David's Daily Diversions

Half the Story

I was reading to Aidie today and after The Bad-Tempered Ladybird, Aidie got The Story of Moses from the Beginners Bible series. I started it but I couldn’t get very far. I had never seen such unbelievable tosh.

It is one thing to simplify the story, but to completely misrepresent the facts is another. First, Pharaoh decrees that the first-born sons of the Israelites would be killed, not that all baby boys would be slaughtered at birth. Moses’ mother, Jochebed, floated the basket down the Nile to Pharaoh’s palace. Then this made up out of whole cloth:

The baby was named Moses and even though he was raised in the Pharaoh’s palace, his real mother was always near him. And she taught him right from wrong. Jochebed also taught Moses that the Israelite slaves in Egypt were unhappy because they were not free.

Since his mother was only his wet-nurse, it seems he took a long, long time to wean. And what, Moses wasn’t able to figure out the unhappiness of the Israelites on his own? But it gets even less biblical.

One day, when Moses was older, he stopped an Egyptian from hurting an Israelite. [He stopped him, alright, dead in his tracks.] Of course it was against the laws for someone to help a slave [it was?], but Moses knew he had done the right thing [he did?]. He knew Pharaoh would be very angry so he left Egypt all by himself. His plan was to live in another land as a true Israelite [what?]; that way he would have to see his people treated to badly [or be done for murder].

Well, I’d had enough of that, so Aidie got out his Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes. This is where they take an entire story and reduce it to a paragraph and add a load of devotional comments. When he was just starting to look at books, Aidie always used to get this out and open it to the story of Solomon determining who was the mother of the baby. He loved anything with a picture of a baby.

Anyhow, I noticed that it jumped from Solomon to Elijah. So I leafed through paying closer attention and noticed just how much is left out of the stories included in the book. It’s not that it avoids all stories where bad things happen to people. It includes the earth opening up on Korah, Absolom getting his hair caught in the tree, and Samson pulling down the temple of Dagon. However, a lot of stories are missing, such as:

The stoning of Achan
Jael driving the spike through Sisera’s head
Ehud gutting Eglon
The Philistines getting haemorrhoids from harbouring the Ark the Covenant
The hanging of Saul’s sons and grandsons by the Gibeonites
Jezebel falling to her death and being eaten up by dogs

I think I need to start reading the stories to him straight out of the Bible. The only problem is that mine doesn't have pictures.