ham?

The Martian is puzzled by the word "sporting" in Genesis, XXVI, 8-11,
and is informed of its meaning. A few moments after reading Genesis XIX,
1-7, he informs his would-be converter that if Lot had lived in Mars and
had offered his daughters to appease the mob, the account of that
incident would never have found its way into any work on morals.
Moreover, he failed utterly to see how the account of Lot's daughters
getting him into a drunken state, followed by a statement such as, "Thus
were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father," could ever
have any moral value.

The story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel does not appeal to this infidel
Martian, since he still believes that integrity and faithfulness are
virtues. Yet, in his endeavor to respect the courtesy due to his host,
he reaches for pencil and pad, and notes the various moral lessons he
had derived thus far from the Old Testament. He wrote lust, incest,
infidelity, and prostitution; arriving at the story of Dinah, Genesis
XXXIV, 1-2, he wrote that in addition to those vices already listed,
rape should be given a prominent place. The stories of Joseph and
Potiphar's wife, Judah and Tamar, King David and his wives, the rape of
Tamar by her brother Ammon, did not impress the Martian as stories for
the delectation of children, since he was crude enough to hold that
anything which would shock the mind of a child, could not have any moral
value and would thus be automatically excluded from any religion. He,
therefore, returned the volume to the Hebrew with the remark that as an
adult he found the stories of De Maupassant and Balzac more interesting,
even though they belonged to the same genre.

Our guest now repaired to one of our golf courses where, during the
interval of a few hours, the fresh air, the sunshine, and exercise
dispelled the mental nausea which the reading of the Old Testament had
occasioned in him. Returning to his quarters, he is approached by one of
the Christian Brethren and the New Testament is placed in his hands with
these remarks, "The Christian recognizes that in the Old Testament the
Jews have given to the Christian world its greatest heritage." The fact
that in exchange for this priceless heritage, the Christians have given
to the Jews a series of persecutions unequaled in the annals of human
warfare is explained by the quality of the Brotherhood of Man that
naturally manifests itself after a complete conversion to the Bible's