Well, this is it - the end of the line. Unless the muse comes upon me again, I am out of chapters. So, once again, for anyone who would like an ms-word copy of the whole book, just drop me your email.
IT IS DONE
“And Fred made each story according to its kind, and at the end of the seventh day of writing, he looked at the book, and it was good. Well, it was good enough.”
Just one more thing. I do not want anyone to think that I do not hold the Bible to be of value. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The bible is many things. It is a book of literature, poetry, history, and the collected folk wisdom of a thousand years. It also a book of mythology, which when compared with other cultures, can give us insights into the origins of thought and the development of civilization. Let me give you a few examples.
Do you remember the story of Jacob and Esau? Jacob was the younger, but he inherited his father’s estate. The story contains an incident where Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of soup. In reality, the soup incident was an unnecessary fabrication of a later time. Well, the whole story was likely a fabrication, but that doesn’t matter. Anyway, back in the days of nomadic herdsmen, it was normal for each son to be given a few animals and start out on their own when they came of age. When the last son came around, he traditionally stayed with the family, and took over the original base herd. So, in those days, the youngest son got the estate. When civilization progressed to agriculture, it was impossible to take part of the land and leave. So, all of the sons stayed with the farm. When the father died, it was the oldest son who was naturally in charge. The story of Jacob and Esau was an ancient story which took place in nomadic days, but it was written and told in the days of agriculture. So, the soup incident was unnecessary, but it was added to transition the inheritance in a way that agricultural people would understand.
Another example is the story of Cain and Abel. It is a classic tale of sibling rivalry, which has been told throughout history. In fact, John Steinbeck used it as the basis of his epic, East of Eden. There is something about this theme that strikes humans very deeply, resulting in its being told by many different cultures, in many different times. The story also highlights the rivalry between the agricultural and nomadic ways of life. As agriculture began to flourish, nomadic herdsmen found themselves pushed out. The story of Cain and Abel harkens back to the long gone pastoral days of the nomadic way of life. It was likely first told by dwindling, marginal groups of nomads. Notice that Abel (the herder) was the good one, of whom God approved, but he was pushed out, killed, by Cain, the farmer.
The Bible also gives us an unwitting insight into the development of the God concept. In the beginning, God was very man-like. He was also just one of many Gods. As time progressed, God developed into a single, all-powerful God. In other words, the Hebrews discovered monotheism. On a global scale, they discovered this concept very early. The neighboring tribes, who had different Gods for different functions, couldn’t stand up against the powerful Hebrew God concept. So, the Hebrews, who were never very successful militarily or culturally, and who never even became influential outside of their own region, ended up founding two of the great religious systems of the world, primarily due to their early adoption of monotheism.
Like many other primitive religions, the Hebrews practiced human sacrifice in their very early days. Vestiges of this practice hung on in later parts of the Bible, such as the story of Jephthah and the last chapter of Leviticus, culminating in the symbolic human sacrifice of Jesus. Other cultures, like the Polynesians, continued with the practice for roughly 2000 years longer. After all, if Gods control every major aspect of human life, what better way to appease them than with a gift of ultimate sacrifice – a human life? But, to their credit, the Hebrews stamped out the practice very early. How do you convince uneducated, superstitious people to stop a practice with so much power? Well, the Hebrew priesthood told a story. The tale of Abraham and Isaac was told as an allegory to show the populace that God himself no longer wanted human sacrifices. He now wanted animals instead. Cudos to the ancient Hebrews for fixing that one up.
Likewise, Satan also evolved. Originally, God was polytheistic. After becoming monotheistic, he was still pretty primitive. When he became all-powerful, he was truly all powerful. He was the originator of everything – both good and bad. But, that had a few problems. So, after the Babylonian exile, the Hebrews adopted the idea of Satan from the Persians. This worked pretty well. Now, God could settle into the comfortable role of creating all good things, while Satan took the rap for all bad things. This is why we see no reference to Satan until after the exile. The idea that Satan was responsible for the talking snake in Eden was not put forward until the New Testament. Also, stories with old and new versions (see the chapter David and the Census) sometimes carried inconsistencies because of this change.
The Adam and Eve myth is literally filled to the brim with classic literary themes and lessons about the development of cosmology and civilization. The two different creation accounts give us insight into the progression of ancient ideas about the origin of the universe, showing us the influence of the Persians in these conflicting pre- and post- exile accounts. We also see the theme of forbidden knowledge, the origins of female cultural subservience, and some unwitting correlations to evolution.
I could go on forever, but, I think you get the point. When a person truly looks into the Bible from an accurate perspective, it is fascinating.
But, that’s not how I was taught. I was taught that the story of Abraham and Isaac was a lesson in obedience – do as you are told, even if it is wrong. My religion really wanted it that way. So did the Nazis.
I was taught that the tale of Noah was literally true. The lesson was that you should behave yourself, and above all, obey God. It had never rained before, yet Noah worked for a hundred years, faithfully obeying the command to build a big boat – a structure which no one had even imagined at that time. And, since God isn’t handy these days, you should obey his representative, which conveniently happened to be my religion, which just happened to have a job for me selling magazines from door to door.
The stories of the Bible are completely untenable when taken as literal truth. I hope that this book has managed to make this point clearly. The Bible is all of the great things that I mentioned earlier, but never forget that, above all else, it is a book of myths.
And as for God, well I define God as the entity who is responsible for the happiness, sadness, and destiny of the human race and its environment; one who can create things, explain things, and destroy things; the master of his domain.
It’s this atheist’s view that there really is a God. It is us.