The book of genesis is the first book for a number of religions. It is the first book in the Pentateuch – the first five books that are common to Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In Greek, Pentateuch means “five scrolls”. In Judaism, the Pentateuch is called the Torah, which means “law” or “teaching”. The book of genesis is the first book in the old testament. The Pentateuch is not literally in the Islamic texts (the Quran), however those texts do acknowledge the Tawrat (Torah) as a holy book sent by god to moses.

Many people base their religion on a warm and fuzzy feeling. They believe (hope?) that there are at least a few underlying facts supporting their belief – although they are never quite sure where those facts begin and end, or how they are defined. However outside of those facts there is always a bottomless pit of uncertainty that gets relabeled as “faith”. That faith comes about via: indoctrination, partial readings, stories retold by others, embellishment by others, a lack of scientific and logical education, traditions, fears, and a willingness to simply lump things in the too hard basket. There is therefore an unfortunate gap between facts and faith. Some people spend their entire lives trying to convince themselves (and unfortunately, others) that there is no gap. It never ends well.

The stumbling block for all religions comes about when the various texts underpinning the religion are examined. There is a Latin phrase “Se tacuisses, philosophus mansisses” which translates as “If you had been silent, you would have remained a philosopher” (or in simpler words: “if you’d kept your mouth shut we might have thought you were clever”). This applies to religion because people’s warm and fuzzy feelings remain intact as long as they keep themselves “silent” by not inquiring too deeply into the texts upon which their religion is based.

Being the first book for many religions gives the book of genesis some importance; after all, everyone has read at least the beginning of it. Well, the first sentence if nothing else. The book of genesis deals with religion’s attempt to explain the beginnings of everything – which is a natural topic that has interested and confounded people for as long as they have been able to ask questions. As we’ll see, it would have been better for the religious if their texts had remained silent on that topic (and many other topics).

There is a great deal more (than the “origin” story) in the book of genesis, and this page will go through those things in excruciating detail – chapter by chapter. For a summary of the “beginning” fables in the various religions, please see In the beginning? (a page on this web site).

Before starting, it’s important to address a common criticism: that some analysis is too literal and that it’s not taking into account the underlying metaphorical messages that are present in the text. To find out why that’s a problematic approach, see the page Is the word an analogy? (link to a page on this site). So if you are the sort of person who believes that the hard-to-explain parts of the text have to fall under the it’s-just-a-metaphor” category, then go for it. The following analysis is aimed at addressing the work in it’s most literal form – because that is the way it was written, and that’s the way that it is used by many people today.

It’s believed that genesis was compiled between 800-550 BCE, however the earliest fragments of the work are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, circa 1st century BCE.

As usual, the following narrative uses lower case for character and place names if there is no certainty (e.g. no credible evidence) for the existence of that entity.

Chapter 1

“In the beginning god created the heaven and the earth“. There you have it: everything that genesis is going to say on the origins of the cosmos. Does it really answer anything? Of course not. Who created god? How was matter created? The religious love to point out “if there is design, there must have been a designer”, however when that dissection tool is pointed back on themselves, they collapse into statements such as “god is eternal”. Whoever or whatever created god must have been greater than god – by definition. So we got the second-tier guy?

It is speculated that moses wrote the Pentateuch, however since he is a fictional character (who died before the fifth book was completed) and who could not possibly have been around to witness creation (even if he was real), it’s all speculation. The text was written by unknown authors writing at an unknown time, although it is now believed that there were at least four distinct authors involved. The Pentateuch is believed to have been finalized in or around the 500s BCE, and not around 1,500 BCE (by the moses character) as fundies suggest. Regardless, the events in the story are either believed to have happened around 4,000 years BCE (by young-earth creationists) or 13.8 billion years BCE (by old-earth creationists). See the pages under In the beginning? for the large number of problems with these dates and timeline.

So there is an obvious disconnect between the events in the text and the writing down of that speculation … by about 1,000 years.

Continuing… “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of god moved upon the face of the waters“. There is so much wrong with this that it is dealt with elsewhere on this site, but how were there waters if there was no form and everything was void?

“And god said, let there be light: and there was light“. This page is not going to go into every piece of text in detail (see elsewhere on this site for more details), but these are the important first bits that everyone knows, and so they are worthy of mention. Fundies often discredit other beliefs as just being “magic” (e.g. they don’t allow their kids to watch “Harry Potter”), however they never acknowledge the huge amounts of magic in their own religious writings. Shouldn’t the omniscient creator of the universe have been able to write down how light was created (let alone what light is)?

Then there’s a cascade of events in which god divides light into day and night, constructs a firmament (“heaven”) to “divide the waters from the waters“, organizes the dry bits to be land, creates vegetation, creates the sun and the moon, creates animals and birds and insects, and finally creates men and women – who were to have dominion over the animals.

As an aside, the Enuma Elish is the Babylonian creation story and tells of a god creating the world from a divided sea. It predates the writing of genesis, so it seems that the author(s) of genesis decided to do a spot of updating (as opposed to writing an original account of what their god did).

All of the above happens on a schedule of (six) “days”, however it’s not explained how there could have been a day before the sun was created?

An example of the gap (that fundies never look too closely at) is: cattle were specifically mentioned in the above creation list, however cattle were selectively bred by humans – who didn’t exist yet.

Near the end of the chapter, god passes on his advice to the first couple: “be fruitful, and multiply“. That and “don’t eat from one tree” are pretty much the manual for life handed down by the omniscient creator of the universe.

At every stage, god takes a look at what he has accomplished and declares it to be “good”. Really? As opposed to all those other less-than-good things god had already tried? How is an omniscient creator of the universe not supposed to create “good” things? This is evidence that the text was invented by men.

The real problem is that the entire work was written by ignorant and superstitious iron-age men who were (admittedly) doing their best to come up with something plausible. They failed. Because everything was an invention, fundies today state all sorts of things to try to cover the inconsistencies. Primarily, anything difficult to explain is stated to be allegory or an analogy. The problem with that approach is that they become very literal when there’s anything that suits their end goals – e.g. the hatred of some people and practices with which they don’t agree.

No, the text is meant to be an exact description of how iron-age men believed the world to have come about. They did their best, but they were wrong.

Chapter 2

It’s obviously hard work creating an observable universe with two trillion galaxies in six days, so the text starts with much emphasis about how god had to rest on the 7th day. Old-Earth creationists are fond of saying that “day” is a metaphor for a much longer time, e.g. thousands of years, but if that is true, did god really just do nothing for thousands of years on the 7th “day”? Why? Sorry, the guys who wrote this stuff, really believed that a “day” was 24-hours.

It’s even more mystifying that the religious people who base their lives on this “beginning” can’t see that the text has been plagiarized from the Sumerian legend of enuma elish – written in about 1,100 BCE, which is at least 500 years before the Pentateuch was written. So fundies, if yours is the one true religion, how come the writers of your fundamental texts copied and adapted them from an earlier fictional story?

The text then retells the creation myth in a different way. It’s clear that a different author (to genesis 1) was having a go at providing an update. For some reason, the text states that all plants were really just “in the earth” but didn’t have a chance to grow because god had not made it rain yet. The solution was for god to create a mist that “watered the whole face of the ground“. However before anything had a chance to grow, god formed man from “the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul“.

Now we have a problem. Dust is the decayed matter of dead organisms mixed with particles of rocks and minerals, and therefore shouldn’t exist yet. So “dust” is thought to mean “dirt”, however dirt doesn’t have the correct constituents to make a living being – so more magic. Once again, note that there are older Sumerian myths in which people are made from clay, so it’s obvious that the writers of genesis were influence by other creation stories. Word of the omniscient creator of the universe?

Next, the lord “planted a garden eastward in eden“. Eastward of what? On a globe, there’s always something further east, so such a description only makes sense if the writers believed that they were standing on a finite plane – which they did. In the garden the lord plonked the man he’d just formed.

The lord then caused plants to grow. In the “garden” he planted a tree of life as well as a “tree of knowledge of good and evil“. It’s not explained to which genus the later belonged. Note that in this chapter, man is created before plants – which contrasts with the order in the first chapter. Note also that the purpose of the “tree of life” is never explained. If the first couple were immortal (prior to eve reaching for the fruit peeler), why have a tree of life?

Then there’s a lengthy geography lesson describing the four branches to a river that flowed out of the garden of eden:

• The river pison which flowed into the land of havilah (where there is bdellium and onyx stone). The location of this river is not known today.
• The river Gihon which flowed into Ethiopia. This is geographically ridiculous, so it’s speculated that this river was really Karun (in Iran).
• The river Hiddekel which flowed to the east of Assyria. It’s thought that this is the Tigris river which flows through Syria and Iraq.
• The river Euphrates which originates in Turkey and flows through Syria into Iraq (where it joins the Tigris river).

Needles to say, it’s not possible to use the above to located the “garden of eden”. Sorry fundies. Why couldn’t the omniscient creator of the universe have come up with some sort of longitude and latitude system to help us all out?

The lord then permitted the man in the garden to eat of all of the trees except from the tree of knowledge of good and evil – lest he would die. Why was it necessary to keep some poor, lonely guy in the dark? What’s wrong with knowledge? What was good and evil? Exactly why did god plant that tree? As a test? Didn’t the omniscient creator of the universe know what the outcome of that test would be? There hadn’t been a death yet, so why would the man understand that concept? Anyhoo…

The lord then pondered his creation and decided that it wasn’t good for the man to be alone. So god had made an imperfect situation that included loneliness? Since it follows immediately in the text, it seems that the lord’s solution for loneliness was to create the animals and birds for the (now named) “adam”. For some reason, adam got to name “every living creature“. There are almost 2 million described animal species on Earth, however it is believed that there are almost 9 million species in total. That’s quite a bit of naming. Or perhaps he only named the handful of animals that get depicted in children’s drawings of the garden-of-eden scenario?

To really fix the loneliness problem, god made adam fall into a deep sleep and, after extracting one of his ribs, formed a woman out of it. There isn’t enough material in a man’s rib to form a woman, and there isn’t the correct type of cells in a rib to form everything needed for a complete person, so this is more magic. So fundies claim that evolution is nonsense but have no trouble believing that a woman can be made from a rib? What a strange world we live in.

Incidentally, there is a Sumerian myth in which the god enki entered a sacred garden, ate forbidden fruit, and was cursed. To help fix various curses ninhursag bore enki seven daughters, one of which was name ninti – who was the daughter born of the rib. Once again, it’s obvious that the writer(s) of genesis were reusing older creation myths to suit their goals.

Speaking of strange, the text then states: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife“. But there was no concept of fathers and mothers yet in the text! It seems that the writer(s) weren’t even that clever if they forgot basic things while they were inventing the creation story on behalf of the omniscient creator of the universe.

The chapter is rounded out by pointing out that the man and his wife were not ashamed due to their nakedness. Wife? After what ceremony? So is this a precedence that a man and woman can be married simply by standing next to each other? Or did adam and “the woman” have a quickie to seal the deal? Note that this is the first marriage in the old and new testaments and it is non-consensual. Spoiler: every single marriage to follow is non-consensual.

Chapter 3

Sorry that this is such a long one, but everything pretty much revolves around this chapter.

It turns out that the “serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field” and said unto the (still unnamed) woman that it was okay to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because it would open her eyes to the knowledge of the gods. Despite being (briefly) reluctant, the woman came around, ate the fruit, and convinced her husband to eat it.

Okay, here we go. So the snake was not only subtle, but could think through a plan with consequences and talk a person into doing something against the wishes of the omniscient creator of the universe? Animals can’t do that, so that’s magic. Why did god design a snake that had such intelligence, brain power and motivation? Snakes don’t have the physiology that permits such speech, so that’s more magic. And remember that the woman didn’t posses the concept of death, so why was the threat of that ever a deterrent to her? How does biting into the flesh of a piece of fruit transfer knowledge? Through the teeth? More magic.

Every single person on this planet uses knowledge to some extent, and almost all people attempt to acquire knowledge throughout their lives. We do that unknowingly when we are young and we generally keep doing it as we get older. We learn to get better jobs, we learn to play sport better, we learn to be in more successful relationships, we learn to be healthier, etc. Obviously the only people who had problems with knowledge acquisition were the superstitious and ignorant iron-age men who wrote the texts that they hoped would control the population.

Consider the amount of knowledge that we have today – which is incredible. If you doubt that, read through the factual bits of over 7 million articles on Wikipedia. So god doesn’t mind us accumulating comprehensive knowledge over the millennia, but getting it quickly by biting into a piece of fruit is worthy of death? Why?

So it turns out that 100% of the population at the time of the story were desirous of gaining knowledge. Big deal. The overwhelming number of people today would do the same should they come across a tricky bit of fruit. So what? Shouldn’t people be judged on what they do with knowledge, not just that they have it?

But of course, the true “message” of the story is about which being is really in charge and what happens when a creation of that being acts in a way that can be interpreted as being disobedient. And it is an interpretation. How many creatures were there that had talked through an issue with the first couple on Earth? That’d be two, right – god and the snake. How did the woman know that the snake wasn’t sent to refine the previous plan? To a god, us meager humans must be like pet animals are to humans. Does it make sense to put a pet on death row because it does something that we didn’t want it to do – and something that they were trained (told) not to do?

And why the absolute need for obedience? Think about it. So the omniscient creator of the universe created at least 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the visible part of that universe yet demands obedience from a much lesser species (to that creator) on just one of those planets? Why? And then he condemns every subsequent member of that species to death because of a single infringement to the very first test given to that species on that planet? Why? Does that seem like sane behavior from a “creator” of everything? Or does it seem like the improbable fairy tale created by men who didn’t have a clue why humans were on that planet – authors who didn’t even realize that they were on a planet? Humans have become the dominant species on the planet because we are not “obedient”. We push boundaries and try things – sometimes with poor results, but often with good results. Blind obedience, especially in the absence of any sort of plausible rule book, is a terrible strategy.

And what does kill (as a result of the fall of disobedience) mean? Eating of the fruit didn’t cause instant death as a punishment, so we went from being immortal to only living 70-80 years? Why? It will be interesting to see the reaction of fundies when science starts to greatly increase the life expectancy of humans – as is expected over the next century or so. So the fall of adam and eve resulted in a punishment of truncated lifespans that science is going to start reversing? That will be interesting.

The result of eating the forbidden fruit was to make the first couple ashamed of their nakedness, and they quickly invented the sewing industry to construct aprons made from fig leaves. Newly-married people generally aren’t that ashamed of nakedness in front of each other, and since there were no documented people around, perhaps they were worried what the snake might observe? Exactly what experience did they have that would lead them to believe that there are situations arising from nakedness that result in ashamedness? There are such places as nudist beaches and nudist colonies today and the people who use those facilities aren’t ashamed of their nakedness, so the act of eating a piece of fruit didn’t flip some sort of “ashamed” switch in all of god’s creation. It sounds like god did a bit of thought-planting with adam and eve to achieve a certain result. If that’s the case, then it won’t be the last time he does that. Free will, anyone?

One day god was walking in the garden and the ashamed couple hid from him. Apparently the lord god called unto adam and said “where art thou?“. Really, the omniscient creator of the universe was unable to locate one man in some local foliage? After admitting that he was ashamed, the jig was up because the lord immediately put two and two together and figured out that the wrong fruit salad had been consumed. Nowadays that’s called entrapment, and it’s pretty obvious what the outcome was always going to be after god baited the trap.

Probably because the marriage was forced, adam immediately pointed his finger at the woman, who immediately pointed her finger at the snake. Before dealing with his beloved creation, god decided to curse the snake to evermore crawl on the ground and to eat dust. How did the snake move prior to being cursed? Did it have legs? How very prophetic of the evolution we would eventually discover pertaining to snakes. And of course, no larger animal can survive just eating dust, so either god got that wrong or that’d be more magic.

Then there’s a weird passage: “And I will put enmity between thee (the snake) and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel“. The religious go to great lengths to have these words prove all sorts of prophetic things (e.g. that they foreshadows jesus), when all it obviously means is that god was going to make life difficult for the snake’s descendants due to the actions of the woman’s descendants – like people stepping on the heads of snakes (as we are still inclined to do).

The lord then turns his attention to the unhappy couple and promises that women shall have “sorrow” when bringing forth children, and, weirdly, that husbands shall rule over their women. Well, duh. The author(s) of the fairy tale were paternalistic misogynists after all. By the way, that bit about painful births was to affect about 50 billion women in the subsequent 6,000 years – for something that they had no part in (eating a piece of forbidden fruit).

Adam escaped specific punishment (why?) however he got lumped into the fate of every subsequent person: that they would end up dying (returning to dust). Bummer! Yep, that’s right: no verbal or written warnings; straight to death. Note that there is no mention of an afterlife. That’s a bit strange, isn’t it? Did the one who made the eternal plan forget about the afterlife bit that is so important to every religious person today?

So instead of eating such a delicious specific type of fruit again, all humanity would be condemned to eat just the other types of fruit in the world (yum, yum) and things that arise from the farming of the fields, like bread, pasta, cakes, breakfast cereal, noodles and cookies (yum, yum)?

If the whole fruit-of-knowledge was a metaphor, then what is the meaning of telling adam that he has to eat of the field instead of that one fruit from now on? Is it possible to miss out from not eating one metaphorical fruit? And if it wasn’t a metaphor: it is estimated that there are now over 2,000 types of fruit, but the curse was that we can’t eat just one of them? Which one? Was it an apple? Sorry to spoil things, but it is estimated that there are over 7,500 varieties of apples in the world. Does anyone today really care that morally we should only eat 7,499 of them? Was the fruit we are now missing out on nicer than, say, mangoes, pineapple, strawberries or peaches? Probably not a huge loss then. As mentioned, the whole text goes very silent on the purpose or fate of the tree of life (that other tree in the garden).

Which bits were a metaphor and which bits weren’t? So adam and eve were real were they? Okay, then was the snake real? If not, how did the real eve get the message about eating the forbidden fruit? So the snake was real? And it talked? The crazy thing is, that a competent writer could have done a really interesting job in just having adam and eve wrestle with the issue themselves. Or even better, perhaps eve could have first wrestled with the issue herself (think Gollum in The Two Towers film arguing with himself about betraying the hobbits). Unfortunately, the author(s) of the fairy tale were not competent writers.

Then came a little more housekeeping because adam decided to name his wife “eve”. Yep, just like he had to do for all the other animals. The choice of name is interesting. It was chosen because “she was the mother of all living“. So, to all those who try to get around the problems of inbreeding and incest by theorizing that there must have been other people in the world, how do you reconcile that belief with eve being the mother of all living (genesis 3:20)?

Note that it isn’t possible for two of a species to viably kick-start a population of that species. Science has shown that there is a 50/500 rule. Namely, that it requires 50 individuals to avoid short-term inbreeding and 500 for long-term genetic health. And that’s absolute minimums, with more realistic numbers being in the thousands for good population health. Fundies sometimes speculate that adam and eve were created perfect and therefore didn’t suffer the same sort of genetic problems that would result from two people today trying to create a new population. That’s nonsense of course because both adam and eve proved themselves to not be perfect (if you believe that sort of thing), and they had their little “fall” before starting to procreate.

And on a point of order, exactly what did every single subsequent person do to suffer mortality? It was adam and eve that ate of the forbidden fruit; we didn’t get a chance, now did we?

It turns out that adam and eve were only proficient in making aprons because god was then forced to kill something to make coats out of skins to clothe them. This turned out to be necessary because they were then asked to close the door to the garden of eden on their way out.

When they were gone, god “placed at the east of the garden of eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life“. That’s pretty reasonable because it was obviously a dangerous place to start picking food for lunch. Um, where is the cherubim and the flaming sword today? We have mapped (at least to a great extent) all of the Middle East and no cherubim, flaming sword, tree of life, or garden of eden have been located. Did the tree of life die and cause the cherubim to pack up the sword and go home? In case you are tempted to go looking, a cherubim is a powerful, winged celestial being, most likely with human and animal (lion, ox, eagle) features. You’ll definitely know it if you spot it.

Or is the whole lot a fairy tale written by superstitious and ignorant iron-age men? A talking snake? Really?

Chapter 4

Leaving the garden of eden had some benefit because adam and eve quickly got on the job and produced two sons: cain – who became the first farmer, followed by abel – who became the first shepherd. Both lads brought forth “first” examples of their work and offered them to the lord in the form of a sacrifice. As an aside, for those who claim that god loves animals, they definitely ignore his propensity of requiring the killing of those animals simply as a gesture in his name.

It’s not explained why, but god was pleased with the dead animals (from abel) but unhappy with the dying plants (from cain). Why? Note that it’s trivial to select the “firstlings” of a flock but good luck selecting the “firstlings” of the “fruit of the ground“. The result: cain sad. For some reason, the omniscient creator of the universe had to ask cain why he was “wroth”. Come on god, please keep up: this poor guy had just spent a year farming (by himself) and then honoring you (despite no stated requirement to do so) and you rejected his well-intentioned gesture (without explanation). Could cain’s wrothness be because god’s reaction was irrational?

The “no stated requirement to do so” part is interesting. There are many times that the author(s) simply injected behavior and actions that were the result of text found much later in the books of the old testament. The practice of sacrificing things to a “god” is an example, and that is a clear indication that the text is an invention of authors long after the events contained in the text – as opposed to a description of events that were supposed to have happened. In this case, invented 3,500 years later. How hard would it have been to add a few sentences containing god’s rules pertaining to sacrifice? And to be honest, cain only did what was required by generations (far down the line) when they had to make their “meat” offerings (see leviticus, chapter 2 for more detail).

For some reason, god then equates cain’s lackluster performance with sin: “if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door“. What is “well” and what is “sin”? At that stage there were no rules given for sinful behavior, and how is picking and offering crops sinful? This is just a huge, meaningless generalization at this point in the narrative.

Perhaps because he’d just been dissed by the omniscient creator of the universe, cain decided to take out his wroth on his brother by murdering him in a field. At that time there were no rules as to killing, however this overreaction is clearly a literary device as opposed to a likely outcome from the events. Even though he is supposed to be all-knowing, god has to ask cain about the location of his brother … prompting the reply “I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?”.

The clear indicator that the text is a fairy tale invented by iron-age men is that the god character is just some guy who gets treated like just some guy. The real reaction of cain should have been: “Holy crap: the being who created everything (including me) is out to bust my ass so I better not sass him to his face”. And the “face” bit is interesting because at no point in the text is there an explanation as to how god presents himself. If you didn’t attach some sort of deity-like component to god, you’d swear (from the text) that he’s just some guy wandering the field – like a John-Wayne-type marshal character come to investigate the disappearance of a brother. Did god materialize for these interactions? Was he just a voice in the sky? Today, hearing voices in the sky gets someone placed under a necessary form of institutionalized care. Back then, it was obviously instruction from a god, right?

Again, the all-knowing one exhibited a blind spot because he had to ask cain about what he had done (apparently the voice of abel’s blood cried out to god from the ground – which is more magic). It turned out that god wasn’t that interested in due process and trial procedure because he went straight to conviction and punishment – which turned out to be a ban on farming and a life of being a fugitive and a vagabond. That actually sounded like a win for cain because since he’d already shown himself to be a dab hand at killing, you’d have thought that the carefree hunter-gatherer life-on-the-road, as opposed to the hard life of a farmer wouldn’t have been all bad.

However cain wasn’t keen and claimed that the punishment was “greater than I can bear” and that “every one that findeth me shall slay me“. And that’s another problem because, according to the text, the sum total of people on the planet at that stage was three. What other people (remembering that “eve” was the mother of all things – see above) were there? That’s another clear example of how the writers forgot things (like logic) when they put pen to paper 3,500 years after the “events”.

We then have the first case of god changing his plan when confronted with an update from his creation. (There will be many more examples of that in later books.) For some reason, despite the murder, god kept cain alive and put a mystical mark on him (in an unstated location) that somehow portrayed the message that anyone who killed him would have vengeance taken on them – sevenfold. How does a mark give that detail? What other people? Sevenfold what? If someone killed cain, would they and six others be killed? Charming. Or perhaps the one person would just be killed seven times? Much better.

Compare cain’s “punishment” for jealousy-motivated murder with the outcome of the guy who was stoned to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath (numbers, chapter 15). Fairness and consistency were not high priorities in the texts.

So it was “exit, stage east” for cain as he was sent to the “land of nod” – which was stated to be “east of eden”. Really, there was an entire other land? Presumably that land would also include people? Which people?

The concept of being a “vagabond” seemed to escape cain because he settled down in nod, acquired a wife and had a son named enoch. It turned out that cain abandoned his farming heritage and somehow acquired the skills to build a city (presumably without permits) … which he imaginatively named “enoch”. One could even claim that cain was rewarded for his murderous actions – with his very own protective mark from the omniscient creator of the universe.

It goes without saying that there is zero evidence for the existence of either the land of nod or the city of enoch. And that’s a pity because the city of enoch would have been the very first city in human history (according to the texts). However, that’s not possible because the first city is recognised to be Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia and it is known to have existed (as a settlement) 1,000 years before the book of genesis claims that cain started to build his city. Sorry literalists.

And to labor the point, from where did cain’s wife come? Remember that “eve” was the mother of all things (see above), so the only thing that can be deduced from the text is that cain “knew” his (not mentioned) sister, or his sister’s daughter to begat enoch. Eww! This is not the enoch that is mentioned in the next chapter – the one that failed to achieve death (something that was promised to all people after adam and eve’s “fall”).

For those claiming that much of the above is a metaphor (e.g. that “nod” means “to wander”), were the people above, and to follow, not real? Did enoch build a metaphorical city? Sounds much more like the author(s) of the fairy tale (3,500 years later) got things completely muddled up rather than have constructed some elaborate metaphor.

The chapter then dissolves into a series of begats (of males unless stated):

• enoch (with an unnamed woman) begat irad.
• irad (with an unnamed woman) begat mehujael.
• mehujael (with an unnamed woman) begat methusael.
• methusael (with an unnamed woman) begat lamech.
• lamech and his wife adah begat:
  • jabal, who became the father of those who dwell in tents and of those who have cattle.
  • jubal, who became the father of all that handle the harp and organ. The first mention of music.
• lamech and his other wife zillah begat:
  • tubalcain, who became an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.
  • naamah, a sister. The first acknowledged female birth.

There’s no explanation of where any of the top-level people came from. Also, polygamy is explicitly stated. So fundies, is marriage between one man and one woman?

The weird thing about the lineage above is the enoch…methusael-begat-lamech bit. That’s eerily similar to the enoch-begat-methuselah-begat-lamech bit that is to follow in the next chapter when detailing the lineage of cain’s brother seth. It seems likely that one of the author(s) of this (or the other) fable got their stories mixed up. That probability is reinforced by the fact that the “cain” story has quite an elaborate start but then vanishes entirely from the remaining texts (sorry for the spoiler). That’s right, if you’re keen to find out more about jabal, jubal, tubalcain or naamah, then you’re out of luck.

On a point of order, humans first used iron around 3000-2000 BCE (in ancient Turkey), which is at least 1,000 years later than the events described in the book of genesis, but about 2,000 years before the book was actually written. That’s another thing that the author(s) forgot.

A story is (sort of) progressed by lamech coming home one day and announcing to his wives that he’s just killed a man. Far from receiving punishment, it’s stated that if anyone were to avenge the killing, lamech would be avenged 77-fold. Yep, 11 times more avenging than would have happened in the case of cain. This lays the claim for the lamest story every told.

These begats took time (see the next chapter), and for all of that time, god is noticeably absent from the story. The more you look at it, the more it seems that cain’s lineage is just an attempt at a tacked-on story that fizzled out, e.g. didn’t find favor with later authors.

Finally, it’s back to adam and eve because the text states that they had another go at “knowing” each other and eve bore a son called seth. The text explicitly states that seth came about to replace abel. Another mystery woman was procured (remembering that adam and eve were not banished to the land of nod) and seth begat enos.

Chapter 5

This is the first chapter that deals with a long and dreary statement of the genealogy of those (supposedly) involved in the beginnings of the human race. The chapter starts with a statement that man was created in the likeness of god, however that is suspect – see The human body isn’t perfect – part 2 as to why (a page on this web site).

One of the strange things about this genealogy is that, despite starting with adam and the “female”, it entirely forgets to mention cain and abel. Since everything that is to follow flows through the line of seth, it really does seem that the author of the cain and abel legend was different to whoever wrote what is to follow, and even more likely that the cain and abel stuff was just a tacked-on story.

Another strange thing is that the lifespans of the characters tend to be extremely long – up to 969 years. Some have speculated that a “year” is actual a lunar month, which would bring down the longest lifespan to about 78 years. That sounds reasonable, except that one of the characters in a later chapter (arphaxad) is said to have had a child at age 35, which would convert to an age of about 2.8 years old – which is not reasonable.

• Year: 0130. adam and “female” begat seth when adam was 130. The text labors the point that seth was a son in adam’s own likeness and image, which strongly suggests that the female was not a very naughty girl. Although truth be told, there weren’t other viable males around for her to be naughty (remember, if you want to go down that path, that abel was dead and cain had been “banished” to be a city-building vagabond). adam lived to 930 and begat sons and daughters with the “female”.
• Year 0235. At 105 seth begat enos. seth lived to 912 and he begat sons and daughters.
• Year 0325. At 90 enos begat cainan. enos lived to 905 and he begat sons and daughters.
• Year 0395. At 70 cainan begat mahalaleel. cainan lived to 910 and he begat sons and daughters.
• Year 0460. At 65 mahalaleel begat jared. mahalaleel lived to 895 and he begat sons and daughters.
• Year 0622. At 162 jared begat enoch. jared lived to 962 and he begat sons and daughters.
• Year 0687. At 65 enoch begat methuselah. enoch’s days numbered 365 years, at which point he “walked with god“. Yep, despite the stated punishment due to the fruit-related incident (the “fall”), here’s a dude who didn’t die. Where he went is interesting because there has been no mention of heaven or hell or anywhere else after people left their earthly form. In case you just did a text search, this is a different enoch to the one introduced in the previous chapter.
• Year 0874. At 187 methuselah begat lamech (note that adam was alive and aged 874 when this happened). methuselah lived to 969 (a new world record that would never be beaten) and he begat sons and daughters. Note that this is not the same lamech mentioned in the previous chapter.
• Year 1,056. At 182 lamech begat noah (yep, that noah). For some reason, lamech was comforted in the knowledge that noah would be put to work to toil over the ground that the lord had cursed. lamech lived to 777 and begat sons and daughters.
• Year 1,556. At 500 noah begat shem, ham and japheth. Spoiler: noah died at 950, but there’s a little bit more to come in his story (see the next exciting chapter). Incidentally, unless there was at least one case of twins or triplets, all three of noah’s sons could not have been born while he was 500. In Islam, noah had a fourth son but he refused to board the ark and drowned.
• Year 1,656. The “flood” (sorry, spoiler alert).

Notice that in the above list how important the first-born was and how unworthy of mention were the children after the first-born? Why? Aren’t we all created equal? Also note how unworthy of mention were the wives who had to follow through (with “sorrow”) all the begats? The chapter was clearly written by one or more misogynists of the highest order because they went to great lengths not to name a single woman – not even the one that was named in previous chapters: eve.

The very large number of years before the named births is interesting. They are obviously first-born events (because that’s what is important in a tribal society apparently), however that is extremely unlikely. A woman is fertile for about 5 days in each of her menstrual cycles: the 4 days leading up to ovulation and the day of ovulation. That’s obviously quite variable, however it does mean that a couple are about 20% likely to conceive if they have intercourse randomly once a month (assuming that nothing else fails in the process). It’s obvious that the characters in the story knew close to nothing about such cycles, so the chances that they took so many decades to conceive is incredulous – given the likelihood that they had far more than one random intercourse event each month. And if you revert to the concept of a-year-is-actually-a-month, you still have to factor in the two guys who had their “begat” at age 65 because that would divide down to an actual age of just over 5 years old. Really?

Needless to say, but science has conclusively disproved (via genetic evidence) that the human race started with two people about 6,000 years ago. On the contrary, Mitochondrial “Eve” lived between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago and Y-chromosomal “Adam” lived between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They did not know each other. They were not the first female or the first male. They were not the only females and males alive at their respective times. They are the most-recently known humans whose direct descendants account for all people alive today. The scientific evidence supporting them demolishes young-Earth creationism.

Chapter 6

The story of noah and his boat is covered (in great detail) elsewhere on this site: see noah idea, so only the highlights will be covered here. Even though the problems raised by the story are insurmountable, the description of the events in the text is fairly brief.

But first we have the mysterious “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose“. This has led to endless debate. To start, “sons” plural? Didn’t god at a later stage in the texts give his only son? And if “fair” is not taken to mean that they knew how to equally divide a pizza between just three people, then are we to assume that some of the feminine half of god’s creation were considered elevated above the others? Was that because of the color of their skin or perhaps the color of their hair? Sorry to the ladies today who aren’t in the “fair” category because it’s been stated that the omniscient creator of the universe believes you aren’t good enough for his sons. Some believe that “sons of god” refers to angels – who were obviously not getting enough up there (wherever that is). Also note the non-consensual nature of the marriages via the word “took”.

In a bit of retrospective rewriting, the text then declares “my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years“. That’s obviously an attempt to accommodate the upper bound that will be established by the moses character (deuteronomy, chapter 31). So the much longer lifespans documented in the previous chapter were to be now curtailed to a maximum of 120 years? That number was proved lacking in 1997 with the death of Jeanne Calment at the age of 122. So when god’s spirit did strive with man he lived to about 900 however without that spirit he only made it to about 90? What’s the objective difference? Mortality is still mortality. So god’s spirit wasn’t strong enough to get someone over the 1,000 mark? Funny how the effect of “god’s spirit” was documented to be commensurate with the timeline of human history, e.g. it couldn’t be made to have people live to 9,000 years because that just wouldn’t fit.

The text goes a little crazy at that point because it explicitly states that there were giants produced because the sons of god and the daughters of men had sex and bore children. Of course the text becomes silent when it comes to giving the details of any of those “giants”, e.g. their names, ages, deeds, or even their … heights. Needless to say, there is zero evidence for anyone ever having lived longer than 122 years.

Now that the deranged preamble is over, it’s down to the nitty-gritty of the chapter: “and god saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually“. Really? So when a mother lovingly caressed her new-born baby, her thoughts could only be covered under the “evil continually” bit? Remember that “the law” had not been passed down at that stage, so how was “evil” defined and how did the people know what they could and couldn’t do and think? And of course it comes down to the thought-control police because god’s issues were with the people’s “every imagination of the thoughts“.

In fact, it was so bad that god regretted that “he had made man on the earth“. Oh, really? So the omniscient creator of the universe didn’t anticipate that outcome? Luckily there was a solution because god said (to whom?) “I will destroy man … and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air“. Okay, god; please put down the weapon and back away for some anger management counseling. What exactly had the animals of the world done to warrant annihilation? And to throw another spanner into the works: what exactly is the imperfection (corruption and violence) that has been exhibited (via either thought or deed) by a one-year-old just prior to the flood? So god just knew that the one-year-old was going to be imperfect? So that means that he was judging people on imperfections that he created in them – but not yet manifested by them? How was: created imperfect, commanded to be perfect, and judged on not being perfect, ever going to work? This is the heart of the problem with all religions. It’s also the reason that religion has been so successful in its ultimate aim: the control of people.

It turns out that the human race wasn’t all bad at that point because “noah found grace in the eyes of the lord“. This suggests that noah (then 500 years old) was perfect and not just mainly good – although that is questionable based on his actions post flood. So in 500 years, noah didn’t have a single “thought of his heart” that was less than the perfection demanded by the lord? Or did the lord just line up everyone on the planet in order of their level of imperfection and pick the one (noah) at the end of the line, as in: “it’ll have to be you, then”?

The peace-loving lord then explained to noah that he was going to murder every person upon earth via a flood because of their extreme corruption and violence. If noah got a bit fidgety at that news, he needn’t have worried because he was then given the instructions on how to build a really big boat so that he, his wife, his sons and their wives, and all of the world’s fauna would survive. The text avoids the topic of whether any of the other seven people who were coming along for the ride were more worthy (perfect?) than the rest of people on the planet who had to die due to their imperfections.

It’s interesting that noah didn’t inquire about the fate of the rest of his relatives. When god was explaining about the necessary upcoming genocide, noah was 500 and his father (lamech) and grandfather (methuselah) were still alive (according to genesis, chapter 5). Even though lamech is said to have died just five years prior to the flood, it seems that methuselah died in the same year as the flood. It’s not explained if methuselah died prior to the flood (which started mid February) or if he drowned. Still, they were alive when moses was told that they weren’t to be on his big boat. Also not covered are the wives of noah’s forefathers, nor any of the sons and daughters who were begat to them – or any of their descendants. Obviously noah was cool with them being drowned because they were so corrupt, violent and wicked.

Then it’s down to the specifics. The ark was to be made of gopher wood and it was to be covered with pitch inside and outside. Today, no one is sure what type of wood is gopher, but most likely it is cypress timber (well, it had to be something that was available at the time). The ark was to have a length of 300 cubits, a breadth of 50 cubits and a height of 30 cubits. No one knows exactly what a biblical cubit is, but that would (conservatively) equate to over 3 million board-feet of timber and if noah had (being very generous) ten months to get the boat ready, that means that he would have had to cut, transport, mill and construct at least 10,000 board feet (about 3 km) of timber per day! And that’s without electricity, diesel, machinery or power tools. That’s just the start of the ridiculousness of the project. Please see elsewhere on this site (coming soon) for the full extent of the nightmare facing anyone who tries to explain this stuff.

The lord decided to micro-manage the project because he instructed noah to include a door and a window in the ark. Hard to see someone as experienced in boat building (as noah would have had to have been) not remembering to include a door in the design? It’s interesting that the texts are filled with things that fall under the observed rule of: the lord builds the things that man doesn’t, and man builds the things that god doesn’t.

Further instruction included the need for noah to bring two of “every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark“. To the apologists: that’d include creatures of the sea, right? Aren’t the fish part of “all” and “every”? Note that the “two of” bit is going to be refined later when a (probably) different author remembered that they have “cleanliness” rules when it comes to animals, and that they intended performing a bit of animal sacrifice. Annoyingly, noah was then told to gather “unto thee of all the food that is eaten … and it shall be for food for thee, and for them“. So, that’d be enough unrefrigerated food for the entire breadth of known animals for a year?

The text does say that the animals will “come unto thee”, however it makes no explanation as to how two koala bears from Australia were to achieve that?

Whatever; apparently noah did all that was asked of him.

Chapter 7

The chapter starts with a reminder about how good noah had been, although now all the good stuff was rolled up with the adjective “righteous”. The original plan did need an update because now they were expected to bring not only two of each animal but seven of each “clean” animal. It’s not made clear how the division of seven was to be made between male and female (but seven is a special number, right)? For some reason, the “clean” rule was again forgotten when a reminder was given (in verse 9) about animals going in “two and two“.

The plan was then officially revealed: that it was going to rain for 40 days and forty nights and “every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth“. Keep that in mind because it’s going to cause problems after things dry out (remembering that noah was not instructed to save any plants from extinction). Also note that we are spared noah’s inevitable question of “what do you mean by ‘clean’ animals?” (remembering that moses was still a long way off).

The construction and loading of the ark had taken 100 years because “noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth“. Nice when everything just happens to be neat round numbers.

Apparently the water was to come from rain (“the windows of heaven“) and elsewhere (“the fountains of the great deep broken up“). Both of these lead to troublesome questions.

The text then gets specific, and contradictory, as to when the rains started versus when the humans and animals entered the ark. Doesn’t matter … we’re rolling. Here’s a graphical timeline of the events in this chapter and the next:

The rest of the chapter describes how, after 40 days and nights of rain, the waters did cover “all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven“. One of the big questions is whether the flood was global or local. To kill all the wickedness in the world it’d have to be global, however the text which states “fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail and the mountains were covered” contradicts that. Fifteen cubits is only about 25 feet and that would have only covered the very flattest of local land. To cover all the world plus another 15 cubits would require an extraordinary amount of water, and that causes a large number of problems that are not explained in the text.

The next bit of text supports the notion that the flood was global: “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man“. It’s hard to see how “all” and “every” can mean anything other than global?

In this way, according to the text, every living thing (not inside the ark) was killed. It’s not explained why fisherman, who obviously had boats and could fish, were not able to at least make a go at survival outside of the ark? The chapter concludes with “and the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days“, although that contradicts with text in the next chapter.

Note that the extraordinary number of problems with the noah-flood story is covered at noah idea (a page on this site).

Chapter 8

Weirdly, the chapter starts with “And god remembered noah“. Really? What else was happening that caused god not to think of noah in the approximately 150 days that he was hands-off in the story? Can an omniscient being forget? A consequence of the remembering was that god caused “a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged“. See the diagram above for a more exact timeline (complete with contradictions).

Eventually the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, although no one knows exactly where that is. Despite already making landfall, the waters continued to recede until “the tops of mountains [were] seen“.

When he felt good and ready, noah popped the hatch and sent forth a raven “which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth“. He also sent forth a dove to see if the “coast was clear” (so to speak). The raven was never heard of again. Could a raven have flown around for weeks without food until the waters were dried? The weird thing is that the dove “found no rest for the sole of her foot” despite the text previously making it clear that the tops of mountains had been seen. Noah retrieved the dove and seven days later sent it out for another go. This time: success, because the dove returned with an olive leaf that had been plucked from the branch of an olive tree. This led noah to believe that “the waters were abated from off the earth“. This is of course ridiculous because all plant life would have died after being submerged in partially salty water for about 10 months, and no tree would still have had living leaves which could be plucked. Just to be safe, noah waited another seven days before again releasing the dove. The dove, obviously weary of the whole thing decided not to return and went off to have a happy, carefree life doing dove-like things such as eating food and living it up with the other doves … no, wait.

To wrap things up, god stated “go forth of the ark, … bring forth with thee every living thing … that they may breed abundantly … and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth“. This is idiotic beyond belief. It’s been covered before, but there’s no way that a species can viably be restarted from a single breeding pair. There was also no plant life for the animals to eat and the carnivores did not have a food source. Also, how did the koalas get back to Australia? They move slowly (or preferably, not at all), they eat a very specific type of leaf, and they are not good at moving on the ground. But the ignorant and superstitious iron-age men who wrote the nonsense didn’t know about Australia, did they? And before you say, “but it was only local animals”, then please consider how “wickedness” was wiped from the earth via a local flood?

If it wasn’t hard enough for the animals, noah decided to burn one of each of the “clean” ones as a token of thanks to the being that had just murdered all but a token of each species on earth – including his “beloved” humans (babies and all).

It then gets really weird: “and the lord smelled a sweet savour; and the lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done“. So noah brought round the lord with a BBQ? So people being evil is the reason they were just wiped out, but despite still being evil, god agrees not to wipe them out again? So after the noah clan managed to breed the population (of inherently evil people) back up to the numbers before the flood, what was the point of the entire flood exercise? And let’s be honest, despite his words, god was still not adverse to doing a fair bit of wiping out – ask the entire populations of the cities encountered during the “exodus” travesty.

Note that the extraordinary number of problems with the noah-flood story is covered elsewhere on this site (coming soon).

Chapter 9

Following the genocidal flood, god blessed the noah clan, encouraged them to “be fruitful and multiply“, and found a way to make sure that all the animals on earth would be in dread of all people. Not sure that polar bears or sharks got that message?

Weirdly, the lord continues with “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you“. Really, the “clean-animal” rules that caused some animals to be loaded onto the ark times seven no longer apply? The only restriction now seemed to be that blood had to be drained before consumption. Perhaps this particular part of the text was written by a different author to the other bits, and therefore not be the word of moses and/or god?

There’s then given a little warning about how anyone who shed’s a man’s blood will in turn have their own blood shed. That also will need an asterisk based on the (many) events to come when someone shed’s blood on god’s instruction.

Strangely, the ark didn’t manage to save any of the animals that science has demonstrated went extinct in the millions of years that we know happened before the “flood”. For example, why didn’t the ark save the trilobite? Scientists believe that over 99% of species that ever existed have gone extinct. Why weren’t they saved by the ark? It’s almost like they were all buried underground and the author(s) didn’t know they existed! That is a major problem for young-earth creationists.

To finish up the entire episode, god tries to reassure the eight remaining people that “neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth“. This again strongly suggests that the flood was intended to be global. That’s because we have had many terrible floods that have killed many millions of people in the past 4,500 years, so either god broke his covenant or localized flooding doesn’t count.

The way that god tried to show his covenant was to “set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth“. This smacks more of a pre-scientific method to try and explain the magical and mysterious rainbow that must have defied explanation to iron-age men. Interestingly, god then adds that “the bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember my covenant“. Really? Does an omniscient being need a memory aid?

The text then makes an attempt to work with the remaining humans: noah, his wife, his sons (shem, ham and japheth) and their (unnamed, of course) wives. It turns out that ham was to become the father of Canaan (however we know how that will work out). In the meantime, noah got to work and helped out the world’s agriculture by planting a vineyard.

To test his viticultural skills, noah had to drink his wine, but unfortunately that caused him to pass out naked within his tent. Must have been good stuff. Just noting that despite it taking many years to produce alcoholic wine after starting a vineyard (say, following a catastrophic flood), noah had not managed to construct anything more substantial than a tent for himself and the missus. And that’s from a guy who managed to turn over 3 million board-feet of timber into the biggest wooden boat the world will ever see.

Also unfortunately, ham managed to see the nakedness of his father and promptly reported the sighting to his brothers. Remember that the lads were all over 100 at that stage. Swinging into action, shem and japheth walked backwards towards their father (so they could not see his tinkle) and placed a garment over the extra tent pole.

Amazingly, upon awakening, noah somehow “knew what his younger son had done unto him“. What? At worst, the text lets us know that ham had accidentally seen his father’s nakedness due to his father getting drunk, taking off his clothes and collapsing where people could see him. How is that ham’s fault? That didn’t matter because noah escalated things by saying “cursed be Canaan“. Exactly how he knew that ham would descend into the house of Canaan is not explained. The author(s) of the text invented that, but how did noah? It gets worse for ham because the text goes on to bless shem and japheth and to state that the descendants of ham will become the servants of the descendants of the other two brothers. Talk about blowing an incident out of proportion. Had no one heard of making and accepting an apology?

It’s interesting that noah was considered the only human pure enough (incorruptible and virtuous) to be saved on the planet, but he had the character flaw of getting drunk and falling down naked for all to see. The chapter concludes by stating that noah lived to be 950 years old.

We know that it’s genetically impossible for three lads to have repopulated the earth starting about 4,500 years ago. The ignorant iron-age men who wrote the text didn’t know that.

Basically, according to young-earth creationists, all of recorded human history (as we know it today) now has to be squeezed into the little bit of time after the flood … including an ice-age that we know happened. Remember that if adam and eve were born in (say) 4,000 BCE, then the flood happened in 2,344 BCE.

Chapter 10

The exciting story-based narrative of the text dissolves in this chapter as it’s back to a boring account of genealogy. Here are the descendants of noah (with each indent being a son):

• shem
  • elam
  • asshur
  • arphaxad
    • salah
      • eber
        • peleg
        • joktan
          • almodad
          • sheleph
          • hazarmaveth
          • jerah
          • hadoram
          • uzal
          • diklah
          • obal
          • abimael
          • sheba
          • ophir
          • havilah
          • jobab
  • lud
  • aram
    • uz
    • hul
    • gether
    • mash
• ham
  • cush
    • nimrod
    • seba
    • havilah
    • sabtah
    • raamah
      • sheba
      • dedan
    • sabtechah
  • mizraim
    • ludim
    • aramim
    • lehabim
    • naphtuhim
    • pathrusim
    • casluhim
      • philistim
    • caphtorim
  • phut
  • canaan
    • sidon
    • heth
• japheth
  • gomer
    • ashkenaz
    • riphath
    • togarmah
  • magog
  • madai
  • javan
  • tubal
  • meshech
  • tiras

(Note that there are some additions to the above in later chapters.)

So it turns out that 10 of the 16 grandsons of noah are not mentioned as having had children. That’s not a great outcome from god’s blessing to be fruitful and to multiply. Of course, the above hierarchy only mentions males.

The text points out that the nations of the earth were divided according to the above tribes following the flood.

One of ham’s grandsons, nimrod is singled out for special attention. Apparently he became a mighty hunter and his kingdom included the cities of: babel, erech, accad and calneh (in the land of Shinar). It doesn’t make complete sense (because asshur was shem’s kiddy), but “out of that land went forth asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and resen between nineveh and calah: the same is a great city“. It’s interesting that the text does not mention nimrod as having children, so perhaps all this first-born stuff is not that important when it comes to power and results?

Of course we all know of the success of the canaanites (for a while anyway). Out of that tribe came the: jebusites, amorites, girgasites, hivites, arkites, sinites, arvadites, zemarites, and the hamathites. The borders of the Canaanites were “from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha“.

It’s interesting that verse 20 in this chapter mentions “after their tongues” because that seems to contradict the point of the next chapter.

Chapter 11

The chapter’s start is about the “tower of babel” and it begins with “and the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech“.

Wrong.

Around the actual time of the supposed flood (about 2,350 BC), there were at least five known main languages: Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite and Hurrian – and that’s just in the middle east. It’s quite obvious that there were a huge number of other languages spoken around the world, and it’s thought that there could even have been thousands of them.

Not only is the babel story sandwiched between two bouts of post-flood noah genealogy, but it doesn’t make sense that the babel story was prior to the flood, because what’s the point? If the world became divided by having multiple languages (as a result of the babel story), then what’s the point in the lesson to humanity if it was once again reduced to the single language spoken by noah and his kiddies? So somewhere in the approximately 2,000 years between when the flood is supposed to have happened and when the genesis fable was invented (around 500 BCE), the author(s) thought that there was a single language in the world. That’s impossible and is a huge mistake in the text. So “babel” was after the flood, however even if you just limit your reading to one book (shame on you), the previous chapter in genesis pointed out that there were diverging languages just in the few generations after noah (“after their tongues“).

No, the only explanation for the fable is that the author(s) thought it was a cute story and couldn’t bear to leave it out of their own fable. In fact, we even know the source of the story: Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta – a Sumerian tale which was written long before genesis was written. Still think your religious texts were written first, and by the omniscient creator of the universe?

Back to the babel fable…

Apparently, the people (which people?) traveled east until they found a plain in the land of Shinar – which is the plains of Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Instead of building the structures necessary for a city, they decided to try and construct one building “whose top may reach unto heaven“. Despite supposedly knowing all, god decided to come down to see what was going on … and he didn’t like what he saw one bit. He attributed the building to a poor attitude and how easy the people had it due to the common language that they spoke. Apparently with a single language, “nothing will be restrained from them“, and for some reason, that worried god. Why? Was god concerned that one day his creation would supersede him (the deity that had already created two trillion galaxies in the visible universe)?

Instead of discussing things, god decided to “go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech“. And that wasn’t the end of the punishment because he “scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth“. It was god himself who named the place where all this happened as “babel”.

It’s a trivial, silly story, but there’s so much wrong with it that it isn’t funny.

As discussed above, the story can’t be placed either before or after the flood. And of course, there’s no evidence to support the story and plenty of evidence disproving the story.

It’s strange that god didn’t seem too bothered about people having a single language and working together for the more than the 1,700 years they’d already been around? Really, in all that time a few of them didn’t get together and plan something “sinful” via the use of a common language? Remember, that not too much earlier than “babel” everyone on Earth was so sinful that they all had to be drowned.

The mountains to the east of Jerusalem (which the people in the story must have passed on their travels) get to a height of about 1,000 meters. There’s no way that the people of the day could have used their stones, mud, lime and straw to build a building 1,000 meters high (we haven’t achieved that today with steel, concrete and machinery), so they must have realized that if they wanted to reach heaven, it would have been a good idea to start on a mountain instead of the plains. In fact, just 400 km further east of the plains of Shinar were much more significant mountains, e.g. Mount Dena at 4,400 meters.

So the people were scattered all over the world, were they? Some of them immediately left the plains of Shinar and rapidly traveled to: Australia, South America, Canada, Easter Island, etc.? How?

How many people were involved in the heaven-headed building project? It would have to be at least hundreds and with their women, elderly and children, probably in the thousands. So how many languages were needed so that “they may not understand one another’s speech“? Did they all get a separate language or did small groups still speak something in common? If so, how were the groups determined? Did (say) a five-year-old girl get a new language and be unable to communicate with her parents? What exactly did the children or those not involved in the nasty building project do wrong?

So the tribal mentality, that was based on multi-generational descent, and was so important up until now, was suddenly broken for the people involved? Did each man suddenly have a different language to his father, brothers, and sons? Did they have free will in suddenly leaving each other or did god force that unto them?

Why is it bad for people to work together? Surely their motives could have been adjusted through education and they still remain communicative with their families and friends?

People today work together in common languages and some of them do bad things. Why does god not apply his same level of standards and sort them out in the same way today?

We know a lot about the development of the world’s languages (they have always evolved, and still do), and there’s no evidence that in about 2,300 BCE there was a sudden divergence into a huge number of languages around the world. The ignorant authors of the texts (in about 500 BCE) didn’t know that.

How long would it take for the people in the story to learn at least one of the other languages involved and therefore start to communicate with other again? Children can pick up the conversational basics of a new language in a couple of years (with immersion), and take about five years for intermediate fluency. Did god not know that about his design? Did he assume that groups of people wouldn’t start to speak each other’s languages after a few years?

And how’d it work out in the long run god? Today we have the following languages and approximate number of speakers:

• English: 1.5 billion
• Chinese (Mandarin): 1.2 billion
• Hindi: 600 million
• Spanish: 600 million
• Arabic: 340 million
• French: 310 million
• Bengali: 280 million
• Portuguese: 270 million
• Russian: 260 million
• Urdu: 230 million

That’s just the top 10 languages (by speakers), however they account for 5.6 billion people, which is about 70% of the world’s population. Remind us god about the plan you put in place? Have the groups of people above defeated the plan of the omniscient creator of the universe?

Speaking of defeat, technology today allows the real-time translation of the spoken (and written) word into the text of another language, e.g. with a relatively cheap device connected to the Internet. It’s expected that the next generation of technology will permit the real-time translation of the spoken word into the spoken word of another language. That will permit two people, in different languages, to have a real-time conversation with each other, e.g. by using a mobile device and ear-based speakers. So god, how will your plan be looking then? It wasn’t much of a punishment from a deity if your creation could find a way to circumvent it?

Sparing us further insult to our intelligence (well, kinda), the text then gets back to the mundane description of genealogy. This list is a bit strange from the get-go because it lists people who lived for more than 120 years – something that was stated as no longer going to happen (genesis 6:3).

• Year 1,658. At 100* shem begat arphaxad. shem lived to 600 and he begat sons and daughters. *The given year here (1,658) is because the text states “and begat arphaxad two years after the flood“, however that contradicts shem being 100 (when the text states that arphaxad was born) because he was born in the year 1,556 (when noah was 100). It would make sense if the text (genesis 11:10) stated that shem was 102 when he begat arphaxad.
• Year 1,693. At 35 arphaxad begat salah. This small number of years (35) means that no funny business can be attempted to divide down the extremely large number of years stated for the other people in the genealogy, e.g. that those numbers are lunar months, or some such. If such a division is attempted, then arphaxad become a father when he was 2.8 years old. arphaxad lived to 438 and begat sons and daughters.
• Year 1,723. At 30 salah begat eber. salah lived to 433 and begat sons and daughters.
• Year 1,757. At 34 eber begat peleg. eber lived to 464 and begat sons and daughters.
• Year 1,787. At 30 peleg begat reu. peleg lived to 239 years and begat sons and daughters.
• Year 1,819. At 32 reu begat serug. reu lived to 239 years and begat sons and daughters.
• Year 1,851. At 30 serug begat nahor. serug lived to 230 years and begat sons and daughters.
• Year 1,880. At 29 nahor begat terah. nahor lived to 148 years and begat sons and daughters.
• Year 1,950. At 70 terah begat abram, nahor and haran. terah lived to 205 years. Unless twins or triplets are involved, it’s not possible to have three children in a single year.

Things became less precise at that point because the text drops the years and ages and just lets us know:

• haran begat lot. haran died before his father (terah) in the land of his birth – ur of the chaldees. No one knows where that is, of course. haran had daughters milcah and iscah.
• abram took a wife named sarai. Later in the text, these names will be revised to: abraham and sarah. sarai was barren (no kiddies).
• nahor took a wife named milcah. Weirdly, milcah was nahor’s niece (the daughter of his brother haran).

Finally, “And terah took abram his son, and lot the son of haran his son’s son, and sarai his daughter in law, his son abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from ur of the chaldees, to go into the land of canaan; and they came unto haran, and dwelt there“.

It’s all a bit strange because the older generations got to see many of their descendants die of old age before they did (due to the progressively shorter lifespans).

Just a reminder in case it slipped your mind: there is no evidence for any of the characters mentioned in this (or any other chapter). They are all fictional characters.

There are those who believe that the first eleven chapters of genesis are the essential set that need to be taught and adhered to. That’s probably because it all gets a bit too abrahamish.

Chapter 12

This chapter is about the character initially named “abram” but who eventually will be called abraham. Note that there is zero credible evidence (e.g. in contemporary non-religious writings) that support abraham being a real person. Just sayin’ in case you’re tempted to take any of the following seriously.

It all starts with god telling abraham that he will “make of thee a great nation” and how he will “bless thee” and how he will “curse him that curseth thee” if only abraham would leave his home and take up residence elsewhere. So is everything based on free will or are some things forced by god?

Having been talked into it, and at the age of 75, abraham grabbed his wife (sarah) and his brother’s son (lot) and departed haran for the land of Canaan. Remember that the canaanites were basically bad people (having descended from that monster, ham who accidentally saw his dad’s nakedness), so god instructs abraham to build an altar right in their land: at somewhere named sichem in the plain of moreh. More specifically, the altar was built on a mountain with bethel to the west and hai to the east. From there, and because there was a famine going on, god told abraham to go further south into Egypt.

The worry was that abraham’s wife (at about 70 years old) would be too good looking (“fair”) and she would cause the Egyptians to want to kill abraham to acquire her. Apparently that’s how Egyptians behave. The text flips into the perspective of abraham as he tells sarah to lie and to say that she is his sister. That way, the randy Egyptians will not want to kill abraham in order to marry her.

Amazingly, abraham cashes in with “sheep and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses and camels” as sarah is taken off his hands and into the house of the pharaoh. That is ridiculous because there’s no way that a king (or one of his princes) would taken a foreigner with no title, money or land to be a wife. It’s also called pimping.

The whole thing comes as a bit of a surprise to the omniscient creator of the universe because he is forced to act by plaguing the (unnamed, of course) pharaoh with great plagues (the nature of which are not specified). This doesn’t go unnoticed by the pharaoh and he said to abraham “why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?“. That’s a pretty good point and one wonders exactly what the pharaoh did wrong except to want the unattached sarah to be well married into his household? For all we know, she would have had a fantastic life there. Was it the pharaoh’s fault that abraham was a liar who had put the future of his wife on the line simply as a mechanism to protect his own life?

The interesting thing is that once the pharaoh was told the truth, he did the honorable thing and sent abraham and sarah on their way with the full protection of his men. The pharaoh sounds like an decent guy who was wronged by a liar and the omniscient creator of the universe. And all for what? To progress the story of abraham a little? It’s a really obvious and weak plot device.

It’s also obvious that the Egyptians are being set up to be one of the villains in the texts, and as we know, they will (unfairly) be brought back in the next book of the pentateuch to fulfill that role. In this chapter we have a taste of what’s to come. It’s a storytelling device.

Chapter 13

The chapter begins with a reminder about abraham’s “lucky” escape from the nasty Egyptians and how he managed to become “very rich in cattle, in silver and in gold“. None of that was stated (in the previous chapter) to have been given to him by the Egyptians, so how did he acquire it? And if he always had it, then he chose to leave a land with people suffering from famine instead of helping them with his riches? Charming.

The rich trio returned to the place where they had built an altar (in the land between bethel and hai) and set up shop. The problem is that they had so many cattle that they managed to cause strife with the herdsmen of the Canaanites and the Perizzites who “dwelled then in the land“. The word “then” in that sentence is hugely revealing. That means that whoever wrote the text was aware that the Canaanites no longer dwelled in the land there, however if moses is supposed to have written the texts, then Canaanites lived in the land until after his death (see the end of the book of deuteronomy).

Not caring about the Canaanites, abraham implored lot not to come to strife with himself, and they agreed to go their separate ways: with lot choosing the plains of Jordan to the east (towards sodom – yes, that sodom) and abraham choosing to entrench himself in the land of Canaan. It’s not explained why or how, but apparently the men of sodom were wicked and sinners (yep, all of them).

Having settled down, god reminded abraham that he now had all the lands to the north, south, east and west of where he was, and that “I shall make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered“. It’s estimated that there is about 17 million metric tons of coarse dust (particles 2.5-10 µm in diameter) in the planet’s atmosphere alone. There’s also some on the surface of the planet. That’s a lot of seed abraham.

To conclude the chapter, abraham moved his tent to dwell in the plain of mamre in Hebron. He also built an altar there. Of course no one knows the exact location of mamre, and excavations in guessed-at local areas have revealed no evidence of abraham et.al.

Chapter 14

This chapter gets very messy very quickly because a whole bunch of new characters are introduced. Apparently those were the days of four kings:

• amraphel, king of shinar
• arioch, king of eliasar
• chedorlaemer, king of elam
• tidal, king of nations

Those guys decided to make war with five other kings, who were located in the valley of Siddim (which is the Dead Sea):

• bera, king of sodom
• birsha, king of gomorrah
• shinab, king of admah
• shemember, king of zeboiim
• zoar, king of bela

It won’t surprise anyone to learn that there is no non-textual evidence that any of these kings existed. Think about that. For real kings in history we have evidence, e.g. coins, statues, documented activities, reports from foreigners, etc., however for the dudes mentioned above, we have: nothing. The most likely explanation for that is that they are all fictional characters. It would be interesting to be in the same room as the author(s) when this stuff was written. Did they suck on the end of their pen whilst trying to come up with the next semi-plausible name of a king and his kingdom?

Those five kings had served chedorlaemer for 12 years, however in the 13th year they rebelled. This caused chedorlaemer and his kingly mates (amraphel, arioch and tidal) to go on a little road trip in the 14th year, during which they smote the following:

• the rephaims in ashteroth karnaim
• the zuzims in ham
• the emins in shaveh kiriathaim
• the horites in mount seir, unto elparan
• the amalekites in enmishpat (which is in kadesh)
• the amorites in hazezontamar

That’s a lot of smoting and of course there’s no reason given for the need to go to war with any of the stated people. Really, all those people required killing? All at once they went “bad” to the extent that they had to be wiped out? It wasn’t possible to attempt any sort of diplomacy? Can you imagine the result if something similar happened today? But it’s understandable because it was “back then”?

So it finally got around to the four kings waging war against the five kings, in the valley of siddim. It didn’t go well for the kings of sodom and gomorrah because they fled and fell around the location of many slimepits, and the other three kings (of the five) didn’t fare to well either because they fled to the nearby mountains. The four kings “took all the goods of sodom and gomorrah, and all their victuals“. With no reasons given, this is therefore indistinguishable from murder and theft.

It turns out that abraham’s nephew (lot) lived in sodom (in the “plain of mamre the amorite, brother of eshcol“), and had been taken prisoner by the five kings. On an aside, didn’t chapter 13 point out that everyone in sodom was wicked? What are you doing there lot? When abraham found out that lot was taken he conscripted 318 of his slaves (“trained servants“) and set out to reclaim him via a pursuit “unto dan“. By dividing his slaves he managed to smote the four kings as he “pursued them unto hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus“. Result! Following the win, abraham brought back “all the goods, and also brought again his brother lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people“. Note the order which places women after the goods, and the use of the word “also” which separates women from “the people”.

Apparently the king of sodom went out to meet abraham in the valley of shaveh upon “his return from the slaughter of chedorlaomer“. To get the party going, melchizedek (the king of salem) brought bread and wine because “he was the priest of the most high god“. No doubt the priest had acquired all the party supplies via offerings from the people? The word that god had previously rejected an offering of grain (remember cain?) obviously hadn’t filtered down to him. The priest went on to bless abraham because he had “delivered thine enemies into they hand“. So pleased was he with the outcome that “he gave him tithes of all“. However despite offering all the goods involved, abraham refused to take anything because “lest thou shouldest say, I have made abraham rich“. He did insist that some of his fighting buddies (aner, eshcol and mamre) have their portion of the spoils.

But a reality check is in order. The previous chapters don’t attribute any military prowess or indeed bravery to abraham (quite the opposite), however he somehow managed to use just 318 men to destroy four kings who had recently managed to defeat eleven other kings and their armies? It sure sounds like a fantasy story that is designed to artificially elevate abraham for future plot purposes.

And “slaughter” is an interesting choice of word because it dispels any suggestion that some of the “smotes” were of a non-lethal variety. In reality, “slaughter” places the events much closer to the genocide end of the spectrum – as expected. There is of course no mention of the women, children, and the elderly who obviously would have been caught up in, and affected by the slaughter.

Chapter 15

The chapter starts with abraham (still spelled “abram”) receiving a vision from the lord during which he is reassured that god will be his shield and that he will get great reward. On a point of order, how did the author(s) know what was in abraham’s vision? Also note that “visions” can be treated these days – but not back then of course.

It was weighing on abraham’s mind that he was childless and for some reason he reminded god that the steward of his house was eliezer of damascus. Then it got weird because the lord reassured abraham that “he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir“. Scientific? To try and reassure abraham further, god pointed to the sky and said that his descendants will be like the stars in the sky. We know that there are only about 3,000 stars visible in the sky from any particular point on the Earth’s surface, so it’s not exactly sure what god was trying to tell abraham?

Still, abraham wasn’t completely convinced because he asked god for more information. The lord told abraham to bring a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon. When collected, the non-avian animals were “divided” – another animal sacrifice that supposedly meant something. Birds tried to get to the carcasses, but abraham drove them away.

Then abraham fell into a deep sleep and a “great darkness fell upon him“. How did the author(s) of genesis know what abraham was experiencing while in a deep sleep? The horror that came to abraham was the knowledge that his ancestors would end up being slaves in a foreign land for four hundred years. This could just have been told to abraham so the sleeping, darkness and horror were just devices by the author(s) to wow the reader. In case it was all too terrifying, god diffuses the situation by letting abraham know that his “seed” (descendants) would eventually escape captivity “with great substance” in the fourth generation. Of course there’s the promise of retribution by the lord towards the people who captured abraham’s seed. It’s interesting that capturing people is okay when god’s people do it, but not a good thing when, say, Egyptians do it.

Apparently one reason for coming out of captivity was to give the amorites a good seeing to because of their iniquities. Of course, this is all meaningless to abraham because leviticus wasn’t known to him (although it was obviously known to the author(s) of genesis).

Then the sun went down and a “smoking furnace, and a burning lamp … passed between those pieces” – which seems to refer to the chopped up animal bits and pieces that resulted from the earlier sacrifices.

The lord then made a covenant with abraham saying “unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates“. That’s pretty expansive: covering millions of square miles across multiple modern nations (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia). Why?

There’s zero evidence for these obviously fictional books, so the devastation that’s going to follow such pronouncements by the author(s) is hard to underestimate; and indeed has led to untold and continual suffering. And just to drive it home, the lord then itemizes the peoples who will be affected by the covenant: the kenites, kenizzites, kadmonites, hitties, perizzites, rephaims, amorites, canaanites, girgashites and jebusites. What did they do to not be “chosen”?

Chapter 16

The chapter starts bizarrely and you have to stop and remind yourself that these are “chosen” people and the texts are documents that modern people want to be the foundations of lives and governments today. Of course, many of those modern people have never read the bits you’re about to be exposed to…

After ten years living in Canaan, abraham started to realize that something was amiss. Because abraham’s wife (sarah) couldn’t have children, she tried to address the issue by offering up her Egyptian “handmaid” (a slave named hagar) as a sexual device for her husband. It’s not stated whether hagar was required to consent to the arrangement (we can guess), however abraham must have been agreeable because the deed was done and hagar became pregnant. Note that abraham was 85 or 86 when he agreed to having sex with his wife’s maid.

If all that wasn’t weird enough, for some bizarre reason sarah became very upset with hagar and came to despise her – despite the whole situation being sarah’s own plan. In fact, the hatred was so much that abraham gave permission for sarah to beat up hagar (a pregnant woman). This understandably caused hagar to flee … all the way to a fountain of water in the wilderness at a place called shur. There, an angel wasn’t impressed with hagar’s attempt to avoid physical punishment and ordered her to return to face whatever sarah had prepared for her in round two.

Again weirdly, the angel stated that, for her trouble, hagar would have her seed multiplied exceedingly. You imagine sarah pointing at her abdomen and saying “Gee, thanks mate, but I seem to be doing okay on my own”. Perhaps it was an abundance of future kiddies that was being promised her? Note that there was nothing to indicate that hagar would be getting a hubby of her own, so perhaps she was left wondering if the source of her future kids would be abraham?

Unnecessarily, the angel pointed out that hagar was pregnant and because the lord “hath heard thy affliction“, the kid will be called ishmael. Great, so the mother is even denied the opportunity to name her son. And to top it all off, the angel informs hagar that her son will be a “wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him“. It’s likely that hagar didn’t see where all that was going because it sure did seem like her punishments were growing.

For some reason, hagar comes around and acknowledges that the lord is “the god who sees”. For that reason, the source of water at which she now found herself was named beerlahairoi (between kadesh and bered). Of course no one knows where that is today.

So hagar returned and bore a son to abraham, and he was indeed called ishmael.

So fundies, based on there being no IVF program at the time, it’s okay for a husband to have sex outside of his marriage … in certain circumstances? And then he can encourage physical violence towards a pregnant woman? Your book says that’s all A-OK.

As an obvious aside, there is zero external evidence for the existence of angels. They are however a useful literary device designed to share the ethereal workload – especially for the jobs that are considered beneath the omniscient creator of the universe.

Chapter 17

The weirdness of the previous chapter is not over – not by a long shot.

The chapter starts with the lord reminding abraham that not only was he a god, but he was the “almighty god“. Good to know. Then god encourages abraham (a 99 year old) to walk before him “and be thou perfect”. What? In what universe could abraham’s actions warrant him to end up being “perfect” (see previous chapters)? Upon hearing the news that god was making a covenant with him, under which god “will multiply thee exceedingly“, abraham promptly fell on his face. That might be a risking thing to do for a 99-year-old.

It got even better because god then promised abraham that he “shalt be a father of many nations“. The great honor came with the news that he would have to change his name from “abram” to “abraham”. The lord then reinforced the promise he’d made that there would be an everlasting covenant between himself and the offspring of abraham. Why was that a thing? Why would an omniscient creator of a visible universe containing two trillion galaxies chose to have a more special relationship with one group of his creation over another? Whatever. The covenant included the land of Canaan. There’s no way that’s going to cause suffering in the millennia to come, is there? It’s hugely unlikely that it was the sort of thing that an omniscient god would do, however it is extremely like something one or more authors (more than 1,500 years later) who were trying to perform a land grab would write.

It then gets bizarre because the omniscient creator of the universe then informed abraham that “every man child among you shall be circumcised” as a token of the covenant. Why? Can’t a god know that men are loyal and onboard with the covenant without having part of their body removed? Why did god design and implement a foreskin if it was now important to have it removed? Isn’t the removal – at an age of 8 days – a forced action? What if the guy decides later in life to opt out of the covenant? Before a whole heap of excuses are made, perhaps you should have a quick read of galatians chapter 5, because it seems that god’s only son wasn’t too fussed about the whole circumcision thing.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, comes the text “and he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of they seed“. Oh, really? Can anyone read that and deny that the text actively supports buying people from a stranger? That’s explicitly stating slavery is permissible. And it’s impossible to rule out that the text is saying that even a baby can be bought. So if a twenty-year-old slave is bought, he has to immediately be circumcised so that he can be part of some sort of covenant? Wow, that’s going to be quite an ordeal in the absence of modern surgical techniques, anesthesia and post-surgical care.

And of course it worked in reverse: “and the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant“. Why? If a child is not circumcised, that would be a decision of his parents, surely. Why ostracize the child because of a decision make by the parents? Or can you see a kid turning up on the doorstep of the local “butcher” saying “my parents aren’t keen but I really want you to slice a little off the tip so that I can get in on this covenant thing”?

The begging question is how many men were alive at that time and how did they take the news that they were now required to be circumcised?

Since name changing was a hot topic, god stated that “sarai” had to change her name to “sarah” and that she would be the “mother of nations“. The lord then announced that abraham and sarah would be blessed with another child, despite he being 100 and sarah being 90. What? If it was within god’s power to bless sarah into having a child now, why didn’t he just do that previously instead of requiring abraham to have a knee-trembler with the maid? Anyhow, the news of another kid caused abraham to fall upon his face.

When abraham pointed out that ishmael should be the promised heir, god said nuts to tradition because their next son, isaac would have a covenant established. Not to worry though, because god then stated that ishmael would be fruitful – begetting 12 prices and becoming a great nation. A case where god altered a plan based on the word of a lesser being?

Not being a procrastinator, abraham went home and, “in the selfsame day“, personally “circumcised the flesh of their foreskin” of: his son ishmael (then 13), and “all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money“. Wow. “Come on guys, I know you’re hiding in here somewhere … snip, snip, snip”.

Adding to the horror of the situation, the chapter concludes by reinforcing the legitimacy of acts of buying people … and mutilating them.

Chapter 18

The chapter starts with god turning up with two mates to visit abraham at his tent in the plains of mamre. For once, abraham didn’t fall on his face; instead, he offered to get water so that god et. al. could have their feet washed while sitting under a nearby tree. Not forgetting the nutritional requirements of his visiting deity, abraham fetched bread – well, ordered sarah to start cooking. While that’s happening, abraham fetched a calf, killed and cooked it (we assume) and served it with butter and milk. And they did eat.

Okay, have a careful think about all that. It’s now over 2,000 years after an eternal being created two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, and yet he makes a journey to visit one of his creation outside his tent? From where did that journey start? A little way off in the plains? From the other side of a distant mountain? From heaven? And a journey that causes him to benefit from having his feet washed? And that eternal being (with that sort of creation ability) is willing to sit under a tree for hours while bread is baked and a calf is caught, killed, drained of blood, butchered and cooked? And that eternal being can digest food? By the way, that means that god poops (think about that). The text doesn’t say if the calf was without blemish so apparently it’s okay to offer up any beast when the lord is hungry. And why was the lord waiting under a tree? Does he overheat in the sun? And why tents? Abraham was extremely rich (remember the 318 slaves he sent off to war?) and we know that others had previously tried to build a building to see what god was up to up there (remember babel?), so why hadn’t abraham instructed a few of his slaves to build some basic structures for housing that didn’t flap about in the wind?

The lord asked abraham where was sarah, and abraham pointed out that she was in the tent. Did god not know that sarah had been cooking just beyond the boundary of a tent flap? Despite the fact that sarah was now infertile (“it ceased to be with sarah after the manner of women“) god informed abraham that sarah would soon have a son. This made (the eavesdropping) sarah laugh out loud – causing god to ask “wherefore did sarah laugh“. Really, god; you’re wondering why someone aged about 90 chuckles when they find out that they are going to have a child? Note that sarah didn’t get a say in the upcoming child-bearing. Because she was afraid, sarah decided that lying was the best option and she claimed that she didn’t laugh. For some reason, this didn’t fool the omniscient creator of the universe because he pointed out “but thou didst laugh“. Riveting stuff. He also promised to return soon and make sure that she had been suitably knocked up. Why wouldn’t he know that at a distance? And why all the laughter from sarah? Didn’t the writers of this chapter read the previous chapter during which the lord explained about the upcoming pregnancy?

Following lunch, the lord and his two (unidentified) mates turned their attention to sodom and gomorrah. Stating his intention to destroy the cities due to the (unidentified) wickedness of the inhabitants, the lord isn’t sure about involving abraham in the plans. Somehow abraham cottoned onto the plan and raised the objection that most children could figure out: “wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?“.

Then follows a period of haggling during which abraham asks the lord if he would still destroy a place if there were a certain number of righteous people, e.g. 50? The lord admits that he would not. We then get to go through the argument with a decreasing number of righteous people: 45, 40, 30, 20, and finally 10. Yep, the lord agreed that a place should not be destroyed if 10 righteous people be found there.

Why? So if there were only nine righteous people found, it would be quite okay to destroy a place? Where do these arbitrary numbers come from? It’s probably a bit annoying to those nine who would still be destroyed despite their righteousness. Why didn’t abraham continue the argument until he got down to one righteous person? Surely the same principle holds for one as it does for 10? Or would that cause a logical problem with the recent flooding-type event? There would have to be at least 10 “righteous” children under one year old in a city, so does that mean that every place should be spared destruction? Why couldn’t the omniscient creator of the universe have figured out this logical argument prior to being cornered with it by one of his creation? What makes someone righteous? Remember that at the time, no laws had been handed down. The writers of genesis sort of forgot about that when they invented the text over 1,000 years later. It’s interesting that the “ten righteous” test would be abandoned in later books when god determined that a bit of genocide was in order.

The lord then “went his way“, presumably leaving his two (unidentified) mates to figure things out. By the way, if those mates were angels then they didn’t have wings, otherwise you’d have expected a sentence beginning “Holy crap … ” from abraham or someone in his tenthold.

The chapter strongly indicates only one thing: that “the lord” is a fictional character whom the writers anthropomorphized to try and progress a story (such as it is). They were forced to give god human characteristics because it’s all they knew about. They didn’t know anything about ethereal beings or how they spent their time, so they assumed that they were pretty much humans with bits added on. Don’t blame them too much because that’s still happening today.

Chapter 19

Many chapters in the texts could make a claim for being the most obnoxious, however it’s hard to go beyond this chapter as the ultimate prizewinner.

The two dudes in the previous chapter get identified as angels (sans wings no doubt), however there must have been something different about them because the character of lot (who for some reason was waiting at the gates of the city of sodom) rose to meet them and then bowed so low that his face pointed toward the ground. As he didn’t fall on his face, lot must have been doing his yoga. Indeed lot did identify them as special because he refers to them as “my lords” and invites them into his house where they can wash their feet and rest before being on their way early the next morning (although how lot knew how long they intended to stay is anyone’s guess).

This offer was rejected as the two said “nay, but we will abide in the street all night“. Weirdly, they acquiesced after lot made his offer again – which is another case of divine beings changing their mind after brief discussion with a mortal. Not only did they enter the house, but they partook of a feast that lot made, which according to the text, centered around unleavened bread. Hopefully lot and the missus had at least one cheese and one dip to go with the bread.

Things took a dark turn as the lads prepared to lay down for the night, because the men of the city (“both old and young” men) surrounded the house and called for lot to send the visitors out so that “we may know them“. Yep, two strangers enter the city and immediately all the men insist that they intend to gang rape them. It’s lucky that the only decent man in the city just happened to be waiting at the gates of the city as they arrived – even though the text doesn’t explain how he could have known they were coming. As an aside, so angels need to eat and sleep, do they?

Realizing that things could escalate, lot went out to meet the crowd and suggested that instead of having sex with the two strangers, he would send out his two virgin daughters and they could all have sex with them. Rejecting the offer, the crowd still tried to enter the house to get to the (obviously unbelievably-handsome) male angels. Pulling lot back into the house, the angels then smote all the men outside the house with blindness so that they could not find the door of the house. It’s not explained why blind men standing outside of a house that they had just viewed could no longer find the door?

Okay, enough is enough. This is just such a stupid, horrific and contrived plot that it beggars belief. How can lot offer his daughters up to be raped by dozens or even hundreds of men to save two strangers who he didn’t know prior to that morning? Did the daughters get a say? It’s ridiculous that every male in the city was so sex-crazed that they form a mob to fulfill their uncontrollable desires. It’s all a ridiculous story – yet people today draw all sorts of conclusions from it.

(Continuing with the nonsense…) The angels asked lot to gather the people who he wished to save because it turns out that the lord had sent the angels to destroy the city. There’s no mention about the rule-of-ten figured out in the previous chapter. The angels suggested that lot gather together his “sons in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters” for the escape out of the city. It’s not stated how many sons were involved, but when you consider lot was also taking his wife, we’re getting pretty close to the magic number of ten that could have caused the entire city to be saved. Wouldn’t there be at least a few male or female six-year-olds who were righteous enough to bring the total up to ten? Unfortunately, lot’s son-in-laws (the two betrothed to his daughters) mocked the suggestion that they flee the city. Did the son-in-laws live with lot and his daughters or did lot have to go outside his house (with all the blind angry guys) to find them?

The next morning, the angels got the ball rolling by insisting that lot, his wife and his two daughters head for the mountains and to not look back at what was going to happen in the city. It turns out that lot wasn’t keen on the mountains and made a successful appeal to go to the smaller city of zoar instead. This is another case of divine beings being talked out of a plan by a mortal.

It turns out that the angels weren’t the ones to be performing the destruction because “then the lord rained upon sodom and upon gomorrah brimstone and fire“. It’s not stated what went wrong at gomorrah, however we can be pretty certain that no one could find at least ten righteous people there.

Unfortunately, in the escape, lot’s wife looked back at the destruction of sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt. The lord must have been pretty pleased with his own efforts because he got abraham up and showed him the destruction of the two cities. For some reason lot became scared to live in zoar and he found a nice cave for him and his motherless daughters to dwell.

If you thought the ridiculousness of the chapter was over, you’d be wrong. For some reason the daughters were worried that their father’s lineage would end so they (on successive nights) got their father so drunk that he didn’t realize that he was having sex with each daughter. Apparently he had no trouble getting an erection despite being too drunk to appreciate that he was having sex with his daughters (and not some other woman in the cave). This led to a son named moab being born to one daughter and a son named benammi being born to the other daughter. It’s not mentioned why those sons didn’t suffer from any genetic abnormalities.

Exactly why the daughters didn’t feel that men were available (e.g. in the city of zoar) isn’t explained. It’s all very silly, but the text gives a clue why such an obnoxious plot device was used. It turns out that moab would become the father of the moabites and benammi would become the father of the ammonites. If you’ve read ahead, you will realize that those tribes are not exactly favored by the lord, so it’s pretty obvious that the foul events in this chapter are a device to make the reader less fond of doomed people in later books. This is more evidence that the authors were not recounting history; instead, they were inventing it.

So lot, who offered up his virgin daughters to be gang raped and then got so drunk that he fathered sons by each of his daughters was one of the righteous people of sodom?

It’s depressing that people are so keen to draw moral arguments from a chapter (e.g. about homosexuality), however they completely forgive/forget the dubious morals that are prerequisite to their fantasy story (like incest and genocide).

Chapter 20

This chapter shows just how void the authors were of ideas.

Apparently abraham and his wife journeyed to gerar, which is between kadesh and shur. There, they encountered abimelech, the king of gerar. Does one normally encounter royalty when traveling? As usual when on one of their road trips, someone couldn’t control their lust for sarah (now about 90 years old) and in this case it was the king. To try and defuse the situation (how?), abraham told the king that sarah was his sister. Yes, yes, all this was previously used in an Egyptian version of the story (in chapter 12). To be clear (again), abraham was trying to save his own skin because he was worried that the king would simply kill him if he learned that sarah was his wife. To the authors of the text, we get it: abraham was a coward.

The king, having snatched sarah was not far off doing the deed when the lord came to him in a dream and explained the situation. So the king had grabbed a choice bit of 90-year-old rumpy-pumpy but decided to have a nap first? The king was fearful for his life and kingdom (perhaps word about certain genocides had filtered through to him), but he did muster a little defense by pointing out to god that he was led to believe that sarah was abraham’s sister. Exactly why he believed that he was therefore entitled to have sarah sexually on that basis is not explained. Regardless, god ordered the king to restore sarah to abraham.

The king then made the same argument to abraham, who then explains why he acted like a coward: “surely the fear of god is not in this place and they will slay me for my wife’s sake“.

And then it all gets weirder because it turns out that sarah is abraham’s half brother! They have the same father (terah) but different (unnamed) mothers. So that’s another example of incest in the text.

Now that it was all explained (yeah, right), the king “took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants, and gave them unto Abraham“. So that would be more treating of humans as goods. He also handed over 1,000 pieces of silver and suggested that the couple could dwell anywhere they like in the king’s lands.

It wasn’t explained before but apparently god then permitted the king and his wife and his maidservants to once again bare children because he had previously “closed up all the wombs of the house of abimelech“.

The weird thing is that in genesis chapter 14, abraham managed to pursue and defeat four kings and their armies (using 318 of his own slaves), so exactly why such a rich man didn’t travel with a whole heap of protection and therefore be in a position to repel a king who wanted to have sex with this “sister”, is anyone’s guess?

Chapter 21

Tying up loose ends, god visited sarah and made sure that she bore a son by abraham. The mechanics of doing that are not explained and the fact that abraham was 100 and sarah was 90 didn’t seem to worry anyone. Not sure that abraham was free to chose, but he seemed to think he was when he named his son isaac. As per the new custom, abraham had isaac circumcised when he was eight days old. The whole episode made sarah laugh because she certainly didn’t think it would all be possible. They all had a great feast the day that isaac was weaned. (This is approximately the rate at which stories get told all the time in the text.)

It wasn’t all happiness because sarah appealed to abraham to cast out hagar and the son she had born with abraham – despite the whole thing being her (sarah’s) idea. To be fair, ishmael had been doing some mocking and therefore he probably deserved a little bit of banishment. The lord reassured abraham that banishment was no big deal because nations would be formed from his son with sarah (isaac) and his son with hagar (ishmael). Accordingly, abraham got some bread and water and gave it to hagar for her one-way trip wandering in the wilderness of beersheba.

Of course, sooner or later, wandering in the wilderness with only bread and water turns to tears and hagar decided to “cast the child under one of the shrubs” and sit a “good way off“, weeping when her water was spent. You’d imagine that most mothers would want to stay close to their dying child, but hagar didn’t want to witness the event.

Her child was clearly upset because god heard his cries and sent an angel to see what was going on: “what aileth thee, hagar“? Really? Isn’t omnipotence a wonderful thing? Upon investigation, god assured hagar that all would be well and that ishmael would make a great nation. To get things started, god told hagar to open her eyes so that she could now see the nearby water well. Things were looking up as hagar “filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink“. To cut a long story short, the next sentence tells us that ishmael dwelt in the wilderness of paran, became an archer, and married an Egyptian selected by his mother. Golly, things move fast in those days.

(On a different topic…) King abimelech and his chief captain, phichol had a word to abraham entreating him not to “deal falsely” with their house and descendants; instead, they asked him to return the kindness that they had shown to him. With this abraham agreed, despite having a grievance over a well that he had dug, out of which he claimed the king had been taking water (something the king denied). Then abraham took sheep and oxen, gave them to the king, and made a covenant via an extra gift of “seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves” that he claimed proved that he had dug the well in contention. How? That place became known as beersheba “because there they sware both of them“.

Following the covenant, abimelech and phichol “returned to the land of the Philistines“. The fact that the Philistines didn’t exist yet (in bronze age Canaan) didn’t seem to trouble the author(s) of genesis. To celebrate the accord, abraham planted a grove in beersheba and then went on a sojourn in the Philistines’ land for many days.

The chapter is a good example of the ask-answer nature of much of the text. There is close to zero character and plot development; instead, the author(s) boringly hit just the plot points that suit their long-term intentions. (It’s a really boring work of fiction.)

Chapter 22

Ever wonder how an omniscient being who created two trillion galaxies in a visible universe on a work day amuses himself a couple of thousand years later? This chapter will fill in the blanks if you have.

Despite all the fuss of producing isaac (see previous chapters), god now instructed abraham to travel to the land of moriah and there to offer his only son (isaac) as a burnt offering. Despite previously showing a propensity for haggling (remember how he got the lord down to the number ten when discussing the number of righteous people in sodom?) abraham makes no attempt to discuss the “necessity” of the brutal killing of his son – a son that was only made possible because of the insistence and actions of the same god who now called for his murder.

Without word or described emotion, abraham packed up his donkey, two slaves, issac and the required amount of fire-starting lumber and set off. After journeying for three days abraham somehow knew that he’d reached the required location, and he told his slaves to wait while he trudged up the mountain with isaac and the timber. For some reason, it took abraham’s preparation with kindling, fire, and knife in hand for something to twig with isaac, who then asked “where is the lamb for a burnt offering“?

Being a proven liar, it came naturally to abraham when he replied to his son “god will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering“. When the correct location had been reached, abraham “built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood“. The author(s) skip the difficult bit of having isaac ask “Um, father, when is the lamb getting here?”.

So abraham stretched forth his knife to butcher his son when, just in the nick of time, an angel “called unto him out of heaven” and told him not to continue. Apparently the good news story is that it was now obvious that abraham feared god. And that’s the takeaway message: the being that created the entire universe requires his creation to fear him.

Of course it wouldn’t be normal if something wasn’t slain, so abraham grabbed a ram that just happen to be caught in a nearby thicket (yeah, right) and sacrificed it instead. Regardless, you’d have to imagine that isaac would never look at his dad the same way again? The angel called out of heaven again and stated that because of his actions, abraham would be blessed and “will multiply they seed as the stars in heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies“. And what’s more “in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice“. Oh really, how’d that work out?

The place where all this is supposed to have happen was then called jehovahjireh “as it is said to this day, in the mount of the lord is shall be seen“. Of course no one knows where the place is today.

There is a version of the story which suggests that isaac was slain by abraham and the next bit seems to support that: “So abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to beersheba, and abraham dwelt at beersheba“. See, no mention of isaac.

How were the people back then able to distinguish between god speaking to them, auditory hallucinations and mental-health issues? And where exactly is heaven that an angel can just call out of it? Funny how everything gets very vague when it suits the story.

The chapter then changes tact and gets back to the genealogy. This time it’s all about nahor, who was abraham’s brother. Apparently nahor had the following kiddies to his wife, milcah (his niece):

• huz
• buz
• kemuel
  • aram
• chesed
• hazo
• pildash
• jidlaph
• bethuel
  • rebekah

You could be forgiven for thinking that the author(s) had lost interest if they were dishing out names like huz and buz. Interestingly, nahor also had the following offspring to his concubine, reumah:

• tebah
• gaham
• thahash
• maachah

Really, to his concubine? So fundies, does your book of laws support sex outside of marriage? Is marriage between one man and one woman? Since there didn’t appear to be any form of ritual (e.g. words or documentation under oath) that equated to the act of marriage, one can only assume that the act of fornication was all that was required for a “marriage” to have taken place. So nahor genuinely had two wives?

Chapter 23

At an age of 127, sarah died in a place called kirjatharba which apparently is now called “Hebron in the land of Canaan“. That seemed to go against the age limit (stated in chapter 6) of 120 years. As this was not abraham’s native land he requested a burial place from the locals. They were on board with that because they recognised abraham as a “mighty prince“. No doubt that was because he had hundreds of slaves. The locals even offered abraham any of their sepulchres (a small room or monument that is cut in rock or built from stone) in which to place sarah.

Although not explicity explained, abraham rejected their kind offer and instead stated “intreat for me to phron the son of zohar, that he may give me the cave of machpelah [before mamre], which he hath, which is in the end of his field” for use as a place for sarah. For this, he offered to pay “as much money as it was worth“. In response, ephron the hittite told abraham that he may have the field and the cave it contained. This still wasn’t good enough because abraham insisted on paying something for the land and cave. Sneakily, ephron asked abraham what was 400 shekels of silver to men such as they, and that he should just take the land. It was sneaky because he managed to put a price on the land whilst not actually stating that he wanted to involve money in the deal. Not to worry though, because abraham immediately parted with the silver. Now with the full rights of ownership, abraham buried sarah in the cave.

The theme of the chapter is fairly prosaic, until it is considered that the text is laying the groundwork for the ownership of land in Canaan by the descendants of abraham. In that way, abraham was a bit of a deceitful guy – although we all knew that.

Chapter 24

With abraham “well stricken in age“, he made the eldest slave in his house promise that he would not allow his son (isaac) to take a wife from any of the Canaanite women.

Yes, the concept of racism started early in these religious texts. And what was the reason for the tribalism and racism? Yep, because the father (ham) of someone (canaan) saw his father (noah) naked. Come on guys, is that really a reason for not wanting two people to marry? Maybe it should be based on the character of the Canaanite woman, and indeed the character of the guy (isaac) instead? And did isaac get a say in his future? Of course not.

Being practically minded, the slave asked what should happen if the woman he locates is not willing to follow him back? To this abraham states that under no circumstance is isaac to be taken along for the journey; instead, abraham feels sure that an angel will appear and help take the reluctant woman back. How did he know that? And would the woman get a say in her future? Of course not.

The weird thing is what happened next: “and the servant put his hand under the thigh of abraham his master, and sware to him concerning that matter“. So these sorts of matters were sealed with one dude putting his hand on the penis of another dude?

To the fundies: are you really sure that this sort of stuff is what you should be basing your lives (and others’) upon?

As an aside, there will be readers of this analysis who bristle at the use of “slave” instead of “servant” or “employee”. The next part of the chapter shows why “slave” has been used: it’s because the text refers to the “master” of the person involved. The use of “master” pushes the relationship well beyond that of “employer”. With the use of “master”, the text implies ownership, and that’s something that pertains to slavery. That coupled with the many times that later texts are going to refer to the rules involving the ownership of people, means that this analysis is not going to shy away from the obvious.

So, the slave “took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed” to the city of nahor in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is roughly considered to be modern-day Iraq, although the precise location of nahor is not known. Having made the camels kneel down near a well of water, the slave came up with a cunning plan. He knew that the women of the city would come out to the well to draw water, so he figured that if one of them gave thought to giving water to the camels, then she would be the right sort of lady for isaac.

And of course, things fell into place immediately because “before he had done speaking, that, behold rebekah came out, who was born to bethuel, son of milcah, the wife of nahor, abraham’s brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder“. “And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin“. Okay, unless she was very young, how is it possible to determine that she was a virgin? Were the author(s) just making this up over a 1,000 years later?

It is entirely in keeping with the fairy tale nature of the book that the resolution happens immediately after the statement (“Before he had done speaking”? Really?). And remember, rebekah is a direct descendant of noah, and therefore would have been of some importance in the city … so exactly why she was drawing water instead of one of the slaves of the house, isn’t made clear; well, except for the fan service of fulfilling the fantasy fiction.

Anyhoo, rebekah was kind enough to give a drink to the slave when asked, and further, she offered to give a drink to the camels – and did so. As to why she didn’t wonder why the slave hadn’t drawn water for the camels, the text is silent. Also not explained is why the test was sufficient? Is the action by rebekah something that nine out of ten women coming down to the well that day would also have made? What were her thoughts towards having or bringing up children, or to sex, or to catering, or to being tolerant, or to having a sense of humor, or to worshiping false idols, etc.?

Regardless, the slave thought it worth thanking god for organizing things so nicely. To seal the deal he had taken out “a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold“. Of course: it had to come down to a balanced transaction when it came to forced marriage.

The slave asked about her heritage and whether her house had room for them to lodge. She explained about her lineage and confirmed that they did have a suitable spare room. The slave was grateful that “the lord led me to the house of my master’s brethren“. So now we’re grateful for incest?

Following the introductions and testing, rebekah ran home to tell of the events. Her brother (laban) ran out to assess the situation and was satisfied when he saw the jewelry and gold the stranger was offering. All were invited back where there was straw for the camels and water for the washing of feet. The slave was also offered meat however he rejected the offer so that he could explain his errand – which he then did in excruciating detail. Some people definitely take the weighty nature of their religious texts to be of importance however they are obviously not aware of how repetitive the text can be. In this case, there is the repetition of the story that we have just been told (including the bit involving the camels). Why?

Finally, it’s down to the nitty gritty when the slave asks if rebekah will be permitted to marry isaac. To this, laban and bethuel said “let her be thy master’s son’s wife, as the lord hath spoken“. So in other words, free will was not part of the equation. Also note that rebekah had no say in any part of the arrangement. Remember that all of this happened in the previous hour or so, yet these men were willing to let rebekah go off with a stranger who had a story.

To seal the deal, abraham’s slave gave rebekah jewels of silver and gold as well as raiment. He “gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things“. Bought and paid for. The next morning the slave was keen to go, however he was told that they all wanted rebekah to wait ten days before she left. The servant resisted this and when asked, so did rebekah as she seemed okay to travel immediately. Accordingly, rebekah, her sister, and her nurse started the journey back with abraham’s entourage. Upon departure, rebekah was blessed with the thought that she would become the mother of “thousands of millions, and let they seed possess the gate of those which hate them” – which is slightly strange. How did the people who were doing the blessing know what would happen, and how did the author(s) who wrote all this know what the people making the blessings did?

For some reason, isaac had a feeling that something was up one day and he took to walking and waiting in a field near the well at lahairoi. It was a wise course of action because he saw camels approaching. When explained to rebekah who it was they were approaching, she covered herself with a veil.

Isaac’s slave explained all that had happened and isaac brought rebekah into his mother sarah’s tent, took her, and she became his wife. Apparently this comforted isaac after his mother’s death. Note that there is still no description of the ceremony of marriage. It seems that the only thing required is for a guy to “take” the woman he wants. There’s no indication that rebekah had any sort of love for the guy she met only minutes before.

Chapter 25

The chapter starts unexpectedly with “abraham took a wife, and her name was keturah“. We’re used to it by now, but “took” is pretty much mandatory – especially when someone who is at least 137 years old wants to get hitched. Remember that abraham was ten years older than sarah and she died at age 127. At the start of the previous chapter abraham was described as “well stricken in age“, so perhaps that’s exactly what keturah was looking for in a hubby? Or is this just more evidence that the whole lot is a fictional fantasy story? Taking a wife at over 137? really?

Before snuffing it (no doubt due to exhaustion), there were more additions to abraham’s line (via keturah):

• zimran
• jokshan
  • sheba
  • dedan
    • asshurim
    • letushim
    • leummim
• medan
• midian
  • ephah
  • epher
  • hanoch
  • abidah
  • eldaah
• ishbak
• shuah

Apparently abraham also had sons to the other concubines (note the plural) that he’d partaken of, and to them he gave gifts and sent them away (to the east country) from his (obviously more important) son, isaac.

Then abraham “gave up the ghost” and died at the age of 175. His sons isaac and ishmael buried him in the same cave that had received sarah. The lord then blessed isaac who dwelt by the well at lahairoi.

The text then moves over to the descendants of ishmael (abraham’s son via his concubine, hagar):

• nebajoth
• kedar
• adbeel
• mibsam
• mishma
• dumah
• massa
• hadar
• tema
• jetur
• naphish
• kedemah

Apparently these were “twelve princes according to their nations” and they had a town and a castle each. And they “dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria“. The misogyny of the author(s) is on show here because ishmael had at least one daughter (mahalath) who was thought important enough to marry a central figure in the upcoming story (esau, in chapter 28), but not important enough to list in this chapter.

Finally the bit we’ve all been waiting for: the lineage of the good kiddy, isaac. It seems that he married rebekah when he was 40. Remember that rebekah turned out to be isaac’s father’s brother’s granddaughter. In other words, isaac married a blood relation from the generation following his.

Despite being barren, and therefore after a word with the lord, rebekah gave birth to twins when isaac was 60 (in the year 2110 after adam). First there was esau (who came out “red all over like an hairy garment“) followed by jacob who took hold of esau’s heel. If that’s how they imagined jacob being born (hands first, and alive, and holding his brother’s heel), then that’s ridiculous and obviously just a literary device.

The boys’ resumes are then given: “esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents“. So the best that can be said for someone is that he lived in a tent? For some reason, isaac loved esau, but rebekah loved jacob. Not enough parents these days just come out and declare which of their children they love. Wouldn’t the world just be a better place today if parents stopped being wishy-washy and just declare which of their children they love?

One day esau came in from working in the fields and, feeling faint, asked his brother to feed him. Normal people would have fed their brother, but jacob only offered to do that if esau would sell him his birthright (remember that esau was the firstborn). It seems that esau had no choice because he sold his birthright to jacob for bread and a bowl of lentils. Really, no choice? People can last for days without food if they have water, and in those days, why couldn’t esau have found someone less demanding to give him some food, e.g. one of his parents or the many slaves in the tribe of abraham/isaac? This is clearly just another fabrication in a ridiculous fictional story.

Chapter 26

Another famine hit the land and isaac wanted to leave to go and live in Egypt. The lord “appeared unto him” and talked him out of his plan, reminding him that because “abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws“, he was to be blessed and have his seed multiplied like the stars of heaven, and therefore the same was due to isaac (of course). Wait a minute. What laws and commandments? Those had not been handed down yet and wouldn’t be for quite some time. Looks like the author(s) of genesis forgot the timelines when they were inventing this bit. Still think it’s the word of god? If this bit isn’t, why should any other bit be?

So isaac dwelt in gerar. Immediately the men of the area took a shine to rebekah (because “she was fair to look upon“), so he tried an old trick by stating that she was his sister. Really guys, the third time you’re going to use this plot device? He wasn’t careful enough however because one day the king (abimelech) saw the two of them cavorting (“sporting”) and called isaac out on his ruse. The king was a bit miffed when isaac explained that he had lied because he was worried that he would be killed so that the men could take rebekah. The king was worried that if any of his men would have taken rebekah then guiltiness would be brought upon them. How, if they had been fooled into thinking rebekah wasn’t married? So acting in innocence when someone had lied to you is now a sin? The bottom line in all this is that isaac was exactly the same as his father (abraham): a coward and a liar. The king laid down the law that anyone who “toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death“. So the king had to put down a law specifically for these two? Didn’t the existing law pertaining to the use of a husband’s wife cover them?

The area must have agreed with isaac because he “sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold“. In fact he became very great and possessed flocks, herds and a “great store of servants” (that’s slaves). This caused resentments among the Philistines who had filled in the wells that abraham’s slaves had dug. Finally, the king said to isaac “go from us for thou art much mightier than we“. Didn’t the king prosper when people in his kingdom did well? So isaac wasn’t contributing some of his success back to the lands and people who were providing him a home?

To try and redress the water-well situation, isaac dug more wells at esek, sitnah and rehoboth. From there he went to beersheba where the lord appeared to him and reassured him that he would be blessed, just as promised to his father abraham. To celebrate, isaac built an altar there, pitched his tent, and dug a well (well, got his slaves to dig the well).

King abimelech, ahuzzath (his friend) and phichol (the chief captain of the army) went to see isaac. They explained that they had seen isaac in the presence of the lord and that they wanted to make an oath between them: “let us make a covenant with thee; that thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not touched thee“. They had a feast and parted in peace. The well that isaac’s slaves had been digging produced water and he called the place shebah, and supposedly that’s why the place is still called beersheba “unto this day“. (Not because it was called beersheba before the well was dug?) Needless to say, no one knows exactly where any of these places are today.

Weirdly, at the age of 40, esau decided to marry a hittite woman, named juidith (daughter of beeri). That’s not weird you say? Well, it is when you consider that esau immediately decided to marry a second hittite woman, named bashemath (daughter of elon). So fundies, is a marriage between one man and one woman? So you’re happy to rattle off words about the sanctity of marriage, such as “It’s adam and eve”, but remain quiet when the very same book describes a marriage such as “esau and judith and esau and bashemath”?

Surprisingly, the dual arrangement that esau had entered into didn’t upset his parents because of any problems of jealousy they thought might arise; it upset them because they were racists who didn’t like hittites because they were hittites.

Chapter 27

Near the end of his life, isaac’s eyesight failed him however he still enjoyed his grub. He called his favorite son (esau) to him and told him to go kill some venison so that he might eat his favorite meal and bless esau before he died. His missus (rebekah) overheard this and called over her favorite son (jacob) for a spot of cunning subterfuge (as families do, it seems). She told jacob to go fetch two goat kids so that she may use them to prepare isaac’s favorite meal and therefore bless jacob instead just before he died.

It fell to jacob to point out the problem: that he was the smooth brother and esau was the hairy brother and there’s no way the plan would fly when isaac started to have a feel around as part of the blessing. That was no problem to rebekah as she put esau’s clothes onto jacob and put the skins of the goats on jacob’s hands and neck. Then, with a cooked meal of goat, jacob went to his father and lied to him by stating that he was esau and he had a meal of venison for him.

In case you think isaac to be an idiot, he did push back with “how is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son” (referring to the meal of venison he thought was in front of him). “Because the lord thy god brought it to me” lied jacob (obviously with his fingers crossed behind his back). He must have sensed that something was up because isaac said “come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son esau or not“. Even though isaac recognized jacob’s voice, it turns out that he was fooled because he was certain that the hands he touched (covered in goat skins) were that of esau. After the question “Art thou my very son esau”, followed by another lie from jacob “I am“, isaac ate of the “venison” and drank some wine. He then asked his son to come closer for a kiss and stated “the smell of my son is as the smell of a field” (due to the borrowed clothes). That tipped the balance because isaac proceeded to give a great blessing: “god give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee“.

In a neat bit of timing (of course), the real esau turned up with some cooked venison for his father as soon as jacob had left his father’s presence. Upon hearing a request for a blessing, isaac “trembled very exceedingly” when he found out that the person making the request claimed to be his first-born son esau.

The jig was up because isaac and esau then discussed how jacob had now taken away esau’s birthright and his father’s blessing. Even though isaac gave it a go with “thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck“, esau wasn’t fooled, and came to hate his brother. In fact, “hate” might not cover it because esau vowed to kill jacob. It’s not explained why isaac’s updated blessing was ineffectual.

Upon learning of this outcome, rebekah commanded jacob to flee to laban (her brother) to seek refuge in the land of haran (abraham’s brother’s lands). The plan was for jacob to “tarry with him a few days, until thy brother’s fury turn away“. Really? Missing out on an intergenerational blessing would pass in a few days? Yep, rebekah stated that she would send for jacob when “he forget that which thou hast done to him“.

It seems that rebekah might have had an ulterior motive in all this because she had really sent jacob to haram because she didn’t want him to take a wife from the tribe of heth (hittites) – as esau had done.

Why do the words (blessings and curses) of someone have the slightest affect on subsequent generations? Was isaac some sort of god who could organize intergenerational benefits with a word? If someone is in a position to give a blessing that actually has some effect, why can’t they reverse and reassign that blessing? In what universe does goat taste like venison, and in what universe does goat skin feel like the hair on a human’s hand? Why should a blessing be based on the serving of food? The author(s) of this fiction didn’t have much to work with (tribalism and superstition), and it shows.

Chapter 28

Almost as if nothing had happened, “isaac called jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of canaan“. What? Just last chapter, jacob undertook a heinous deception of his father and now isaac is blessing him? What was the big fuss about? The instruction (and racism) continued when isaac told jacob that he wasn’t going to take a wife from the “daughters of Canaan“; instead, he was to go and pick up a wife somewhere in the house of nahor, betheul and laban – which of course involved more incest since his mother (rebekah) was laban’s brother. More blessings from isaac to jacob helped to seal the deal.

The penny dropped for esau upon realizing that his father (isaac) had sent jacob to Padanaram (Mesopotamia) so that he would not marry a woman from Canaan. The problem being that he (esau) had already married two of them: juidith and bashemath. To “right” the “wrong”, esau decided to take a third wife and marry mahalath, who was a daughter of ishmael. She was also a first cousin to esau. So fundies, is marriage something that is between one man and one woman? Your bible is explicitly stating that one man and three women is acceptable.

Upon his journey to haran to find a race-appropriate wife, jacob had a dream in which he saw a ladder which angels were using to reach heaven. The lord made an appearance in the dream and promised jacob that “thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth” and it shall spread in all directions and “in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed“.

Wrong. Science has proved (via genetics) that all the families currently found on earth could not have shared a common ancestor with one dude about 4,000 years ago. Like it or not, that wraps it up for the texts being the infallible word of god.

Further, god promised jacob that he “will bring thee again into this land“. Upon awakening, jacob was in awe of what had happened and believed that the place where he slept must be the “gate of heaven“. He used the stone that had been his pillow to construct a monument, and on that pillar he poured oil and named the place bethal (even though it somehow first got the name of luz). Further, jacob vowed that the lord shall be his god if that lord was happy to give him bread and clothes. He sort of went a bit overboard in declaring that the pillar that he’d built would be god’s house, but cryptically added “and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee“.

And there you have it: the start of the instruction whereby people had to tithe 10% of their earnings to god. Of course, not one single shekel or grain of wheat has ever made it to god; instead, all of the tithing has been gobbled up by the various churches and their hierarchy of “holy” men.

By the way, how do the author(s) of this text know what happened in someone’s dream about 1,500 years after it supposedly occurred?

Chapter 29

In terms of incest, it just gets worse and worse in this chapter…

Eventually jacob arrived in the east, at a location that the locals confirmed to be haran. Inquiring whether they knew laban (jacob’s uncle), the locals confirmed that they did; and in fact it was his daughter rachel (with her flock of sheep) arriving at at nearby well at that very moment.

Of course. The fairy tale nature of the text is revealed by just how neatly everything works out. After a random and long journey, it wasn’t like jacob arrived one hour too early or one hour too late to meet rachel; he arrived exactly at the moment that she did. Whatever; jacob managed to help rachel to water her sheep by rolling off a large stone that covered the well.

With no indication of consent, jacob kissed rachel and explained about his mother’s lineage – which didn’t take long to intersect with hers (they were first cousins). She was so taken with the story that she ran home to tell laban what had happened. He was so taken with the story that he ran back to meet and kiss jacob. O…kay. They all went back to laban’s place for a proper debrief.

And jacob stayed with them for one month, at which time laban asked jacob what his wages should be, since he shouldn’t “serve me for nought“. It turns out that laban had two daughters: leah, the eldest (who was tender eyed) and rachel the not-eldest (who was beautiful). Because jacob loved rachel, he told laban that he would serve him for seven years after which time he would marry rachel. Of course, rachel didn’t get a say in any of this. With a certain resignation, laban declared that “it is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man“. Oh, really? Why? Weren’t there other good men around her weren’t her first cousin?

The seven years just flew by (seriously, in less than one sentence), and a great feast was organized to celebrate the event of the marriage of jacob to rachel. For some reason, laban decided to give leah his own maid (zilpah).

Then it gets weird because laban decided to play a clever jape on jacob by substituting leah for the blushing bride rebekah. For some reason, jacob didn’t notice this switcharoo until the next morning, upon when he asked laban “wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?“. It was then that laban explained that in these parts it was not done to give away the younger daughter before the eldest daughter had been hitched.

There was light at the end of the tunnel for jacob because laban explained that if jacob agreed to fulfill the bride for one week, then he could also marry rachel – as long as he worked another seven years for laban. For some reason, laban decided to give rachel his own maid (bilhah).

It turns out that jacob did the seven years of work because “he loved also rachel more than leah“. It was at this point that god got involved (remember him?) because when he saw that leah was hated he decided to “open her womb, but rachel was barren“. For some reason, leah thought that having produced a son (named reuben) that jacob would love her. In case that didn’t work, leah had a backup plan: to do it all again by having another son (named simeon). Three times a charm, because leah had a third son (named levi) to demonstrate just how much jacob must love her. And to seal the deal regarding jacob’s love, leah had a fourth son (named judah).

So despite loving another (rebekah), and despite being on a path (seven years of work) to obtaining his true love, he continued to have sex with a woman (leah) he didn’t love and who he had been tricked into marrying?

(The reason for all the maid stuff will become clearer next chapter.)

For anyone who likes to make excuses for this kind of stuff, remind us all again how this tale of incest and bigamy (with names and details) is an allegory?

Chapter 30

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it happened, but certainly during this chapter the text had become insultingly stupid.

When it became obvious to rachel that she wasn’t having children, she got angry and demanded that jacob do something about it. He pointed out that he wasn’t god and therefore couldn’t do much about her internal plumbing. She decided that she could do something about it and decided to offer her maid (bilhah) as a substitute for herself. This did the trick and “they” were blessed with a boy named dan.

A second son (naphtali) was born to jacob and bilhah, and weirdly rachel proclaimed “with great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed“. What? It wasn’t rachel giving birth and leah had already popped out four kids by jacob, so exactly how rachel had prevailed is anyone’s guess?

The weirdness was only just starting because when leah saw what was going on, she offered her own maid (zilpah) as a sexual device for jacob to use. This worked very well and a son named gad was born. It worked so well that zilpah’s services were used again to produce a second son, named asher.

A few years must have passed because number-one-son reuben was old enough to go foraging, and on one trip he found mandrake in the field. These toxic plants must have been considered to be a cure for infertility because rachel was desperate to have some of them. A kind of arrangement was made whereby leah was allowed to have sex with jacob that night if rachel could have some of reuben’s mandrake. No mandrake was needed by leah because she managed to produce another son, named issachar. Obviously while on a streak, leah produced her sixth son to jacob, named zebulun, and a daughter, named dinah.

It must have been many years into the saga, but god decided to open rachel’s womb and have her produce a son, named joseph. Why didn’t he do that earlier instead of rachel needing to muck around with alternative medicine?

It was at this time that jacob appealed to laban that he be allowed to take his wives and children and “go unto mine own place, and to my country“. It’s still not clear why jacob needed permission from laban since they were both equally descended from a common ancestor: terah (father of abraham and nahor)? It turns out that laban was agreeable to jacob leaving, and he asked jacob what he wanted as wages for all his efforts in his lands. A bit of sneakiness was afoot because jacob stated that he wanted to go through all the animals of the land and take the “speckled and spotted cattle” and all the “brown cattle among the sheep” and all the “spotted and specked among the goats“. This seemed like a good idea to laban because such animals were not a valuable as the “pure” colored beasts that would remain in his herds and flocks.

So jacob did as he said and removed the marked animals for his sons to take towards their new home. However he himself stayed behind and enacted his diabolical plan. He set a scene in which spotted and stripped rods and tree branches were placed in prominent positions before the troughs at which the animals came to drink. Whilst gathered to drink, those animals had sex and by seeing the marked rods while having sex they would bring forth “cattle ringstraked, speckled and spotted“. For some reason, jacob was sure that he could produce stronger beasts in this way and thus increase the value of his animals compared to those of laban. Even though this must have taken many generations, laban was not aware that jacob was playing funny business with his animals. Why not? The chapter ends with a description of jacob’s success: “And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses“.

Okay, seriously now, what is the genetic process that is being enhanced by animals seeing spotted sticks while breeding? Why do they get stronger if their parents see certain types of sticks? And the stupid thing is that it’s not explained why getting more and more spots, etc. was a good thing since they were considered less desirable in the first place? Why is it that fundies are keen to take the events in the book literally however they always simply ignore chapters such as this one that make no sense? This episode proves that the texts are the invention of ignorant and superstitious iron-age men – not the words of an omniscient creator of the universe.

And why should jacob do anything to harm laban when all laban did was welcome him to a country and provide him with daughters, maids and children? He still got his beloved rebekah, so what’s the problem with all that extra nookie that he got along the way? To be honest, it’s jacob’s fault if he couldn’t tell who he was having sex with on his wedding night. Why couldn’t jacob just have taken his animals and built them up after finding his eventual home? Why’d he have to be such a jerk?

And of course, this chapter proves that people like “maids” were really slaves and therefore just property that could be passed around and used for whatever purposes their masters (and mistresses) wanted. And why did leah need to offer up her maid for sexual services when she had done very nicely by producing four children of her own with jacob?

Chapter 31

Relationships had soured between the jacob clan and the laban clan (despite the overlap of laban’s daughters, leah and rachel). Not sure that jacob should have been too surprised after his spotted-cattle trick, but he noticed that the countenance of laban “was not toward him as before“. Well duh jacob. That’s what happens when you play dishonest tricks on someone who just asked what they could do to give you wages for what you had done over the years.

In fact, even the lord suggested to jacob that it was time to leave “unto the land of thy fathers“. In an attempt to justify things, jacob called his daughters and whinged that despite serving their father, he had been deceived by laban who had “changed my wages ten times“. What? That must have been extraneous to the text.

There’s also an unhealthy dose of denial mixed with dishonesty and possibly mental issues when jacob states things like “thus god hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me“. The text itself states that he was the one who started the breeding deception involving spotted sticks and cows. To now invent the story that it was really god who did it is evidence of either lying or insanity. So it’s okay to do anything and then later claim it was okay because it was what god wanted? (Spoiler: that’s pretty much the justification for every event in the books following genesis.)

The madness aspect of the events is confirmed when jacob claims that he saw in a dream “and behold, the rams which leaped upon the cattle were ringstraked, speckled, and grisled“. How did the author(s) about 1,500 years later know what was in jacob’s dreams?

On a practical note, rachel and leah asked “is there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house” when they were told that they were soon leaving for foreign lands. It seemed that the inheritance was to be all the cattle, camels, goods and slaves that they could take with them.

Eventually laban got around to noticing that jacob had left with a fair amount of people and stuff and decided to pursue him. It took seven days, but eventually he caught up to him in the mountains of gilead. For some reason, god appeared to laban in a dream and warned him “speak not to jacob either good or bad“. Again, how did the author(s) know what happened in a dream?

Ignoring that advice from god, laban asked jacob why he secretly left “and carried away my daughters, as captives taken with the sword“? In fact, laban went on to say that he was willing to send jacob away “with mirth, and with songs, with tabret, and with harp” (a tabret is like a small drum or tambourine). Upon further questioning about his motives for leaving in the way he had, jacob admitted that he was afraid because he thought laban would take leah and rachel from him.

There’s a bit of a strange sub-plot because it seems that rachel had stolen laban’s gods – which means that she took the idols and images that laban believed represented gods that were important to him. It turns out that rachel had hidden them so cunningly in her “camel’s furniture” that they eluded a “thorough” search. In fact it’s worse than that because rachel was sitting on the gear (on her camel) and stated “I cannot rise up before thee; for the custom of women is upon me“. Yep, because of menstruation, rachel was not able to get up and have her camel searched.

When the goods were not found, jacob got all indignant and demanded to know why he had been pursued. He summed it up with “I been twenty years in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle: and thou hast changed my wages ten times“. Sticking up for himself, laban still claimed that all the stuff that had been taken (cattle, daughters, all that can be seest, etc.) were his, however he was willing to make a covenant with jacob.

They constructed a pillar from a pile of stones, and immediately diverged as laban called the place jegarsahadutha, while jacob called the place galeed. (It’s much easier to type jacob’s version.) Apparently the “heap” would be a witness of the covenant. It’s interesting how there always had to be a physical symbol of something in those days. It couldn’t just be on a verbal agreement and/or a handshake. Apparently they all believed that the pile of stones would be a watchtower where the lord could view the progress of their covenant even when they were apart from each other. A part of the covenant was laban insisting that jacob should not “afflict” leah or rachel, nor should he take other wives.

Success! Perhaps because they were afraid of god or their forefathers, they both agreed to the covenant and jacob “offered sacrifice upon the mount, and called his brethren to eat bread: and they did eat bread, and tarried all night in the mount“. The next morning laban “kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them: and Laban departed, and returned unto his place“.

They never did get to the bottom of the stolen-gods issue.

Chapter 32

At a place that got named mahanaim, jacob was met by angels of god. It’s not entirely clear why that was? Upon sending messengers to his brother (esau) about his intended homecoming, jacob became scared when he got the return message that esau intended meeting him with 400 of his men. Fearing destruction (why?), jacob came up with the cunning plan of dividing his party into two. That way, if one party got annihilated, the other could escape. With a final appeal to his god (whom he rightly claimed had told him to return to those lands), he grabbed whatever came to hand as a present for his brother.

What came to hand was: “Two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, thirty milch camels with their colts, forty kine, and ten bulls, twenty she asses, and ten foals“. That’s 550 animals (plus colts) – which is quite the present. To enhance the effect of the attempted bribe, he ordered his slaves to take the animals and to divide into distinct groups and go in front of the main party (containing the important people). That way, esau would get his present in stages and his pleasure was sure to build before the expected disappointment of seeing his brother again after 20 years.

Then it gets weird at a ford called jabbok. Because he’d sent the rest of his party away, jacob thought he was alone, however he was joined by a strange man with whom he wrestled throughout the night. Why? Is that what someone normally does with a stranger? During the wrestling, the stranger could not prevail against jacob, however when he “touched” jacob’s thigh, it became dislocated. It’s a pity that no one in the WWE know the thigh-dislocation-touch move today.

The stranger asked of his name and was told “jacob”. The stranger then states that jacob was to change his name to “israel” (which apparently means “he struggles with god”). Get it, get it? The stranger was really god – and jacob struggled with him. Brilliant! Why exactly god couldn’t prevail against a mortal is harder to explain (unless god was faking it?). The newly-named israel decided to call the place where it all happened to be peniel “for I have seen god face to face, and my life is preserved“. What a pity he never got to speak to a sketch artist because we could all have seen the likeness of god in which we are all supposed to have been made.

Still, wrestling does have its downside and in this case, jacob’s thigh never healed. Apparently it’s for this reason that “children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank” – which has led to them removing the sciatic nerve during kosher butchering.

So a mortal physically wrestled with the omniscient being that created two trillion galaxies in a visible universe in a day … and won? O…kay. Or is it all just an analogy to represent the “birth” (pain near the thigh) of “israel” (name change from “jacob”)? How very clumsy if it is. So if god didn’t really turn up for a wrestling match, then in which other events in this (and subsequent) books was it not really a god getting involved?

Chapter 33

Still, there was the problem of the upcoming meeting with esau for jacob to worry about. To prepare himself for that, he divided his party with: “the handmaids and their children foremost, and leah and her children after, and rachel and joseph hindermost“. That’s right: make sure that the slaves and kiddies were for the chop first.

It turns out that jacob need not have worried because when he finally met esau, they embraced, kissed and wept. It seems that one brother tricking the other out of his eternal birthright and blessing was not as serious as previously indicated. Upon asking who all the people were, jacob made the formal introductions for his two wives, two slaves and twelve children. Everyone bowed.

Upon learning that the more than half-a-thousand animals were intended as a device to find grace with him, esau declined them and stated that he’d got enough animals, thank you very much. Still, after jacob insisted, esau accepted the animals. Despite the suggestion from esau that they travel together, jacob (with his entourage) encouraged esau to go ahead on his way to seir.

Upon reaching succoth, jacob built a house and “made booths for his cattle“. He then further traveled to shalem, a city of shechem in the land of Canaan. Before that city, jacob pitched his tent – which must have been a disappointment to all after briefly living in a house. There, jacob bought a parcel of land for “one hundred pieces of money” (silver, no doubt) “at the hand of the children of hamor” (shechem’s father).

And, as everyone does at special locations, jacob erected an altar and called it eleloheisrael. See how nicely things go when god doesn’t intervene with activities such as wrestling?

Chapter 34

All the happiness in the previous chapter was too much for the author(s) because they had to balance it out with a return to horror in this chapter.

Being keen to “see the daughters of the land“, dinah (jacob and leah’s daughter) went walking. This turned out to be a bad idea because “when shechem the son of hamor the hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her“. Yep, apparently that’s what princes did in those days when they saw a direct descendant of adam walking in the street. He must have liked what he’d partaken of because he promptly fell in love (yeah, right) with dinah and “spake unto his father hamor, saying, get me this damsel to wife“. In any civilized society he’d be in jail, however at those times at least he was attempting to make amends – of course with no indication about how dinah felt about the events. Notice the use of the word “get” instead of “ask”?

Upon hearing about the defiling of his daughter, jacob decided to wait for his sons to come in from the fields for a family pow-wow. When they were home, it turned out that hamor had also come to visit jacob for a chat about recent events. The lads were suitably wroth, however hamor appealed to jacob to let schechem marry dinah, and even further, to “give your daughters unto us, and take our daughters unto you“. To further sweeten the pot, hamor promised that jacob’s kin “shall dwell with us: and the land shall be before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein“. Even shechem (“the defiler”) chipped in and asked for all to “find grace in your eyes” and promised to pay whatever dowry was deemed necessary.

Appearing to relent, jacob’s sons indicated that things would sort of be okay, but the main stumbling block is that they couldn’t possible give their sister to someone who wasn’t circumcised. They went on to suggest a solution: that if every male of the hamor tribe be circumcised, then “will we give our daughters unto you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people“.

This proposal was put to the men of the city, and with the thought that they would get access to all of jacob’s cattle (with cattle seemingly more important than access to the women which were part of the deal), everyone agreed to, and was circumcised. It was then that two of jacob’s sons (simeon and levi) “took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males“, including hamor and shechem. That’ll learn ’em.

And of course with victory came the spoils: “They took their sheep, and their oxen, and their asses, and that which was in the city, and that which was in the field, and all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives took they captive, and spoiled even all that was in the house“. Their little ones?

The reason this troubled jacob was not because of the fate of the inhabitants of the city (both dead and “spoiled”), but because he was scared about reprisal from other Canaanites and perizzites. However simeon and levi waved away his objections, stating “should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?” – which sounds like slut-shaming when she was the one that was raped. It’s worth noting that no one today knows who the perizzites were.

Wow, it’s like the author(s) of this stuff only had two gears: still and rage. So the “chosen” people engaged in a spot of genocide and sex slavery as retaliation for one rape – and a rape that was acknowledged and attempted to be addressed with marriage? And what was the mass circumcision about? A “clever” jape? So it was all males in the city killed? What exactly did a ten-year-old male in the city do wrong? And how did two guys and presumably their slaves kill all the males in a city? They were stated to be farmers and presumably there were at least some soldiers in the city? Except for the horrific nature of the story, it sure sounds like a fictional piece of nonsense.

Let’s look at the case. There was no investigation, witness statements, evidence gathering, trial, or sentencing – and that all leads to questions. There’s no mention of who told jacob about the crime, so was he hearing about it from someone in the city? Perhaps it was someone who had an axe to grind against the accused? There’s also the question of whether a rape had happened? We did not hear from dinah (of course), so there’s the possibility that she was consensual in the act (it has happened that two strangers wanted to have sex). If she wasn’t then of course shechem deserved severe repercussions, but not perhaps as severe as happened. There’s also the possibility that dinah was consensual and then changed her mind either during or after the act – perhaps to protect herself when she realized that her father and brothers knew about it. This is not an attempt to lessen the horror of rape, it’s just to show the importance of thorough investigation. None of that happened in this case. Of course, the point is that the characters in the text deal in absolutes, e.g. they are not interested in reasons; instead, they just somehow know that because the incorrect type of sex had (supposedly) occurred (e.g. outside of “marriage”) that severe retribution was required. And what about judgment and sentencing? The lads in this case decided that genocide was the appropriate sentence. What would they do for a lesser crime, e.g. robbery with violence, or a greater crime, e.g. murder? Would they only kill half the males in the city in the first example, or all the people in the city in the second example? And why were they the ones to decide on the punishment? Today, we have victim statements, but we don’t allow people related to the victim to decide the severity of the punishment. Didn’t the crime happen within the jurisdiction of a city? Why wasn’t there a process to address the crime within the city? And of course that leads to the thorny problem of how was a crime defined in those days? Fundies will tell us all about how important the ten commandments are, however those had not been handed down in the days of dinah and shechem. So how was a crime defined? Just how visitors to the city wanted it defined?

To the fundies who treat this text as literal and who let it affect their daily lives, are you sure it isn’t better to live under a system that treats crime with some standards of uniformity, published law, scientific rigor, and fairness? The problem with the approach taken in the text is that it has no backstop. At some base level, fundies who take this stuff seriously believe that it gives them some sort of underlying right to justify their actions. In the worst cases, they feel justified in taking retribution into their own hands with the “knowledge” that their god will be the only one that matters when their actions are judged, e.g. in some sort of afterlife. That’s unfortunate because it’s all based on the fictional writings of ignorant and superstitious iron-age men who were writing text with the dual aims of: the control of all people and the justification of a select group of people.

Chapter 35

Another journey was on the cards for jacob because “god said unto jacob, arise, go up to bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto god“. Why would the omniscient creator of two trillion galaxies in a visible universe require an altar of rocks to be made unto himself? How do the author(s) of the text know what god said to someone?

Anyhow, jacob took it seriously and commanded his household to “put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments“. He also got them to take the earrings out of their ears, and he then hid the lot under a nearby oak tree? What? What other gods? Didn’t his household take the recent multiple actions of just one god to be sufficient reason to abandon their belief in all the other gods (that supposedly existed at the time)? Why didn’t jacob just destroy the instruments that were intended to worship other gods? They were buried under a tree so that they could be retrieved later. Why was that? And what is it about having a bath and wearing clean clothes that makes a journey to set up an altar more successful? Surely after a couple of days on the road, the effects of the clean up would be undone?

You may have been wondering about repercussions from the events in the previous chapter, but fear not because god had put the fear of god “upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob“. See, a nice neat wrap up to the horror of the previous chapter. Does that mean that god appeared to everyone in those cities? Strange that not a single person in those cities thought to write down their interactions with an omnipotent deity.

Arriving at luz, jacob built an altar and “called the place elbethel: because there god appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother“. Unfortunately, rebekah’s nurse (a character called deborah whom we’d not heard of before) died and “was buried beneath Bethel under an oak: and the name of it was called allonbachuth“.

The lord then repeated things by once again blessing jacob, reminding him of his new name (“israel”), and promising that he would be fruitful and would multiply in the land that was promised to abraham and isaac. There seems to be a bit of disjointedness in the text because jacob then set up a pillar, added oil and drink to it, and called the place bethel. Since “bethel” had already been involved in the story many times, this seems a bit strange.

Amazingly, jacob’s lineage grew by one as they arrived at ephrath because rachel gave birth to a son whom she called benoni, but her father quickly renamed to benjamin. Unfortunately rachel died while giving birth and she “was buried in the way to ephrath, which is Bethlehem“. “And jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of rachel’s grave unto this day“. Needless to say, no one knows where that pillar is.

Continuing his journey, jacob “spread his tent beyond the tower of edar“. Nobody knows where that is. Obviously desperate for some risky sex, reuben decided to “lay with bilhah, his father’s concubine“, and jacob “heard it“. There can be little doubt that sexual “servants” labeled as “concubines” were indistinguishable to slaves. The text then provides a handy summary of the offspring of jacob (being careful to omit dinah, his daughter who was born to leah):

• reuben – to leah, jacob’s 1st wife, his cousin
• simeon – to leah, jacob’s 1st wife, his cousin
• levi – to leah, jacob’s 1st wife, his cousin
• judah – to leah, jacob’s 1st wife, his cousin
• dan – to bilhah, rachel’s slave
• naphtali – to bilhah, rachel’s slave
• gad – to zilpah, leah’s slave
• asher – to zilpah, leah’s slave
• issachar – to leah, jacob’s 1st wife, his cousin
• zebulun – to leah, jacob’s 1st wife, his cousin
• joseph – to rachel, jacob’s 2nd wife, his cousin
• benjamin – to rachel, jacob’s 2nd wife, his cousin

Eventually “jacob came unto isaac his father unto mamre, unto the city of arbah, which is Hebron, where abraham and isaac sojourned“. There, isaac “gave up the ghost” and was buried by esau and jacob. The fact that isaac achieved an age of 180 didn’t seem to bother anyone, although it should have since it contravened the 120 year limit stated by genesis 6:3.

Chapter 36

There’s another change of pace in this chapter because it’s back to the boring genealogy … this time to do with esau, who was isaac’s other son and the brother of jacob who performed the deception with the goat skins to steal away esau’s blessing and inheritance (although they made up with each other in chapter 33).

For an unstated reason, esau took his wives (yes, plural) from the Canaanite side of the population. Here they are, with the next generations of sons they produced for esau:

• adah (wife to esau, daughter of elon)
  • eliphaz
    • teman
    • omar
    • zepho
    • gatam
    • kenaz
    • amalek (to a concubine named timna)
• aholibamah (wife to esau, daughter of anah who was the daughter of zibeon)
  • jeush
  • jaalam
  • korah
• zibeon (wife to esau, a hivite)
• bashemath (wife to esau, ishmael’s daughter).
  • reuel
    • nahath
    • zerah
    • shammah
    • mizzah

That last one gets complicated because it’s thought that bashemath is the same person as mahalath (ishmael’s only stated daughter). Note that there is an error in the text (in genesis 36:16) as korah is incorrectly included in the offspring of eliphaz when he is a son to aholibamah. So the omniscient creator of the universe is not phased with errors in the “word” he left to his creation? If that one is allowed to creep in, then what other errors made their way into the texts? So fundies, the “marriage is between one man and one women” concept takes another blow – and from the very texts that you need to be fundamental to your religion.

Because esau had acquired so much wealth, the land in which he lived could no longer support him (e.g. his large number of cattle), so he moved everything to the mount seir region. The exact boundaries of seir are not known, but seir is thought to be northeast of the Gulf of Aquaba and would included modern-day Jordan and parts of northern Saudi Arabia.

The text then takes a detour to a different family tree. These are the offspring of seir, the horite (sons unless indicated otherwise):

• lotan
  • hori
  • hemam
• shobal
  • alvan
  • manahath
  • ebal
  • shepho
  • onam
• zibeon
  • ajah
  • anah. Apparently it was anah who found “mules” (water?) in the wilderness.
    • dishon
    • aholibamah (daughter).
• anah
• dishon
  • hemdan
  • eshban
  • ithran
  • cheran
• ezer
  • bilhan
  • zaavan
  • akan
• dishan
  • uz
  • aran
• timna (daughter with same mother as lotan, and eventual mother to amalek)

Astute readers may have noticed the mess in the above family tree because there are duplicate entries, e.g. for anah and dishon. It’s possible that there is a straight out mistake, and it’s possible that there is some confusion about the use of the word “son” and “duke” (as in a tribal leader). But apparently having a family tree that resembles a bowl of spaghetti wasn’t a problem as part of the “word” of the omniscient creator of the universe.

There’s then presented a long list of the guys who ruled in edom, but were replaced when each died (with the dude on the next line):

• bela, son of beor. The name of his city was dinhabah
• jobab, son of zerah of bozrah
• husham, of the land of temani
• hadad, son of bedad (who smote midian in the field of moab). His city was avith
• samlah of masrekah
• sau or rehoboth
• baalhanan, son of achbor
• hadar. His city was named pau; and his wife’s name was mehetabel, the daughter of matred, the daughter of mezahab.

And finally, there’s a statement of the “dukes that came of esau” (dukes being captains of tribes):

• timnah
• alvah
• jetheth
• aholibamah
• elah
• pinon
• kenaz
• teman
• mibzar
• magdiel
• iram

Good luck fighting your way through the names presented in this chapter.

🙁

Chapter 37

It’s back to one of the stock themes in this chapter – internal family friction.

The text starts with an interesting point. Namely that jacob was living in a land in which his father (isaac) was a stranger. These texts (describing, as we now know, 100% fictional events) were written well over 1,000 years after the (supposed) events they depict, and were clumsy attempts to justify a land grab by one group of people. And why were the strangers entitled to move into the land? Because an old guy (noah) got drunk, fell down naked, and one of his sons (ham, who would eventually have a son named canaan) accidentally saw him naked – thus condemning an entire branch of people. Remember that as you read the resulting travesties. And there’s no indication that the people in these stories were acting on the knowledge of that (supposed) penile event, however they were acting as if some event was in place as the sufficient reason. And that means one of two things: either god was directing everything (as if it was an extended puppet show) or greedy writers over a millennium later were inventing stories to try and achieve and justify a goal. The most likely one of those is obviously the correct one.

For an unstated reason jacob loved joseph (then 17 years old) more than all his other (twelve) children. But wait a moment, that’s weird from the get go. It is understandable that a parent might favor aspects of one child over the other, but favoritism when it comes to love is a more difficult thing to understand in a parent. It’s not clear that the author(s) of the text understood the concept of love (which would explain quite a bit). One of the results of jacob’s love was the construction of a coat of many colors for joseph. This didn’t go unnoticed by joseph’s siblings and they hated joseph. As usual, it’s all very black and white.

It gets worse because joseph decided to relate a dream that he had in which his wheat sheaves stood upright whereas his brother’s “sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf“. Joseph would have done better to keep that one to himself. After all, it was just a dream, so why did anyone have to know about it? And again, how did the author(s) of this text know what was in a dream of someone over 1,000 years earlier? The expected result happened: that joseph’s brothers hated him even more.

It gets even worse because joseph decided to relate another one of his dreams in which “the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me“. (Get it: eleven stars equates to eleven brothers!) This time it was worse because even joseph’s father rebuked him for his dream. Of course this is all ridiculous because unless they believe that joseph was in control of which dreams he was having (was god tinkering again?) how could they be upset with him? And to those who believe that the isaac clan is an analogy, so this dream would be an analogy within an analogy?

One day joseph’s brothers were feeding the family’s flock in shechem and isaac sent joseph to be with them. Why would eleven brothers go off to conduct the family business but one stay behind? Of course: as a literary device. On the way there joseph met a man who told him that the brothers were actually in dothan. Upon arriving in dothan, joseph’s brothers “conspired against him to slay him“. Their plan was to throw the body into a pit and say that “some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams“. That’d be all those lions and bears that were wandering around in the pastures? They stripped joseph of his coat and cast him into a pit. So that would be a pit with straight sides and more than two meters deep (so that he couldn’t easily climb out) that just happened to be near to where they were grazing that day? And if the pit was just cut into the soil, couldn’t joseph had chipped away and made foot and hand holes to eventually clamber out? So the pit was made of timber or stone, and just happened to be near them?

Also coincidentally, that day there just happened to be a “company of ishmeelites came from gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt” and judah suggested that they sell joseph to them.

At first you could be forgiven for thinking that judah didn’t want to kill joseph, but no, it was purely that he could see no profit in killing joseph, whereas selling him would mean some financial gain. Weirdly, the plan was changed again because the brothers suddenly didn’t want to even have a hand in the sale. Instead, they just wandered away for a little while.

Just at that time, there happened to be some passing “midianite merchantmen and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold joseph to the ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought joseph into Egypt“. Why wouldn’t a passing group of people lift someone out of a pit as a means of rescue? Why the sale to the other group of travelers who just happened to be passing at the same time? So that’s three amazing coincidences (a suitable pit and two passing groups of travellers) coupled with the unlikely event that eleven brothers decide to dispose of one brother who had two dreams and owned a colorful coat? And this rubbish passes for historical record for some people?

To those who try to mount a case that the texts do not promote slavery, note that this is a passing company of travelers to whom it is easy to sell a human being. That can’t be anything other than slavery. And we even now know the price of a person in those days: 20 pieces of silver! That amount of silver in those days was worth a few hundred US dollars in today’s money … for the sale of a seventeen year old male. The amount of 20 pieces of silver is interesting because that’s the amount that was set in leviticus chapter 27. That is evidence that the author(s) were inventing (rather than relating) events, because otherwise how did the slave traders of the day know the price that would only be set (by the lord, no less) much later? That only makes sense if the author(s) of genesis knew that the entire pentateuch existed when they were inventing a story that supposedly happened during only the first book of the five. In other words, they let events in the later books affect what they were claiming were real events that happened when characters and events from only the first book were possible.

So the deed was done: the midianites sold joseph to the ishmeelites and he was taken to Egypt. Note the neat transference of guilt to the people that are to be hated in later texts? The now innocent-in-our-eyes brothers returned to find the pit empty. At least reuben had the decency to rent his clothes at the site of the empty pit. They didn’t think to run after the slave traders (who couldn’t be too far away) and take or buy back their brother; instead, they decided to take his colorful coat and dip it in the blood of a baby goat that they had just killed. They then returned to their father who, upon seeing the bloody coat said “It is my son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; joseph is without doubt rent in pieces“. Their father didn’t just speak, he acted: by renting his own clothes, putting sackcloth upon his loins, and mourning his missing son for many days. Yep, days. The text states “And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted“. That would appear to be a mistake because jacob is stated to only have one daughter (dinah).

The chapter concludes with a reminder that “the midianites sold him into Egypt unto potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s, and captain of the guard“. Of course there’s no evidence that potiphar was a real person. It’s telling that the author(s) managed to state an actual name for someone they though important enough to mention, however they were unable to give the name of the most important person in Egypt: the pharaoh. This is clear evidence that the author(s) of genesis were just making things up and they had no idea about the lineage of pharohs at the time they were inserting their fictional story. Of course they had to have background to make the events seem plausible, so they invented the name of a captain. If this is all the word of god, didn’t he know who was pharaoh at the time of the events? Why is absolutely nothing in genesis (or any subsequent text) tied to an actual person or event that can be corroborated by a believable contemporary source outside of the text?

Chapter 38

Noting that judah was the one out of the eleven brothers in the previous chapter brought out for attention, the story in this chapter unsurprisingly continues with him. He had a friend called hirah who was an adullamite, and one day while visiting he saw the “daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was shuah; and he took her, and went in unto her and she conceived“. It’s not completely clear whether shuah was his wife’s name or his mother-in-law’s name, but this summary is assuming the later. It turns out that they conceived a number of times, producing the following sons (and background stories):

• er. This son was forced to marry (by judah) a woman named tamar. However er “was wicked in the sight of the lord; and the lord slew him“. No crime was mentioned.
• onan. Upon the murder of er, judah forced onan to marry tamar. However onan wasn’t keen on reproducing with tamar and instead of depositing his seed in her, “he spilled it on the ground“. The lord didn’t like that one bit, so he also murdered onan.
• shelah. This son was born at a place called chezib.

Fearing further “peradventure”, judah said to tamar (his daughter-in-law) that she should remain a widow at her father’s house until shelah became old enough to marry her. Note that tamar had no say in the business of handing her off from one brother to the other.

Unfortunately (and conveniently for the story), judah’s (unnamed) wife died and he went to his mate hirah in timnath to be comforted. When tamar learned that judah was going to shear his sheep in timnath, she removed her widow’s garments and strategically placed herself in an open place that she knew would intersect with judah’s journey. The problem for her (as she saw it) was that shelah had grown up and she had not been given to him as a wife.

Upon seeing tamar (with her face covered and therefore not recognizing her as his former daughter-in-law), judah assumes that she is a prostitute and asks how much it will cost for him to “come in unto thee“. Not considering actual money, judah offers to give her a kid from his flock. Being a practical sort of lass, tamar required some sort of tangible pledge prior to payment – his signet, braceletes and his staff. He quickly parted with all of that, did the deed, “and she conceived by him“.

Being an honorable sort of chap (cough, cough), judah tried to pay the fee of a baby goat for the prostitute’s services, but upon inquiring (via his mate hirah) as to the location of the “harlot”, he was told that no such woman existed in those parts. About three months later it somehow came out that tamar had played the trick on judah and that she had conceived. This prompted the response from judah of “bring her forth, and let her be burnt“. Whoops.

It turned out okay because instead of a good old-fashioned burning, jacob ended up acknowledging that “she hath been more righteous than I, because I gave her not to shelah my son“. He could hardly deny it since she had produced his signet, bracelets and staff. Yeah, quite an incredible collection of moral messages, isn’t it?

The story gets a bit more complicated then because tamar gave birth to twins. Apparently one of the twins put his hand out of the womb first and the midwife put a scarlet thread around his wrist. That’s so that there would later be no doubt about identifying the firstborn (and we all know how important the order of birth is to people of that age). Unexpectedly, the hand (with thread) retracted into the womb and the baby without the thread came out first, and was called pharez (or perez). The baby with the thread was born a little later and was called zarah (or zerah, or zarath). This of course is quite impossible (via a natural birth), and is obviously some sort of literary device invented by the author(s).

Not to put too much of a spoiler on things, but I guess we all know where the lineage of pharez is headed? Yep, a lineage that included a woman pretending to be a prostitute on the side of the road. Funny how people tend to stop figuring out that certain lineage (when working backwards) at someone like a king (further spoiler: david)?

Chapter 39

Just when you’d forgotten the sub-plot, it’s back to see how joseph was getting on in Egypt…

Recapping that joseph had been sold into slavery by the ishmeelites, the chapter states that he actually did quite well and prospered in the house of his master, potiphar (a captain in Egypt). Apparently that was because the lord was with him – but not enough to do anything concrete like free him and allow him to return home. Things went so well for joseph that he was made an overseer in potiphar’s house, and the entire house was even blessed as a result of joseph’s blessing.

He ended up doing so well that he came to the attention of potiphar’s wife. She of course wanted a bit of nookie with joseph, however he refused. Good boy! The wife didn’t give up so easily and she cornered joseph one day in the house when no one else was around. Resisting her advances (again), he fled, however she managed to snare part of his garments in the process. With those garments as “proof” she accused joseph: “he came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice“. Upon returning home, potiphar learned of his wife’s claim and he was very wroth. So wroth that he put joseph into prison.

Luckily, the lord was with joseph and he found favor with the keeper of the prison – who eventually put joseph (to some extent) in charge of the other prisoners and their doings. For some reason, the lord didn’t favor joseph enough to free him and have him return home to his people.

Chapter 40

The (unnamed) pharaoh had been displeased with two of his staff: his butler (cupbearer) and his baker, and had thrown them in prison where joseph had been charged with looking after them. What does that mean in practice? Remember that joseph was also a prisoner, so what exactly did he get to do to look after two other prisoners? The text doesn’t explain of course. The only thing that the reader needs to know is that joseph was (unfairly) in a bad place and that he had special powers, e.g. it’s the typical victimized-hero story.

Speaking of special powers, the butler and the baker had dreams that made them sad and they were keen to know what they meant. Strangely, joseph replied “Do not interpretations belong to god? Tell me them“. If interpretations belong to god, why did joseph need to hear the dreams?

The butler’s dream involved a vine with three branches that brought forth ripe grapes. The butler took the grapes and pressed them into a cup which was delivered to the pharaoh’s hand. This one was pretty easy for joseph because he interpreted the branches to mean days, and he told the butler that he would be restored to his position within three days. Being a practical guy, joseph added that he wanted the butler to mention him to the pharaoh so that he might “bring me out of this house” (something that god was unable or unwilling to do). There’s then a reminder about how joseph was unjustly stolen from his homeland and forced into his current dungeon residence.

For some reason the baker “saw that the interpretation was good” and told joseph about his own dream. As an aside, how did the baker know that the interpretation was good before the events came to pass? In the baker’s dream, there were three baskets on his head and the birds ate the baked goods from the uppermost basket. This one was no problem for joseph either because somehow he knew that within three days the baker would be hanged and the birds would eat his flesh.

It just happened that the third day from the day of these interpretations was the pharaoh’s birthday, and amazingly the butler and baker had been released from prison to attend the festivities. As predicted, the butler was restored to his position and the baker was hanged. Unfortunately, the butler forgot to mention joseph to the pharaoh.

It’s doubtful that these stories could get more obvious or childish. Of course none of that happened, and of course it’s just a device to get the reader to think well of the victimized hero.

Chapter 41

Two years had passed and the pharaoh managed to have two dreams: the first about seven lean cows eating seven fat cows, and the second about seven lean plant ears devouring seven full plant ears. It’s probably not worth lingering on the fact that cows don’t eat cows and plants don’t eat plants, but hey, it was a dream, right?

The dreams troubled the pharaoh and he called for all his magicians and wise men to give suitable interpretations, however none were able to help. As an aside, so there were Egyptian magicians, were there? It’s noteworthy that there is nothing in the writings that the actual Egyptians left for us to support that. Luckily for the pharaoh, the baker overheard the issue and explained how joseph had correctly interpreted two dreams two years earlier. That did it for the pharaoh because he called joseph to come forth out of the dungeon. After a quick shave and change of clothes, joseph presented himself to the pharaoh and explained that even though it was really god who was doing the interpreting, he’d have a go.

After hearing a (long) recap of the dreams, joseph stated that the dreams meant that Egypt was about to have seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Brilliant! The solution was for the pharaoh to take one fifth of the produce during the seven years of plenty so that it could be used during the seven years of famine.

The pharaoh was very impressed by this (as yet unfulfilled) interpretation and he immediately elevated joseph to be the second-most powerful person in the land (after himself of course). To seal the deal, the pharaoh took off his ring and put it on joseph’s hand “and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck“. Also given to joseph was a chariot so that “without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land“.

The gifts didn’t stop there because “Pharaoh called joseph’s name zaphnathpaaneah; and he gave him to wife asenath the daughter of potipherah priest of on” (“on” being a place apparently). Note that this was another non-consensual marriage. And joseph was even very hands-on during the seven years of plenty because he went all over Egypt and helped gather up all the food. No doubt he delegated a bit. Things were so good during those years that joseph and asenath had two sons: manasseh and ephraim.

Unfortunately, the good times ended “and the dearth was in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread“. Needless to say there is no record of a worldwide famine (except for in Egypt) lasting seven years. This is just another device invented by ignorant iron-age men who didn’t understand the scale of the world in which they lived (in the bit they considered to be the center). The author(s) really doubled down (and cemented their ignorance for all to see) with “And all countries came into Egypt to joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands“. There’s no way that one fifth of crops for seven years is enough to be sold to “all countries” to solve the results of a seven-year famine.

This is clearly just another childish fable designed to elevate the victimized hero.

Chapter 42

We start to go full circle in this chapter…

The effects of the “worldwide” seven-year famine started to bite and jacob (remember him?) ordered nine of his sons to go to Egypt to buy corn (with the youngest, benjamin staying behind). Incidentally, “corn” was not maize in those days, it was wheat.

The brothers eventually found themselves in front of joseph because he was the guy who was in charge of selling food to all the people in the world who were going hungry. Even though joseph recognized his brothers, he “made himself strange unto them” so that they would not recognise him. So that would be a magic disguise, would it?

When he asked why they had come to Egypt, they told him that they had come from Canaan to buy food. Instead of accepting the obvious, joseph accused his brothers of being spies in the land – something they denied over and over.

Although it makes no sense, joseph kept the brothers in jail for three days and only released nine of them (he kept hold of simeon) so that they could prove who they were by producing their youngest brother (benjamin who had stayed home). Why it mattered or counted as proof of anything if they produced another brother, is anyone’s guess? It would have made for a much better story if joseph had told the lads to produce all 12 brothers (as they claimed they had). They would have then been in the difficult position of having to produce a brother who was actually standing in front of them (although they didn’t realize that).

On the return journey (with the food), the nine brothers got an attack of the guilts over what they had done to joseph and they started to wonder if some divine intervention was happening. When they looked in one of the sacks of food they even found the money that they thought they had spent on the food (joseph had returned the money). The lads didn’t know that and thought that god had returned their money – making things even scarier for them. They finally made it home and told their father (jacob) everything that had happened. It turns out that every man’s sack of food also contained the money that they thought they had spent purchasing the food.

Already sad for the loss of joseph, jacob refused to let benjamin travel to Egypt.

Chapter 43

When they had finished the food they had bought, and because the famine was continuing, jacob told his lads to go back to Egypt to buy more provisions. It fell to judah to point out that the mystery seller had said that they had to bring their younger brother back the next time they returned. That didn’t please jacob too much and he asked them why they admitted to having another brother? They replied that the man had asked them lots of questions and they had just answered honestly.

When judah said that he would look after benjamin on the trip, jacob agreed and told them to “carry down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds“, and to take double the required money.

When joseph saw the full compliment of his brothers (the ones that had sold him into slavery sans colorful coat), he told the ruler of his house to show them all to his home and to prepare them for a meal at noon. The lads were a little nervous about what was happening and they explained that they had brought extra money to make up for the returned money they had found in their sacks the previous trip. The steward of the house told them not to worry as he led them to joseph’s house where they got water and washed their feet and had their donkeys fed. He also brought simeon out of prison to them.

When joseph returned home, they gave him the presents they had brought and he asked them about the father that they had mentioned. They all bowed down their heads to joseph who then noticed and asked about benjamin: “is this your younger brother, of whom ye spake unto me?“. Seeing his younger brother again made joseph emotional and he retired to his bedroom for a little cry.

Upon returning, the brothers were seated for a meal in order: from eldest (reuben) to youngest (benjamin) and that amazed them. A bit of a downer in the story is that the brothers were forced to eat by themselves and the Egyptians ate by themselves (with joseph) because “the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians“. Reinforcing the concept of favoritism, joseph made sure that benjamin received five times the food of any other brother.

It wouldn’t be a religious text if there wasn’t a reminder about unjustifiable racism and favoritism.

Chapter 44

It turns out that joseph was a sneaky so-and-so because he commanded the steward of his house to organize a little test. They filled the brothers’ sacks with food and, once again, refused payment by placing the fee for the food into the top of each sack. But then, joseph’s silver cup (apparently he had one special cup) was hidden in the youngest brother’s sack (benjamin’s). The brothers then left to start their journey home.

They hadn’t gone far before they were overtaken by joseph’s stewart who accused them of theft. The brother’s were aghast at the suggestion and stated that if any of them had stolen something then that brother should be put to death and the rest of them taken into slavery. A quick search of sacks (from eldest brother to youngest, in order) showed the missing cup to be in benjamin’s sack. This caused each brother to rent his clothes and for the whole party to return to the city.

Upon return, joseph seemed to relent on the death penalty approach, and stated that the brother who took the cup would become his slave and the rest of the brothers would be released to return to their father. Then judah spent a very long time retelling the story about how their father didn’t want to send benjamin because he’d already lost one son (joseph) and didn’t want to lose his youngest – because it would cause him to get gray hairs and he would have sorrow unto his grave (which would seem to render the problems of gray hairs moot). To solve the problem, judah offered to be taken as a slave instead of benjamin.

Chapter 45

Finally, joseph could contain himself no longer and asked the brothers to leave the room while he rearranged himself so that he would become recognizable to them. How? Did he take off his false mustache? He then invited his brothers back into the room and confirmed that he was the brother whom they had sold into slavery. For some reason joseph stated that it wasn’t really the brothers who had sold him into slavery; instead, it was really god who had done that as part of a bigger plan. And joseph now got that plan rolling as he told the brothers to go and get their father (and presumably the women, children, animals and assorted slaves) and return to Egypt to live in a place called goshen. This was considered a good thing to do because joseph knew that there was still five years of famine to come. To seal the deal, joseph fell upon benjamin’s neck and wept, and then kissed all his brethren.

The pharaoh heard of the events and was very pleased. He told joseph to get his brethren to go back to the land of Canaan, gather their belongings, and then relocate so that they would get “the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land“. What land fat? It seems the author(s) forgot that they were in the midst of a worldwide famine. It’s also less clear why the pharaoh thought this was a good idea? Surely in those days he would have thought that the fat of the land should be for Egyptians and their offspring?

To sweeten the deal, he gave each brother a change of clothes, but to benjamin he gave five changes of clothes and 300 pieces of silver. For an unknown reason, he sent ten donkeys laden with corn and bread and meat for their father (jacob). Surely all that was necessary was the food required for the return trip?

The remainder of the chapter is a brief mention of the brothers returning home and convincing a disbelieving jacob that his son joseph was alive and indeed was the “governor over all the land of Egypt“. Upon being convinced, jacob said that he would go and see joseph before he died.

Chapter 46

During his journey to Egypt, jacob (also called “israel”) “came to beersheba and offered sacrifices unto the god of his father isaac“. There, god spoke to jacob “in the visions of the night” and told him not to worry because he would make a great nation of jacob and his descendants. This is actually the last time that god will have any sort of direct action in the book of genesis.

It turns out that jacob was traveling with a great deal of baggage, including his sons, their wives, and his son’s sons, his daughter and everyone’s daughters, his cattle and their goods. There’s then a lengthy list of jacob’s “seed”:

• (via leah:) reuben’s sons: hanoch, phallu, hezron, carmi.
• (via leah:) simeon’s sons: jemuel, jamin, ohad, jachin, zohar, shaul (the son of a Canaanitish woman).
• (via leah:) levi’s sons: gershon, kohath, merari.
• (via leah:) judah’s sons: er, onan, shelah, pharez, zarah. (er and onan had died in Canaan.)
• (via leah:) issachar’s sons: tola, phuvah, job, shimron.
• (via leah:) zebulun’s sons: sered, elon, jahleel.
• (via zilpah:) gad’s sons: ziphion, haggi, shuni, ezbon, eri, arodi, areli.
• (via zilpah:) asher’s son’s (unless stated): jimnah, ishuah, isui, beriah, serah (a daughter).
  • Sons of beriah: heber and malchiel
• (via rachel:) joseph’s sons: manasseh, ephraim (born in Egypt to asenath, “the daughter of potipherah, priest of on“).
• (via rachel:) benjamin’s sons: belah, becher, ashbel, gera, naaman, ehi, rosh, muppim, huppim, ard.
• (via bilhah:) dan’s son: hushim
• (via bilhah:) naphtali’s son: jahzeel, guni, jezer, shillem.

If you count all of jacob’s children born to leah (his first wife) and all of their children it comes to 32 (that’s everyone on the first six points above, plus dinah). The text says that the total is 33 (genesis 46:15), which might have been a mistake in either counting or writing, or perhaps that number includes leah?

The text (genesis 46:18) mentions that there were 16 souls born to zilpah’s union with jacob – which is correct if you don’t include zilpah in the count.

The text (genesis 46:22) mentions that there were 14 born to rachel’s union with jacob – which is correct if you don’t include rachel in the count.

The text (genesis 46:25) mentions that there were 7 born to bilhah’s union with jacob – which is correct if you don’t include bilhah in the count.

The text then totals the number of people traveling to Egypt (omitting joseph and kids, and the wives of jacob’s sons, of course) as being 66. If you don’t count the two daughters in the bunch (dinah and serah), then the total should be 65 – which at least is in keeping with the one-off error concerning leah’s offspring. It’s also messier due to the previous deaths of er and onan. Anyhow, close enough.

In case the reader was a little light on arithmetic skills, the text then adds jacob, joseph and his two kids to come up with a total of 70 setting up shop in Egypt (which should have been 69). Of course that total doesn’t include the people not worth mentioning, e.g. the wives of the various lads, miscellaneous daughters (presumably) and all of the slaves.

Note that of the 69 mentioned in the three generations under jacob, only two were female (dinah and searh). That’s astronomically unlikely (about one chance in 3.97 x 10¹⁸) and clearly is a literary choice made by the author(s) when they invented the stories. To make more sense, there must have been more daughters, but of course, being females, they were not important enough to mention.

They eventually arrived in goshen and joseph did fall upon his father’s neck and wept when he was finally reunited with jacob. It must have been too much happiness for jacob because he now stated that he was ready to die.

Weirdly, joseph instructs jacob et. al. to tell the pharaoh that they were cattle farmers (shepherds) because apparently “every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians“. Presumably that way jacob’s clan would be left alone by the Egyptians? Of course it’s nonsense because we know today that the ancient Egyptians were cattle farmers – with evidence of that activity dating back to the 5th millennium BCE. That mistake is another thing introduced as a literary device by ignorant authors over 1,000 after the supposed events.

Chapter 47

Upon being reminded by joseph that his father and brothers had settled in the land of goshen in Egypt, the (unnamed) pharaoh asked them what was their occupation and how old was jacob. It was explained to him that the lads were cattlemen and that jocob was 130 years old (which further contradicts the age limit of 120 given in genesis chapter 6). For some reason jacob felt he was in a position to dish out blessings – which he did to the pharaoh no less. This must have pleased the pharaoh because jacob and his brothers were given the best of lands in Egypt.

The lads did really well on their land and they managed to nourish everyone in their clan with bread. The problem was that the famine was biting hard and both Egypt and Canaan: “there was no bread in all the land” and “the land of Egypt and all the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine“. The weird thing about this chapter is that it contradicts the successful strategy (stated in chapter 41) of collecting excess in the seven years of plenty to survive the seven years of famine to follow. So did that strategy of the great dream-interpreter (joseph) work or didn’t it?

Not adverse to a little profiteering, joseph managed to soak up all the money from the people of Egypt and Canaan as they were forced to buy food from him during the famine. As we all know, money eventually runs out and joseph made the helpful suggestion that the people should pay him (for food) with their cattle, their flocks and their donkeys. That worked for a year but then they ran out of animals. The only thing left for people to sell for food was their land – which joseph cheerfully accepted. The scheme was so successful that “joseph bought all the land of Egypt for pharaoh” which resulted in the people being relocated from the land to the cities.

Do you know who wasn’t affected by the land grab? That’s right, the priests. Because the pharaoh had allocated land to the priests, they were allowed to stay on their land. So assuming that the priests were also in the midst of a worldwide famine, how did they get food if they weren’t allowed to sell their land to buy it? Just given it?

The brilliant part of the scheme was that joseph then appeared to be the hero because he told the people that they were welcome to once again inhabit the land they had just sold – however they had to give the pharaoh one fifth of everything they produced from then on. The text then has the temerity to have the people say how grateful they were to the pharaoh for “saving” them and how pleased they were to now be the pharaoh’s servants. To seal their fate: “joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that pharaoh should have the fifth part, except the land of the priests only“. It’s disgusting behavior, yet it’s tarted up as being beneficial to the people. That’s right: the people were now effectively renting their own land in perpetuity. Thanks to their profiteering, jacob and his clan had possessions and “grew, and multiplied exceedingly“.

Even though the text previously stated that jacob was ready to die, he managed to hang on for 17 more years before telling joseph (while putting “thy hand under my thigh“) that he wanted to to be buried with his fathers in the land of Canaan. That is something that joseph promised to do.

If you take a step back and evaluate the story in this chapter you quickly realize what a ridiculous work of fiction it is. So the pharaoh put the needs of his people last and allocated the best lands in his country to a small clan of foreigners? Why? There’s not mention of god affecting the mind of the pharaoh to achieve that, so the pharaoh just acted in a way that grossly disadvantaged his own people? And how did joseph manage to keep alive all the animals that people used as payment for food? Somehow the animals were fine living off joseph’s land however nowhere else in Egypt or Canaan could the animals survive (and provide for the people)? Needless to say, there is zero evidence of every piece of land in Egypt being sold to cope with the effects of a worldwide famine. Don’t you feel that piece of information would have made it into the writings the Egyptians did leave? That’s clearly a nonsense piece of fiction invented by the author(s). But, as should be obvious, if the author(s) invented this part of the text, what other parts are nothing more than works of fiction and not the words of the omniscient creator of the universe? Take a minute.

The fact that the priests were allowed to stay on their land and not pay the 20% tax gives a clue as to the real motivation of the text: the control of the population by a ruling class. There’s nothing more to it than that, and the insertion of a “god” is just a means of achieving the end control the author(s) desired.

Chapter 48

As it getting close to the end for jacob (whose name is used interchangeably in this chapter with “israel”), joseph brought his own sons (manasseh and ephraim) before him. For an unstated reason, jacob decided to elevate joseph’s sons to be equal to his own in terms of inheritance. The weird thing is that jacob had 49 other (living) grandchildren, so why joseph’s two got singled out for special treatment is a mystery. Of course, it’s the sort of thing that sounds intriguing in a story, however it’s also the sort of thing that is going to cause intergenerational disharmony. They certainly didn’t need any sort of extra inheritance since joseph was by far the richest person in the (known) world at that stage.

Strangely, even though he had elevated them in the inheritance pecking order, jacob asked who the two were when joseph presented his two kids. When joseph explained who manasseh and ephraim were, jacob asked that they be brought closer so that he could bless them. The lads were presented to jacob as nature intended: with ephraim towards jacob’s left hand and manasseh towards his right hand. This of course was done because everyone knows that the right hand is used to indicate the first-born and the left-hand is used for those not lucky enough to be a first-born. Why?

But the last laugh was jacob’s because he crossed his hands while giving the blessing and therefore put his right hand on ephraim and his left on manasseh. Hells bells! Clearly thinking this was an oversight on the nearly-blind jacob, a displeased joseph tried to correct the mistake, however jacob stated that he knew what he was doing, and that the younger brother (ephraim) would turn out to be greater than the older brother (manasseh), e.g. that “his seed shall become a multitude of nations“. How did jacob know that? More magic.

Finally, jacob decided to give joseph an extra share of inheritance above his eleven brothers. One wonders what that actually meant since it was joseph who had all the money from the sale of Egyptian goods and property, and whatever jacob did have had to be split among twelve sons? The text gives a clue because it has jacob stating the following about his assets: “which I took out of the hand of the amorite with my sword and with my bow“. Yep, plain old-fashioned theft – which still must have been inconsequential compared to the wealth that joseph had managed to acquire. Speaking of twelve sons, it’s interesting that this chapter entirely ignores the other eleven of jacob’s kiddies. If we’re going for this eldest-youngest theme, then surely reuben (eldest) and benjamin (youngest) should have had some interest in jacob playing fast and loose with inheritances?

Chapter 49

Even though it was being dragged out (so very dragged out), jacob was getting closer to his end. He was now so close that he decided to call all his sons together to explain what was going to happen to them in the future. How he knew what would happen in the years to come is not explained. More magic. Here are the “predictions”, kid by kid:

• reuben: although being first-born and “my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellent of power“, he was not to excel “because thou wentest up to thy father’s bed; then defilest thou it“. That’s what you get for sleeping with your father’s concubine.
• simeon and levi: they were treated together, and it wasn’t good. Because they were judged to be “instruments of cruelty” who, “in their anger they slew a man“, they were to be cursed, divided, and scattered in Israel. So killing gets you cursed? For some reason that approach didn’t apply to many of the characters in the book.
• judah: is singled out for future success. Apparently he will be a leader, a lawgiver, and a ruling authority “until shiloh comes“. shiloh was supposed to be the first religious capital where the tabernacle was to be housed. Some have theorized (of course) that this prophecy refers to the arrival of certain savior – especially since judah is supposed to be a forefather in that lineage.
• zebulun: “shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for an haven of ships; and his border shall be unto zidon” (sidon). There’s probably something a little off with jacob’s magic at this point because this prophecy turned out not to be true (since zebulun didn’t end up settling at the sea).
• issachar: is predicted to be someone who works hard but is comfortable to live a pleasant life whilst being subservient to others – like a hard-working but well-looked-after donkey. Nice.
• dan: will become a judge of his people. He will be like a snake that brings down a horse and rider by biting the heels (more than one heel?) of the horse (something that isn’t going to happened since snakes tend to stay clear of approaching horses).
• gad: all that can be said about gad is that he will overcome, but only at the last and after he has suffered defeat.
• asher: will have riches of the land and will provide bounty for even royal occasions.
• naphtali: will be known for their agility and swiftness, and also for their wise and eloquent speech. One senses that jacob was running on empty at this stage.
• joseph: will be blessed by the almighty with: “blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb“. He will be blessed above his brothers.
• benjamin: will devour his prey and divide the spoils. O…kay.

Those were the blessings for what will become the twelve tribes derived from mr israel (jacob).

And of course, there’s not a single mention of his daughter, dinah (who hasn’t been involved in the story since chapter 34).

Then, jacob said that he was to be buried with his fathers in that cave in the field of machpelah (of ephron the hittite) – where abraham and sarah his wife were buried, and where isaac and rebekah his wife were buried, and where his own wife leah was buried. Finally, at an age of 147, jacob “gave up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people“.

It’s all very black-and-white and prescriptive. Whole lives are summed up and destinies determined via single events and beliefs. Why? Aren’t people more complicated than that? Can you imagine if something like that happened today? Imagine if grandpa was close to the end and gathered his kids around him and started to say things like “And Johnny, you’ll be a great squash player; and Phil, you’ll conquer the short-selling market in Hong Kong; and Britanee, you’ll take the art of body piercing in surprising directions; and Gerald, you’ll eat many a fine lobster dish; etc., etc., etc”. The kids would start looking at their shoes in embarrassment. Apologies if that sounds ridiculous, and it is incredulous because of course dying fathers would never say anything about a non-male offspring.

Chapter 50

Upon the death of jacob, his son joseph fell upon his face and wept and kissed him. He then commanded his slaves to embalm jacob. The embalming took 40 days and the total time that the Egyptians mourned for him was 70 days. The pharaoh gave leave for joseph to go bury his father (in that cave), and in fact sent “all the servants of pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt“. Accompanying them were all the house of joseph and his brothers. Their little ones and their flocks and herds stayed behind in the land of goshen.

The very great company included chariots and horsemen. They arrived at atad beyond Jordan (although no one knows where atad is today) and were forced to wait for seven days of mourning due to a “great and very sore lamentation“. The locals were so impressed with the scale of the mourning that they called the place where it happened abelmizraim. After the stop, jacob’s sons completed the journey and buried jacob in the cave in the field of machpelah.

After the burial everyone returned to Egypt, however another problem had developed. Because jacob was no longer around, the brothers were worried that there was no longer anyone around to keep joseph on the leash (due to the episode during which they had sold him into slavery all those years ago). Not to worry, because joseph explained to his brothers that he wasn’t too bothered as he believed it was all part of god’s grander plan (even though their action was evil). He even went further by promising that he would nourish his brothers and their little ones.

Unfortunately, the text forgot to give the year (or offset from someone else) when joseph was born, but it does say that he lived until he was 110 years old. It is stated that joseph got to see ephraim’s children of the third generation, and also the children of machir (the son of manasseh). The details about that lineage are very vague.

Finally joseph told everyone “I die”, however before the actual event, he stated that he was pretty sure that god would one day pay everyone a visit and would deliver them from Egypt to the land that he had promised to abraham and to isaac and to jacob. He omitted all the bits about how they would wander in the wilderness for 40 years and how all but three of them would die on the journey back. That’s probably for the best because the news would have been a bit of a downer.

He did express a desire for his bones to be carried back to that promised land, and upon dying, joseph was embalmed and place in a coffin in Egypt.

Done.

Summary

Well, there you have it: the fundamental origin stories that underpin several of the world’s religions. Amazing, isn’t it?

It’s incredible that so many people today will rattle off the names and events described above as if they are facts when there is zero credible evidence for any of them. For some reason, the fact that they are present in a work such as “the book of genesis” is believed to be sufficient to give them credibility. Why is it that the people who love to reference these characters and events never stop to wonder why there is no non-religious evidence for any of them? The book itself is what has become the source of reverence, not the words in the book.

It’s ironic that the three religions that derive from these early texts (the pentateuch) are sometimes stated as being abrahamic religions – when abraham himself is demonstrably a fictional character. And what a character. By the text’s own admission, abraham was a liar, a coward, a pimp (more than once), a conscripter of men for war, a murderer (most likely involving genocide), a narcissist, an adulterer (of sorts), a beater (by proxy) of a pregnant woman, a keeper of a very large number of slaves, and a mutilator of men’s and boy’s penises.

In fact, the entire lineage of abraham, isaac and jacob demonstrated themselves to be real jerks. Why is it that they can get away with anything their childish minds desire, yet they end up being treated with reverence because of some sort of shared destiny as “chosen” people in a “promised” land – which are inventions of authors thousands of years after the supposed events? The text is little more than a black-and-white, “good” versus “evil”, fan-service third-rate fiction. It’s not some sort of wonderful analogy; it’s a book of: violence, lies, murder, deceit, slavery, bigamy, genocide, misogyny, pimpage, cowardice, and worst of all, scientific inaccuracy.

When someone starts with “As abraham said …” they might as well be saying “As Harry Potter said …” for all the importance it should play towards being the basis of people’s lives and actions today. If someone comes at you like that, it’s worth interjecting by saying “Sorry to interrupt, but you do realize that abraham is a fictional character, right?” You can adapt that statement by substituting any religious character’s name for “abraham”.

Some have speculated that a lot of the really bad stuff detailed in this and subsequent books (e.g. slavery) is actually okay because it was sort of only applicable to the time. Oh, really? Where does it say that your god was happy with his lessons losing relevance with the passage of time? Were the points of the story relevant for 10 years after the events? 50 years? 100 years? 500 years? 1,000 years? When did they lose relevance due to the passage of time? If you’re not happy with that, then take it up with your god who failed to put time limits on his stories of horror.

You’d have thought that the people of the day would have figured out that if life is so banal and black-and-white, then actions involving favoritism and tribalism are going to lead to jealousy and end badly for all concerned? Actually treating people as being equal would have solved many of their problems and made these texts unnecessary, however that didn’t occur to the omniscient being that (supposedly) created the entire universe.

The other amazing thing is the realization as to how weak the storytelling is. There’s no real character or plot development; instead, we are given brief statement-and-resolution episodes. If this work didn’t exist and was written by anyone other than a “challenged” child today it would be laughed out of every publishers’ office in the world – and rightly so. Instead, it’s encouraged to be the basis of people’s whole lives? Weird, right?

Have you ever wondered why no one has made a film out of the entire book of genesis? Sure, films have been made involving some highlight events, but if this book is the seminal story of three main religions – which are followed by about 4.5 billion people today, then surely a multi-part movie covering every event in “genesis” would have to a blockbuster? Or would such a film only serve to highlight the ridiculous and atrocious nature of the clearly fictional story, and thus turn people away? What rating would a film that involves numerous examples of incest, rape, forced marriage, murder and genocide get? Yes fundies, it’s far better to discourage people from finding out all about that, isn’t it?