Let My People Go

The picture below got me thinking that perhaps the reason there is so much discrepancy and argument regarding  religious matters is that early on there was a glitch, i.e., some lost or forgotten or revised information.  The picture shows the 10 Commandments as a summary of the bible.  Now, I have to say, that if you were forced to summarize all of Judaism in just 10 "rules," I think these 10 would certainly be front runners.  I don't think you will find too many people who would have a problem with any of them.  In regard to Christianity, they might want something about Jesus thrown in there too, I'm not sure.  You can discuss it among yourselves. 

You see how this called
my name, right?

I felt this picture was a sign that I should offer my interpretations of events.  Here's what I think was going on around the time the Jews left Egypt:


As you can imagine, God is not in the best mood.  The Egyptians are not cooperating and he is forced to come up with a gang-o-plagues to get the them to understand he means business.  Even then, once the Jews tried to leave, God had to part the Red Sea to help them get across quickly since the Egyptians changed their mind and were coming to recapture the Jews.  He then had to close it back up on the Egyptians.  God does not feel happy at having to employ such tough love measures.

God did a better job with
some plagues than others.

Moving on, the Jews are headed for Israel.  At one point they stop and set up camp for awhile.  Moses heads up Mount Sinai for a pow wow with God.  This is where the trouble starts.  God is talking to Moses and Moses appears to be taking all sorts of notes.  Moses ends up being up there for 40 days and nights.  About halfway through the first day, Moses realizes God is a talker and he better just start summarizing what he's saying or his hand will fall off.  Soooo, after 40 days Moses heads back with his summary, aka the 10 Commandments.  He figures that'll be enough of a start for the "How to be a Jew" manual and he can just wing it with the rest of the details.


About halfway down the mountain, God says "Oh wait Moses, one more thing..."  Moses, who is tired and crabby at this point says "Ahhhhhhhh!  What?!?!" and slams down the tablets containing the 10 Commandments.  Of course they break all over the ground and God is pissed off.  So, God, seeing that there doesn't appear to be 40 days worth of notes on those tablets, calls Moses back up the mountain, has him re-write his "summary" and then tells him that for being such an ass about the whole thing and complaining about having to write for 40 days, he can go back to the people and explain to them that they will now be wandering the desert for 40 years thanks to Moses's ungrateful attitude.


Moses heads back down again and is trying to figure out how he's going to explain the whole 40 years in the desert thing without getting his ass kicked.  As fate would have it, Moses caught a break.  He sees that in his absence the rest of the Jews have been back to praying to a golden calf.  Now, in fairness to the Jews, Moses hadn't yet returned with the official final edition of the one god only rule, so they were really just hedging their bets a little if Moses didn't show back up - I mean he was gone a long time.

Where would they get a
golden anything?  I don't even
think that's real gold.

Jumping on this opportunity, Moses freaks out at everyone and says that God saw what they were doing and he is so mad that he is making them all wander the desert for 40 years.  He lets the Jews think that the whole thing was their fault and doesn't mention his little altercation.


From then on, throughout the history of religion, there has been debate on whether the bible was God's exact words sent through a human hand or was instead, divinely inspired.  Now you see why that is.  You know there was no way Moses was able to remember everything God said, so some stuff is more exact than others.  The End.


If you are interested in more of my biblical interpretations, please visit me at www.probablygoingtohell.com.