The Fairy Tale of Elisha And The Two Bears

[MineralMan]

Was this the source of the Goldilocks tale? Who knows?

2Kings 2:

22 So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.
23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she BEARS out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

After all the Bible is the source of many of our stories.

[damntexdem]

1. But were some of the children too hot and some too cold?

Were the 42 only those children who were just right?

;-)

[MineralMan]

2. That isn't clear. What is clear is that teasing an old man

about being bald can be a bad idea. God'll getcha for that.

[DeSwiss]

3. One can only infer.....

...from this act that Yahweh also has male-patterned baldness. That he will kill anyone who laughs about it.

- And that he can't cure it, but neither will he wear a toupee.....

K&R

[backscatter712]

4. Meh, the story of Lot and the angels in Sodom is much better...

Genesis 19:

1The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2“My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”

“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”

3But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

6Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

9“Get out of our way,” they replied. And they said, “This fellow came here as an alien, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

10But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.

Out of all the bizarre, non-sensical and twisted stories in the Bible, the story of Lot is the most fucked up of them all. "Leave the angels of the Lord alone, but feel free to gang-rape my daughters!"

[charlie]

5. It was such a boffo story

it deserved a sequel. In Judges. With a new sicko surprise ending:

²² While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.”

²³ The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this outrageous thing. ²⁴ Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing.”

²⁵ But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. ²⁶ At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.

²⁷ When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. ²⁸ He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.

²⁹ When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judg%2019:22-29&version=NIV

[laconicsax]

7. You should start including the rest of the story...

Judges 19:30

And all who saw it said, "Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak."

[charlie]

9. Maybe I should

It's a teaser for the next exciting installment. They WEREN'T aghast at the weasel who threw his concubine to the mob. NOR were they freaked that he chopped her up and mailed the grisly bits to their doors.

No, they were mad as hornets about the indignities he suffered. Mad enough for a full-on war between Israel and the tribe of Benjamin, with thousands killed in Yahweh's usual total-genocide policy. And of course, a bounty of female virgins harvested as spoils.

IOW, the same old shit with different names. Jerry Bruckheimer for the Bronze Age Levant.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

12. sometimes i find it funny

That people with something against the bible tend to read the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in a very similar way that Christians do. Christians don't talk about any of those stories because they are of virtually no importance to them - and from growing up in a Christian church which I rejected as a kid, in my opinion most are completely clueless about anything not in the New Testament. That's fine, because they have a faith system and world outlook that's extremely different than what's set forth in the Hebrew Bible. I just hate things being lumped together that don't need to be.

Anyway, there are a ton of horrifying stories in Judges. The point of the book is to show bad Israel fared without a king. Several times it's mentioned "there was no king in those days, everybody did as they pleased". In making a theological and political argument for a theocratic monarchy, Judges is great. That's the purpose of the book - obviously probably everybody here disagrees with that purpose - but why not judge it by those standards, instead of mocking it for not being spiritually uplifting, something that it never sought out to do? It could be like me yelling at my cat's litter box to be more spiritually uplifting and acting like it's not supposed to stink.

I don't mean to be put peoples words in each others mouth - I know I took quotes from multiple people in one reply. Just replying to the thread in general.

[backscatter712]

8. Such an uplifting and spiritual piece of Scripture...

:sarcasm:

[trotsky]

10. You're not reading it METAPHORICALLY!

Metaphorical rape, murder, and dismemberment really aren't that bad, you know.

[raccoon]

11. Funny but they never do a Sunday school lesson on that particular piece of scripture. nt

[laconicsax]

6. Don't forget the afterword...

2 Peter chapter 2 describes Mr. "please rape my daughters" as a "righteous man"

[DeSwiss]

13. And do you know the other tale.....

...about the day where Yahweh made the sun stand still in the sky? A WHOLE DAY??? Because when Yahweh's gots him some killing to do, he don't be messing around!

Joshua 10:12 - 13 "Then spake Joshua to the Lord... and he said in the sight of Israel, 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." And the sun stood still and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to go down about a whole day."

- Need more killing time? Sure, I'll just stop the sun and moon in their tracks to give you more light. Just let me know when you're done.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

14. This is the sort of thing I mean

So...who believes that it actually matters whether or not the sun stood still? Fundamentalist right wing christians believe that it happened because the bible mentioned it, and everything in the bible has to be taken literally. And people who are outspoken in their unbelief believe that it matters, because everything has to be taken literally, since that's the only way you can get upset about it. So Christians wind up defending genocides that never happened, and Atheists wind up getting upset about genocides that they supposedly don't believe in....yet are still very upset about? Never understood that. Any archeologist can tell you that Joshua is at best greatly exaggerated...but that's never the conversation any Christian or Anti-christian wants to have.

It's pretty funny that they have so much in common, whereas anyone who is perhaps a skeptic (or liberal christian or other religion) but interested in the point of the story would see that the entire book of Joshua is at best loosely based on fact and is an attempt to give the rather insignificant nation of Israel a heroic and interesting past in the same way lots of nations find pride in heroic national pasts (ehem...). A lot of people would also be turned on by the fact that the line about the sun standing still comes from the book of Jasher...and is a story based on a poem from a book which no longer exists. But that would require basic textual analysis, a scholarly attitude, and an open mind...which both sides tend to lack.

[DeSwiss]

15. Ain't it the truth. n/t

[struggle4progress]

16. Do you actually have an argument linking this story to Goldilocks, or is this just flamebait?

I read the thread looking for anything resembling coherent discussion or useful insight, but it seems merely a opportunity for everyone to sneer

According to the story: The inhabitants of a city ask for help with their bad water supply; Elisha goes and fixes the water problem; as he leaves, a gang of ungrateful youth of the city make fun of his appearance; and he loses his temper

This doesn't have any obvious connection to Goldilocks, that I can see

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Original 'Goldilocks': old woman who either disappears or is impaled on a steeple by the bears

Yes, even back in the 19th century, they were altering tales to give them younger, more photogenic heroines:

The present day bedtime story of the young girl who disrupts the home life of an anthropomorphic bear family dates in print back to 19th century Great Britain. In 1831 a woman named Eleanor Mure printed a small, homemade booklet written in verse and called “The Story of the Three Bears Metrically Related with Illustrations.” Mure had created the work as a present for her nephew. Its subtitle, “The Celebrated Nursery Tale” implies that it was probably based on an earlier oral story.

Six years after Mure‘s work, British poet laureate Robert Southey wrote the “Story of the Three Bears” which appeared in his work, The Doctor. Over the course of time, this small chapter became one of the most beloved story books for children.

Although his tale was extremely similar to the Mure work, it is unlikely that Southey knew of it. Instead, he claimed that he had first heard the story from his uncle who, according to some folklorists, may have been aware of either Mure, the old oral version, or an old English folk tale called Scrapefoot, a story in which the protagonist is a fox.

In both stories, the main character is not a young girl, but a nameless, homeless and ill-tempered old woman who intentionally breaks into the bears’ home looking for food and shelter. Those who believe that Southey, and probably Mure, were influenced by the tale of Scrapefoot contend that the two authors simply substituted the fox (vixen) for a shrewish woman (also sometimes known as a vixen)

One major difference between Mure and Southey’s versions is the ending. Southey’s tale has the old woman jumping out a window and disappearing forever, leaving her fate up to the reader’s imagination. In Mure’s telling of the story, the bears, after unsuccessful attempts to burn her alive and drown her, impale the poor creature on a church steeple.

http://www.suite101.com/content/the-original-goldilocks-and-the-three-bears-a91839