Fiction From the Bible

MAGIC, MYSTERIES, MYTHS and MISERY; The bible revisited

Published online July 12, 2021

The bible opens with… “In the beginning,” so this is where I will start. I am reading from the King James Version, which is just one of the baffling 2,500 different interpretations of the same book! So, what could go wrong when there are so many people with their fingers in the pie? By the way, King James was believed to be a gay man, so I wonder is his rendition the Gay Bible? I don’t know, but it is interesting to think about.

Anyway, “In the beginning,” God created the heaven and earth and all the oceans. It took him six days and on the seventh day, God rested. I can’t believe God would get tired and have to rest. God? Why didn’t he just do it all in one day? This sounds like how a man might divide a task into several segments and then after tiring he would rest. What is the sense of being God if you have to rest? I’m not buying it myself.

After God created all the firmament, he decided someone should live there. He made a man. God must have been thinking, “Well, what shall I make him out of? I got some sky here; shall I make a sky man? Got some water here, maybe a water man will do? Nah I got some dirt over here, I’ll make him out of dirt, a mud man.”

Adam and Eve Doin’ the Nasty!

When God was finished, he thought “Well he looks pretty good. Now, I’ll breathe some life into him.” Here is where this mythical tale gets really creative. God puts mud-man down in a garden called Eden. God feels sorry for mud-man because he is alone. So, he makes the man made of dirt fall asleep and while asleep God cuts him open and breaks off a rib. Out of this divine surgery God creates woman—a companion for the man he calls Adam. The woman God decides to call Eve. Where did God come up with these English sounding names, Adam and Eve in a world of people named Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego? This entire story sounds like something Scheherazade dreamed up to keep the prince from killing her.

But wait, it gets better! There was a magic apple full of knowledge growing in the garden and A and E were forbidden to eat it. This sounds like a trap to me. Along comes a solicitous serpent and he tells Eve, “Hey eat the apple! You’ll love it!” Eve does and gives some to Adam. “Come on, try it! Take a taste, its great! Just a little bit, just a taste!”

And Adam loves it, too. But now he is looking at Eve differently. “Hey, you’re naked. I like your curves, what’s that thing between your legs?” Eve says: “Hey, you’re naked too and that what’s that thing between your legs?” Well, this must be embarrassing for Adam and Eve. God will find out. Of course, he will find out, he’s God, right?

When God does find out they ate the damned apple he confronts the snake. The snake admits it was his fault and is banished to crawl on his belly and eat dust for all eternity. Me, I’m wondering if the reptile has to crawl on his belly now, because what was he before? Did he have legs before? Was it a lizard turned into a snake? This isn’t clear. How can he be a snake and then be cursed to be a snake forevermore? I’m confused.

When Adam and Eve figured out they were naked, they must have had sex, because they had two kids, two boys they named Cain and Abel, and we all know that happened to them, right? These two kids must have hated each other because Cain murders Able.  Talk about sibling rivalry! Are these the weird people we are supposed to be descended from? I’m glad it is just a myth, right?

Noah’s Floating Animal Shelter!

The next story is a tall tale because God gives the only righteous man left on earth an impossible task. His name was Noah. God was mad at all the descendants of dirt-man and his trampy wife, Eve as they were raucous and salacious and evil and just generally up to no good. God told Noah: “I will DESTROY both them and the earth!”  

Noah was wondering what to do about God’s threats to bomb Mother Earth, so God, in his infinite wisdom told Noah to “build a really big boat” because he was going to pull a flood on unsuspecting Earthlings, and cover all the dirt he made and the Dirt People with water, in order to KILL them.

God furnished all the dimensions for the boat he called an Ark, so many feet long, so many feet wide and so many feet tall. Noah knew the big boat would be the thing to solve all problems. Now, God told Noah to “go out among the creatures” and catch two of each species on earth and put them all in the Ark. Alas, there were so many creatures on earth, poor Noah would never be able to catch them all. Besides it would take 800 years to build this huge boat!

That’s got to be a Bible typo. Maybe 80 years, right? By the time Noah collected a few animals, (remember it took him 800 years) they would all be dead by the time the ark was finished and he would have to start over again! Besides Noah was already 600-years-old when all this hubbub began, claims the bible!

I think his age is a Bible typo, too. Perhaps Noah was only 60-years-old. Still, this was a huge and impossible task for an old man. Too old, too many creatures to catch and the damned flood was coming. Noah was getting tired just thinking about it. But the flood did come—forty days and forty nights of solid rain! All the fun, parties and fornicating were over for the Dirt People, as the rain soaked their tents and put out their fun campfires.

Water covered the earth. Killed everything except for maybe the fish and a few eels slithering around, wondering what the heck happened.

It took one hundred and fifty days for God to decide everything must be dead by now; he had been successful in the first mass murder on Earth! So God made the water recede and told Noah to come out.  “It’s okay Noah, the ethnic cleansing has taken place!” One hundred- and fifty-days, that’s five months that Noah and his family were stuck in the ark with all the smelly pooping and seasick animals, who had nothing to eat. It must have been abject misery on that boat, bobbing around in the waves with no direction, piss and poop everywhere and no food.

So, Noah was so happy to get off the boat he built an altar to God, to show his appreciation for God’s smart thinking. Then Noah killed some lambs and a few birds and sacrificed them as burnt offerings. Now, I’m wondering does God like barbeque and if so, what kind?

So far in this book of myths, the Bible, we have found that God, this creator of all things to be grouchy, ill mannered, ruthless, and mean and a mass murderer. So far, this disagreeable entity is not someone I would want to follow. His gospel is full of _________________. (Fill in the blanks and suit yourself) But we will look further into the Bible and its exciting stories.

Now onto some more good fiction writing! The Book of Kings has a sordid story that sounds very fishy to me. In fact, it’s a whopper, a whale of a tale. Of course, it is about a whale and his victim Jonah. Since all the progeny of dirt-man and Eve were killed off by God in The Great Flood, the people on earth at this time were the descendants of Noah.

Nineveh or SAD CITY!

Eventually all of Noah’s kin became as evil as those who were killed in the flood. God saw all these people to be raucous and salacious and evil and just generally no good thieves, court jesters and of course fornicators! One of the worst cities for fornicators was Nineveh, pronounced “Nin-A-Va.”

This city was a bad as Tombstone Arizona before Virgil Earp showed up!

Now Nineveh was a river town and located on the banks of the Tigris River. Today the city is called Mosul and is in Iraq. God called on his disciple Jonah to travel to Nineveh and preach the word of God to all the resident sinners and fornicators.

Now Jonah was tough because that’s why God picked him. But Jonah didn’t want the job of “taking names and talkin’ gospel” in Tough Town. He had seen enough of Sad City and wanted a desk job!

Jonah decided to sneak away and hide from God and join the Navy. Not the real Navy of course because they didn’t have one yet, but he figured the fishing boat Navy which docked in Nineveh, about 650 miles upriver from the Ocean would be a great place to start a new life away from the chaos of Sin City. Jonah got a job as a deck hand on a fishing boat and the boat set off down the Tigris River to the sea. On reaching the sea and putting out their fishing nets a great wind arose and churned up huge waves and the boat was in danger of sinking. Immediately the crew members were suspicious of the new deck hand Jonah and they cried out: “What evil have you brought upon us”

Jonah knew the storm was his fault for trying to hide from God and break the rules! That was a dumb idea Jonah must have said to himself because God busted him the minute the fishermen put the nets in the water. Thus, Jonah summoned up his last good deed and confessed to the fishermen that he was “hiding from God” and it was he who brought this danger to the boat. It was “GOD’S DOING!” Jonah then jumped into the sea, (or the other fishermen tossed him into the sea) it’s not clear exactly but Jonah was in the water and expecting to die for disobeying God.

Now, here’s where the story gets really good. God sends a whale to swallow up Jonah as punishment for running away. Jonah must have thought he was on his way to HELL squirming and thrashing inside the whale’s belly, while trying to get his breath. Jonah probably wasn’t exactly sure what had happened but he knew it wasn’t going to be good because after all, he had disobeyed God.

After a while, Jonah could feel the whale swimming forward and he knew they were going someplace and hopefully Jonah would not be consumed by the whale’s stomach acid. So, this swimming went on for three whole days, while Jonah lounged off to the side in an area of the whale’s stomach where there was some lawn furniture set up.

The whale was making good time cruising through the ocean and then finding the river. Up the river he swam until he came to the town of Nineveh. Now, I’m pretty sure the whale didn’t know the river was called the Tigris River, or the town where he was making his delivery was named Nineveh but he knew he had arrived because God had written an itinerary for him. Meanwhile Jonah decided he should have gone to Nineveh in the first place because it couldn’t be any worse than where he was in the whale’s close and stuffy stomach. Jonah also wondered why he wasn’t dead yet. He didn’t know God had a plan for this disciple (Jonah) who went AWOL!

It must have been a sight, when the whale belched up a wet human looking thing all covered in slimy whale spit and complaining about the heat. I don’t know who to feel sorry for the most, Jonah all disheveled and wet stinking to high heaven of old fish, or the townsfolk who saw it happen!

The story says Jonah stood in the center of the city and proclaimed it would be destroyed in 40 days. God was mad again damn it! The sight of Jonah must have so frightened the city dwellers that they repented and agreed God sure was a nice guy. Well, it seems some great magic happened here. The city was saved from destruction by a disapproving God, Jonah did his good deed, under threat of death, and it was mission accomplished!

The Angry Pillars of Salt!

The next story comes to you from the book of Genesis. It was certainly newsworthy and possibly appeared in the local “Aramaic Times” under the headline: “God turns woman into pillar of salt, just for looking the wrong way!” 

Of course, there is a back story to the angry pillars of salt, and it is also quite unbelievable. It seems all the people God put on this earth turned out to be pretty scummy for one reason or another. Two towns in particular were dens of iniquity and corruption, probably worse than Nineveh. Abraham was the man in charge in those times and God said to Abraham: “Sodom and Gomorra have become so evil I am going to destroy them. The people are doing abominable things and have an unnatural lust.” Abe said: “But wait, if there are a few good people living there you will kill them too.”

So, God said, “Tell ya what I’m going to do. I’ll send in some angels to see how bad it is and then get back to you with a Memo.” God did this and the angels were sorely attacked and were forced to blind their attackers with flaming swords, or sumthin’ like that. Abraham was very disappointed then he remembered he had relatives there too.  “My nephew Lot (yes that was his real name) and his wife live there. They are good people and must be saved.”

“Ok,” said God, “Tell them to pack up and get out of town, fast! Oh, and one more thing, tell them not to look back over their shoulders. They must walk straight ahead. If they look back, I will turn them into a pillar of salt!”

So, Abraham rushed to tell Lot and his wife (the Bible does not give her a name) they will be saved if they pack up and skip town before the destruction begins. “But God said he will turn you into a pillar of salt if you leave and look back,” cautions Abe. “I’ve got nothing to look back for,” said Lot. “Me neether,” said No Name Woman. So stuffing their belongings into some designer sheep skin traveling bags they headed for the road out of town.

As they walked away, the din of the city lessened and they realized they were leaving home. They wanted to look back at sin city to remember all the good times, but were afraid of Gods threat to turn them to salt if they did. So, they walked. Keep walking. Don’t-look…don’t-look…don’t-look.

She looked. BOOM!

Thunder came down and the wrath of God was a sight to behold. He had been disobeyed AGAIN! Where there had been a woman, now stood a pillar of salt. Punished for her disobedience. But you’d think God would have told Abraham her name.

Foot note: the location of Sodom and Gomorra was somewhere on the Dead Sea. A subsequent earthquake has destroyed its location. Guess God didn’t tell them about the earthquake. He not only killed all the people; he destroyed the ground they lived on.

We can see as we look at this legend of the Lord, from the Bible, that God was a seriously vengeful mass murderer whose creations became so abominous to him he destroyed them. He was a my way or the highway kind of God.

We will continue our study however, of The Good Book.

Saul demands 100 Foreskins!

Well, this story is from First-Samuel and it certainly got my attention. What kind of sorcery and mass murder do we have here? Who is Saul and what is his fetish with foreskins? The back story on this heinous demand for male human flesh is one of mass murder and bloody mayhem.

King Saul was a mass murderer of thousands of Philistines. He hated David and was jealous of him too, because David had killed tens of thousands of Philistines. It seems the Philistines and the Israelites were forever at war with each other with the Philistines being the bad guys of the bible because they worshiped a God, they called Dagon.

Dagon was half man, half fish and the Israelites worshiped, you know; the real God and the Israelites were this real God’s favorite people. It seems all this killing on both sides was alright with this real God of good, but only if you were on his side.

Now Saul, The Good Book says, was at that time in his life, possessed by demons. In other words, he was nuts. Saul had a very beautiful daughter named Merab. David had a big rep since he had knocked off Goliath with a rock in the eye and he wanted to marry the lovely Merab.

The evil Saul wants to kill David because he is jealous of him, so the last thing Saul wants is for David to marry his daughter. Saul connives an evil plot. He will demand an impossible dowry for his daughter’s Merab’s hand.

He will demand 100 Philistine foreskins.!

Now this is brilliant because Saul figures the Philistines will not want to give up their foreskins without a fight, and they will kill David if he tries. Wrong! David figures he is up to the task, full of himself since he chopped off Goliath’s head, so he takes a few good men and heads for Philistine country. David must have caught the Philistines asleep or maybe drunk as he and his men were able to murder and circumcise 200 Philistine men! Two hundred foreskins should impress Saul, David must have thought.

And now to present this bloody mess of human flesh to the king! It must have been quite a sight!

Crazy Saul was not delighted of course when David plopped those 200 foreskins at his feet, messing up his kingdom with a lot of blood and gore. Saul’s plot to kill David had failed and now he had this mess in front of him—and he must give up Merab in marriage.

Poor Merab. The bible doesn’t say if Merab was all that interested in David, but he had gone to an awful lot of trouble so he could marry her and so they were married. They probably didn’t live happily ever after because David would have a total of six wives and you know how women can fight among themselves.

With the death of tens of thousands David becomes the most successful serial killer of all time. God was pleased. David succeeded in a time when a man was measured by the number of other men he had murdered and how many wives he acquired. Yea verily, so be it!

Samson and his Beautiful Head of Hair!

Sampson and Delilah is the next story from The Good Book we will examine. It details a story of hate and violence, deceit and betrayal, in other words a love story. This time around the evil Philistines are the rulers and the Israelites are their slaves. Remember they worship Dagon the half fish half man god, a sort of merman of sorts. Now Sampson, a hero of the Israelites and the strongest man of his tribe falls in love with Semadar a Philistine woman.

Semadar is totally not interested in marrying an Israelite, even as handsome a one as Sampson is purported to be. Besides she is in love with Altur, a Philistine man, Sampson floats the idea of a fight between him and Altur and the winner gets to keep Semadar. She is decidedly not happy in being up for grabs; the prize in a winner takes all fight. So, she decided to even up the odds by fighting Sampson along with Altur. This turns out to be a really bad idea as Sampson who is as strong as Superman easily wins the fight against both of them. The bad news is that Semadar is killed in the melee.

Sampson is pretty mad at how things worked out too; he killing the girl he wanted to marry and again not knowing his own strength. Now here is where the story takes a little twist. Semadar has a sister and her name is Delilah. (The name just sounds exotic and sultry don’t you think?) Anyway, Delilah had been secretly in love with Sampson all along and was willing to overlook the fact he was an Israelite Superman. But because her sister was the object of Sampson’s affection, Delilah loved Samson from afar and said nothing. The fight which resulted in the death of her sister Semadar changed everything for Delilah. Because her sister was dead, Delilah now hated Sampson and vowed a deadly revenge.

Now the plot thickens. Delilah sidles up to Sampson and lays her voluptuousness all over him. “Hiya fella, how’s it goin?” She tells him of her great love for him which she kept secret until now. She promises to be the best wife in all of God’s creation.

Poor Sampson. This strong man was no match for the Delicious Delilah as they hang out together as lovers, getting to know each other and having fun, or so he thinks. All the time Delilah is trying to figure out the secret of his strength. She asks around but no one tells her. As the days go by Delilah realizes Sampson himself is reluctant to reveal where his strength lies, so he throws her a couple of red herrings, and he lies about his real secret.

You would think that a smart guy like Sampson would figure out Delilah was up to no good. But no, she keeps badgering him until he finally he gives up the truth and tells her his strength is in his long hair. Further he reveals that if his head was shaved, he would be absolutely powerless. Delilah is so happy now that she knows how to kill Superman off, which makes her feel better about avenging her sister’s death.

Now while Sampson sleeps, in her arms no less, Delilah has a Philistine sneak in the tent and cut off Sampson’s hair with a sharp pair of quiet scissors. His super strength was in his hair. The scissors were his Kryptonite. Now helpless, Sampson wakes up and is turned over to the Philistines, weak powerless and so hurt that Delilah turned on him.

The first things the Philistines do is poke out his eyes and make him a sightless slave. I’m wondering how effective a blind slave would be, but that is what The Good Book says, so it must be true. Delilah is paid a few silver coins for turning Sampson over to the Philistines like a true Patriot would. So, she is happy. She gets rid of Sampson; her sister’s death is avenged and she made a few bucks on the side.

The story is not over yet. There is more revenge to come and God approves! This time it is Sampson’s turn. He tells God he is tired of being blind and a slave, and begs God to restore his strength just one more time. If he does Samson promises God he will kill a few Philistines for him and make God happy.

God grants Sampson’s wish. Somehow Sampson finds his way to the big Philistine temple of Dagon where the half man, half fish is worshiped by the populous. Summoning all his super strength in one humongous effort Sampson pulls down the pillars holding up this great building killing hundreds of Philistine worshipers and himself in the process.

God approved and God smiled! Sampson was creative and obedient and he killed a few more evil doers in the process.

Authors Note: Too many people actually believe the fairy tale fictions within the Bible. The stories fly in the face of science and common sense. However, after perusing these often comical stories, and presenting their amusing details, and really thinking about them, I can say with all confidence: 

“Yea verily, I say unto you. This is all bullshit!”

By Don DuPay