Burgers in the Bible and Beyond

Before I get to some Bible-related posts from around the blogosphere, I want to start with the burgers. They may not be in your Bible in so many words, but they are there in a fitting paraphrase to the final words of the Book of Jonah, which I picked up from one of my professors in college.

The Book of Jonah ends (rather perplexingly) with the phrase “and also much cattle”. The best suggestion I’ve heard to explain this “open-ended ending” is that God is essentially asking Jonah, who may not be able to have compassion for human inhabitants of Nineveh, to appreciate all the good hamburger meat that will be destroyed if God wipes out Nineveh.

Let’s face it: who wouldn’t allow their enemies to be spared if it was the only way to make sure you didn’t also wipe out the best hamburgers available in the process?

On a related note, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article about belief in the paranormal, together with the picture on the left. In the process, he mentioned the idea that there might be supposedly intelligent beings who would travel 10,000 light years just to abduct farm animals.

That doesn’t seem to me implausible – in fact, we might define the intelligence of extraterrestrial civilizations in terms of the distance they are willing to travel in order to obtain the ingredients for making the best hamburgers.

Now for some links to the Bible (alas, mostly without burgers) around the blogosphere:

Bob Cornwall asks which Bible “Bible-believers” believe. In the process, he mentions one that renders “Peter” with its more precise English equivalent: Rocky.

Barry Taylor talks about the dark side of the Bible.

Doug Mangum has a post on archaeology and the Exodus in the news (and those who know the Exodus story will know that it does involve the destruction of good hamburger meat…sob).

Mentioning burgers in talking about the Bible makes it seem more fun, doesn’t it? Today I got students to talk about movies they had seen “twice” – the original and a remake – as a lead into talking about Chronicles. Fun can change our perspective, as Volkswagen found in its “fun theory” (HT Richard Beck):

Jeremy Smith has shared a nice instructional video on how to participate in Pentecostal worship (with very specific guidance and suggestions for clapping and hand-raising):

Torey Lightcap asks whether you’ve made your rapture pet-care arrangements yet. And finally, since Halloween is almost here, Scotteriology has a post about something scarier than horror movies, hauntings or hideous headless horsemen: Chick tracts.