Received from a friend, who might be joining the blog in January:

(use it or don't)(je ne care pas)(that's a bit of French for you)(trying to say: I do not care)

Looking online today for some basic chronology of some Christian stuff, I was reminded of something I've been thinking since first studying early modern Europe - namely, that the Christian Bible is so insanely and bizarrely incomprehensible that it's impossible to understand how, once literacy picked up after the print revolution and people could actually READ, anybody still wanted to practice that religion. Forget that the synoptic Gospels that purport to recount Jesus's biography are contradictory to the point of making Divrei ha-Yamim and Melachim seem like perfect clones of each other. I'm talking about the content itself. Bizarre. And incomprehensible. If Jesus really spoke like that, I hope he provided the Apostles with a link to SparkNotes.

An example from Mark, the Gospel, thereof:
[11] And they asked him, "Why do the scribes say that first Eli'jah must come?" [12] And he said to them, "Eli'jah does come first to restore all things; and how is it written of the Son of man, that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? [13] But I tell you that Eli'jah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him."