Since the visitor wishes to remain courteous he proceeds, but with a
great deal of hesitation, to further examine the revelation of God. At
this point he is assured that this work is read in most schools and
taught to small children. However, our guest is again disillusioned; for
no sooner does he arrive at Genesis, XII, 11-20, than he finds that
Abraham, good Abraham, the pure, the father of all Hebrews, makes of the
sacred relationship of marriage a means of personal gain and safety by
betraying his own wife. Now it is the Martian's turn to inquire of the
Hebrew whether the latter had ever read this story to his own daughter?
Or, the story of Abraham's affair with Hagar, his handmaiden? Was the
Hebrew's young daughter aware that Isaac, son of Abraham, was as ready
and willing to prostitute his wife for protection for himself as was his
father Abraham?
The Martian is puzzled by the word "sporting" in Genesis, XXVI, 8-11,
and is informed of its meaning. A few moments after reading Genesis XIX,
1-7, he informs his would-be converter that if Lot had lived in Mars and
had offered his daughters to appease the mob, the account of that
incident would never have found its way into any work on morals.
Moreover, he failed utterly to see how the account of Lot's daughters
getting him into a drunken state, followed by a statement such as, "Thus
were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father," could ever
have any moral value.
The story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel does not appeal to this infidel
Martian, since he still believes that integrity and faithfulness are
virtues. Yet, in his endeavor to respect the courtesy due to his host,
he reaches for pencil and pad, and notes the various moral lessons he
had derived thus far from the Old Testament. He wrote lust, incest,
infidelity, and prostitution; arriving at the story of Dinah, Genesis
XXXIV, 1-2, he wrote that in addition to those vices already listed,
rape should be given a prominent place. The stories of Joseph and
Potiphar's wife, Judah and Tamar, King David and his wives, the rape of
Tamar by her brother Ammon, did not impress the Martian as stories for
the delectation of children, since he was crude enough to hold that
anything which would shock the mind of a child, could not have any moral
value and would thus be automatically excluded from any religion. He,
therefore, returned the volume to the Hebrew with the remark that as an
adult he found the stories of De Maupassant and Balzac more interesting,
even though they belonged to the same genre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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