When WHWH Repeats Himself

August 11, 2009, 2:12 pm by dc-agape.

Exodus 35-39:31

I will be introducing a new post structure for this section of Exodus.  I am not getting tired of reading the Bible; unfortunately YHWH (for some unknown reason) decided to repeat himself in numerous places.  The following chapters of Exodus are the first example.  A second set of examples are the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.  Additionally, the Apocrypha of the Catholic Bible repeats sections of the Books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.  Even the Gospels do this, especially the Books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  Many apologists for YHWH claim that this is to give us a second (or third) view point.  But many scholars recognize that this was not always the case.  The Books of the Old Testament were written in four distinct styles: documents lettered J, E, D, and P.  Some of these texts were written from the Northern (Israel) territory and others were written from the Southern (Judah) territory.  No original documents have been found, unfortunately lost to the savage effects of time.  With the Synoptic Problem (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) many of the stories and parables are the same as the posts I have written for the Gospel of Mark.  The format that I will introduce for the ending of the Book of Exodus will be used in these sections as well.

Chapter 35

This starts with the same old commandment about the Sabbath (Exodus 31).  But it does add one more stipulation: no one can build a fire on the Sabbath.

Moses relays the commandment of YHWH to the people of Israel about the Tent of Meeting.  Those that have not lost their gold jewelry to the Golden Calf Incident bring it.  It also includes all the other materials looted from the innocent Egyptian civilians.  This would have included the great numbers of dead sea creatures (Exodus 26).   Of course, all these were freewill offerings…except that no one would want to look stingy!

Chapter 35:30 – 36:7

This really only repeats what was said in Exodus 31:1-11.  The slight addition is that the offerings made by the Israelites exceeded what was needed to create the Tent of Meeting and all the bling that YHWH wanted in his new Tent.  See my post here.

Chapter 36:8 – 36:38

This just tells how the craftsman made the Tent exactly the way YHWH wanted it.  See my post here.

Chapter 37:1 - 10

This just tells how the craftsman made the Tent exactly the way YHWH wanted it.  See my post here.

Chapter 37:23 – 24

This just tells how the craftsman made the Tent exactly the way YHWH wanted it.  See my post here.

Chapter 37:25 – 29

This just tells how the craftsman made the Tent exactly the way YHWH wanted it.  See my post here.

Chapter 38:1 – 20

This just tells how the craftsman made the Tent exactly the way YHWH wanted it.  See my post here.

Chapter 38:21 – 30

This section is different.  It actually describes the exact amount of costly items required to satisfy YHWH lust for golden objects.  The total amount of gold was 29 talents and 730 shekels (2193.25 pounds – 994.84 kilograms).  Which would be at today’s market value - $30,197,121.39US.  The total amount of silver was 100 talents and 1, 775 shekels (7544.38 pounds – 3422.07 kilograms.  Which would be at today’s market value - $1,729,775.45US.  The bronze was 70 talents and 2, 400 shekels (5,310 pounds – 2,413.63 kilograms).  Today’s market value would be about - $3,924.40US.  Unfortunately, Moses did not keep an accurate number of sea life required to make the purple yarn for the Curtain or the number of sea cows murdered for the roof of the Tent.  I made a rough estimate here.

Chapter 39:1 – 30

This section describes the Israelites making fancy clothes for the priest of YHWH (very similar to any other religion of the day).  I have posted on this topic before, linked here, here, and here.  The garments for the priests took a number of posts!

In closing, as an Atheist, I would like to say just one thing.  This is some fancy digs for a supernatural being who was satisfied with un-worked stone altars up till this point in history!  For nearly 2500 years YHWH had been satisfied with a few stones put on top of each other.  I guess ultimate power does corrupt ultimately!  You cannot deny that there is a huge difference between un-worked stone (pre-exodus style) and a bare minimum of 32,000,000 US dollars (post-exodus style) temples.  Even when this is what the Israelites stole from the civilians of Egypt – that had nothing to do with the possible slavery (see my post on the Lasts Word of…).

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