June 10, 2009, 11:14 am by dc-agape.

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In making an introduction to the Book of Exodus I want to make two things completely clear: the error in the Word of God as to how long they stayed as slaves and when the exodus actually happened.  So many points exist that refute the concept of 430 years in Egypt that I will use as many as I can in this post.  The timing of the Exodus is a hotly debated subject, but we do have enough information to be certain that Biblical scholars are wrong.  It did not happen in the 18^th dynasty of Egypt (1446 BCE).  I will point out in this post why how long the Israelites were in Egypt.  In my next post I will debate the timing of the Exodus.

To determine the time the Israelites spent in Egypt let me start with these verses:

Exodus 12:40-41 Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years.  At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt.

Now let me compare to more verses:

Gen 15:13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years.

Gen 15:16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. 

So in two different places the Word of God tells us that the Israelites would be in Egypt for four centuries.  Yet in a different verse it tells us that in the fourth generation they will leave Egypt.  Now here comes the question: was a generation 100 years?  No, they were not; we know that because four generations did actually live in Egypt and each of these generations did not live for more than 137 years!  We know that Jacob was close to 81 years old when Levi was born.  Jacob was 147 years old when he died and only lived in Egypt for 17 years (Gen 47:28) meaning that Jacob entered Egypt when he was 130 years old.  That would mean that Levi was 49 years old when he went to Egypt.  We also know that Levi died when he was 137 years old (Exodus 6:16).  This leads us to understand that Levi lived in Egypt for 88 years.  We also know the lineage of Moses: Levi, Kohath, Amram, and then Moses himself.  So Gen 15:16 is correct!  From the Dead Sea Scrolls we know that Kohath died when he was 136 years old and that the Israelites had been in Egypt for 152 years by the time of his death.  Two generation and we are already at 152 years into the exile.  The lynch pin to the whole 430 year exile in Egypt is how long did Amram live!  We know that Moses was 80 years old when he led the people out of Egypt (Exodus 7:7).  Combining what we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls (152 years) and what we know from Moses age (80 years) that adds up to 232 years.  So Moses was born when Amram was 200 years old, right?  Not so, Amram died when he was 137 years (Exodus 6:20).  So you see we are running into a problem here, it could not have been 4 generations and 430 years, the Word of God is wrong!  But by how much is it wrong, how old was Amram when Moses was born?  Moses was born 2377 years after the creation of the world.  With a lot of finagling we find that Amram was 72 years old when Moses was born.  This means that the Israelites spent only 304 years in Egypt.  To make things even worse we know that while Joseph was alive, the Israelites were favored by the Egyptian Pharaoh (Exodus 1:8).  So now comes a new question: how many years were the Israelites slaves?  Joseph died at the age of 110 (Gen 50:26).  He spent an additional 68 years in Egypt after Jacob died.  Levi lived an additional twenty years after Jacob. So for 88 years out of the 304 years the Israelites lived in peace with the Egyptians.  To make things even worse the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate in the Tractate Visions of Amram that the Israelites were free to travel from place to place.  In the time of Amram they were not slaves!

So as it turns out the Israelites definitely did not spend 430 years in Egypt making two of my opening sets of verses lies.  The Word of God is correct about the number of generation, but is completely false about the number of years spent in exile.  Using different dates of births and deaths the Israelites spent between 215 years and 304 years in Egypt of which 88 years were totally peaceful.  So the Word of God is fallible in both the number of years spent in Egypt and in the slavery of the Israelites!  As an Atheist I continue to find that the Bible is a complete work of fiction that should not be taken literally.  Creationism (taking the Word of God literally) is complete bullshit and as a result should not and cannot be taught as an alternative to science.  The two are not compatible, one is based on facts (science) the other is based on an extensively fallacious Book of Words.

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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.

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May 9, 2009, 12:35 pm by dc-agape.

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The Last Words of Joseph is a disappointingly fragmented Tractate.  Very little of it remains.  What does remain is the story of Jacob’s mourning, the price fetched for Joseph, and how magnanimous Joseph was.  These three concepts deliver us a little more info than the Book of Genesis.

We are told that Jacob mourned his son’s “death” for a year.  He also held a “mourning feast”.  The fragments then describe how eighty talents were paid for a slave.  Eighty talents were worth about 125 pounds troy weight of silver (or 46,655 grams of silver worth today, as of this posting, about $22,875.23).  This price is severely different than that of the Book of Genesis (Gen 37:28), where the brothers only received 20 shekels of silver (about 8oz of silver worth $111.19). The editors of my copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls use the Christian “Testament of Joseph” to interpret that this was the payment that the brothers received for selling Joseph.  But the way the fragments are organized it seems more likely to describe a member of the “Mourning feast” purchasing a slave from Jacob.  The Tractate closes with how Joseph chooses not to shame his brothers by announcing that he was a slave.  This last part, of course, does not occur in the Book of Genesis.  Joseph has no choice he is a slave and is sold into slavery to one of the most prominent man in Egypt: the captain of the prison guards, Potiphar.

Evolution of the story is evident here.  The Jewish sect, that wrote this Tractate, has attempted to increase Joseph’s stature by showing him to be even more magnanimous than the Torah.  And the Christians, using this Tractate, increase the value of Joseph as a slave.  These are small changes and they were obviously not included in the Word of God that we know today, but this evolution does tell us something.  Any story, oral or written, becomes larger and larger than life with the passing of time.  How much of the Torah was treated in the same manner?  How much of the New Testament was treated in the same manner?  And even more important, since we know this…how can we be certain that the Word of God is accurate and valid? 

To an Atheist, what can be seen here is more than enough evidence to put the entire Word of God into question.  It can be said that YHWH has protected the important parts, but which parts are the important parts?  Which parts have been modified by the Traditions of Men?  At this point, anything that may have been the “Truth” is questionable.  As a result, how can we trust any of what is written in a text that has had centuries (even millennia) to be manipulated. 

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January 22, 2009, 2:07 pm by dc-agape.

Genesis Chapter 50:15 – 26

Here ends the exploits of YHWH in the Book of Genesis.  This is also the end of the Patriarchs of the Israelites.  Before I did into the Book of Exodus, I want to devote some time to the TrueChristianTM part of the Word of God as well.  My next posts will be in the Book of Matthew.  My plan is to continue flipping back and forth between the Old and New Testaments.  One reason for this is that I don’t want to get bored!  A second is that I don’t want you to get bored.  I also want to provide equal efforts to both Judaism and Christianity.  If I continue to poke holes in the Old Testament it might look as if I am focusing on Judaism, which is not the point of this experiment. 

But let me finish up with the last few verses of Genesis.  In these verses Joseph’s brothers come to him in a panic.  They are afraid he holds a grudge against them for his own slavery.  I can certainly see why they would be worried.  But Joseph reassures them that everything that has happen was because of YHWH and not his brothers.  Here is another example of YHWH interrupting our own freewill.  You see his brothers had to sell Joseph into slavery or none of this would have happened the way YHWH had planned!  So now we understand that YHWH made Joseph’s brothers jealous of him, YHWH gave Judah the idea to sell Joseph into slavery, YHWH made sure that the Ishmaelites where close by to purchase Joseph, and YHWH even made Potiphar purchase Joseph!  So how many people did YHWH take freewill away from in this story?  If we continue with this trend…even the sexual advances of Potiphar’s wife onto Joseph were controlled by YHWH.  YHWH made Potiphar’s wife sin!  How does this make YHWH a good god, loving god, or even a god to be worshipped?

The brothers of Joseph have another thing to worry about as well.  Joseph has sold all the peoples of Egypt and Canaan into slavery.  Does this include his brothers?  If so he is there master!  Not only can he take his grudge out on them as a powerful Egyptian second-in-command, but even worse he can take his grudge out on them as their slave owner!  Now this may not be the case, we know that the priests of Egypt were not sold into slavery, maybe Joseph provided free food to all his relatives.  But if this happened, it would only strengthen the case for the famine to be due to corruption and not to a natural occurring event!  Can you imagine living in during a famine as great as this seven year famine and know that certain people were being provided for without being sold into slavery?  We start to see why the Israelites were hated by the Egyptians.  Either Joseph sold his brothers into slavery or the people of Egypt forced slavery onto the Israelites for the corruption that Joseph perpetrated!

An interesting thing occurs is how his brothers approach Joseph about their fears.  They lie to him!  This is a great example of “godliness”!  The patriarchs of the Jewish and Christian religion cannot help themselves; they cannot “live righteously before the Lord”. Here is the lie:

Gen 50:16-17 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.  Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.”  When their message came to him, Joseph wept.

You can tell this is a lie for a number of reasons.  First, they do not go to Joseph, they send him a message.  You can always lie better is the person cannot see your face.  Second, Joseph was with his father during the “Blessing of Jacob” and at his death bed.  Israel had plenty of time to make the instructions directly to Joseph!  But it was a very effective lie, it caused Joseph to weep.  Joseph realized that he was negligent in his treatment of his entire family.  This is a Biblical family value?

Years later Joseph is preparing to die.  But before he dies he gets to see the great grandchildren: the sons of Makir, who is the son of Manasseh.  He pleads with his living relatives that when they leave Egypt to take his body and be buried in Canaan!  He does not request where his bones to be buried, he just does not want to be buried in Egypt. 

There is one thing that as a gay Atheist I cannot forget to bring up.  It is about the “christian” interpretation of a never-changing trust-worthy YHWH.  Joseph is the first character in the entire Word of God that fulfills YHWH decree that man’s life will be 120 years (Gen 6:3). After only 650 years YHWH has finally gotten around to being consistent.  This never changing, truthful god has been inconsistent and lying for 650 years!  I guess he gets better at those qualities as he matures.

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January 21, 2009, 3:01 pm by dc-agape.

Genesis chapter 49

We have reached the end of Israel’s long and industrious life.  The way the Word is written Israel makes the request to be buried with his forefathers right after he “blesses” his sons.  And this is followed directly by his death.  How many people today can know the time of their death so well that they can bless their children, command their children, and then die within a matter of minutes?  The only way this can happen is when someone is “yanked” from this existence.  YHWH must have decided it was time for Israel to die.

It is interesting how Joseph shows honor to his father, humbleness to the courts, and then lies.  In the chapter 48 he does not visit his father often or introduces his sons to their grandfather until “some time later”.  Now he shows proper respect for his father, not quite like the 10 commandments.  He is acts humble before the courts…asking them to tell the Pharaoh that his father had died.  He is second-in-command…he only pretend humbleness.  Even Pharaoh’s court must do as he commands.  The best part of this story is the lie he tells Pharaoh’s court!

Gen 50:5 My father made me swear an oath and said, “I am about to die; bury me in the tomb I dug for myself in the land of Canaan.”  Now let me go up and bury my father; then I will return.

His father did not dig that tomb!  We know this because what Israel actually said can be read here.  Even more is the arrogance that Joseph shows when telling the court what he plans to do.  Re-read that part in Gen 50:5 “My father made me swear”.  His father did not make only Joseph swear…he made all his sons swear!  Joseph’s arrogance and lying are legendary.  But this is our role model of how to be “Godly” and “humble before the Lord”.  I guess as long as you are “humble before the Lord” you can be a complete ass to all of humanity!  Many TrueChristiansTM certainly are.

Much pomp and ceremony is giving to the death of Israel.  He is embalmed over 40 days, there is a 70 day mourning period after his death, and Joseph mourns an additional seven days after reaching the Jordan.  To make things even more interesting, all of the Pharaoh’s officials and dignitaries follow the sons of Israel to bury Jacob in Canaan.  All this for a despised shepherd.

Something just does not add up.  Joseph is the 2^nd most important man in Egypt.  He has sold all the citizen of Egypt into slavery.  All of Joseph’s family are of a despised occupation.  Yet the Pharaoh does all this pomp and ceremony for a lowly shepherd!  They are treating Jacob like the father of the Pharaoh!  Does this make any sense to you?  It seems a little made up to me or at least embellished.

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January 18, 2009, 10:19 am by dc-agape.

Genesis 47:13-31

Without a doubt, the famine of the Bible was man-made.  This is the story of how Joseph made all the people of Egypt (I wonder if that included his family) into slaves to the Pharaoh.  Now Joseph is forcing the people to buy back the stocks of food that Joseph forced the people to give to him.  Talk about corruption!  They paid a “tax” to Joseph to prepare for the famine and now they have to sell their livestock, land, and bodies to Joseph to get their food back from Joseph!  Have you ever seen such a scam?  So this is a Biblical value?  He did not prepare for the famine to help the people of Egypt; he did it knowing full well that if he charged a high enough price (for the grain the people grew themselves) he would force the people of Egypt into slavery!

I wonder if this verse is still true:

Gen 47:26 So Joseph established it as a law concerning land in Egypt – still in force today – that a fifth of the produce belongs to Pharaoh.  It was only the land of the priests that did not become Pharaoh’s.

It would seem that this law has been changed drastically since Joseph’s time!  So here is another case of the inerrancy of the Word of God is proven wrong.  For a purely literal interpretation of this verse…there is no Pharaoh at all.  So either translation of this verse proves that the Word of God is not inerrant.

In the last part of this story Jacob Israel makes Joseph promise not to bury him in Egypt.  Here YHWH has both forgotten that he changed Jacob’s name and that he had decreed that man’s life would be 120 years.  Israel was 147 years old when he forced Joseph to make the promise to bury Israel in Machpelah.

In doing a little research on the web, Google Book has an interesting tidbit on the authenticity of the first chapters of Genesis, which include Machpelah.  The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, Chapter 10, p295 (by Thomas L Thompson, Continuum International Publishing, 2002) has a great look at the research that has gone into proving/disproving the Biblical inerrancy of the land sale of Machpelah.  The Traditions of Men claim this Machpelah as a holy site, but research cannot prove this point.  In fact, research cannot pin down the date of the Patriarchs.  This book by T L Thompson looks like a valuable read to me!

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January 15, 2009, 12:21 pm by dc-agape.

Genesis 45

As with any lie, Joseph cannot continue deceiving his brothers. Even though he sent all his servants away, everyone heard him weeping in front of his brothers.  Of course the message got to the Pharaoh.  But the Pharaoh did not know what the weeping was about until Joseph had spent much time with his brothers.

Because of the lie that Joseph was living, his brothers could not respond to his declaration.  They were basically freaked out.  Can you imagine being in the presence of Egypt’s second-in-command while the man starts to weep so loudly that the entire building hears it?  I am sure the brothers believed they were responsible for this misery and would soon be dead.

Joseph had finally, after 21 years, forgiven his brothers.  It is the second year of the famine that only kept the grain crops from growing; Israel still had honey and pistachios.  Somehow Joseph has risen above the Pharaoh:

^{Gen 45:8} “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.  He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. 

Joseph is either lying again, or the power has made him arrogant.  When the Pharaoh put Joseph in charge he said:

^{Gen 41:40} You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders.  Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.”

So you can see that Joseph was neither the “father” to Pharaoh nor was he ruler of all Egypt. 

^{Gen 41:43} He had him ride in his chariot as second-in-command, and men shouted before him, “Make way!”  Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt.

He was in charge of Egypt, but that did not make him the father of Pharaoh or the ruler of all Egypt.  If the Pharaoh had heard Joseph say these things, Joseph would have been killed.  He was admitting to attempting to usurp the throne of the Pharaoh!

When the Pharaoh heard that Joseph’s brothers were in Egypt, he and all his officials were pleased.  The Pharaoh suggested that all of Joseph’s family move to the “best” lands in Egypt to live off the “fat of the land”.  I am really starting to think that this was not a true famine, but one more of the type that was caused by corrupt dictatorships.  Joseph can provide a huge meal to his brothers on their first trip, and that the Pharaoh tells Joseph that his family can live off the “fat of the land”.  There is the fact that grain cannot be stored for much more than a year or two, and that other food stuff were still available (cattle, honey, pistachios, almonds).  It looks like in preparing for the seven years of famine, the Pharaoh and Joseph caused the famine!

The Pharaoh goes on to tell Joseph to bring his entire family, and not to worry about their “possessions”.  Everything would be replaced by the Pharaoh once they got to Egypt.  If they were in the middle of a famine, supplies would be short…all supplies!  This was an agricultural society; everything was based off animals and plants.  The ability of the Pharaoh to replace all of Jacob’s belongings except his livestock seems suspect as well.

Well to say the least, Jacob is total surprised by his son’s words and by the “gifts” that the Pharaoh and Joseph sent with the brothers.  The best gift was the knowledge that his favorite son had not died 21 years earlier, as the brothers had claimed.  So Jacob packs up and moves to Cal-i-for-n-y! 

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January 14, 2009, 11:58 am by dc-agape.

Genesis 44

Joseph continues with the charade of not being related to the brothers.  He sends his brothers back to Israel but with a horrific twist.  He has planted evidence that Ben-Oni has stolen from Joseph’s house.  Is it not bad enough to imprison one of his brothers, accuse all his brothers of being spies, demanding that Israel give up Ben-Oni, and trick his own father with the return of the grain price?  Now he is attempting to destroy his father by keeping Ben-Oni as a prisoner.  Talk about dishonoring your father and mother!

His steward caught up with the brothers very close to town, Joseph did not allow them much of a head start and he did know exactly where they were headed.  Immediately, the steward confronts the brothers with the “theft” of Joseph’s divination cup.  Joseph has a Divination Cup?  Why does he need one of these, isn’t YHWH who interprets dreams?

^{Gen 41:16} “I cannot do it,” Joseph replied to the Pharaoh, “but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.”

So here is another example of Joseph lying to his brothers.  I guess once you start lying it is difficult to stop! 

The brothers vehemently deny any theft, and promise to kill the one responsible and the other 10 would become slaves to Joseph.   Way to go Judah and Rueben, that’s protecting your youngest brother!  Either kill him for the theft or give him into bondage.  Well, of course, the steward finds the divination cup in Ben-Oni’s possession, since Joseph had it placed there. 

Upon returning to Joseph, Joseph demands that Ben-Oni becomes his slave!  This is pushing the limit of cruelty.  Ben-Oni is innocent, and Jacob had to know that Ben-Oni was special to his father.  The brothers plead for the life of Ben-Oni to be returned to Israel.  Judah takes the lead and tells Joseph everything about the events that occurred at Kiriath Arba.  He tells Joseph of the pain that Israel feels because of the demands that Joseph has made in regards to Ben-Oni. 

Judah pleads with Joseph to take him instead of Ben-Oni.  Somewhat out of his responsibility to Israel, but more for a personal reason:

^{Gen 44:34} How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come upon my father.”

Judah’s biggest concern is that he would have to see the pain in his father’s eyes.  His biggest reason for wanting to take the place of Ben-Oni is to save himself from facing up to his responsibility and oath that he made to Israel!  What a coward!

As a gay Atheist, I can only interpret the Word of God in this chapter of Genesis as an incredible example of how horrible people can be to their own families.  Joseph continues to lie, continues to dishonor his father, and continues to punish his brothers for something that he claims he has forgotten:

^{Gen 41:51} Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh, and said, “It is because God has made me forget all my troubles and all my father’s household.”

He may have forgotten, but he certainly had not forgiven!  Joseph is a role model that I should follow?  How can this Holy Book be a guide to godly living?

But there is more: Judah and Reuben.  Reuben had made a promise to his father regarding the safety of Ben-Oni that would require the death of his two sons.  Not once in this chapter is Reuben step up to save Ben-Oni, and by that save his own sons!  And Judah is just as bad.  He wants to take Ben-Oni’s place as Joseph’s slave, not to save Ben-Oni.  No, that is not the motivating factor; he wants to ensure that he does not have to face Israel with the bad news that Ben-Oni has been taken into slavery!  Is this the Family Values that the Religious Right want us to remember enact into US law?

Remember: the brothers do not know that this is all a deception devised by Joseph.  Why would anyone go to such lengths to punish his own family over something that happened 21 years ago, has had such a positive outcome, and has been forgotten!  Or maybe this is the Family Values that the Religious Right want memorialized.

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January 13, 2009, 8:36 am by dc-agape.

Genesis 43

Judah this time tries to talk Israel into letting Ben-Oni go with them.  He repeats to his father that they cannot return to Egypt without Ben-Oni on account of the lie that Joseph told them.  Judah, the lying slave-trader, takes personal responsibility for the safety of Ben-Oni, promising Israel that he will guarantee that Ben-Oni will return.  Somehow this guarantee is stronger than Rueben’s (the adulterer), even though Rueben’s punishment would have been much greater.  Judah only promises to bear the burden of guilt for the rest of his life, whereas Rueben promised to have both his sons put to death if any harm came to Ben-Oni.  Personally, Rueben seems much more reliable and is willing to take a much higher stake in Ben-Oni’s life.  He is also the one that attempted to save Joseph when his brother’s wanted to kill Joseph.  But YHWH in his infinite love and power had already chosen the lying, slave-trader (Judah) to be the father of Jesus.

Israel agrees that Ben-Oni can make the journey, with great hesitation.  He makes his sons return the extra silver and bring extra gifts: balm, honey, spices, myrrh, pistachios, and almonds.  I guess the famine was not severe enough to stop the production and growth of honey pistachios, and almonds.  These items should have been in shorter supply than the grains.  Honey, true honey not that made from grapes or date juice can be stored indefinitely; I just wonder how the bees make any extra honey if the famine is destroying the crops bees use to make the honey.  The more I read about this 7 year famine, the more I wonder how it could have happened!  None of the food products could last, definitely not for the entire populace.  Foreigners, like the Hebrews, would not get the opportunity to purchase food stuff, unless the Pharaoh and Joseph allowed the subjects of Egypt to starve to death!

The sons of Israel arrive in Egypt and see Joseph.  Joseph requires a private audience with his brothers, still holding on to the deception of being a stranger.  In the mean time, the brothers find out that the silver in the first shipment of grain was not the silver they paid with.  Joseph put the money back in their sacks from his own pocket.  At that time Simeon was released to them. 

In the private audience, Joseph asks more about Israel’s health and nearly breaks down in front of his brothers when he sees Ben-Oni.  He has to race out of the audience room, weep and wash his face before they eat.  He does not eat directly with his brothers, or with the other Egyptians.  So there seems to be at least three tables or even three rooms.  The brothers are astonished that Joseph seats them in order of age.  Is this truly that difficult, even for someone who is not their brother?    We do not know how many years apart the brothers are, but they could be up to 14 years between Reuben and Zebulun.  Ben-Oni being easy to recognize as much younger, since he was born after leaving Haran!  But life as a sheep-herder cannot be an easy life, so their age would be quite apparent.

The story ends with Joseph lavishing 5 times more food on Ben-Oni’s plate than on his other brother’s plate.  Here again, the concept of a famine in the land and the lavish amount of food just does not seem to connect.  It would seem that Joseph took full advantage of his status.  If this is the case then Joseph was not acting very godly or justly.  He seems no better than many of the cruelest dictators and rulers of history!

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January 12, 2009, 1:42 pm by dc-agape.

Genesis Chapter 42

The famine reached all the way from Heliopolis to Hebron, a distance of at least 160 miles (and possibly 200 miles away).  That would be like saying that a drought centered in Knoxville, TN also destroyed crops in Nashville, Hickory, NC, Atlanta, GA, and Lexington, KY.  Since the sons of Israel took their flock 80 miles north of Hebron we are talking about a famine that would also reached Louisville, KY and Charlotte, NC.  And people complain about the weather now days!  Adding in the rest of Egypt, this famine would basically cover the entire south-eastern seaboard.  Can you imagine the damage of a 7 year famine of this size in the US?

For another example, the Wollo, Ethiopia famine of 1984-85 was of a smaller area (Tigray, Afar, and Amhara) than that described in the Word of God.  True there was another famine in the southern part of Ethiopia during this time, but it had a secondary cause.  So maybe with this in mind, you can see that this famine was a tall tale!  The worst we have recorded did not come close to what the Word of God describes. 

In the Word of God, Israel sends 10 of his sons to Egypt to get the “grain” that has been stored by Joseph for the past 7 years.  Joseph actually meets his brothers at the grain market.  The man in charge of all the grain in all of Egypt meets 10 lowly purchasers of grain.  How many thousands of people were buying grain on that day?  Is it possible that this chance occurrence could even happen?  Well Joseph does not tell his brothers who he is.  In fact, he does the exact opposite; he lies to his own brothers after 21 years.  Man do I call that holding a grudge!  His appearance has changed; he uses an interpreter (that by the way Abraham did not need).  And he even calls them spies!  He does this not just once, but he insists that they must be spies, again.  Lying, in the Word of God, can you believe this!  Knowing better, Joseph repeats the claim a third time.  So he puts all of them in custody for three days!

Somehow the brothers believe that this is related to an event 21 years in the past.  They’re right, but come on…does anyone feel guilt for that long!  And if they did feel guilt for 21 years, it seems cruel of Joseph to heap punishment on top of the guilt.  They have a conversation about the event directly in front of Joseph, but Joseph continues the deception. 

He chooses Simeon to kidnap and bound directly in front of his brothers.  This Joseph fellow has a lot of rage pent up since his 17^th birthday!  He just keeps heaping pain and suffering on his brothers.  So much for naming his first son “because God has made me forget all my troubles and all my father’s household”.  He has not forgotten anything and certainly has not forgiven. 

It turns out that Joseph has returned his brothers money to them.  But this only makes matters worse.  Now his brothers are in fear for their lives!  It’s kinda funny how the first thing they blame is YHWH. 

Gen 42:28 “My silver has been returned,” he said to his brothers.  “Here it is in my sack.”  Their hearts sank and they turned to each other trembling and said, “What is this that God has done to us?”

What a mighty show of faith!  This is an example to all humans about how to respond to YHWH? 

Joseph has even dishonored his father, Jacob.  The fear that he created in his brothers is visited upon Jacob.  Jacob is severely distraught over the loss of Simeon and the thought of losing Ben-Oni.  Reuben, the adulterer, attempts to calm his father…by offering his sons as “collateral” that Simeon will be returned and that no harm will befall Ben-Oni.

The chapter ends with Jacob swearing that Ben-Oni will not go to Egypt.  But in the same breath says that if harm comes to Ben-Oni from the trip, Jacob will go to his grave in sorrow.  That being odd in itself, the oddest part is that the use of “My son” seems that Ben-Oni is his only son!  He has 10 other sons in front of him yet he talks as if only Ben-Oni matters!  What a loving father.  This is a great example of how YHWH wants all fathers to treat their sons!  Joseph is a wonderful example of forgiveness and truthfulness, as well.

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