Back in the day, a friend and I got together to form a band and make some joyful noise to the Lord. We called ourselves Squish and The Masticating Chicken. Christian music would never be the same. Lovers of CCM (Crappy Christian Music) flocked to our door. Check out our breakthrough, signature sound: Cacophonous Worship (Squish is on geet and myself, The Masticating Chicken, on vocals).
I just finished reading The Temple Scroll by Jacob Milgrom and want to take this moment to say, Holy crap!
Okay, now that I got that out of my system, I need to reverse my saying because some Jews who got that out of their system in the past did not consider it holy. Defecation was a defiling activity in terms of Essene purity strictures. So was sexual intercourse, by the way.
Anyway, back to the Temple Scroll… This document is what is known as rewritten Torah.
That means it takes a bunch of scriptural texts (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in this case) and has its artistically licensed and/or divinely inspired way with them. Other examples include Chronicles and Jubilees. It basically sets out to portray the way the Temple and everything that takes place inside or around it ought to be like according to the perspective of the Essenes. Two of the Temple Scroll’s departures from Rabbinic and (I would assume) normative Judaism’s tradition which really amazed me concern its purity regulations in terms of defecation and sex (two things that obviously should never have anything to do with each other).
The Essenes, in contradistinction with other sects like the Pharisees, believed that the city in which the Temple resided was under the same purity regulations as the temple itself. So if the Essenes took over, no one who was impure could enter or be in Jerusalem. And that means no sex in the city (I’m sure Sarah Jessica Parker doesn’t count). If you called Jerusalem home, you’d have to remain celibate. Even treating yourself to a little one-on-one time would be prohibited. If you wanted or needed a bit of loving, you’d have to leave the city. But then you couldn’t get back in for three days post coitus.
And a man who lies with his wife and has an ejaculation, for three days shall not enter the whole city of the temple in which I shall cause my name to dwell.
11Q19, Col. XLV, line 11-12
In this day and age, very few people give a shit. So maybe they’d fit in fine in Essene Jerusalem, because nobody would be able to poop therein. And on Sabbaths, you’re really out of luck, because the Temple Scroll placed the community toilets 4500 cubits outside Jerusalem, which was 1000 cubits further than an Essense was allowed to walk on the Sabbath (11Q19 46.15). Six days a week, you may release your bowels. But on the seventh, which is holy to YHWH, if you live in Jerusalem, you cannot. Sundays would really be crappy days.
Sometimes I get into one of those moods… And when I do, strange things happen. Like this quiz I created: What Rabbinic School Do You Belong To?. Check it out and see which side of the great Jewish debate you stand on.
Last year, I purchased an absolutely incredible audio book, The Bible Experience: Old Testament. And I say this as one who abhors audio bibles generally and the NIV specifically (The Bible Experience is based on the TNIV). That is not to say there aren’t problems. But I was able to listen through 1 and 2 Samuel, Genesis, and Exodus without any serious hiccups. In Leviticus, however, I couldn’t help laughing at a ridiculously anachronistic absurdity…
The book starts out cool enough. As YHWH speaks to Moses in the Tabernacle about Levitical rites and regulations, we are greeted with the sound of knives being drawn, animals slaughtered, blood splashed, fat and flesh burning… You can almost smell the aroma of sizzling meat. The commands come alive viscerally. But as we move away from sacrificial regulations, an ambience of meditative monastic chant echoes across the backdrop. It was so obviously out of place that I almost wonder if such juxtaposition was intended to convey something. And if so, what? Moses was the first monk? Latin preceded Hebrew? Catholics hide in holy places? Goat-hair curtains and animal hide have cathedral-like acoustics? The Pope is Jewish?
Here are a couple of links to parodies of the I’m a Mac I’m and I’m a PC Mac commercials:
If you haven’t yet seen the original Mac commercials, get off your lazy but and head over to the apple site and watch them.
The name of the terrorist organization which heads the Palestinian Authority is known as Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya or HAMAS. In Arabic, the acronym means zeal.
But it is an interesting bit of irony that the acronym is identical to the Hebrew word חָמָס which means a wrong
.
It’s really sad that it’s true. But at the same time I can’t stop laughing. so without further adu: New Mac Commercial
