Month: January 2010

bookmark_borderJan 10

Posted on by ErikaRS

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Old Testament

Sarah dies today, at a ripe 127 years old, and Abraham buys a nice piece of land to bury her in. I am entertained by the reverse haggling process that Abraham and the Hittites go through.

  • Abraham: Please sell me some land so I can bury my wife.
  • Hittites: You’re an awesome dude, bury her in one of our finest tombs.
  • Abraham: Sweet! Will you ask Ephron to sell me his cave.
  • Ephron: I’ll give it to you!
  • Abraham: No, I’ll totally buy it from you. How much is it worth?
  • Ephron: It’s worth 400 pieces of silver, but who cares? Bury your wife there.
  • Abraham: Here’s your monies!
We also read today how Isaac gets his wife. Abraham sends his servant to his kin to find a wife for Isaac; he does not want him to marry one of the local Canaanite women. More fan fic opportunity: perhaps Abraham disapproved of a local sweetheart of Isaac’s.
Abraham’s servant prays that when he asks for some water, the woman who gives him water and then offers to water his camels be the one destined to be Isaac’s wife. Fortunately for him and his camels, that happens immediately. The woman at the well was Abraham’s grandniece, Rebekah (which would make her Isaac’s first cousin once removed? I always get confused by such things). If I had prayers that specific answered that quickly, I might reevaluate my position on God.
Rebekah, was “very beautiful and old enough to be married, but she was still a virgin”. What was her actual age? Was she happy about being sent among strangers to marry someone she had never met? Did she have her own hopes and dreams about some young man near her home?

New Testament

Today, Jesus performs miraculous healings for the faithful. Jesus’ touch heals a leper. Jesus remotely heals the servant of a faithful Roman officer. He heals Peter’s mother-in-law and a bunch of demon-possessed people. Wait… demon-possessed people? Hmph, those do not exist. Rather lessens the impacts of the rest of the healings. I suppose we can be generous and say that Jesus healed what was called demon possession which we now recognize as something else.

Since Peter’s mother-in-law was healed, he must have been married. I wonder how his wife (and family?) felt about Peter wandering about with Jesus. Was she convinced because she had seen Jesus’ ability to perform miracles? Was she upset because her husband abandoned her, leaving her in a weak position socially and economically? In any case, Jesus tells his disciples not to care about the loved ones they abandon, so I suppose we shouldn’t either, right?

The reason the author of Matthew shared all these healings was to show that Jesus fulfilled Isaiah 53:4,

He took our sicknesses
and removed our diseases

When I look up Isaiah 53:4, I see

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought he troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for our own sins

The first 1.5 lines alternately get translated as “Yet it was our sicknesses he  carried; /  it was our diseases”. I have two quibbles with this this supposed fulfilled prophecy.  Usually when a footnote gives an alternate translation, it is because the translators thought that the alternate was less likely than the original.  By that logic, the author of Matthew seems to be misquoting Isaiah.

Now, suppose the alternate quote is correct. We still face the problem of context.  The alternate version of the full first two lines would read

Yet it was our sicknesses he carried;
it was our diseases that weighed him down.

Taking diseases burdens the one who takes them, at least according to the original content. This contradicts the image of Jesus and healing presented in the New Testament.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nice bit from today’s Proverbs reading (well, once you edit it a bit):

Never let loyalty and kindness leave you!
Tie them around your neck as a reminder.
Write them deep within your heart.
Then you will find favor with both God and people,
and you will earn a good reputation.

bookmark_borderJan 9

Posted on by ErikaRS

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Old Testament

Remember the trick that Sarah and Abraham tried to pull on Pharaoh?  The one where Abraham tries to pass Sarah off as his sister and Pharaoh takes her as his wife.  Well, they try the same trick again with Abimelech in Gerar.  Once again, the Lord intervenes and Abraham gets his wife back along with a lot of goods.  This basic story appears three times in Genesis (yes, it will happen again), so it seems likely that three different versions of the same oral tradition are being reported as three different stories.

This version has some interesting details.  Sarah and Abraham really are siblings.  They “have the same father, but different mothers”.  So, yay for not lying?  This version also has some temporal inconsistencies, or at least if not inconsistencies, temporal weirdnesses.   Abimelech took Sarah as his wife.  That night God revealed to Abimelech that Sarah was Abraham’s wife.  The next day Sarah was returned.  After Sarah was returned

Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants, so they could have children.  For the Lord had caused all the women to be infertile because of what happened with Abraham’s wife, Sarah.

This feels inconsistent given the timeline given earlier in the story.  A significant amount of time would have had to pass for women to notice they had been made infertile.  Did Abraham delay in praying after Sarah was returned to him?  Did Abimelech actually keep Sarah longer than was implied (i.e.,., there is a time gap between verses 20:11-13 and 20:14)?  Very confusing.

In any case, we know that all of this must have happened within 3 months of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because after this, Sarah gives birth to Isaac and we know that God said just before destroying Sodom and Gomorrah that Sarah would have a son within a year.  (Maybe about 6 months if we assume that this might have been going on before Sarah was visibly pregnant.)

Once Sarah has Isaac, her hatred toward Hagar and Ishmael increases. She asks Abraham to send them away.  To give some credit to Abraham, he is reluctant to do so, but God tells him it will be okay, so he sends them off with some food and water.  The sadness of Hagar’s banishment is summed up in this sentence “Then he sent her away with their son, and she wandered aimlessly in the wilderness of Beersheba.”  In a world where a woman and a child would be perceived as nothing but a burden by any group that could take them in, such banishment is essentially a death sentence.  Sarah must have known that.

We also read today of God’s test of Abraham’s faith.  God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.  Abraham prepares to do so, and at the last minute God sends an angel to tell Abraham to stop.  I know that many people who believe in the Bible see this as a great testament to Abraham’s faithfulness and as a great demonstration of how God will spare us from sacrifices we cannot handle.  However, to those of us not looking at this story through the lens of faith, it is horrifying.  Abraham thought God was serious.  Imagine worshiping a God who you believed would seriously demand you to sacrifice your child.  To my modern eyes, that is brutal and disgusting.

New Testament

I just finished The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow.  In addition to being a good introduction to the must knows of probability and statistics, it also has a good discussion of how much success and failure is due to chance.  Given two people with the same inherent skill level, just by chance one may become a superstar and the other an abject failure.  In any case, that and experience causes me to be cautious when Jesus claims

A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit.  A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. … Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

Now, given enough observations, this is likely true.  If you can observe the enough actions of a person, you can probably form a reasonable opinion of their nature.  However, chance is active in our lives, and a small number of observations can very easily give a misleading opinion of  person’s nature.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing of note today.

bookmark_borderJan 8

Posted on by ErikaRS

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Old Testament

Today we hear the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah.  The Lord goes down to see if the residents are as wicked as he has heard.  I would think that God, at least God of the modern Christian conception, would already know the degree of evil in the cities.

In any case, Abraham convinces God to spare the city if there are even 10 righteous people in it.  Thus, since the angels destroy the cities, we should conclude there were not even 10 righteous people there.  Not that the angels seemed to look very hard once they got there.  Maybe they just knew with their angelic powers, but then why did they have to go there physically in the first place.  Maybe they have only short range righteousness detectors.

The men of Sodom come and demand that Lot give the angels over so they can rape them.  Lot offers his daughters instead.  Not much better in my opinion.  Fortunately, the angels prevented this and instead blinded all the men of Sodom.

Destruction now assured, the angels tell Lot to leave the city and flee to the mountains.  Lot fears the mountains, so he persuades them to let him go to a nearby town instead.  Lot’s wife turns to watch the destruct and is turned into a pillar of salt.  Weird consequence.

Lot makes it to the small town with his daughters, but he was afraid of the people there, so he goes to the mountains (yes, after asking if he could go to the town instead of the mountains).  Since no one else lives in the mountains, Lot’s daughters decide to get him drunk and have sex with him to get themselves pregnant.  Like with the story of Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham, this story tries a little too hard to assert Lot’s innocence and ends up casting suspicion on the story instead.  The story is also suspect because it says Lot’s daughters could not find husbands because there were no men left in the area, but why not go back to Abraham (since it was conflict over wealth that caused them to part, not personal discord)?

New Testament

Jesus tells us not to worry so much.  God takes care of the lilies and the birds, so he must take care of us.  The course of action Jesus advocates is sensible, but not for the reason given.  So much lies beyond our control that worrying over it has no effect.  But it will all turn out okay in the end because humans are resourceful and resilient.  For the most part, we can find happiness by accepting what is and not worrying about what could be.

Jesus gives a good lesson about avoiding hypocrisy.  Avoiding judgment cannot prevent others from judging you, but those who are judgmental seem to end up being judged more.  Those who are hypocritical are treated more harshly they make mistakes or experience bad fortune.  Improving yourself will bring you much more happiness than criticizing others.

Today’s lesson on prayer is a passage that causes pain for those losing their faith.  Jesus promises

Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for.  Keep on seeking and you will find.  Keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds.  And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Faithful Christians who have doubts struggle with this passage because it implies a lack of answer is their own fault. Since, as faith fades, the sense that prayers are being answered departs the doubter is trapped in a vicious cycle where they feel that their doubt is destroying their ability to pray and that moves them further away from their faith.  Thus, this passage makes a painful process even worse.

Golden rule!  Everyone loves it.  (But remember, it’s not exclusive to Christianity.)

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s psalm is a psalm of praise. This psalm has one bit that I like

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers — the moon and the stars you set in place — what are mere mortals that you should think about them

Now, if only the psalmist had stopped there with that beautifully expressed sentiment of the vastness of the universe and not have gone on to insist that humans are special, “only a little lower than God”.

bookmark_borderJan 7

Posted on by ErikaRS

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Old Testament

Today we read the account of Sarai giving her maid Hagar to Abram as a wife so that he can get her pregnant.  Once Hagar actually gets pregnant, she starts to queen it over Sarai and Sarai gets angry at her.  Whenever I read this story I wonder whether this idea was really Sarai’s or Abram’s (assuming the whole thing happened, of course).

Genesis 17 starts out with a story that is kind of odd.  God appears to Abram and makes a covenant with him.  God promises that Abram will have countless descendants.  Then God told Abraham that he would have a son by Sarah (oh yeah, God renamed them as part of the covenant). Abraham laughed because he thought he was too old to have children.  This passage is strange because just yesterday we saw God making approximately the same covenant with Abraham.  Why do it twice?

Right after this, we get the story of how some angels stopped by Abraham’s tent and told him that Sarah will have a son.  She doubted this and laughed.  Now, you could see these as three separate events.  You could also see these as repetition to emphasize the point that God was going to give Abraham descendants.  To me, it looks like the compiler of Genesis was trying to synthesize multiple oral traditions into a single narrative.

New Testament

Yesterday and today’s passages from Matthew emphasize the plausibility of the claim that one of the sources for that gospel was document containing saying of Jesus.  The passages from yesterday and today read like a series of pithy sayings strung together.

Psalms and Proverbs

It seems that these first psalms share a common theme. The author (presumably David) needs to be saved from enemies.  God feels anger at those enemies. The author has a pure and true heart and so God does not direct anger toward him.  Evil people will get the punishment they deserve.  Ultimately, these Psalms reveal a desire for the world to ultimately be fair.  A very understandable sentiment.

bookmark_borderJan 6

Posted on by ErikaRS

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Old Testament

Melchizedek, what a great name!  He is the priest who blessed Abram after he rescued his nephew Lot from some dudes who had captured him.  Apparently, there is some confusion about him because, you see, Aaron was supposed to be the first priest.  But this Melchizedek dude was described as “the king of Salem [which some people believe was Jerusalem] and a priest of God Most High”.

We get an interesting picture perspective on Abram in Genesis 15.  When the Lord told him that he would have as many descendants as the stars, “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.”  But when God told him that he would give him the land he was in, Abram questioned God saying, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I be sure that I will actually possess it?”  (This is followed by some animal sacrifices and a funky dream with flaming torches moving seemingly of their own volition.)

Genesis 15:16 is an interesting commentary on free will: “After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.” God apparently knows that the Amorites will be sinful enough to warrant their destruction (well, at least in the eyes of a God who was one willing to murder most of humanity).

New Testament

Today we learn what Jesus has to say about several moral issues.  First, adultery.  As is well known, Jesus says “anyone who even looks at a women with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.  If such a view were taken seriously by those who profess to be Christians, advertising, modelling, and much of Hollywood would not be able to stay in business. Jesus also tells people to gouge out their eyes and cut off their hands if these things cause them to sin.  I also wonder how society would treat anyone who started doing this.  We’d probably institutionalize them.

On divorce, Jesus says “a man who divorces his wife, unless she has been unfaithful, causes her to commit adultery.  And anyone who marries a divorced woman also commits adultery.”  But it sounds like man who divorces his wife who marries a non-divorced woman is not committing adultery.  Oh, and a woman cannot divorce her husband. Interesting (but not surprising) double standard there.

I always laugh when I read Jesus’ admonition against making vows by heaven or earth given that many things in the US such as presidential inaugurations and court witnesses swear their oaths on the Bible; this seems to violate the spirit of Jesus’ command even though, since “by the Bible” is not being said it might pass the letter of his command.

I approve of Jesus saying that we should not seek revenge, we should not seek “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”, but I think he takes it a bit far.  In particular, when he says

But I say, do not resist an evil person!  If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.

This verse has been one of the sadly many that have been used to keep women in abusive relationships.  As such, I cannot commend Jesus’ words even he is countering a sentiment I also disagree with.

On the other hand, the next section about loving your enemies has some good verses.

If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that?… If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?”

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s Psalm starts “O Lord, don’t rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your rage.”  I have a hard time dissociating most emotions from their temporal context.  This leads me to generally wonder about how a timeless God can have emotions.  However, I can usually accept as somewhat feasible the idea that these are translations of the divine state into terms humans can understand (feasible in the way that I can suspend disbelief and discuss the properties of mythical beasts).  However, I cannot do that for rage.  Rage is such a temporally rooted emotion.  The very idea of God experiencing rage is, in my view, nonsensical.

This Psalm has another interesting line in verse 5.

For the dead do not remember you. Who can praise you from the grave?

This verse challenges the idea of an afterlife.  At the very least, it argues for a view that the dead to not go immediately to heaven or hell but instead are really truly dead until God brings all of the dead back to life and punishes or rewards them.

Today’s verses from Proverbs are just an conceptual continuation of yesterday’s: if you are destroyed and cursed, it’s your own fault for not fearing the Lord.

bookmark_borderJan 5

Posted on by ErikaRS

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Old Testament

Now, upon reading the story of the Tower of Babel, two interpretations popped into my mind (two of, I am sure, many more than that).  One, it’s meant to be literally true and God does not like tall buildings and large cities and, as punishment for attempting to build them, diversified language and scattered people over the world.  Given that (a) we have plenty of large cities and tall buildings now and (b) that interpretation is clearly inconsistent with analyses of languages and their origins, that must be wrong.

So my second interpretation is that God is intentionally the source of misunderstanding between people.  The literal mixing up of language is symbolic of the misunderstandings that prevent people from coming together and working together in harmony.  God does not want humanity to come together.  This, of course, will sound completely implausible to those who believe that God is love, but I think my interpretation is no more of a stretch than the many Christian interpretations of various parts of the Bible.

The genealogy of Shem makes me wonder yet again at the internal consistency of Genesis.  Remember back in Genesis 6 when God said that the life span of humans would only be 120 years.  Let’s assume that did not apply to people who were born before the flood (i.e., Noah and his sons).  Still, we see that Shem’s son Arphaxad lived to be 438, his son Shelah to be 433, his son Eber to be 464, his son Peleg to be 239, his son Reu to be 239, his son Serug to be 230, his son Nahor 148, and his son Terah to be 205.  That means we have 7 generations after the flood where people were living to be well over 120 years old.

I wonder how Sarai felt about Abram passing her off as his sister instead of his wife.  Certainly God did not like it, although it is odd that God chose to punish Pharaoh for taking Sarai as his wife instead of Abram who was the one doing the lying.  I also wonder if Sarai preferred being Pharaoh’s wife; it must have been a hard, unpleasant life wandering from place to place, dealing with starvation.  Life as wife of a ruler must have been so safe and comfortable by comparison.

New Testament

The book of Matthew gives us content!  Finally!  The Sermon on the Mount.  Of course, having watched “Life of Brian” recently I cannot help but wonder how large the crowds were and whether or not those in the back could hear properly. 😉

Today’s reading also contains the passage which shows why this project will not likely change the thinking of any Christians, as useful as it may be for me personally.

God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers.  Be happy about it!  Be very glad!

If my experience is any guide, Christians who stumble across a blog like this will either read my posts then use a passage like this to determine that my criticism of it only justifies and strengthens their beliefs or they will already be of the types who recognize the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the Bible but have an interpretative style that allows them to accept/ignore them.

Christians occasionally debate about whether or not the laws in the Old Testament are invalidated, partially invalidated, fulfilled, reinterpreted, or something else by Jesus in the New Testament. Well, the Bible provides support for most interpreations.  Here’s what we see in today’s reading, from Matthew 5:18:  “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved.” Now, there is some wiggle room with “until its purpose is achieved”, but this looks like a point for the “most of the Old Testament laws are still valid except for those Jesus specifically said were invalid” side of the debate.

We also see that Jesus’ feelings on punishment are more mild than yesterday’s Old Testament reading.  Today we read, “If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment”; yesterday, we were told explicitly that this judgment meant death.  Now, given the next statement “But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment!”, we can conclude that either people should be killed for anger or Jesus is a lot softer than yesterday’s reading.

I do like the bit about how you should reconcile yourself with those who have something against you before making your sacrifices at the Temple.  Taken symbolically, it is quite an inspiring idea.  We cannot, in good faith, ask for blessing or forgiveness (of ourselves or others) if we are not truly at peace with others in our hearts.  Bad feelings affect the sincerity which with you can interact with the world.

Psalms and Proverbs

From the Psalm “You will destroy those who tell lies” (“You” being God). This is an another issue that I want to keep track of (although I will probably forget and miss many instances). So, what happens to sinners?  The common Christian answer is that they go to hell.  What, however, is hell? Some say literal eternal torture, some say separation from God is hell, some say that hell is the complete annihilation of the soul, and there are many more interpretations.  This is a point, albeit a minor one since the destruction here could mean worldly destruction, for the “hell as total destruction” interpretation.

Today’s Proverbs are more fodder for the criticism that my reading and interpreting the Bible is invalid because I am an evil, godless atheist (but an awfully nice one, since I’m pointing these passages out so you don’t have to search for them yourself).

I called you so often, but you wouldn’t come.  I reached out to you, but you paid no attention.  You ignored my advice and rejected the correction I offered.  So I will laugh when you are in trouble!  I will mock you when disaster overtakes you — when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster engulfs you like a cyclone, and anguish and distress overwhelm you.  When they cry for help, I will not answer.  Though they anxiously search for me, they will not find me.

You see, God gives atheists all the proof they need.  They have willfully rejected God’s obvious and loving revelation.  Therefore, it is their own fault when disaster happens to them.  It is their own fault when God chooses not to reveal himself to them if they later come seeking.  (And I will let you figure out for yourself how consistent it is for a loving God to mock anyone in their times of trouble, even those who rejected him.)

bookmark_borderJan 4

Posted on by ErikaRS

Yeah, that listing the annotations things lasted until I went back to work. Manually

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Old Testament


Any botanists in the crowd? What are the chances that an olive tree could grow and have leaves within just a few months of the land where it was growing was at least 22 feet underwater? Apparently, we don’t get a follow-up to the flood because God really liked the smell of the first sacrifices. Good thing God doesn’t break a promise since we don’t really do animal sacrifices any more. Or maybe God likes the smell of fossil fuels burning just as well.

I wonder if it was the delicious smell of burning animals that convinced God to let humans eat meat.  Of course, In non-mythical development, human food consumption went from foraged plants to meat to raised plants and animals not from foraged plants to raised plants to meat.

As far as Genesis 8:5-6 is concerned, the death penalty is not just a good thing, it is required for murderers. Still, the story of the rainbow’s origins is pretty (although I find the imagery of a million tiny prisms to be just as pretty and not nearly as morally questionable).

The bit about Ham’s descendants being cursed because Ham mocked his father’s nakedness has always struck me unfair. While one could make a halfway feasible case that Adam and Eve introduced sin to all humanity and, therefore, all humanity deserves God’s curse, it is hard to say that it is fair of Ham’s descendants to be cursed just because he disrespected his father. Sounds to me more a lame explanation of why the Israelites felt justified in their enmity with the Canaanites.

It must have been sad for Noah (and perhaps Ham, Shem, and Japeth). Since Noah, or at best Noah and his sons, were the last people to have the ridiculously long life spans, they must have had to see the death of their descendants. Children, grandchildren, maybe great grandchildren. What a depressing prospect.

New Testament

So, we finally reach the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. The problem with the author of Matthew, however, is that he is so concerned with showing that prophecies are “fulfilled” that we do not get much content as to what Jesus was actually teaching. I do have to compliment the author of Matthew in today’s readings though. I think this might be the first time that the Old Testament verse he quotes is not obviously being taken out of context. Kudos!


Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing of particular note today.

bookmark_borderJan 3

Posted on by ErikaRS

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Old Testament

SAB count: absurdities: 26, contradictions: 16, science and history: 7, women: 1, injustice: 3, interpretation: 1, sex: 1, cruelty and violence: 4, prophecy: 1.

This is one of those days when I feel like the SAB annotation counts are rather inflated. One of the things I dislike about the annotations is that they tend to count the same thing over and over again. Thus, for example, we get an injustice count for each time the text repeats that God is killing all the creatures on the earth with the flood.

Unlike some people, include the SAB, I’m not bothered by the long lives of these Biblical characters. They’re like elves. They were probably pretty like elves too (the text explicitly said the women were beautiful enough to tempt the sons of God).

I find this genealogy interesting. Adam had only been dead 126 years when Noah was born. I wonder what the family dynamics were like when Adam was alive with all of Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech. Given that the world was descending into evil great enough for God to commit mass murder, Adam must have had a good number of “back in my day” conversations with his descendants.

Oooh, new characters! “Sons of God” who have sex with human women and produce giant Nephilites who “became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times”. I feel like there is a whole fantasy genre that must exist that I have been missing out on. Although one has to wonder where they come from and why they were so evil.

I won’t waste much time wondering about the complete implausibility of the flood or the massive violence of it. That’s been done before. Plus, I like the story. It is entertaining. I must say though, saying that Noah must take a single pair of every animal and then sentences later saying that he must take 7 pairs of some animals is just plain sloppy story telling.

I wonder what Lamech and Methuselah thought of all these flood preparations. Methuselah lived up until the start of the flood (600 years after Noah’s birth) and Noah must have been preparing by the time Lamech died (595 years after Noah’s birth). Did God communicate to them what was going on? Were they saddened to know that all of their other descendants were going to be killed? Was Methuselah killed by the flood or did he die peacefully before it? More great fanfic fodder.

New Testament

SAB count: absurdities: 3, contradictions: 5, intolerance: 2, injustice: 2, science and history: 1, language: 1, cruelty and violence: 1, prophecy: 1

Jesus’ baptism and subsequent temptation has never really struck a cord with me.

Psalms and Proverbs

SAB count:

  • Psalms: injustice: 1, intolerance: 1, cruelty and violence: 1
  • Proverbs: 0

This may very well be a translation choice of the New Living Translation, but I find the line in today’s psalm “Slap all my enemies in the face!” to be absolutely hilarious given that, in popular culture, face slapping is associated with catty fights between women.

Today’s proverbs reading has some good advice: stay away from people who think they can make a living by stealing and murdering.

bookmark_borderJan 2

Posted on by ErikaRS

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Old Testament

SAB count: 11 absurdities, 8 contradictions, 2 science and history, 1 family values, 3 women, 3 injustice, 5 interpretation, 3 sex, 1 cruelty and violence, 1 prophecy

Talking serpents! I wonder if all the animals could talk. Why did God put a tree that Adam and Eve could not eat from there in the first place? Can we really say that Adam and Eve were “good” before eating the fruit because they were just doing what they were told and did not know good and evil? Apparently, God didn’t know that they had eaten from the tree (or at least pretended not to). Sexist patriarchy, pain of childbirth, having to struggle to grow food, and death for all humanity just because of two people. Harsh.

Apparently, being kicked out of the garden was not a punishment as much as it was God being afraid that the humans would eat from the tree of life. Why did he make it in the first place? Also strange, God says that Adam and Eve have become “like us, knowing both good and evil”. Where did this “us” come from all of a sudden, and who else is part of it?

We all know the Cain and Abel story and how God gives no reason for preferring the lamb over the fruits of the land (although many excuses have been made for it). However, what I wonder, and will continue to wonder throughout, is why does God wants physical meat and veggies in the first place?

Interesting: Cain says that God has “banished me from the land and from your presence”. More indications that God in these chapters is a physical being, not the omnipresent being suggested by modern Christians.

Whoah! Where did Cain get a wife from? And what was someone condemned to be a homeless wanderer doing founding a city?

Weird little interlude about how Lamech, after killing some dude, declares that anyone who kills him will be punished 77 times. And by what authority does he say that? Is this implying that Lamech’s curse is just as good as God’s? Not surprising in what was certainly a superstitious society, but rather dulls the impact of God’s earlier declaration.

New Testament

SAB count: 3 contradictions, 1 science and history, 3 prophecy

We have yet another reference to something that can only be called a fulfilled prophecy by the generous. The author of Matthew quotes Hosea, “I called my Son out of Egypt”, but in the context of Hosea 11, this was pretty obviously part of a recounting of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt.

Here, we also see Herod the Great killing all of the children under two years old in and around Bethlehem. According to Wikipedia, there is no historical notice of this outside the Bible and is not widely believed to have never occurred.

Psalms and Proverbs

SAB count:

  • Psalms: 2 injustice, 2 cruelty and violence, 2 intolerance
  • Provbers: 2 contradictions, 1 good stuff

Nothing much here, except that we have a Psalm showing God to be a rather violent God.

bookmark_borderJan 1

Posted on by ErikaRS

First real post! Other posts will probably not be as detailed with respect to the background reading.

Reference links:

Skeptic’s Annotated Bible annotations:

  • Old Testament: 10 absurdities, 15 contradictions, 16 science and history, 1 women, 12 interpretation, 1 prophecy
  • New Testament: 3 absurdities, 10 contradictions, 2 science and history, 3 interpretation, 3 sex, 1 prophecy
  • Psalms: 1 interpretation, 1 contradiction
  • Proverbs: 0

Old Testament

These two chapters are part of the Primeval History section of Genesis. From the Wikipedia entry, “The highly artificial and literary character of this unit makes it unlikely that any oral traditions lie behind it, and indeed its literary origins have long been identified in the corpus of Babylonian myths, especially the Enuma Elish.”

As story and poetry, the 7 day creation account is lovely and compelling, but the account of creation suffers from huge problems if you try to take it at all literally.  In the first creation account light is created before the sun and stars, large categories of creation like fungus and bacteria are never created, and vegetation is created before the sun.  These all contradict scientific knowledge.

The creation account cannot even achieve internal consistency.  There are two contradictory accounts of creation. The 7 day creation account and the Garden of Eden account. Amongst other irregularities, the Garden of Eden account indicates that humans were created before vegetation and animals, but the 7 day creation account indicates that vegetation and animals were created before humans.

New Testament

According to Wikipedia, Matthew was written by an anonymous Jewish Christian in the latter part of the first century. The anonymous author is assumed to be Jewish because of the emphasis put on Jesus’ supposed fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Many believe that the author of Matthew depended on other sources including the Gospel of Mark and the hypothetical “Q” document.

These chapters cover the genealogy of Jesus and his visit from the wise men from the east. Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 to show that Jesus’ birth fulfilled a prophecy. There are a couple interesting things about Isaiah 7:14. First, as the translation note in the New Living Translation notes that the word that was translated to “virgin” can also be translated as “young woman”; this casts some doubt on the whole “virgin birth” idea. Furthermore, this prophecy was part of a larger prophecy having to due with invasion from Assyria and southern Egypt, quite unrelated to the Jesus mythos and obviously not fulfilled by the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life.

One also has to wonder about the star the wise men followed to Jesus. Apparently it guided them to exactly where Jesus was born. The Biblical authors must not have meant by “star” what we mean by the word today (you know, those giant distant suns we see at night).

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s psalm is one of those ones that say that the godly will prosper in all they do and the ungodly will not. Now, the psalm makes clear that some of this prospering or lack thereof will happen after death, but there is also a strong implication that the godly will prosper in this life. I can see where the Protestants got their idea that while you could not know for certain who was predestined to be saved, they certainly had to be someone who was prosperous in this world.