Genesis

It's pretty clear at the beginning that heaven is literally, physically up. The sky has windows in it which God can open to make it rain.

After the two conflicting creation stories, most of Genesis is boring genealogies, who went down to where, who smote whom, and a lot of gratuitous going-in-unto. The intolerance and violence don't surprise me - Noah's flood and Sodom and Gomorrah deserve a mention, but you know those stories already. What took me by surprise was the sheer volume of deceit. It's first nature for these characters to lie to each other at every opportunity. For example, one piece of advice that you might take to heart, if you thought that this book was any kind of moral example, is: if you're a man travelling with your wife, and you're afraid the locals might kill you and force her into sex slavery, tell them she's your sister. Then they'll force her into sex slavery without killing you, and you can relax. This happens three times, I think.

Chapters 37 to 45 are an interesting enough story, although not one with any discernible moral unless it's "If you know there's a famine coming, make sure you stockpile food so you can hold everyone to ransom for it." I can't read this bit without hearing the songs from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Other highlights:

• Jacob extorts his hairy brother Esau's birthright from him by threatening to withhold food when Esau is starving to death. He later deceives their father by covering himself in goatskin to dress up as Esau (that's how hairy he is.) God seems to be fooled as well. Much later in the bible, Esau is condemned for selling his birthright so cheaply.


• Jacob meets a man on the road, and they decide to wrestle all night. This appears to be consensual, so it's probably one of the few morally unobjectionable bits so far. The man turns out to be God. In a surprise result, Jacob whoops His candy ass. But the match was probably pre-scripted anyway.


• Some of Jacob's sons sell their sister Dinah to the ruler of some province or other on the condition that he orders all the men to be circumcised. Shortly afterwards, while the men are clutching themselves in agony, the sons nip in and massacre them - apparently in vengeance for the ruler dishonouring them by treating their sister like a harlot. Dinah's voice is totally unheard in all this.