ok @else 's livetoot has made me finally start reading The New Testament for the first time ever and WOW this document is WILD i love it

like straight off the bat not one, but TWO prophecies of weird holy birth

(bonus: a person going nonverbal)

and then we find out the two mothers are RELATIVES?

and then mary visits elizabeth and randomly breaks into song???? (and decides to stay there like 3 months for some reason?)

is this real? is this a translation quirk?? it's like if someone tried to make a parody of Genesis and i'm only like halfway through the first chapter????

goyim, are y'all doin ok?

i love the implication that when zechariah goes nonverbal, the people around him try to accommodate and sign with him 🥹 never mind the reason right now 🙃

ANYWAY,,,,,,,,,,, after this wild ride,,,,, on to chapter 2 😵

chapter 2 seems to continue the trend of "oh you think the OLD testament was epic?? then get a load o' THIS!!"

also the story about jesus staying behind in the temple to ask questions and learn stuff feels to me like,,, peak Autistic Jewish Boy. in a parallel universe where i was raised religious, that would've 100000% been me at age 12

this book feels so far like it's trying REALLY HARD to constantly impress me with how miraculous and special everything is and like,,, dude,, chill,,

there we go; chapter 3 feels much more similar to the old testament. especially the extremely long list of names of jesus' ancestors(?) that i have literally 0 context for. classic

chapter 4: the desert and roof story makes sense to me somehow. reminds me of jonah maybe? but also like,,,, of COURSE the way only to beat the devil is to rules-lawyer around quotes from scripture. i'd say it's the most jewish thing in the entire chapter EXCEPT right after that, jesus goes on to go around synagogues and does an EVEN MORE jewish thing: he teaches his own new interpretation of scripture and gets everyone mad at him!!!!!!

man i'm getting tired of all this going around healing everyone; aren't you, like, the messiah? can't you just heal everyone collectively and bring the dead back? what kind of messiah are you supposed to be if you can't even do those things?

the scene at the dinner with the tax collectors? amazing. love it. also now understand the us and tax

i don't get the thing with the fasting though? and the old and new wine? i feel like there's uh,, some 2000 year old context that was lost there?

ohhhhh wowwwwwww ok those are some Spicy Takes on the shabbat there woweeeeee 🥵🥵🥵

no, seriously, i'm just,,,,,, speechless (badum tss)

big Why Can't We All Just Get Along Plz 🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭 vibes here in the speech at the second half of chapter 6

ah there we go. Messiah of the House of King David bringing the dead back to life! now we just need the white donkey and the gate of mercy and the reunification of the diaspora

man at this point its kinda feeling to me like jesus has no idea what to do so he just randomly goes from town to town to preach and heal people, and some of those towns seemingly randomly are either impressed or scared by him

there's also a LOT of demons possessing people. that's a pretty rare thing in the old testament afaik

wait jesus can just GIVE PEOPLE THE ABILITY TO MAGICALLY HEAL????