The Antichristian Phenomenon

So here it is: The first part to my reading quest. In this article I will comment on Genesis chapters 1-19. All chapters from 11-50 deal with the familiy history of Adam’s direct descendants. Some of these are important characters in biblical mythology, such as Noach and Abraham. Others seem not so much important, and it’s certainly possible that I will jump to the book of Exodus in the next edition of “Reading the Bible”, as the later chapters (for as far as I have read) do not have much interesting to add.

The first chapters of Genesis deal with well-known biblical stories: The creation, the garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge, Noach’s Ark and the flood, Abraham’s deal with God and the destruction of Sodom.

Creation
It was interesting to read the creation story, because it illustrates the pritimive knowledge (or rather: ideas) of the universe the ancient people, among who was the author of Genesis, had. The sky, “heaven”, is portrayed as a half sphere that is placed on top of the earth and which divides the waters of our planet and the waters above the heavens - yes indeed, apparently there is water in space, not a vacuum. In the half sphere that is heaven, God puts up some lamps and among them one big one to rule the day, and a smaller one to rule the night. Not only shows this that the nature of stars wasn’t undestood, but also that there wasn’t a clear distinction between stars and moons. After God has some plants and trees pop up, he creates the animals. In Biblical taxonomy, the main categories are: Birds, fish, wild animals, livestock and creatures that crawl. After all that, God creates man and woman.

In the second book of Genesis, man seems to be created before all flora, and definitely before the wild anmimals and birds. However, I’m not going into every contradiction because I’d never get through the Bible before I turn thirty. I just want to say that I think the accusation that the two creation accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are contradictory is justified.

Eden
Skipping ahead a bit, we’ll get our first share of talking animals: a snake, who seduces Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. This actually constitutes the first big issue I have with christianity: the negative attitude to knowledge. Incarnations of this meme can be found throughout history, from Galileo Galilei to the modern day creationism crap. God would rather have wanted us to stay ignorant of the world, imprisoned in a garden. Eating from the tree of knowledge constitutes the aspiration to becoming gods - and that’s wrong for some reason. Personally, I encourage this aspiration. When a scientists who was working on genetic manipulation for protein development was asked whether he was playing for god, he answered: “I’m not playing” and it is such an attitude that deserves respect. I can’t wait to go post-human.

In any case, God wasn’t amused and felt threatened. To ensure his totalitarian reign, he punished women by making sure childbirth isn’t fun, and that the men will reign over them. He punished men by making sure they’d have to work hard to stay alive. He ban-kicked Adam and Eve out of Eden, and placed Cherubs with flaming swords (cool!) in East Eden to protect the way to the tree of life; making people wouldn’t live forever.

Noach and the flood
People didn’t live forever, that’s for sure, but I’d say 900 years is pretty close considering our current life expectancy. While the descendants of Adam and Eve were populating the earth and fucking like rabbits, God got more and more pissed off. He decreed that people shouldn’t live more than 120 years. God became sorry that he created humankind, because to him all of them were “bad” for reasons unknown. Luckily, he came up with a solution: Fucking kill them all, and with them all the animals: divine global genocide. God liked Noach though, and commanded him to build a boat too small considering its purpose. He told Noach to bring on board one pair of each animal seven pairs of clean animal and one pair of unclean animals and seven pairs of each kind of bird and NOach agreed and brought on board one pair of each animal seven pairs of clean animals and birds and one pair of unclean animals one pair of each animal. And so, after the flood, Noach and his family and the animals on the earth began the task of repopulating the earth.

Abraham’s deal with God
Following the line of first sons from Noach to Abra(ha)m, who is a strange character. He leads an army and kills off the army that sacked Sodom. When the king of Sodom wants to give Abram a reward, he suddenly turns holy and swears by the lord that he will not take anything, because it isn’t his to take - forgetting the lives of those soldiers he killed a moment ago. God, however, is impressed by Abram and appears to him in a vision and tells him he will bless him. Abram sacrifices some nice cattle too God, who loves dead cattle (Ask Cain!). After the birth of Abram’s first son Ismael, God appears to Abram again and asks him to become his little bitch. First of all, God changes Abram’s name to Abraham. God says he will bless Abraham’s descendants with kingship and furthermore offers Abraham and his descendants a big land. In return, God asks Abraham to cut off the end of his and his descendants penis. In this way, God will have a way to recognize who his has to bless, and who his has to curse. Abraham agreed, and showed great courage but sawing off the end of his penis when he was already 99 years old. He mutilated his extramarital son’s genitals that same day, too.

The destruction of Sodom
God tells Abraham of a serious accusation against Sodom. There is never any mentioning of a jury or judge to either confirm or reject this accusation, because God takes matters in his own hands. He tells that he will destroy Sodom and everybody in it. Abraham asks if God would destroy Sodom even if there was one person innocent in the whole city, and God tells Abraham he would leave the city alone if this would be so. Luckily for the people living in Sodom, Abrahams nephew Lot lives in Sodom, and he is quite innocent indeed. You’d guess there’s no need to worry for the city and its inhabitants because of God’s promise. However, God has a trick up his sleeve. He can’t wait to commit another genocide, and sends two angels to Lot. These angels get Lot out of the city, making way for the sickly murderous God to rain fire and sulphur down on the city.

Other general remarks
One thing that I thought was remarkable was the consequent mentioning of animal (and almost human) sacrifice to God. It shows the connection of OT Christianity with other ancient religion in which such sacrifices were the norm - of course, current day Christianity would rather forget this tradition while still hoping they can get away with calling the Bible timeless. Women’s rights are also non-existant. Men used to marry multiple women - even Abraham slept around with his wife’s slave to produce a receptacle for Abraham’s offspring - he’ll be damned to give it to his wife! Another interesting instance of cruelty against women is when the angels enter Lot’s home. The people of Sodom demand Lot to bring the strangers that entered his home, but he offers his virgin daughters instead, saying the Sodomites can do with them whatever they want.

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