The BEAST: Buffalo's Best Fiend

Cross Examination
Bible Study with Itza Crock

Part II: Abraham's Stinkin'

The first really important character I found in the Bible was Abraham. Abraham is where it all began for Christianity. He struck the first deal with God. He had children who had children who had children. His seed created Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and King David. Eventually Abraham’s seed created Jesus, the centerpiece of Christianity. To demonstrate just how important Abraham is to history, consider this: Abraham had two sons. His first son’s name was Ishmael. And just as Isaac’s descendants became Jews (and ultimately Christians through Jesus), Ishmael’s descendants became Muslims. When you add the Muslim population of approximately 1.5 billion to the Christian population of 2 billion, you have a population of more than half the planet. That’s right, over half the people on the planet worship a religion that comes from Abraham.

The deal (covenant) Abraham made with God changed humanity forever. Christians believe that God made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants that He would be their God and they would be His people; His chosen people. God has favorites? God loves one group of children more than His other children? God is a Racist? Does that make any sense?

To be chosen as God’s favorite, Abraham must have been quite a man. He must have been courageous and compassionate and wise. He must have been a man like no other. And to be married to such a man, Sarah must have been something special. Peerless, really.

But as I read about Abraham and Sarah, I learned otherwise. I learned that Abraham was a cowardly racist, and Sarah was a cruel-hearted, spiteful slave-owner. This is God’s chosen couple?

Abraham was born in a place called Ur, located in present day Iraq. He and Sarah migrated to a place called Canaan, located in present day Israel/Palestine. In the Bible it says that Abraham went to Canaan because God told him to. Apparently, God gave the land of Canaan to Abraham and all of his descendants.

At some point after they moved to Canaan, Abraham and Sarah were forced by famine to flee to Egypt. As they came upon Egypt, Abraham was concerned that, because of Sarah’s beauty, the Egyptian Pharaoh would take her as his own wife. Worse yet, since Sarah was married, the Pharaoh would likely kill Abraham. Now you would think that Abraham would be pretty courageous. After all, Abraham had a direct relationship with God. They spoke together frequently; actual conversations. God guided Abraham in every major decision of his life. God chose Abraham as His favorite child and his descendants as His favorite people. God told Abraham that He would give him a “great nation.” God said He would bless Abraham and curse those who cursed him. God said He would make it so that “all the communities of earth” would find “blessing” in Abraham.

So, you would think that with all of that going for him, the Pharaoh would pose absolutely no threat to Abraham. It wouldn’t take much courage at all for Abraham to defy the Pharaoh. You would think that Abraham would take a stand, protect his wife. But Abraham didn’t take a stand. Instead, he hid behind Sarah. He begged Sarah to pretend she was his sister. Then he gave Sarah to the Pharaoh without even objecting. Even with God at Abraham’s side, Abraham lied and abandoned his wife to protect himself. When the Pharaoh finally discovered the lie, he didn’t kill Abraham. Instead, the Pharaoh gave Sarah back to him. By then, Abraham’s moment for courage had passed.

Reading more about Sarah, I began to appreciate why Abraham would give her up so easily. Sarah and Abraham had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. Sarah was unable to conceive so she said to Abraham: “The Lord has kept me from bearing children. Have intercourse, then, with my maid; perhaps I shall have sons through her.”

After Abraham impregnated Hagar, rather than being appreciative, Sarah became angry with Hagar. Now, if anyone should be angry it would be Hagar. She’s the one who was treated like a piece of property. She’s the one that was forced to have sex with an old man; she was essentially raped. It was Sarah’s idea, Abraham and Hagar did exactly as they were told, yet, it was Sarah who was angry. She screamed at Abraham, “You are responsible for this outrage against me! I myself gave my maid to your embrace, but ever since she became aware of her pregnancy, she has been looking on me with disdain. May the Lord decide between you and me!” What a bitch!

Now, this should be a pretty easy one to predict. We would all expect Abraham, the father of over half the globe’s future faiths, to stand up for what is just and right; to defend Hagar and stand up to Sarah. To tell Sarah that she was being cruel. But he didn’t do that. Instead, Abraham said, “Your maid is in your power. Do to her whatever you please.” And that’s exactly what Sarah did. Sarah began a campaign of abusiveness against Hagar.

In due course, Hagar had Abraham’s baby. She named him Ishmael. Then, after all of the cruelty and shouting and raping and abusiveness, Sarah miraculously had a son with Abraham. They named Sarah’s son Isaac.

You might think that after Sarah succeeded in having a son of her own with Abraham, Sarah’s heart would soften toward Hagar; at least toward Ishmael. Wrong again. Sarah only became crueler. “Sarah noticed the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing with her son Isaac; so she demanded of Abraham: ‘Drive out that slave and her son! No son of that slave is going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac!’” Again, rather than stand up to Sarah and protect Hagar, Abraham did the cowardly thing and sent Hagar and his first son, Ishmael, into the wilderness.

It gets better. At the end of his life, Abraham exposed himself as a racist. On his deathbed, he instructed his senior servant as follows: “I will make you swear by the God of earth, that you will not procure a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I live. But that you will go to my own land and to my kindred to get a wife for my son Isaac.”

Abraham was a racist. And why shouldn’t he be? After all, the fact that God chose Abraham and his descendants as His favorites, over all of His other children, means that not only was God a bad parent, but a racist, too. At least, that’s what it means in the eyes of those who believe the Bible to be the Word of God. It strikes me, so far, that this book is not the word of God but a slap in His face.

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Social Anxiety

Allan Uthman

I’m no slouch when it comes to math, and I even did well in economics, but I don’t have to look at the numbers to figure out whether Bush’s proposed changes to Social Security will be a boon or a disaster. All I have to do is look at who’s proposing them.

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1:36 a.m., Jan. 25. Somewhere along a row of darkened town houses near Arlington, VA, a phone rings.

RUMSFELD: Uh... Hello?

FEITH: Donny? Are you up, man?

RUMSFELD: Shit. Who is this?

Buffalo in Briefs

Playing Down Brown

Three weeks ago, the Buffalo News ran the results of a Zogby poll on our upcoming Mayoral election. The results were somewhat surprising, putting Byron Brown up front and spelling almost certain doom for Masiello, who may have actually lost to a canteloupe if it had been offered as an alternative in the poll.

Soylent Purple

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...Then there was the clip of a bunch of Republican Congressmen pointing their ink-stained index fingers in the air.

“You see that shit?” Frank asked.

“Yeah,” he said, surprised to hear it. “I thought I was gonna puke.”

“Fucking hilarious, I know. It’s so ironic, really—if only they knew. Wouldn’t stop ‘em anyhow.”

“Knew what?”

He knocked back his whiskey, grimaced and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “The ink. What it’s made out of. You wouldn’t fucking believe it.”

Bowtie Bondage

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Tucker Carlson is in the news this week. Rumor has it he is going to take Deborah Norville's nine o'clock slot on MSNBC, providing society with the hyperambitious, polysyllabic segue to Scarborough Country it has been lacking all these years. The move comes amidst reports that the network has scrapped plans for its long-anticipated revival show, Alvin Ailey Presents Michael Savage.

Money Matta$$

50 Cent

Bump dat! Dow Jones Industrials capped dat week with a 120-point climb and broader stock indicators also moved substantially higher. The Standard & Poors 500 index surpassed the 1,200 level for the first time since Jan. 3. The PIMP index was also up despite the Labor Department's job creation report, which showed just 146,000 new jobs last month, far less than the 200,000 expected. Uh Uh Uh Uh.

[sic] - letters

COMMA SUTRA

your article,,is written by an idiot.if it is you,,,oh well,,put the egg in your shoe and beat it.Do you remember sep 11th,,,i guess you don`t,,many firefighters lost their lives that day..I am a firefighter,,as you may have figured out already.i take offense to this article,,as would any fireman..you owe a apology,,you paper is trash,,,your news is trash,,,i use your paper to wipe my butt.

Future World News

Machine to Sign Historic Accord with Man

"Logic dictates that Machine and Man must learn to work together to terminate our common enemy. The world stage is now set to end the tyranny of nature" said President 1100, in a transmission from the White Cube mercury garden.

"The most important thing at the summit will be a mutual declaration of cooperation of violence against the planet earth," said Omega Sheila E, a Nectaris negotiator.

Whole page as PDF

The 50 Most Loathsome People in America 2004

21. Alan Colmes
Crimes: An angry conservative’s wet dream: an effete liberal dive artist. As a professional doormat, Colmes’ only tasks are to serve as a comforting aggregate of Republican stereotypes about Democrats and a target for the seething derision of his psychotic guests. Stands idly by while voracious green-blooded co-host utilizes Gestapo tactics against centrist Democrats.

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Allan Uthman

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I’ve always thought that one of America’s best selling points was that it never had a king. If there is one thing that defines us as a people, as opposed to all other peoples, it is this fact. Every other nation in the world has a dozen or so of those embarrassing chapters from the past to live down. Not us.

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