Making the Bible more Palatable

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.

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