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26. Moses. What a great story.

on Aug14 2019

It’s the Horatio Alger story on steroids: the poor youth cast away by his parents who becomes the ruler of a vast empire, loses favoritism, is persecuted and eventually saves his flock by destroying the enemy. Wow! No wonder it’s such a memorable tale.

According to Wikipedia, “The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is legendary, and not historical, although a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure.”

Moses is, however, mentioned in many non-Judean writings. For example, Diodorus Siculus, a prominent and well-respected historian and author in the 4th century BC, describes Moses as a wise and courageous leader who left Egypt and colonized Judaea, founded cities, established a temple and religious cult, and issued laws. Of course that reference – the earliest in non-Judean literature – was written many centuries after the events took place – if indeed they did.

Of course, whether Moses was real, or whether he did all that the bible says he did, is not the focus of this book. It’s a wonderful story that drives home the bible’s main goal, which is similar to the commandment stated in Deuteronomy and later restated by Jesus: “The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”

Similar, yes, but as far as the intent of the old testament is concerned, it might be restated as “The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt trust and obey the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, or severe consequences are sure to follow.”

Which pretty much sums up the action in the Moses story, which begins with a theme that will be reprised many centuries later, at the time of Jesus’ birth. Joseph has died, and there is a new Pharaoh. Seeing how the Israelite have prospered, and their numbers are growing, the new Pharaoh worries that “the people of the children of Israel may become more and mightier than we, and may join with our enemies to defeat us.” He therefore commands the Hebrew midwives to kill all newborn children during birth if they are male.  But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king’s orders, and let the males live, saying the Hebrew women are too healthy and too quick, not giving us enough time to get there for the birth. So the Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful.

Seeing this, and fearing them, Pharaoh gives the order to “cast every son that is born into the river.”

During this time, Moses was born, and his mother hid him for three months. “When she could no longer hide him, she made for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch; and she put the child therein, and laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.”

By the way, the story of his being found in the bullrushes and adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter is very much like the story of Sargon of Akkad’s Akkadian account of his own origins, which evidently preceded the Moses story by several centuries.

My mother, the high priestess, conceived; in secret she bore me
She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid
She cast me into the river which rose over me.

Hmmm. Well, a good story deserves retelling.

So the Pharaoh’s daughter finds him, adopts him, and names him Moses, or Moshe, a name which means ”I drew him out (meshitihu) of the water.” (This explanation links it to a verb mashah, meaning “to draw out”, which makes the Pharaoh’s daughter’s declaration a play on words. The princess made a grammatical mistake which is prophetic of his future role in legend, as someone who will “draw the people of Israel out of Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea.” Making it a very cool name, indeed.

One day, when he had become a grown man, Moses saw an Egyptian “smiting” a Hebrew, so Moses “smote” the Egyptian and killed him. When Pharaoh heard about it and looked for Moses to slay him, Moses ran away to the land of Midian, where he had a son for whom he chose the name Gershom, for, he said, “I have been a stranger in a strange land.”

Eventually the king of Egypt died, but the Israelites remained in bondage, crying out to the Lord for release. The Lord heard their cries, and remembering his covenant with Abraham, decided to do something about it.

So He sent an angel in a burning bush (evidently God’s preferred method of communicating with Moses), spoke to Moses from “the midst of the bush” and introduced Himself, and told Moses He was going to send him “unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.”

Moses, of course, asks “Who am I” to do that.

God explains “            I will put forth my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that (the Pharaoh) will let you go.”

But wait, there’s more. God then tells Moses “ye shall not go empty,” but will take “jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment… and ye shall despoil the Egyptians.”

Then, so Moses won’t have any trouble convincing the Israelites that he is doing God’s work, God gives him the magic staff, that turns back and forth from a rod to a serpent at Moses’ command. Moses still balks, worried that he is not eloquent enough, and God gives him Aaron to speak for him.

Finally out of excuses, Moses packs up his family, grabs Aaron, and heads for Egypt. Once there, he convinces his people of his mission and authority, and goes to see the Pharaoh, demanding that he let his people go. The Pharaoh, of course, declines. Moses then calls for a strike by the Israelites, who stop working and start praying. This irritates Pharaoh, and he comes down on them, causing Moses to ask God why his people are still being punished.

God kind of skirts the issue, telling Moses to take Aaron back to the Pharaoh, and when the Pharaoh asks him to do a wonder, to tell Aaron to cast down his magic rod. Which he does, and it becomes a snake. Which is evidently not an astonishing event in Egypt, because Pharaoh’s sorcerers and wise men then all cast down their rods and they also all become serpents. Oops. No problem, though, because Aaron’s rod/snake immediately swallows up all the others.

Pharaoh still won’t relent, so God directs Moses to take his rod to the river,  and smite it, upon which the river is turned to blood, as is all the other water in Egypt.

25. Joseph and the many colored coat.

on Aug14 2019

So Jacob settled again in the land of Canaan, where his father had lived as a foreigner. When his son Joseph was 17, he worked for his half brothers, Bilhah and Zilpah, tending flocks, and reported to Jacob some of the bad things his half brothers were doing.

Now, Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children because he was born to him in his old age. So one day he made Joseph a beautiful coat and gave it to him, which made his brothers jealous and angry.

Joseph then described a dream he had in which his brothers bundles were bowing to his in obeisance, which angered them even more. Then he described another dream in which the sun, the moon, and the stars were bowing to him. I can imagine the effect this dream had on his brothers, and anyone else he told it to.

So his brothers plotted against him.

One day Jacob tells Joseph to join his brothers in the field, see how they’re doing, and report back to him. His brothers see him coming and decide to kill him. They will throw him in one of the pits in the area and say an evil beast devoured him. Reuben, in order to keep Joseph alive so he might rescue him later, tells the brothers not to harm Joseph, but just to put him in the empty pit without laying a hand on him. Which the brothers do, first stripping him of his splendid coat.

As they then sit down to have lunch, they see a caravan of Ishmaelite traders coming toward them and decide, instead of killing Joseph, to sell him, which they do, for 20 pieces of silver. And the traders took him to Egypt.

The brothers then killed a goat, dipped Joseph’s coat in it, and sent it home to their father. Jacob recognized it immediately and assumed that Joseph had been killed by a wild beast. Dressing himself in sackcloth, he mourned for his lost son, saying “I will go to my grave mourning for him.”

When the traders arrived in Egypt, they sold Joseph to Potiphar, captain of the palace guard under Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who is so pleased with him he makes Joseph his personal attendant. Everything goes along swimmingly until Potiphar’s wife falsely accuses Joseph of trying to rape her, and Joseph is thrown into prison.

Because God is watching over him, however, Joseph succeeds in all things, and before long the prison warden makes him his favorite, putting him in charge of the other prisoners and everything that happens in the prison. Some time later, two of his prison mates, the chief cup bearer and the chief baker, who have been incarcerated for offending Pharaoh, tell Joseph of dreams they have had. God interprets them through Joseph, giving the two dreamers a vision of their futures: one is to get his position back as cup bearer, the other is to be impaled.

Both dreams eventually come true.

Some time later, Pharaoh has two dreams, which no one can analyze. The cup bearer remembers Joseph from  prison, and Pharaoh brings him in to tell him what the dreams mean.

Joseph says they mean seven years of bounty for Egypt, then seven years of famine. He tells Pharaoh to put the best man available in charge of preparations for the seven years of famine. Pharaoh chooses Joseph, making him second in command over all of Egypt, and gives him Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, for his wife, with whom he has two sons.

So during the seven years of bounty, Joseph takes one-fifth of all the crops produced in Egypt, and stores it in Pharaoh’s warehouse.

During the next seven years, he trades food from the Pharaoh’s warehouses to the Egyptian people for their possessions, their livestock, and their lands, basically giving Pharaoh ownership of the entire country and all its contents.

During that time, Jacob sends the rest of his sons, excepting Benjamin, to Egypt to buy food. They meet with Joseph, who recognizes them, but they don’t recognize him. He makes life tough for them before he reveals himself as their brother, and they all hug and give thanks. Pharaoh tells Joseph to bring them all from Canaan to live in the land of Goshen, “the very best land in Egypt,” and showers them with gifts.

At age one hundred and forty-seven Jacob dies, asking Joseph to bury him with his ancestors. As he lies dying, he tells Joseph God wants him to go to Canaan to take back “the land of your ancestors, plus an extra portion of the land that I took from the Amorites with my sword and bow.”

Then he prophesies for each of his twelve sons, blessing each one with an appropriate message, and dies. And thus the twelve tribes of Israel are born and named. Years later, at the age of one hundred and ten, Joseph died, was embalmed by the Egyptians, and placed in a coffin in Egypt.

24. Jacob

on Aug14 2019

I have come to the point where I wonder why great parts of the bible are included. It seems much the same story is told over and over, in a different way, and with a different cast of characters. True, the story of Jacob’s early life seems unique – the deceiving of his father to steal the blessing from his brother.  But viewed in the light of the 21st century, it’s hard to swallow if, of course, you are not an orthodox Jew (and probably even then.)

Jacob disguises himself as his brother and gets his father’s blessing. When his father learns he has been deceived, he bows to convention, saying he can only give the blessing once. I don’t see the reason for that explained anywhere, but assume it’s part of the Jewish tradition.

God help me, I’m not out of Genesis yet, and my mind is cramping with what I’m reading. For example: Judah, Joseph’s brother, “took a wife for Er his first-born, and her name was Tamar.  And Er, Judah’s first-born, was wicked in the sight of Jehovah. And Jehovah slew him.  And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother unto her, and raise up seed to thy brother.  And Onan knew that the seed would not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did was evil in the sight of Jehovah: and he slew him also.”

We have no clue about how Jehovah slew the brothers, or even proof that was what really happened, but obviously God could “slew” them any way He wanted to. However, from what the bible says, it would appear that He made it plain that it was He doing the slaying.

So then Judah’s wife dies, and he goes to Timnah to shear his sheep. And hearing of this Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute and gets Judah to have sex with her, receiving a goat as payment, and requiring as collateral “thy signet and thy cord and thy staff that is in thy hand.” And of course she becomes pregnant. Judah tries to find her to pay here the goat, and cannot.

Three months later Tamar appears, hands Judah the signet, cord, and staff, and Judah “acknowledged them, and said, ‘She is more righteous than I; forasmuch as I gave her not to Shelah my son.’ And he knew her again no more.” What? Of course Judah wasn’t exterminated by God for “his wickedness.”

I’m losing my way, here.

So Isaac then tells Jacob to go to Paddan-aram to find a wife, because “You must not marry a Canaanite woman.” Jacob travels toward Haran, lies down for a nap at sundown, and dreams of a stairway that reaches from the earth up to heaven, and the angels of God (Young translates it “the messengers of God) going up and down it.”

At the top of the stairway stands the Lord, who says (again according to Young’s translation) “I am Jehovah, God of Abraham thy father, and God of Isaac.” He then gives the land on which Jacob is lying to him and to his seed, and blesses Jacob and all his progeny to be. And in the morning Jacob names the spot Bethel, which means House of God.

So Jacob hurries on toward Haran, meets a group of shepherds, and they tell him his cousin Rachel is coming. Jacob kisses her and instantly falls in love. He asks his uncle if he can marry her. His uncle agrees, and says “Stay and work with me.” So Jacob stayed and worked for seven years to “pay” for Rachel.

On the night of their wedding, his uncle substitutes his older daughter, Leah, for Rachel. For some inexplicable reason, Jacob doesn’t notice, and has intercourse with her. In the morning, realizing he has been deceived, he goes to his uncle, who says it’s the custom for the older daughter to be married first, and asks Jacob to “spend the wedding week” with her, which Jacob does. Then the uncle tells Jacob to spend seven more years working for him and he will give Rachel to him as his second wife. To which Jacob agrees. So a week after Jacob had married Leah, his uncle gives him Rachel, and Jacob stays and works another ten years.

Evidently Rachel was incapable of conceiving, so the Lord enabled Leah to have children, of which she had four: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, and then stopped having them.

Well, Rachel becomes jealous of all these children her sister is having, and confronts Jacob about it, saying “Give me children or I’ll die.” Jacob replies it is not he, but God who has stopped her from having children. Then, in the biblical way, Rachel tells Jacob to have sex with her maid, Bilhah, so that through her she can have a family, which Jacob agrees to do.

So Bilhah gets pregnant, twice, and gives birth to Dan and Napthall. Seeing this, Leah gets mad because she can’t have any more children, and Rachel is gaining on her in that department, so she gives her servant to Jacob for another wife. And Zilpah, the aforementioned servant, has two children, Gad and Asher.

Then Leah has sex with Jacob again, and eventually has two more sons and a daughter, which puts her way ahead of Rachel in the child department. So Rachel prays to the Lord, and he hears her prayers, and makes her fertile again, and she bears Joseph, which is probably where this whole story was pointing.

Then there’s that whole thing about the spotted and speckled sheep, with Laban and Jacob scheming to cheat each other. Jacob wins in the end, due to God’s intervention, and becomes very wealthy. Then God tells him to go back to the land of his birth. Jacob gathers all his livestock, and belongings, and family, and servants, leaves secretly so Laban won’t see them, and heads for Gilead. I don’t know how you would manage to get that kind of caravan past a blind man, much less Laban, but he doesn’t find out for three days that Jacob has left, whereupon he gathers his people and heads after him, murder in his heart. Fortunately, God appears to him in a dream and warns him to leave Jacob alone.

He still pursues Jacob, and chastises him for stealing Labon’s family’s possessions, but when they search Jacob’s camp they find none of them, mainly because Rachel has tucked the important things – Laban’s family’s idols – into her saddlebags and is sitting on them, apologizing for not getting up because she is “in the way of women.”

Jacob and Laban then make a covenant, establishing a boundary which neither will cross.  Laban kisses his daughters and granddaughters and goes back home.

So Jacob goes to reunite with Esau, first sending his wives, servant wives, children, livestock, and possessions on their way, leaving him alone. During the night God comes and wrestles with him, and is losing the match until He touches Jacob’s hip and wrenches it out of its socket. Then God said “Let Me go, for dawn is breaking.” But Jacob won’t let Him go until He blesses him, which He does, and renames him Israel, “because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”

Okay. Completely believable. Man wrestles God; man wins.

At any rate, Jacob and Esau are eventually reunited, and tearfully hug each other.

Later Jacob’s daughter Dinah slips away, as you or my daughter (or son) might, to a festival to see what’s happening. She is there raped by Shechem, the son of a prince, who falls in love with Dinah as a result. He begs his father to get Dinah for his wife.

So the sons of Jacob tell Prince Hamor that can’t happen because Shechem is uncircumcised, and that would defile Dinah. However, they tell him, that can happen if every man in your tribe is circumcised. Hamor agrees to make that happen. Which it does.

And while all the men are still “sore” from the circumcision, two of Dinah’s brothers took their swords and slew all the males, including Shechem and Hamor, and brought Dinah back home. Then Jacob’s sons, seeing all the men were slain, “plundered the city because they had defiled their sister,” taking all the livestock, all the women and children, and anything else worth carrying off.

Jacob, fearing retribution, rebukes his sons. But God saves the day again, appearing to Jacob and telling him to move to Beth-el. Which Jacob does, and God clears the way for him by terrifying all the cities in the area so they are afraid to pursue him.

Jacob and his people flee to Bethel, even though that place had not been named Bethel yet, and God appears to him again, blessing him, and apparently forgetting he had already named him Israel, he names him that again. Then God says “I am El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty.’ Be fruitful and multiply. You will become a great nation, even many nations. Kings will be among your descendants!  And I will give you the land I once gave to Abraham and Isaac. Yes, I will give it to you and your descendants after you.” Then God leaves and Jacob set up a pillar of stone and poured oil on it, and named the place Bethel.

They continue their journey, toward Ephratha (which is Bethlehem) and Rachel gives birth to Benjamin, but dies doing so.

Don’t go away, though. Now comes the story of Joseph, and it is some kind of story.

23. Where we all came from.

on Aug14 2019

Okay. Let’s take a short break and talk evolution, DNA, LUCA, survival of the fittest, and all that stuff.

LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, is what we all sprang from, according to common scientific belief. It was a small, single-celled organism with a ring-shaped coil of DNA floating freely within the cell, like modern bacteria, and a set of 355 genes. It was the final evolution of the building blocks that had developed in the chaos existing more than 4 billion years ago.

That’s been duplicated. Almost.

In 1953 scientists imitated the earth’s early atmosphere by mixing hydrogen, carbon monoxide, ammonia, methane and water vapor in a glass flask and then subjecting it to ultraviolet light and electrical discharges. Within a few weeks (not even the blink of an eye on a cosmic scale) complex molecules formed in the mixture, including several amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, which are in every cell of every living organism. So the necessary ingredients (the building blocks) were falling into place.

But, of course, it was not alive, because for life to occur in this inert result of several chemical reactions, a further step is required – a vital piece needs to be added. Out of millions of compounds, formed over millions of years, only one in particular provides that missing ingredient – the crucial piece necessary for the emergence of life.

That missing ingredient is DNA, our genetic code, quite accurately called “the building blocks of life.”

Technically speaking, DNA (or deoxyribonucleic acid) is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA, located in the cell nucleus. The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people.

For simplicity’s sake, think of it as code, the kind used to write computer programs. Binary code has only two building blocks, or bases: one and zero. The way they are arranged tells the computer what to do. Human DNA is a very long and intricate “code,” containing more than 3 billion bases.

So how did this microscopic single-celled animal come to have a complex set of instructions telling it what to become and how to reproduce? Well, no one really knows. Some say it could have started with RNA, which is very similar to DNA, but less stable. Of course the question then  becomes “where did RNA come from?” There are some very astute and complicated explanations, but the simple answer is we don’t know and may never know where DNA and RNA came from, or why they came, or how animals began using them.

Bummer.

Believe me, the science world is feverishly dedicated to proving that life happened by accident. Otherwise they might have to accept the possibility of intelligent design, and that is totally unacceptable to them.

Well, that’s enough about DNA for the moment. We’ll get back to it.

Now let’s talk about evolution.

Of course Darwin knew nothing about genetics, and DNA, and so on. I believe he kind of got it right, anyway, but also got it very wrong. His whale story is a perfect example. According to Live Science, “In the first edition of The Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin speculated about how natural selection could cause a land mammal to turn into a whale. As a hypothetical example, Darwin used North American black bears, which were known to catch insects by swimming in the water with their mouths open:

‘I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale,’ he speculated.”

The idea didn’t go over very well with the public. Darwin was so embarrassed by the ridicule he received that the swimming-bear passage was removed from later editions of the book.”

Darwin, without realizing it at the time, basically says DNA changes as a result of the environment, such as changes in beak shape in Galapagos finches in response to available food sources.

History World provides this explanation.

“Chance, on which the theory of evolution depends, is exceptionally hard to believe in. But there is strong evidence, from the fossil record and from DNA, that chance has indeed brought us the amazing diversity of life.

Accidental changes in the message carried by the DNA have again and again led to altered or mutated versions of living things. If, as occasionally happens, the mutation brings an advantage of some kind, then the mutant creature is better equipped to pass on its new version of the DNA code to future generations.

Its descendants will seem, at the first few removes, a variant of the same species. Later, after many more mutations, they may have evolved into an evidently different animal. “

In other words, changes happen chaotically, rather than in response to the environment, and when a change is beneficial, it sticks. Which fits with Darwin’s survival of the fittest dogma.

Because I am who I am, I cannot believe that a bear became a whale in order to get more to eat. I also cannot believe a mouse turned into a bat for the same reason. But that’s just me.

However, I also have trouble believing in a set of wings suddenly sprouting on a mutant mouse, and proving to be beneficial. Obviously if the “wings” in the mutant mouse were not developed enough for it to fly, they would not prove to be beneficial. The “wings” would have to develop, generation by generation, into paraphernalia that would permit the mouse to fly. And because with the development of the wings apparently came blindness, a powerful sonar system would have to be added, so the bat could catch its food and not run into things. That’s a lot of mutation for a simple rodent.

However, there is at least one species of mouse that is blind and uses a sonar system. So it seems only reasonable that this is the mouse (or its equivalent five hundred million years ago) that managed to sprout wings. Otherwise, the whole evolution from mouse to bat is not just improbable, but impossible.

Let’s say you have a living, seeing mouse, and that creature somehow develops “wings,” meaning the third, fourth, and fifth digits grow abnormally long, with webbing between them. Okay, so what? It all of a sudden discovers it can fly? That’s a remote possibility, but a possibility. Maybe it falls off a cliff and finds out it can glide. From there it’s a short step to purposeful flight.  So everything’s good, right? It flies around all over the place and grabs bugs en volante. Why in the world would it then need to develop a sonar system?

Now suppose you have a living, blind mouse, the result of generations and generations of its ancestors living in dark caves, or only going out at night, or being born blind, or whatever. Over time it develops wings, and spends its life bumping into walls and trees because it can’t see. The development of wings in a blind mouse would be the first step to extermination.

But imagine the blind mouse, sitting in its cave, or somewhere in the black of night, listening carefully for the sound of something it can eat, and developing the ability to tell that sound from the sound of something that will eat it. Its hearing becomes more and more acute, and eventually it develops a method of sending a signal and analyzing what comes back. Bingo. The rudiments of a sonar system. From there, the development of wings would not be suicidal, but could actually become useful over time. As I understand the theory of evolution/survival of the fittest, I still don’t understand how the wings could be anything but a handicap until they’re fully developed, but maybe that’s just a problem of my small brain.

So let’s talk simians and homo sapiens. You’re a gorilla, or an ape, 500 million years or so ago. You have plenty to eat, you have little to fear from predators, you’re strong and quick, and life is pretty good. Why then would you develop into a weaker, slower being, surrounded by predators, with not enough easily accessible food? Now, if you knew you were going to develop into full-blown Man, with enough brain to solve problems, develop tools, plant crops, etc., etc., it would make more sense. But where is the granular advancement from ape to man? I don’t see it.

Thomas Henry Huxley, a colleague of Darwin, was perhaps the first to try to identify humanity’s roots using well-reasoned evolutionary thinking. In his 1863 book Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, Huxley said it was “quite certain”, anatomically speaking, that humans are most similar to gorillas and chimpanzees. One of these two must be humanity’s sister species, although Huxley was not sure which.

Wait. They are anatomically similar, so they must be sister species? What a lot of twaddle. The fact that two beings are “anatomically similar” in no way guarantees that one evolved from the other.

But right or wrong, that’s simply not important. The important question is “Why would simians evolve into a lesser creature?” To me this is not “evolution,” or “survival of the fittest.” It is a random mutation that worked.

We only have two choices, as I see it. Either evolution progressed through survival of the fittest – that is, a change occurred that was in retrospect foreseeable – and it benefited the mutant, or change happened chaotically, with no regard to positive progression, and the change benefited the mutant.

Now let’s look at another possible aspect of DNA, which I’m sure will be excoriated by scientists, religionists, and pretty much everyone else.

First of all, let’s go back to the comparison between DNA and computer code, and take it a step further. Probably the biggest advance in computers today is the study of artificial intelligence. Basically this means the computer inputs data, analyzes it, and makes choices based on probabilities. The key, of course, is the parameters set at the start. Asimov’s laws, for example.

So suppose the parameter set for DNA is to improve the species’ lifestyle. Wow! Everything fits, now. More food in the sea than on land? Start developing a sea creature. Blind mouse? Start developing a sonar system. Beak too big to get enough food? Make it smaller and more pointed.

No, DNA can’t look at the future and make changes based on it, but it might be able to assemble data and make changes based on empirical evidence. Question: did RNA develop into DNA because it wasn’t stable enough to make changes that might improve the species? And did it change to incorporate a more durable type of artificial intelligence? And was it designed and placed there in the first place by “an intelligent creator?”

What do you think?

22. I stand corrected

on Aug14 2019

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.”

21. The sacrifice of Isaac

on Aug14 2019

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.

20. The birth of Isaac

on Aug14 2019

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.

19. Abraham up to his old tricks

on Aug14 2019

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.

18. Lot and his daughters

on Aug14 2019

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.

17. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

on Aug14 2019

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.

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