I can clearly see why they [dwarves] would be embarassed when their shirt falls off.
So THAT's why the elves bring us so much cloth.
I think it actually made sense, back then. No antibiotics. Cut yourself shaving and you could sign your own death sentence.
The issue wasn't infection, it was about being distinct and officious over women. Cutting your beard was unmanly, and unmanliness from a man was seriously punished. It was their version of pink aisle madness. In this case, lethal levels of machismo.
Actually, in my opinion the point of the rule was TO HAVE the rule. All organized religions have at least a few laws that have little or no bearing on logic or the real world, because that's what their followers want. Suppose Christianity had a rule that forbids the faithful from cutting off their own left hands. Nobody would give a crap, nobody wants to dismember themselves in the first place. But suppose that same rule was altered, to say that the faithful are not to cut the
fingernails on their left hands. The vast majority of people (these days) would cut them anyway, of course, but you'd also see a full spectrum--folks who don't cut them on the Sabbath, folks who don't cut them during Lent, ultra-orthodox types who actually
don't cut them at all, and loophole-lovers who point out that the Bible doesn't say anything about not
filing one's nails. Fingernails would become an object of heresy and religious schism, people would LOVE this law. Simply
because it's so damn stupid.
Makes you wonder about some of the more WTF sections of Leviticus, like how it's a "sin" to plant two types for crops in the same field. What would happen if some of
our more bizarre civic laws, like how it's illegal to walk backwards on the sidewalk for more than 6 paces, or to go skydiving on a Thursday, somehow made it into a time capsule and were discovered, like a latter-day Dead Sea Scrolls, by archaeologists of the future? What a kooky-ass religion THAT would turn into, huh?
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Topic: From "Beard" on the wiki (Read 12323 times)