It has been said that if The Bible were to be faithfully adapted for the big screen, it would almost certainly be the most astonishingly obscene film ever made. I doubt that anyone who is familiar with The Written Word Of God would contest this. The subject matter of the Old Testament alone (with its constant graphic brutality, genocide, casual incest, and countless rapes) would be more than enough to earn The Good Book an NC-17 rating.
In light of this, I thought it might be fun to compile a list of five of the most amusing, inappropriate, and potentially offensive passages in The Bible. Fair Warning though: Although everything discussed in the following sections can be directly attributed to God Himself (I’ve even provided detailed links to the passages in question), things still get fairly graphic, so you probably don’t want to let your kid read it (those who are easily offended by wiseasses providing glib and irreverent commentaries on the smutty portions of sacred religious texts would do well to avoid it also).
1. A BRUTAL GANG RAPE
It’s always the same old story isn’t it? A man and his mistress are visiting your house when a gang of ruffians pounds on the door and demands to have nonconsensual group sex with him. You offer to let them have a go at your virgin daughter and the man’s mistress instead (in ancient times it was apparently considered impolite to allow male guests to be raped), but they’re not much interested in either one of them, as they had their hearts set on some man-on-man action.
Finally you just decide to toss your guest’s mistress to the angry throng in the hopes that she’ll sate their rapelust. After a spirited discussion, the rapists reluctantly agree to put the man-on-man rape on hold and settle for man-on-mistress rape (which strikes me as more than a little odd, since “openness to compromise” is not a trait often ascribed to angry sex mobs, but whatever). They then spend the remainder of the night savagely beating and raping the woman before leaving her to bleed to death on your front steps.
The next morning, your guest comes to the front door and is somewhat perturbed to discover that [one of] his prized womanslave[s] has been killed without his express permission. So he decides to hack her body into twelve pieces (naturally) and send them “into all the areas of Israel”. This might seem strange, until you remember that people back then had different ways of mourning.
Take The Five Stages Of Grief, for example. Today we know them as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, but this wasn’t always the case. In the ancient world they went more like this:
1. Mild Shock
2. Indignance
3. Breakfast
4. Dismemberment Of Corpse
5. Mail Bodyparts To Others
So be sure and keep that in mind. Context is everything when it comes to The Bible.
And for those skeptical among you who may suspect that I am simply making things up (a valid concern), here is the passage as it appears in The Bible:
22 While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.”
23 The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this outrageous thing. 24 Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing.”
25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. 26 At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
27 When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. 28 He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.
29 When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.
One can only hope that God intended this as a cautionary tale and not an instructional one. We may never know for sure.
2. FATHER-DAUGHTER INCEST
There are certainly More Than A Few Incestuous Stories in The Bible, and to this day remains somewhat unclear what is and is not to be considered incest. For example: It is perfectly acceptable for a man to have sex with his niece or daughter, according to God. So go to town on that one, I guess.
But one incest story in The Bible stands out as being particularly disgusting: The tale of Lot and his two daughters in Genesis 19. See, it turns out Lot was…well, maybe it’s better if I just let God explain it in His own words…
30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
33 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
34 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” 35 So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. 37 The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. 38 The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.
The lesson here is perfectly clear: If you, (a Good Christian Man) live in the middle of nowhere with your two young daughters, go ahead and engage in sexual intercourse with both of them in order to assure the continuance of your family line.
I mean, sure, while it’d hypothetically be possible for you to “simply leave the mountains and move to a town so you can have sex with women who are not your children”, you probably shouldn’t Monday Morning Quarterback The Word Of God. Better to play it safe and follow Lot’s example: Impregnate your own children and then die, leaving them to raise your clubfooted, droop-eyed incest babies by themselves in the middle of nowhere.
Amen.
3. GOD KILLS MAN FOR EJACULATING ON FLOOR INSTEAD OF INSIDE SISTER-IN-LAW
As you may or may not be aware, The Bible has some fairly strict rules about what a man is supposed to do with his ejaculate. It should go without saying that ejaculate is not to be drunk, bathed in, sprayed indiscriminately about the room, or discharged into the orifices of [certain] relatives. But did you know that it is also a sin to eject semen onto the floor?
It’s all right there in Genesis 38. God kills Judah’s son Er for some reason, so Judah asks his other son (Onan) to impregnate Er’s widow (“Come on! Do it as a personal favor!”). Understandably, Onan is none too pleased about this, but that does little to excuse the bad judgement he displays during sex with the woman. Check it out:
6 Now Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.
7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD took his life.
8 Then Judah said to Onan, ” Go in to your brother’s wife, and perform your duty as a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.”
9 Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother.
10 But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD; so He took his life also.
So let that be a lesson to you: When your dad orders you to have sex with your dead brother’s wife, do it correctly! Don’t even think about pulling out at the moment of orgasm and and ejaculating on the floor instead of impregnating her, unless you want God to strike you dead on the spot.
Honestly. It’s just common sense.
4. ATTENTION WOMEN: SHUT UP AND BECOME PREGNANT
A lot of people like to harp on how Islam’s holy texts say to treat women, but if you take an objective look at The Bible, Christianity doesn’t fare much better on this front. The Bible is chock full of outright Misogyny, most of it directly passed down by The Lord Himself. Here’s just one example (of hundreds); see if you can pick out the message God’s trying to get across (it’s subtle!):
11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15 But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.
All in all, this passage makes it pretty clear how far humanity has strayed from God’s teachings. This is as good a place as any to start if we TRULY want to get humanity back on the path of Riteousness. Seems like the best first step would be to fire all teachers and women in positions of authority. Then we could have them keep completely silent as we fitted them for the modest 17th century dresses they would need to constantly be clothed in. After that’s sorted, we can move on to impregnating them (forcably if need be).
In short, if we TRULY wish to follow The Teachings Of The Bible, women are really gonna have two choices:
1. Refusing To Capitulate & Being Stoned To Death Before Burning In Hell
2. Mouths Shut, Legs Open, Human Rights: Nonexistent
Hey, I don’t like it any more than you do, but I don’t make the rules! If you don’t like it, take it up with You Know Who.
5. DESTROY INFANTS AS REVENGE
Psalm 137 is ostensibly the self-told story of a group of people who were enslaved after their city was razed to the ground. It’s all fairly standard religious fare (“oh woe is us”, plenty of weeping, etc) until the last couple lines when the slaves express how happy it would make them to take their captor’s infants and smash them to death on the rocks:
7 Remember, LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”
8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.
9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
Shockingly enough, many Christians find this portion of the psalm to be somewhat distasteful, and so have seen fit to “edit it out” when whenever it is performed as a song or read in church. Some may see this sort of “cherry picking” as hypocritical, or even as blasphemous, but I can assure you that this is certainly not the case. Humans have a long and storied history of conveniently ignoring (if not outright dismissing) the portions of our holy books which we personally find inconvenient or distasteful. So “accidentally” leaving out a shocking or barbaric portion of The Good Book is far from unprecedented.
I’m sure God didn’t mean to leave all that unpleasant stuff in there, and He definitely wouldn’t have a problem with people editing The Bible as the means to an end. I mean, it’s not like it’s is regarded as being “100% The Word Of An Absolutely Infallible God, No Exceptions”, or anything. The Lord wouldn’t have given you a brain if He didn’t want you to adulterate and/or defile the holy book He passed down to you, right?
Right?