angelo wrote:Of course we're interested. Great job Aggie.

Thanks Angelo. I'll post the three chapters that I've messed around with. Take a look at it and let's talk about Abraham he supposed father of religion, the greedy money-grubber who sold his wife to the Pharoah.

Chapter 12
1 God tells Abraham to leave his father’s house.
2 He bribes him with promises of greatness.
3 And he makes more promises of being respected by all who meet him.
4 So Abraham leaves Haran with Lot, he is 75 years old.
5 Abraham takes Sarah, Lot and Lot’s wife and they go to live in Canaan, the land founded by Ham, son of Noah and supposedly the ancestor of all the world’s dark-skinned people [according to Apartheid theory, servants and water-carriers into eternity].
6 Abraham passed through Sichem, to the plain of Moreh, to the land of the Canaanites.
7 Then God tells him that his son will inherit the land he has founded.
8 He went to a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builds an altar.
9 He builds an altar on the mountain and then moves south.
10 He escapes from the famine in land he’s just found and that God has said will be an inheritance for his son.
11 As they’re approaching Egypt, Abraham, a 75 year old (and more) man tells his wife Sarah tthat she’s a good-looking woman.
12 He expresses a fear that the Egyptians will kill him for her.
13 So he tells her to lie and say that she is his sister:, so that his life may be safe. [WTF, what about her,if some Egyptian fancies a 70+ year old woman who’s just walked across a desert.]
14 And so it happened, the Egyptians [who had no nubile young women], saw this old woman and that she was beautiful.
15 Pharoah’s sons saw her and took her to their father’s house.
16 Another WTF, the Pharoah then gives Abraham sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels.
17 And God sends plagues to Pharoah for taking Abraham’s old wife.
18 So Pharoah asks Abraham why he didn’t say she was his wife?
19 Pharoah is pissed, he tells Abraham the liar to take his wife and move on.
20 So Pharoah sends him and his wife and all his goods off.

Chapter 13
1 Abraham leaves Egypt with his eife, Lot and his wife and all his riches that he amassed as a result of selling his wife’s services to the Egyptian Pharoah, he goes South.
2 It is stressed how very rich he is in cattle and other livestock..
3 From the South he travels to Bethal to where he’d had his tent before going to Egypt.
4 Being there, he talks to God..
5 Lot had also accumulated wealth, livestock and tents.
6 Because of their great wealth of livestock, the two families couldn’t stay together.
7 Their servants quarrelled. And to clear things up where they were living, there were Canaanites and Perizzite living there too.
8 Abraham and Lot try to sort out the fighting among their servants.
9 They agree to split up.
10 This was before the detruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot liked the look of Jordan, it remined him of the garden of Eden or Egypt and a place called Zoar (a place near Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot settled).
11 Lot chose Jordan and settled there.
12 Abraham stayed in Canaan, pitching tent towards Sodom.
13 Sodom, the city of sinners.
14 God speaks to Abraham, the same man who sold his wife for wealth to the Pharoah, and offeres the whole of Jordan to him
15 Supposedly to the descendants of Abraham forever.
16 So not only dd Abraham get rich by selling his wife, he now gets to have a huge chunk of land given to him.
17 As far as he can walk
18 He removed his tent, moved to the plain of Mamre in Hebron, and built an altar

Chapter 14
1 During the time of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations;
2 These kings went to war against Bera king of Sodom, and Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar.
3 They fought in the valley of Siddim, which is the salt sea.
4 Chedorlaomer, king of Elam won the battle apparently, because they were his subjects for 12 years; in the 13th year theyrebelled.
5 In the 14th year Chedorlaomer, and some other kings, “smote” the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim,
6 And the Horites in Mount Seir, unto Elparan, near the wilderness.
7 They returned to Enmishpat, in Kadesh, where they “smote” the Amalekites, and the Amorites, living in Hazezontamar.
8 The kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, Bela (Zoar) fought a battle with them in the valley of Siddim;
9 That is with Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, Tidal king of nations, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar;four of them against five.
10 The valley Siddim was full of slimepits which trapped the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah the kings that remained fled to the mountain.
11 The winners looted Sodom and Gomorrah and left.
12 Including Lot, Abraham’s nephew and all his goods.
13 Someone who had escaped came to tell Abraham.
14 When Abraham heard that his nephew was taken captive, he took an army of 318 men to the land of Dan [only Dan didn’t exist yet because it was named after Abraham’s gread-grandson after the exodus, whose grandfather wasn't born yet.]
15 He and his servants rescued Lot.
16 They brought them back to Abraham’s camp, including all of Lot’s wealth.
17 The king of Sodom went to congratulate Abraham on the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, at the valley of Shaveh.
18 Melchizedek king of Salem brought bread and wine; he was a priest of God.
19 He thanked Abraham profusely.
20 And he paid Abraham for having killed Chedorlaomer.
21 The king of Sodom said to Abram, “give me the people, and you take all the goods for yourself.”
22 But Abraham argued that he’d promised God,
23 That he wouldn’t take any of the wealth, he didn’t want to be accused of being greedy. {Really, he could've fooled me)
24 Except for what the young men who went with him (Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre) had eaten and what they wanted. Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre.

That's it for now. I'm going to sleep my 'flu off, be back with more tomorrow.

Aggie, many scholars today doubt Abe ever existed.

angelo wrote:Aggie, many scholars today doubt Abe ever existed.

The only evidence for him is in this book.
There was no other way of recording his history other than by word of mouth, so I would imagine that by the time the story was written, it had a lot of writer's licence added to the story.

I can't get around the long years of life though. My feeling is that it's the life of their direct line, because there is no way you can shorten a year more than the way Islam does not which is around 355 or so days. It would be based from the cold season to the next cold season, so it can't be actual years. These long lives are my biggest problem. I don't bother too much whether Abe actually lived or not, but I'm a little surprised that he was really a liar and a money-grubber. My husband says he went to church regularly until his middle 30s and he never heard the story of the Pharaoh and Sarah, nor the one (coming up tomorrow) when Lot gives his daughters to be raped, rather than let the people rape the angel messengers. I haven't read it yet, but I'm getting there.

Agrippina wrote:One book that has never interested me enough to read it (mostly because I fall asleep when I do) is the bible.

I've decided that in order to argue against it, I have to have read it at least once, but in the first sentence I'm already irritated. So to make myself more enthusiastic about it, I've decided that I shall embark on an effort to read it all the way through and in the reading to apply some common sense as well as my knowledge of what the ancient world was really like to rewrite it in a way that includes the fantasy but with more of the reality thrown in.

Before I post anything that I've started to work on, please clarify for me that I'm not breaking some copyright laws and that I'm allowed to do this, also some suggestions would be welcomed before I spend too much time, starting with...

1.Once upon a time, around thirteen point seven billion years ago, a deity emerged from the rubble of the explosion that came to be known as the “Big Bang,”

Also, can I claim some sort of rights over this?

Edit to fix typo.

When you get to the Noah story, remember it was really in Babylon and Noah was really the Doctor with his Tardis's chameleon circuit working. Also, don't forget that after rescuing all the animals, he then jumps back in time and prevents the flood from ever happening in the first place hence explaining why there is no evidence that it ever happened.

Moonwatcher, if you look earlier on in the thread, you'll see I dealt with the Flood there.

Chapter 15
1 Abraham has another vision of God speaking to him. God tells him not to worry.
2 He asks God what he will give him seeing he is childless and he mentions his steward, Eliezer of Damascus?
3. If he has no heir, it has to be one of his houser.
4 And God says that Eliezer shall not be the heir but that “one of his own bowels” will inherit. [Aside: if this God knows everything how does he not know that babies don’t come from excrement?]
5 God says to him to look to the stars because that is how many descendants he will have.
6 Abraham believes this.
7 God says that he brought Abraham from “Ur of the Chaldees” to inherit the land [again note, Ur of the Chaldees didn’t exist at the time Abraham was supposed to have lived].
8 So Abraham asks God how he will know it.
9 God says offer a 3-year-old heifer, a she goat, a ram and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.
10 He does this, dividing up the carcases but not the birds.
11 When the birds came to settle on the carcases, Abraham drove them away.
12 Abraham went to sleep and had a nightmare.
13 God tells Abraham that his descendants will be strangers in a strange land for 400 years. [is this possibly a refreence to the fear that the writers of Genesis had about possibly being exiled in Babylon for 400 years]. [Also there’s another hint her referring to the ‘400 years’ could it be that the writers of Genesis had been in Babylon for 40 years when they wrote this, and could it be a hint that the length of their lifetimes might be decades and not actual years, so 900 years could be 90 years in fact, this would make them indeed very old, but not centuries old. The problem arises when the 70 year old Cainen having a child is considered, but that could be simply an error - mere speculation this.]
14 And that they will serve a great nation but come out with wealth.
15 And that he will be buried when he is very old.
16 The fourth generattion will come back to the land but the ‘sin’ of the Amorites is’ not yet full.’
17 The sun goes down again, [was this the second day and did Abraham sleep through a day and a night] a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp passes betweent he pieces of the carcases.
18 God tells Abraham his descedants will cover the land from the Nile to the Euphrates.
19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,
20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims,
21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Chapter 16
1 Sarah hadn’t yet had any children but she had a servant, an Egyptian, named Hagar.
2 Sarah told Abraham to have a child with Hagar.
3 Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham after they’d been in Canaan for 10 years to be his wife.
4 Hagar conceived and then hated Sarah.
5 Sarah goes whining to Abraham that Hagar hates her because she is pregnant.
6 Abraham said to Sarah, “she’s your maid, do with her what you will.” So Sarah sends her away. [This righteous man makes an Egyptian woman pregnant and then lets his wife send her packing with nothing].
7 An angel finds Hagar and asks her where she’s going.
8 She replies that sh’es running away from Sarah.
9 He tells her to go back and be submissive.
10 And again the promise of multitudes of descendents.
11 He tells her that God said the child’s name must be Ishmael.
12 And that he will be a terrorist.
13 She mutters something about God seeing her and she seeing him.
14 The well was called Beerlahairoi; it is between Kadesh and Bered.
15 Hagar has a son he is named Ishmael.
Abraham is 46 when Ishmael is born. [He was 75 when he went to Egypt with Lot, so what? Did he age backwards? Is Abrham’s other name Merlin?]

Chapter 17
1 And when Abram was 99 God appears to him and tells him he is perfect.
2. And again he tells him how he will multiply his seed.
3 Abraham falls down before God.
4 God says he will be the father of many nations.
5 He changes Abraham’s name from ‘Abram’ to the more familiar spelling.
6 And he goes on with promises of great nations and great kinds.
7 And promises of a covenant.
8 Abraham has lived in this land for 53 years since the birth of Ishmael, which was 10 years after he returned from Egypt, and he is a stranger in the land of Canaan????
9 God goes on about how his ‘seed’ has to keep the covenant.
10 The covenant is that every man child must be circumcised.
11 The circumcision is a sign of the covenant. {I suppose if you’re going to convince a guy to cut himself and his sons, he has to have a promise of great wealth to do this].
12 At 8 days old, all boys including servants and other men in the house.
13 Repeats the boys born to the house and all the people bought to work in the house.
14 Anyone not circumcised is to be shunned.
15 And he changes the spelling of Sarah’s name from Sarai to Sarah.
16 She’ll have a chld who will be the ancestor of kings.
17 Abrham is a little surprised [who wouldn’t be] that a 100 year old man and a 90 year old woman will have a chld.
18 Abraham says that maybe Ishmael should be the inheritor.
19 God says Sarah will have a son and that he is to be named Isaac and the covenant must be made with him.
20 God says he’ll make Ishmael the ancestor of princes.
21 But that Isaac will be the covenant bearer.
22 God left.
23 Abraham went around circmcising all the men in his household.
24 He was 99 years old when he was circumcised.
25 Ishmael was 13.
26 Abraham and his son Ishmael are circumcised on the same day.
27 And all the men including the slaves.

A note on the age of Abraham and Ishmael.
I suppose I'm nitpicking a little on the age thing and the greed of Abraham, but I can't help but be surprised that the selling of a wife to a king as a concubine, and sending a servant who he'd raped out into the wilderness when she is pregnant, doesn't exactly fill me with respect for him.
If Abraham was 46 when Ismael is born, then he is 59 when Ishmael is 13 and Sarah is 50, it’s quite conceivable that a 50 year old woman could still be able to have a child, a bit far-fetched but I’ll let that go.
So if Genesis says he was 99 when he was in fact 59, then 13 years must be equal to 40 years, i.e. 13 into 40 equals slightly over 3 years per bilblical year. But this still doesn’t account for Braham being 75 when he goes to Egypt, but 25 with a young 20 year old (more or less) wife does. And then the rest of his aging adds up. But the great ages of his ancestors doesn’t.
Curious.

Which proves that the whole tale came from the fertile mind of a goat herder. An imaginary tale that couldn't possibly have happened. People do not live up a thousand years old on this planet.

angelo wrote:Which proves that the whole tale came from the fertile mind of a goat herder. An imaginary tale that couldn't possibly have happened. People do not live up a thousand years old on this planet.

Actually, in my opinion, the extreme aging was a way to explain dinosaur fossils, or it was a way to make their ancestors appear to have lived thousands of years earlier. It's all part of the inability to understand amounts that they couldn't count.

mindyourmind wrote:
Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

I hate to detract from Aggie's efforts but this was as Funny as Hell.

So hard laffs, mines beerz stayze in not , but wuz thru noes holze it comed owt. This ain't easy, like learning a new language.

I've just read the bit about Abraham and Lot and how they got to the point where Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac.

This is the story as it should be told.
The man who was to become the father of all major religion for the next 5,000 or so years of the world's history, left his father's house with his half-sister who was also his wife.

He goes to Egypt where he fears that he will be killed if he says that she's his wife, so he tells people that she is his sister, and the pharaoh, who takes a fancy to her, takes her as his mistress. But then he discovers that Abraham is really her husband so he pays them to leave his land. Now in good Roman tradition, he would simply have declared them divorced, or had Abraham killed anyway. But that's not what God's plan was with Abraham.

So Abraham leaves Egypt with a wealth of livestock and slaves and goes to Canaan, where he settles. Then he has sex with his wife's Egyptian slave, on the insistence of his wife, and she has a son. But then his wife gets jealous and makes Abraham throw her out, which he does but then he gets her back again.

In the meantime, God tells him that he is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, this after he had already promised that he would never destroy the earth again. Abraham haggles with him about the number of 'good' people necessary in the two towns to prevent this happening and they settle on 10. God then sends two messengers to tell Lot to take his wife and family and leave the city before they destroy it.

The people of Sodom see the two messengers and demand that they be given to them to rape. Lot is horrified so he offers instead his two virgin daughters instead. Which they refuse and then demand his other daughters' husbands instead. Lot manages to get away from the city, and send his married daughters away with their husbands.

On the way away from the city, his wife turns to look back and is turned into a pillar of salt. Lot carries on walking and finally hides from all the bad people in the world by going into a cave in the mountains, where his two horny virgin daughters make him drunk, have sex with him and produce two boys who will become the founders of great nations. The bible is big on its characters founding great nations.

In the meantime, Abraham is running out of money, so he takes Sarah to another king to sell her as his sister. Remember she is 90 years old at this time. This king takes her but doesn't sleep with her before he finds out that she is in fact Abraham's wife. This is where Abraham says that she is his wife but also his half-sister (as if that makes his sale of her any less odious). The king again offers him lots of livestock and slaves to leave and extracts a promise from him that God won't 'smite' him the way he did Sodom and Gomorrah because, after all, he didn't sleep with Sarah.

Sarah then has the boy, Isaac and again her jealousy over Hagar and Ishmael causes her to tell Abraham to get rid of them. He does this, sending them packing with nothing more than a piece of bread and some water. They run out of water and Hagar leaves Ishmael away from her under s shrub so she can't see him die. And again, God comes with the bribery of 'great nations' and saves them by causing a well to spring from the ground.

This is the father of all religion. A man who firstly marries his sister then sells her off. Then he rapes her servant and sends her and her kid off to die of thirst in the desert. I really think that religion should choose better people than these to base their belief system on.

The Jews and OT type Christians and Islam all base their belief system on the righteousness of this man. And they have the cheek to point out that those of us who don't believe are sinners. I bit thick I think!

Is this the very first ever, swingers party ? Or the first ever wife swap ?

angelo wrote:Is this the very first ever, swingers party ? Or the first ever wife swap ?

There's nothing quite like shagging your sister and then selling her for a few head of cattle and some slaves.
I suppose a nice one to say to the people of the Middle East is that maybe the reason that they can't settle the question is because they're questioning circumcision. Maybe God is seriously pissed, he enjoys hearing babies scream.

I think you're doing a marvelous job with the rewrite and translations. Exposing theism for what it is. Soap opera writers would have a hard time topping that set of plots. Incest is the norm but that's the way it had to be, especially after the ark ran aground, so it was probably a genetically dominant trait at that time.

petwo wrote:I think you're doing a marvelous job with the rewrite and translations. Exposing theism for what it is. Soap opera writers would have a hard time topping that set of plots. Incest is the norm but that's the way it had to be, especially after the ark ran aground, so it was probably a genetically dominant trait at that time.

The problem with the ark and repopulating, it doesn't explain where the Egyptians came from.
There's not a word said about Egyptians and while I can forgive them for not knowing about the Chinese and sub-saharan Africans, I can't forgive them for simply not explaining how their incest also led to the Egyptians.

My biggest gripe with Abe is that he's set up as this paragon of virtue, when all he does is repeatedly sell his wife for wealth. Also that no preacher ever explains that Sarah was Abe's sister,or tell the stories of the constant selling of her favours for livestock.

Some more observations.


Chapter 23 A whole chapter is devoted to the haggling between Abraham and Ephron the Hittite for the purchase of a burial place for Sarah who died at 127.

Chapter 24 is all about how a servant is sent to get a wife for Isaac from the family of his brother, Nahor and his wife Milcah. She is their granddaughter, the child of his son Bethuel. She gives the servant water to drink at the well, he likes her, gives her family ten camels’ load worth of gifts and she follows him home where she meets Isaac sleeps with him and becomes his wife.

Chapter 25/26
On the matter of age and years.
When Abe dies, it is the year 2265 since the creation.
According to my time scale, Abraham’s father was still alive when Ishmael and then Isaac were born, but Abe doesn’t live near him so there’s no contact.
I still have a problem with all the old people inclduing Abraham’s father being killed in the flood when they live beyond the flood. Their dating system is seriously suspect.
Then Abe is 100 when Isaac is born and he get married a third time, which I didn’t know, and has a whole family with the third wife, who he disinherits, but he sends his misstresses’ children off with gifts.
I don't really want to talk about the kind of god that tells a man to murder his son, just because he wants to mess with his head. What sort of person worshps a god that does this? And then the way Rebecca is sold to Isaac for 10 camels loaded with gifts? No wonder that anti-Semites throughout history have criticised the Jews for being money-hungry. And this includes Isaac, another revered figure who won’t feed his starving brother who is also his twin, if he won’t hand over his share of their father’s wealth. This is the story we’re supposed to teach our childrena? And believers call us immoral?

In chapter 26, Isaac again does the “she is my sister” thing when he goes to live among the Philistines. It seems that there was a whole lot of raping of other men’s wives going on but people tended to leave sisters alone. I don’t understand this. It’s OK to rape a man’s wife but not his sister but OK to sleep with the sister, but then when they find out she’s his wife they leave her alone. This sounds like circular arguing to me. Also you’d think that the Philistine king would’ve remembered Abraham pulling that stunt.

Then their son Esau married a Hittite and another woman and they’re not happy, even though he’s 40 years old, Isaac is 100 years old now according to the previous chapter.

It talks about the laws that God gave to Abraham but the only law he gave him was about cicumcision. There is no other legal insturction other than “kill your son, and your livestock for me and I’ll make you rich.”

Chapter 27 has more morality lessons. You’ve gotta love these people.
Isaac is dying. So his wife cooks up a plot to get him to hand over his wealth to the younger son, as if they can’t share it? So while Esau is away hunting for an animal to bring a venison stew to the old man, she gets Jacob to kill two goats, and cooks a stew for him to give to the old man who is nearly blind.

She also covers him in the skins that his brtoehr regualrly wears and wraps fur around his neck so his dad will think he’s the other twin. When the dad blesses him and promises all his wealth and the other guy finds our, he threatens to kill him. Why doesn’t Isaac simply withdraw his blessing and hand over it estate to the honest brother? Instead the mother sends the spoilt child away to her brother while she whines to her dying husband about how her kids will be the death of her yet.

Another first. Abe was a pimp! He even pimped out his sister. Yes I can also see where the Jews as money hungry people was born.

Chapter 23 A whole chapter is devoted to the haggling between Abraham and Ephron the Hittite for the purchase of a burial place for Sarah who died at 127.

127, a mere teenager, poor thing.

Agrippina wrote:She also covers him in the skins that his brtoehr regualrly wears and wraps fur around his neck so his dad will think he’s the other twin. When the dad blesses him and promises all his wealth and the other guy finds our, he threatens to kill him. Why doesn’t Isaac simply withdraw his blessing and hand over it estate to the honest brother? Instead the mother sends the spoilt child away to her brother while she whines to her dying husband about how her kids will be the death of her yet.

Reading this takes me back to catechism classes when I was ± 8 years old. I remember how the lady who gave this class went out of her way in reminding everyone in the class that what Isaac did was very very bad and if it wasn't for Jesus who died for everyone's sins (past and present) he would surely be in hell right now.

Looks like it seems a book nobody wnated to adopt, so they had to invent Jesus. But it continues in the same style even then. I guess the resurrection was a powerful myth at the time.

Without the resurrection there would not have been any form of christianity. I can't wait for Agrippina to get to the N/T .

A long time ago, I read the bibble all the way through - took me about 6 months. To have it done in precis form in modern English like you're doing would have helped a lot. I think it's a really good job.

There were some bits in the boly hible that, when I read them, I thought "WTF is this trying to say ?". Very confusing, I'm sure you'll come across them. Looking forward to the story of the golden hemmorroids (Ist Samuel, chapter 5) !

The babble is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
- Issac Asimov-