a survey

[cellio]

If you are so inclined, I'm curious about your response to the following (replies initially screened; will unscreen and explain Wednesday):

Without looking, summarize what happened at Mount Sinai according to the torah, starting with God beginning to speak and ending with the golden calf. I'm looking for up to a few sentences, not detailed essays. (You can skip the building of the calf.)

If you like, please also say how you identify religiously (or that you don't).

Edit: Comments no longer initially screened. Also, there was one comment that the poster asked me to keep screened, which I thought I had done, but it's gone now. If I screwed that up, I apologize!

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

God says: "Yo, Moses, tell your people that I'm God."
Moses says: "Okay."
God says: "Okay, now tell them to keep the sabbath and respect their parents and avoid murder and... never mind, this is taking too long. Just come up the mountain."
Moses climbs mount Sinai.
Moses sees a bush burning without being consumed. He takes off his shoes.
God presents him with a set of gift-wrapped sapphire plates engraved with the Torah. They're so grandly wrapped that it takes forty days to get them out of the box.
Meanwhile back at the camp, the Israelites get lonely and want something to pray to that they can actualy see. So they melt all their earrings and get Aaron to make it into a calf. Then they ask it for all the stuff they think God's been keeping back.
Moses comes down the mountain. He sees the calf. He freaks out and shatters the plates. The Israelites promise to behave, and Moses goes back to get a replacement copy.

I think I'm mising some details. Like, I think there were signs other than the bush, I just don't remember what they were. I also don't remember why Moses was up the mountain for a long time, just that he was. He may also have been arguing with God over the laws at some point.

[cellio]

That's actually pretty close, except the burning bush wasn't there (that was back in Midian, when God said "hey Moshe, I need someone to go argue with Paro and lead my people out"). There were a couple more rounds of deal-making (see my followup).