Boson Barnes & Noble Stops Selling Bibles - Are Talmuds Next?

 (Reuters) Bookseller Barnes & Noble in Boson's Southern Shore Mall have announced that they will stop selling Bibles.

"We simply can not, in good conscience, continue to peddle a hateful book that endorses slavery, infanticide, denying women's rights," a store manager who wished to remain anonymous said in a Skype interview.  "Have you ever read this book?  I'm not talking about a children's Bible where the stories are sugar coated and cleaned up as they are in most Hollywood movies.  Horrific!" 

"During the COVID-19 lockdown I had a lot of time on my hands to read.  I started going through the Bible my parents gave me for Easter when I graduated from grad school with a degree in Library Science.  Sure, I was familiar with many of the stories, but once a person gets into the actual text things are different.  Some have said that the 'God' of the Old Testament is the most brutal and evil character in all literature of any kind." 

"Yahweh in Old Testament, or Torah in the Jewish tradition, is a psychopath.  Any honest person reading the book would say that.  He tells his followers to rip babies from pregnant women's stomach because they are from another tribe that does not follow the tribal 'God' of Israel." 

I went online and found a series of courses on Youtube from a professor at Yale University.  Again and again the prof has to warn the college students in her class to understand that the people at that time were Bronze Age slavers.  The Old Testament lays out some of the pathetic 'commandments' on how a slave master can rape his slaves, and who owns the children, and that you can whip slaves on the Sabbath, because that's work.  Wait until Monday to beat your slaves if they are disobedient while being raped by the master.  What a book!"

(The Yale Course - Lecture One - Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) (RLST 145) with Prof Christine Hayes (45:45 min) 3 Dec 2012)

He went on, "And the New Testament.  It was written in Greek and reads like a Greek novel of the time.  Crowds are characters in many of the stories.  Like a Greek drama.  A bunch of Hellenistic ideas are mixed in with Jewish ideas and secret society practices of the time, and voila - a new religion is created.  But, it is almost as screwy as the Old Testament, but Jesus is a little nicer than the Yahweh character of the Old Testament."

"None of these ideas have a place in a modern tolerant society," he finished.  "So we have decided to put the Bibles in stock under lock and key in a glass case.  People who ask will be shown  a Bible, but they will not be out for casual customers wandering the aisles.  We will also keep a record of anyone who buys this sick book."

Barnes & Noble was not looted when other stores in the mall had windows smashed and grates broken by mostly peaceful looters.  No one has bothered to burn any bookstores in Boson.

Some are asking, "Are the Jewish holy books of the Talmud next?"