May 31, 2009, 7:27 am by dc-agape.

Tales of the Patriarchs (Part 4)

After the Flood, Noah does his hocus-pocus of burnt offerings (blood sacrifices) to YHWH.  Here it says that all the deaths caused by the Flood were not enough atonement for YHWH.  Even though his anger was his own fault for chaining the rebellious angels to earth!  The Most High did truly enjoy the smell of burnt flesh; I guess that covered up some of the stench from the drowned and rotting animal carcasses. 

Then Noah debarks with a lion at his side, I wonder how much fresh meat they had on hand to keep this beast sated for an entire year?  But the even bigger Tall Tale is that Noah then “walked about the length and breadth of the land”.  Walking even a few 100 miles would not have been the “length nor the breadth of the land”.  So this is obviously a metaphor or exaggeration, because we know from this Tractate that he also planted a winery and within 4 years it was producing the wine that would get him drunk in Gen 9:20-21.  But the Tall Tales don’t stop there!  As soon as he leaves the Ark “the whole land was filled with grass, herbs, and grain”.  None of these seed can withstand the conditions of the Flood.  Just reading the previous linked abstract, it is obvious that the high water and high nitrogen (rotting animal flesh) would make the soils completely inimical to plant life.  So not only is the Flood, itself, a huge Tall Tale, but the survival of plants after the flood is impossible.  When you combine all the different parts of the Tall Tale it could not have happened!

In the next section of the Tractate YHWH comes down to see how Noah faired for after the Flood.  Here is where some people believe that humans were vegetarians prior to the Flood but changed to eating meat after the Flood.  In Gen 1:29 YHWH gives all plants to Adam, here in this Tractate, just as in Gen 9:3, YHWH gives Noah all the animals as food as well.  This unchanging YHWH certainly changes his mind a lot!  Since of course, we know that many Jews and Catholics are forbidden to eat certain foods, after YHWH gave all plants and animals to us.  Of course, the rainbow is brought up in this Tractate as well, as if water particles did not make rainbows before the Flood (another Tall Tale). 

The two sections that follow this will end this post.  The second to last section I want to cover in this post is about the children of Noah.  It would seem that at least two grandchildren of Noah survived being on the Ark.  Can you imagine having two young children on an overcrowded Ark for an entire year?  I wonder how many more were loaded on the Ark and accidently became food for the lions, tigers, and bears!  But Noah was prosperous in the flooded world and his children were as well.  In total recorded number Noah only had three sons, but an unnumbered of children were born to him after he turned 640 years old!  To add to that Noah’s three named sons had 32 more children.  So if this is true, it should not be Mitochondrial Eve but Mitochondrial Emzara (Noah’s Wife)!  Most of Eve’s Mitochondrial DNA died out in the Flood.

The last section I want to talk about in this post is the next sacrifice that Noah made, and no it is not in the Book of Genesis.  That same vineyard that would be the cause of such fatherly love later in Ham’s life was the source of this next sacrifice.  After four years of toiling the soil, Noah had his first batch of wine ready.  Except it really wasn’t a great sacrifice…Noah invites all his family to the alter and they all get drunk off the first crop of wine!  Sounds like worshiping Dionysus or Bacchus.  Even more to the point: Dionysus has a holy day on Jan 3^rd…Noah celebrated his “sacrifice” on Jan 1^st!  When you realize that Roman/Greek influence had already reached the authors of this Tractate…it is obvious that they were writing from personal experience and not “spiritual” guidance.  Yet these Tractates were taken as literally as the writings of Moses!

As an Atheist, reading these texts clearly show how religious materials are written by men to describe their surroundings.  When you combined the knowledge how Scientology and Cargo Cults developed, not a single religion in the world has any supernatural source.  Scientology was created for one purpose: to make money!  The Cargo Cults of the South Pacific were created by accidental exposure to modern technology.  Religion is created by man for man’ own power…nothing supernatural about it!  For another example of how religion is man-made take a look at this post by yunshui at Right to Think entitled “Lies, damn lies, and Catholics”.

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May 29, 2009, 7:50 am by dc-agape.

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Tales of the Patriarchs (Part 3)

Childhood does not seem to be very important to the Jewish writers of Religious materials.  Just as in the case of Jesus, this story of Noah tells of his birth and without fragmentation jumps to his adult life.  Unlike Jesus, Noah brags about his birthright and how righteous he is.  Then we find out that he marries a woman by the name of Emzara.  They have three sons and an unknown number of daughters.  Then we get to a confusing part, a Watcher who is a messenger from the Holy Ones comes to Noah after he has had a vision about the Flood.  The last section I will cover in this post is again the Flood, a repeated topic in these Tractates.

The first thing we read from Noah, as an adult, is his bragging about how righteous he is and will always be!  Isn’t that pride?  And marrying off your children to your brother’s children is, of course, now considered a sin (but I will get to that in a second)!  He also killed all his daughters by not allowing them on the ark (that is coming up in the next paragraph as well).  And we know that he gets drunk off the first wine after the Flood.  I guess these small flaws are OK, and that he is still a righteous man, both in his eyes and in YHWH’s eyes.

Cousin marriage was acceptable at the time, even though YHWH would eventually decide that it was a sin worthy of death (Lev 18:6)!  So remember that either YHWH does change or go for it, marry your cousin…YHWH approves.  The worst thing about this section is that it clearly states that Noah had daughters, yet we know that they did not join him on the Ark.  This means that he sacrificed his own flesh and blood, because of the Flood that YHWH created.  What a loving father!  Even more what a loving YHWH to force a man to do such a hideous act, can you imagine the pain Noah felt as he watched his daughters drown?

Noah has a vision, which he shares with no one.  And then a Watcher comes to give him a message from the Holy Ones about the flood.  I will have to amend my last few posts.  The Watchers are different from the Nephilim, which are different than the Sons of Heaven.  It seems from this passage that it is the actions of the Nephilim that cause YHWH to create the Flood that kills all live on dry land, except plants.

I will close this post with the most horrific description of the Flood presented in any Religious Document:

1QapGen Col.6 row 25-Col.7 row 4 until the Floodgate of heaven [opened…destroying] humanity and cattle and wild animals and birds […] […] upon them.  The earth and all that was upon it, in the seas and on the mountains […] all the constellations, the sun, the moon, and the stars.

So in this version the flood gates did kill all the animals in the seas as well as all the animals on the dry land.  Since some of the fragmentation occurs at critical points we cannot tell what happens to the sun, moon, and stars.  Are they witness to the horrific actions of YHWH or could the Flood be so intense that even they were destroyed?  The worst is yet to come.  One of the Watchers then tells Noah

1 QapGen Col.7 row 5 “I hereby grant you your reward from me”

Noah’s reward was to be the only man standing after such horrific violence.  He was King of the World.  And of course, what does Noah do?  He rejoiced and “shouted for joy”!  He was overwhelmed with excitement that YHWH had destroyed the entire planet.  He was ecstatic that his daughters had drowned in the Flood.  He was all bubbly because even Methuselah was now dead.  If you calculate the age that Methuselah died it was in the year of the Flood.  Noah was the one and only leader of the entire human population, I bet he was excited! 

As an Atheist this tale is so horrific I cannot see how anyone could worship this monster named YHWH.  He is twisted, has horrible tastes in righteousness, and punishes innocent people due to his own actions.  The destruction of the planet by a Flood has got to be one of the worst ways to kill every living thing, including the sea life (due to fresh water mixing with the salt water).  But to chose Noah as the living representative of Humanity?  Noah was so flawed that it is no wonder that the world is so fucked up now!  Maybe this really did happen.  It does explain why some humans are such a mess.

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May 28, 2009, 10:15 am by dc-agape.

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Tales of the Patriarchs (Part 2)

The next section of the Tales Tractate is pretty beat up.  The gist is that Lamech is still not totally convinced that Noah is really his son.  Fortunately, both the grandfather and father of Lamech are around.  Lamech goes (actually runs) to talk to his father, Methuselah.  For some reason he needs Methuselah to go and talk to Enoch (the grandfather of Lamech).  So Enoch tells Methuselah so that Methuselah can tell Lamech the truth about Noah.  Pretty convoluted and you would hope that the answer to the question was recorded, but in both cases that is exactly what is missing/been destroyed.  Whatever the answer was it seems to have settled the issue, because only two lines later (on the column) we jump to the story about the adult Noah.

One thing that we get from this part of the Tractate is that the Holy Ones do live among humans and are not the Watchers.  We find this out because Methuselah has to travel “the length of the land of Parvaim” to speak with Enoch.  I guess when you have the entire earth and you live for centuries you just get tired of living close to other family members.  But Enoch lives with the Holy Ones, yet it is the Sons of Heaven that sleep with human women.  In fact, Enoch is “beloved and a friend of YHWH and the Holy Ones”.

Another point that seems to come from this is that the Sons of Heaven are responsible for the sins that cause YHWH to massacre the entire world’s population of animals and humans.  In Enoch’s reply, it seems that these Sons of Heaven are “confused” and “doing great violence”.  So it would seem that YHWH is responsible for the causing his own anguish that brings the Flood!  It is his own Sons of Heaven that he cast down on earth that cause humans to sin against him.  Now is that a just god or is that just a stupid god?  “I got rid of my problems up here in heaven by sending them to you.  But since you actually couldn’t handle them either, I’ll just wipe you out.  Maybe this Noah kid will be OK.”  What type of logic is that!  And we are supposed to worship this monster idiot?  I think not.

Before the flood humans, the Holy Ones, and the Sons of Heaven co-inhabit the earth.  YHWH does not like the Sons of Heaven (he cast them out of Heaven) and it seems the Holy Ones are useless.  Enoch is the only human that is friends with them, even Methuselah has moved away from the Holy Ones.  So it would seem that YHWH loses nothing by destroying his own creation including all the innocent animals and humans that did not associate with the angels that YHWH throw out of heaven.  I sure am glad only  ten generation of humans have been born before YHWH loses patience.  

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May 26, 2009, 8:30 am by dc-agape.

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Tales of the Patriarchs

Our illustrious editors are kind enough to let us know that this is a rewrite of the Bible.  The original author(s) of this Tractate “improved” upon the stories from the Book of Genesis.  This starts as a story of why YHWH destroyed humanity and all the other living creatures on the planet with the Flood.  I won’t give you the reason yet, but let’s just say it’s a spectacular example of the stupidest thing a supernatural being could ever do!  The first Patriarch in the story is Lamech, Noah’s father.  The Tractate then turns to Noah himself.  Noah’s sons are mentioned but only to describe how they spread across the world.  Abram is the last Patriarch of this tale.  From the use of the name “Abram” it can be foreseen that this tale ends before YHWH changes his name to Abraham.

The opening of our story is the reason that YHWH drowned the entire world in his anger with the Flood.  It is actually quite simple…YHWH bound fallen angels to earth.  That’s right, to get rid of the angels that YHWH did not like he sent them to earth in fleshly bodies…where the humans lived.  Well of course these fallen angels, called Watchers (or more familiar term…the Nephilim), intermingled with humans.  This show how either naive or stupid YHWH was.  What else would you expect evil angels to do except corrupt humanity?  Worse than that YHWH did not strip them of their heavenly knowledge, so the Watchers used this knowledge to their own benefit.  They also, being angels, must have been more intelligent, more hansom, and more powerful than the humans.  So the women, of the time, sleep with these supernatural beings!  This only produced more evil offspring and the whole world was corrupted by YHWH own action.  He sent the angels to earth, what else would he expect to happen?

Here enters our first Patriarch, Lamech.  In a fit of jealousy he demands that his wife prove that she had not sleep with one of the Nephilim.  She had just given birth to Noah.  Something about Noah was surprisingly different than a normal baby, and Lamech thought that Noah was a child of the Nephilim.  Here we learn that Noah’s mother’s name was Bitenosh.  Why she should have a name in this story and not the Bible is of great curiosity.  Reading the response of Bitenosh is much more racy than anything in today’s Word of God:

1QapGen Col.2 lines 9-10 She said, “Oh, my brother, my lord, remember my voluptuousness […] in the heat of lovemaking, and my ardent response. I am telling you the whole truth […]. 

Sorry about the brackets, this is the symbol for where the scrolls are beyond recovery and the words have been lost to eternity.  Let’s hope that the term “my brother” does not mean she married and had sex with her brother!  But if this section were in the Bible I bet more people would read that Book.  Bitenosh continues the discussion of Noah’s conception, guaranteeing that Lamech is truly the father of Noah. 

One oddity appears in this section.  The author(s) use numerous terminologies for men who are not human.  To being with, when Lamech is worried about who fathered Noah, they use the term Holy Ones or Nephilim.  But when Bitenosh defends herself, she uses the term Watcher and differentiates that from the Sons of Heaven.  So it would seem that there were two extra sources of sperm in the days before the Flood other than human.  I can see how the Holy Ones and the Sons of Heaven might be the same, but then the Nephilim and the Watchers might also be the same.  We know from the Book of Genesis that the Sons of Heaven/God did have sex with human women (Gen 6:1-2).  But from reading that section of the Book of Genesis it would seem that it was the offspring of the Sons of Heaven that were the Nephilim (Gen 6:4).  Why would the Sons of God/Heaven be evil?  Why would the children of that union be evil?  In fact verse four claims that the Nephilim were “heroes of old, men of renown”.  Nothing from the Book of Genesis would indicate that humanity had any reason to become evil.  Yet right after the part about the Nephilim the Book of Genesis declares that humanity had become evil (Gen 6:5-7).  Remember that only 10 generation of humans had been born by the time YHWH grew angry (Gen 5).  It is a good thing that Noah didn’t let his children forget how to please such a temperamental YHWH!

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May 25, 2009, 2:53 pm by dc-agape.

Commentaries on Genesis (Part 2)

I finished the first fragment yesterday (5/24/2009), but this post will be on the other eight fragments of this Tractate.  These fragments are in terrible condition, none of them exceed five lines.  Compared to the first fragment that had a total of closer to sixty lines this material is much shorter.  Three of the fragments are about the flood, one fragment covers the incident with Ham and Noah, two more fragments are on Israel’s “blessing” on his sons Issachar and Dan, another is the blessing on Joseph, and the last fragment maybe about the blessing on Judah.

The first and second fragments on the Flood are the dimensions of the ark.  As I have posted before, these dimensions are extremely too small to hold a pair of all living animals.  Here the dimensions are 300 cubits in length (150 yards or 137 meters), fifty cubits wide (25 yards or ~23 meters), and 30 cubits high (15 yards or ~14 meters).  Even when considering that this ark had three levels, the total area would have been 2.32 acres.  This tiny area had to not only hold the animals, but their food as well!  Plus eight people, if you get picky.  Even a supernatural being can’t do that, unless he created some sort of spatial anomaly.  This would have been like making the inside of the ark larger than the outside!  It is just a Tall Tale, nothing more.  The third fragment on the Flood is about when Noah left the ark after spending one full year in that cramped area with a lot of animals shitting everywhere.  Oddly the raven was released after Noah left the ark not before in this story.  This has been the only difference I have read from the modern day Book of Genesis.  But then again, this fragment is also different from the first fragment.  So this may be scribal error or translation/editing error.

The fragment on the Ham incident is identical to the Book of Genesis.  The loving father, Noah, who has spent the last year in a cramped boat with the only survivors of humanity and life on earth, curses his youngest son descendants for seeing his father drunk off of wine and nude.  I’m sure am glad my father was never that cruel.  In Noah’s hangover from his first alcohol binge in over a year, he curses 1/3 of the human population to eternal slavery.  Not the role model I would like to have people look up to.

The two fragments on the “blessing of Israel” for Issachar and Dan are not to inspiring.  Little is left of Issachar’s “blessing”.  About all that is left is something about Issachar descendants becoming slaves.  What a blessing!  Most of the fragment is about Dan’s “blessing” from his father.  The kindest thing that Israel tells his son is that Dan’s descendents will be numbered as one of the tribes of Israel.  The other thing that Israel tells Dan is that his descendents will be like vipers by the roadside, striking at passing horses and presumably the human riders.  You just have to love a dad that is so willing to give out such wonderful blessings!  Here is just another example of how not to be a father, straight from the Word of God.

For Joseph the “Blessing of Israel” truly is something a father should tell his son on his death bed.  Israel blesses Joseph with an agile hand and a strong bow.  He continues this blessing with the promise of help from the one and only, YHWH.  I guess if you can’t love all your children, loving one is good enough?  What a great biblical example of parenthood.

The final fragment is has a connection to Zechariah (Zech 4:14).  The editors of my copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to think that this also is related to the blessing on Judah.  How this is linked is beyond my layman’s comprehension.  I can see the link to Zechariah, but I do not see anything to do with the blessing on Judah (Gen 49:8-12).  The one thing this fragment does do is claim that the men of Yahad (the Dead Sea Scroll sect) were present from the time of the Book of Genesis.  Somehow I get the feeling that this was religious tampering with the Word of God for human pride.

Posted in Genesis Material, Dead Sea Scroll, Inerrancy - My Ass, Joseph, Family Values? | Print | No Comments »

May 24, 2009, 8:50 am by dc-agape.

Commentaries on Genesis

This tractate is not as long as the Book of Genesis.  It actually has 11 fragments, the first is the longest with five entire columns and a sixth one that only has 21/2 lines.  The other fragments are just about as bad as those of much of the other Dead Sea Scrolls.  This will be a two part post.  I will cover the first fragment in this post and my second post will address the other fragments.  Interestingly, these six columns of the first fragment cover Gen 5:32 – 49:21.  So it basically covers the entire Book.

Reading this is just like reading the original material.  There is no commentary.  The first section covers the Flood.  Funnily, it starts with my favorite verse from the story.

4Q252 Frag. 1 col. 1 [In the ] year four hundred and eightieth year of Noah’s life, he came to the end of them and God said, “My spirit shall not dwell with man forever, their days shall be determined to be one hundred and twenty years until the waters of the flood come.

We start with the biggest mistake in the Bible.  Not a single recorded lifespan before or after the flood was 120 years.   So YHWH never acted upon this quote!  It is a gaping error that has persisted in the Word of God since its first recording!  What I find hilarious is that this is how the remaining text from this Tractate starts.  If Noah lived to be well over 480 years, yet YHWH determined humans to live only 120 years…we have a disconnect from reality.  And yet every copy of the infallible Word of God has this mistake, not just our modern documents but even those that are over 2000 years old!

The rest of this section is, as I said earlier, identical to the New International Version of the Old Testament.  Here the author(s) make it clear that the Flood started on a Sunday and 364 days later, also on a Sunday, Noah left the ark.  I still want to know how the olive tree survived the flood, brackish water (which would have been the case when you mix fresh and salt water) usually kills almost every living plant.  And the olive tree is no exception, especially after an entire year of being waterlogged.  So the story continues to have massive errors, the olive tree could not have survived and been able to produce leaves.

The next topic of this “commentary” is how Noah cursed his grandsons.  In fact the author(s) go so far as to remind the reader that Noah could not curse his own sons due to the blessings that YHWH bestowed on them.  All because Noah got drunk, 1/3 of the human population of the world would be slaves!  Got to love this story.

The next story is about how Abraham left his father.  If does have a clerical error.  The first line calls Abraham by his later date name.  Then the rest resorts back to calling him Abram. The text jumps around through the Book of Genesis, not because of fragmentation, but because the author(s) don’t want to be bothered by some section of the Book they are commenting on.

The next jump takes us to the story of the human sacrifice that YHWH demands of Abraham.  This short segment ends with the angel telling Abraham that YHWH is well pleased.  Isn’t great to know that YHWH is pleased with a man who is willing to commit murder, of his own child no less, to please YHWH ego!

The next two sections are very small.  The first may not even be linked to anything we know about the Book of Genesis.  But it is assumed that it is about how Isaac blesses Jacob.  If this is the case the author(s) simply leave out the part that is not particularly a positive aspect of their ancestor.  They left out that Jacob tricks his father into believing that Jacob is really Esau.  The other small section is about Esau’s sons.  This section has one prophecy: that the sons of Esau will be blotted out during the Last Days.  This of course happened in the Days of Saul.  So to these Jews the Lasts Days had already begun…in 1050 CBE.  This means, if you take the Bible literally, that the Last Days have been occurring for half the time the world has existed, for over 3000 years.

The next jump leads to the so-called blessing of Jacob Israel.  The three parts that exists are the “blessing” of Reuben, the blessing on Judah and the blessing on Asher and Naphtali.  This “blessing” of Reuben Israel is really a curse on his firstborn son.  Israel never forgave Rueben for sleeping with Bilhah, Israel’s slave wife.  The author(s) here wanted to reaffirm this position to help explain why the tribe of Rueben was not important.

In Israel’s blessing on Judah it is the exact opposite.  Israel heaps greatness on the descendents of Judah.  An anachronism occurs at this point.  The author(s) mention the throne of David, who of course has not been born by this time.  And this blessing of Israel has since been proven to be false.  Even before the “coming of the Righteous Messiah”, Judah did not have the throne of Israel for the entire time, and certainly does not have it now!  It is a good thing this is only a blessing from a human, otherwise YHWH would look like a fool for making such a promise.  But it still makes the Old Testament out to be filled with things that do not have any relevance to anything but history.

This fragment ends with a repeat of the blessing on Asher and Naphtali.  Again, this is not a commentary; it is a verbatim repeat of the Book of Genesis.  In fact, this entire “Commentary” was nothing but certain Biblical verse taken out of the Book of Genesis and repeated.  If anything this is an attempt to make the Book of Genesis less violent, less contradictory, and less insulting to the dignity of the Israeli people.

Posted in Dead Sea Scroll, Genesis Material, Inerrancy - My Ass, Family Values?, Tall Tales, Readings | Print | 13 Comments »

May 22, 2009, 8:17 am by dc-agape.

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A Sermon on the Flood

Here we are back at the Great Flood, but this time it is from the veiw point of the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  YHWH gets angry with his creation because he forgot to teach them what he wanted.  And if you want to put the blame on humans, instead of YHWH, well then Adam was a hideous father!  Cain kills Abel, and Seth obviously did not teach his children any better.  Within 8 generations, but about 1600 years, humans were so evil that YHWH couldn’t stand it.  So he destroys all the living things on the planet.  That’s right the loving YHWH drowns every living innocent animal on the planet in the process of punishing 8 generations of humans.  He destroyed all the plants, all the birds, all the herbivores, all omnivores, and the carnivores, just because he was angry at humans!   Yet he is the one that made humans.  He was the one responsible for their desires and actions.  He was the one that needed to record his will for those people, yet he did not.  And worse, Adam and Seth did not teach their children what they needed to know or how to act. 

Well this Sermon adds more to it.  Before the Flood there was so much abundant food that humans did not have to work as hard as they do now!  This lack of extra toll was responsible for humanities sinful nature.  So it was extremely easy in the Garden, and Adam sinned.  It was less easy out in the world, but not as hard as it could be, and all of humanity sinned.  The silver lining is that now that we have to work so hard to stay alive, we can’t sin as bad as those patriarchs.  With science making life easier, watch out world here come the sinners!

After this tidbit, the sermon brings us the promise.  This promise is even more over reaching than the one from Genesis 9:11 (where YHWH promises to never destroy the entire world with a flood again).  The author of this Tractate claims that YHWH promised to never flood waters or ravaging waters, trivial weather conditions compared to a world-wide flood.  All you have to do to receive this blessing: be faithful to his covenant!  He will be merciful to those who remember his commandments.  But don’t ever rebel at the Words of YHWH!  Isn’t that so simple, shouldn’t we all just obey his commandments?  That’s right we should stone the rebellious child (Dt 21:18-21), stone the adulterer (Lev 20:10), stone the medium (Lev 20:27), stone those who work on the Sabbath (Num 15:32-36), cast out the sick (Lev 13:45-46), and treat foreigners with death (Num 31:17)!  And of course, don’t forget to make blood sacrifices to atone for every sin you commit.  This was the covenant made at the time of the Flood.  Forget the whole Jesus thing.  No wonder we have flooding and rampaging rivers in this day and age, we have forgotten the covenant!  We don’t obey his commandments.

These are the commandments of YHWH.  Jesus did not absolve us of obeying them!  He only made the sacrifice that would allow us to not have to continue to offer blood sacrifice to YHWH.  Most of these commandments make no sense in today’s world.  We can heal the sick; we know that foreigners are not evil.  One child would be alive if we killed every rebellious one!  Even though maybe they would behave better, but it is now considered child abuse to punish our children.  How many adults would be alive today if we stoned adulterers?  I certainly could go for stoning the mediums, since they are a pack of liars and just steal money from the gullible.  Many of the commandments made in the Old Testament are outdated!  But how can we ignore one and follow another?  They are all commandments that a supernatural being has given humanity!  We must follow all of them are make our own laws and rules.  And by making our own laws we invalidate YHWH’s commandments.  You cannot have it both ways, either you follow all of his commandments or you don’t.  Either you please YHWH or you don’t!  As an Atheist all I see are people picking and choosing which commandments they will follow and which ones they will ignore.  If YHWH exists, this will not save you from his wraith.  As a result, you have wasted your life here on earth pretending to be something you are not!  What hypocrites.  Why would any non-believer want to convert to your useless religion?

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May 21, 2009, 8:13 am by dc-agape.

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Lives of the Patriarchs

I just taken a look at this Tractate, and discovered that it is horrifically damaged beyond meaning.  The deciphering the five sections that remain is only possible through the use of the Book of Genesis, a Jewish commentary called the Midrash Tanhuma, and two other Tractates: A Paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus and Commentaries on Genesis.

The first fragment that survives has two topics: a holy language, and the Egyptian bondage.  In the first column of the first fragment is a direct quote from Zephaniah 3:9.  The fact that the authors of this Tractate use a verse from Zephaniah is telling in of itself.  The date of the original writing must be after 630 BCE.  More importantly, the use of this verse and the material that survived seems to lean towards the concept that in the future everyone would speak the same language: Hebrew!  This concept leads towards some biblical scholars claiming that the “Last Days” are here because nearly everyone can speak a common tongue.  I wonder if English is truly the language was the original language before the Tower of Babel?  Do you really think that English is the language of YHWH? Do you really think that English is a “purified” language?  Once again the shear arrogance of some Christians is shown to the world.  First, we know that English has evolved over the centuries.  Second, we know where modern English originated from.  Third, we know that only 20% percent of the world actually speaks English.  So by any definition of the “prophecy”, the Last Days are far from here!  Just more of the shear arrogance of the American Christian!

The second half of the first fragment foretells the “future” bondage of the Israelite people by the Egyptians.  The discrepancy between some documents saying four generations, 400 years, and even less is repeated here.  The translation of this tractate assumes that it was 400 years.  But that goes against two other sources: Genesis 15:16 and The Vision of Amram.  In fact, the Vision of Amram and the promise in Genesis are more in alignment than the documentation in Exodus!  The Vision of Amram describes four generation that lived in Egypt: Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses!  Where as in the Book of Exodus it claims that the total number of years spent in Egypt was 430 years (Exodus 12:40).  Here is only more proof that the Word of God has been corrupted.  YHWH has not protected his own Word.  He either does not exist or he does not care!  In either case, we cannot use the Word of God as a message from YHWH because of the corruption.  The Bible is obviously not to be taken literally!

The other two fragments of this Tractate are so short and broken that we can tell what story they are referring to but no additional information is given.  One of these fragments is about the human sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22:12).  The fragment expands the 1^st half of that verse, where the angel is speaking about not binding Isaac to the altar.  Nothing is clearly said about Abraham’s fear of YHWH.  The last fragment seems to be directed towards the period and reason for Jacob to leave Beersheba (Gen 28:10).  It does claim that Jacob was 15 when he started his trip to Haran.  The remaining part of the fragment includes something about Esau, but it is unclear what this is referring to. 

Without a doubt, as an Atheist, reading this Tractate, including the Vision of Amram, and the Book of Genesis, one can see how the Word of God is not accurate!  In fact, one can infer that politics or religion has played a part in distorting the actual document that is claimed to be the immutable Word of God.  As a result, along with many of the Tall Tells from the Book of Genesis, the concept that the Word of God should be taken literally is absurd. 

To make matters worse, I have only read two Book of the Word of God and found that both books are corrupted.  I have just described the errors in the Book of Genesis but I have also found that the Gospel of Mark is not free from being twisted out of context, corruption and disunity.  The hints that I have already uncovered about the Book of Exodus also point to that Book being corrupt.  Can, for any reason including faith, anyone argue that the Word of God be taken seriously? 

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May 20, 2009, 5:17 am by dc-agape.

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A Meditation on Creation

I have five more Tractates on Genesis before I will start the Book of Exodus.  The first three that I deal with will be rather short, due to their fragmentary nature.  These are the Tractates “A Meditation on Creation”, “Lives of the Patriarchs”, and “A Sermon on the Flood”.  The Tractate “Commentaries on Genesis” is a little bit longer.  Bu it is the “Tales of the Patriarchs” that will take the most time.  This last Tractate has survived for many centuries in both Jewish and Christian form.  So it might not be what you expect or have heard of, since it is the closest to the original anyone has seen. 

Until the end of August, post will be made less frequently than I have done up to the middle of April.  I will repeat, this is not due to lack of material or lack of inspiration.  I am in a PhD program and this is the period of that experience that is “make it of break it”.  I have finished classes and the written cumulative exams.  At the same time I have enough data collected to begin the process of publication.  As I begin to write and go to conferences, my time will be less free to work on this project.  For example, before July 18^th, I will have one paper in the process of publication, a poster on the second paper to carry to Philadelphia, and write my proposal for PhD candidacy.  Add to that moving and going to Southern Mexico to scuba dive.  I have a strong feeling that the trip to will be the most disruptive…I have heard that where I am going internet service is quite sparse.

This Meditation is obviously from the first chapter of Genesis.  Even though it is so fragmented that it makes the entire chapter less than two paragraphs, it does have the same order as the first chapter.  The first paragraph is about the creation of the world.  The second stresses the creation of Adam and Eve.

It begins with a call to “all you who possess understanding”.  It goes on to say that YHWH, as a “them”, created the light and the heavens from the void.  And that he would rule over all their works.  This part is not clear as to if it is the animals of the world, special angels, but it certainly cannot be Adam and Eve because their creation is added in the following lines.

The surviving text starts this section with “and the understanding of good and evil…”.  Adam is then taken from the earth.  So does YHWH use the understanding of good and evil to create Adam or does he create Adam with the understanding of good and evil?  Eve is then “taken” from Adam.  This concept is much more vague than the “from his rib” that is common in Gen 2:21.  This Tractate goes further still by calling Eve a helper and partner.  Nowhere does it say that YHWH created Eve to be subservient to Adam!  She is not as equal as in Gen 1:27, but it is clear that YHWH never intended women to be treated as inferior beings.  Even blaming Eve for the “Fall of Man” goes against why YHWH created Eve in the first place!  YHWH created both male and female to take care of his creation.  If anyone wants to have a religious purpose in their life, men and women are equally made for one purpose by YHWH: to rule passionately over YHWH’s creation.  Why should there be any sexual discrimination when humans were created for one purpose?  The first  chapter of Genesis is quite clear that if this is Biblical Marriage, then man and woman are equal.  Is that what most of you hypocritical Bible thumpers want?  It certainly does not seem so!

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May 18, 2009, 7:33 am by dc-agape.

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The Last Words of Levi (Part 4)

The final fragments of this Tractate are disorganized and pretty much meaningless.  Maybe to a PhD in history of the Jewish people it might have some meaning, but I will attempt to get as much out of it as I can.  Seven fragments are all that is left of this section.  Basically, they consist of an admonition, of three prophecies, some words on a righteous teacher, and some Levite texts.

The admonition is, of course, sexual in nature.  This portion, basically, makes an admonitions on the sexually immorality of females that have sex outside of marriage.  It claims that their acts will corrupt the reputation of the woman herself, her brothers, and her father.  It goes so far as to claim that her actions will be a disgrace that will never be erased from all generations.  Here we go again, one person actions will punish future generation for eternity.  What a loving YHWH we have!  It just makes you want to follow this monster and praise his monstrosity.

Three prophecies still exist, but one thing must be taken into account…this Tractate was written when the prophecies were taking place.  So they really are not prophecy.  The authors of these Tractates (all the Last Words of…) claim that the true author was the patriarch, but in reality these Tractates are written during the “future” well after the patriarch died.  They have no prophetic ability.  This of course, leads someone of my persuasion (an Atheist) to wonder about all the Books of the Word of God.  Are any of the prophecies written before they occur, or are they taken out of context…like so many from the New Testament? 

The first prophecy is worse than anything you see today.  It claims that Levi’s sons will walk in light to begin with but darkness will grow in their thoughts.  This will lead them to leave the “ways of truth”.  When the darkness completely overtakes them they will be handed over…and that is where the Tractate breaks apart.  We know many times the Israelites were handed over to oppressors, so this prophecy is nothing new.  We know that each time the “prophets” claimed it was because the people had strayed from the ways of YHWH.  At the same time we know that the “oppressors” were powerful kingdoms that took decades, if not centuries, to become as powerful as they were.  We also know that these “oppressors” had to struggle to become the powerhouses that they were.  No supernatural events occurred to make the “oppressors” what they were.  None of the “oppressors” appeared out of the mists, magically created by YHWH to punish his people for their sins.  What is amazing is that the Israelite people banded together and stayed united through each of these events. 

The second “prophecy” is even more vague than the first.  This one claims that tribulation will return.  In this one, the people will be deprived of their possessions and their homes.  Again, these events have nothing supernatural about them.  The authors of the Tractate are using past events to claim their hero is having prophecies.

The third “prophecy” is completely fragmented.  It is the longest of the three, but not one sentence is complete.  If anything it is an opening to the concept of the righteous teacher that will come in the future.  Little else can be gleaned from it.

The next two fragments talk about a great teacher, almost someone like Jesus, but not quite.  The authors do say that this teacher will make atonement for the sins of his generation, but they do not claim that he will be a blood sacrifice.  He will teach all “children of his people” and they will learn from him.  The darkness that covers the world will be removed and the sun will shine again.  But there will be people who speak against him.  While he is in office (yes they believe he will be a leader, not an outcast), many will lie, go astray, and be confounded.  But he will reveal wisdom to some.  This is where the fragment again is lost and the end is unknown.  Who is chosen, why are they chosen, what happens to the great teacher?  These questions are not answered.  You could certainly make a case that this great teacher that is spoken about was Jesus.  But that would be jumping to conclusions that just cannot be justified.  Every generation has been vile and perverse from YHWH perspective.  These authors had another great teacher in mind as well, who came a century before Jesus (one that existed when these Tractates were written).  And the fragments are too incomplete to fully make any decision about their meaning.

The final fragment speaks of a future where the sons of Levi are upright and full of wisdom.  This will happen because they keep the revelations that YHWH has given them.  By keeping them the authors are telling future readers not to change the words of these Tractates, and to study them deeply.  By doing these things, the reader will live in the light of the world and never be disowned.

It is a shame that such documents were not kept by the ruling religious leaders.  Obviously other documents (the Old Testament) were more to the liking of the leading religious leaders of the time.  But reading these fragments only makes an Atheist wonder.  How much of the Old Testament was identical to these Tractates?  How many of the Books of the Old Testament were written after the events they “prophesied”?  How many were written to encourage a small group of people to stay firm in their beliefs?  Were any of them truly inspired by YHWH or were they just documents that unified a people, and got those people through the hard times of oppression and gave them hope of a better future?

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