What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? Read Free

which meant he got to throw his first fit—as if he didn’t know this was coming. The people were tossed out of paradise and they were no longer immortal. But at least they could have all that sex they were missing. The result, of course, was many children. Pretty soon one brother was killing another, while the rest were fruitful and multiplied, until the whole world was filled with humans killing each other. Now that’s entertainment!
    Unfortunately, it was also an endless series of headaches. People acted very badly and, since swimming hadn’t been invented yet, Yahweh flooded the entire world and started over. The next crop of humans tried to build a tower to heaven in Babel. So Yahweh, not a big fan of competition, broke up that little project. Then the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah started doing things a little too entertaining, even for Yahweh’s boredom-killing agenda, and both cities got nuked.
    As the centuries wore on, Yahweh became partial to the family of a Semitic tribesman named Abraham. He promised Abraham wagonloads of descendants to populate the land of Canaan. But Yahweh, never one to make things simple, didn’t give him a son until after Abe knocked up his maid and then turned 100. Yahweh had a flare for soap opera.
    The son was a nice boy named Isaac, Abraham’s long-promised offspring. Naturally, Yahweh demanded that Abraham kill him. Abe was about to make a sacrifice out of him when— psych! That wacky Yahweh was just messing with Abraham’s head. Abe didn’t have to sacrifice his son; it was just a test. Instead, he was given an alternative: trim the end of his penis. Kind of bizarre, but it beat torching the kid, who probably slept with one eye open that night.
    Thus began the begetting. Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob—who was renamed Israel—and Israel had twelve sons from two wives, who were sisters, and their two maids. Yahweh’s scheme got ever more interesting, even if it wasn’t exactly family entertainment.
    A drought then drove the people of Abraham to Egypt, where they spent 400 years being slaves and leaving no evidence they were ever there. Eventually, Yahweh heard their cries and found a fixer—Moses. He was the son of Hebrew slaves, but he passed as a prince of Egypt. Well, he didn’t look Jewish. Ba-da-boom.
    One day, while Moses was herding sheep, Yahweh appeared as a burning bush and spoke to him. Who knew Moses talked to his plants? Or that the plants talked back? God then slammed the pharaoh with ten plagues and led the Israelites out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and back toward Canaan. But first they had to endure forty years of desert campouts. Along the way, Yahweh issued the Ten Commandments and a few hundred other mitzvah to live by.
    Once they reached Canaan, the Israelites found that it was full of Canaanites. Go figure. The Hebrews called it the Land of Abraham because Abe had lived there years before. (Gee, I used to live in New Jersey. Does that make the Garden State the Land of Me? ) With God’s help, they launched a war and conquered sixty-one cities—the commandments about not killing and not coveting apparently on hold for the moment.
    Eventually, they settled in and organized themselves into two kingdoms—Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Each was dominated by a different version of the Hebrew faith. Around 1000 B.C., the valiant King David—of Goliath fame—came to power. He united the two kingdoms and reigned for forty years, followed by his son, Solomon, who built a great Temple in Jerusalem and ruled for forty years more. Along the way, Solomon collected 700 wives and 300 concubines. He was also very wise. Hey, any guy who could land that much action was no dummy. Plus, he had to remember all those anniversaries.
    Around 722 B.C., the huge empire of Assyria invaded Israel in the north. Then, in 586 B.C., the even bigger empire of Babylon conquered Judah in the south and kidnapped the leaders. Then, in 536 B.C., the even bigger