The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

The story of Isaac and Rebekah is, perhaps, the exception to my misogynist rule. It’s actually a very charming story in which a woman is one of the major characters, and in which a husband is actually described as loving his wife.

Abraham sends his major domo to get a wife for Isaac from the Canaanite women – Abraham’s country, his relatives.

The servant asks “what if she won’t come with me? Shall I take your son there to choose his own wife?”

Abraham tells him under no circumstances is he to take Isaac there, saying “The LORD, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my birth, and who spoke to me and who swore to me, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give this land,’ He will send His angel before you, and you will take a wife for my son from there.”

He says if the woman does not want to come, then the servant is relieved of the duty.

So the servant packs up and travels to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor. He stops outside the city, with his camels, in the evening, when women go out to draw water.

The servant prays, saying “O LORD, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today, and show loving kindness to my master Abraham.” Then decides how he will know the right woman.

“Now may it be that the girl to whom I say, ‘Please let down your jar so that I may drink,’ and who answers, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels also’ — may she be the one whom You have appointed for Your servant Isaac; and by this I will know that You have shown loving kindness to my master.”

Immediately a beautiful young girl comes out with a jar on her shoulder. A virgin, though I have no idea how the servant was able to discern that fact. She draws some water, the servant asks her for a drink, she agrees, and offers to water the camels. So the servant knows she is The One.

They go to Rebekah’s house, where he meets the family and explains his mission. The family agrees, but Rebekah’s mother, and her brother Laban, suggest they not leave for a while – say ten days.

The servant responds “Do not delay me, since the LORD has prospered my way. Send me away that I may go to my master.”

Her family then says “we will call the girl and consult her wishes.” Then they called Rebekah and said to her, “Will you go with this man?” And she said, “I will go.” Abraham’s servant gives Rebekah and her family many precious and valuable items, and they leave to go back to Isaac, who was living in the Negev.

Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, camels were coming. Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she dismounted from the camel.

She said to the servant, “Who is that man walking in the field to meet us?” And the servant said, “He is my master.” Then she took her veil and covered herself.

Then Isaac brought her into his mother’s tent, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; thus Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

A sweet story, punctuated at the end by the words “and he loved her.”

One day God decided to test Abraham.

Before we get into that, let me say I completely understand this “testing” that runs through the old testament; it provides a lesson, that you must have faith in and obey God unequivocally. Aside from that, it makes no sense, because it presents God as an ordinary being who knew so little about a person’s character He had to test them to be sure. That doesn’t jibe with any all-knowing God I might choose to believe in; how could it be consistent with belief in Jehovah, or Yaweh, or the God presented at that time who created the universe, and who knows what is in men’s souls? However, even though we assume (and the people in those times might have assumed) that God is an all-knowing god, we don’t find that implicitly expressed until much later in the Bible, except for references such as God knowing what was in Abimelech’s heart in his behavior towards Sarah, and some discussion in Job about His knowledge of people’s actions.

So did God change, or did our perception of Him change, from an all powerful being who has to test people to know what’s in their hearts, to an all powerful and all knowing Being? I’m not smart enough, or enough of a scholar, to answer that; I’m just raising the question.

Or am I overlooking the paradox of an all-knowing God versus free will? God did basically this same thing with Adam and Eve. He must have known they were going to fail the test, but that fact didn’t influence their free will. In this case, He must have known Abraham was going to pass the test, and that didn’t influence his free will. Perhaps passing the test is more for the benefit of the one being tested than in the one testing. Passing it, and hearing praise from God, laid a solid foundation of faith and personal strength for Abraham.

Moving on…

God said “Abraham!” And Abraham answered “Here I am!” (It appears that’s the way Abraham answered whenever his name was called.)

God says “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”

So Abraham took Isaac and a couple of strong servants, and “went to the place of which God had told him.” And Abraham “took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.”

“Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, ‘My father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ And his son said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’” To which Abraham answered “God will provide,” and they walked on together.

They come to the appointed place. Abraham builds an altar, lays the wood, and puts Isaac on top of the wood. Then “he stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.”

Apparently satisfied, God has an angel call to Abraham from heaven, saying “Abraham, Abraham,” to which Abraham answers “Here I am.”

The next voice he hear is evidently God’s, who says “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

Hearing that, Abraham lifted his eyes and saw a ram caught in the thicket. He catches the ram and offers him as a burnt offering in place of his son, and calls the place where it happened “God will provide.”

Then the angel of the Lord speaks again from heaven, saying “the LORD declares, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

I totally get this kind of test – set up to prove an employee’s (or potential employee’s) loyalty to the cause, or the firm, or the cult, or whatever. In this case, however, it wasn’t for the benefit of the employer, (God) because He knew in advance what Abraham’s response would be. No, it was for Abraham’s benefit – to focus his feelings and beliefs and internalize how devoted he was to the cause (God). The realization that you would sacrifice your own son to prove your loyalty would be an earthshaking event to me, and perhaps it also was to Abraham.

When Abraham is one hundred years old, God fulfills his prophecy. Sara, who now is 90 years old, conceives and gives birth to a baby boy, who Abraham, his father/uncle, names Isaac. Subsequently, Sarah sees “the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking.” Sarah goes to Abraham and tells him to “drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.”

This gives Abraham a problem. But God talks to him and tells him to obey Sarah, because Isaac is his most important heir. But not to worry about Hagar and her son; God will make him a nation also, because he is Abraham’s descendant.

Abraham drives Hagar and her son out, giving her some bread and a skein of water. Hagar goes into the desert, and the water is soon used up. Knowing they will both soon die of thirst, Hagar puts the boy under the shade of a bush and goes some distance away, not wishing to see him die, and weeps. God hears the boy crying, and sends an angel to comfort Hagar, telling her God will make a great nation of Ishmael, her son. Then He opens her eyes, and she sees a well of water, where she replenishes their supply and gives the lad a drink.

Ishmael goes on to become the patriarch of the Ishmaelites.

Nations spring from Abraham and his descendants like water, making me wonder why God chose him as His most important person in the first place. For example, it’s much different from the way He chose Noah, who was “a righteous man who walked with God.” We don’t hear anything like that about Abraham.

One source says “Abraham was chosen by God because of his character. He was not chosen because he was sinless or would live a sinless life after being chosen, but because he was the type of individual who would want to please God and raise his family with that same desire. We want to look at this verse concerning Abraham’s character and notice some qualities that all fathers would do well to emulate in their life.“

According to the bible, God says “I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.” I can’t find a reference to “what He has spoken about him,” so I don’t know what that is. As far as I can tell, God just sees something in Abraham, and knows he is the apex of the Jewish faith.

Maimonides suggests God chose Abraham because he came to the conclusion on his own that there was just one god, and that god required ethical behavior. This tells us Abraham chose God, instead of the other way around.

So Abraham takes Sarah and goes North, toward the land of Negev, and sojourns in Gerar. Then “Abraham said of Sarah his wife, ‘She is my sister.’ So Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.”

What? The founder of Judaism, who walks in favoritism with God and the angels, denying his wife to save his skin again? He hands over his wife; Lot is willing to hand over his daughters…

Here’s the thing. If I’m writing this a thousand years or so after it happened, I’d say something like “Abraham, suspecting the king might kill him and take Sarah as his concubine, asked her to pretend she was his sister, though it grievously pained his heart to do this, because he loved her deeply.”

None of that in the bible. Women are evidently bargaining chips first and wives or daughters second. However, it seems there are some pretty clear property rights where women are concerned. Witness what happens next with Abraham and Sarah.

God comes to the king in a dream and chastises him for taking a married woman, and “closes the wombs” of all the women in his household.” The dialogue is extremely interesting and thought provoking.

God says “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is married.”

The king, Abimelech, knowing he has not touched Sarah, asks “Lord, will You slay a nation, even though blameless? He said she was his sister, and she said he was her brother.”

And God says “I know, I know. You have done this with a clear conscience, and have not sinned against Me because I kept you from touching her. So give her back to Abraham, who is a prophet, and he will pray for you. If you do not, you and all who are yours will surely die.” So did Abimelech, who many scholars suggest was a polytheist, already believe in the one (Abraham’s) God, or did God’s voice (or appearance) in his dream turn him into a believer?

Anyway, Abimelech drops her like a hot rock, as I most certainly would do after hearing God’s threat. He takes her back to Abraham and complains to him, saying “What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.”

And Abraham answers “Because I thought, surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.” Of course we’re not told why Abraham thought that, but he continues “Besides, she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. and it came about, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said to her, ‘This is the kindness which you will show to me: everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.’”

So Sarah really is Abraham’s half sister. Which makes me wonder why this didn’t show up back in Egypt, when he offered Sarah to the Pharaoh.

Anyway, Abimelech believes Abraham. As Ellicot says, “The fact of this compact between Abraham and Sarah having been made so long before, would convince Abimelech that their conduct was not occasioned by anything which they had seen at Gerar.”

Abimelech then gives “sheep and oxen and male and female servants” to Abraham, restores Sarah to him, and gives him permission to settle wherever he pleases.

Then Abimelech goes to Sarah and says ”Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, it is your vindication before all who are with you, and before all men you are cleared.” (Note he carefully calls Abraham her brother, not her husband.)

Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids, so that they bore children.

So Abraham is once again handsomely rewarded for what was, as far as I’m concerned, a cowardly and ignoble act. There are many things about this story I don’t quite understand. One of them is the requirement for Abraham to pray before God would remove the blight he put on the house of Abimelech, instead of all-powerful God, who caused the blight, just flipping the switch and removing it. It seems like Abimelech was the injured one here, the victim of an act he didn’t commit or have any knowledge of. It would make more sense to me if he and Sarah prayed for Abraham. But I’m not the one writing it.

Frightened by the sight of the smoking rubble in the valley where Sodom and Gomorrah used to be, Lot gathers his daughters and goes up into the mountains, as the angels originally told him to do. There he finds a cave and sets up house in it.

Then his first born has an idea. With no men around, and no chance of any stopping by, she worries about Lot never having any children to carry on the family name. “Come,” she says to her sister, “let us make our father drink wine, and let us lie with him that we may preserve our family through our father.”

The thought may be abhorrent to us, but remember all the people who exist in the world at that time are committing numerous forms of what we would call incest today, because there is no one else available; everyone stems from Noah and his no-name wife, who obviously were the progeny of Adam and Eve.

The younger daughter agrees, and that night they made their father drink wine, “and the firstborn went in and lay with her father; and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.” But he evidently knew what to do while she was there.

The next night is a repeat of the first, with the younger daughter going “in to lie with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.”

But you have to hand it to Lot. So drunk he didn’t even know he had a bed partner, he was still able to get both of his daughters pregnant. The man had really powerful swimmers.

The first born gave birth to Moab, who became the father of the Moabites; the younger daughter gave birth to Ben-ammi, who became the father of the Ammonites.

It’s already quite clear I’m not a biblical scholar, and I freely admit it, so I am somewhat puzzled by this passage. But since the Jews are so concerned with provenance and the order of generations, I assume this is important because it details the origins of two large geographical areas in the bible: Moab and Ammon, homes, of course, of the Moabites and Ammonites. Because they were founded more than thirty-two hundred years ago, their entire history is unclear.

No need to go into details; I’ll just hit the highlights.

One day, while God and a couple of angels are walking around with Abraham, God decides to share his thoughts, describing Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin as “exceedingly grave.” He continues “ I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” In other words, He’s heard bad things about Sodom and Gomorrah. No explanation about how He heard them, perhaps from His angels. The interesting part of this is He must personally visit Sodom to find out if the rumors are true, but as an all-knowing God, He shouldn’t need to hear about the city’s sins from an external source, and certainly shouldn’t have to see it with His own eyes to confirm it.

God doesn’t actually tell Abraham He’s going to destroy Sodom if things are as bad as he’s been told, but Abraham evidently can read between the lines, and begins to intercede for the inhabitants of the city, eventually getting the Lord to promise He won’t destroy the city if he can find just ten righteous men living there. Then the Lord leaves, heading for Sodom, following His angels, who are already headed in that direction.

One evening, as Lot is sitting “in the gate” of Sodom, he is visited by two angels – we assume the same two that were visiting with God and Abraham.  When Lot saw them, he immediately “bowed down with his face to the ground.” Obviously, he knew immediately that they were angels, but we don’t have a clue as to how he knew. We do know they didn’t have wings or halos, because the townspeople would have noticed this and commented on it later, when they come to Lot’s door. We might guess, however, that they were attractive, from the reaction of the townspeople.

The townspeople, “from every quarter,” pound on Lot’s door, demanding that he send the angels out so they can have sex with them. Lot refuses, and offers to send out his two virgin daughters instead, so the townspeople can “do whatever they like” to them. As a father of two girls, I have a rather large problem with this. I realize Lot’s predicament. But to me this offer is symptomatic of a misogynistic theme that runs throughout the bible. Women, it seems, are not on the same plane as men. Not even important enough for their names to be listed in the begats. Examples are myriad. Abraham giving Sarah to the pharaoh to save his own skin. Eve seducing Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. Job and his associates having their pompous all-male discussion. The Nephilim “taking” the daughters of men. Careful naming of Noah and his sons, but only referring to the rest of his family as “his wife and daughters.” The covenant of circumcision, which prevents women from being included. It seems women are only named when they’re a vital part of the story – the most obvious example being Mother Mary.

As I said, I understand Lot’s predicament, but looking at it objectively, I think he could have handed over the angels, apologizing profusely, knowing that they could probably take good care of themselves. After all, when the crowd became too rowdy, the angels “struck them with blindness,” neutralizing the threat, as the crowd then “wearied themselves trying to find the doorway” to Lot’s house.

Ellicot says this was not true “blindness,” but “a disturbance of vision caused by the eye not being in its proper connection with the brain.” In other words, like Lamont Cranston, the angels clouded the men’s minds. And by the way, note it was only the men of Sodom who surrounded Lot’s house, young and old: no women. Which, I guess, is a good thing.

The angels then told Lot to gather his family and get ready to leave, because “we are about to destroy this place, as their outcry has become so great before the LORD that the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”

When Lot was undecided, the angels “took his hand, and the hands of his wife and two daughters, and brought them outside the city.  “Escape for your life!” they tell him. “Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the valley; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away.” Being his father’s son, Lot argues with the angels, and talks them into letting him go to a nearby town called Zoar. As soon as Lot and his family are safe, the Lord turns Sodom and Gomorrah into a pile of smoking rubble, causing smoke “like the smoke of a furnace.”

But Lot’s wife, “from behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” Are you catching the rhythm, here?  She has no name. She walks behind him, as women were made to do in those times, and – in a commentary on the contrariness of women in general – she disobeys the angels and is instantly transformed into a pillar of salt. Phooey. Who needed her, anyway? It’s very much like getting rid of a character in a bad television series.

However, it does point out the necessity of faith. Hers was obviously insufficient; Lot’s, however shaky, was evidently enough. Interestingly, some scholars – trying to make the bible real – suggest that “the earthquake heaped up a mighty mass of the rock-salt, which lies in solid strata round the Dead Sea, and Lot’s wife was entangled in the convulsion and perished, leaving the hill of salt, in which she was enclosed, as her memorial.”

To me that misses the point. You’ve got a good story, here, full of sex and angels and fire and brimstone, and death, and the necessity for faith, and the power of God, and what happens if you disobey. Why mess it up trying to invent the way a fantastic event could have actually happened? Just accept the lessons and move on.

Which begins: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” How many of those do you know?

This is a terrible, terrible story, as any parent who has lost a child will tell you. But of course it is just a story, told and written more for the art of telling than in any sort of reality. Imagine, if you can, a God who would let Satan take from a blameless man everything he has in the world, including his ten children, just to prove to the devil how good and steadfast the man is.

Someone once said the story of Job is one of the most important in the bible,  because it shows us that God is not responsible for evil. That statement’s so full of contradictions it makes no sense at all. So God lets Satan play games with his creations? Just to settle a bet? What In heaven does that make God?

Toward the end of the long, long poem, God and Job have an extended conversation, after which God arranges for Job to accumulate far more riches and goods than he had before, and gives him ten more children. Job, I assume, is supposed to be happy again; that’s one of the points of the story. But as a father who has lost a child, I know nothing could ever replace that child, and a parent who loses a child can never be one hundred percent happy again; there will always be that hole in his or her heart. So to me, the only worth of the story of Job – as, probably, the originator intended – is in the telling. The language. The similes, analogies, descriptions, and power. If there’s a more serious message than God hates and smites the wicked, and blesses the good, and that you shouldn’t blame God or lose faith in Him when things go bad, I’m missing it.

It does, however, take the heat off of God by presenting an answer to the age old question about why bad things happen to good people. The devil did it.

So there was only one couple in the world back then – Adam and Eve. And when Adam was 130 years old he begat Seth – in his image. We assume the mother was Eve, but the bible doesn’t specify that. Then Adam (and Eve, we suppose) had a bunch of other sons and daughters, and died when he had reached the ripe old age of nine hundred and thirty. There is a lot of controversy about that number, and the prolonged age of others in this period, one problem being that according to Ellicot, “primaeval man had no power of expressing large numbers.” Whoops. Another suggestion is the Jewish calendar back in those days was based on the cycles of the moon and not of the sun. Which would make Adam about 78.

But who really cares whether Adam lived to be nine hundred or ninety? What real effect does that have on the story?

Anyway, Adam had all these kids. Then Seth had a bunch of kids. Evidently with his sisters (hopefully not with his mother.) Then Enosh, one of his sons, had a bunch of kids, but we really don’t know with whom, but we have to assume it was also with his sisters.

It keeps going. Always the male participant is named, but never the female. At any rate, it’s obvious that all those relationships were incestuous: mother/son, father/daughter, brother/sister.

But wait, there’s more. Cain went into the land of Nod, which lay East of Eden, and had relations with his wife, and she gave birth to Enoch. Wait. His wife? Where did she come from? Ellicot surmises one of his sisters followed Cain into Nod (which some say was Mongolia) “in spite of the solemn decree of banishment passed upon him.”

This is getting a little creepy. Obviously, according to the Bible, we’re all related, and are still practicing a remote form of incest. Maybe the ages of the antediluvians is necessary to the proposition that Adam and Even populated the world; they needed to live that long so they could have enough children.

Of course it all stems from the supposition that God created only two creatures: one male and one female. Frankly, I think that supposition, and all of the begats, is a bunch of twaddle. It’s there because it tells a story and has a moral; that is its function and its purpose.

Do we really see Adam and Eve telling Cain and Abel the paradise story? “Yeah, we had it really good, but we screwed up and doomed mankind forever to turmoil, hardship, and death. Here’s the whole story so you can pass it on to your children.”

Of course as far as I’m concerned, all that is totally irrelevant. There are some highlights. For example, Enoch, who walked with God, was taken by God – meaning, evidently, he was such a reverent person he didn’t have to die, but went straight up into heaven.

Now we come to the weird part.

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” And “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

Or according to the King James version, “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

So the sons of God took the daughters of men as wives, and those daughters bore children to the Nephilim (the giants). Problem is, no one seems to know exactly who the sons of God were, and who or what the Nephilim were.

The sons of God, the daughters of men, and the Nephilim.  Jesus taught that we are all sons of God, but there’s an obvious distinction here, differentiating the sons of God from the race descending from Adam and Eve and, obviously, from the Nephilim. Sounds like three different races, and if that’s so, where did those three races come from?

Whoever and whatever they were, these passages set up the basis for the flood. When the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great, he was sorry that he had made man, and determined to blot out his creatures from the earth except for one: Noah, who walked with God and had found favor with Him. Which included man, beast, the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, “for I regret that I made them.” The explanation is that “every creature had corrupted its way on the earth.”

I get the man part, but it’s kind of hard to see what the birds and beasts had done to anger Him. I do think, however, that getting rid of “the creeping thing” might have been a good idea.

Incidentally, that’s also when some biblical scholars say God shaved about 800 years off of man’s life expectancy, pronouncing (to whom?) that “his days shall be 120 years.”  That provides a lot of food for thought. Folks regularly living for eight or nine hundred years before the flood, and only about 15% that long afterward.

Others have a different opinion – that 120 years was left for man before he would be destroyed by the flood. That interpretation would give Noah 120 years to build the ark. And then there’s that moon cycles vs sun cycles controversy.

Obviously, to believe the story of Noah and the flood, you must believe that some supernatural power made it possible. God, aliens, whatever. How else could Noah have built this huge boat – 500 feet long and 75 feet wide? Imagine first the amount of wood needed, the number of “gopher” or cypress trees that would have to be cut down and made into boards, beams, and planks.

A modern replica, built to scale, was opened for viewing in Kentucky in 2016. It required well over three million board feet of lumber to build. I’m no lumberman, but from what information I can find on the subject, that much wood would require about ten thousand mature cypress trees. No idea on the length of time it takes to cut a cypress tree down, strip it, and cut it into boards, but there’s no doubt it was good they had 120 years to do it.

Then there’s the concept of going out and collecting a male and female version of every living thing, bringing them back to the ark, and fitting them in it. Along with enough food to keep them all alive for a year or so.

According to Young’s literal translation, God told Noah to bring into the Ark “of all the clean beasts seven pairs, a male and its female; and of the beasts which are not clean two, a male and its female; also, of fowl of the heavens seven pairs, a male and a female, to keep alive seed on the face of all the earth.” That is a pretty sizeable group of livestock, to say nothing of the flying and creeping things. God evidently gave Noah a week to do all that.

So the ark is built and stocked, and then it rains for forty nights and forty days, the same length of time, by the way, that Jesus spent in the wilderness, and the number of days He spent on earth after His resurrection.   So the water raises “15 cubits high,” covers the highest mountains, and raises the ark, which floats for almost a year before God causes the waters to subside.

Noah turns all the creatures out to be fruitful and multiply, and immediately begins building an altar. When it’s finished, he takes “one of every clean beast, and one of every clean fowl, and burns them on the altar as a sacrifice to God. That’s quite an offering. Quite an altar, too, come to think of it. It also, evidently, assumes that all the clean beasts and all the clean fowls had reproduced during the year they were on the ark. Of those that didn’t there would be only one left, and the species would become extinct.

And “Jehovah smelleth the sweet fragrance,” and decides not to smite man anymore.

The multitude of holes in that story have been pointed out countless times; no need for me to repeat them. But of course if you believe in God, you can dismiss them, because God is all-powerful.  Maybe He shrank all the animals down to the size of an ant; maybe He just handed Noah a box of self-activating DNA samples from all the creatures. All that’s not important, anyway, because the story of Noah, like all the other stories in the bible, is a parable, which is “a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.” Granted, not all of the stories in the bible are simple. Nor are they, necessarily, all fiction. The point is, they’re all there to teach us something. And most often the lesson is about the necessity for and power of faith. And, of course, sacrifice.

In the Old testament, we are able to interact with a being who appears before us, and speaks to us, and punishes and rewards us, pretty much in person.  In the New Testament, we are given a Being who walks and talks with us for more than three decades, then leaves us for Heaven, and becomes our intercessor.  The difference seems to be obvious, but it’s more complicated than it appears.

The serpent told Eve that if she and Adam ate the fruit they would become as gods. Based on that promise, they ate, and were excommunicated. But as we’ve discussed, their sin was not disobedience, or pride, or any other common “sin.”  Their “sin” was not in raising themselves to God’s level, but in bringing Him down to theirs.

So when Jesus came, what did He do?  He raised us back up to God’s level, as His children, with all the benefits derived from that relationship, thereby “taking away the sin of the world.”

But back to the bible. If everything is a parable, what’s the moral of the Noah story? What is it teaching us? That if we aren’t good little boys and girls God will wipe us out? That’s the obvious lesson. By fire next time. And the way we’re all behaving, that day may not be far off.

As with just about every other story in the bible, the lessons are about faith, obedience, and sacrifice.

“Then God said to Noah…”

Which brings up an interesting point (to me, anyway). The old testament is full of God talking to people, saying things to people. How does He do that? Since He doesn’t always “appear,” He speaks to them in other ways – as a voice in their heads, perhaps, or from the sky. If so, how do they know the voice they “hear” is really God’s? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t shout to them from the sky, as He would in a Monty Python sketch. Wait. There is at least one passage in the bible where He does just that.

I’m really not being flip; I just think this is a rather glaring omission by the authors. I’d like to know how God communicated with all those folks without appearing in human form, or as a burning bush, or whatever. Which brings up still another point: why in the world appear as a burning bush?

To Moses and His people he appears as a dark cloud, and as Moses brings the people to meet Him, “Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder.” That’s enough to stir the heart of Erich von Daniken, or any other ancient alienist. Also a pretty good description of a volcano erupting.

So at least once God just spoke as a voice from the sky. When that happened, did the ones He was speaking to faint, or have to run change their drawers? Nope. They listened, and pretty much did what the voice told them to do. I don’t know about you, but if I was on the 8^th green about to make a putt and heard God speaking to me from the heavens, I would do what He told me to do, too. Especially if everyone in my foursome also heard Him. If they didn’t, I’d probably wind up in a padded cell.

But I digress.

So along comes Abram, and God tells him to go to a certain place, where He will make him become a great nation. And Abram takes his family and goes. When he reaches the appointed spot, God (Jehovah) appears to him and says “to thy seed I give this land.” Nothing about how He appeared, or what He looked like. Just that He appears. And Abram builds Him an altar.

Incidentally, this is, according to Ellicott, “the first time that any appearance of the Deity is mentioned. Always previously the communications between God and man had been direct, without the intervention of any visible medium,” as in “God commanded Adam,” and “Adam and Eve heard His voice,” and he “called” them, or “spake” to them.

There is a famine, and Abram goes with his wife, Sarai, to Egypt, to “sojourn” there. Well, Sarai is a beautiful woman, and when the Pharaoh sees here, he wants her. And Abram says to her “pretend you are my sister, because seeing how beautiful you are, if the Egyptians think you are my wife they’ll kill me and take you away.”

But the plan has a flaw. Pharaoh, believing she is Abram’s sister, takes her into his house as a wife/concubine, giving Abram all sorts of wonderful presents for her.

Then Jehovah brings plagues – great plagues – on Pharaoh’s house, letting him know it is because he has taken Abram’s wife. We don’t know how He let the Pharaoh know that, but he did. Maybe Sarai owned up. So he chides Abram and tells him to go away, taking all his stuff with him.

Biblical scholars tell us this part of Abram’s story is important because it details the origin of the Jewish nation – when God says to Abram “to thy seed I give this land.”

So Abram, now a wealthy man thanks to the Pharaoh, returns to the land the Lord had directed him to. And the Lord says to him “Lift up thine eyes and look North, and South, and East, and West, for the whole of the land which thou are seeing, to thee I give it, and to thy seed — to the age.”

And Abram builds Him another altar.

Pretty soon we hear about a war (the War of the Kings) in which Lot (Abram’s nephew) is taken prisoner. When Abram hears of this he takes his 318 trained domestics, and smiteth the bad kings, and rescues Lot, and plunders the lands of those he’s conquered. But Abram refuses to take any of this plunder for himself, so that no one can say “I have made Abram rich.”

When he returns home, Abram is troubled. God has given him the land, and promised him many children, and said He would reward him exceedingly, but Abram has seen no real effect of those promises. He has no children, and how does he know the land is really his? Most importantly, all the land and riches mean nothing if Abram has no children to inherit them. So he whines a little to God, who – instead of vaporizing him for his impertinence – reassures him, appearing to him at night while Abram is in a dream state, or trance.

In his trance, Abram sees God lead him from his tent, where He tells him to count the stars, and says “thus is thy seed.” But that’s not enough for Abram. He asks God “How do I know I possess it?” How about some proof, Jehovah? If I’d asked my father a question like that I’d have been sent to my room. But not God.

Instead, God tells Abram to assemble a group of animals and fowl, divide them, and lay them in the field, which Abram does, and spends the rest of the day shooing away birds of prey that came to feast on the carcasses. As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and in that sleep a great and terrible darkness came upon him. And in that darkness God spoke to him. This was God proving He was God – a profound terror, as Ellicott says, “which the creature cannot but feel when brought near to the manifest presence of the Creator.”

God tells Abram that his children will be “strangers in a strange land,” and will be afflicted by those in the land for 400 years, but it will all end happily, and Abram will go to his fathers in peace. The trance ends with Jehovah leaving – as “a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces,” meaning the carcasses Abram had put down.

As a reminder – I am not attempting to write a new translation of the bible, just commenting on those passages that interest me, and bringing a new interpretation to those that present themselves.

And here’s one of the interesting parts. Because she can’t conceive, Sarai tells Abram to lie with Hagar, her handmaid, so he can have a child. He does that, and Hagar conceives. This changes her relationship with Sarai; she begins to disrespect her mistress. Sarai complains about it to Abram, who replies “She’s your handmaid; do with her what you will.” So Sarai chastizes Hagar and sends her away.

In her flight, Hagar rests for a time “by the fountain of water in the wilderness.” Where “a messenger of Jehovah” finds her and tells her she will bear a son, and to go back and humble herself to Sarai, which Hagar does. He also tells her to call her son Ishmael, and that he will be “a wild-ass man, his hand against every one, and every one’s hand against him — and before the face of all his brethren he dwelleth.”

The interesting point: this is the first use of the term “messenger of Jehovah.”

Obviously, though, it’s far from the first appearance of God Himself, who is frequently involved on a one on one basis with his creatures — appearing to them, speaking to them, sending his messengers, making promises, commanding them, making threats, and otherwise being a part of their everyday lives. Very reminiscent of the gods of other religions: the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, among others, who were constantly popping in and out of mortals’ lives. The significance of that is a matter for you to contemplate.

Of all the forces in human nature, hope is by far the most important.  Without hope, no miracles occur, no inventions happen, there is no  striving, no ambition, no vital force. Because hope is a positive  emotion, always concerning some kind of improvement in our current  condition, without hope we become merely zombies, trudging through a  sunless world of apathy and despair.

Of course hope swings on faith. Without faith there can be no hope. So  which comes first? Well, by definition in that last sentence, faith must  come first; we need something on which to pin our hope.

Someone described faith as “belief in things not seen.”   Which raises  the question: What the hell does that mean??? I mean, it sounds  wonderful and simple and elegant, but think about it. Where does the  belief come from, for instance?

Thousands of years ago, cave people, then others — Egyptians, Greeks —  had faith in their “gods” — the sun, the moon, trees, whatever.  Obviously those were things they could see and anthropomorphize. Then  all of a sudden comes this monotheistic belief in a god that’s not tied  to any worldly item. He’s not a talking tree (ok, he was a talking bush a  couple of times, but he became the bush instead of the bush becoming  him) or the sun or a bear or a star; he’s this unattached god who  creates the sun and the moon and the earth and the animals and man, and  woman. Wow! Where did that come from?

Of course some special people can see this god and talk to him, but  everyone else has to take it on FAITH. The belief in things unseen, with  the only evidence being the spoken or written word.

Or is that true? Is it possible we feel there is something, someone else  out there, know it’s true in the depths of our souls? Or not? As some  smart guy said “if god did not exist man would have to invent him.” So  here’s the question. Did we invent him, and thereby engender our belief?  Or do we believe in him because he’s really out there?

Actually I don’t think that’s the question at all; it’s just tangential  to the original question “what the hell does that mean?” The belief in  things unseen thing. Of course that covers a ton of territory. Including  ghosts, vampires, werewolves, heaven/hell, honest politicians, and a  myriad of other “unseen” things.

Come to think of it, that’s probably why God is taking more and more of a  back seat to aliens, and superheroes and all those other things  previously alluded to. Let’s face it; He’s not nearly as glamorous or  scary or powerful or REAL as those other things. Funny, but crosses  don’t seem to bother the modern vampire, and holy water rolls right off  of them, when it used to make them smoke and scream.

Also come to think of it, you know who believes in god a whole lot more  than most of us apparently do? Those guys in the robes and funny hats  who are hell bent on killing us. OK, maybe that’s not true. God knows  (oops) his name has been used as an excuse for the most egregious crimes  against humanity. I read somewhere that Hitler was a religious man,  that he believed he was walking in the footsteps of some Aryan god or  other. So there you go.

But I digress. Or maybe not. Today’s movies, and TV, and computer games  give us a much, much clearer picture of deviants than of god. What young  mind would not choose to believe in seductively handsome vampires  rather than some old man in a white robe? We get incredibly vividly realistic representations of monsters, vampires, dragons, aliens,  witches and other nonexistent creatures. And what picture do we get of  god? George Burns and Morgan Freeman.

Yeah, yeah, I know. We have Jesus, who did stuff like walk on water and  bring people back from the dead. But shoot, those are just parlor tricks  compared to what Superman and his ilk can do.

Speaking of Jesus, I think he’s probably the fulcrum of “Christianity”  because he really existed, or at least we believe he did. And that gives  us an anchor for our faith — gives us the possibility of believing in  “things unseen” because after all Jesus was real, wasn’t he? So we can  believe in things unseen because of someone real who says we can.

It’s all very complicated, isn’t it?

I guess there are really two major forces at work: those that appeal to  our “good” side (love thy neighbor, be charitable, try to be ascendant,  don’t steal, kill, covet, and all that other stuff) and those that  appeal to our “bad” side (if it feels good, do it; do whatever, just  don’t get caught; take advantage of people whenever you can; think only  of yourself.) The god side and the devil side.

One thing this little exercise has done is clear up a mystery for me —  about the rise of belief in unseen things; aliens, vampires, etc. I now  recognize why we have more “faith” in them than in god. God obviously  lost support because he wouldn’t let us have any fun. The other  creatures have replaced him because they basically follow no rules, and  because they’re ever so much more glamorous.

I think god needs a new PR man.

Seems like everywhere you look these days, you see super heroes, ghosts, vampires, aliens, monsters, zombies, and other extra-reality things. Not really, of course. On TV, in books, magazines, game boys, Xboxes, wherever. I’m wondering what the attraction is. Why this escape from reality into what is usually something so dark it would seem unattractive at best.

Face it, believers.  There is no such thing as a vampire. Or a ghost. Or Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or zombies, or people who can fly and throw lightning bolts, or aliens. Well, maybe extra-terrestrials; it seems rather solipsistic to call them aliens, don’t you think? I don’t say they don’t exist; with trillions of possible worlds out there, that would be incredibly arrogant.

However, the other stuff is just plain dopey. How about a TV show starring a good vampire? Are you kidding? He sucks people’s blood to stay alive, and he’s a good guy? Double stupid. Little green men capturing people and taking them to their space ship to have sex with them or stick weird things into them. Triple stupid. Sounds to me like delusions of grandeur. I do get the super hero thing. The bubble brains who watch that stuff probably are experiencing momentary transference — wishing they could fly, or at least leap tall buildings at a single bound.

Okay, so if there’s no proof that any of these things exist, how about God?  No proof there, either, right? All these things take a leap of faith. But the dumb things are an easier leap, because they don’t really have any effect on your life.

Believe in God and you have to walk the line — at least as well as you can. Believe in that other crap and you just have to stay out of dark alleys, or wear a garlic clove around your neck. (Which, I guess, rules out Italian vampires. There are lots of unanswered questions like that. For instance, can you ward off a Jewish vampire with a crucifix?)

I do remember loving the mummy pictures when I was a kid.  Walking home in the dark, positive I could hear that step, scrape, coming behind me. (It never occurred to me that I could run rings around a gimpy mummy.) I remember being scared out of my wits the first time I saw The Thing (from another world). The operative word here is “kid.”

But these days even grown-ups believe in all that stuff. That fascination, it seems — that belief — should have been left behind years ago. The question is, I guess, has all that stuff become some kind of a substitute for religion? It’s certainly at the other end of the scale. Can you believe in those things and still believe in God? I guess you could peg them all as creatures of the devil. But I don’t think that enters into it.  I think the opposite is true. These beings represent a life that is totally ungoverned, basically answering to no one. Okay, there is the vampire holy water crucifix thing. But even that doesn’t seem to work anymore.

All of this seems somehow to mirror a much larger picture — the shift from the moral code we’ve always lived with (we called it God, ten commandments, golden rule, etc.) and the moral abyss into which we are being thrown. Pretty much every great nation’s demise has been foreshadowed by a turning away from morality, a relaxation of accountability, the growth of the “if it feels good, do it” mentality.

That doesn’t mean you have to believe in God. But whatever you call it, you must have some kind of higher standard in place, an ideal to pattern ourselves after. Or irresponsibility inevitably becomes chaos. It’s well under way in the United States. Just look at today’s headlines — at the greed, licentiousness, murder, lies, and viciousness in America, and the apparent utter lack of conscience. Bernie Madoff, for example. Or a man who walks into a church and shoots the pastor, or walks into a school and kills two dozen children he doesn’t even know.

What in God’s name has happened to the most wonderful country in history? Oh, sorry, God’s about gone. Maybe that’s a clue.