The Bible: Something’s Screwy Somewhere: Part Two

Multi-millions around the world accept the Bible as the literal word of God, and as such it cannot be in error. However, an examination of Biblical texts strongly suggests, to those with open minds, that error, or as I like to phrase things “something’s screwy somewhere”, abounds.

I know I probably shouldn’t pick on God and the Bible as often as I do, but, you know, it’s so damn easy it’s like taking candy from a baby. God sure leads with His chin. Anyway, if I haven’t been struck down by lightning by now, I probably won’t be, so here goes another round. As per usual, all references are from the King James Version (KJV) of the so-called “Word of God”.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Biblical Sightseeing

WTF? It takes forty years for the Chosen People to get from N.E. Egypt to the Promised Land (Israel) – it only took the American pioneers six months to get to their Promised Land across the Great Plains and mountain ranges and deserts by covered wagon - something’s screwy somewhere unless the Israelites just stopped to smell the roses and take in the local sights and scenery. Then you figure the distances travelled by Captain Cook and crew, Magellan, Columbus, and all those other seafarers in the golden age of sail. They travelled vastly greater distances in vastly shorter time frames. The more you compare the Exodus trek with other treks, the more anomalous it appears.

Biblical Generation Gaps:

One of the most idiotic themes in the Bible is that the innocent suffer because their ancestors were guilty of some sin or other in the eyes of God, whether it’s on the grand scale of humanity condemned to hardship and suffering because of Adam and Eve’s giving in to temptation (Genesis 3), or the examples of the sons and daughters unto the third, fourth even tenth generation being persona non grata to the Almighty because of an iniquity preformed by dear old great, great, great grandpa or grandma (Exodus 20: 5; Exodus 34: 7; Numbers 14: 18; Deuteronomy 5: 9; Deuteronomy 23: 2-3). That our loving, forgiving, merciful, compassionate Almighty would act in such a manner is anomalous.

Biblical Aliens: The Extraterrestrial Jesus

Several times Jesus admits he is “not of this world”. Check out John 8:23 and 18:36.

Biblical End Times

According to Matthew 24:3-14 and Mark 13:4-13 the signs of the end times are to be along the lines of wars; rumours of war; conflicts between nations and kingdoms; famines; pestilences; earthquakes, false prophets; deadly family feuds; worldwide distribution of the gospels;

So what’s changed in over 2000 years? Why would this be interpreted on being now, not then? That interpretation is highly anomalous, yet it’s what a lot of Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists would have you believe.

Biblical Geography

Though Biblical geography is good in general – no glaring oops like describing massive ice caps and glaciers, that’s no big plus seeing as how the various Biblical authors lived in the areas described by the Bible. I could write a totally unbelievable tale of BEMs (Bug Eyed Monsters of the extraterrestrial kind) on the Moon and yet get the lunar geography spot-on. Not that Biblical geography doesn’t have it’s oops moments, like why no physical evidence or remains of Sodom and Gomorrah; where’s Noah’s Ark to be found that hasn’t already been explored high and low?  And if the weather be part of geography, then having a global spell of very persistent wet weather for forty days and nights (960 hours) is highly anomalous, so much so as to be impossible. It’s called Planet Earth, not Planet Ocean, because there’s not enough of the wet stuff to make it so. Parts of Biblical geography are anomalous.

Biblical Hot Air

The Bible is chock-a-block full of prophets and prophecies, right up through and including the end of the world as we know it (Armageddon). Amazingly, all this soothsaying failed to note and log anything about global warming, climate change, etc., rather major issues in our times. The Bible is big on prophecy; the proof of the prophecy pudding is lacking. That’s an anomaly.

Biblical Characters

There are no independent, verifiable documents, statues, pictograms, stele, inscriptions, grave sites, or any other historical or archaeological evidence that yields any additional credibility to the actual existence of various famous Biblical characters like Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Abraham, Joseph, Moses & Aaron, Noah, Solomon, David & Goliath, Jonah, Methuselah, Joshua, and a host of others. You just gotta take the Bible’s word for the reality of these individuals. It’s like the only reference to Homer & Plato, Aristotle & Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid & Archimedes, was in an ancient Greek school primer for a beginners’ reader and that’s it. Would the very real existence of these half dozen ancients be given any real credibility given just a reference in a lone text? What makes the Bible a special case then? If Biblical characters are as really real and as really the VIPs they are made out to be, then it’s highly anomalous that there just is no other independent confirmation of that status.

A Biblical Piece of the Action

Both the Bible and the Koran are as two peas in the same monotheistic pod. They collectively have influenced billions upon billions of people – whole societies in fact. These texts therefore somewhat remind me of the “Star Trek: The Original Series” TV episode ‘A Piece of the Action’ (aired January 12 1968) where an entire alien society was in the manner of the Bible/Koran subservient to a ‘religious’ text – in this case a book about Chicago gangsters in the roaring 1920’s. That’s what the aliens patterned their culture after. I’m sure that episode was a deliberate dig at the influence our religious texts have on us. But I consider it anomalous that much of the world’s culture is centred on minor variations on and of a single religious text.

The Biblical Face of God

We’ve all seen images of God, from stained glass windows to Michelangelo to Hollywood. The anomaly is that it’s all make-believe. Unless I’ve missed something somewhere along the line, no where in the Bible is God’s physique noted; no physical description exists. He’s not described as white, somewhere between middle and old age, with a very long flowing grey-white beard and long flowing grey-white hair who looks entirely human. The popular image is that the image of God was created in Zeus’s image. Zeus was the model as Zeus’s image was widely known from statues, pottery, etc. For all you know, God could look extremely alien, or for that matter pass you on the street without you blinking an eye.

You Can’t Trust the Bible

We’re used to current events being set down in the here and now. Journalists, camera crews, microphones, tape recorders, etc. will give you today’s events on today’s evening TV news broadcasts. Reviews of recent events will be covered in your weekly magazines. But if I were to write a new biography of say Alexander the Great, you’d know that it could not be 100% spot-on since there’s no way to interview old Alex or those who knew him. Many a document, monument, inscription, etc. from that era would now be lost or destroyed. But when you read your Bible, do you think of the text as you would the evening news bulletin or weekly magazine news roundup, or, as you would my biography of Alex, someone who died way over 2000 years ago?  If the former, you’re sadly mistaken, for those who penned Biblical texts describing Biblical events can no more be trusted for 100% accuracy than my new biography of Alex, and for a similar reason. Words were put to paper long after the facts of the matter transpired. And as for Biblical quotations, well, no tape recorders existed back then, so take any pithy sayings with a very large grain of sodium chloride. Trusting in the Bible is an example of rather strange and anomalous human behaviour.

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Twiddling His Thumbs

 Presumably, at the close of the Old Testament, God has retired to His throne room and penthouse in Heaven, and that’s where He’s been couped up for way over 2000 years now. The question is, what does God do with His time up there in La-La-Land? Even if He eats and sleeps and goes to the bathroom and taken daily heavenly showers and trims His beard weekly, that still leaves a lot of hours for – well what’s the answer? Perhaps He stands at the Pearly Gates greeting new arrivals, or conducting Heavenly orientation sessions for new arrivals. Maybe He plays chess with Jesus or the archangels. Perhaps He conducts graduate classes in advanced Christian theology. Perhaps He ghost-writes articles for religious-themed magazines; watches those hellfire and brimstone televangelists on YouTube, or maybe once a year takes on the role of playing Santa Claus – no mortal could fill those shoes. Like Santa, God needs to keep a list and check it twice to find out who’s been naughty and who’s been nice to ensure that only those with the Right Religious Stuff enters through those Pearly Gates! It remains however that what God does with His spare time is an anomaly that has never been adequately explained.

Conclusions

This little exercise is barely scratching the surface that exposes that God’s infallible word, as recorded in the Bible, is anything but. It is riddled with fallacies, errors, enigmas, anomalies, and a potful of similar synonyms.

My Top Religious Anomalies: A List

All of religion is anomalous, but some bits are more anomalous than others. Here are some of those bits.

GOD: This isn’t really an anomaly due to any conflict between theory and observation. There is very little of either. The anomaly here is why anyone in their right mind would believe in such a supernatural deity. The gap between observational evidence and theoretical faith is so vast that it staggers the mind – at least it boggles my mind, all the more so since the only real description of God’s bona-fides, the human penned Old Testament, exhibits Him not as a just, loving, forgiving, merciful and compassionate deity but an all-round SOB that makes Hitler look downright cuddly.

CREATION, THE CONCEPT OF: One of the biggest mysteries to me is why anyone in their stark raving right mind would assume anything and everything had been created from scratch, as in Genesis for example. You cannot make that assumption from first principles based on personal observations and human history. Knowledge that there were in fact creations therefore must be based on information passed down from those with way more insight or knowledge than you could possess. Who passed that information on down the line?

HEAVEN & HELL: If they exist, heaven and hell have to be physical places with some sort of celestial and terrestrial coordinates respectively. Despite all these millennia that have flowed under the bridge since Methuselah was in diapers, nobody has sighted heaven up there or pinpointed where hell is located down here.

BIBLICAL OLD AGE: Though Methuselah is the best known, there are a whole pot-full of Old Testament males-only who reach ripe old age way, way, way in excess of three score and ten. The anomaly here is that even with the best of diets, exercise regimes, health and medical care, and outstanding personal habits (sound sleep, no drugs, no alcohol, no smoking, etc.) no human alive today can come within a bulls roar of the longevity achieved by Methuselah, Adam, Noah, and a host of others. The anomaly is easily resolved in this case – the Bible is full of it; “it” being rather messy and smelly.

NOAH’S FLOOD: A whole textbook could be written about the impossibilities, not just the anomalies, of the Biblical tale of the flood and Noah’s Ark. The amount of water required can’t be produced. The boat isn’t near large enough to house and feed every species that would need to be given shelter. The crew isn’t sufficient to look after their charges. That doesn’t seem to discourage those from spending vast sums of money not to mention time and energy boldly gong where others have gone before and like those who went before, returning empty-handed!

EXODUS, BOOK OF: There are multi-dozens of anomalies, things that just can’t be, reported in the Bible. Of all of these, the most anomalous is the Book of Exodus, because some of the events recorded there can be checked against another independent historical source. If the history in the Book of Exodus is found wanting, and it is, then if one holy book goes down the gurgler, then all the rest of the books are suspect too.

The anomaly here is that the Book of Exodus features the land and peoples of ancient Egypt fairly prominently. A couple of key Biblical characters play leading roles there – Moses and Joseph – not to mention thousands of alleged Hebrew slaves. Nasty things happen to that land and those peoples like the ten plagues and the drowning of pharaoh’s army. The anomaly here is that you’d expect ancient Egyptian records to verify and collaborate and substantiate the Book of Exodus, but you don’t find anything of the sort. It’s as if the Biblical version took place in a parallel universe – or in the imagination of the all too human author.

BIBLICAL MIRACLES: Then there’s this Biblical bit about Joshua commanding the sun to stand still (at least that’s the way I recall it). That’s a tall tale or myth but whatever, it can’t be a physical reality. But wait, there’s more! There’s Jonah and the whale; Eve’s creation from a rib; walking on the waters; the walls of Jericho tumbling down at the sound of no doubt out of tune trumpets or rams horns. In the Bible we have this tale of the multiplying of loaves and fishes out of virtually nothing.

Miracles are part and parcel of any and all supernaturally based religions. Miracles of the supernatural kind (and that’s the only kind of miracle that counts here) violate one or more laws, principles or relationships established by science. There can be no such thing as a supernatural miracle in theory. However, there have been numerous reports of supernatural miracles.

Reported events cannot violate the natural state of things. If they do violate that natural state of things, then they must be supernatural. There’s no known theory that can accommodate supernatural events. That’s part of the conflict between science and religion. The conflict is an anomaly.  

THE AFTERLIFE: A concept that closest to the hearts and minds of nearly all humans and human cultures past and present is what happens to us after we kick the bucket. The answer is we transcend into another life – an afterlife. Every culture, past and present, has an afterlife concept, a life after death concept, or some sort of an eternity or immortality worldview. However, the concept of eternal life is actually hellish as you would rather quickly be bored out of your afterlife skull, and you still have infinity yet to come.

Not all of the versions of the theoretical afterlife can be correct however. Idealistic theoretical expectations that when you die you won’t stay dead, versus practical reality that observations show that dead things stay dead, are indeed conflicting, therefore anomalous. However, nobody has ever come back from the dead to prove the reality of an afterlife to the satisfaction of any unbiased referee.

Those Tall Tales of Biblical Disasters: Part Two

Despite what you might hear in church, or view on Christian websites, the Bible isn’t all about those ten Godly commandments, loving your neighbour, doing onto others, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, truth,  justice and everlasting life. Star Wars aside, there’s a dark side to the Force. Even apart from hell, fire and brimstone and lots of sins and sinning, there’s much death and destruction all around. The Bible is full of tales of disasters that rival anything Mother Nature has conjured up. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

*Ten Disasters Rolled Into One: The Ten Plagues of Egypt (Exodus)

Despite there being no confirmation in ancient Egyptian historical records for these Biblical plagues, any of the first nine could have a natural explanation. I mean pestilences happen; ditto droughts/famine; locust swarms are hardly a novelty; even the Nile turning to blood can be seen to be just an ordinary toxic algae bloom – the ‘red tide’ common in other warm waters around the world, like the Gulf of Mexico.

The Tenth Plague however can not be attributed to a natural cause – death to all the Egyptian firstborn was literally a Deliberate Act of God; a deliberately calculated act of cold-blooded murder. Now, and most likely the case, it never happened and that’s supported by the fact that no such event is recorded in ancient Egyptian texts and it’s an event that can hardly have been unnoticed and been glossed over. If that’s so, then the related Passover celebration is a total fraud/fabrication. If on the other hand it happened as the Bible said it did, then God should be tried for crimes against humanity (specifically in this case crimes against the ancient Egyptian peoples), imprisoned for life with no hope of parole, since I assume He cannot be executed, though it would be justified, methinks.

*More Death by Drowning (Exodus)

To add insult to injury, I suppose one could also include the drowning of pharaoh’s army (Exodus) as a ‘natural’ disaster. There’s never an Ark around when you really need one! But gee whiz, gosh golly, guess what? Historians, and bookkeepers and accountants back in ancient Egypt somehow forgot to include the loss of all those chariots, horses and soldiers in their official inventories and recordkeeping. When you have that sort of appalling loss, scapegoats are found; heads roll. Alas, there’s also no record of any scapegoat or rolling heads over this unrecorded calamity. At least ancient Rome acknowledged that it lost their entire Ninth Legion, so something is screwy about Egyptian bookkeeping – or about the accounting in the Book of Exodus! 

*Your Numbers Are Up (Numbers)

If earthquakes and plagues (as in disease) are disasters, then the Book of Numbers is the place to find them (after Genesis and Exodus of course). There is dissention in the ranks of the Chosen People out there in the Sinai Wilderness and so there’s mutiny afoot and the Biblical equivalent of Captain Bligh (i.e. – God) will not be denied His wrath. The major mutiny ends with a bang and not a whimper. It ends when God kills thousands (14,700 – Numbers 16:49) of His Chosen People with a plague (love those germs) and a fiery earthquake (God’s hot to trot His shake, rattle and roll which kills another 250 - Numbers 16:32; 16:35 and 26:10) as punishment for rumblings in the ranks. Further on down the Wilderness track we have the episode of the ‘golden calf’ mark II (i.e. more idols; more idle worship). So God, knowing that His Chosen People didn’t build up sufficient immunity from His last bout of germ warfare, sends another – the local undertaker gets to bury another 24,000 Israelites (Numbers 25:9).

Turning now to the New Testament...

*The Ultimate Mother of All Disasters: Armageddon or the Apocalypse of Revelation

Here we are presented with destruction on a massive scale; the end of days; the end of the world; more hell, fire and brimstone (cubed) all around. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest (or Pestilence depending on interpretation), War, Famine and Death. This of course hasn’t happened yet (though it should have by roughly 100 CE according to Jesus), so it’s still in the ‘what if’ category, though actually I think that should read ‘iffy’ category. 

There are certainly potential natural scenarios that could easily mimic the Book of Revelation’s scenario, at least in terms of total firepower (or should that be Four Horsepower). Since this is near global destruction, we need something slightly bigger than a hurricane or an earthquake. All out nuclear or biological warfare might be a parallel, but then I’ve ruled out wars (and rumours of war) from the legit disaster category, though that might be little consolation if your city is nuked or if you’re infected deliberately with the bubonic plague. I’m thinking more along the lines here of an asteroid impact, as in the films “Armageddon” or “Deep Impact” (and a good dozen clones of these), though a good old nearby supernovae blast or gamma-ray burst would do the job nicely. Maybe there’s a Black Hole nearby which our solar system might be drifting towards. Gulp! In any event there’s a happy ending since out of the ashes the Phoenix (a new heaven and a new earth) will rise again.  

In conclusion, then as now, natural disasters inspire the creation of newer, better, bigger disasters: ten-fold the death count; twenty-fold the destruction. Of course this additional creation resides either in the land of pure fiction (browse your local DVD store and bookshop for examples), or at least as vastly embellished natural ones that actually happened, tales told well away from where they happened so no one’s the wiser. That F2 twister that passed several miles away from you now turns into an F5 that passed right overhead after several retellings!  

Since there is no supporting evidence for any of the Biblical disasters, I think it’s prudent to assign them to the category of, if not 100% fiction, then to the realm of greatly exaggerated campfire tall tales. As for Revelation, let’s just say that if it hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to.

Is our Supreme Being A Deity For All the People?

If you believe the Bible, the Almighty has His Chosen People - the Hebrews. The Almighty has His Promised Land for His Chosen People. That Promised Land isn't America (far less California) or Australia/New Zealand or Europe (with or without Great Britain) or Antarctica or Asia or Africa or Russia, etc. Those Chosen Peoples aren't the Italians, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Aboriginals, the Amerindians, the Polynesians or the Turks, and especially not the Egyptians! The Promised Land is the Land of Canaan, now called Israel; The Chosen People are, obviously, the Israelites. In fact the Bible (King James Version) makes crystal clear, not once, but 201 times that the Almighty is the "God of Israel". So, if you ain't associated with the Almighty's Chosen People and His Promised Land, it's impossible to believe that you are one of those in His holy grace! In short, it's safe to give your alleged Supreme Being your Big Middle Finger, even both of them!

Biblical History: Fact or Fiction?

The Bible is apparently one of the best, if not the best selling books of all times. Why it isn’t for sale though in the mythology or fiction section of bookstores (or available in similar locations in libraries) is beyond me. Simply put, the Bible isn’t believable as non-fiction and as a historically accurate record of those ancient times.

Is Biblical history fact or fiction? Well, it's probably a mixture of both but the emphasis is weighted heavily on the fiction part - say by a ratio of 99% bovine fertilizer to 1% wheat among the chaff. I mean the Bible was written by a multitude of authors, with hidden agendas (who never had to take a polygraph test), over eons of time, and has suffered through dozens of versions and translations and mistranslations. I like an analogy of a row of twenty people - whisper a sentence into the ear of person number one and have that person whisper that sentence to person number two, hence person number three, and so on down the line. Have person number twenty then relate the sentence back to you. Odds are that there will be little similarity between what you originally whispered and what you ultimately heard after the twenty translations.

Since the texts of the Bible weren't written down until many decades after the 'fact', what does that tell you about the reliability of the texts being literally accurate? History is a very inexact science, written by the winners, patchy at best, and the farther one goes back in time, the patchier it gets. Historians often have a hard time documenting and agreeing on who, what, where, when and why of happenings 200 to 500 years ago. So how can we put faith in the literal truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding events 2000 to 5000 years ago?

Anyone can make up or embellish stories and write them down and frequently do. Our bookshops and libraries are full of books labelled 'fiction'. Further, no one believes that all of those non-fiction books lining the shelves are without any shade of doubt always literally non-fiction from first page to last. One can easily find two non-fiction books on the exact same topic that are totally opposite in content and in context. Can anyone absolutely state that those who authored the various Testaments, those books, chapters and verses of the Bible weren't sort of making it up as they went along, or at least padding things a mite and slanting things according to their own worldview? In fact I've seen one book title that alleges that most of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament are downright fraudulent*. Humans at best can make mistakes in copying or in making translations; they like to embellish stories and tell little white lies (even whoppers), and at worst invent pure fiction (in the guise of truth) for their own purpose(s).

As has been often pointed out, including by me immediately above, history is written by the winners. Perhaps it would be interesting to have had Adam and Eve's side of the story, or Satan's side of history instead of just God's version of events!

So is the Bible literal history? There's no other historical or archaeological evidence for most of the people, places and events in the Bible: people, places and events like Noah and the Ark, Jonah, Solomon, Samson, David, the Exodus, the Battle of Jericho, Sodom & Gomorrah, or the Garden of Eden. Why isn't the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments tablet(s) in a museum - if they really exist? Does any rational person really suggest that a virgin birth happened; that there were literally giants in the earth; that angels are historical (or should that be hysterical), that the Star of Bethlehem, whatever it was (if it was) guided wise men; that all of the above reflect really real reality? All those Biblical tales read like modern sci-fi stories. There are just no independent sources, outside of the Bible, that verify any of these, IMHO, rather tall tales. The historical bona-fides of the Bible are seemingly impossible to independently verify and thus believe in. That said, I've often maintained that behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. Still, the Biblical mountain as being an historical mountain and not a mythology, regardless of the hidden molehill, is an impossibility to swallow hook, line and sinker.

For a specific example, I’ve read quite a few dozen books on or about ancient Egyptian history over the years, and I have to note that certain words tend to be conspicuous by their absence in both text and index. I mean words like Joseph, Moses, Israel, Israelites, and Hebrews. Also, I have noted a lack of references to anything akin to all those plagues of frogs, locusts, boils, etc.; references all those firstborn kicking-the-bucket simultaneously, or pharaoh losing a hell of a lot of his army, horses and chariots by drowning in the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds). The King James Version of the Bible states that Rameses was the kick-off point in the N.E. Nile Delta for the Hebrew Exodus, yet all the maps of ancient Egypt fail to show any such place. Even my ancient Egyptian dictionary fails to note Rameses as a place. There is noted on the map a Per-Ramesses in the Nile Delta in ancient Egyptian history, but that’s not what the Bible mentions. Per-Ramesses, a.k.a. Qantir, which is right adjacent to Avaris, but those place names don’t get a Biblical mention either. The next stop off location according to the Bible was Succoth but that’s not a location noted on the ancient Egyptian map. Then the next Exodus location, according to the Bible was Etham. Guess what? That’s not on the map either!  Doubt my word? Kindly consult your own choice of scholarly texts dealing with ancient Egyptian history. In short, the Exodus and all associated with it is fiction pure and simple and any belief in it as an historical event is a purely delusional one, along with all the associated baggage, like the Passover.

*Ehrman, Bart D.; Forged: Writing in the Name of God: Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are; HarperOne, New York; 2011.

God, the Psychopathic Killer: The Tenth Plague: Part Two

God is a cold-blooded, premeditated, serial killer. The Bible says so. With respect to that tenth plague inflicted upon ancient Egypt, death to the firstborn, there’s no wriggle room here. God did not delegate; no one else did the deed; it was no one else’s idea; God and God alone must bear 100% of the responsibility for His actions and the death of up to a fifth of the entire ancient Egyptian population. To add insult to injury, others celebrate those deaths via the Passover!  

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Point Seven: God also executed judgment against the gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12). Sorry, but my reading of that little announcement suggests, indeed demands, that there is such a thing as the gods of Egypt, since you can’t pass judgment against something that doesn’t exist! Therefore, God, by his very act, acknowledges the reality of polytheism. Perhaps the gods of Egypt should cast judgment of the God of Israel! Would any impartial jury rule for the God of Israel, or the gods of Egypt? Methinks it’s an open and shut case. God is the murderer, not anyone else, not gods, rulers, commoners or the beasts of Egypt can or should be held accountable.

Point Eight: The mass murder of numerous Egyptian citizens is actually ‘celebrated’ by various cultures in something called the Passover. The origins of Passover reside in this ‘historical’ firstborn execution, in that God’s Chosen People, the Israelites that were in Egypt at the time, were passed over when it came to smiting the firstborn. So, for all of you out there in reader-land, if you celebrate Passover, you’re celebrating mass murder by your almighty deity.

Least there be any doubt about this, interested readers are invited to check out Exodus chapter 12 for God’s instructions leading up to verse 11 which notes the “Passover” and verse 12 which notes that God will “pass though the land of Egypt” doing His imitation of Charles Manson but sparing those who took heed of the introductory verses of Exodus 12. It’s made crystal clear shortly after, and we notice how the people then worshiped the Biblical Charles Manson. Actually that’s unfair to Charles for he didn’t come close to God’s numbers, not by a long shot. 

*Exodus 12:27 - That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.

Point Nine: Obviously God is very, very proud of His mass murder as the Bible (God’s word) refers to it again and again.

*Numbers 3:13 - Because all the firstborn are mine; for on the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I hallowed unto me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast: mine shall they be: I am the LORD.

*Numbers 8:17 - For all the firstborn of the children of Israel are mine, both man and beast: on the day that I smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself.

*Numbers 33:4 - For the Egyptians buried all their firstborn, which the LORD had smitten among them: upon their gods also the LORD executed judgments.

*Psalm 78:51 - And smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham.

*Psalm 135:8 - Who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast.

*Psalm 136:10 - To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever.

Point Ten: Note the use of the words “smote” and “mercy” in the same sentence. Wow!

Point Eleven: The tenth plague is not an isolated one-off incident. There are numerous other instances from the Bible that equally point out God as being the Jack the Ripper or Charles Manson or any other modern mass murderer, sadistic, serial killer you care to cite as that personified in the Old Testament. For example, please consult Deuteronomy 20:10-17. If all that’s not enough to convince you, there’s always Ezekiel. The following chapter and verses should convince you that the tenth plague was not an isolated incident. Ezekiel 12:20; 25:17; 28:23; 30:26; 32:15; 33:29; 35:4; and 35:9.

Point Twelve: If you in fact looked at those eight Ezekiel chapter and verses, you’ll have noted a certain phrase repeated over again and again. We note the everlasting phrase “I am the LORD”. Just to make sure you don’t forget it, that phrase is repeated 162 times in the Bible (King James Version). I personally think that’s a bit on the side of overkill. Can you imagine an American president again and again reminding Americans who is top dog and boss by thundering out “I am the PRESIDENT”! Such constant reminders might be suggestive that the utterances come from one who is really a tad insecure in the position. 

Point Thirteen: Speaking of the president, the modern relevance of this little exercise is that yet, in modern America, the 21^st Century, you have had presidential candidates (unnamed, but you know who they are), who would be happy to end the separation of church and state and who would govern from the White House according to the texts of the Bible. Governing according to the Bible would mean carrying out God’s version of foreign policy, which is, according to the Bible, something akin to a policy that tends to shoot first, shoot often, shoot to kill and don’t worry about asking all those awkward later questions as dead men tell no tales; the hell with all those later questions, full stop. The President and Commander-in-Chief would be playing the role of God and that would have to include being willing to carry out all the sort of God-performed and God-endorsed atrocities of the Old Testament, like that tenth plague. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. My reading of this is America, be afraid, be very afraid, for even if it doesn’t come to pass in 2012, there’s always 2016, or four years later, or four years after that. Sooner or later, ‘God’ in the persona of POTUS (President of the United States) will be elected. 

P.S. The closest America came to having ‘God’ in the White House was Christian fundamentalist and thrice Presidential candidate (and triple loser) William Jennings Bryan. Bryan has totally against the theory of evolution and the teaching of that theory in American schools and universities. His main claim to fame is that he was the guest prosecutor in the 1925 Scopes Trial, or the so-called Monkey Trial”. Teacher John T. Scopes was accused of teaching Darwinian evolution to his students in violation of Tennessean state law.  When Bryan himself was placed on the stand by the defence attorney, the famed Clarence Darrow, as an expert in all things Biblical, well the verdict was that Darrow made a ‘monkey’ out of Bryan. Bryan died just five days after the trial ended. Though Scopes was found guilty, the verdict was later overturned on a technicality.

God, the Psychopathic Killer: The Tenth Plague: Part One

God is a cold-blooded, premeditated, serial killer. The Bible says so. With respect to that tenth plague inflicted upon ancient Egypt, death to the firstborn, there’s no wriggle room here. God did not delegate; no one else did the deed; it was no one else’s idea; God and God alone must bear 100% of the responsibility for His actions and the death of up to a fifth of the entire ancient Egyptian population. To add insult to injury, others celebrate those deaths via the Passover!  

Matthew 10:34 (King James Version) says “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” If that’s God’s son saying that, then what must God’s foreign policy be?

Well, nowhere is God’s foreign policy more evident than that related in the Book of Exodus and forcing Egypt’s supreme ruler, the pharaoh, to “Let My People Go”. To accomplish that diplomatic trick, God inflicts those ten plagues on pharaoh’s helpless Egyptian people. Now while the first nine plagues might have natural causes, there is no way the last plague, the slaughter of the Egyptian firstborn (and their animals’ firstborn), can be put down to natural happenings. God is judge, jury and executioner. Our loving, compassionate, merciful, forgiving, etc. supreme deity, the Almighty, shows His true colours, no ifs, ands or buts about it. .  

I’d wager that any competent criminal psychologist or psychiatrist would conclude that God derives much sensual pleasure and satisfaction from mass murder and He always looks forward to the next time, since God’s done it often enough. However, let’s just examine that one specific case history, the tenth plague that was inflicted on ancient Egypt in the Biblical Book of Exodus.

The basic story is that God will go forth among the Egyptian peoples (who have done Him no wrong), and their livestock (who have certainly not sinned) and execute all those who were unfortunate to have been the firstborn (including livestock), except for any and all of whoever of His Chosen People (the Israelites) that leave out a sign that they should be passed over.

Here are the relevant chapters and verses, and some points of contention relating to them.

*Exodus 3:20 - And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.

*Exodus 11:4 - And Moses said, Thus saith the LORD, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt.

*Exodus 11:5 - And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.

*Exodus 11:7 - But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast: that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.

*Exodus 12:12 - For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

*Exodus 12:29 - And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

*Exodus 13:15 - And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast.

Point One: There’s one immediate problem with this ‘firstborn’ extermination. What if prior to that smiting, your firstborn had already died? I mean way back then infant mortality in particular, and mortality rates in general would have been at higher rates for lower age groups, like for the infants, those of childhood ages, even young adults. God cannot smite your firstborn if your firstborn was already dead! Those authors who penned this nonsense should have taken a course in Logic 101. 

Point Two: That minor point aside, but as hinted immediately above, firstborn doesn’t just include babies, infants, toddlers, and children. Teenagers and adults, even those middle-aged and the elderly might be a firstborn. Nowhere in Exodus does it associate firstborn with a child or children! In fact, the odds are high that the pharaoh himself was a firstborn since succession of rulers tends to be the firstborn son of the previous pharaoh. I’m 64 years old, and I am a firstborn. Just as well I wasn’t an Egyptian citizen way back then! Take a typical family, say one with five kids. One of those kids will be a firstborn. If the entire Egyptian nation is composed of a one in five ratio of firstborn to later born; and if that one in five is the firstborn that God smites, well that’s a percentage of, well, 20% (give or take). Exterminate one fifth of any nation and I’ll guarantee the person(s) responsible won’t be an object of worship. Even Hitler didn’t exterminate 20% of those residing in Germany and those countries he invaded.  

Point Three: So if any modern leader, president, prime minister, chancellor, emperor, king or queen, dictated that all of the firstborn of his or her country were to be executed forthwith, can you imagine the outcry? Even if the resulting death toll would have been ‘only’ 15% or 10% or 5% that would have been the least of his/her worries. Such a person would exceed being on a par with the worst of the worst of terrestrial tyrants – from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot back to Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. The nations of the world would unite quick-smart to act against such a person. Yet because this is God doing the smiting, well that’s okay. Except, in the Old American West He would have likely been lynched by a mob from the highest branch of the tallest oak tree or else tarred and feathered, and drawn and quartered if not buried alive in an ant hill.

Point Four: What’s God got against the beasts like cattle? Add animal cruelty to God’s sins.

Point Five: It certainly wasn’t the Egyptian people that were responsible for pissing off God, just the political powers-that-be (that unnamed pharaoh). Most certainly the Egyptian beasts of burden weren’t responsible, yet it’s the firstborn of people and beasts that were smitten – that’s the act of a psychopath.

Point Six: A far more rational God, a far less sadistic deity, could have caused a hell of a lot less death and suffering of the innocents by just torturing pharaoh into His objective “Let My People Go”. It would have been easier all around. God used a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. God’s an idiot, which would be funny except you wouldn’t expect the Egyptians to be laughing!

To be continued…

The Biblical Forty: Part One

You can’t read much about Biblical lore without running across the pure number forty. It appears very often. Why? Was it a lack of imagination on the part of the mortals who penned the texts? Was it coincidence? Is it just statistical probability? Does it have some deeper significance? There’s no apparent obvious answer to this – it just is and it just is interesting.

The number 40 appears quite frequently in the Bible (at least in the King James Version anyway). You’d think that there would be equally as good a probability that 39 or 41 would appear as frequently, but no, apparently not. 39 and 41 hardly get a mention. That alone is a bit odd. Anyway, here are some of the numerous examples of “40” in the Bible (King James Version).

GENESIS 

*It rained 40 days and 40 nights.

*The flood was 40 days upon the earth.

*At the end of 40 days Noah released a raven.

*Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah.

*Esau was 40 years old when he married Judith.

*The Egyptians and Joseph embalmed and mourned his daddy for 40 days.

EXODUS

*Children of Israel ate manna for 40 years in the wilderness.

*Moses went up on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights.

*There were 40 sockets of silver noted and logged.

NUMBERS

*It took 40 days to search and spy out the Promised Land the Israelites were looking for and get word back about the goodies there

*God condemned His Chosen People to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.

DEUTERONOMY

*More is related about those 40 years in the wilderness.

*More about Moses staying 40 days and nights on the mountain, starving and dying of thirst, waiting to receive those tablets of stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

JOSHUA

*Again, more info about those 40 years in the wilderness.

*Joshua was also 40 years old when he went on that spying mission.

JUDGES

*Israel had 40 years of peace between God’s judgments.

*There was 40 thousand in Israel and the big question was there a spear or shield among the lot of them?

*Abdon had 40 sons.

*The children of Israel did naughties and were tuned over to the Philistines for 40 years.

1 SAMUEL

*Eli judged Israel for 40 years.

*A philistine, Goliath apparently, menaced the armies of Israel for 40 days.

2 SAMUEL

*Saul’s son was 40 years old when he started his reign.

*David reigned for 40 years.

*David slew 40 thousand horsemen of the Syrians.

*Absalom after 40 years asked to be let go and pay a vow.

1 KINGS

*A bit more info about David reigning over Israel for 40 years. 

*Solomon had 40 thousand stalls for his horses.

*Solomon’s house was 40 cubits long.

*One laver contained 40 baths.

*Solomon reigned in Jerusalem in Israel for 40 years.

*Elijah journeyed 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the mount of God.

2 KINGS

*Jehoash began a 40 year reign in Jerusalem.

1 CHRONICLES

*More about David and those 40 thousand Syrian footmen.

*More about David reigning over Israel for 40 years.

2 CHRONICLES

*More about Solomon who was strutting his stuff in Jerusalem, thus over Israel for 40 years.

*Joash reigned in Jerusalem for 40 years.

To be continued…

A Biblical Quiz: Part Two

Believing in the reality of Biblical stories is, IMHO akin to accepting the reality of the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and the Adventures of Superman. Or, perhaps it’s more akin to accepting the reality of that other Holy Trinity – Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy! Next time your local clergy starts shooting off at the mouth about the reality of all things Biblical, the Glory and the Greatness of God, here are a few awkward questions to pose (or perhaps just forward this on to your local place of worship along with a “please explain”).

I’ve said it before but it probably bears repeating that the moment you question the bona-fides of any part of the Bible you have got to question the lot. So here are a few questions of mine which if truth be known could easily be expanded to monograph lengths.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

MIRACULOUS ANOMALIES: You live in your modern day world and observe all and sundry around you and all appears as it should – no unexplainable surprises ever happen, which isn’t the same thing of course as unexpected. The sun and the moon in your universe obey the laws of celestial physics; if you get swallowed by a fish you die; everyone you know has a mother and a father who contributed genetic material equally to their being (i.e. – you don’t know anyone born of a virgin); rock musicians at a concert you attended don’t cause nearby buildings to collapse; the loaves and fishes in your pantry only get replaced if you go to the supermarket; your glass full of water doesn’t suddenly acidify and turn into fermented grape juice – that would put the wine industry’s knickers-in-a-knot; you’ve never witnessed 960 hours of continuous rain; people at the beach swim in the water rather than walk on it; speaking of  the waters, they just don’t tend to repel like, well like poles of a magnet do; people who diet by going without food and water for 40 days die; the dead you once knew stay dead; people like yourself don’t learn new languages instantaneously; people, like your neighbours, don’t live for over 900 years; you’re rather unlikely to see anyone get turned into a pillar of salt; rivers don’t morph from water into blood; shape-shifting is something fictional found only in the pages of mythology, science fiction, science fantasy and horror; if you get a haircut, you don’t need to take out gym membership to make up for your power loss; punishments in your society tend to fit the crime. The next time you smack your golf ball into the water hazard, wouldn’t it be nice to imitate Elijah and Elisha at the River Jordan and of course Moses and wave your arms about and the waters would part so you could hit your golf ball and just get on with your game. 

Quiz question: How come the unexplainable was a regular happening but only for all practical purposes in Biblical times?

CAIN’S WIFE: We all know that in the beginning God created Adam and Eve, and the two then produced two sons, Cain and Abel, and then a third son Seth after Cain failed to show brotherly love for Abel and introduced to the world the first homicide on record. Now in order for the human race to get their ‘be fruitful and multiply’ act kick-started, these young lads needed to shack up with the opposite sex. Now apparently Cain was able to do for the Bible says he knew his wife. (Genesis 4:17).

Quiz question: Where did Cain’s wife come from? 

CAIN’S BOUNTY HUNTERS: Given the same set of characters, after Cain slew Abel, God was pretty pissed and punished Cain by exiling him, but Cain was more worried that it would come to pass, that every one that ran across his would slay him in return. That would ruin God’s punishment so He forbids anyone to slay Cain. (Genesis 4: 12-15).

Quiz Question: If there were only Adam, Even and Cain in existence, who was around and about to act as bounty hunter?

THE BIG WET: We all know the story of the Big Wet, that world-wide flood as related in Genesis and Noah’s Ark and all the animals that went in two-by-two, etc.

Quiz question: How did a pair of kangaroos (just one of numerous possible examples) hop from Australia to the Middle East and back again? Or, how did terrestrial vegetation survive underwater in total darkness for the duration?

NOAH’S ARK: Noah’s Ark has been claimed to have been discovered a dozen times over and every time it’s a case of back to the drawing board.

Quiz question: Why hasn’t Noah’s Ark really ever been found using all of the high-tech equipment available to Biblical archaeologists?

SODOM & GOMORRAH: Since 1945 there have been lots and lots of chin-wagging over and about ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Japan knows about them first hand; they were a major reason behind the second Gulf War. But who was the first to actually make and employ weapons of mass destruction? God, that’s who. Perhaps it will jog your memory if I mention Sodom and Gomorrah, and other nearby cities. In fact, God used a weapon of total destruction, since no trace of these settlements, have ever been found to this day.

Quiz Question: Why hasn’t Sodom and Gomorrah ever been located?

HOMOSEXUALITY: One question immediately arises from God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah due to sexual wickedness. If God was so against homosexuality (‘strange flesh’), how come He didn’t smite ancient Greece, ruled by those – shock, horror – ‘other gods’? That’s strike one alone. Homosexuality was socially acceptable in ancient Greek society (strike two), not only between consulting adults but between adults and minors as well (strike three). 

Quiz question: Why didn’t God smite ancient Greece?

TENTH PLAGUE:  One well known example of God’s foreign policy was the Ten Plagues inflicted on ancient Egypt, most notably the final one, death to all the Egyptian firstborn, regardless of name, age, sex or rank. So mass murder was definitely one of God’s foreign policy instruments (and that’s God’s story and He’s sticking to it, though fortunately the ancient Egyptians don’t seem to be aware that they were culled).

Quiz Question: Why didn’t the ancient Egyptians note and log anywhere that they had been culled by God and that their gods were powerless to prevent it? Why did an all-powerful God have to resort to mass murder as an instrument of foreign policy – to make Pharaoh “let my people go”? Surely it would have been sufficient to just torture Pharaoh into submission and spare the rest of the innocents.

PHARAOHS: Biblical texts often refer to the title of Pharaoh, yet the actual identities of these kings of ancient Egypt are never given.

Quiz question: Why aren’t Pharaohs named in the Bible, given that they indeed have names? Why is that? Did anyone who actually penned any part of the Bible that talks about Egypt actually ever set foot in that country?

GOD OF ISRAEL: I am given to understand that God is a God for all people, all nations, all races, all cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Yet it is crystal clear from the Bible that God is the “God of Israel” – it’s stated often enough. That’s reinforced because God is clearly not a God of Egypt; God is clearly not a God of the Land of Canaan. In fact during that era, the peoples of the Americas, Asia, the Subcontinent, most of Africa, etc. hadn’t a clue that the Almighty God even existed. Rather bad PR on God’s part wouldn’t you reckon?

Quiz question: If God is a universal God, why does His Holy Book usually refer to Him as just the “God of Israel”?

 

PROMISED LAND: Back around 1500 BCE the world’s population was a heck of a lot less, at least relative to the numbers around the world today. There would have been many fertile areas, lands of milk and honey, sparsely populated, like parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas. So, if God is looking for a good geographical location to plunk His Chosen People into, given that He can just snap His fingers and send them from Point A to Point B (like He did in that Tower of Babel scenario), why not choose a desirable and easy option, say Cuba, or New Zealand? There were no doubt vast tracks of sparsely inhabited lands in the Americas or southern Africa, all available relative to forcing an invasion of the Land of Canaan with associated death and bloodshed.

Quiz question:  So why did He choose instead the tough and bloody option – not only making His Chosen People walk the long walk, but having to fight for their Promised Land because it was already well and truly inhabited?

 

EXODUS: Related to this, outside of the Book of the Exodus and other Biblical references there is no other historical evidence or historical record that any of those events ever happened.

Quiz Question: Why aren’t the events as related in Exodus, an obviously major historical happening, of supreme significance if true, recorded anywhere else, as in ancient Egyptian historical records for example?

To be continued…

God’s Temper Tantrums and General Bad Behaviour: Part One

God is a kind god; God is a loving god; God loves you; God cares about you; God is a compassionate god; God is a forgiving god; God is a merciful god. You see it on church billboards – “God loves you anyway”. We’ve nearly all had that drivel rammed down our throats since we were kids in Sunday School and some of us actually believe it. Does the hype match the Biblical reality? Can pigs fly?

Assuming there is a God and assuming that the Bible is God’s word and an historical record of His activities (and you won’t hear anything to the contrary in church and from other formal Christian religious organisations) then the standard hype you hear, the standard image projected of God (and son) tends to be ‘warm and fuzzy’. It’s all about love, compassion, mercy, kindness and forgivingness, not hell, fire and brimstone. There’s at least one Bible-oriented Internet site that gives you a “verse-of-the-day” which is always ‘warm and fuzzy’ – a Biblical verse you’d whisper to your dying grandmother. However, if the church, religious organisations, even Biblical Internet sites stuck to a ‘wrath of God’ message they would be way more intellectually honest. Alas, people want to hear ‘warm and fuzzy’ not ‘wrath’.

Here are just a few selected ‘warm and fuzzy’ KJV Biblical quotations.

2 Corinthians 13: 14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.”

Daniel 9: 9: “To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him;”

Ephesians 2: 4: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,”

Ephesians 4: 32: “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”

Joel 2: 13: “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.”

So now let’s turn to and examine the Biblical ‘wrath of God’ and see how ‘warm and fuzzy’ God really is. In the beginning, God spits the dummy…

GENESIS: In the beginning God starts off on the wrong foot and continues out of step throughout Genesis.

Well Adam and Eve get booted out of the Garden of Eden by you know who. Now this is hardly the action of a good host, especially when there wasn’t a readily available hotel room down the road as an alternative for our original loving couple. There’s no mercy, compassion or forgiveness here.

Then God drowns nearly the entire human race with forty days and nights of torrential rain. Only Noah and a few of his kin plus a few selected animals ever get to see dry land again. Now if that’s not genocide, I don’t known what is! Hitler could have cited this as a precedent for his own extermination philosophies. One interesting puzzle here is that if God singled out Noah and a few of his relations to survive that flood, then Noah and kin must be God’s chosen people. Therefore their descendents must also be God’s chosen peoples. Alas, since those descendents repopulated the planet, and since not all of that repopulation were favoured by God, then something’s screwy somewhere.

Then we come to the Tower of Babel. People build a tower (early prototype of the skyscraper) upwards towards the sky (i.e. – Heaven). God is apparently terrified by this action, and retaliates by creating and fostering numerous languages on these upstarts so that the architects and builders, etc. can’t communicate since they all speak now in different tongues. How that is accomplished isn’t adequately explained. Still, it’s a rather painless way of learning a foreign language even at the expense of forgetting your own native tongue. Further, to ensure that no correspondence will be entered into, all and sundry get scattered to the four corners of the globe – did God hire a fleet of jumbo jets to transport them? Anyway, since even the tallest of modern terrestrial structures don’t remotely reach Heaven, God worried needlessly. It’s often said that “God works in mysterious ways”. My translation of that pithy but copout statement (something that explains nothing) is that God is as loony as the Mad Hatter. God needs not only to chill but is in desperate need of some serious therapy. 

God then, having gotten up on the wrong side of the bed again, terrifies poor Abraham and nearly gives him a heart attack by ordering him to execute his son, Isaac. An animal is substituted at the last minute and so God says “ha-ha, fooled you, I was only playing a little joke”. However, the damage was done and that sort of joke is hardly good PR designed to command loving respect. Ask yourself, is this the way a real loving God would behave? Would you appreciate being on the receiving end of God’s little joke?

After another bad hair day, God gives Sodom & Gomorrah the A-bomb treatment since the good folk of the twin cities don’t meet God’s moral standards - moral standards? Talk about casting the first stone, or the pot calling the kettle black! God did such a good job of destruction here that to this day no trace of the twin cities has ever been found! Some alchemy is also practiced as the complex multi-element biochemistry of Lot’s wife’s human body is transformed into a pure compound of just two elements – sodium and chlorine. Neat trick that one.

Throughout Genesis God’s composure is anything but cool, calm and collected. He really needs an aspirin and a good lie down at this point, and, we’re only through just the first Biblical book. What horrors are yet in store?

EXODUS: Apparently God was just warming up in the bullpen with his temper tantrums and smiting in Genesis. His nasty side really shines and comes to the fore in Exodus.

Ancient Egypt is ground zero for starters when God inflicts the ten plagues on the Egyptians (obviously not His chosen people). Those plagues included mass murder of the first-born as the grand finale.

God’s not done with the Egyptians however as for an encore He drowns Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, or was that the Sea of Reeds?

God’s personal Constitution is then imposed on His own Chosen People, the Israelites. That Constitution is more widely known then and now as the Ten Commandments, but God exempts Himself, especially the bit about “Thou shall not kill”.

LEVITICUS details a potful more of God’s ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ and ‘or else’s’. God loves laying down the law – as long as it’s His law. In any other context He’d be considered a bully at best or a dictator at worst. He’s certainly not into making laws via the concept well known as democracy.

NUMBERS continues the ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ parade, but also contains some bits not fit for kid’s TV viewing – violence!

There is dissention in the ranks of the Chosen People out there in the Sinai wilderness and so there’s mutiny afoot and the Biblical equivalent of Captain Bligh (i.e. – God) will not be denied His wrath.  Actually there were two related mutinies. The first and minor mutiny ends with a whimper and not a bang. The second and major mutiny ends with a bang and not a whimper. It ends when God kills thousands of His Chosen People with a plague (love those germs) and an earthquake (shake, rattle and roll) as punishment for rumblings in the ranks. Further on down the wilderness track we have the episode of the ‘golden calf’ mark II (i.e. more idols; more idle worship). So God, knowing that His Chosen People didn’t build up sufficient immunity from His last plague, sends another – the local undertaker gets to bury another 24,000 Israelites.

Somewhere along the line here, a pissed-off God does an about-face and instead of leading His Chosen People to the Promised Land via a pillar-of-fire by night and a pillar-of-a-cloud by day in quick-smart fashion as in Exodus, He now dooms the Israelites to wander about aimlessly in the desert wilderness for forty years instead. Not even the Spartan army toughened up its recruits via living-off-the-land survival training in this sort of barbaric way. Who’d want to be an Israelite? So with ‘friends’ like God hanging around looking after you: who needs enemies! But enemies there were.

To be continued…