The Bible For People Who Hate The Bible

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Excerpts from Book 1		HOME
"MOSES AND AARON: THE FOUNDATIONS OF JUDAISM"
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*(click cover for details)* From the chapter "The Old Testament In 60 Minutes" Genesis - [covers (so it says) a period of about 2100 years: from c3760 - 1650 BCE; all references are from the book of Genesis] A character with the generic name of God (more on his proper name later) creates the Universe, The Earth, and everything on it, in six days, around 3760 BCE. He also creates two human beings out of dirt, and puts them in a special garden. We call them Adam and Eve (1:1 - 2:24). This god gives them some odd rules to live by, and when they break one of them, the god throws them out (3:1-24). Godless in the wilderness, the two procreate. We follow their bloodline through their third son Seth, past nine generations to a man called Noah. Noah allegedly builds a large boat under instructions from this same god, saving himself and all living things (!) from a catastrophic flood (4:1 - 9:28). His three sons, according to tradition, are the progenitors of three major races: Shem - the Semites; Yaphet - the Aryans; and Ham - the Hamites (black/African peoples).	We continue down this bloodline, through the oldest son Shem, past another nine generations, to Abraham (10:1-32 / 11:10-32). We get to know Abe (12:1 - 25:18), his son Isaac (25:19 - 26:34), and his grandson Jacob (27:1 - 35:22), whose nickname becomes "Israel". These are the "patriarchs" of the Israelite people, and all who descend from Jacob/Israel will be called "Israelites". Jacob/Israel has twelve sons (35:23-25). He greatly favours his eleventh son Joseph, and in vengeful jealousy, Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery. Joseph ends up in Egypt. He eventually climbs to a powerful political position, working for the pharaoh. He gains control of all the Egyptians' food during a drought, and then he bankrupts the Egyptian people and turns them all into sharecroppers for the pharaoh, making the pharaoh rich and himself as well (37:1 - 44:34). His brothers and their families are brought to Egypt to live with Joseph in comfort (45:1 - 47:12; 47:27), while all the Egyptians have been enslaved to him (47:13-26). Genesis closes with the death of Joseph in Egypt, old and of natural causes, and his embalming, sometime around (perhaps) 1650 BCE (50:22-26). From the chapter "Intro To Moses" Moses presents us with more problems than we should expect. The story we've all heard tells of a good and humble man, charged by God to go into Egypt and save the horribly oppressed Israelite slaves. With the help of this terrifying god, the long-suffering Moses leads the slaves out of bondage, whips them into shape, and takes them through a few battles. This prepares them for their coup-de-grace: they will invade a beautiful land	promised to them by this god, murder all of the peoples who live there, and steal their stuff. These are God's dictates. The meek and gentle Moses is only acting on orders. Throughout the legend we are told of dazzling wonders and miracles worked by this god through Moses. Now, as odd as this yarn is to begin with, it should still seem fairly simple. We should be able to open the Bible, find the beginning of Moses' story, and just follow it through, right? Wrong. The 'Five Books Of Moses' - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy - tell much more than just the adventures of Moses. They are a tapestry of tales and rules and concepts woven into a religious foundation. Before we start, the reader has to discard the typical idea of what a 'priest' is. This word will be used often in these chapters, and if modern images are attached to it, the stories won't be understood. The Catholic and Anglican 'priests' of today are only the faintest echo of what a priest once was, and shouldn't be thought of at all during our adventure. Instead, for a more accurate picture of the ancient priest and his responsibilities, the reader should imagine the typical image of a wizard, or shaman, or 'witch-doctor'. Those men always held high places among their peoples. Some worked magic. Some frightened their followers. Some were thought to be possessed, or directly in contact with spirits and demons, and some were thought to talk to gods (these men were called "seers" by the ancient Israelites, but were later renamed "prophets" (1Samuel 9:9).
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From the chapter "Moses Part One: The Real Moses" The following inscription was left for us about a thousand years before the time of Moses, by King Sargon of the Akkadian people. The Akkadians were ancestors of the Israelites. Sargon was a character revered in his time for his buildup of Akkadian power, and for his take-over of Sumeria. He tells of his origins: "I am Sargon the Great King, the King of Akkad. My mother knew not my father. My family were the rulers of the land. My city was the city of Atzu-pirani which is on the banks of the Euphrates. My mother conceived me; in a secret place she brought me forth. She placed me in an ark [box] of bull rushes. With tar she sealed it, closed the door, and threw me into the river which did not enter into the box to me. The river carried me. To the dwelling of Akki the Water-Carrier it brought me. Akki the Water-Carrier, in the goodness of his heart, lifted me up from the river. He brought me up as his own son. Akki the Water-Carrier placed me with a tribe of foresters. Of this tribe of foresters, Ishtar made me king, and for * years I reigned over them." translator's note: perhaps a tribe of Woodsmen, a rude race of men. Sargon became their captain. *unfortunately this part of the text was destroyed [from Records Of The Past, Vol 5, translation by H. F. Talbot 1875]	At a glance we can see that this story of Moses in a box of bullrushes, found on a river and raised by his finder, was not original. It is incredible to think of a princess hiding a male slave child in the palace when the pharaoh, her father, wanted them killed. Perhaps she had an illicit affair with an Israelite man. Perhaps Moses really was her baby. Why else would she do such a thing? Where They Crossed - Though tradition has always told us that Yahweh parted the Red Sea, this is not where the Israelites claimed to cross. The Red Sea, lying between Egypt and Sinai, is a deep chasm, with a width of nearly two hundred miles at its broadest point. Parting this particular sea and getting across it would have been a miraculous event for sure. Think of what you'd have to walk through on the sea bed! Even parting the northwestern tip of the Red Sea - known as the Gulf of Suez, only ten miles wide at its narrowest point - would be pretty dazzling. But it would have been nearly impossible for the Israelites to get to the shore of this sea, due to the terrain, and it would have been pointless anyway to go sixty or seventy miles southward just to experience this miracle. They could cross right where they were. There were several well-traveled routes.	From the chapter "Moses Part Five: Rules!" The Perfect Israelite Man The Perfect Israelite Man celebrates three feasts every year: Passover and The Feast Of Unleavened Bread in the first month of the year, and The Festival Of Booths in the seventh month (details in Feasts section). Through the whole year, he makes all his first-born males (animal and human) available to Yahweh (Ex 12;14-20,43-49 & 13:3-16). Ezra clears Israel of immigrant women and their half-breed children - by Darrin Crosgrove from Book 1
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He celebrates the sabbath day every week (Ex 16;22-30). He follows the Ten Commandments (Ex 20:1-17), which will be examined closely soon. There are rules for buying and selling Israelite slaves. For instance, if he buys a man's daughter as a slave, he knows he can't resell her to foreigners. She is Israelite property only. If he gives her to his son as a wife, he will treat her as a daughter. But if he loses interest in her, even as a slave, then her father can buy her back (Ex 21:1-11). His punishment for murder is death. His punishment for causing disfigurement is to have the same done back to him: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. And there are payments he must make for violence causing accidental miscarriage or accidental death, for a neighbour being gored by his ox, and for a neighbour's ox falling into a hole on his property (Ex 21:12-36). The Perfect Israelite man doesn't steal or set fire to things that aren't his, and if his oxen break loose and graze in another man's field, he pays for what they ate. When he gives or pays something to another man, and that gift or payment goes missing, if the thief is not found the Israelite man will go to the temple and guarantee in front of Yahweh that he didn't touch the stuff. He doesn't make bad business deals to cheat people. If he sleeps with a virgin he pays her father properly. He kills witches, and men who have sex with animals. He is kind to strangers and widows, but he'll kill anyone who worships gods other than Yahweh. He never charges interest on loans to other Israelites. He would never hate Yahweh and he won't curse any rulers (!). All of his first produce goes to Yahweh (the Levites), and he won't eat a beast that he has found already-dead (Ex 22:1-31).	Among the medical rules for priests: Dealing with lepers - all skin conditions and even fungus growing on clothes or in a home are identified as leprosy. Prescription: quarantine (Lev 13:1-59). Infested clothes and tents to be burned. If the leper heals, sprinkle the blood of a turtledove on him. Total charge: two turtledoves, two lambs, cereal, and about a pint of oil (Lev 14:1-57). From the chapter "Moses' Appendix" The Name Of God (appendix #3) All ancient people had gods. Their gods always had proper names. Though most people don't know it, the god of the Old Testament had a name. In Consonantal Hebrew (no vowels were used) it was spelled YHWH. In English it is "Yahweh", roughly pronounced yaw-hway. In Hebrew the J makes the same sound as our Y, so you can also spell his name JHWH - Jahweh. This is where the Rastafarian "Jah" comes from. And in Hebrew the W is pronounced like our V, so it's also JHVH - Jahveh. Switch the vowels and you get Jehvah. Add an O in the middle and you have Jehovah. Yahweh, Jah and Jehovah are all translations of the Hebrew YHWH. Although this word has never been fully understood, there is agreement that its root means "I Am" or "I Will Be". When Moses asks this god his name, the god says "YHWH". It's been variously translated as "I Am That I Am" and "I Will Prove To Be What I Will Prove To Be", and so on. In English translations "Yahweh" is almost always rendered as "The Lord". Here in The Bible For People Who Hate The Bible those instances have all been changed back to Yahweh so that the reader will understand better the men who wrote this stuff.	Was Yahweh really that new? If we look back to Egypt, where the Israelites lived just before they discovered Yahweh, we find the high Egyptian god Ra spoken of with these familiar words: "Ra the Sun, The Almighty God, appeared and said: "I Am Who Am! I am Khepri the Lifegiver. When I - Ra the Sun - appeared, life appeared. Every living creature appeared after I appeared. There was no heaven and no earth. There was no dry land and no reptiles in Egypt. Then I spoke and living creatures appeared..."" (from The Story Of Ra and The Serpent, preserved on a fourth century BCE papyrus, the original is believed to date back two thousand years earlier; see Old Testament Parallels by Matthews and Benjamin, ch 1 pt 3.) Ra referred to himself as I AM WHO AM. Yahweh referred to himself as I AM THAT I AM. Moses used some Egyptian ideas to build his god. From the chapter "The Old Testament In 60 Minutes" Ecclesiastes - also credited to Solomon, but scholars place it around 250 BCE. It's hard to guess how this piece made it into the OT. The title means "preacher" essentially, and this work was written by some Jewish elder or religious leader. His attitude is remarkable. As he views the state of the Israelite people, and looks back at their history of oppression brought on by their anti-social, our-god-will-kill-your-gods behaviour, he reviews the thoughts that Judaism taught him to speak as truths, and questions why anyone should believe them.
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Moses holds his arms in the air, magically causing the Israelites to win their battle against the Amalekites - by Matt Brown from Book 1		He observes that all the things people do, even the most holy things, are done only for vanity's sake (1:2,14 & 2:1, 11-26 & 3:19 & 4:4,7,8 & 5:10 & 6:2,4,9,11 & 7:6,15 & 8:10,14 & 9:9 & 11:8,10 & 12:8). Religious devotion is vanity; a man acts piously in front of people so that they will consider him holy, and in front of Yahweh so that the god will favour him. A man does kind things only to feel good about himself and so that he'll be respected as a good man. All is vanity. The writer observes that the world is upside down: "I have seen slaves on horses, and princes walking on foot like slaves." (10:7), meaning that many of those ruling the world as kings (those on horses) are idiots and should be in the place of slaves, while men of truly great character who should be recognized as princes walk unappreciated among the lowest. He notes that a man's whole lifetime of labour can be for nothing, and his savings can end up being squandered by a foolish son who inherited them. So what is it all for? He has also decided that the guarantees of religion can not be trusted. As a follower of old Judaism he does not believe in life after death. It was guaranteed that Yahweh would do evil to his Chosen People if they didn't obey him in life, but nothing at all was guaranteed AFTER life. So he questions the point of obeying strict rules. Is it purely for vanity's sake that a man is a rigid follower of doctrines? Does he follow a religion just so he can think himself to be better than others?

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