Ten Impossible Biblical Events

One hardly knows where to start, there are so many biblical absurdities to choose from, so I expanded the six impossibilities of the White Queen to ten biblical ones. Other than that, here are my top ten biblical impossibilities, a quintet from the Old and New Testaments.

Now imagine if your next door neighbor, co-worker, friend, relative, spouse, or significant other told you that he (or she) had …

1) He was swallowed by a great shark and lived to tell the tale. You would have to conclude that there are fishermen’s tales, and then there are the real nutters! This would be a Whopper squared! (Jonah and the whale)

2) Haircuts that weakened their knees like a newborn. I could conclude that they had some kind of physiological condition that made them prone to fainting, but that the haircuts had no logical connection to those episodes. At least that’s what I would conclude. (Samson’s haircut)

3) They practiced their trumpet at home, held out near neighbors who wanted to stone them to death because of the noise, but to add insult to injury, their house collapsed around them. If they blew a trumpet and as a result their house collapsed around them, you’d have to conclude that the architects and builders were careless, in fact downright fraudulent. It certainly wouldn’t make any connection between a well-built brick house collapsing and blowing the trumpet. (Joshua and the Battle of Jericho)

4) You followed your doctor’s advice to the letter; getting enough sleep and exercise and eating all the correct and suitable foods in the correct and adequate amounts; Have an ideal body weight while abstaining from smoking or drinking alcohol or caffeine. Your doctor has promised you now that you will live to the age of Methuselah for over 900 years! What do you think about that? I suspect he would think that the doctor in question was misled, practicing snake oil medicine, probably a total fraud and that his neighbor had Buckley’s to hit 90 let alone 900 or higher. (Biblical longevity)

5) He ordered the Sun and Moon to stop (or to stop the Earth’s rotation, the same difference), and it was like that, a kind of DIY summer time. The obvious question, why didn’t you realize or benefit from this unique daylight saving event? (Joshua in Gideon)

6) Born of a virgin. The date in question clearly has to be April 1, right? (Virgin birth of Jesus)

7) It existed in the desert for 40 days and nights without food. I’ve heard of fad diets, but this is bordering on ridiculous! I suspect that if you could survive 40 days without food, you must have been quite flabby at first; many fat stores that can be extracted for your energy needs. (Jesus in the desert tempted by Satan, although I don’t recall ever seeing illustrations of Jesus obese or even flabby)

8) They walked on the water as they didn’t want to get wet in their “tiny little yellow bikini”. Since the average human is not so sweet that you have to worry about dissolving if soaked in water, what’s the problem with getting wet, especially if your friendly neighbor has a backyard pool? (Jesus walking on the water)

9) A supply of muffins and fish sticks that, at the snap of your fingers, resulted in an almost infinite supply, all without having to go to the supermarket to restock. Now if that got out, you’d think supermarkets would bring charges against your friend for practicing witchcraft. (Loaves and fishes multiplied by Jesus)

10) He kicked the bucket but was resurrected. May I kindly suggest that you suspect that your neighbor inhales the good stuff or puts some magic mushrooms in his stew? (The resurrection of Jesus)

Now, what would you really think of your neighbor’s sanity if he made such statements? I imagine you might be inclined to call all those nice young men in their clean white coats and have you take your neighbor to the fun farm! If you don’t tend to believe your friends and neighbors, even your family, about such extraordinary claims, why would you put faith in an ad hoc improvised text (the Bible) written millennia ago by people you have never met and have never met. known? Have you had a polygraph test?

Seriously, if someone you knew made any of those claims and, therefore, as a result you questioned their mental good faith, why not question the sanity of those biblical scribes who made those ten previous claims, and many more besides. ? And if it does that, a logical extension would be the assumption that almost all parts of the biblical tradition are in fact suspect, and if some parts are highly suspect, then all biblical texts are likely to be equally nonsensical.