We all know what the Bible mentions. Books featuring ‘stories from the Bible’ are a dime a dozen in bookstores. What doesn’t the Bible mention is way more interesting and amounts to just about most of life, the universe and everything. What the Bible omits tells heaps about the bona-fides of God the alleged deity, and ultimate author!
What the Bible* doesn’t contain is perhaps of far greater importance than what it does say when one comes to examining the relative importance of the document and it’s proper place in the world’s literature. Because of fairly major omissions, I conclude that the Bible is just a fairly minor piece of site-specific pseudo-historical literature (to be kind) or a potpourri anthology of fairly mundane science fantasy short stories because most of the historical context is unverifiable.
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
Genesis 1:26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Genesis 1: 27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
Presumably that means all of the earth’s peoples that populated the earth ultimately were God’s creations (even if many times removed by natural acts of human reproduction), and not just the two original individuals (Adam & Eve) nor just those peoples and human cultures of the Mediterranean region. So, what peoples in general or nationalities or tribes are noted and logged in the Bible (apart from the names of selected individuals).
People’s Positive Mentions: Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Egyptians, Greeks, Hittites, Israelites, Persians, Philistines, Romans, and probably a few other inhabitants, nationalities and tribal cultures located north, south and east of the (unnamed) Mediterranean Sea.
People’s Negative Mentions: Any and all of the ancestral tribes of the Aztecs, Incas, Maya, and Olmecs fail to rate a mention. Any and all of the various Amerindian tribes you can think of - ditto. Aborigines, Asian(s), Asiatic, Blacks, Celts, Chinese, Cro-Magnon(s), Danes or the Danish, Eskimos, Indians (India Antarctica (penguins), there’s no excuse for ignoring a rather large fraction of humanity that just didn’t happen to be blessed with a Mediterranean climate.
Discussion: There’s a whole potful of people and places that should give God the Big Middle Finger for leaving them out of his Big Picture as related via Biblical texts. For God to entirely ignore the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, all of the Americas
What about Northern Europe and inhabitants? Confined it would seem to non-existence. God creates the world and the human species but perhaps is embarrassed by those barbarians and pagans way north of the Mediterranean (again surprisingly not mentioned either) and so Biblically deletes them to a sort of Orwellian non-persons status.
Of course nearly all of the Southern Hemisphere is also conspicuous by its absence from all things Biblical. No acknowledgement of the Australian aborigines; the New Zealand Maoris; the Polynesians, the Micronesians, the Melanesians. Apparently all of these peoples aren’t important enough to rate a mention in God’s Holy Bible, yet aren’t these humans too supposed to be among God’s creations?
While there’s little or no historical evidence for many of the characters that appear and feature prominently in the Bible, right up to and including Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth depending on personal choice, really real individuals whose historical bona-fides aren’t in any doubt living in that neck of the woods in those times don’t rate even a Biblical one-liner. No Greek philosophers or poets or historians get a mention. There’s no Hercules (Roman) or Herakles (Greek) noted (hey, if the Bible acknowledges Goliath and Samson, the least it can do is tell a tale or two of Hercules – besides Goliath and Samson never rated their own TV shows); King Gilgamesh is conspicuous by his absence; there’s no Ptolemy, Cleopatra or Alexandria the Great; no Agamemnon (of Troy fame) mentioned in passing either.
Egyptian pharaohs aren’t identified by their names even though there are about 240 references to ‘pharaoh’ or ‘pharaohs’ in the Bible. That alone reeks of pure Biblical make-believe and identifies the Bible as having no credibility whatever. Pharaohs had actual names, the same as you and I. So that failure is as phoney as a $3 bill and a disgrace to whoever authored those bits on God’s behalf.
Instead of all of these historical individuals that played major roles in the Mediterranean region during Biblical times, we get science fantasy stories like Moses holding a conversation with a burning bush; Jonah and his whale; Joshua’s sonic trumpets at Jericho not to mention his ability to manipulate celestial physics; Methuselah’s marvellous lifespan; and of course Noah and his (never to be found) ark. Then there are those loaves and fishes breeding like rabbits! At least King Sargon gets one mention, so that’s a positive, and a Caesar or two gets a mention as well.
Other Non-Mentions: After places and peoples come things. No famous monuments are given their due in the Bible – not the Parthenon, not cities like Troy
Speaking of the Southern Hemisphere and Noah above, while I don’t expect a massive amount of nitty-gritty detail, there should be some accounting for how a pair of flightless New Zealand Kiwi birds made it to Noah’s Ark and back again! Oh, and by the way, how did Noah have knowledge enough to sex all the animals and how did he know that each pair that he sexed as male and female was actually fertile? Some of those animals may well have been senior enough to have been over-the-hill and off-the-pill or just plain suffering from impotency! Just asking!
Lastly, the Bible fails to mention some fairly obvious legal concepts like genocide is wrong; that there should be equal rights for women; that same-sex relationships behind closed doors is nobody else’s business; that belief in other gods isn’t the end of the world, and so on and so forth. The Bible fails to condemn slavery. It also fails to argue against the death penalty – so much for an all-loving, all-forgiving God. The Bible is very good on instructing people what not to do (‘thou shall not…’), and literal followers of Biblical passages have in fact inflicted massive amounts of personal harm and cultural damage over thousands of years – just ask the Mesoamericans; those tried and convicted by the Inquisition; or alleged witches – always guilt until proven innocent. The Bible most certainly does not turn the other cheek when it comes to paganism and polytheism. It tends to advocate the philosophy of smite first and ask questions later.
Failure to mention, even in passing, all of the above negatives is very odd indeed. It’s as if you built, furnished and decorated your new four-bedroom, two-car garage home, yet the only bits you mention in your letter to Mum was something about the sofa, the kitchen sink, the master bedroom wallpaper and that it was constructed out of bricks – that’s it.
Something is screwy somewhere. So what do we conclude from all of these Biblical omissions?
Despite all the grandiose statements about creating life, the universe and everything, the Bible is just well embellished pseudo-history of a relatively small part of the globe, areas part and parcel of the Mediterranean region, controlled by one alleged deity, no different in principle than Odin controlling the Norse lands; Quetzalcoatl’s strutting his stuff in Mesoamerica; or Viracocha being revered by the Incas of Peru. The proof of that local Mediterranean pudding is that the phrase “God of Israel” appears 201 times in the Bible. Not God of life, the universe and everything – just little old Israel Israel
The Bible all up: It’s ultimately a case of what’s included in those Biblical stories (names and places) is not largely supported by archaeological evidence or logic. What is not included is, in a global context, things that any self respecting deity responsible for all things global should have been delighted to have included. That they weren’t speaks volumes – loud and clear.
*King James Version
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