Genesis

The first book of the Bible, that of Genesis, gives the essential blueprint of how to manipulate and take financial control of a host nation. Christians could take a bit more notice of this.

The Hebrews (in Storyland) enter Egypt
The story begins with an amiably clueless Pharoah letting Joseph and his brothers in (Chapter 47), giving them the best land:

Then Joseph settled his father and his brothers, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph provided his father, his brothers, and all his father's household with food, according to the number of their dependents. 

Joseph and his family are rescued from starvation and given some of the best land, by the kind generosity of the Pharaoh. Soon after, he has somehow become in charge of the nation's finances:

And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, for the grain which they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house. And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph, and said, "Give us food; why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone." And Joseph answered, "Give your cattle, and I will give you food in exchange for your cattle, if your money is gone." So they brought their cattle to Joseph; and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds, and the asses: and he supplied them with food in exchange for all their cattle that year. And when that year was ended, they came to him the following year, and said to him, "We will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent; and the herds of cattle are my lord's; there is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our lands.(47:14-19)

The Egyptians have become in debt to Joseph, and he has life-and-death control over who gets the money. They give him their real assets - horses, herds of cattle, asses, in return for the money he has made: the transactions mean that they have sold all their herds of cattle to Joseph - and are still hungry!

This edifying tale ends with the enslavement by debt of the populace:

Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be slaves to Pharaoh; and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, and that the land may not be desolate." So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them. The land became Pharaoh's.

They are begging the interloper, Joseph, to let them have their seed to sow upon their own land - what a clever wheeze. It reads like a kind of early version of the Protocols of Zion.
 

This Chapter 47 of Genesis begins the story of the 'Hebrews' entering Egypt, and let's turn now to Douglas Reed's perceptive comment written back in the 1950s:

The theme of mass-captivity, ending in a Jehovan vengeance (“all the firstborn of Egypt”), appears when this version of history reaches the Egyptian phase, leading up to the mass-exodus and mass-conquest of the promised land. This episode was necessary if the Judahites were to be organized as a permanent disruptive force among nations and for that reason, evidently, was invented; the Judaist scholars agree that nothing resembling the narrative in Exodus actually occurred....

Historically, therefore, the Egyptian captivity, the slaying of “all the firstborn of Egypt ,” the exodus toward and conquest of the promised land are myths. The story was invented, but the lesson, of vengeance on the heathen, was implanted in men's minds and the deep effect continues into our time.

It was evidently invented to turn the Judahites away from the earlier tradition of the God who, from the burning bush, laid down a simple law of moral behaviour and neighbourliness; by the insertion of imaginary, allegorical incident, presented as historical truth, this tradition was converted into its opposite and the “Law” of exclusion, hatred and vengeance established. With this as their religion and inheritance, attested by the historical narrative appended to it, a little band of human beings were sent on their way into the future.

That's from Chapter 1 of Reed's sombre masterpiece The controversy of Zion which gives I suggest the most centrally-relevant account of what the last 25 centuries of history have been about.

Anti-morality tales: 
1.Lot and his Daughters

A crowd from Sodom approaches Lot, who has two 'angels' staying with him. The crowd wish to 'know' the angels, and Lot replies:  

Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like. (Gen 19:8)

-Lot offers his virgin daughters to be gang-raped by a bunch of strangers. (There is very similar sadistic cruelty to the story in 
Judges, 19:23-4, as if its re-telling the same delightful story).

Later on, the 80 year-old Lot gets blind drunk so that he cannot recognise his own daughters, yet he can maintain a hard-on, and his two daughters thereby manage to get themselves impregnated. This is (to remind you) the commencement of the great race especially chosen God. Richard Dawkins wonderd why 'this dysfunctional family' should have been especially chosen by God.

2.Abraham pimps out his wife

Entering Egypt, Abraham decided that as his wife Sarah was good-looking, he would offer her to the pharaoh as a wife. Abraham is well rewarded, with sheep, oxen, he-asses, menservants, maidservants, she-asses, and camels (Genesis 12:16). God then decides to punish the Pharaoh: "The LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sar'ai, Abram's wife." Richard Dawkins wondered why the innocent, deceived party namely the pharaoh should be the one who gets punished? Abraham emerged from Egypt loaded up with silver and gold, clearly with Yahweh's approval.

This clever wheeze is then repeated with another king (Genesis, 20): He offers his wife Sarah to Abimelech king of Gerar, saying she is just his sister -  'But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night, and said to him, "Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is married." (20:3). He quickly gives her back to Abraham, and again, Abram ends up receiving "sheep and oxen, and male and female slaves" plus a thousand pieces of silver! Plus, "And Abim'elech said, "Behold, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you." These are all Hebrew-supremacist stories, where Yahweh gets to push everyone around

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Exodus

The Ten Commandments, Deconstructed

   Moses comes down from the mountain with the tablets of  stone, and smashes them. Hold it right there.

   The Levite killer-priests then go on a rampage slaughtering three thousand men, women and children - with God’s blessing, of course. The men offer no resistance as the Levite killer-priests hacked about at their women and children. Normally the warrior-caste and priestly caste are separate, but not here. (When the Hebrews get to Canaan they start wiping out entire communities and cities ‘with the edge of the sword’ – how did they make the swords in the desert?) With the Ten Commandments smashed to bits, and thousands writhing around in a death-agony after God’s own priests had been on their bloody rampage, then what does Moses do? He makes potable gold, he alchemically dissolves the Golden Calf into drinkable colloidal gold - and goes about administering it to everyone. Uh-huh.

   Moses goes back up the mountain and gets a replacement set. The commandments are not the same. The Sabbath every week had been a blessing when no work should be done, in the Sixth Commandment. Now it becomes a death-curse: anyone found working on the Sabbath ‘will surely die’. Surely no culture could exist, where anyone found working on that one day of the week gets killed? The replacement set ought to be the one where we know the words – after all the first was smashed to bits wasn’t it? - but instead it becomes rather diffuse.

   On the same page as the Ten Commandments in Exodus, right after them, we get God discussing how to sell off your daughter as a sex-slave: He advises putting in a money-back guarantee clause in case satisfaction is not obtained (exodus, 21:7). To call this an ethically-challenged deity would be a grave understatement. On the same page the deity also starts listing the various types of persons who need to be killed.

                                                The Exodus Story

   The Book of Exodus begins with the Israelites in bondage in Egypt, hard to find in any historical records of Egypt[1]):

1: 12-16  But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they made the people of Israel serve with rigor, and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field;

Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiph'rah and the other Pu'ah, "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live.

   Hebrews in Egypt are multiplying, and Egyptians are ‘in dread’ of them. The unlikely instruction is given to ‘midwives’ by the King, to murder every male Hebrew child. The midwives reply:

So the king of Egypt called the midwives, and said to them, "Why have you done this, and let the male children live?" The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and are delivered before the midwife comes to them.

They pop out quickly, before the midwives can arrive to kill them. Despite being ‘in dread’ of the Hebrews, the Pharaoh commands that  "Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile.”

   Moses has a dialogue with his Adonai God about how to lead out his people from Egypt. The latter explains the tactics of theft:

 when you go, you shall not go empty, but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and of her who sojourns in her house, jewelry of silver and of gold, and clothing, and you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters; thus you shall despoil the Egyptians." 

We are left in suspense, of how the Hebrews are to ‘despoil’ the Egyptians, by relieving their neighbours of household gold and jewellery – but, all will be revealed. God explains to Moses the dire plan for plagues over Egypt:

"When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. (4:21)

The aim is not primarily to get ‘Israelites’ out of Egypt, but rather to force the Pharaoh not to agree to it. The deity instructing Moses is here claiming to be ‘God Almighty’ (6:2)

    The first plague begins, and all the Nile turns to blood and the fish die etc – and the magicians of Egypt claim to be able to duplicate this effect!

“But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts; so Pharaoh's heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them; as the LORD had said”

A second plague was unleashed, of frogs everywhere, and again the magicians of Egypt claim they can duplicate this effect! (8:7)

But the magicians did the same by their secret arts, and brought frogs upon the land of Egypt. 

So far, this is looking like a contest between rival groups of black magicians – but, hang on. Gnats appear everywhere as the third plague, and this time the magicians of Egypt cannot duplicate the effect:

 The magicians tried by their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. And the magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." 

– which apparently shows this to be ‘the finger of God.’

What god might that be, wondered Seymour Light?

     The Hebrews are to be given a special plot of Egypt to live in called Goshen, so they do not experience the awful plagues. (8:22) As God keeps hardening the heart of the Pharaoh in order to prevent him from letting the Israelites go, frightful hail and rains fall, and the Pharaoh repents. But even then, God makes him un-repent, after all one wouldn’t want to miss the  plague of locusts:

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your son's son how I have made sport of the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them; that you may know that I am the LORD.

     The deity wants to ‘make sport of the Egyptians’  As the last, cataclysmic punishment approaches, this is a good time to remind the Israelites about relieving their neighbours of family gold and silver: (11:2)

Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask, every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor, jewelry of silver and of gold."

                                                              The Passover

    In the first month of the year (12:2)

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,"This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you

each Hebrew household needs a lamb to slaughter, and on the 14^th day (i.e. Full Moon) its blood has to be daubed over the house lintel – “It is the Lord’s passover”  - and the murderous over-flying God will spare their children on that Passover night.

     This, Seymour Light reflected, was weirdly fulfilled much later, when the Prince of Peace was crucified on the Passover full Moon on Friday, 3^rd April 33 AD, the first full Moon after the Equinox: this Exodus text defines it in this manner. (Seymour Light was puzzled that Jews today began their year on the New Moon nearest the Autumn Equinox, when this Exodus text clearly defines it as the springtime month) Dire Pauline theology passed dimly through his memory, as to how the Lamb of God had somehow atoned or rescued believers by His death, making the analogy with this ‘passover’ Full Moon when this nightmare god chose to slaughter innocent children, to ‘make sport with the Egyptians.’

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     It was indeed a bloody religion, Seymour Light reflected:

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.  “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever.”

The horror of the mass murder of innocent children had to remembered ‘forever’ -  nay, celebrated and honoured. No-one needed to say how this over-flying god could ‘smite’ all the innocent little children in their cots at night. 

     The Egyptians finally let the people of Israel take all the gold and silver and clothing they ask for (12:36). None of this happened as such, it’s just a story from someone’s hellish imagination – and for which God will forever after ask the Israelites to feel gratitude. ‘Thus they despoiled the Egyptians.’ (12:36) I wouldn’t invite these people to my party, reflected Seymour Light.

    Helpful rules appear here about who may ‘celebrate’ Passover, eg

          “…every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him.” (12:43)

                                           The Redempion Theme

     Once the Israelites have escaped from Egypt, the Lord instructs:

"Consecrate to me all the first-born; whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine… you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb. All the firstlings of your cattle that are males shall be the LORD's. Every firstling of an ass you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every first-born of man among your sons you shall redeem. 

Redemption here is a payment, a first-born ass can be ‘redeemed’ with a lamb – or if not ‘you shall break its neck’. ‘Redeem’ here seems to mean, avoid the slaughter of’ or else what does it mean? Later on we will discover, that the first born sons may be ‘redeemed’ by paying a tithe to the priesthood – who are presumably writing this text in the first place – many centuries (Yes, Seymour Light nodded his head) many centuries after you have been told it was written.

    We consult Douglas Reed’s weighty The Controversy of Zion, for a perspective, to explain the chains of enslavement here being forged:

The picture of blood-bespattered priests, thus given, is worth contemplation. Even at this distance of time the question prompts itself: why was this insistent emphasis laid on blood-sacrifice in the books of the Law which the Levites produced. The answer seems to lie in the sect's uncanny genius for instilling fear by terror; for the very mention of “blood,” in such contexts, made the faithful or superstitious Judahite tremble for his own son! 

It is all spelt out in Exodus, this claim of the fanatical priests to the firstborn of their followers: “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is mine.” According to the passage earlier quoted from Micah, this practice of sacrificing the human firstborn long continued, and the sight of the bloodied Levite must have had a terrible significance for the humble tribesman, for in the words attributed to God, quoted above, the firstborn “of man and of beast” are coupled. This significance remained long after the priesthood (in a most ingenious way which will later be described) contrived to discontinue human sacrifice while retaining the prerogative. Even then the blood which was sprinkled on the priest, though it was an animal's, was to the congregation still symbolically that of their own offspring!

Again and again blood is spattered over white-robed priests and the congregation, to make everyone feel ‘holy.’ The act of redemption is later explained as achievable by giving so many shekels to the priest. And we will address in due time, the issue of sacrificing the human firstborn – yes, alas, we will be coming to that – as might not be quite what you heard from the pulpit.

                                                  Crossing the Red Sea

     Prior to the crossing of the Red sea, Yahweh once more explains his motive:

And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host; and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD."

He intends to ‘get glory’ by the spectacular mass murder involved. Those writing this story gave no motive for the Egyptian army to wish to chase the Hebrews – when they would have been devoutly grateful for their departure.

     Three months later Moses gets to receive the Ten Commandments. Special effects appear in the story, which will reiterate:

 `Take heed that you do not go up into the mountain or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death … no hand shall touch him … whether beast or man, he shall not live.' (19:13)

This was no god of light, but rather:

And the people stood afar off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was (20:21)

On the very same page as the Ten Commandments, Yahweh was explaining about how to buy and sell slaves – especially one’s own daughter:

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. (12:7)

Selling your daughter for sex, with a refund guarantee - if satisfaction is not obtained! Yahweh also explained how its OK to beat up your own slave without punishment (this immediately follows the Ten Commandments):

"When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money.

      There follows the categories of people to be killed “You shall not permit a sorceress to live” – (22:18) and "Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed.” The trashing of anyone else’s religion is a recurrent theme.  But, having said that, a weird twinge of benevolence appears later in Chapter 22, as if memory of some benevolent deity were endeavouring to make itself heard.

                                                        Seeing God

      Moses threw buckets of blood around (24:6-8), it was how to please his God:

And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient." And Moses took the blood and threw it upon the people, and said, "Behold the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words." 

After the contract was struck, with loads of blood, then Moses and Aaron go up the mountain. God offered them a snack on their way:

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abi'hu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.

Rather like meeting Darth Vader, they are relived that no-one had tried to kill them.

      The Torah stories were materialistic, with no after-life, and the blessings offered by Yahweh in return for obedience are all material, as are all the curses (in far longer lists than the blessings). The point of all of the obedience, burnt offerings etc was not virtue or salvation, but that they would obtain the land – it was a 100% material promise and contract.

      The God constantly defined Himself in material terms, as a being who can see and taste etc, who gives advice in battle, often thru some sort of intercom system, and at one point moans because the Hebrews want their own king, claiming won’t he do? He constantly demanded sacrifice offerings like evening snacks, with detail over their cuisine, admires the odour of the burnt offerings and wine … Indeed Seymour Light occasionally  wondered (but could not decide) about the argument put forward in that classic work, The Genius of the Few by O’Brian, that Yahweh was some sort of large Annunaki-type being, who could fly in his ‘cloud by day, pillar of fire by night’, and come down when required into the Tent of Meeting where He often dwelt.

Yahweh was ‘bellicose and vindictive’ O’Brien found. (p175, adding: “With Yahweh by your side, violence is never more than a hand’s breadth away!” (p.190)

                                  Levites: The Killer-Priests

      On coming down with the Ten Commandments, Moses finds that the people have alas melted down their gold to make an engraved image – contravening the Third Commandment they had not yet been given! That was asking for trouble. Contravening the Seventh Commandment he was bringing down from the mountain, Moses assembled the Levite priesthood and had them slay three thousand men as punishment. This Levite priesthood appear as the only ones who have swords, for no resistance was offered:

then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, "Who is on the LORD's side? Come to me." And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. And he said to them, "Thus says the LORD God of Israel, `Put every man his sword on his side, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.'" And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. And Moses said, "Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the LORD, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, that he may bestow a blessing upon you this day.

The killer-god blesses this mass-murder act, with no hint of incompatibility with the Seventh Commandment He had just engraved on the stone.

       The atheist Richard Dawkins wrote, one might have hoped that this killing ‘would have been enough to assuage God’s jealous sulk. But no, God wasn’t finished yet. In the last verse of this terrible chapter his parting shot was to send a plague upon what was left of the people ‘because the made a calf, which Aaron made.’’ (the God Delusion, p.277) Seymour Light admired the moral judgement of Dawkins -

‘God’s monumental rage whenever his chosen people flirted with a rival god resembles nothing so much as sexual jealousy of the worst kind, and again it should strike a modern moralist as far from a good role-model (Ibid, p276)

but could not go along with the view that no such Being had ever existed. Too much horror had come from this deity, for it to be merely a figment of anyone’s imagination. Who could ever dream up so hellish a god?

      Seymour Light here reflected upon Aaron’s ability to construct a furnace reaching a thousand degrees centigrade, in the middle of a desert, to melt gold (32:4) – and the even more remarkable alchemic ability of Moses to unmake Aaron’s golden calf, dissolve it and turn it into potable, colloidal gold! (32:30)

      The Fifth Commandment gets revamped as a death-curse:

You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy for you; every one who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. (31:14)

Originally it had been a blessing - but, hey, that was on the original tablets that Moses had smashed in anger, remember? (20:8) Seymour Light here recalled the piteous story of an old man caught gathering firewood, not knowing it was the sabbath day – and by the way this is the invention of the seven-day week, this is how it began. The Hebrews ask God what to do with him, and God replies, stone him to death - and lo, they stoned him to death (Numbers, 15).

     Once again Seymour Light admired the moral judgement of the atheist Richard Dawkins:

What shocks me today about such stories is not that they really happened. They probably didn’t. what makes my jaw drop is that people today should base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh – and, even worse, that they should bossily try to force the same evil monster (whether fact or fiction) onto rest of us. (Ibid, p282)

At last someone was correctly evaluating the Judaeo-Christian god Yahweh, which surely has to be a milestone and an augury of hope for Homo Sap.

      It began to dawn upon the Hebrews that being ‘rescued’ by this Deity from Egypt may not have been such a great idea. Yahweh, whose rage was like an ever-simmering volcano, turned out to be unappeased by the thousands just slaughtered followed by a plague - and to his ‘chosen people’ vowed, of the Promised Land: ‘To your descendants I will give it’ (33:1) – the promise is broken, for which they had left Egypt and they will all have to die in the desert! Only their children will get to enter this promised land, ‘flowing with milk and honey.’

     Later on, we get detail about how to make and consecrate the Ark of the Covenant,  (29:21)

Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands upon the head of the ram, and you shall kill the ram, and take part of its blood and put it upon the tip of the right ear of Aaron and upon the tips of the right ears of his sons, and upon the thumbs of their right hands, and upon the great toes of their right feet, and throw the rest of the blood against the altar round about. Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron and his garments, and upon his sons and his sons' garments with him; and he and his garments shall be holy, and his sons and his sons' garments with him. 

The alter is splattered with blood, the priests are splattered with blood – ever so holy, Seymour Light reflected.

      Moses was given a preview of just a few of the local residents due to have their land stolen from them: “I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Per'izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb'usites,” as well as destruction of their places of worship: “You shall tear down their altars, and break their pillars, and cut down their Ashe'rim” (34:13) These Middle-Eastern goddess-worshipping peoples were living - or so Merlin Stone argued, in her The Paradise Papers, When God was a Woman, 1976 - in ecological peace and harmony. ‘For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your borders’ (34:24). This deity behaved as if totally exempt from the Commandments just given, not to steal or kill.

     This was bad news for Planet Earth, reflected Seymour Light: the Predator had arrived.

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[1] ‘The Scholarly consensus is that the story of the Exodus is not historical’ Karen Armstrong, The Bible, The Bibliography, 2007,15.

Tales of the Patriarchs

Ethics-from-Hell Stories.

- suitable for the education of criminal dynasties, vampire families, etc. -

Contents:

Lot, Abraham, Jacob, Judah, Joseph, Moses

1. Lot

    Lot is sitting by the gate of the city of Sodom, when two angels arrive. He offers them hospitality for the night and they enjoy a meal together. But then the whole city of Sodom, ‘all the people to the last man’ surround the house, and call out for Lot to bring out the visitors ‘that we may know them.’ (Genesis 19:5)

    Word has evidently gone out about the angels having arrived, and a huge crowd gathers clamouring to see them. Did they have space helmets or wings, or how were they distinguished? It turns out that they were angels sent by the Lord to announce the destruction of the whole city on account of its wickedness (N.B. We’re not told what that wickedness was). Had the inhabitants maybe gathered some hint of this? At any rate, they called out for the angels.

    But Lot alas had a depraved and filthy mind, and he replied to them: ‘I beg you my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold I have two daughters who have not known man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please.’ He was offering his two daughters to be gang-raped! He must have been quite dim, if he thought that he could somehow offer his two daughters to an entire city. And this is notwithstanding, as we learn shortly, that both of his daughters had partners, to whom they were engaged.

    Some time after, when the two prospective husbands have been lost, the two daughters are living in a cave with their aged father. They contrive to get him so drunk that he can inseminate them both without realising who they are. Lot must have been quite dim, not to realise that he had just impregnated his own daughter. This incest-while-too-drunk-to-remember story produces two children, from whom descended the Ammonite and Moabite tribes.

    The atheist Richard Dawkins had a pertinent ethical judgement: ‘If this dysfunctional family was the best Sodom had to offer by way of morals, some might begin to feel a certain sympathy with God and his judicial brimstone.’ (The God Delusion p.272)

2. Abraham

a merry tale of incest, deception and grabbing the loot

    On two occasions, Abraham pimps out his wife/sister Sarah to a foreign king. He has a god who colludes with him, who each time makes the king feel guilty, for taking another’s wife. Thereby Sarah is returned to Abraham – loaded up with a thousand pieces of silver, sheep and oxen, male and female slaves, from King Abimelech (Genesis Ch 20).

     Earlier (Chapter 12), Abraham received a huge wedding-dowry in return for giving his ‘sister’ to the pharaoh: camels, sheep oxen menservants, maidservants etc. The ‘god’ colludes with the plot and makes the pharaoh feel guilty, so that Sarah is returned. The trick is played twice, each time using the ‘she’s only my sister’ ploy.

   3. Jacob

    Isaac, the father of Jacob and Esau, is nearly blind in his old age. His dying wish is to give his blessing to his elder son, Esau. But while the latter is out hunting, Jacob pretends to be Esau and contrives to receive the blessing. It’s a totally materialistic affair, that wealth will come to him, and that others will serve him, that his enemies will all be cursed, etc. Both Isaac and Esau are distraught when the deception is discovered, but the Father says he can do nothing – ‘your brother came with guile, and he has taken away your blessing.’ (Genesis 27:35)  

    Jacob has a daughter called Dinah. She gets raped by a non-Israelite, who then sincerely tries to make amends, by offering to marry her: ‘And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob; he loved the maiden and spoke tenderly to her’ (Genesis 34:3). To this end the Israelites are offered full trading rights with his tribe, the Hivites, plus land ownership rights, and even the availability of the Hivite daughters for marriage. The sons of Jacob agree and accept the offer, on one condition: the whole tribe has to get circumcised! The Hivites agree, and do this extremely painful thing (for adults its very painful) – and then three days later, while the Hivite men are still ‘sore’ and recovering, a couple of Jacob’s sons went and found the Hivite men ‘unawares’ and killed all of them., plundered the village, took the women and children -  and retrieved their sister.   

    Jacob expresses concern about possible reprisals from neighbouring tribes, but does not seem at all bothered about the dreadful treachery, mass murder etc.

     A suitable father, surely, for the twelve tribes of Israel.

4.   Judah (Genesis Chapter 38)

    Judah’s firstborn son was called Er. He married Tamar, but he ‘was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord slew him.’ Uh-huh.

    Judah had a second son, Onan, and instructed him to lie with the lonely Tamar. Onan endeavoured to do so , however he had scruples about entering into the partner of his newly-dead brother, and ended up spilling ‘his seed on the ground.’ So the Lord slew him also. Uh-huh.

    Judah, walking down a road, espies the lonely Tamar. ‘He thought her to be a harlot, for she had covered her face’ and said, ‘Can I f*** you?’ She replied, how much is it worth? He said, ‘A sheep’ and she replied, that is fine, but I notice you haven’t got a sheep, so give me a token for now. He gave her a signet, cord and his walking-stick.

     At this point in the narrative the listener could well infer (a) Tamar must have known it was her father in law, but was too traumatised by recent events to object; and (b) while on top of Tamar, her identity must have dawned on Judah.

     Three months later Judah was told, your daughter-in-law Tamar has ‘played the harlot and is pregnant’. He replied, OK take her out and burn her. But then Tamar sends to Judah the ring, cord and stick she was given, to indicate by whom she was pregnant. She is spared, but he ‘did not lie with her again.’

     Summarising, Joseph had sex with the partner of his two sons, who both die obscurely in consequence of this, treats her as a mere prostitute, and then proposes to exact a punishment of burning by fire upon her for thus being a prostitute – and only recants upon hearing she was bearing his child.   

5. Joseph

     Joseph was put in charge of Egypt’s finances (Genesis, Chapter 47). During a famine, he managed to gather up all the money that was in Egypt. The citizens implore him, ‘Give us food: why should we die before your eyes, for our money is gone.’ Joseph demands their cattle, and offers them food in return. The next year they were again hungry, but they had lost all their herds and flocks of animals - because Joseph had taken them - so this time they offered him their land: ‘Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be slaves to Pharaoh.’ Joseph has also come to own the seed: ‘Give us seed, that we may live and not die’ – farmers beg a foreigner to be allowed their own seed! Thereby the Pharaoh via Joseph came to own all of the land, except that owned by the priests. All of the people of Egypt are enslaved! A stranger, a non-Egyptian by financial juggling took over the seed, land and animals of the Egyptian people.

     That was Planet Earth’s first introduction to the ‘Protocols of Zion’ tactics.

6. Moses

*   Moses slays an Egyptian in a quarrel: ‘After looking in all directions to make sure no one was watching, Moses killed the Egyptian and hid the body in the sand.’ (Exodus 2:12)  That’s cold-blooded murder followed by a cover-up.

*  On descending from Mount Sinai, with the proverbial tablets of stone, Moses becomes wrath with the Israelites for doing something which was about to be forbidden - little did they know - in the 2^nd Commandment: making a graven image.  He appealed to the Levites, who seem to be the only ones who had swords: ‘Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.’

     NB, Moses had previously smashed the tablets so that the ‘Thou shalt not kill’ commandment had not then been given, thereby allowing the Levites to exterminate their family members, etc.

·         * Numbers 25:17  ‘Vex the Midianites, and smite them.’ We do not gather what the Midianites  had done wrong. Moses orders the twelve tribes to go forth into battle, and (in storyland) they kill every man, burn the cities, plunder the women etc., the usual stuff. On returning home Moses rebukes his army, with words which echo in eternity for the depth of their horror: ‘And did you let the women live? … Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. (Numbers 31:18)

     A schizoid character, Moses first married a Midianite (Exodus 2:21) then ordered the extermination of all mature Midianite women.

            Child-killer!

            No more wicked character …