Bible tag!

As the weather improves and the little ones return to the great outdoors (sometimes for good, if natural selection has its way), parents naturally want to provide activities for their children that are both wholesome and fun. Playing ‘Guantanamo’ was all well and good until Mrs. Schroeder’s cat stopped resisting the water boarding, and you can’t really argue with the police’s opinion that ‘hunting pirates’ isn’t good for race relations.

So why not give them a game to play straight from the Bible?

You’ll need a menstruating woman to get started. This one’s probably on you, moms! She’s ‘it’ for seven days, and anyone or anything she touches becomes ‘it’ too. The ‘it’ team must then try to make as many people and as many things unclean as possible, while the opposing team must try to bathe everything in water before evening. While it sounds like the odds are stacked in favor of the menstruator and her unholy hordes, don’t worry – they’ll be handicapped by cramps and hobbled by the pain of childbirth. Thank Jehovah!

The origin of cooties shots

Bible tag truly is infectious, but you should be careful that your neighbors don’t think you’re Jewish. While they’ll undoubtedly be impressed by the hundreds of gallons of water you’re spilling on your lawn to purify yourselves, you’re not yacht club members yet! In fact, it may be wise to invite them over for a BBQ (in the evening, once you’re clean), just to be safe.

After playing Bible tag for a little while, you’ll probably start wondering “how did they manage to keep everything clean in the desert with such little water?” Well, they didn’t.

Scholars believe Bible tag (!) can explain the disappearance of several early Israelite settlements. After a few hours of vigorous play, participants would begin to run out of things to purify themselves with. When it got to the point that the water jugs themselves needed to be bathed to remain pure, scores of players would have already succumbed to dehydration and exhaustion. The self-inflicted tragedy further embittered thousands of displaced Canaanites, and one teary-eyed spectator has gone down in history with his legendary lamentation, “come on, we’re smarter than that!”

Its prodigious water demands of course mean that, just like all good games, Bible tag can only be enjoyed properly in the developed world.

Coming soon, we’ll have more Games by Leviticus, including one similar to the traditional English game of bowls. But instead of using polished balls, the Israelites used rough, dense pieces of stone, and rather than being rolled down a green, they were lobbed at people’s heads! We’ll also have ‘Guess My Abomination!’ Do I sleep with other men, wear garments woven from two different kinds of thread, or eat crustaceans?

Find out soon, and thanks for playing!