Leviticus Rules!

Chapter 19 ("Various Rules of Conduct") of Leviticus starts off, for the most part, with some actual reasonable suggestings for, you know, not being a jackass during your time on this planet.

For example, "revere your father and mother."  Now I can't quite say that I lived that as a teen, but now that I'm on the other side of the parenting game, a little reverence seems like a darn swell idea. 

There's some stuff in Chapter 19 about not picking your vineyard bare, or picking up grapes that have fallen.  Now I'm no farmer, although I'm the grandson of one, but these both seem like reasonable suggestions to me.

Don't steal.  Don't lie.  Don't rob your neighbor.  Don't curse the deaf or put stuff in the path of the blind.  Don't spread slander.  Take no revenge, cherish no grudge, don't bear hatred for your brother -- I'm down with all that stuff.

Don't breed domestic animals with others of a different species -- well, I have to admit that I'm with Bart Simpson here when I say, "God, schmod, I want my monkey-man."  But still, Chapter 19 is batting a solid .900, which is pretty good, Levitically speaking.

At this point, I was just about to give up on Chapter 19 providing any snark material.  Even the bit about the man who has carnal relations with a slave, who can then get off scot-free at the low low price of only one ram, well, even that seemed tame relative to some of the other Leviticus lunacy.

Oh, but then...the circumcision of the fruit.

Reading about the circumcision of the fruit reminded me all over again of the original point of this series -- which was to point out to all of you who love to quote Leviticus on the whole issue of homosexuality that there's a whole lot of other stuff in this particular book, and perhaps if you're only selecting bits of Leviticus that support your own pecadillos without embracing the book as a whole, then maybe you're being just a wee bit hypocritical.

So anyhoo, according to Chapter 19 verses 23 - 25, you are not to eat the fruit of a tree until it is circumcised.  How, you might wonder, does one circumcise a tree?  (And no, while many have compared yours truly to a mighty oak, we're talking about something else here.)  (Ok, maybe not a mighty oak -- more of a maple sapling.  Or maybe a just-sprouted weeping willow.  I regret bringing up the analogy, to be honest.)

According to Leviticus, a tree becomes circumcised after all the fruit it bears in its fourth year is sacrificed to the Lord.  So if you've partaken of fruit from a tree that's less than four years old, or from one whose fruit wasn't sacrificed after its fourth year, then shame, shame, shame you naughty kitten.

Oh, but its verses 26 through 28 that ought to make some of you scratch your head. 

Do you eat meat with blood in it?  Do you clip your hair at the temples or trim the edges of your beard?  (Ladies, this goes for you, too...)  And most importantly -- do you have one or more tattoos?

If so, then you, my friend, are not living up to the Lord's standards.

Continuing on...don't make your daughter a prostitute, seems fair enough...don't go to mediums or fortune-tellers (ever read your astrological forecast?  I'm thinking that's a no-no). 

Stand up in the presence of the aged and show respect for the old -- ok, down with that.

And here's one for those of you who are working yourselves into a lather over illegal immigration -- "When an alien resides with you in your land, do not molest him.  You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you.  Have the same love for him as for yourselves, for you too were once aliens..."

Thus ends wacky Chapter 19.  Only eight more to go.  Thank Jehovah.

(By the way, I know I've noted it before, but Brucker's excellent "Annotated Skeptic's Annotated Bible" does an excellent job of looking at the bible with a, well, skeptic's eye, but from the point of view of a believer.  He has recently added some invaluable comments to some of my older entries in this series as well.) 

Comments

[deadlytoque]

What about the bit in 19:19 where it says you can't wear clothes made out of more than one fiber? Imagine all those people who are burning in hell because of poly-cotton blend...

[Funky Dung]

Does Typepad have trackback or pingback capabilities? I only wonder because I've linked to you a couple times but never saw a track/pingback to the post.

[Bob]

Hey Funky -- Typepad does accept trackbacks. When I started blogging, I turned them on, but got discouraged and/or confused as to what it's all about after going months without ever getting one.

I turned it on for this entry, let's see what happens.

[Funky Dung]

Hmm. Since I already wrote the post, I don't know if a pingback will be sent. WordPress does it automatically when the post is published.

[Chance]

Great stuff, as usual!

[Brucker (who has two tattoos)]

Gosh, if you're going to start pointing people to my comments, I'm going to have to start calling you something like "filthy infidel" to keep up proper fundamentalist appearances.

Isn't it interesting that the Israelites were ordered to be kind to immigrants, but wipe out the indigenous population?

[Brucker]

Deadlytoque, I've often wondered about that poly-cotton thing. A lot of people bring it up as a semi-sarcastic response to 19:19, but really, can we say for certain that the ban applies to synthetic fibers as well as natural ones?

Another random thought from a guy who just claimed he wanted to build up his fundamentalist image, and then admitted to having tattoos. Go figure.

[deadlytoque]

Well, alright, so we admit poly-cotton blend... but does 19:19 exclude wool/cotton blends? What if your shirt was woven from linen and cotton?

[Brucker]

Oh, the shame of it all!