The Biblical account of the Creation seems to be a meld of at least two minds; we have separate accounts of the Grand Covenant made between God and Abraham, and separate accounts of Moses tapping the rocks for gins-n-tonic.
The identity-parade of Biblical authors has acquired the name Documentary Hypothesis. (And here the teacher realises the class is boring into pillars of salt.)
The authors who hang with Elohim as the God of the hood are known as the E Gang; the authors who hang with Jaweh are known as the J Gang; and the Deuteronomy authors are the P & D Gang.
All ye need to know.
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ — and you’ll find none of that in the Sinai desert, or the belly of a whale.
‘Inspired? The Bible is not even intelligent. It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of absurdities and contradictions.’ E Haldeman-Julius, The Meaning of Atheism
Absurdities and contradictions? Whoa! Hold it there, tiger. And you saying the pandas never made the trek from China to Noah’s Ark? Well I never.
At least three sets of scribes labour with the lusty zeal of New York gangsters to bestow their God with the hyperbolic language of fascism. A motley crew of parchments and papyri cobbled into a patchwork compendium of fables and fantasy.
The Bible, the Book of Mormon and Koran are not worthy to be prized as guidebooks for the Meaning of Life. Dr Robert Beckford asks, ‘If the Bible is less than literate, what is there to hold on to?’
Readers who hanker for a fascist intergalactic empire-building God can hack straight to the madhouse of the Book of Ezekiel. This is God at her ranting best. The fascist reader will not be disappointed.
‘It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview — however heroic the efforts of redactors — is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.’ Sam Harris
*****