{"id":7354,"date":"2023-05-23T12:15:10","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T16:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=7354"},"modified":"2025-11-13T14:43:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T20:43:06","slug":"120-inventing-god-and-law-inventing-scripture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=7354","title":{"rendered":"120. Inventing God and Law: Inventing Scripture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"When<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve been super busy with non-comic things for a while, but finally came up for air this weekend. This is what happened.<\/p>\n

I had a lot of fun drawing this one. I’m particularly fond of the seasick giraffe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Noah's<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

(My brilliant and incredibly good-looking supporters on Patreon<\/a> get to see every page in full resolution, just like that, so they never miss a detail. They get the pages early, too. Come support the comic at patreon.com\/nathanburney<\/a>!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Constitutional Law<\/p>\n

Part 2: \u201cWhat Were They Thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n

Digression: \u201cA History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia\u201d<\/p>\n

120. Inventing God and Law: Inventing Scripture<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

TITLE: Part N: Scripture<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Panel 1: A large scene. In the distance, the Tower of Babel rises so high that it vanishes into the blue of the sky. Closer by, a young noblewoman in a sheer green linen dress stands on the grassy bank of a river, and points to two slave women, who stand waist-deep in the river alongside bulrushes and cattails and lotuses, and other Egyptian riverside plants with purple flowers. One, topless with her skirt floating on the water, holds on to a wreath of flowers set on her head, while the other, in a full-length linen dress that the water has made translucent, reaches for a wicker bassinet floating on the water. Nearer to the viewer, the river converts into a raging sea where Noah\u2019s ark tosses and spills water from its prow, while a zebra and lion look over the railing and a giraffe pukes over the side. The sea divides, and Moses leads a throng across the sea floor in between the waters. On the other side, a grinning Jonah gives us a thumbs-up from the mouth of a happy whale, and the tablets of the Ten Commandments and a Torah scroll are inset.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

NARRATION:<\/p>\n

The Covenant Code was a start, but they needed more. Newly freed from captivity, yet still beholden to a distant empire, and now actually ruled by a divine god? These were a people in desperate need of a new identity.<\/strong> They needed to invent a new narrative of who they were, and what that even meant. They needed a founding mythology.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus came stories of Moses and Noah\u2026 of Abraham and Jacob\u2026 of Exodus<\/strong> and kings and covenants. Over the coming centuries (mostly between 450 and 350 BC), such stories would be invented, remembered, borrowed, redacted, and repurposed\u2014becoming the books of the Old Testament.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But these weren\u2019t mere stories.<\/p>\n

These were holy<\/strong> texts: the one place where they could find anything their sovereign god had said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These books were filled<\/strong> with rules, regulations, and procedures: all the laws<\/strong> which governed their society.<\/p>\n

You couldn\u2019t amend them or get new laws, of course. How could there be any higher authority?<\/p>\n

Instead of a sovereign making the laws, it was the laws that were sovereign.<\/p>\n

In other words, their scriptures<\/strong> were sovereign!<\/strong><\/p>\n

How was that<\/strong> supposed to work?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>View Transcript<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. I’ve been super busy with non-comic things for a while, but finally came up for air this weekend. This is what happened. I had a lot of fun drawing this one. I’m particularly fond of the seasick giraffe. . … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,35,63,60,1,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-brief-history-of-government","category-constitutional-law","category-inventing-the-law","category-the-institution-revolution","category-uncategorized","category-what-were-they-thinking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10591,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7354\/revisions\/10591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}