respect for the contract itself.
16 No; the strength of a contract can only be gauged by one party’s willingness to adhere to provisions that are a) arduous, but also b) devoid of repercussion if violated, and c) lacking the barest lick of common sense.
17 And such are the laws of kashrut.
18 What; didst thou think these laws had a sand-grain of reason behind them?
19 That shellfish are unclean, for they lack fins and scales? Yea; for the contaminants of saltwater are best filtered not with hard shells, but porous gills.
20 That pigs are unclean, for they alone among the common farm animals are filthy? Yea; for cows are models of hygiene; and sheep are neat freaks; and chickens must have OCD, what with all their nonstop claw-washing.
21 That all insects are unclean . . . save four species of locust? Yea; because that is in there; look it up; Leviticus 11:21–22; I kid thee not.
22 Or consider the most famous dietary injunction of all: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.”
23 What kind of people would take such a specific rider—one forbidding only intergenerational culinary goat cruelty—and extend it into a ban against consuming all meat with all dairy, on the principle of “just to be safe”?
24 A Chosen People, that’s who.
25 Why, put aside the nature of the laws themselves: consider but their context and they become even more laughable.
26 Elaborate eating restrictions, given to people who would be consuming exactly one (1) foodstuff for the next four decades?
27 Seafood etiquette instructions, given to desert tribesmen whose only prior experience with fish involved walking through them?
28 Lectures about uncleanness, given to nomads who emitted a collective fungal stench so awful it actually deafened people?
29 No; the Hebrew dietary laws were carefully conceived and calibrated by the angels and Moses and Aaron and me, for the health and maintenance of the long-term neurosis of the Jewish people;
30 That they may forever display their faith through the ritual observance of rules too emphasized to be ignored, too random to be logical, and too vague to be satisfying.
CHAPTER 10
1 A part from these laws, I also transcribed to Moses on Sinai the chronicle contained in the first part of the Bible: the stories of Creation, and Adam and “Eve,” and Cain and Abel, and Noah, and the patriarchs; even Moses’s own story;
2 Until I reached the point when I said unto Moses, “Until I reached the point when I said unto Moses, ‘Until I reached the point when I said unto Moses, “Until I reached the point when I said unto Moses”’”; whereupon he laughed.
3 Well, chuckled.
4 The whole transcription took 40 days and 40 nights; exactly the same length of time it took for me to inundate the entire planet; which demonstrates either the relative difficulty of writing, or the ease of flooding.
5 In recent decades scholars have analyzed the Old Testament and concluded that it is an amalgam of the work of at least four different authors, working over a period of roughly a thousand years.
6 But thou wilt recall that in Againesis 3, I talked of other “scholars,” and how they had concluded that life on earth evolved over billions of years; perhaps thou rememberest the explanation given therein; I will not repeat myself, but it applies here as well.
7 The only portions of the Pentateuch I did not give directly to Moses, were those relatively small sections comprising the story of the Jews’ post-Sinai travels, which he and I worked on together on the road, Kerouac-style.
8 And this seems like an apt moment to answer one of the questions I have been asked most frequently since the Bible began its unprecedented run at the top of the best-seller lists: what advice do I have for young writers?
9 Verily, there is no question I take more pleasure in answering; not only because it appeals to my ego (which is fathomless), but because I take pride in being part of the great storytelling tradition.
10 For I was
16 No; the strength of a contract can only be gauged by one party’s willingness to adhere to provisions that are a) arduous, but also b) devoid of repercussion if violated, and c) lacking the barest lick of common sense.
17 And such are the laws of kashrut.
18 What; didst thou think these laws had a sand-grain of reason behind them?
19 That shellfish are unclean, for they lack fins and scales? Yea; for the contaminants of saltwater are best filtered not with hard shells, but porous gills.
20 That pigs are unclean, for they alone among the common farm animals are filthy? Yea; for cows are models of hygiene; and sheep are neat freaks; and chickens must have OCD, what with all their nonstop claw-washing.
21 That all insects are unclean . . . save four species of locust? Yea; because that is in there; look it up; Leviticus 11:21–22; I kid thee not.
22 Or consider the most famous dietary injunction of all: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.”
23 What kind of people would take such a specific rider—one forbidding only intergenerational culinary goat cruelty—and extend it into a ban against consuming all meat with all dairy, on the principle of “just to be safe”?
24 A Chosen People, that’s who.
25 Why, put aside the nature of the laws themselves: consider but their context and they become even more laughable.
26 Elaborate eating restrictions, given to people who would be consuming exactly one (1) foodstuff for the next four decades?
27 Seafood etiquette instructions, given to desert tribesmen whose only prior experience with fish involved walking through them?
28 Lectures about uncleanness, given to nomads who emitted a collective fungal stench so awful it actually deafened people?
29 No; the Hebrew dietary laws were carefully conceived and calibrated by the angels and Moses and Aaron and me, for the health and maintenance of the long-term neurosis of the Jewish people;
30 That they may forever display their faith through the ritual observance of rules too emphasized to be ignored, too random to be logical, and too vague to be satisfying.
CHAPTER 10
1 A part from these laws, I also transcribed to Moses on Sinai the chronicle contained in the first part of the Bible: the stories of Creation, and Adam and “Eve,” and Cain and Abel, and Noah, and the patriarchs; even Moses’s own story;
2 Until I reached the point when I said unto Moses, “Until I reached the point when I said unto Moses, ‘Until I reached the point when I said unto Moses, “Until I reached the point when I said unto Moses”’”; whereupon he laughed.
3 Well, chuckled.
4 The whole transcription took 40 days and 40 nights; exactly the same length of time it took for me to inundate the entire planet; which demonstrates either the relative difficulty of writing, or the ease of flooding.
5 In recent decades scholars have analyzed the Old Testament and concluded that it is an amalgam of the work of at least four different authors, working over a period of roughly a thousand years.
6 But thou wilt recall that in Againesis 3, I talked of other “scholars,” and how they had concluded that life on earth evolved over billions of years; perhaps thou rememberest the explanation given therein; I will not repeat myself, but it applies here as well.
7 The only portions of the Pentateuch I did not give directly to Moses, were those relatively small sections comprising the story of the Jews’ post-Sinai travels, which he and I worked on together on the road, Kerouac-style.
8 And this seems like an apt moment to answer one of the questions I have been asked most frequently since the Bible began its unprecedented run at the top of the best-seller lists: what advice do I have for young writers?
9 Verily, there is no question I take more pleasure in answering; not only because it appeals to my ego (which is fathomless), but because I take pride in being part of the great storytelling tradition.
10 For I was
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