Archive for Bible-based government

Two Hothead “Prophets” of Scriptural Myth

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, culture, faith, freethought, Hebrew scripture, history, life, prehistory, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , on November 13, 2010 by chouck017894

Accepting Bible stories literally is always an indulgence in naivety for at least two reasons: 1) All biblical accounts were penned long after the timeframes in which the event allegedly occurred; and 2) Few, if any, genuine historical records ever support the contention that the starring figure in the religious myths even existed.  Where any person or persons can be verified by historical records, they always serve only in peripheral roles, which any writer of fiction knows will add the illusion of reality to a made-up tale.  Take the two “prophets” Elijah and Elisha, for example.

Elijah.  The priest-authors of the “prophet” tales—as they did with every Hebrew scripture tale—took great liberty in use of cosmological facts known to prehistory cultures, and plagiarized myth from neighboring cultures to play upon people’s gullibility.  Regarding the two “prophets” here referred to, both were named by incorporating the word Eli, which means “god,” and using a suffix that referred to life.  In the Ecclesiasticus, an apocryphal or New Testament version, which consists mainly of a series of maxims concerning the practical and moral (?) aspects of life, Elijah was altered to Elias.

Elijah (said to mean “Yah[weh] is my God) is cast as a 9th century BCE Hebrew “prophet” (traditionally c. 910 BCE), which was indeed a timeframe of social and religious changes.  According to priest-authors writing in Jerusalem in the seventh century BCE, Elijah supposedly led the struggle against the idolatrous worship of the Phenician god Baal.  This is told in 1 Kings 17-18 and in 2 Kings 2:15, both composed, remember, in the seventh century BCE Jerusalem.  Elijah is featured in the tale of King Ahab of Israel who married Jezebel of Tyre, and built a temple of Baal for her, which led to a contest of “miracles” between Elijah and the “prophets” of Baal.  According to biblical myth, Elijah commanded that no rain or dew was to fall except by his okay.  Three years allegedly passed with no rain or even any dew falling.  Myth disguises that King Ahab is actually the Babylonian storm god who was named Adad.

To pursue this tale further, we must recognize that it is a variation of the Deluge scenario from the Noah myth of Genesis.  According to 1 Kings, chapter 18, God told Elijah to go show himself to King Ahab, and then God would send rain upon the Earth (as Noah was told to get ready before the Flood).  Here the plot deviates somewhat:  Elijah goes to the top of Mount Carmel where  he awaits the rain, and seven times he had to send his servant to look toward the sea (symbol of the Source of Creative energy) for what we might think of as a weather forecast.  Finally, at the seventh try “…the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain” (flooding).  It was then that “…Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel” (1 Kings 18:45).  And so too did Elijah go, who had “…girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab (the storm god) to the entrance of Jezreel;” meaning the passing over into the first dimension of material matter, just as Noah’s landing on Ararat symbolized.  And what happened?  The queen, Jezebel (symbol of energy-substance in early formation of matter) sought to kill the “prophet.”  But Elijah escaped; he withdrew to the “wilderness,” which is always used as the symbol for the pre-physical energy dimensions.  And guess what: he had to stay there for “forty days and forty nights.”

To cut this story summary short, Elijah was told by God to return—just as Moses had been told to leave the unfulfilling conditions of Egypt and renew the movement through the wilderness to continue the process of energy evolving as matter, i.e. the promised land.  Having demonstrated the supremacy of the god Yahweh over Baal, according to the priest-authors, Elijah then had the “prophets” of  Baal put to death.  Typically, the Hebrew priest account implies that omnipotent, omniscient creative power likes to indulge in fiddling around in the political affairs of one tiny region on planet Earth—Israel.  And a later episode tells of Elijah having 102 innocent soldiers burned alive, for following orders to take the “prophet” into custody.  This is the character that is hailed by some Christians as the precursor of the Messiah—a claim based only on the myth of Elijah being carried to heaven in a chariot of fire (a symbol of the sun).

Elisha.  Elisha’s name is Hebrew meaning “God is deliverance.”  The death of this alleged “prophet” is traditionally set in the 8th century BCE.  Elisha was portrayed as having been a farmer who was chosen by Elijah to be his disciple.  When Elijah supposedly ascended to heaven in his fiery chariot he cast his mantle upon Elisha to indicate that Elisha then bore the responsibility of continuing the struggle against the idolatrous Baal cult.  Although Elisha was portrayed as less fervent than his  predecessor, he is credited with attaining much greater political influence through his alleged power to work miracles.   But he, too, had an impulsive murderous streak.  And the tale of Elisha is strangely reminiscent of the Moses/Joshua involvement, even to the point of repeating their miracles.  For example, in 2 Kings 2:14 it says, “And he (Elisha) took the mantle of Elijah that fell  from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of  Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over.”  How many Bible interpreters recognize that God separating the “waters” for Creation is repeated in Moses, Joshua, and Elijah myths, and symbolize the same cosmological circumstances?  The initiation of energy toward definition as matter.

Later, after passing over into the intended land (commonly accepted as having taken place c. 896 BCE), bald-headed Elisha trudged his way for fifteen miles from Jericho to Jerusalem.  His “prophet” status got off to a rough start, however, when he was accosted by 42 mocking boys near the town of Bethel who taunted him, “Go up, thou bald head: go up, thou bald head.”  Elisha lost his cool, cursed the youngsters in the name of the Lord, and immediately two bears miraculously appeared and tore all the juvenile delinquents to shreds.  Biblical scholars disagree as to the authenticity of this tale.  (But who could ever doubt it!)  True or not, Elisha using the power of the Lord to destroy 42 youth still amounts to murder.  Thus, not only Elisha but the Lord himself stand guilty of disobeying the Sixth Commandment.

Elisha, nonetheless, is allowed a  passing report card; the reason being that he supposedly allowed himself some compassionate acts later in his “prophet” career.  Priest-authors claim that he made a poisonous spring wholesome, made poison soup palatable and harmless, saved a woman who was deeply in debt from having  to sell her sons into slavery, cured a barren woman and raised her dead son, and other standard miracles.  And Elisha even cured the Syrian king Naaman of  leprosy; this kindness was much appreciated by the king, but not so much by the king’s servant, Gehazi, to whom the ghastly disease was transferred!  Hey, God thought it was okay.

But, as with Elijah, impulsiveness was never abandoned in Elisha’s character.  He is credited with having played a role in two assassinations years later for political reasons.   The first assassination involved Hazael who murdered Ben-hadad (2 Kings 7-15), and the second assassination allegedly took  place after Elisha instigated an uprising following the idolatrous Jehu gaining the throne of Israel (2 Kings 1:37).  It all seems to have amused God, for apparently nothing else on this little planet was worth looking into.

Again it becomes rather obvious why the fundamentalists and those who want the US government to be Bible-based or “God-led” find the holy book so inspiring.  Upon Elisha’s death, traditionally placed c. 841 BCE, the king of Israel is said to have wept copiously for the “prophet,” and the bald man was buried with highest honors.  Holy word remains frustratingly silent as to whether the townspeople of Bethel, where the 42 children were killed, felt the same grief at the “prophet’s” demise.

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Examples for Bible-based Government

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, Government, history, humanity, life, politics, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 9, 2010 by chouck017894

By biblical clues it was once determined that the murder of Abel by his brother Cain occurred in 3875 BCE.  Interestingly, the first year of the Jewish calendar was set as beginning in 3760 BCE—or 115 years later.  The brief and incomplete list that follows here, taken from “Holy Bible” stories, make it clear that the respect for life was not an especially high priority among God’s favorites.

The Deluge, whipped up by none other than God himself with the sole intention of obliterating the human species, supposedly occurred in 2348 BCE.  Oddly, part of the Lord’s instruction to Noah (who escaped being done in) was that Noah and his progeny must, among other listed immoral acts, refrain from committing homicide—the shameless counseling of do as I say, not as I do.  Scanning over the following brief highlights from biblical tales, remember that the definition of murder is the unconscionable killing of a human being.

 In the time of Abraham (c. 1860 BCE), the alleged progenitor of the Hebrews, the Lord asked Abe to sacrifice his son Isaac.  Abe said okay, but then the Lord said that it was only a test and provided a ram for slaughter.  Why the all-knowing creator would have to test Abraham in this cruel manner is never explained.  What this tale does reveal is that any tradition about not killing handed down from the time of Noah 488 years before was not taken seriously.

By the most commonly accepted calculations, Moses did not receive any commandment against homicide until 1491 BCE—or 369 years after Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son, and 2384 years after Abel’s death.  It might be said that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” given to Moses was a case of too little too late.  Even with this commandment as counsel, good old Joshua, the God-favored successor to Moses, is proudly presented as freely indulging himself in holocaustic slaughter of countless Canaanites.

Then there is the tale of Jephthah, a blustery Israelite who was called upon by the Israelite elders to head off a threatened Ammonite attack around 1143 BCE.  Jephthah, positive of God’s favor, swore that if he won in battle then whatsoever cometh forth out of the doors of my house to meet me…” he would offer it  up for a burnt offering to God (II Judges).  Well, Jephthah won the battle.  His “honor” supposedly demanded the ritual murder of his daughter, for in joy to see his safe return she had rushed out to greet him.  God is portrayed as knowing all, so was it Jephthah’s fault or God’s divine indifference that Jeph had to murder his own daughter by fire?  Even God seems to have ignored his own edict handed down to Moses only 348 years earlier, for he did nothing to save the girl.

412 years after the Commandment Thou shalt not kill had been handed down, King Saul of Israel indulged himself in a swift war of extermination against the Amalekites in 1079 BCE in which, the boast goes, every man, woman babe and child were “utterly destroyed.”  This was bad enough, but then King Saul’s pitiless “prophet,” Samuel, is recorded as having savagely chopped the captured and defenseless Amalekites King Agag into mincemeat with a sword.  Samuel also contributed  to Israel’s gory glory by then promoting David (1040?-973? BCE) for the throne.  And ultimately, 23 years later after the slaughter of Agag, David did succeed Saul as King of Israel.

David is  presented in Holy Scripture as a master of deceit, mendacity and bloodshed, and followed the traditional pattern of killing everyone among a conquered people, including women, babes and children.  He even had people killed “lest they should tell on us” (1 Samuel 27:11).  David’s list of slaughters and atrocities are too many to present here, but his open disregard for the sixth commandment makes it questionable as to why God could ever have considered him a worthy founder of a royal dynasty or to be the protector of the Holy Ark of the Covenant.  David is commonly excused under the pretext that he displayed unfailing devotion to Jehovah!

Next we have Elijah, c. 910 BCE, who had the Phenician prophets of Baal put to death to prevent them from muscling in on his hold on the official religion of Israel.  The myth goes that after the murder of the Baal priests, rain and dew which God had jealously withheld for three years finally returned.  Besides murdering the priests of  Baal, Elijah also caused the destruction of two companies of fifty innocent messengers that had been sent to him by King Ahaziah of Israel.  There was eager anticipation that this “holy man” was to return to Earth, and this was later incorporated into Christian myth as the spiritual fulfillment in John the Baptist.

The successor of Elijah was Elisha, c. 896 BCE, another typically short-tempered and irascible Israelite “prophet,” who displayed his disregard for the sixth commandment with 42 unruly children on the road to Bethel.  The young delinquents allegedly teased him about his bald head.  In angry retaliation, holy Elisha is said to have cursed the children in the name of the Lord and immediately two bears appeared and ripped the children to shreds.  The weak excuse for this god-assisted murder of  forty-two children is that the “prophet” was weary and agitated from his fifteen mile hike from Jericho.  Elisha was not weary, however, when he hatched the conspiracy to seize the throne of Israel and elevate Jehu, the last son of Joram, as king.

Jehu, allegedly appointed by God and anointed by murderous Elisha as king of Israel (c. 843? BCE), lost little time in setting out to exterminate his predecessor King Ahab’s seventy children as well as the priests of Baal.  How the murder of the priests was accomplished is a mystery, for Elijah had supposedly already done all that.  But true to form, here is what chapter 10, verse 30 of 2 Kings says: And the Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing that which is  right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.  Thus  blessed by the Lord, Jehu, without an ounce of scruple, later ordered two or three eunuchs to throw his wife Jezebel out a window to her death.

This  brief and far from complete list of God-favored characters from “the good book” have been offered as spiritual inspiration for countless generations.  Do they really exemplify the most exalted way of attracting peace, love, justice, mercy or intelligence that is so yearned for in the world?  Are these really examples that an advanced nation should follow?

 

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Taking the Fun Out of Fundamentalism

Posted in Atheist, Bible, culture, faith, history, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , on January 17, 2010 by chouck017894

Fundamentalism is the belief in some old “sacred” literature—usually composed by authority-hungry authors—as being literal truth and factual historical record which commonly includes elements regarded as uncontroversial prophecy.  In Christian fundamentalism, stories from the Jewish Torah are used as a springboard for the doctrine of Creationism, blended with such “miraculous” accounts as virgin birth, the physical resurrection of a world savior, and his anticipated physical “second coming.”

With such unnatural and improvable assertions accepted as fact, there was set in place the basis for unswerving and unalterable principles of religious-philosophical belief.  Unfortunately, unswerving belief and rigidity of a doctrine does not insure its value as truth.

The Christian fundamentalism that we see today in the early 21st century America took root in the early 20th century as a movement to counter the Darwinian evolution theory and the threat of liberal (nonjudgmental) theology.  It was around 1909 that a group of protesters began circulating a publication called The Fundamentals that avowed five key points regarded as holy and fundamental.  1) The infalliblity of Scriptures, 2) the Virgin birth of the Son of God, 3) the physical resurrection of Jesus, 4) Jesus as replacement in atonement for mankind’s sins, 5) and the return of Jesus in a judgmental rendezvous.

By 1925 the frenzy of fundamentalism was so infectious that a teacher in the state of Tennessee—J. T. Scopes—was brought to trial for teaching the science-based theory of evolution.  In the so-called “monkey trial” the teacher was convicted for exposing his pupils to truth.  The fundamentalists took strength from the verdict and throughout the rest of the 1920s attempted to rid churches and schools of any scientific inquiry of what they regarded as the perverse modernism of evolution. 

Fundamentalists found their cause a bit more challenging than they liked and through the 1930s, with the broader public snickering at them as extremists and anti-intellectuals, they began to pull apart, settling into various independent churches or becoming splinter denominations.  In the next decade, however, the fundamentalists attempted a new tact to attract wider following: they would present their belief in a pseudo-scholarly way, and the movement became referred to as neoevangelicalism.  It was a tact that picked up steam to develop into the political steamroller that now flattens a broad swathe across rationality in 21st century United States.

If nothing else, the fundamentalists do know how to kick up a fuss and present a facade of righteousness—just as the “prophets” of the Old Testament intentionally disturbed the things as they existed and sought to change them for their own ends.  All this was obsessively indulged in and fertilized by persons with inflated egos (Billy Graham comes to mind), and in the 1950s they discovered television and the wealth it could siphon in.  By the 1970s the fundamentalists were worming their way into electoral and legislative politics, and waxing profusely against secular humanism and happily passing judgment on such things as communism, abortion, feminism, homosexuality, and the constitutional safeguard of separation of church and states affairs. 

The exercise of control is the fundamentalists’ aim, theocracy their goal.  In that pursuit they have found it convenient to discard many teachings of the teacher as presented in the earliest New Testament books.  They claim to be devoted to a government based on Biblical examples—Old Testament blood and guts style—being careful to stifle its many glorifications of inhumane conduct, wars, deceits, enslavement and injustices that allegedly met with God’s approval.

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