Biblical Cryptozoology: Part Two

Cryptozoology is an endeavour to establish the reality of animal species (often mega-fauna) that are currently unverified or totally unknown. New species (usually insects and micro-fauna) are being discovered everyday. Alas a lot will never be verified because we humans unknowingly have driven them to extinction. Mythologies around the world are full of unknown mega-fauna, which truth be known, if they have or had existence it is or was extraterrestrial in nature. Here I briefly look at the most popular of all mythological texts, the Bible, to see what might be of zoological interest. 

Note: All references below refer to the King James Version of the Bible.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

LAND:

*The Behemoth is referenced once only in Job (Job 40:15) and is the Biblical kissing cousin of the Leviathan (see below). Behemoth is a primordial land monster inhabiting marshlands and rivers who likes to chomp on grass, like an ox. It’s presumed by modern scholars to be the hippopotamus, but proof-positive is lacking given the once-only reference.

*Hairy men: There’s no reference to current hairy ape-men like the Yeti in the Bible. Yet there is this interesting passage from Genesis 27:11 – “And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man”. Make of that what you will.

*Lambs with Horns: In Revelation you get two references to ‘lambs having horns’. The first (Revelation 5:6) tells of a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. However, it’s further stated that these represent the seven spirits of God (whatever that really means though I’m sure mystics and scholars have it all under control), so it doesn’t really represent something zoological. Then there’s that third beast from the earth that “had two horns like a lamb” but obviously wasn’t since it “spake as a dragon” (Revelation 13:11). So what exactly was it?

*Giants: Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua all testify to the existence of giants. From “giants in the earth” otherwise known as the Nephilim; “the land of giants” (more Nephilim); “remnant of giants”; to the “valley of the giants”, there were giants aplenty. I gather it was the presence of giants (the Nephilim) that so terrified the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness that they refused to continue their trek to the Promised Land. Instead, they preferred to do an about-face and return to Egypt! That cowardice pissed off the Almighty and he thus caused them to be condemned to wander about the wilderness for another forty years. So what terrified God’s Chosen People?

By the way there’s nothing overly unique about Biblical giants. Greek mythology is chock-a-block full of giants, good, bad but usually ugly, as they are in many other cultures. Their popularity remains through the ages, and though not a staple of our society, stories or descriptions about those elusive hairy man-apes relate beasties that are anything but dwarfs.

*Serpents: We all know about the serpent (a.k.a. Satan) in the Garden of Eden, but wait, there’s more shape-shifting in store. There’s that parlour trick preformed by Moses and Aaron before the Egyptian pharaoh to impress said ruler enough to “let my people go”. That parlour trick was turning a rod or staff into a serpent and back again. In Numbers God sends a fiery serpent to bite His Chosen People – exactly where they were bitten isn’t related, but the bite must have been poisonous for many died! However, Moses did some hocus-pocus and some who were bitten lived to tell the tale. Isaiah then talks about a “fiery flying serpent” also a “piercing serpent” and a “crooked serpent” – presumably all one and the same serpent. Jeremiah talks about that biting serpent the Lord likes to utilize. Revelation goes full circle and equates the serpent with the dragon which is equated with Satan. Whether there’s anything here anomalous from a zoological point of view is in the eye of the zoologist.

*Satyr: You wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Isaiah 13:21 & Isaiah 34:14 lend credence to the satyr that half-goat, half-human hybrid one normally associates with ancient Greece.

*Unicorns: While I’m sceptical about horned lambs, unicorns are a well established part of mega-fauna mythology from many times and places. The unicorn gets its due in the Bible as a real creature. Check out Isaiah 34:7 for example. 

SEA:

*The whale or big fish that swallowed Jonah and kept Jonah alive inside his innards would have to be a unique species to science.

*The Leviathan is some sort of primordial fire-breathing sea monster of the Old Testament (Isaiah, Job, and Psalms), the kissing cousin of the Behemoth (see above).

*Sea monsters are given the thumbs-up in Lamentations 4:3.

*A weird composite beast arises from the sea in Revelation 13:1-2: a hybrid of leopard, bear and lion (which are hardly marine animals) with seven heads and ten horns. That’s all sort of akin to Daniel 7:3-7. Here Daniel describes four different beasts arising from the sea. The first was like a lion with eagle’s wings. The second was like a bear (a pseudo-bear obviously). The third was a four-headed pseudo-leopard with four wings. The last was something radically different or diverse, something “dreadful and terrible” with iron teeth, nails of brass, and ten horns. Then another little horn pops up and starts speaking! That sounds something technological, like the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’. As with Revelation 13:1-2, the first three beasts, despite arising from the sea, are hardly typical marine animals. Something’s screwy somewhere! 

An interesting question arises. I gather or at least I assume that none of the above beasties entered onto Noah’s Ark in mating pairs, two-by-two, especially the more terrestrial and aerial ones. So, how did they survive that flood to produce offspring that would raise hell further on down the track? 

CONCLUSION: There’s much here to interest those who like to read and study mythology, especially animal-related mythology, comparative mythology and symbolism. There’s not much here to excite the cryptozoologist, although those ‘giants’ might be of interest to physical anthropologists, and the Cherubim and Seraphim to those who like to play around with the reality of possible ancient astronauts.

Biblical Cryptozoology: Part One

Cryptozoology is an endeavour to establish the reality of animal species (often mega-fauna) that are currently unverified or totally unknown. New species (usually insects and micro-fauna) are being discovered everyday. Alas a lot will never be verified because we humans unknowingly have driven them to extinction. Mythologies around the world are full of unknown mega-fauna, which truth be known, if they have or had existence it is or was extraterrestrial in nature. Here I briefly look at the most popular of all mythological texts, the Bible, to see what might be of zoological interest. 

You won’t find references in the Bible to the Yeti, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, the Cyclopes, or other similar beasties that interest wildlife biologists in the hunt for unverified, but possible examples of terrestrial wildlife. However, that doesn’t mean that the Bible doesn’t contain descriptions of a whole host of unknown creatures – the province of modern cryptozoology. Taking in turn the realm of the air, the land and the sea, what do we find?

Note: All references below refer to the King James Version of the Bible.

AIR:

*Cherubim: Of all the weird and wonderful creatures that appear between Genesis and Revelation, Ezekiel takes first prize for the most weird and wonderful of all. Ezekiel, assuming here he hadn’t consumed too much fermented grape juice, witnessed a whirlwind, a great cloud, full of fire with much brightness and overall the colour of amber, when as he puts it all came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month. Okay, maybe it’s a volcanic eruption (or perhaps a descending spaceship)! Well, apparently it’s not volcanic in origin for it then comes to pass that there were four creatures associated with this phenomenon which Ezekiel ultimately identifies as a Cherub (Ezekiel 9:3) or Cherubim (Ezekiel 10:14).

Ezekiel also says that these four living creatures (or perhaps crew members) “had the likeness of a man” (i.e. they were humanoid but not human).  And each of these creatures had four faces and four wings. The four faces were akin to those of a man, an ox, an eagle and a lion. And these creatures glowed. On second thought, maybe Ezekiel had consumed a bit too much grape juice! However, to be fair to the man, if you’ve never had a close encounter before and no concept of ET, then you can only interpret and describe what you see in terms you are familiar with, like an eagle or lion or something that’s akin to a man but not a man. 

Anyway, Ezekiel also describes the glowing craft or vehicle associated with this quartet, which in ancient astronaut literature is noted as the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’, a Biblical UFO encounter. Then he hears a voice, which in his confused state assumes must be a deity, in fact The Deity (well, that’s understandable – back then I probably would have assumed the same not being acquainted with ancient astronaut and UFO lore and the whole concept of life on other planets). In a similar way to his description of aliens in familiar terms (somewhat like a man), Ezekiel could explain in the only way possible the message he was given as a ‘message from God’. The messengers certainly weren’t his next door neighbours holding a conversation with him! 

It would appear that the creatures who posed as the Lord or who Ezekiel misinterpreted as the Lord departed around or about Ezekiel 3:2-14. Thus Ezekiel concluded his ‘first contact’, a close encounter of the third kind.

However, there was a second coming, a repeat performance around Ezekiel 8:1 when it came to pass for Ezekiel in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month. Again you get descriptions of those four faces, slightly altered as this time round as the four faces were akin to a cherub, man, lion and eagle (Ezekiel 10:14) – the ox had gone, so maybe these weren’t the exact same aliens. But you still get the technology of the wheels and the clouds and the brightness and the fire and the lifting up and departure, and so ‘second contact’ ended by the conclusion of Ezekiel 10.  

Something seems amiss at first glance however as first contact was in the “thirtieth year” but second contact was in the “sixth year”. I gather the thirtieth year was his 30^th year in captivity down by the river at Chebar, while his sixth year was his 6^th year back at home following. At a minimum that means at least six years between first and second contact, not that that has any great significance.

There is however one more follow-up to these four-faced creatures. Revelation, like Ezekiel, is dominated to a nearly excessive degree with four living creatures. Revelation 4:7 relates another four creatures, all with now familiar faces – lion, calf, man and flying eagle. But in the time elapsed since Ezekiel’s day (a time that hasn’t actually arrived yet apparently), these aliens had sprouted an additional pair of wings, for a grand total of six wings as related in the following verse, Revelation 4:8. Maybe these creatures have differing number of wings due to age (they grow more wings as they grow older), or sex (females have four wings; males six wings or vice versa) as something part and parcel within their own natural selection and evolution.

These six-winged beasties are probably the Seraphim as related in Isaiah 6:2 and 6:6. They like to cry out “holy, holy, holy” (their catchcry), exactly the same phrase you get uttered in Revelation 4:8. They, the four beasts with the six wings, were also blessed with a myriad of eyes (as in way more than two) on all sides. Lots of eyes can be found in Greek mythology too. Argus was a 100-eyed giant, ultimately slain by Hermes who presented the corpse to Hera (Mrs. Zeus) who incorporated the eyes of Argus into her iconic symbol – the peacock.

In any event, four-winged ‘spirits’ were commonly depicted in ancient Mesopotamia so there’s nothing unique about Ezekiel’s neural network and visions and so perhaps Ezekiel wasn’t hitting the bottle after all.  

These intelligent beings might be thought of as outside the province of cryptozoology or zoology full stop, yet the Sasquatch/Bigfoot, Yeti and similar hairy hominoids are considered legit. But since Ezekiel’s creatures are unknown humanoids to science, intelligent or not, whether they fall in the realm of cryprozoology or not, well that’s just unnecessarily splitting hairs. Still, one could argue that the Cherubim (and Seraphim) might fall more into the interests of astrobiologists and/or ufologists if my premise is correct and they are really extraterrestrials.

*Cockatrice: Both Isaiah and Jeremiah acknowledge the cockatrice which is a relatively small two-legged dragon, but with the head of a rooster. In some versions it’s cited instead as a basilisk, which in legend is king of the serpents with the evil eye (much like the Gorgon, Medusa), though without wings. Some editions just wimp out and call it a viper.

*Dragon: There are many references to the concept of dragons in the Bible, but the biggie is Revelation 12:3 – “And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.” And Revelation 12:7 – “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels.” Of course in this context the dragon is equated with Satan, but “seven heads and ten horns” has to be a rather weird description of Satan, an original angel, methinks. Still, here’s the reference: Revelation 12:9 – “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” So there!

*Flying Horse: When you think of a flying horse you think of Pegasus, but Pegasus doesn’t get a mention in the Bible. But, you do get a relation of Pegasus, cited in 2 Kings 2:11 when Elijah gets abducted, placed on a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire and gets transported to heaven whether he likes it or not. I presume that in order to get from ground level to heaven the horses must have had wings. Then there’s Revelation. I think Revelation 9:17 is confusing the concept of the horse with the dragon since one doesn’t normally associate a horse’s mouth spewing forth smoke, fire and brimstone! And our poor very confused author of Revelation has trouble distinguishing a lion’s head from a horse’s head – even a very young child can tell the two apart. However, later on down the track we get white horses and riders (one of which I gather is J.C. himself – as a rider, not as a horse) heading hell bent for leather to strut their Revelation stuff. Presumably, those horses will be descendents of Pegasus, otherwise by the time they (the riders) reach terra firma from heaven it’s going to be splat-city (unless they have parachutes of course).

*Locusts: In Revelation you also have a plague of locusts appear, which doesn’t sound too unusual or anomalous, except these locusts were shaped like horses and had the faces of men and crowns on their head which was covered in the hair of women and teeth that you associate with lions and the tail of a scorpion. Are you getting the impression the author here either had some magic mushrooms for breakfast or else was puffing on the good stuff?

To be continued…

Biblical Old Age: An Explanation or Two: Part Two

One of the many anomalies part and parcel of Biblical texts are those “Book of Genesis” genealogies that inform us that various characters in the Bible apparently spend way more time in retirement and collecting pensions and other old age social security benefits than they ever did gainfully employed. Methuselah is often the person cited as king of the pensioners. The question is, are those Biblical old ages fact or fiction? If factual, what are the possible explanations?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Bible itself apparently offers no explanation for these extraordinary life-spans. Therefore, we have open slather when it comes to speculations upon the explanations.

The most probable explanation is that it’s pure Biblical fiction, just more myths and fairy tales for grown-ups, but then if that’s true this essay terminates now. So, indulge my fantasy as I play the ‘what if’ game, as in ‘what if’ a lifespan of 969 was achieved. How and why and what sorts of implications are now gist for the fun-and-games mill that can be speculated on till the cows come home. 

One thing I rule out is more time to be fruitful and multiply. Any normal male over any normal lifespan could potentially father hundreds upon hundreds of offspring. You don’t need a 900+ year lifespan. Re-enforcing this are the observations by the Gershwin brothers in their “Porgy and Bess” song that no gal is going to give in and spread her legs for no man who’s 900 years old!

Now I have speculated elsewhere at long length that God isn’t really a deity, but an extraterrestrial, a Captain of the Starship Heaven. Further, God, and his extraterrestrial colleagues from other starships, the polytheistic ‘gods’, came to Earth with technological powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men (and women), and experimented with mammalian primate stock, ultimately producing, via artificial selection, the human being (which really was a very bad mistake, but that’s another topic).

Now perhaps these Biblical long-lifers were really aliens themselves, aliens with naturally long life-spans, part of Captain God’s Starship Heaven crew who did a lot of the be-fruitful-and-multiply begetting bit (some of those ‘sons of God’ chatting up some of those ‘daughters of men’ scenarios that the Bible relates) designed to improve the stock of the terrestrial species known as Homo sapiens..

Or perhaps this gift of extensive longevity is yet another case of God and/or the polytheistic gods doing a bit of bio-tampering via bioengineering, medical technology, and/or genetic engineering on actual humans – some of God’s chosen ones.  So perhaps if our old-timers were human through-and-through, then you have really got to conclude that clearly, some advanced bio or genetic or medical technology/engineering was employed, and by elimination, the only beings capable of employing such technologies would be aliens, aliens who to humans living way back around the time of the mythological flood were considered deities.

So assuming Methuselah and the rest of the super-pensioners listed above were genetically or medically augmented with all those additional years, what’s the point?

One reason for a long lifespan is if you need to take a long journey. Now that rules out Planet Earth since a normal human lifespan is long enough for you to get from Point A to Point B, even before the invention of the automobile and the airplane, especially given the rather limited geography that was known in Biblical times.

The only journeys that make sense in Methuselah terms would be a journey to the stars, where say Captain God (the E.T.) and crew of the Starship Heaven originally came from – call it a sightseeing tour for God’s chosen few. 

Today, modern humanity with its advanced high-tech civilization can’t manage to get to even the nearest of stellar neighbours. Our spacecraft are too slow; our life-spans too short. But how far could you get if you lived to be over 900 years and had an advanced extraterrestrial’s technology to transport you?

Now when it comes to interstellar distances, things are measured in light-years. One light year is the distance light travels in one year. The speed of light is roughly 186,000 miles per second; a light-year is some 6 trillion miles.

If you could travel at 1% light speed, you’d travel one light-year per every 100 years. So, if you lived somewhat beyond 900 years, you could make it out to roughly 9 light-years one-way, or 4.5 light-years roundtrip. That would bring you to our nearest stellar neighbour, the Alpha Centauri system, and back home again within your 900+ year allotment.

If you celebrated over 900 birthdays, and if you could travel at 10% light speed, you’d travel one light-year every 10 years. So, you could make it out to roughly 90 light-years one-way or 45 light-years if you wanted to touch ground on home turf again before you snuffed it. A radius of 45 light years brings you to distances that incorporate a fair few stars and star systems, some of which are quite Sun-like and prime candidates for hosting some form of alien life.

But if you could travel at close to light speed and taking into account special relativity, you’d boldly go outward bound at a little less than one light-year per year. The catch here is ‘special relativity’. It operates in your favour if you want to explore strange new worlds, etc. very far from home.

So, another possible explanation is that Methuselah (and the others) actually lived normal human life-spans but their interstellar journeys were at such velocities, close to light-speed, that Einstein’s special relativity came into play. The upshot is, the faster you travel, the slower you age. And thus, the case of the ‘twin paradox’ where the stay-at-home twin ages normally (one second per second; one year per orbit around the Sun) according to our norms, but the boldly going traveller, rocketing along near light speed twin, ages way more slowly. Thus, when the boldly going twin returns home and reunites with stay-at-home twin, there will now be vast differences in their ages. Stay-at-home twin has grown a lot older relative to boldly going twin. In fact, stay-at-home twin might have already snuffed it, dying of natural causes – old age – before a reunion happens.

So if Methuselah was boldly going, he might return home to a home now hundreds of years post his terrestrial date-of-birth, but to stay-at-home types, knowing nothing of special relativity, Methuselah would a super-pensioner, having obviously spanned those hundreds of years. Those stay-at-home bodies would record Methuselah lived to a super ultra ripe old age when in reality he aged normally and had a normal life span – no bio, genetic or medical technology/engineering, just special relativity physics.

 

And so in conclusion, Methuselah’s age and those of his super ultra pensioner kind, can be accounted for by 1) assuming the story is total rubbish (and if you were a betting person, that’s the way to bet); 2) they were aliens with naturally lengthy life-spans; 3) they were humans who were artificially augmented by various technological means to keep those grey hairs and wrinkles at bay for hundreds of years; or 4) they had normal terrestrial life-spans, the sort that you or I expect, but they were subjected to the weird physics associated with the Special Theory of Relativity.

Biblical Old Age: An Explanation or Two: Part One

One of the many anomalies part and parcel of Biblical texts are those “Book of Genesis” genealogies that inform us that various characters in the Bible apparently spend way more time in retirement and collecting pensions and other old age social security benefits than they ever did gainfully employed. Methuselah is often the person cited as king of the pensioners. The question is, are those Biblical old ages fact or fiction? If factual, what are the possible explanations?

I’d normally sooner trust a card shark, used car salesman, even a politician before I’d trust any of those Biblical tall tales. However, there’s always the ‘what if’ game, as in ‘what if’ this particular Biblical tall tale is really true. ‘This’ in this case is the ripe old ages of a few of the Old Testament characters. Where does that lead us?

The following Biblical characters and their ages at death are listed on Wikipedia, but since there are several versions of the genealogies in the Old Testament (Genesis) the ages don’t always agree. Regardless, relative to you or me, these fine Biblical folk are up there getting their pensions and other senior citizen benefits and have been for quite some considerable time assuming they retired at 65. If you’re getting close to your ‘use by’ date, don’t you wish you had been born a Methuselah?

Methuselah = 969 (or 720) years.

Jared = 962 (or 847) years.

Noah = 950 years.

Adam = 930 years.

Seth = 912 years.

Cainan or Kenan (pre flood) = 910 years.

Enos or Enosh = 905 years.

Mahalaleel = 895 years.

Lamech = 777 (or 753 or 653) years.

Shem = 600 years.

Arphaxad = 535 (or 438) years.

Eber = 464 (or 404) years.

Cainan (post flood) = 460 years.

Salah = 460 (or 433) years.

Enoch = 365* years.

Peleg = 339 (or 239) years.

Reu = 339 (or 239) years.

Serug = 330 (or 230) years.

Nahor = 304 (or 148) years.

Terah = 275+ (or 205) years.

Abraham = 175 years.

Oldest human verified = 122 years.

Reasonable life expectancy = 80+ years.

While there’s no theoretical reason(s) for a human to die after X number of years, 969 is pushing that envelop a bit even if you did have all the right stuff, inherited good genes, didn’t smoke or drink, ate your vegetables (and an apple a day), got eight hours of sleep and some reasonable exercise every day, avoided stress and all those other sorts of things your quack general practitioner keeps on telling you to do.

One now needs to ask to what purpose were these select few individuals given, in most cases, 900+ years instead of three score and ten. I mean that’s just not a little bit of difference from the norm, it’s a massive difference. Further, these Biblical pensioners aren’t of the ‘over-the-hill-and-off-the-pill’ set. That is to say, if you want to live to a really ripe old Biblical age, it’s better to have been born a male (which somehow runs counter to expectations today where females tend to live to collect more pension checks than males).

The Bible itself apparently offers no explanation for these extraordinary life-spans. Therefore, we have open slather when it comes to speculations upon the explanations.

To be continued…

*Enoch didn’t come back from his interstellar sightseeing excursion to die a peaceful and natural death back on Terra Firma. Apparently was whisked away from his terrestrial abode by God for reason(s) unknown – raptured, abducted, died on the voyage, joined the crew, whatever – and so we don’t really know when Enoch snuffed it.

The Bible: Just Science Fantasy and Tall Tales? Part Two

The Bible is often a treasured book in the homes of most people, and usually found in motel and hotel rooms to boot. But, is The Bible really the word of God, or at best pure mythology; at worst, pure fiction, an early forerunner to the science fiction dystopian novel? Well, actually the Bible is really more an anthology of short stories authored by many individuals over a long period of time, and heavily edited (as to what it would and would not contain) by other people. It’s all pretty ad hoc.

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.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Then there’s the concept or character of Jesus Christ (JC), the alleged son of God. Kids have Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny; tweens and teens have whatever pop idol is flavour of the month (or week – what’s in and what’s out change fast), but adults have JC.

While there is little doubt in my mind that there really was an historical figure who went by the name of Jesus Christ (but there are those who would, and do, argue that JC was as totally a mythological figure as Zeus and Apollo, or for that matter Santa), and who was executed, I suggest that JC was still a person who was very human, died, and has remained dead ever since.

I suggest that there existed a very charismatic character, which, alas, could have been mentally ill. Our mental institutions or asylums are full of people who sincerely believe that they are this person, or that person, or a reincarnation of this or that historical figure, but in reality, are totally delusional. I’m sure this syndrome is not unique to this era. There have been lots of charismatic religious figures over the centuries, which, in another time and place, if claiming to be the Son of God, would have attracted a massive following, and a near mythological aura. Perhaps JC just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right personality to pull the charade off – in fact JC probably sincerely believed his own story.  I’m no expert on what exactly JC said about himself, or has been alleged he said. Perhaps he made no claims at all and it was only others who embellished him as something he never claimed to be. If that’s the case, then of course he wasn’t mentally ill. I just mean that I’m sure mental illness existed some 2000 years ago – then as now – and it’s possible that JC could have suffered to some greater or lesser degree assuming he made some extraordinary claims about himself. Regardless, the bottom line is that JC was the son of a man and a woman, not the Son of God.

Therefore, there wasn’t a virgin birth was there? Come on, pull the other one. Where’s the real objective and conclusive evidence? Was there a qualified medical doctor on the spot to witness and testify to that alleged miracle? Now if the virgin birth account is accurate, which I doubt, then JC had no biological father. Therefore, all of his genetic material came from his biological (virgin) mother. That being the case, JC should have not only been a woman, but probably a clone of his mother! Since the authors of the relevant Biblical books could hardly have been aware of modern genetics, their ‘oops’ is understandable – but it’s an ‘oops’ nevertheless.

Now someone is bound to mention that there is such a concept in biology known as parthenogenesis. That is, a normally sexually reproducing female gives birth without benefit of any sperm fertilizing her egg(s). Unfortunately, this doesn’t occur naturally in mammals, although it has been induced artificially in laboratory mice and rabbits. If the Biblical virgin birth was the result of natural parthenogenesis, something medical science denies is possible, then it was such a rare event that it has never happened before or since, or else laboratory techniques where far more highly advanced back then, even relative to today’s medical technology. However, because there’s always a slight, however incredibly slight, change of a natural parthenogenesis event, then the alleged virgin birth can not be claimed to be a bona fide miracle, and as such, offers no proof for God’s existence.

If God or His scribes wished to make crystal clear the ideas and events and chronology central to ‘the end of the world’, Revelations, Armageddon, the Rapture, the Second Coming, etc., He or they failed – miserably. Any dozen Biblical scholars will give a dozen different interpretations of the ‘end of days’, from the literal to the metamorphic. Revelations, apparently that is, was intended for those of that era; that it was intended for generations far removed from those times is apparently not the case according to Biblical scholars. If you’re not going to make your point clear, well, what’s the point? How many hundreds upon hundreds of times have Biblical scholars prophesied the end of the world, or the end of days, or Armageddon, or the Second Coming, or Final Judgment (take your pick of relevant phrases) based on the Biblical verse? Well, we’re still here! We are indeed still here, so, so much for the reliability of The Bible, or God’s word, and/or the competence of so called Biblical experts. So, the next time some Bible-thumping Fundamentalist tells you that the ‘end is nigh’, take said message with a proverbial grain of salt and don’t lose any sleep over it!

Then there are the time discrepancies to explain. According to Biblical scholars, by studying all the various begat events and generations in the Bible, the world must have been created in 4004 BC – or maybe 5005 BC – or maybe 10,010 BC – or whatever. The point is that whatever the Biblical scholarly calculation, it falls way, way short of that figure obtained through geological and astronomical means. In fact there’s not even the most remote reconciliation between the origins of the world as given in the Bible and as given in science, far less that of the entire Universe. I gather various Biblical scholars are more interested in the Rock of Ages than the ages of rocks.

Learn from the lessons of history: Here are a couple more flies in the Biblical ointment.

Can The Bible really be a true historical account? Not likely. It’s written by a multitude of authors, over eons of time, and has suffered through dozens of translations. 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. 

God maybe and JC probably, are historical figures, as are all the other characters in the Old and New Testaments. Apparently many of the texts within 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, 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 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’. Can anyone absolutely state that those who authored the various testaments, chapters and verses of The Bible weren’t sort of making it up as they went along, or at least padding things a mite? Humans at best 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).

Lastly, as has been often pointed out, 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 instead of just God’s version of events!

The Bible: Just Science Fantasy and Tall Tales? Part One

The Bible is often a treasured book in the homes of most people, and usually found in motel and hotel rooms to boot. But, is The Bible really the word of God, or at best pure mythology; at worst, pure fiction, an early forerunner to the science fiction dystopian novel? Well, actually the Bible is really more an anthology of short stories authored by many individuals over a long period of time, and heavily edited (as to what it would and would not contain) by other people. It’s all pretty ad hoc.

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.

We all know the song from the popular American opera “Porgy and Bess” by George & Ira Gershwin & DuBose Heyward: Extracts go something like this:

“It ain’t necessarily so,

It ain’t necessarily so,

De tings dat yo’ li’ble,

To read in de Bible,

It ain’t necessarily so.”

“Oh, I takes de gospel,

Whenever it’s pos’ible,

But wid a grain of salt.”

“I’m preachin’ dis sermon to show,

It ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa,

Ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa,

Ain’t necessarily so.”

To which I add, amen to that brothers and sisters!

The Bible, if taken at face value, is full of contradictions.

How come the same book we call The Bible, that one true word of God, tells you at the same time to both turn the other cheek and love your enemy, while advocating an eye-for-an-eye and a tooth-for-a-tooth?

I mean you have ‘do unto others…’ but it’s okay to execute witches (and lots of other undesirable types as well, with no mercy shown because of sex or age). And there’s certainly no such thing as equal rights for women in and according to The Bible. Slavery is A-OK with God and son (JC), as is beating/whipping slaves if they do a naughty.

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There are some pretty big unanswered questions that arise from various chapters in the Old Testament. There’s a lot that’s pretty unbelievable in The Bible, especially the Old Testament. The point is, the minute you question the validity or accuracy of any one thing in The Bible (New or Old Testament), then that’s the minute you need to acknowledge the logical requirement to question everything.

So, where did Cain’s wife come from? I mean if Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel doesn’t that immediately suggest that the future of the human race is in a bit of a reproductive fix for lack of additional feminine company? There’s no Biblical mention apparently of additional females contemporary with the second generation (and first born) of humans. That’s a bit of an oversight wouldn’t you say? And if Cain and Abel had unnamed and unmentioned sisters, well what of those taboos that prevent or limit inbreeding, and of course incest. Surely an all-knowing God would have foreseen this.

If you start off the human race with just Adam and Eve, then where did all the various diversity of human ethnic or racial types come from in such a relatively short time frame?

Then there’s this Tower of Babel story. What was (an apparently all powerful) God so afraid of?

How did all those individuals, all those souls, pre-Christ, get ‘saved’? I mean, how did a Neanderthal caveperson, living 100,000 years ago, get to Heaven? Or for that matter someone who even was living in Old Testament (pre-JC) times?

Then we have Jonah and the whale (or big fish). Well, if you swallow that as being the gospel truth then there’s this bridge in Sydney Harbour that I’d like you to buy from me – going real cheap too. 

Then there’s the parting of the Red Sea (or Reed Sea) scenario. Moses may have been the one to wave his hands and arms and in so doing parting the waters, but God was directing the show and the action and so ultimately has to take the blame for the slaughter (by drowning) of the Egyptian army. I’m reminded of the phrase that ‘God so loved the world…’ – well God certainly didn’t love the Egyptian army! Speaking of God’s love, you wouldn’t have wanted to been one of those upstanding citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah back in those days, or for that matter been hanging around at the time Noah was building his Ark!

What about Methuselah living to 969 years? Sure he did! But if he did, then it’s ‘anything you can do I can do better’ time. So, my personal objective is that I’m heading for the 970 longevity prize in the Guinness Book of Records!

To be continued…

What the Bible Doesn’t Mention: Part Two

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), Irish, Neanderthals, Negro(s), Nubians, Sea Peoples, Spanish, Sumerians, Welsh, and on and on it goes, or doesn’t go. While God needn’t have noted the natives of 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 and all of her native peoples – who existed in Biblical times – is totally inexcusable and unforgivable. 

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, not massive structures like ziggurats or mastabas or the Great Sphinx; not even the pyramids. In fact I don’t believe the Bible mentions any of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – a major oversight IMHO. 

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. If you’re not of Israel, then apparently God doesn’t need concern himself with you, at least not in a positive way.

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