2023-11-23

Two Months Jail for Writing God Prefers Grilled Chops to Boiled Cabbage

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by Neil Godfrey

In Canada, Attorney Murphy brought a case against Mr. Ernest-Victor Slerry of Toronto, accused of writing the following lines:

The God of the Bible is portrayed as someone who walks in the Garden of Eden, talks to a woman, curses a snake, sews skins to make clothing, prefers the taste of roasted chops to the smell of boiled cabbage, sits in a burning bush, comes out from behind rocks, an old rascal that Moses had a hard time calming, who, in fits of rage, massacred hundreds of thousands of his chosen people, and who would have killed them all if cunning Moses hadn’t reminded him: What will the Egyptians say?

Obviously, these things are said without delicacy. But in the end, if the form is lacking, the substance is accurate. Not a word that cannot be supported by a reference. Long before the Christian era, the “anthropomorphisms” of the Bible shocked the Jews.

Under the blasphemy law, Mr. E.-V. Slerry was sentenced to two months in prison. The judge declared, “Our conception of God is an integral part of our national life. We view the Bible as the basis for all good laws in our country. It is the dearest and most precious book in the world to us.”

Couchoud, Paul Louis. Théophile ou L’étudiant des religions. Paris: André Delpeuch, 1928. p. 174 – ChatGPT translation
https://archive.org/details/couchoud-theophile