Posted: Thu Aug 9 2001
Ten Commandments "Just A Math Error", Says God

In an exclusive interview with God, our crack investigative reporters uncovered a historic anomaly yesterday. When asked how He came up the idea for the Ten Commandments, God chuckled and said: "That's a strange story. Got a minute?"

When our reporter said "Sure, I've got all day", God continued: "Well, I had this idea to establish some ground rules. You know, level the playing field sort of thing. I thought about having a positive commandment, such as 'Be Good' or 'Eat, Drink, and be Merry' but I decided they were too vague. 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' and 'Thou Shalt Not Steal' sounded better, and gave a more consistent message."

"I swear, that's all I had intended to do. I gave them to Moses - who was lost in the desert because he didn't know how to use the handheld GPS system I gave him - and that's where it started to go wrong."

"You see, I was using binary - and had been for thousands of years - but Moses had just left Egypt, and he was used to the Arabs new-fangled 'base ten' system. So when I wrote the number two on the tablets in binary, Moses saw '10' and interpreted it as ten."

When our reporter asked for clarification on this, God got a bit upset and said; "I gave you a brain, do the math yourself."

"I only gave Moses those two commandments. I don't know where he got the others from; I think he must have pulled them out of his ass, because they don't sound right to me."

"For example, I don't know where he got: 'Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's goods' or 'Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife.' I mean, if your neighbor's stuff is better than yours, it gives you something to shoot for. Who in their right mind doesn't want something better? Same for the wife. You can covet all you want, just don't use it without proper permission!"

God concluded the interview by saying: "I don't know what Moses was smoking, but it must have been some good shit!"


--Gary Randayn