Leviticans, 7:12 - And thus she prepared for the turgid cock of a donkey, yet when upon her the cock was visited, she disdained it by saying ‘lo, this cock is too small to fill my hole’, and thus the LORD smote her and the donkey and all persons within sight.
There are so many passages in Song of Solomon:
Song of Solomon 1:9 -
I have compared thee, O my love, to a mare harnessed to one of the chariots of Pharoah
Song of Solomon 7: 6–10 -
“How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights! Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit. Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine. I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.”
And then there’s Leviticus 15:16-18 -
"And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even. And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even. The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even.”
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
So, is Jesus gone forever? Nope, he rose from the dead after a couple of days and now sits next to Dad in heaven. So, the sacrifice was what exactly? And when you think what the supposed sacrifice was for it gets, even more, ludicrous.
It means an immortal being—a member of a small pantheon of incestuous immortal beings—having been temporarily inconvenienced as one among millions who were crucified by the Romans, is now allowing all of us to live forever, on the basis of said temporary inconvenience, provided we show the appropriately sycophantic brown-nosing. If not, eternal torment.
I would excuse poetical analogies translated from a wholly different language: they often sound absurd, while they may be quite moving in the original.
“Her hair was like a flock of gulls across the northern sky” doesn’t sound so sweet, if translated into a language in which the word for “gull” is “shit-bird”. 
In any event, I love the Song of Solomon. Hot stuff (if allowances are made for cross-language translations of poetry). 
Sounds sensible enough. What’s ridiculous about washing up after sex? 
just to remind everyone, here are the questions that fell below Oddball_92’s standards.
You see it is the last point that is the main one I’m interested in. I know that no rational person would answer “yes” to the first two.
I’m assuming that you happily disregard many of your god’s commandments and yet…
And that fascinates me. Those are precisely the sort of bonkers tales that qualify for the OP. The unicorns, cocks and bears are fairly sane compared to the capricious slaughter of millions.
And I bow to your certainty as well. You manage to accept that your god is powerful enough to subvert the natural order of the world and is happy to wipe-out all but a handful of people. Yet you choose not to follow what he tells you to do.
So I’ll rephrase that last question, see if that helps.
How do you choose what to accept and what to ignore in the bible?
There’s something in the Bible about sacrificing thousands of heads of cattle (or bulls, or something) that to me is absolutely insane. The sheer manpower needed for that task, especially in the days before mechanical means of slaughter, and the waste of perfectly good meat (“burnt offerings” I assume aren’t eaten?) seems completely illogical.
Actually anything mentioning animal sacrifice (not to mention human sacrifice!) in the Bible to me is psychopathic.
The story of Abraham and Isaac is heartwarming.
God says, “Yo. I require a sacrifice or I will smite thee. But no, the usual lamb won’t do. Bring me your son Isaac instead. Yeah, you love him. But show that you love me more or I will smite thee.”
Abraham, “Nooooooo…ok, I’ll do it.”
Abraham leads his son into the wilderness to make sacrifices to appease God’s appetite for blood. Isaac asks, “Where’s our sacrifice?” Abe says “God’ll provide the sacrifice.” Isaac, it turns out, is a bit of a low-watt bulb.
Just when Abe is prepared to strike down his son to appease God’s insanity, God says, “Hahahaha, LOL. Pysch. Just testing. You pass the test, good for you.”
I can’t think of a story in the Bible that makes me want to worship God more than this one.
And God presumably already knew the choice Abraham would make, and still chose to mentally fuck with him! I never fully understood that story. It’s amazing how, if it weren’t God, you’d assume it was just some pissy, melodramatic teenager.
It’s a “just so” story explaining why Israelites don’t do human sacrifice (a not uncommon religious ritual in the area at the time).
As in -
Q: those Phoenicians sacrifice children to their gods. Why don’t we? Are their gods mightier than ours? [Anthropologists speculate that human sacrifice - even of children - was a way of demonstrating absolute dedication to the powers of one’s gods: it was relatively common. Thinking goes - the more powerful the god, the harsher its demands. Thus, a god that demanded sacrifice of children was more “seriously powerful” than one that, say, demanded sacrifice of fruits and flowers]
A: no, our god could ask for human sacrifice of children - and if he did, of course we would do it, he’s just as mighty as theirs (even moreso) - but he’s a nicer god than that: he won’t demand it. This is shown by the story of Abraham and Isaac. So, the fact that we don’t do human sacrifice doesn’t mean our god is a wimpy one.
It’s a lot better if you imagine “Yakity Sax” playing at the same time.
Along the same lines, there’s Exodus 33.18-23, just before Moses receives the tablets:
And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:
And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:
And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
So Moses got to see God’s “back parts”. And they apparently were glorious.
Maybe it’s a typo and they meant “bollock”.
Read it cover to cover. And believe me, NOBODY should ever have to read Numbers all the way through. It picks up a lot in Kings though.
My favorite part of Kings is David’s instructions to Solomon on his deathbed. It reads exactly like an Iron Age version of The Godfather: David instructs Solomon to “take care” of David’s enemies. 
Wise man = wiseguy?
Or maybe Abraham was a schizophrenic who heard voices. Today we diagnosis it as mental illness, and if need be, we lock them up for their own safety and the safety of others. Back then if you heard voices, you were called a prophet.
Is there really any difference between Abraham and Andrea Yates, except he backed out of it and she didn’t.
Andrea Yates was a real person. Abraham was a mythical figure. Therein lies the difference.
Ha! I came into this thread to say something similar.
FWIW, I kind of enjoy some of the ridiculous stuff in Scripture. A lot of it becomes more interesting when looking at context (as Malthus points out with Abraham and Issac), but I’m fascinated that some of this stuff obviously would have been seen as ridiculous to later Israelites (esp when they decided to write down the oral traditions), but instead of scrubbing the stories clean, they just decided to transcribe it whole-scale. It’s interesting to me - perhaps part of the ever-evolving religion ideal (once again, tip to Mathus for stating it so upthread) - our history is important, even if our stories are bit silly.
(FTR: I am a Christian - ELCA)
Before we get to the good stuff, I want to say that I am a firm atheist and that I have in fact read the Bible - no, not ‘cover to cover’: especially Numbers and Revelations are tough to digest to put it mildly
Bob Dylan said it much more poetically…
Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”
(sorry, posted as I started searching the Bible)
I’ll get back when I have found some quotes I vaguely remember - harder than i thought it would be …
first off: I always wondered why it was so hard to count in biblical times AND why translators kept repeating apparent mistakes in that regard.
Leviticus 11:20-23 (CEB)
Any flying insect that walks on four feet is detestable to you, but you can eat four-footed flying insects that have jointed legs above their feet with which they hop on the ground. Of these you can eat the following: any kind of migrating locust, any kind of bald locust, any kind of cricket, and any kind of grasshopper. But every other flying insect that has four feet is detestable to you.
John 8.1 about the woman caught in adultery. With no man in sight.
How did she commit adultery all by her lonesome?
Johnny Winter version of Highway 61. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yclRjptWlW8
Or the Dylan version posted by standingwave.