Jews and Muslims

 I was using modern terminology.  Actually, the Jews were not called Jews in the Old Testament, they were called Israelites or the Children of Israel.  Jacob was the son of Isaac until he had his name changed to Israel after a wrestling match with an angel.  Israel is translated as "he who contends (or struggles) with God".  This is confusing to me because Jacob struggled with an angel, not with God Himself.  Be that as it may, Israel had 12 sons which were the origin of the 12 tribes of Israel.  Actually, Jacob kind of stole the birthright from his older brother Esau, but that's another story.  I don't think the Arabs were called Arabs in the Old Testament either.  There are many tribes and peoples mentioned, and I think at least some of them were the ancestors of today's Arabs, but I'm not sure about that.  

The Muslim thing is a little more complicated.  The Muslims of today trace their origin back to Abraham as do the Jews. The Koran, however, doesn't mention the split between Isaac and Ishmael.  It talks about both brothers as if they never diverged, so I guess they consider themselves to be the descendants of both of them.  I think they view the Jews as a renegade people that went astray from the true religion, and that Mohammed tried to win everybody back to it.  The ones that returned became the Muslims of today, and the ones that didn't became the Jews and the Christians of today.  

I don't think that masturbation is mentioned in the Bible.  Lots of people think that the story of Onan is about masturbation, but that's not what I got out of it.  Onan's sin was refusing to father a child in his dead brother's name according to the custom of the time.  The spilling of the semen on the ground was incidental.  

I've got another furnace story to tell, but it's kind of long. Maybe tomorrow.