Top 10 Legends and Fairytales in the Old Testament
by Barrett Wolf
- Talking Snake – While talking animals and eating poisonous or cursed fruit sounds like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the Bible begins with this fun Adam, Even and Snake story.
- The Great Flood – Not so fun story here: God murders every living thing on planet earth (except for 8 people and some animals). Good thing this story isn’t actually true.
- Tower of Babel – God was frightened that people building a tall tower might actually reach his house in the heavens. Stand on a satellite, look down on the earth and read this story out loud. Quite funny!
- Lot, Pillar of Salt and 2 daughters – Abraham’s nephew’s wife gets turned into a pillar of salt, then while drunk, has sex with his 2 daughters in a cave. The sons they produce from this encounter were Ammon and Moab, the fathers of the Ammonites and Moabites (the ancestors of Ruth, wife of Boaz…also ancestors of Jesus).
- Jacob and stealing Esau’s blessing from Isaac – While Esau (a real man’s man) was out hunting, Jacob (mama’s boy) pretends to be his brother to steal the blessing. Isaac doesn’t notice. Too funny!
- Jacob and Rachel/Leah – Jacob wants to marry Rachel who is beautiful and not Leah who is ugly. The girls’ father gives him Leah as a wife instead and Jacob doesn’t notice until after they’ve “been intimate”. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t really interested in women anyway. After all, he played at home with the girls and didn’t like the great outdoors, like his manly brother.
- Exodus from Egypt – 10 plagues leading up to mass murder of Egypt’s first-born launch a series of events: parting of the Red Sea, water coming from a rock, and bland bread falling from heaven in the morning. It’s a nice story, but there’s not much archeological evidence (from Egypt or Israel) to support it actually happened.
- Joshua and the Sun – For those that believed in a flat earth and a sun that revolved around the earth, this is a story of how God helped Joshua win a war. Joshua’s army needed to kill all the bad guys. So God helped him out by making the sun stand still, to extend time in the day. Good one.
- Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego – 3 guys were faithful to their God, so they were thrown into a hot fiery furnace to be burned alive. Instead of burning to death, they comfortably stood in the midst of the flames, while God (or his angel) stood with them. Good thing they chose the right God.
- Job – The best story of them all! A drama filled with dialogue between God and Satan and their grand experiment to test the faithfulness of one man. At the end, when Job inquires of God, since his friends’ advice didn’t satisfy him, God rebukes him, “Where were you when I created the world?” in other words, “Shut up, don’t bother me with your questions. I am God and you are not!”