What You Can and Can't Eat (Leviticus 10-11)

Now it starts to get good (finally).

Before I submit a definitive list of what you can and can't eat according to the Bible, I should mention that two of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, decide to make things a little more festive by lighting some incense. This pisses God off royally because he considers patchouli and the like to be "unholy fire" (Lev 10:1). He is so incensed (get it?) by this act that he gets Moses and some of their other relatives to kick them out of the Hebrews-only camp they've set up (at the base of Mount Sinai, I think). No incense? Tell that to the Catholics. They love that shit.

Leviticus 11 plainly lays out which animals are fit for human consumption and which aren't. The criteria is that they have to be both cloven-footed and chew cud. So I'm guessing cows are okay. So are horses by the same token. What's not okay are camels, rock badgers, hares and pigs (Lev 11:4-7).

I didn't know what a rock badger was but a Google search pulled up an image of a Magic Card that told me that a rock badger has the power of being "unblockable as long as defending player controls a Mountain". No wonder you can't eat them. Very few of us controls mountains.

As for les fruits de mer, you can eat whatever you want provided it has fins and scales. All fish are okay but sharks, dolphins, lobsters, shrimps, etc are off the list. The Bible is not super-specific about naming the seafood you can't eat but the criteria would cut out a lot of tasty stuff for which I personally have tremendous food nostalgia (popcorn shrimp, in particular). The Bible is, however, super-specific about naming the birds you can't eat. These include: eagles, carrion vultures, ospreys, falcons, ravens, nighthawks, regular hawks, ostrich, seagulls, owls, cormorants, ibis, water hens, pelicans, carrion vultures (yes, named twice in the same paragraph for emphasis), storks, hoopoe (huh?) and bats (Lev 11:13-18). Note to the brillant zoologist on hand when the Bible was being written: bats are not birds.

You can't eat winged insects except for locusts. You can eat grasshoppers. This is good if you happen to go to Thailand and want to look like a tourist. You can't eat anything that "swarms". Probably a good rule of thumb. You can't eat weasels, mice, geckos, land crocodiles, sand lizards, regular lizards or chameleons (e.g., Gary Olfman or Cate Blanchett).

Worse than being a vegan.

Faceplant! (Leviticus 6-9)

It seems that the subject of animal sacrifice will not be put to rest anytime soon. One of the things that I didn't mention was that the sacrificial altars that Moses and Aaron use are decked out with giant horns on either side (like a Viking helmet) and each and every time a sacrifice is made the horns get ritualistically smeared with blood. Very dark.

In the previous post, I pointed out that it is easy to be deemed unclean. Here's more on that: "You shall eat no fat, of ox, or sheep, or goat. The fat of an animal that dies of itself, and the fat of one that is torn by beasts, may be put to any other use, but on no account shall you eat it. For every person who eats of the fat of an animal of which an offering by fire is made to the Lord shall be cut off from his people" (Lev 7:22-25). Wait a minute. I understand that it's not good to eat what is basically road kill; however, eating no fat whatsoever from the aforementioned animals is completely unreasonable. Personally, I adore fatty meat and am not above eating six pieces of peameal bacon in one sitting.

Sometimes in an animal sacrifice, the priests some of the animals blood purposefully smeared on them: "And Moses killed it, and took some of its blood and put it on the tip of Aaron's right ear and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the great toe of his right foot" (Lev 8:23). I think this happened in a scene from The Lost Boys (starring the two Coreys, one of which had impeccable comedic timing).

Leviticus 9 describes an animal sacrifice that is apparently so mind-blowing that all the Israelites "shouted, and fell on their faces" (Lev 9:24). This is pretty funny to me. There's been so much sacrificing already that you'd think they'd be used to it by now. Weirdos.

Ladies! Give Your Fat Up to the Lord! (Leviticus 1-5)

Leviticus is all about specifics. I like that. Whenever I watch comedy, it's always the specifics that make me laugh.

The first few chapters of Leviticus deal with the subject of animal sacrifice and what passes muster and what doesn't. Sacrificing a mangy animal is a no-no. Wasting the fat is a no-no. God is especially keen on the blood being splattered around as much as possible. He wants a show.

All the fat must be burned separately as an offering because "all fat is the Lord's" (Lev 3:16). This sounds to me like the slogan for a women's weight-loss clinic with evangelical leanings (Put down that Three Muskateers - give your fat up to Jesus!"). In my imagination this clinic would also incorporate a mild circuit of exercises resembling nothing more than shifting your weight back and forth. And possibly some calf stretches. 

Not every offering has to be an animal. If you're too poor to make a proper offering of a bull or a ram, you can offer up two turtledoves or pidgeons or even some flour. Leviticus 2 discusses these "cereal offerings". In the case of cereal offerings, if there are any leftovers (which is not a word I easily associate with the concept of religious sacrifices) then Aaron and his sons get them because they're the priests. That's the best. I love it when I host a party and people bring lots of food and it just gets left at my place afterward. The number of lunches I'm able to assemble is my gauge for how successful the party was (for me).

Leviticus 5 starts to get into sins. Did you know it's a sin to take a "rash oath" (Lev 5:4)? It doesn't even matter if you're promises to do good or bad - it's a sin to be hasty in your decision-making. There are also a lot of ways in which you can become "unclean". For example, "...if he touches human uncleanness, of whatever sort [italics added] the uncleanness may be with which one becomes unclean, and it is hidden from him, when he comes to know it he shall be guilty" (Lev 5:3). This sounds wide-open but after reading it a couple of times, I think it's referring to getting a venereal disease with slow-to-show symptoms from someone you don't know very well (obviously). That's a sin.

No S'mores on the Sabbath (Exodus 35-40)

Finally I'm done Exodus. I've been looking forward to the next book, Leviticus, because I hear tell that it's got some of the weirdest, most obscure prescriptions. I'm pretty sure it's entirely devoted to what you can eat and who you can have sex with (and when). This is precisely what any religion boils down to.

Exodus 35 starts out with Moses yammering on about the importance of the sabbath. We get it, already. Rest on the seventh day. He also says to "kindle no fire in all your habitations," (Exo 35:3) which I think is the reason why orthodox Jews don't use electricity in their homes on the sabbath. I don't know. This seems like a dumb rule to me. Here's why:

Electricity = a physical phenomenon associated with stationary or moving electrons and protons

Fire = the phenomenon of combustion manifested in light, flame and heat

So, they're two different things. Electricity is not fire. So enjoy your Lite Brites on the sabbath, Jews!

Okay, in all honesty, I wasn't as fully engaged in reading the last chapters of Exodus. The reason being that they're mostly devoted to how God scams his people for their gold ("I want your gold!") so he can get Moses to use it to build some of the fancy stuff he wants; in particular, "the tabernacle, its tent and its covering, its hooks and its frames, its bars, its pillars, and its bases; the ark with its poles, the mercy seat, and the veil of the screen..." (Exo 35:11-12).

The Israelites are poor to begin with, and there aren't that many of them left after Moses called for a moderately-sized slaughter. So it seems a tad insensitive on God's part to expect them to cough up their valuables so he can have all these flashy things. The worst of it is that God wants Moses and Aaron to have "holy garments" to wear when they're tending to his shrine. There is extensive description of the jewel-laden breastplates they're supposed to wear. They must weigh fifty pounds each. Their robes are also hemmed with bells (to warn bears of their approach...?) and pomegranates, which aren't light either.

At the very end of Exodus, Moses blesses his people, in what I consider to be a smug, self-satisfied gesture. Since when does he go around blessing people?

Jealous? (Exodus 33-34)

For some reason or other, God keeps referring to Moses and his people as a "stiff-necked people" (Exo 33:5). I didn't mention this when it came up in previous passages but it's used quite a few times off the top of Exodus 33. I guess it means that they're stubborn. This seems a little uncalled for since the people that are still kicking around have followed Moses out of Egypt, marched through the parted Red Sea, spent days and nights waiting at the base of a mountain (with nothing to do) and killed thousands of their friends on command. They seem pretty flexible to me.

Anyways, God promises to take Moses and his people to a new land of "milk and honey," (Exo 34:3) which I surmise is next to Candyland. He also promises to drive out the following people: the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites. So far everyone is bad according to the Bible except the Israelites, and even that herd keeps getting culled.

Not only will he get rid of these other tribes, God fully endorses the desecration of their altars to other gods. He says, "you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god" (Exo 33:14). No kidding? I think I'll start asking people if they believe in Jealous.

Moses is a little frustrated that he hasn't gotten to see God's face. I don't know what he expects. God's compromise is to stand Moses on a rock, cover him with his huge, holy hand so he can't see anything, then remove it at the last minute so Moses can get a glimpse of his back. Maybe God is a butterface.

Moses and God have to redo the tablets for the Ten Commandments because Moses broke the last two in one of his increasingly more common spazzes. So they go off together for a while back up to Mount Sinai. When Moses returns, his face is all glowy and shiny like he just got a facial because he's been talking with God. "And when Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him" (Exo 34:30). This makes perfect sense to me because when I get a facial, I usually get waxing done at the same time (to remove my light, downy lady-beard) and it is scary for about an hour or two afterward, until my follicles calm down.

A Small Yet Intimate Massacre (Exodus 32)

While Moses is up on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights listening to God's demands for ostentatious furnishings, the people are getting restless. Where's God? We wanna worship him! He's not here. Gotta worship something!

Aaron spearheads the initiative to melt down the gold hoop earrings worn by mostly everybody ("Oh no, you did-n't) and fashion them into a golden calf. That makes sense. When Moses returns from the mountain and sees his people having a MASSIVE DANCE PARTY around this new idol, he is righteously pissed and smashes the tablets on which the Ten Commandments are written.

I'm sure his people get the point; they've been busted. But Moses is the kind of guy who likes to hammer home the point (just like God - no wonder they get along famously). So he burns the golden calf, grinds it into a fine powder, mixes it with water and makes everybody drink it! That is really mean. It sounds like something a disturbed mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy would do.

Now here's the best part. Basically, Moses says something to the effect of, "If you're with us, you're against us". Some of his people (specifically, the sons of Levi) come over to his side and he tells them, "Put  every man his sword on his side, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour" (Exo 32:27). Kill everybody! And they do! They kill three thousand people! God will neither stand for this business with the golden calf nor for this DANCING.

This is ridiculous. Moses spent all that time and energy hauling their asses from Egypt just to slaughter the majority of them.

How to Get into the Fat-Burning Zone During an Animal Sacrifice (Exodus 29-31)

God is not easy-going by any stretch of the imagination. He is as detail-oriented as a wedding planner and as exacting as Martha Stewart.

Exodus 29 consists of instructions on how to properly carry out an animal sacrifice. It's like a complicated French recipe. You've got to get a young bull and two unblemished rams (preferably hormone-free). You've got to throw their blood around like you're Jackson Pollock. You've got to separate the fat that covers their entrails. You've got to cut out their organs and cut their limbs into pieces. You've got to burn everything upon the altar. According to God, "it is a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the Lord" (Exo 29:18). I doubt that.

Exodus 30 is mostly about incense. God has in mind a delightful potpourri of the following: "...liquid myrrh... sweet-smelling cinnamon... aromatic cane... cassia... olive oil..." (Exo 30:23). I think my Mum uses the same stuff around Christmas time to make the house "welcoming," as she puts it. If it doesn't smell like that then I imagine it would smell like the entire contents of one of those stores you see in cheap malls that only sell knock-off perfume.

There's one really strict rule that comes out of Exodus 31: "Six days shall work be done, but the seventh is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall be put to death" (Exo 31:15). Man, he is not kidding. This is one rule in the Bible that I really dig. It's so French (in France the sabbath is called "the entire month of August"). My only question is, is there a difference between sloth and rest? Hopefully not.