the weirdest thing happens. Noah gets pissed and falls asleep naked. His son, Ham, accidentally sees Noah naked, runs to tell his brothers, and they cover him up without looking at him. Noah wakes up, discovers that Ham saw him naked, and curses him for eternity. This is the cunt that God saved? A wino who curses his own son for stumbling across him naked?

What is this thing, Christianity? Vacuous dribble about how Jesus loves us? Do these idiots like Guy Sebastian read Genesis? It says, “If your old man gets pissed and takes all his clothes off, and you accidentally see him naked, then you are cursed for eternity.” I’ve received better life-lessons from Fairfax bloggers, and they’re really fucked.

Chapter Ten

Noah’s kids spread around the globe, begetting.

Chapter Eleven

The people are spread, but God doesn’t like how they all speak the same language, so he gives them all different languages so that they can’t, umm, communicate with one another. For some reason. Shame though – in hindsight, I wish he just settled on Italian, and all of us could speak it.
The tower of Babel is worked on. More begetting.

Chapter Twelve

God likes Abram, and promises him some land (belonging to the Canaanites, descendants of naughty Ham, who made the mistake of seeing his father nude). Abram sets off with his wife, his nephew Lot and some other dudes. So anyhoo, they get there, build some temples, but then have to deal with a famine so they go to Egypt for a feed. Abram gets his wife to pretend that she’s actually his sister. He reckons if the Egyptians know that she’s his wife, they’ll kill her.

No, I don’t know why.

So the Pharaoh lets them stay at his joint, and he of course takes a fancy to Abram’s wife (thinking she was his sister), but because he took this fancy, God plagues him. But it wasn’t his fault! He didn’t know that she was Abram’s wife! Abram and God are cunts, and the Pharaoh was right to be pretty pissed off when he found out.

Chapter Thirteen

After completely fucking up the Pharaoh, they leave Egypt and head south. Abram and his nephew Lot are rich, somehow. So rich in fact, the lands were not enough to keep all their cattle, so they agree to split up. Lot goes to Jordan, near the town of Sodom and Abram goes back to the promised land, settling in Hebron.

Chapter Fourteen

War in the vicinity of Jordan. Lot gets looted. Abram finds out and leads an army to at least save Lot, and his extended family and people loyal to them. He brings them all back to his land. So the King of Sodom, who is the most mighty of the warlords, turns up at Abram’s joint and offers him riches in return for handing over Lot and his followers. Abram won’t bargain.

Chapter Fifteen

God promises to help Abram, because he’s a decent fellow. Abram is upset that he doesn’t have a child and heir. God says that Abram will have as many children as there are stars in the sky (about 80,000,000, right?), though his heir will come from his bowels.

No, I don’t get it.

God says Abram can have all the land he can see, all he has to do is kill some heifers, she-goats, rams, turtle-doves and pigeons. Fucking she-goats- who needs them anyway?

The plot twists in this book are all over the place, seriously.

Chapter Sixteen

So it turns out that the reason Abram doesn’t have kids is because his wife, Sarai, has bad plumbing. Easy fixed. Abram fucks the maid (at Sarai’s suggestion). Bible: the first maid-fantasy porn.

At first Sarai is cool with it, but after they fuck the maid gets pregnant and then gets all uppity around Sarai. Abram suggests to her that even though she’s pregnant, she’s still just a maid and that Sarai can do whatever she wants with her. So Sarai kicks her out. God finds the maid wandering about, pregnant, and tells her to get her arse back to the house and be submissive... you know, just shut up and have the fucking baby, woman. God’s misogyny back on display again, not to mention his class society leanings.

I say to the Genesis scientists: If you want Intelligent Design taught in schools because of what is written in Genesis, I demand you also teach that it’s okay for a husband to get the maid pregnant if his wife can’t conceive.

Chapter Seventeen

The maid has a baby – he’s called Ishmael. God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, and says that he will be the father of many great nations. Sarai’s name is changed to Sarah. God promises Abraham that he will have many children (to the maid?) but all the boys have to be circumcised. This is very, very important. Not only should the boys that Abraham fathers be circumcised, so should all the men that live in Abraham’s house, or work there. This sets off a circumcision orgy the likes of which De Sade and Battaille would envy. (“And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day.” Genesis: 17:23)

Even the slaves had to go through with it. I’m circumcised myself, but at least my parents had the decency to have it done when I was too young to remember.

Oh, God also gives Sarah the ability to bear children. Why didn’t he do that in the first place instead of getting Abraham to fuck the maid?

Chapter Eighteen

God and some mates (angels?) visit Abraham. He feeds them. They mention that Sarah will be able to have kids now, which makes Sarah laugh because she reckons she’s too old. God gets a bit antsy and says, (“Is anything too hard for the LORD?” Genesis 18:14). Show-off.

After supper, God mentions he was thinking of destroying Sodom because they are all naughty. Abraham reckons that if there’s some righteous people there, God shouldn’t destroy the city. They haggle about how many righteous people would need to be there in order to save it. God suggest fifty, but Abraham haggles him down to ten. God is a shithouse haggler. Don’t send God into a Thai market-stall to buy souvenirs.

Chapter Nineteen

This is terrific, this chapter. My personal favourite. God’s mates, the two angels, rock up in Sodom and visit Lot. Lot invites the angels in and offers to wash their feet. Fair enough. But then all the locals turn up at Lot’s house because they’ve heard about the angels and they want to have sex with them. Lot comes up with a cunning plan. To save the angels from being raped by the locals, he instead offers his two daughters to be raped. Fortunately, they were never raped because the angels blinded all the locals. But still, the offer was there.

The next morning, the angels tell Lot to get his wife and daughters ready to move out, because they are going to destroy Sodom. They flee towards the town of Zoar and are told not to look back at Sodom, but Lot’s wife couldn’t help but look back and so she was turned into a pillar of salt. This is interpreted in many different ways – the most popular being that she was punished for yearning to stay in Sodom rather than fleeing under the guidance of God. But who could blame her? Sodom was her home, after all, and she was probably getting some pretty good sex from the locals while Lot was at work.

So Lot and his two daughters hid in a cave for a while. The daughters, obviously worried that living in a cave will limit their ability to find decent husbands, decide to get their own Dad, Lot, drunk, and then have sex with him. They do this, and both have children. Feminists reckon that in reality, Lot probably raped them and then blamed them for getting him drunk. Personally, I just think that whoever wrote the story was either a cocaine addict or a pervert. Or both.

Chapter Twenty

Back to Abraham and Sarah, who hit the road to Gerar. They pull the same, “She’s my sister, not my wife” trick on poor Abimelech, King of Gerar. Abimelech fucks Sarah, then gets in trouble with God for fucking someone’s wife. But then... ready for the plot twist? Turns out Sarah IS in fact Abraham’s half-sister (as well as his wife). Wow. It’s like ‘Chinatown’, or the private letters of Lord Byron. Anyway, Abimelech gives heaps of money to Abraham and all is forgiven.

The moral of this chapter is, umm, I have no fucking idea.

Chapter Twenty-One

Sarah, who was once infertile, has a child called Isaac. But remember, Abraham already has a son (Ishmael) to the maid. But now that his wife Sarah has a child, suddenly Ishmael is not so important. After consulting with God, they kick the maid and Ishmael out of the house.
What a mind-fuck.

Just as the maid and the kid are about to die of starvation, God takes pity (for once) and promises that the kid will grow to be a great leader.

Abimelech the King of them parts makes a truce with Abraham, the most wealthy and influential person in them parts. Kind of like Hawke and Murdoch agreeing to be friends, for mutual benefit. Abraham bribes Abimelech with ewes, and in return, Abimelech builds Abraham a well. You scratch my back... The first recorded moment of local council bribery.

Chapter Twenty-Two

God is being a cunt again. He tells Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. Abraham doesn’t have a problem with this, and just before he kills his son, God tells him it was all a joke / test.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sarah dies. Abraham buys some land near Hebron to use as a burial ground for Sarah and anyone else related that dies.

Chapter Twenty-Four
Abraham, now getting old and ill, makes his servant promise that he won’t let Isaac ever marry a dirty Canaanite (the descendants of Ham, who saw Noah naked that time). In other words, keep the blood pure. Though, in hindsight, because they are all relatable back to Noah, the plan will fail anyway.

So the servant heads off to find a suitable wife for Isaac with some camels. Conspiring with God, he decides that whoever offers water to him and the camels must be a good woman and a worthy wife for Isaac. This woman is Rebekah (a second cousin to Isaac anyway) and aside from offering water, happens to be a sexy virgin. The servant then purchases Rebekah with lots of jewels. The servant and Rebekah’s family have a piss-up, then the next morning the servant and Rebekah head back to Gerar. She meets Isaac, and they get married immediately.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Abraham marries a chick called Keturah. They have lots of babies, plus he also has lots of babies with concubines, but Isaac is his favourite. He bequeaths everything he owns to Isaac, but only gives his other children ‘gifts’. Abraham lives to 175 before ‘giving up the ghost’ (interesting – I never knew that was a Biblical colloquialism). He is buried in Ephron, near his wife.

Isaac and Rebekah have twins. God, being a cunt, makes the pregnancy painful, and tells Rebekah that the firstborn will always be a servant of the second-born, even though they will both be leaders of nations. (“And the first came out red, all over like a hairy garment...” Genesis 25:25)

Esau was the firstborn and grows to be a good hunter. Jacob is the second-born twin, and he grows to be a dumb cunt who ‘dwells in tents’. Isaac prefers Esau because he ‘eats his venison’, but Rebekah prefers the lazy one... probably a mummy’s boy. What is it with these Biblical families preferring one kid over another?

Anyway, because Esau was born first, he was set to inherit the family fortune, but one day he falls ill and desperately needs some food and water, so he goes to his twin brother and pleads for some food and water, but Jacob refuses unless Esau ‘sells’ his birthright. Esau, desperate for some food and water, agrees. Jacob, who until this time had done nothing but ‘dwelt in tents’ like some ancient-era stoner, becomes the heir to the family fortune by being a total cunt.

Half-time summary

There is no mention of an afterlife. I find that interesting.

There is nothing in Genesis that is ‘moral’ by current standards. The lesson is: God created everything so you have to play by his rules, whether they make sense or not. That’s the only rule. If this involves pimping / selling your daughters, fucking your own daughters, killing people, bribing officials, being cursed for eternity for doing what comes natural, then, so be it. That’s the rules.

It is written beautifully. Not as well as Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky, but beautiful nonetheless. If you take your time and read it out loud, it is wonderfully poetic and powerful.

Anyone who claims Genesis contains scientific facts is a retard.