A Very Long Walk

June 7, 2009, 6:22 am by dc-agape.

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Tales of the Patriarchs

( Part 8 )

Today I want to focus on the two biggest lies ever believed by Christians.  I will be able to finish the Tales of the Patriarchs and the Genesis material from the Dead Sea Scrolls in two posts.  My post today will be one and the second post will be tomorrow.  After that I will start on the Book of Exodus.  What are the two biggest lies?  One that YHWH would give the entire Middle East to the descendants of Abram, but only the Jews.  The second lie that the Christians believe is that the Word of God is accurate. 

But first I need to deal with the short section on Lot and Abram splitting up.  In the Word of God, Abram and Lot separate because both men have too much livestock and they are competing against each other and the Canaanites and Perizzites (Gen 13:6-7).  Now, in the Book of Genesis, Abram allows Lot to choice the best fields (Gen 13:10-11).  Yet in the Tales of the Patriarchs, the only reason they split was the arguing of their shepherds. Now wouldn’t you think that the two most holy men alive at the time could teach their hired help how to get along?

So what about the lies?  The first one is that Israel has any portion of the Middle East!  When YHWH tells Abram to look upon his descendant’s eternal inheritance, Abram sees from the Red Sea to the Euphrates River.  Even though somehow the author(s) of this Tale believe that the Euphrates spills into the Red Sea!  But instead the two are parallel.  Abram’s descendants do inherit this territory…but after 70CE it was the Muslim (Ishmael’s descendents) who would inherit this land.  Only in 1945 did the UN give any of this land back to the Israelites.  But, of course, to inherit something for eternity would mean that YHWH was not going to destroy the earth at Judgment day!  It would mean that the earth would never cease to exist. 

The second lie that YHWH tells Abram, and Christians believe, is that Abram’s descendants will be “like the dust of the earth that none can count”.  Guess how many Muslims exist in the world today?  The Muslim population is 1.66 billion.  What about the Israeli population (Jewish)?  The Jewish population of the world is about 0.906 billion.  And for those of you who believe that Christians are also the descendants of Abram, what are their total population in the world?  The Christian population is 2.14 billion.  Sorry YHWH, you lied, we can still count the number of descendants that Abram has!  And if you claim that three significant figures is not accurate enough to claim that we can count them all, does your speedometer read more than two numbers?  Do you count time in 1/10 of a second?  Three sig figs is standard operating procedure when dealing with numbers in the billions.  What it means is that these numbers are significant to within ½ a percent.

I find it quite humorous that in the Tales of the Patriarchs the author(s) claim that Abram walked from Hebron to the Red Sea, followed the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates, and then followed the Euphrates to the Sea of Persian Gulf.  After that he came back to Hebron.  Let’s look at that in detail.  The first distance was short: only 367 km (229 miles).  In this link it takes 5 days to bike, think about how long that would be to walk.  The next leg of his journey is actually about 300 km (186 miles) more, he was backtracking. The next leg is somewhat difficult to determine, the Euphrates River never joins with the Mediterranean Sea!  Through Israel it is about 208 km (130 miles).  He then had to pass through all of Lebanon, which is another 210 km (131 miles).  From the tip of Lebanon to the Euphrates River is about 700 km (421 miles).  He still had to get to the mouth of the Euphrates from there…about 475 km (286 miles).  Then all he had to do was travel the last 1300 km (2150 miles) back to Hebron!  Total distance…~3500 km (5700 miles) all on foot!  It would have only taken him about 2 years to complete, so I guess at the ripe old age of 82-85 years of age this was a short trip for him!  Can anyone say bullshit! 

As an Atheist, I just can’t believe that people fall for this crap.  The Tall Tales, the shear fantasy, and the gross geographical errors are astounding!  Yet in the United State, we have people who believe that YHWH promised the entire Middle East to the Israelites.  We also have people here in the US that fall hook, line, and sinker that these stories are the Truth.  If I can’t even get out of the Book of Genesis without finding the most egregious errors, why should I trust the Word of God to be inerrant? 

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Posted in Dead Sea Scroll, Genesis Material, Tales of the Patriarchs, Word of God, Inerrancy - My Ass, Becoming an atheist, Tall Tales, Readings | Print | 4 Comments »