And their young became giants, every one

[vovat]

I saw an interesting special on the History Channel last night. It was called Banned from the Bible, and it discussed various books that didn't make it into the Bible. I had read Enoch (I wrote a paper on that one back in my senior year of college), the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Protovangelion, but there were some other ones I didn't really know much about. I think I might have to read Jubilees now. They mentioned in the special that it says Cain married his sister, and that was fairly controversial. I always thought that pretty much went without saying if you took the Bible literally, though (unless maybe Cain married one of Lillith's children or something). I didn't catch the beginning, so I have to wonder if they said something about the Book of Jasher. I remember doing an Internet search for information on that a while back, and finding out that someone had actually forged a version of it in relatively recent times. The way the books were described gave me a sense that many of them were essentially Biblical fan-fiction, written to explain gaps and contradictions in the Bible, and to expand upon ideas that are only touched upon in the canon, like Enoch being "taken" by God, and the Nephilim. It's sort of the same kind of stuff done by people writing Oz fan-fiction, for instance.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is kind of a fascinating work. It implies that Jesus had to learn to use his powers for good, and, when he was a little kid, he insulted people and even killed them. It certainly isn't in line with what modern churches teach about Jesus, but the idea of Jesus having to learn to control his godly powers is an interesting one. Sort of similar to some modern superhero origin stories, I suppose.

And, to end this post on a non-Biblical note, I saw William Hung's album at Kmart today. Do they expect anyone to actually BUY the thing? The guy was amusing, sure, but who's going to want to cough up $14 or whatever to hear him butcher songs?