The Temple of Yahweh

Though it more commonly goes by the name of "Solomon's Temple" or "The First Temple" (to distinguish it from the later Second Temple that was still around in the time of Jesus), the true name of the most famous building endeavor from the reign of King Solomon is The Temple of Yahweh. And in this week's update of the Brick Testament, the world can finally behold this most sacred of ancient monuments in perhaps its most beautiful form, rendered entirely out of LEGO bricks, inside and out.

While Solomon spent seven years constructing this house for God (or rather, his 150,000 foreigner forced laborers did), he spent nearly twice as long on a fancy-shmancy house for himself. And rest assured, this too has been faithfully rendered in LEGO.

Finally, at the end of this building spree, Yahweh himself appears to Solomon to give him a friendly reminder that if he or his descendants ever fail to follow The Law or worship any other god, he'll eradicate Israel.

Solomon Gets Wise

A new section of the website launches today as The Brick Testament begins illustration of the stories from the reign of King Solomon as told in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles (with the occasional dip into Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes).

Our first nine stories find the newly-crowned Solomon tying up some loose ends left unfinished during the reign of his father David, and by "tying up loose ends" I mean carrying out a series of strategic murders and vengeance killings. Next we discover that the whole slavery / Ten Plagues thing is apparently all water under the bridge as Solomon marries the daughter of the Pharaoh of Egypt, then heads up to Gibeon to sacrifice 1,000 animals and afterwards gets blessed by Yahweh with great wisdom.

It's not long before Solomon's awe-inspiring wisdom is put on display, and word-of-mouth brings folks from around the world to Jerusalem just to hear him speak.

David's Psalm of Victory

The Brick Testament celebrates its 350th illustrated Bible story this week with the addition of an illustrated psalm that brings the King David section of the website to a fittingly dramatic conclusion.

Certainly David is about the mainest of main characters in The Bible. His name appears 895 times--second only to Jesus (942 times) and Yahweh himself (5,787 times)--and the telling of his long, remarkable career stretches across four books. Hope you've enjoyed The Brick Testament's visualization of that life, as David journeyed from precocious decapitator, to corpse foreskin collector, to slaughterer of women and children, to royal polygamist, to ethnic cleanser, to ineffectual father, and finally to enfeebled old man.

David vs His Own People

We all have the occasional family fight, but as we find out in this latest set of six new illustrated stories, when you are God's elect ruler over his chosen people, a squabble between father and son can result in the grisly death of 20,000 people.

And while most of us hope for a relatively peaceful and relaxing old age, we find King David living out his golden years in a constant and bloody battle for power as his sons, his subjects, his friends, and even his wife take advantage of his dwindling faculties.

Rape, Murder, Revolt, and Strange Advice

Little is going right for David as he enters into his advanced years as king. His virgin daughter Tamar is raped by David's firstborn son Amnon. Another son Absalom murders Amnon, forms a popular uprising, and drives David out of Jerusalem. As he is fleeing, an old enemy tosses rocks and curses at him. Perhaps strangest of all, we begin our set of seven new illustrated stories with a giant long-since-decapitated enemy unexpectedly returning to fight the Israelites anew.

Rest assured, all these convoluted goings-on are part of God's plan, as he selective intervenes in human affairs to bring disaster on David's family and bring disaster on Absalom.

David Loses a New Son, Gains a New Hat

Happy new year! The Brick Testament website rings in 2008 with seven brand new illustrated stories from the continuing saga of King David.

It's wacky mayhem as David impregnates a married woman and arranges to have her husband killed. When this newest addition to David's ever-growing collection of wives gives birth to a little baby boy, God forgives David for his sins, but strikes the baby dead. On the brighter side, David gets a shiny new hat after his army massacres the Ammonite people and enslaves the citizens of Rabbah.

Kellemes Karacsonyi Unnepeket!

Wishing you a merry Christmas in Hungarian can only mean one thing: The Brick Testament: The Story of Christmas has now been published in Hungarian! This new release brings the total number of languages in which Brick Testament books have been published up to seven! Congratulations to publishers Cinelink BT and Elefant es Kastely for this fine-looking addition to the Brick Testament canon, and for bringing holiday cheer to people from Koszeg to Debrecen.

War and Dismemberance

You may remember from the stories about King Saul how God had ordered Saul to commit a complete genocide against the Amalekite people. In fact, it was for the sin of sparing a single man from that total genocide that God rejected Saul as king.

So one can hardly blame Saul for having tried to be a little more thorough in his next genocide. But in our latest installment of stories, we find out that instead of being pleased by Saul's genocide of the Gibeonites, God is furious about it. How furious? Furious enough to wait until many years after Saul's death to suddenly start starving the Israelite masses to death with a terrible three-year famine.

And what does it take to appease God enough to end the famine? As you would no doubt guess, it takes the death and dismemberment of seven of Saul's children and grandkids on a mountainside.

Hard to think of a more appropriate story to celebrate as we head into the holiday season. Well, actually, there's also the story of God telling David to take a census and then killing 70,000 Israelites for David having taken a census. If that one doesn't fill you with holiday cheer, you are truly a Scrooge, my friend.

David, King Of Israel

A brand new section of the website launches today called King David, covering the stories from the biblical books of 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles concerning David's reign as king of all Israel.

Join along for our first installment as David disenfranchises the original inhabitants of Jerusalem, expresses his hatred for the blind and lame, impregnates many different women, and exposes himself before God. While God, for his part, demands war on the Philistines and kills a man just for touching the ark.

The Last Supper - Leonardo Da Vinci style

I was prompted to take a new go at building a LEGO Last Supper this week when I was interviewed about The Brick Testament by my local paper. They had asked if they could get a photo of me posing with a construction from The Brick Testament in hand.

I immediately thought of using The Last Supper since it’s iconic, relatively portable, and one of the few scenes from The Brick Testament that I’ve kept intact over the years. Trouble was, I’d just sold it as an art piece to someone who had seen it on display at the art gallery in Bratislava, Slovakia that I was invited to last Spring.

I began working on a "replacement" Last Supper, but since this was going to be a stand-alone piece, I decided not to merely replicate the Da Vinci-inspired version found in The Brick Testament's Last Supper story, but to try for something that is even more closely based on the original Da Vinci version. Because hundreds of years of deterioration and poorly executed "restorations" have left it uncertain exactly how the original once looked, I ended up basing my version most closely on an early 1800s life-size mosaic copy from the Church of the Minorites in Vienna.

For those interested, I've made this new version is available as a desktop wallpaper on the Brick Testament's desktops page.

Civil War, Polygamy, Murder, Decaptitaion, and Mutilation

The David vs Saul section of the website comes to a dramatic and bloody close with seven new illustrated stories.

Saul's Last Stand

The exciting saga of David vs Saul builds to a terrible and bloody climax in this week's update featuring seven new illustrated stories.