Exodus 35 to 37: Te Deum or tedium?

Exodus 35

Moses calls a meeting and passes on the Lord's commands...

... sabbath

... kindle no fires on t'sabbath

And Moses creates one of those present lists you do when you're getting hitched, only this time it's for the Lord's temple.

Onyx, linen, shrewbread, candlesticks etc.

And Moses' audience Getteth With The Programme.

Verse 21 “And they came, everyone whose heart stirred him up, and everyone whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD's offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation and for all his service and for the holy garments.”

and badgers' skins, silver, bracelets, sugar and spice and snails and puppy dogs tails

It's a regular potlatch, except without the redistribution.

And Moses shouts out some particularly skilled craftsmen (and women)

Verse 35 “Them he hat filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work.”

Exodus 36

But Moses' subcontractors/wisemen tell him that there's now More than Enuff Stough

Verse 6-7 “And Moses gave commandment, and they caused it to be proclaimed throughout the camp, saying, Let neither man nor woman make any more work for the offering of the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing. For the stuff they had was sufficient for all the work to make it, and too much.”

And then there's this long description of taches and loops and curtains. Having the decorators in is bloody painful.

Yep, more boards, tenons, shittim wood. More gaudy gaudiness. More cherubims.

It's as boring as the begatting, frankly.

Verse 38 “And the five pillars of it with their hooks: and he overlaid their chapiters and their fillets with gold: but their five sockets were of brass.”

Exodus 37

And he's still at it.

Verse 1-2 “And Bezaleel made the ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half was the length of it, and a cubit and a half of breadth of it, and a cubit and a half the height of it. And he overlaid it with pure gold within and without, and made a crown of gold to it round about.”

And it goes on and on in this vein. Give me a family tree full of Muppims and Amaleks and Beelzebuubs any day of the week (including the sabbath) instead of this.

Te Deum? No, tedium....

Genesis 5-6: the prelude to the soggy bit

One of the many hideous memories I have of the long and painful years I spent at Old Palace School for Girls in Croydon is of a production one of the dance classes put on, including the song The Animals Went in Two by Two. It featured pairs of girls playing various types of animals parading up the central aisle of the Banqueting Hall (which served as an assembly room, theatre, gym etc etc). And the fucking bitches who were our PE teachers at this time, who I'd better not name for libel reasons, in case they're not burning in some appropriate hell somewhere, cast as the hippo who "got stuck in the door" a girl who, whilst very popular, pretty and generally lovely, was also rather large.
Of limited relevance, I know. But we all need to have the occasional cathartic PE-teacher rant, and it seemed like a good opportunity.
These two chapters are pretty much all begatting, and some very, very, very old men (bit short on women, shock horror). And a big boat made of gopher wood. Which sounds kinda cool, but no-one actually knows what it was. And being the sentimental type, it seems a bit sad to create all those creatures - including beasts, fowls of the air and creeping things - and then kill them all off. The giant humans I seem to be less concerned about, given that we'd already apparently started killing each other off and generally embarking on the unpleasant activities characteristic of the species. Sigh.

Genesis 1 to 4- "stop me if you've read this one before"

Well, this is familiar. The story I've had drilled into me at various (sort of religious) prep schools and via paintings and myths and all the rest of it. It is the “Christian” creation mythology. Garden of Eden, serpents, fruit (not specified as apple), wicked women leading men astray etc. From a plotting point of view, it starts at the beginning (with the Word) and rushes you through sex, disobedience, discovery, punishment, exile, birth, murder and begatting with great efficiency. If only the following 880 so pages were so enthralling...

So, while wanting to write intelligently on the Big Questions of- you know, creation, evolution, theodicy, idiocy, all that guff- my eyes were drawn instead to Ch 1 verse 11

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit trees yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth, and it was so.

Now, if I could get my hands on the vandal who senselessly sawed my wife's plum tree that she planted on t'allotment, there'd be some distinct lack of forgiveness and heavy-duty smiting going on. I am neither Christian nor pacifist, after all.

Anyway, same chapter, verse 28.

and replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

has gotten us into all sorts of stupidity. But I seem to recall there's an alternative call to stewardship rather than dominion, further on in Genesis, so I'll save the ranting for that.

Then God says "it's all yours, but not that tree." And would you Adam and Eve it, along comes the serpent, and says, “ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

And God is irritated, and clearly not omniscient, since he/He has to cherchez la femme: Adam and Eve manage to hide from him/Him and he even has to ask the reason why.

Ooh, here's a good bit; I'll get a T-shirt made up for the little lady. Chapter 3 verse 16“and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.”

Yadder yadder yadder, Chapter 4 is about Cain and Abel.
God turns out to be fonder of animal husbandry than agriculture. (Don't forget who was writing this stuff down, and their self-serving bias).

And Cain is Unhappy about this and there is some smiting. Brothers, eh, what can you do?

(If I were a sci-fi geek (which I sort of was once), I would characterise God at this point as a not particularly competent terra-firming engineer with poor control over the parameters and behaviour of his production schedule. Just saying...)

Cain's wife (who she?) gives birth to Enoch, and then we get our first little bit of begatting. Lots more of that to come of course, which is partly why we're doing this whole King James Version project together- either one of us alone would come unstuck on the begatting.

At the tail end of Ch4 the family tree already begins to look like one of those “demographic bushes” that were spoken of when the police were trying to construct lineages of the Shannon Matthews crew. Everyone married or ex of each others' cousins, step-brothers, aunts younger than their nephews etc. One of my best mates is a quack, and just to toughen up medical students, he has them go and try to get a family history- for genetic purposes- from the punters where he works. It's always good for a laugh. Bit like the Bible really...