Some More Major Biblical Gaffes

Preface

In my first story, The Devil's Gateway, one of the main characters—Liv—teaches a class for lesbians who have, or had, great difficulty with Christian doctrines that have caused them much discomfort with regard to their undeniable lesbianism. Liv termed her class as The Truth of the Lies.

The lies she exposes are the so-called inerrant truths as presented in the bible, and espoused by seemingly most of the Christian churches. This essay will try to look at some of the great lies that are taught in those churches.

To understand how this all came about, we need to go back into antiquity; back to the time when it all probably began (a time that few, if any, will argue).

As far as scholars can figure out, sometime well before the 1200s, there were people outside of a few cities, predominantly, Jericho. Jericho was a large city in its day, but its aristocrats ruled in such a way as ti bring down itself. Many of what are thought to be Canaanite became what are called the Israelites, or what the Old Testament said were the Northern Kingdom after the death of Solomon.

In the more southern of the highlands, there have been discovered what appear to be many settlements that held from about 50 to 200 people: this was in what are called the highlands of Judea. These people were thought to have been fairly much bucolic in lifestyle, but apart from most around them (other than communicating with similar groups in those highlands), but related to those mentioned above. Both were said to worship many gods, including Yahweh.

While this is very sketchy, a much more complete telling of this can be found in the book, The Bible Unearthed ©, by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (Touchstone, 2003.). This book was also on PBS, and may still be found there.

In any event, things became murky. Not too awful long ago, the bible was accepted to tell the tale of what all happened. For thousands of years, what the Old Testament said was taken as gospel by the Jews (or most of them), then by the Christians, and God help them if they said otherwise.

Even in today's enlightened times, we still have what we call Fundamentalists who, were it not for our laws, might still proscribe the old punishments for anyone who dared to say otherwise than what they interpret to bible to say and be. Thank goodness that it isn't so in our time.

Modern scholarship had its modest earnest beginnings after Darwin wrote his theory of evolution, though he gave a proper nod to God and His creation.

Not so those who read his astounding and seminal work (and that of Alfred Russel Wallace who had almost the same ideas as Darwin, but not with the detail that Darwin had).

What did "those" readers of Darwin find in his work? A complete and utter refutation of creation as in the first two chapters of the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis!

Without a doubt, the God of Genesis did not create the Universe, or our Earth, or even us humans.

Before going any further, let me pose this question: If any was to hear the so-called word of God telling to write down His work in creating all that there is, would we expect that there would be any errors in what we were told?

Would we expect maybe just a smattering or errors, say ten maybe?

Or would we expect any contradictions in what He said?

How about Him saying that He erred, or repented, as in made a mistake or two in His creation?

Well, that's a question for each of us to answer. My answer(s) is/are a resounding No!

If yours is the same as mine, or even similar, why would you, or for that matter, anyone, even Fundamentalists, say anything else?

That's the question that will ultimately lead to the truth of the matter, or, as Liv was wont to say, The truth of the lies!

* * * *

Bible scholarship has steadily increased, and fortunately for us, the books with their research, both critical and textual, have become increasingly more readable by just about anyone. Unfortunately, there are, and have been, many more of Fundamental and Evangelical faith who have taken to writing also, and some even write novels that appeal to those not given to wanting to know the truth of the lies.

In fact, they even write more versions of the bible. The Catholic church has several versions, and some bibles keep rewriting their original version. I've even bought a totally new version (already in its improved writing), The Uncensored Truth Bible that they say is for New Beginnings.

I had to get it (it was priced cheaply at a discounter). I mean, it said that it was written by ninety (can you believe it?) Scholars over a seven year period "for...accurately communicating, ",,,the meaning of the original..." blah, blah, blah.

Frankly, I found it hard to believe that ninety people had so wasted their time for seven years (if what the editor/publisher says is to be believed).

I say as I have because when I started to read it, it contained the same things, in the same way, as just about every other Christian bible. After a few things at the start of it, I skipped over to certain other places where I knew there should be other than that I'd read in other bibles. I found no telling differences.

Now there are a multitude of what Liv called "Me too" books, but there is another "Me too" bible now. They just won't quit. Maybe its because it's sponsored by a mega church out of Las Vegas that they felt that they had to put their hat in the "Bible" ring.

One other thing I want to say here before I go any further, is that there are many who think that the Old Testament was never intended for anyone other than the Jews. It was originally thought to have been written by the aristocrats taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in order to give the Jews a sense of unity, of being a specific people and not become extinct as a race. Whether this is true or not, I have no real idea.

What it all morphed into, what part the Jews played in it all is probably something else. Whether it makes any difference or not to the larger picture is also something else.

What I do know from reading much of the bible for a long, long time now, as well as what scholars have discovered via their critical and textual research, is that it is mostly one grand fictive of enormous proportions. Undoubtedly, the Fundamentalists and most Evangelicals will disagree with me.

Fair enough, and since this is geared mostly to lesbians (and others too) who have been greatly troubled by the Christian (and any Jewish synagogues, or other religious communities that believe as the Judeo-Christian community does), and believe in the bible, I offer these proofs.

More, I'm open to being proven wrong, but...No witnessing, testimony, or preaching will be allowed in comments. Just facts and where to find them please.

In presenting my statements I will also use known scientific facts, as well as known history. Known, I say!

I will also use the King James Version, but may on occasions also use one of the other versions. I'll be picking on certain verses to keep it all simple.

Chapter 1

From Genesis:

1:11-12 Earth to bring forth grass, herb yielding see, and fruit tree with fruit on the third day, but no sun as yet. That doesn't come until the fourth day in verses14-19. Everybody knows that nothing grows on earth without the sun, so all of that growing can't have been.

Then in 1:26-29, man is made, male and female, in his own image. Many have said that this is "spiritual: creation, but that isn't so as verse 29 says that He instructs them with all the fruit, and herb bearing seed that will be for "meat" to them.

What this is, is the first creation of humans that is in the bible. The second creation comes up in the next chapter where He makes first the one, then the other, and that from a rib of the first.

By the way, in verse 26, the writer of this portion of Genesis as God saying "Let us", but in verse 27, we're told that they, "man", were created in His image. Hmm. One God, or several? A conundrum here.

2:7 has God making a man out of the dust and making him live by breathing into his nostrils. Then in verse 22 He makes a woman from one of his ribs.

Now this is a different creation of humans than in chapter 1, and an obvious contradiction. There are obviously two different writers here. That, or God contradicted Himself. Both have been given food to eat. They can't get away from this error, or that two different men had to have written these two "creations". There's no way to blame this screw up on God.

* * * *

This next one deserves special attention (as do certain others that we will come too soon).

3:20 tells us that Adam named his wife Eve for she is the mother of all living (him excepted, of course). But in 4:16-17, her first born, Cain, is not only kicked out of the suburbs of Eden, but swiftly finds him a wife.

Huh?

There is no explanation of where this land of Nod is, or how he found an unnamed wife out in the vast wilderness. That leaves us wondering where these other people came from; after all, his unnamed wife had to have a mother and father other than Adam and Eve—or did they have children before Abel and Cain?

That's not the half of this unexplained obvious error.

Eve can't be the mother of all living—unless there's a separate race (species) of people that we can intermix with. If this is the case, Eve is not the mother of all living.

Another race? Another species? An older creation? And intermixing? Blasphemy! Right?

Okay, the bible story is hokey, but...

Contrary to the bible's rendition, there were other humans. Neanderthals, for one. I say Neanderthals because their genome has been completed, namely by Svante Paabo of the Max Plank Institute in Germany. This is scientifically verified, and a book has been written about it.

More, the genome of individuals have been found to have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA, one to two or three percent. However, the individual percentages found in other humans is not the same DNA in all of them. It6 is estimated that about twenty percent of Neanderthal DNA is extent in our species.

I know that Intelligent Creationists have their own scientists that love to pick on select science and debunk it, but I haven't seen this one taken on as yet, though maybe it has been.

At any event, if they have, or will, maybe they will explain away Denisovan DNA, which is in the people of Tibet. There is a good deal of literature on that too. Specifically, there is a PBS story on First Peoples in three segments, the one on Asia telling about Tibetans and Denisovan DNA.

It's interesting that useable DNA from a Denisovan was found in the Altai Mountain range of Russia, yet their DNA made its way to Tibet. There is only one way for that to have happened, and that's by sex.

From a book from Alexander H. Harcourt, Humankind © (Pegusus Books LLC, 2015), Professor Emeritus, Anthropology, U. Of Cal., comes this from page 119:

"Extraordinarily enough, one of the gene forms that allow Tibetans to live at high altitude apparently came from Denisovans. I will give its name here, as I suspect that it will become famous. It is EPAS1 Emilia Huerta-Sanchez and a very large team reported this finding about the Denisova gene in only July 2014.

"...all the evidence so far indicates that only Denisovans and Tibetans have the high-altitude gene form."

Research and science keep finding and learning. The bible is stuck in place with its tall tales.

* * * *

15:18 has God promising Abram' (his name before God changed it to Abraham) descendants all the land from the great river of Egypt to the Euphrates river. Not at all oddly, in II Samuel, 8:3, we're told that David went to reclaim his border at the Euphrates river.

I'm sure that worked with the intended Jewish audience way back when, but it just ain't true historically. A really tall tale elaborated with the second telling. That Uncensored Truth bible didn't correct it, and neither did the Catholic bible.

* * * *

Here's another unanswered, and uncleaned up mess that not even the Uncensored Truth bible gets to the truth of (as seems often is the case), or any other revised bible either.

Jacob, Abraham's grandson, goes to Egypt where his son Joseph has supposedly become Pharaoh's right hand man. He has his other sons with him, and near the end of Genesis, Pharaoh gives Joseph leave to place his father and brothers in a choice place in Egypt.

47:11 says that Joseph placed them in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses as Pharaoh commanded. Nothing is said about who this Pharaoh is.

The problem, for one?

The first Rameses was succeeded by his son Seti, who was succeeded by his son, Rameses II (or Ramses II). This ran from about 1295 to about 1213 BCE.

Keep in mind that before Rameses I, there was no Rameses (or Ramses). This will all come to bear when we next look at the so-called Exodus in the following book after Genesis. Genesis ends in chapter 50 with the death of Jacob, then that of Joseph.

Chapter 2

From Exodus.

I:2-3 give us the names of Jacob's children: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. These will become important in this telling shortly.

1:11 tells us that the Jews, in effect, became slaves and built for Pharaoh (whichever one that was), treasure cities of Pithom and Raamses.

2:1 begins the tale of a Levite whose wife soon was with child, bore a son, and hid him lest he be thrown into the river as the other children were at that time. She takes the child in puts him in a protected basket and set it to where Pharaoh's daughter could find him. Thus, we're told was how Moses came into play.

2L11 tells us about a grown Moses who subsequently slays an Egyptian that is mistreating Jews, then had to flee for his life into Midian, where we're told of finding himself a wife (Zipporah), daughter of Reuel verse 18 (or Jethro, 3:1).

Needless to say, Moses is called by God and told to go have Pharaoh free his people, and he does so after a few miracles.

12:35 begins the tale of the actual Exodus of the Jews out of Egypt. We're told that the Egyptians gave them gold, silver and clothes.

It continues by saying that there were six hundred thousand men on foot besides children. We're told that they took flocks and herds and much cattle, plus unleavened bread and no other food for they left in a hurry.

Finally, we're told that they were in Egypt four hundred and thirty years.

14:7 says that Pharaoh decided to change his mind and with his best 600 chariots, plus all of the other chariots, and then says that he chased them with his whole army.

Moses had moved all the Israelites past the waters that God had parted until they were all safe. Verses 9-10 say that Pharaoh had caught up to them encamping by the sea. The rest of the story is legend—all the Egyptian, chariots and army, were drowned, which would have left Egypt defenseless.

Speaking of defenseless, recall that a few paragraphs ago we were told that the men were numbered at over six hundred thousand. When we see a couple of books after Exodus, in Numbers, we're told that all of those men were able to go to war (1:45).

This brings up in the paragraph earlier where they were leaving with all of their goods, that it said also that children were part and parcel of the move. Children have to have mothers, and Jewish me had wives.

Some logical extrapolation tells us that those six hundred plus thousand men had a wife, and like most men of that time (if not since then too), they probably had at the very least two children each, and many probably more than two. However, using a conservative two kids per family, we come up with over two and a half million when you count the Levites, their wives, and children, not to mention the older people of which there surely had to be some.

Remember also that they had flocks, herds, and much cattle.

Now how do you move that many people on the spur of the moment (for the Egyptians had suddenly caught up with them)? Imagine, if you will, that many people and all of their goods and animals being told to move across the waters that were supposedly parted (be it regular sea of a see of reeds.

Imagine that they had to have had some kind of shelters to break set up at each stop, much less break down each time they were to move. Two and a half million people with their animals on foot is a logistical nightmare under normal conditions. It would have taken a major miracle under normal circumstances, and as we are often told of momentous miracles, in this case, we're not, save that the water was parted.

Imagine also that they had to have separate latrines; and what about if a woman had to go while trudging along. And what about the animals pooping, or giving birth.

* * * *

So what was the date that the Exodus was to have occurred in? We have Hollywood's version, most popularly starring Charlton Heston, which views every year, or more in some places, I'm sure, but that does the bible say about it.

To answer that, we have to do a little biblical detective work. As I mentioned earlier, Jacob and his sons were placed, at Pharaoh's command, in the land of Rameses (above, Genesis, 47:13)

I said then that there was no land of Rameses when Jacob was supposed to have been there, Ramses I, father of Seti I, grandfather of the Great Ramses II, and great grandfather of Ramses III. That Ramses (spelled Rameses at times) who began the line of Rameside Pharaohs ruled from about1292-1290 BCE. Ramses the Great, II, reigned from about 1279-1213 BCE. Ramses the Great moved his capitol to the new city of Pi-Ramsses. He most likely had the city built as he was known as the great builder; or it could have been Seti. In any case, there was no land of Rameses when Jacob was supposed to have moved to Egypt.

Exodus 1:11 says that the Jews built PI thon and Raamses as slaves because they had become too numerous (1:9)

Exodus, 12:40, tells us that the Jews had been in Egypt four hundred and thirty years.

All of this has/has many people believing that the Exodus out of Egypt was at the time of Ramses the Great (Ramses II), or about sometime in the 1200s BCE. However, there is another time that can be used, and it is date specific in place of being places specific.

I Kings, 6:1, tells us that when Solomon was in his fourth year as king after David, that it was four hundred eighty years after the actual Exodus.

Solomon is generally said to have begun his kingship at 970 BCE, which, if true, his fourth year of kingship had to be 966 BCE. Adding four hundred eighty years back since the Exodus to 966 BCE gives us a different date for the Exodus of 1446 BCE/ Again, there was no land of Ramses, and no city of Pi Ramses or Pithom. There were no kings named Ramses.

Two sources say that in 1446 BCE, the Pharaoh was Amenhotep II (1498-1419 BCE), who is said to have enjoyed a fairly peaceful tenure (though he defeated the Mittani in the far northern borders near modern day Syria.

So we have two possible time periods for the so-called Exodus, the one when Egypt was invincible (the Tuthmosis Pharaohs making Egypt reign supreme), and the time of the other great warrior Pharaoh, Ramses II.

Egypt ruled the Levant (Palestine, Lebanon), and Syria.

There was no Exodus as claimed!

Fundamentalists claim many things and times, but known history is against them They have no real facts to say otherwise. You can't change history, and the words in the bible back up history and not the Exodus.

Uh-uh, this is a fabricated story, period!

Chapter 3

From Joshua

There are many things that could be brought up from this book, but let's just look at the worst.

5:2 tells us that the Lord told Joshua to circumcise the children of Israel—again! Now how long do you think it would take to circumcise over six hundred thousand plus me, not to mention the children under twenty, of which the bible says nothing, and what about the Levites?. How many "sharp knives would they need to accomplish this in a goodly time frame (whatever a goodly time frame may be)?