(This is the second installment from my book, Disbelief, which I wrote several years back.)
ONE GOD OVER OTHERS
The first five books of the Old Testament of the King James Version of the Holy Bible are known as the Torah, the most holy of the sacred writings in Judaism. Jewish religious “tradition” (i.e. authenticity vouched by the priestly class) ascribes these writings to Moses through a process of divine intervention. In other words, with the God of Abraham dictating the story to Moses.
According to dating of the text by Orthodox rabbis, the revelation of the Torah to Moses occurred in 1380 B.C. on Mount Sinai, about 600 years after the Epic of Gilgamesh creation myth and Flood story was written. In an alleged face-to-face meeting with Moses, God laid down his famous Ten Commandments, which represent the moral foundation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. God later dictated to Moses an additional 613 mitzvah, or divine commandments, which the Chosen People were required to observe and practice. (Again, these immutable laws were written hundreds of years after Hammurabi’s Code was put to stone.) Outside of its significance to Judaism, the Torah is accepted as part of the Bible by Christians and in Islam is seen by them as authentic revelation from God.
The remaining books of the Old Testament are comprised essentially of a chronology of events in the history of the ancient Hebrews, with occasional songs and proverbs (wisdom) providing respite from the constant warring and bloodshed between the Hebrews and conquering armies of Assyrians, Persians, Alexander the Greek, and so forth. The last books of the Old Testament, First and Second Maccabees, describe a successful uprising against the Seleucid Empire led by Judah Maccabee, reasserting the Jewish religion, expanding the boundaries of Israel, and diminishing the influence of Hellenism (Greek impact) on their culture. This took place in about 160 B.C. Within one hundred years, Israel would once-again be conquered by an alien culture… this time, the Roman Empire.
Prophecy, i.e. the prediction of future events by self-appointed holy men, is common throughout the Bible, and is replete throughout the Old Testament.
A recurring theme of Jewish prophecy, echoed throughout the latter half of the Old Testament, is the hope and prayer that a Messiah (savior) will be sent by God to rescue the Hebrew people from these onslaughts and restore Israel to the prominence it enjoyed under King David.
Of course, not only were the Chosen People disheartened and disillusioned by the constant cultural upheaval that the conquerors brought with them, but their priestly class had to nimbly shift gears, as well. In order to curry favor with new administration and keep their spiritual customers in the fold, they had to adapt, adopt, and improvise the mythological product being dispensed to the faithful. A recurring theme of the Old Testament story is that the Chosen People aren’t pious enough, and don’t deserve God’s help and favoritism: they need to lean more on their spiritual leaders, and heed their words.
In other words, be obedient to the priestly class.
God’s Imperfect Creations
The God that the Jewish priests invented was unusual for a divinity. By definition, the Almighty One was perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present. According to the mythology, this god effortlessly produced the universe, the earth, and all the beings thereof in a week’s time. To accomplish this, he would have had to be a genius biologist, chemist, and physicist, all rolled into one. Accordingly, one would expect his human creations to be perfect and act exactly as he intended, helping him execute his master plan for humanity.
And, yet, from the beginning, God’s human beings seem to puzzle, frustrate and anger him into punitive rages. At one point in the Genesis story, God scrapped his entire experiment by drowning every human being except model citizens Noah and his family, and then re-started the process anew with their progeny. Evidently, God felt that the failure of his initial design was an aberration. But, alas, the descendents of Noah continued the pattern of living like fools, disappointing and disobeying God at every turn. Even when he parted seas for them or helped them defeat their enemies time after time, his human creations doubted his powers and turned to other gods. At this point, God threw a tantrum, and punished his Chosen People by making them wander in the desert for forty years before they could enter the Promised Land.
At some point in the reading of the Old Testament, the reader must wonder about the perfect, all-knowing nature of the God of Abraham. A God who can design and build a universe in one week should be able to design a human brain that can follow instructions and learn from mistakes. The question arises: if he failed in that task (i.e. who else is to blame?), then why was God constantly disappointed, angry and vindictive when his creations did as they pleased and annoyed him?
Of course, if the Almighty One had perfected the human being, and it performed exactly as he intended, there would have been no sin, there would be no need for atonement, no need for prayers and absolution, no need for offerings of food and valuables, and no need for worship. In a nutshell, no need for the priestly class. Thus, the authors of the mythology continually stirred the pot, with the hero (God) continually at odds with his ungrateful, less-than-obedient subjects.
One Astute Man
So that the first human being Adam would not be lonely, God created Eve, the first female, from one of Adam’s ribs while he slept (Genesis 2:21-22). Upon awakening and realizing what God had done, Adam matter-of-factly announced, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). This is an astounding declaration. Until this point, God had not defined families or marriage, nor had there been any “fathers” or “mothers” on earth (i.e. Adam didn’t have parents), or “wives” in the seven previous days of creation. Adam, in a stroke of mental astuteness that would have flabbergasted Albert Einstein, created all of these familial concepts in one off-the-cuff pronouncement. And, he evidently married Eve simply by pronouncing her to be his “wife”, without her consent or the bother of a lengthy courtship. It was arguably the first case of “love at first sight”.
Interestingly, this episode concludes by noting that Adam and Eve “were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). This is a curious statement. Both of these humans were created naked, as were all of the other animals. Why should either of them have any guilt feelings regarding their bodies? Maybe that’s because…by the time the mythology was written (by priests), nakedness had become sinful in the eyes of the priestly class (and, therefore, the God that they had created)?
Placing Blame
A specific example of God’s perplexing thought process is provided in the story of the Garden of Eden. God created Adam, the first human being, and placed him in the Garden. Also within the Garden, God placed “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, but forbade Adam from eating its fruit under penalty of death. Adam later tried to learn by eating the fruit and God punished both Adam and Eve by exiling them from the Garden (Genesis 2:17-3:24). This raises a few questions: Why wouldn’t God want his human creatures to know the difference between good and evil? Particularly, since He later reveals that he is an obsessive stickler for the rules. And, why would God have created such concepts (of good and evil) in the first place if it wasn’t his plan all along for Adam and Eve to learn these things? Inexplicably, God doesn’t lay down the law regarding good and evil (i.e. the Ten Commandments) until the time of Moses, approximately 2,500 years later, according to biblical scholars. Questions: Why keep one hundred generations of Hebrews in the dark? And, why the indignation when the people sinned? They didn’t know what sin was.
By the way, the issue of nakedness is resolved when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. The immediate consequence is that they realized that they were naked and hastily clothed themselves with fig leaf aprons (Genesis 3:7). The moral of this story must be that God feels that nakedness is bad. But, wait a minute! God designed them: why would he create something that is evil or shameful? Or, conversely, why put into their minds, via the Tree of Knowledge, the concept of being ashamed of something that God created?
It is ironic that the only animals that seem to be ashamed of nakedness are humans. Of course, they have these feelings because the priestly class has laid an enormous guilt trip on them, via the Genesis mythology.
The Set-up
God also placed, among other things, a talking serpent in the Garden of Eden who convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. The all-knowing God seemed surprised when he found this out, and then cursed the serpent to crawl on his belly for all time (Genesis 3:1-14). Again this raises obvious questions: Aren’t God’s creations perfect? The Almighty knew what he was doing when he created the serpent (who theologians say represents Satan), and had to have put the evil ideas in the serpent’s mind which caused it to tempt Eve. So, why the surprise, anger, and vindictiveness? The omniscient God had to know, in advance, how it would play out. It is apparent that he (or, more precisely, the priestly authors) planned it that way. And, therefore, it gave God and the clergy a convenient excuse to blame Eve for the sin and justify God making her and, by extension, all subsequent women subservient to men (“he shall rule over thee”)(Genesis 3:16). Talk about unfair!
Re-read the Genesis story and it is very clear that God directly forbade Adam from eating the fruit before Eve was created. Adam was the one who disobeyed God’s direct orders, not Eve. Yet, as we have all been taught, the villain of the Garden of Eden story is Eve, “the temptress”.
Bad Boy Cain
Another hard to understand story is the familiar tale of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain became a farmer and Abel a shepherd. They both made offerings to God (in order to gain his favor). With no explanation, God respected Abel’s offering, “but unto Cain and his offering He had not respect”. God vaguely inferred that Cain had sinned in some way. Cain became upset and killed Abel in a fit of jealous rage. In turn, God became vengeful and cursed Cain to a lifetime of misery.(Genesis 4:4-16). This incident doesn’t make a lot of sense. God had not specified the characteristics of an acceptable versus unacceptable offering. He didn’t do so until Moses time, 2,500 years later, when he dictated an entire, very detailed chapter of Leviticus on the subject (Leviticus 1). So, it was God who instigated the deadly fracas by unfairly slighting Cain and thus enraging him. If anyone looks bad in this story, it is the Creator.
Then this episode gets stranger. Upon being exiled from the presence of God, Cain went to the land of Nod, “knows his wife”, and she bore a son, Enoch (Genesis 4:16-17). At that point in the Genesis story, there is only one woman on earth, Eve, who had had no female children. How could Cain have fathered a child…unless his new wife and the mother of the newborn child was his own mother, Eve? This does not seem to bother God; he neither repudiated nor punished Cain for having sex with his mother. However, we later find out that God abhors incest; in fact, he commanded Moses that “if a mother and son have sexual relations, both must be put to death” (Leviticus 20:11). What can we learn from this? Perhaps that God realized that he had made a mistake in allowing incest in the first place. OK… but could an all-knowing Divine Being truly make a mistake of any kind?
Killing, Smiting, and Murdering
In the Old Testament, God is crystal clear about murder… he says he’s against it. One of the Ten Commandments delivered to Moses is “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), and one of his 613 mitzvah is very specific on the penalty: “Anyone who commits murder must be put to death” (Leviticus 24:17).
Interestingly, however, God doesn’t personally practice what he preaches. Nor does he seem to have a problem with his Chosen People smiting anyone who stands in their way. In the Flood account, God drowned every living thing on earth except Noah’s family and the animals that were gathered onto the Ark (Genesis 6-8). When God unleashed a plague upon the Egyptians, he killed all of their firstborn, including children and beasts (Genesis 13:15).
In these accounts, God aborted the lives of unborn children, slaughtered innocent infants and young children, and summarily executed helpless animals… because he was displeased. What kind of a message did that send to his human creations regarding murder? That it is permissible to kill someone if they anger you? Later, God burned 250 individuals alive (Numbers 16:35), sent a plague to kill 14,700 unhappy Israelites (Numbers 16:41-49), sent another plague to slay 24,000 idol worshipers (Numbers 25:1-9), and called up three days of pestilence to kill 70,000 men because King David conducted a census (2 Samuel 24:10-17). On one occasion, God sent two bears to slaughter forty-two children because they had made fun of a man’s bald head ((2 Kings 2:23-24). Evidently, God’s philosophy is, “Do as I say, not as I do”.
But, even that’s not accurate, as there are many episodes in the Old Testament where God directed his Chosen People, through their leaders, to ruthlessly massacre armies, civilians, animals and pets. For example, Moses and his Israelites murdered every man, woman, and child residing within the cities of Hesbon per God’s instructions (Deuteronomy 2:32-35), Joshua and his army killed every living thing in Jericho before burning it to the ground (Joshua 6:16-24), and then Joshua’s troopers did the same thing to six additional cities, sparing not one life (Joshua 10:28-40). God later enabled Judah to kill 500,000 Israelite men for turning from him (2 Chronicles 13:15-20), and sent the army of the Chaldees to kill all the occupants of Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 36:15-23). One wonders what the helpless children of these towns did to deserve their fate?
The lesson from these latter stories seems to be that if someone has something that you want (like, maybe, land and property?) it is acceptable in the eyes of God to steal it from them and murder them in the process. But that, of course, runs counter to God’s tenth commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house… nor anything that is thy neighbor’s” (Exodus 29:17). Boy, religion is confusing!
The Birth of Intolerance
The God of Abraham not only kills or condones the murder of those who affront him or his people, but he also demands that the Israelites render the harshest of punishments upon those who disobey him. The death penalty is required by God for many offenses which might be misdemeanors or minor felonies in today’s society, including: anyone who curses his mother or father (Leviticus 20:9); anyone who commits perjury (Deuteronomy 19:18-19); any stubborn or rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:18-21); anyone who harasses a widow or orphan (Exodus 22:24); any woman who has had premarital sex (Deuteronomy 22:21); and, (lest anyone forget who is making this stuff up) anyone who disobeys a priest (Deuteronomy 17:12) .
The Almighty is a little less clear about how he feels about strangers. He told Moses that He “doth loveth the stranger” and that the Israelites should “love ye therefore the strangers, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). At the same time, however, God decreed that “any strangers approaching a sanctuary should be put to death” (Numbers 17:7). Moreover, with regard to strangers with different beliefs, his attitude is resolute: “If a city worships other Gods, kill everyone in it and burn it” (Deuteronomy 13:12-16).
This last directive conveniently provided Divine justification for all the smiting and mayhem conducted by Moses, Joshua, David, et al, as they confiscated the Promised Land from the native peoples who called it home.
Over-the-Top Punishment
There are scores of atrocities in the Old Testament that are attributed to the wrath of God. Since He presumably dictated the story to Moses, God must have been quite proud of his achievements, wanting all the credit He was due.
Among the Creator’s accomplishments were: making people deaf, dumb and blind (Exodus 4:10-11); creating a rain of burning sulfur to kill the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-25); inflicting boils upon all the citizens of Egypt (Exodus 9:10-11); creating an earthquake to swallow up 250 complaining Israelites (Numbers 16:31-33); requiring a man to burn his daughter to death if He will help him conquer an enemy (Judges 11:29-39); inflicting severe cases of hemorrhoids on entire Philistine populations (1 Samuel 4-6); killing a man who kept the Ark of the Covenant from falling from an ox drawn cart (2 Samuel 6:6-7); using a hailstorm to kill citizens fleeing from a battle (Joshua 10:8-11); infecting King Azariah with leprosy for allowing incense to burn in the wrong location (2 Kings 15:1-5); and, directing Moses and his followers to stone to death a man for gathering sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36).
And, we already know what God does when he really throws a tantrum…He drowns everyone and everything on earth!
The Fear of God
As noted earlier, God made a covenant with the tribe of Abraham that, if they did what He asked, then they would become His Chosen People, He would favor them in their endeavors, and would reward them with the Promised Land.
Of course, they were merely human beings and didn’t always uphold their part of the bargain. From time to time they screwed up, they backslid, and they sinned. In order to coerce the Israelites into better behavior, God made examples of people as previously noted, smiting some, inflicting disease on others, punishing children for the mistakes of fathers, and whatever suited his whim.
In addition to actually terrorizing the population, God and his priestly spokesmen made alot of bloodcurdling threats to intimidate the Chosen Ones and others. For example, if He didn’t get his way, God would: kill men, have their children smashed, and have their wives raped (Isaiah 13:15-16); set people, animals, and even plants on fire (Jeremiah 7:20); make people hungry enough to eat their own children and friends (Jeremiah 19:9); break people’s bones and knock their teeth out with stones (Lamentations 3:1-16); turn daughters into whores and wives into adulterers (Hosea 4:13); send the children of Israel into slavery in a far away land (Joel 3:8); send plagues on people and animals to rot away tongues and eyes (Zechariah 14:12-15); and give away the property of men, “including their wives”, to other men (Jeremiah 8:10).
And, if He couldn’t play shortstop, he’d take his ball and bat and go home!
Women Underfoot
In case you missed an earlier point, the God of Abraham considered women to be the property of men.
After the Garden of Eden debacle, where God conveniently blamed Eve for Adam’s sin, He declared that “thy husband… shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16). In Chapter 21 of Exodus, God explained His rules allowing a man to sell his daughter to another man and allowing men to take multiple wives. Unfettered by law or Commandment, wise Hebrew King Solomon later accumulated 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3).
Married women were commonly considered currency and sex objects rather than partners in a family enterprise. Following the death of a man, the deceased father’s inheritance went entirely to his sons, or if he had no sons it went to the daughters, or if he had no children it went to the closest male relatives (Numbers 27:8-11). Not only did the surviving wife get nothing, God’s law forced her to then marry (that is, become the property of) her husband’s brother if she didn’t have a son. The brother-in-law had the right to refuse this wedding, by the way; the woman did not (Deuteronomy 25:5-9).
Not only were men considered to be superior to women, they were also considered to be cleaner. God went into great detail explaining His loathing of female menstruation and prescribed numerous rules to keep unclean women away from other humans. During menstruation, no one was allowed to touch the woman, and anything that she touched was considered to be unclean (Leviticus 15:19-30). But, wait, since God created all things, he had to have created the physiological process which includes menstruation. Why then would it be a bad or unclean thing? God also considered women unclean after giving birth. If the child was a male, the woman was considered unclean for seven days, while if the child was female the woman was unclean for fourteen days (Leviticus 12:1-5).
Rape, the paramount fear of many women, reared its ugly head often in the Old Testament. Interestingly, God’s prescribed punishment for committing this most heinous of crimes was proscribed to be a pound of silver to the father and a forced marriage to the victim if she was not already engaged or married (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). That’s right… the victim was forced to marry the man who savagely attacked her! If a man raped an engaged virgin who didn’t cry loud enough to draw attention, the community was to consider the attack consensual if it took place in a city, and by God’s law the woman was to be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:24). Yes, if a terrified woman is raped at knifepoint or is muzzled by her attacker, then she is deemed to have encouraged the sexual encounter. Only a man could have written this stuff.
Also, the rape of a child by her father is condoned in the Old Testament. In Chapter 20 of Leviticus, Moses goes into great detail identifying forbidden sexual relationships: men and men, women and women, married women and other men, mother and son, etc. Noticeably absent from this list is sex between father and daughter. Since God considered daughters to be the sole property of fathers, this exception is understandable but, nevertheless, troubling to modern day sensibilities.
God and Slavery
It is only natural to believe that God would be unalterably opposed to slavery, one of mankind’s cruelest institutions. However, not only does the Old Testament not once mention’s God opposition to the practice nor His intention to abolish it, but He and his appointed biblical authors are vocal in their advocation of slavery.
The first mention of slavery in the Old Testament is a passage where Noah condemned his grandson Canaan to a life of slavery because his father Ham observed Noah naked and drunk (Genesis 9:20-27). Yes, the son was enslaved for something his father happened upon. And, this punishment from Noah, “a just man and perfect in his generation…Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). If God considered Noah perfect, then obviously he considered slavery to be acceptable.
God later went on to explain how slaves were to be treated. A slave “cannot be corrected by mere words” (Proverb 29:19). Does this mean that slaves can be beaten? Yes, and if a man hits his slave hard enough to keep him down for a day or two, but the slave gets back up, “he shall not be punished: for he is his money” (Exodus 21:21). This makes it clear that the slave was to be considered nothing more than a financial investment of the owner, very similar to a man’s daughter who could also be sold to be a wife or concubine, as previously discussed.
God goes on to explain how to acquire slaves. He says that He prefers lifelong slaves to come from the surrounding heathen nations, perhaps purchased from foreigners visiting the Israelite regions. And, if the owner died, the male children were to inherit these slaves (Leviticus 25:44-46). Slaves could also be obtained as spoils of wars conducted at the orders of God. When the Almighty delivered the enemy into the hands of his people, he ordered the men to be killed, “but the women, and the little ones…shall thou take unto thyself” (Deuteronomy 20:13-14). This is great; God actually helped the Israelites obtain slaves. However, turnabout is fair play. Later on, following the death of Joshua, when the Chosen People defy him, God delivered the entire Israelite population into slavery six different times to various enemies (Judges 2-10). From all of this, we can see that the God of Abraham was/is quite comfortable with the idea of human slavery, both as a socio-economic tool and as a preferred technique of mass coercion.
Interestingly, with regard to the latter, the Chosen People time after time returned to their sinful ways after God punished them with slavery. One would think that a real God would know, in advance, what kind punishment would be 100 percent effective.
An interesting angle to the slavery issue was God’s treatment of “heathens”, or non-believers in Him. As noted above, God directed the Israelites in their wars of conquest against these foreigners, helping the Chosen People to acquire their wealth, their land, and make slaves of them. Of course, these enemies of the Israelites were not chosen to receive the Word of God and, as a result, had no Covenant with him, as did the Hebrews. As these “heathens” lived their lives in ignorance of his laws, how did God justify punishing them with robbery, slavery and death? Ironically, God was actually more forgiving and helpful to the very people who had received his Word, and then turned against him. Again, the Old Testament story is very confusing.
The Whole Implausible Story
Truth be told, the Old Testament is one hell of a yarn. It includes, among other things, a Creation story, a Great Flood story, a man being swallowed by a whale and surviving, a woman being turned into a pillar of salt, a wrestling match between God and a man, a burning bush that speaks, a great sea that parts when a wooden staff is laid before it, great city walls that fall down when a trumpet is blown, a human being carried up into Heaven aboard a flaming chariot, and a lot of enemies being smited with the assistance and encouragement of God. The story ends with the Jews eagerly and longingly awaiting a Messiah, a Savior who will be sent by God to deliver them once again from their enemies and secure the long-awaited peace and security of their Promised Land. It’s the kind of story that Hollywood likes: violence, sin, a cast of thousands, special effects, and the good guy winning out in the end.
Yet, it is a curious plot and the hero is a hard guy to figure out. It stars a seemingly immature God who is jealous, spiteful, vengeful, and even cruel, at times. At the same time, he can be very patient and forgiving toward his Chosen People, who constantly doubt Him, defy Him, and certainly don’t deserve Him. And, for a God, he seems very human. For example, He makes mistakes, He changes His mind, He lashes out in anger, and He plays favorites. One would think that a real God would know what He was doing, would do it right the first time, and would say what He means and mean what He says. God shouldn’t have to try out 150 different ways of coercion to make the Chosen People idolize and obey Him.
The bottom line is that God seems… very human-like, which would be odd is He were really a god.
By the way, there isn’t much doubt in the Old Testament about the so-called “free will” of man: he has none, unless one considers the freedom to do everything that God demands, “or else”, to be actual freedom. That is comparable to “voting” in a communist country where there is one candidate on the ballot. Similarly, if you are free to defy The Man, but will be killed if you do so and tortured for all eternity, is your choice really a free one?
Reflecting on this, the biggest unanswered question in the Old Testament story is: Why did the God of Abraham create human beings? Since that subject isn’t discussed, one can only wonder. Was the Creation intended to fill some void in God’s existence? Perhaps He needed more recognition for His greatness, so he created a human cheering section. (Or, so he thought!) But, would a God who needs to hear praise and thanks really qualify as a Supreme Being? What would ego mean to such an entity? He already knows he’s the Greatest. Or, was God simply fooling around in his laboratory and invented humans by accident? It seems that way, like an experiment gone wrong, with Dr. Frankenstein furiously trying all manner of desperate measures to correct the behavior of his monster. But, all of God’s flailing about seems so un-godlike. Surely, the Almighty God wouldn’t create a defective product, or, if He did, He’d damn well know how to fix it. Maybe there’s another, more esoteric answer to this question. If there is, it is not readily apparent in the Old Testament story.
To greatly summarize the plot, God creates the world and everything in it, lays down the rules for humans to observe, and promises wonderful things to the Hebrews if they comply. They don’t, and God waffles back and forth between punishing and redeeming them. The Hebrews lose their temple and their Promised Land, and once again look toward God to save them. End of story.
Really? What is the purpose of this fantastic tale? It was obviously completed many generations after Moses’ time, so “Who wrote it?” and, “Why?”
And the Author is…!
Scholars refer to first five books of the Old Testament as the Pentateuch, which is Greek for “five volumes”. As noted previously, tradition deems that Moses personally wrote the Pentateuch with divine guidance. Modern scholarship has turned this assumption on its head. It is now obvious that many writers had a hand in developing the Old Testament story and that God didn’t dictate the stories or edit the proofs. The Pentateuch is replete with historical and other factual inaccuracies, contains numerous contradictions and logical absurdities, and features many erroneous prophecies. If anyone could accurately predict the future, it would be the Almighty One. A book containing all these errors could not possibly have been produced with divine guidance.
The fact that Moses couldn’t have written the Pentateuch is obvious when his death and burial are described in the last chapter of Deuteronomy, one of the books he is alleged to have written. In fact, the real author of the passage indicates that Moses burial location is hidden so that “no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day” (Deuteronomy 34:5-6). In other words, that day, many years thereafter, when the real author wrote this passage. Biblical scholars now believe that Deuteronomy was written shortly before 622 B.C., or as many as 800 years following the life of Moses, if he really existed.
Other indications that Moses wasn’t a biblical author include the inclusion of city names and tribes yet to exist at the time of Moses’ alleged death in approximately 1450 B.C. Genesis 11:31 says that the Chaldees lived in the city of Ur during the life of Abraham, but historical records reveal that the Chaldees didn’t even exist as a tribe until well after Moses was dead, and they didn’t become a prominent enough group to occupy a city for another 800 years. Genesis 14:14 mentions the city of Dan, but the city didn’t acquire this name until it was seized one thousand years later by conquest.
Some particular names mentioned in Genesis 14 and 25 are consistent with names of people recorded by the Assyrians as living during the sixth through eighth centuries B.C., not a thousand years prior in Moses’ time. Also lending suspicion is the fact that the book of Exodus never provides the names of the Egyptian Pharaohs, even though Moses would have readily known this information.
Finally, the Pentateuch describes leading characters such as Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph riding camels. However, there is no historical or archaeological evidence indicating that camels were domesticated earlier than 1200 B.C. The real author(s) of these passages didn’t have the benefit of this knowledge and must have taken for granted that camel riding predated them by hundreds, if not thousands, of years. So, he (they) innocently included it in the biblical myth.
The preponderance of biblical scholars are certain that Moses wasn’t the author of the Pentateuch and believe that there were probably four authors and an editor involved in the Old Testament compilation as we know it. This “document hypothesis” recognizes different writing styles, different usage of words, and different topic areas of the authors, among other things. Research has been unable thus far to determine the names of the contributors, so they are known in the scholarly community by initials: J, E, P, D, and R.
Unknown author “J” used JHWH as the unpronounceable name of God and issues relating primarily to humanity were his focus. He wrote a complete historical record of the Israelites from a Judean perspective, so it is presumed that he resided in the Kingdom of Judea. Historians typically place a 950-750 B.C. date on his work.
Unknown author “E”, whose primary focus was on morality, consistently used Elohim as the name of God. E emphasized the second born of families because they were of historical and personal interest to the North for symbolic reasons. E left a complete account of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Historians date E’s contribution to have occurred in the range of 900-700 B.C.
Unknown author “P” is considered almost certainly to have been a priest. He identified Aaron, the first High Priest, as his spiritual ancestor. His manuscripts include rituals, laws, sins, chronologies, genealogies, and other subjects of definite interest to a priest. P doesn’t attribute any human qualities to God, and the Hebrew terms equivalent to mercy, grace, and repentance don’t appear once in P’s work. His interpretations and attitudes are often cold and harsh, something that might be expected from a traditional church leader. He doesn’t include any mythical details, such as talking animals, likely interpolated into history by J and E as a result of popular urban legends. As P was aware of the books of prophecy, he probably wrote his share of the book later than J and E, around 700-650 B.C.
Unknown author “D” received his name because he was the author of Deuteronomy as well as several of the historical books. He likely wrote the book of Jeremiah because it contains several carbon copies of statements made in the book of Deuteronomy. Historians speculate that D may, in fact, be either Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, or Jeremiah himself. Evidence for the “document hypothesis” indicates that the person compiling the Pentateuch tacked D’s work onto the end of the compilation. It is believed that D probably finished his work shortly before it was “discovered” during the realm of King Josiah in 622 B.C.
Author “R” has been designated as the redactor, or editor, of the Pentateuch as it is known today. His work is thought to have been completed around 500-434 B.C. The scholarly community consensually believes this editing was accomplished by the Jewish priestly scribe, Ezra.
It is not known why the books of the Pentateuch were combined. It is speculated that a number of Israelites fled south into Judea with the E document in hand when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C. Consequently, the J document coexisted with the E document in this society prior to their combination. Around this time, P likely became a widespread alternative priestly version of the J and E records. With three variant interpretations, no doubt would come arguing factions. R then saw the need, or perhaps was elected, to combine the documents into a single cohesive document agreeable to all parties. Not wishing to eliminate any essential parts of the respective documents, R would then combine the contrasting stories into one quasi-harmonious account and do the best he could to avoid contradictions, inconsistencies, and repetitions. Because the D document doesn’t step on the toes of the other three histories, the redactor likely tacked Deuteronomy onto the end for this reason. By 434 B.C., the redactor had certainly compiled the modern version of the Pentateuch. While scholars are certainly not fully able to explain the origins of the Old Testament with one hundred percent accuracy, they can conclude with great certainty that the Pentateuch is a set of conflicting passages scribed 500-3500 years after the events it purports.
We’ve learned that the Pentateuch was not authored by Moses, at least according the greatest biblical scholars of our time. So, the next question has got to be, “Were these authors divinely inspired?” Obviously a lot of this story took place long before the lives of these authors. How could they know what happened unless either (a) God had provided them with the facts, or (b) the Pentateuch is primarily a mythology, passed down through the generations, designed to justify and support the Hebrew religion.
Divine Guidance?
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), probably the most famous opening line in the history of literature. Obviously, no human beings were in existence at that time, so either God related it to the author, or the author made this up on his own. The two chapters of Genesis go on to detail how God created the universe and everything in it. The first thing God did was to create light, and divided the light from darkness to create day and night. This was accomplished on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:3-5). Incredibly, three days later He created the sun and the moon (Genesis 1:16). As any elementary school student knows, the sun is the only appreciable source of light for our planet. In order for there to be “light” on the first day, the sun would have to have been in existence. Surely, God would know this, but Bronze Age men, telling tales around a campfire, would not.
On the second day of creation, God allegedly made the “firmament” which divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were below it (Genesis 1:6-7). This firmament is described in the Jewish Encyclopedia as the “arched solid vault of heaven… to which are fastened the lights, the stars”. The concept, as detailed in Genesis, is that this firmament separates the “sky ocean” from the open air above earth’s inhabitants. In case you haven’t guessed it, this alleged sky ocean is the source of rain. Rain falls when “God opens the windows of heaven”, as he did to initiate Noah’s flood (Genesis 7:11). To put it all together, the firmament is supposedly a solid dome above the sky in which are placed the stars and planets for illumination purposes, and above which is the great reservoir of water which is periodically released onto earth through windows that God opens. Needless to say, any astronomer or astronaut can tell you that there isn’t any firmament above the earth and beneath the moisture-laden clouds. God would know this, too.
The authors of the Pentateuch also got some bad information from God regarding basic zoology. Following Noah’s flood, God said that all terrestrial and marine life would have fear and dread toward humans (Genesis 9:2). Experts in the field of zoology disagree, noting that there are vast numbers of animals, ranging from pets to fearless predators, which have no fear whatsoever toward humans. Later in the Genesis story, Jacob successfully alters the color patterns on lambs and goats by placing peeled tree branches in front of the mating livestock (Genesis 30:37-39). Modern geneticists state that peeled branches have no effect on an organism’s appearance; DNA does. Of course, the ancient writers wouldn’t have known of DNA, but God would have, because He created it.
God would also have known which animals chew the cud. Twice in the Old Testament it is proclaimed that hares (rabbits) are “unclean” because they chew the cud (Leviticus 11:6 and Deuteronomy 14:7). To chew the cud means to eat grasses, swallow, then regurgitate later for further chewing. Zoologists assert that rabbits do not do this.
But, there’s even more bad zoology. Later in the Old Testament, ostriches are painted as careless parents (Job 39:13-17), which is exactly the opposite opinion held by modern science: ostriches are extremely meticulous about how they take care of their offspring, and even the father helps out, which is overwhelmingly rare in the animal kingdom. Leviticus 11:21-23 states, incorrectly, that insects and arachnids (e.g. spiders) have four feet, when actually insects have six feet and arachnids have eight. Leviticus 11:13-19 identifies the bat as a fowl (e.g. a bird), when it is actually a flying mammal. Later in the Old Testament, Jonah is swallowed by a fish and lives inside its stomach for three days (Jonah 1:17), something that is extremely implausible given the impact of the gastric juices and bile acids that Jonah would have been exposed to. Of course, God would have known this, since He designed the digestive tracts of all living creatures. So, it is doubtful that the Great Scientist in the Sky, who designed everything, would have given the authors this and other bad scientific information for their story.
Numbers Don’t Lie
The Old Testament goes into great length and detail to document the succeeding generations between Adam and Moses. For some inexplicable reason, during this period the male descendents lived extraordinary long lives. Adam lived 130 years before siring his son, Seth, and then proceeded to live another eight hundred years. Seth lived 912 years, his son, Enos, lived 905 years. His son, Abraham, lived 315 years, and then his son, Ishmael, lived 137 years. Finally, the last patriarch in the Genesis account, Joseph, expires at age 110 years young.(Genesis 5:1-50:26)
Interestingly, the lifespans of the Hebrew patriarchs decrease over the thousands of years, exactly the opposite of what recorded history has experienced (i.e. longer lifespans as man has learned more about nutrition, diseases, safety, etc.) Coincidentally, the lifespans of the patriarchs reach possible, but still implausible, levels the nearer the Bible approaches recorded history. In other words, closer to the point that the biblical story could be verified by independent historians, such as the Egyptians, who kept very precise records of everything. Modern scientists and historians have yet to discover evidence of any human being who lived 125 years, let alone the 969 years of Methuselah (Genesis 5:21-27).
The longetivity claims and the peculiar receding lifespan progression are, therefore, highly suspect, and paint the entire Genesis story as more of a collection of myths than actual facts. As a matter of fact, anthropologists who study other ancient religions note that important figures in th0se religions also have extremely abnormal lifespans, sometimes reaching into the thousands of years.
Another anthropological exaggeration which manifests itself throughout the Pentateuch is consistently improbable population growth. The first such example takes place during the post-Flood era when the population of the earth inexplicably mushrooms from eight human beings to a million plus in only a few hundred years (Exodus 1:5, 38:26). By the time of 2 Samuel, later in the Old Testament, it is claimed that there were well over a million men in two armies alone (2 Samuel 24:9). Simple math will tell you that these numbers are way out of line. For one thing, if population doubled every generation (20 years), an initial population of eight individuals would expand to less than 10,000 people in ten generations (200 years).
Not only are the Old Testament numbers exceedingly exaggerated for a believable population growth spurt, but the living conditions were not exactly primed for such a magnificent, logarithmic eruption of life. The reader might recall that every living thing that wasn’t on the ark, including plants and animals, was destroyed in Noah’s flood. The survivors would have had very little to eat, not to mention the fact that all the freshwater sources would have been polluted by ocean saltwater. This is the type of environment that kills people, rather than stimulating population growth.
Furthermore, there is no reliable archaeological evidence that there were that many people, including massive armies, living simultaneously in the Middle East until very recently. Some 5,000 plus years after Genesis, Sadaam Hussein’s Iraqi army was numbered at 538,000 men, out of a population of roughly 30 million inhabitants. Needless to say, no amount of procreation by Noah and his virile progeny could have created these massive population numbers. Someone fibbed, and it wasn’t God.
Another case of exaggerated numbers occurs in the famous exodus of Moses and the Hebrews from Egyptian captivity. The most widely accepted and latest possible date of this purported event is 1447 B.C., according to a chronology based on the reign of King Solomon (1 Kings 6:1). According to the Bible, the Israelite slaves were used to build the Egyptian city of Raamses (Exodus 1:11). This doesn’t square with the detailed genealogical records of the Egyptian pharaohs, however. There wasn’t a Pharaoh named Raamses until 1320 B.C., or 127 years after the alleged Exodus.
Upon the Israelites alleged escape from their construction duties, God parted the Red Sea so that they could cross and escape from the pursuing Egyptians (Exodus 14). This was supposedly the last that Egypt would see of them, and it was as far as the Bible is concerned. Moses supposedly marched his people straight through the other Egyptian regions (several hundred miles of cities and military garrisions) without being noticed. This was an amazing feat, considering that Moses’ multitude included “about six hundred thousand on foot, that were men, beside children” (Exodus 12:37). If we assume only one wife per man and only one child for every other couple, there’s a total of more than one and one-half million escapees in addition to the “mixed multitude of flocks, and herds, even very much cattle” (Exodus 12:37-41).
This huge sea of humanity and animals then purportedly wandered around the region for forty years, likely expanding its numbers. According to modern nutritionists, a human being on minimal rations would require a quarter pound of food per day. That equates to at least 200 tons of food per day plus drinking water being generated for this human population in an inhospitable climate (i.e. mostly desert, sparse vegetation, temperatures up to 120 degrees in the summer). The Bible specifies precise locations where this multitude resided during their desert journey; in fact, they were in Kadesh-barnea for most of the 40 years (Deuteronomy 1:19). Interestingly, not one scintilla of evidence of an Israeli encampment or occupancy has ever arisen from the multitude of archaeological excavations conducted in this area, among the most-investigated in the world. One would think that several million people would have left significant human and cultural remains.
Similarly, there is no evidence for several million people invading Caanan and destroying the inhabitants’ possessions forty years after the Exodus (Numbers 33:50-54). Archaeological findings in the form of bodies, waste products, documents, and clothing tell us that the population of Caanan during this era was never greater than 100,000. Thus, we can reasonably dismiss the possibility of a group in excess of one million ever conquering and inhabiting the region. Lending credence to this is the historical record of the Egyptians, who kept records of everything. Of the thousands of fourteenth century B.C. Egyptian records uncovered in this very region detailing the governments, armies, religions, trade routes, and everyday lives of the inhabitants, none pay any respect to the millions of Israelites allegedly moving about like nomads in Kadesh-barnea.
A famous monument uncovered in Thebes in 1896 contains hieroglyphs that describe the Pharoah Merneptah entering Caanan in 1207 B.C. and easily defeating the inhabitants therein, among which were the Israelites. In fact, the stele says, “Caanan is captive with all woe. Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized, Yanoam made non-existant, Israel is wasted, bare of seed.” The Egyptians often used this last phrase, “bare of seed”, to indicate that a people’s granaries had been destroyed, making them subject to famine, and incapacitating them as a military threat to Egypt. Pharoah Merneptah’s official records don’t even mention this campaign in Caanan, almost as if it was a minor skirmish, not worthy of special note. This would not be the case if the Israelites were a mighty foe with a million or more men of fighting age. Interestingly, the Bible does not mention this humiliating defeat either, nor the fact that the large Israelite nation had to endure a crippling famine. The inescapable conclusion is that the Israelite population was not a large one, and that it may have been just a large tribe among many then existing in Caanan.
Real or Imagined Conquests?
The military campaigns of Moses, Joshua and other Israelite leaders were characterized by improbably massive armies and convenient miracles. In the battle for Jericho, God directed Joshua’s army to blow trumpets for seven days… which caused the fortified walls of the town to crumble and allowed the Israelites to enter and put everyone in it to the sword (Joshua 6:1-21). This is interesting, because never before or afterwards has the sound of a trumpet been shown to crumble a wall.
Later in the Old Testament story, God granted Joshua’s request to make the sun cease its motion so that he could defeat his enemies in the daylight (Joshua 10:12). God complied and created a length of day that had never taken place in the past (Joshua 10:13-14). Not surprisingly, there’s little credibility in this claim because astronomers at that time in Egypt, China, Babylon and South America would have certainly recorded this atypical event… and their records show no such extraordinary and unique astronomical event. Another reason that it couldn’t have occurred is because the sun doesn’t move; rather, it’s the earth that orbits the sun. Of course, God would have known this, but the author of this preposterous episode of the mythology wouldn’t have had a clue.
According to the Bible, Joshua was in command of a 40,000 man army before setting it loose against the city of Jericho (Joshua 4:13). Even so, he needed the magical trumpets to conquer the city. What is highly improbable about this story is not the trumpets, however. At about that time in human history, the Egyptians were the most powerful nation not only in the Middle East but in the entire world, and in 1285 B.C. Pharoah Raamses recorded the size of his entire army at 37,000 men. As noted above, there is no evidence of a 40,000 man army of Israelites roaming about the Middle East, obliterating cities with ease.
The consensus of archaeological findings points away from Moses or Joshua ever conquering the cities claimed by the Bible. Jericho, in particular, is a very ancient city whose history is well-preserved archaeologically. Although Joshua’s famous battle allegedly took place long after the death of Moses, there’s overwhelming archaeological evidence that suggests the city was destroyed before Moses would have even been born (Joshua 6). Of course, God would have known that and, one would think, he would have shared that insight with the author of the Joshua mythology.
More Numbers That Don’t Lie
According to the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths, the God of Abraham created the universe, the earth, and everything in it, exactly the way he told Moses, who faithfully recounted the feat in Genesis. Biblical experts have carefully calculated the age of the universe/earth by painstakingly reviewing scripture (the entire Old Testament). According to this calculation, the universe/earth was created between 4323 B.C. and 4570 B.C., making the universe/earth approximately 6,429 years old in 2013 A.D. if one was to believe the Old Testament story. There is good reason to reject this account of creation, however.
Ironically, Christian scientists Baron Georges Cuvier and James Hutton, who are now known as the fathers of the science of Geology, made the primary breakthroughs in discovering the earth’s genuine antiquity during the eighteenth century. They were the first to document multi-layered fossil columns in the earth’s surface and mixed vertical and horizontal rock layers in adjacent areas, suggesting exceedingly drawn out natural phenomena that caused these geologic formations. Within one hundred and fifty years, breakthroughs in the field of geology yielded sophisticated age-dating methods which enabled scientists to date rocks based upon the deterioration of radioactive isotopes contained within them. This discovery opened the door for scientists to place increasingly accurate estimations on the age of the earth, which is currently believed to be 4.3 billion years old. The reader will recall that Genesis states that God created the stars on the universe’s fourth day (Genesis 1:16), again approximately 6,423 years ago. Modern astronomers believe, however, that the most distant stars are more than ten billion years in age.
In 1859, Charles Darwin published his manuscript, “On the Origin of Species”, which turned out, in retrospect, to be the cornerstone of modern biology. In his book, Darwin recognized how species are specifically adapted for their respective environments and speculated on how they acquired this adaptation. He also noted the struggles among members of the species that lead to survival of only the fittest members. In other words, only those members of the species that are the most successful adapting to changes in their environment will be among the survivors. Importantly, Darwin correctly noted that these natural progressive events would take an enormous amount of time to occur. Scientists have since located simple fossilized organisms, such as bacteria, within rocks well over three billion years old. According to the theory of evolution, plants and animals both evolved from similar, primitive life forms. Since plants and animals are obviously much more complex than the earthly array of prehistoric microorganisms, we would expect their fossils to appear much closer to the earth’s surface. And, this is exactly what occurs. Through a battery of analytical techniques, scientists have been able to solidly conclude that plants and animals began appearing on earth around five hundred million years ago. Furthermore, increasingly complex animals presenting advanced nervous systems appear well after the more primitive, less evolved ones.
Human beings are much easier to date because we’re relatively new to the earth and because our distant relatives left behind extremely helpful clues. Remnants of ancient human-like creatures found in the mid-nineteenth century prompted several expeditions to search for more of these mysterious life forms. These human-like creatures would later become known as the Neanderthal, of whom we could be distant descendants. Recent fossil discoveries in Africa yielded ape-like human remains dating to around a few million years, while paleontologists uncovered two-million year-old fossils of beings that evidently used two legs to walk upon the African soil. Furthermore, modern humans, Homo sapien, began to appear around 100,000 years ago. By the time of modern man’s dominating emergence, fossil remains indicating our migration to other regions of the world become readily apparent. Only 10,000 years ago, humans became advanced farmers and hunters. Tools uncovered in the eighteenth century have now been carbon-dated to verify their belonging to this era.
What do all of these modern scientific discoveries tell us about the Genesis story? In a nutshell, that it didn’t happen that way. All of the scientific facts now in evidence dispute the Old Testament’s alleged age of the earth, the story of God’s creation of all life forms, and Noah’s Flood. This realization leads one to the obvious conclusion that the unknown author of Genesis didn’t know what he was talking about and, if he was getting divine guidance in the writing of the story, then the God of Abraham was/is not really God, because the Creator himself would be aware of the factual truth.
Copies of Copies of Copies
As has been previously discussed, biblical experts believe that the final editing of the Hebrew Torah or Pentateuch (which is comprised of the so-called Five Books of Moses and is the foundation of the Old Testament) was completed between 500 and 434 B.C. Several centuries later, after Alexander the Great had spread Greek culture throughout the Mediterranean, Ptolomey II ordered the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek. He supposedly brought together 72 Hebrew elders in Alexandria, Egypt and asked them to translate. The result was the Septaguint (“from the seventy”), which was completed sometime between the 3rd and 1st century B.C. at the Library of Alexandria. No original copy of that document exists. The oldest surviving Old Testament text is the Codex Sinaiticus, which was handwritten by a Christian in Greek in the 4th century A.D. and contains the New Testament, as well. Without the original to compare against, it is unknown whether the Codex scribe faithfully copied the Septaguint, or revised it to harmonize with the new Christian theology.
Later, the early Christian clergyman St. Jerome translated this product into Latin; it is known as the Vulgate version. This also presented an opportunity for editing and revision. In the 1500’s, Martin Luther translated the Vulgate into German, revising what was now called the “Bible” to fit his Protestant message. Even later, the Bible was translated into English in what we now know as the King James Version. Many fundamentalist Christians are firmly convinced that every word in the KJV “Holy Book” is the verbatim Word of God, despite the five linguistic removes from the original Hebrew and the fact that every new round of translation had a theological “agenda” of some sort.
“Provenance” is a term used most commonly in the antique trade to document the authenticity of a relic. If the chain of custody can be validated, that is, if it can be proved that the item is original and has not been altered in any way, then it is considered the real McCoy and has historical and monetary value. In the case of the Old Testament, there are no surviving originals in Hebrew. The well-known facts that the oldest existing translation postdates the original Hebrew to Greek translation by some five hundred years and was produced by Christian clergy casts considerable doubt on the provenance of what we commonly believe to be the Old Testament message. This is an important fact, since the Old Testament is the underpinning of the New Testament story.
In Conclusion
Virtually every statement in the Old Testament regarding events prior to 1000 B.C. (i.e. the reign of King David) is unsubstantiated by historical or scientifically-derived evidence. In many cases, the only record of important biblical characters and events is in the Old Testament itself, despite the fact that these supposedly-real characters and events allegedly impacted actual record-keeping cultures of the day. The earth’s geologic record, as preserved in the Grand Canyon, shows no evidence of a Flood that allegedly covered Mount Everest by fifteen feet of water. No remnants of Noah’s Ark have been found, nor have the whereabouts of the mystical Ark of the Covenant (the most sacred physical item in the Hebrew religion) been determined.
As a matter of fact, no original remains of the Old Testament document itself have been found to verify any of the Old Testament story offered in current versions of the Holy Bible. It is possible the Old Testament story as we know it is markedly different from the Hebrew original.
In summary, one can reasonably and rationally conclude that (a) an all-knowing, perfect God had nothing to do with the writing of the Old Testament; and, (b) many generations of priestly salesmen created, and then doctored, the mythology/sales brochure to suit the times and needs of the Hebrew, and later Christian, consumer.