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If you're like me, nowadays you seldom bother to turn on the "news" or glance at a "news" paper. What's the use? Those of us with an ounce of gray matter have long ago figured out that America's "news" is all cleverly-devised programming to keep the masses mooing in unison by a nameless, faceless but well-organized insidious enemy that is steadily bringing this nation to the edge of its own grave. We also understand that this finely-tweaked programming has been so effective that the only thing left to do before pulling the plug is to mop up a few minor problems—primarily mopping up those Americans who are still infected with the disease of independent thought.
Lenin and Stalin cured their enslaved people from thinking by murdering some 60 or more million of them. When one gives a tyrant free reign, and the right to suppress freedom of speech, mass execution is just around the corner.
The solution for independent thought in America is daunting because A) we still have some vestiges of a republic and B) we have those nasty, inconvenient little Constitutional rights standing in the way. One of those is the right to keep and bear arms, which has repeatedly barred the way of a modern-day Lenin coming on the scene. Another is the right to believe, speak and write anything we damn well please! Sure, we have men and women who are feverishly working day and night to circumvent these obstacles, but so far they keep running into those pesky little Constitutional Amendments. But where there's a will—and the dictatorial control of the national media, banking and political system—there's a way! It's called "hate speech crimes."
Back when I was a boy if you called someone a "fat queer" you got busted in the mouth or called a name in return. Today, in numerous democratic nations, if you call someone a "fat queer" you can be arrested, jailed and fined. Hell, if you open your yap in Brazil and get dumped in the slammer, you can't even make bail! Yep! In good old democratic Brazil you can rob, rape and/or murder someone and walk out if you lay down the green (or whatever the color of their money is), but commit the crime of hurting someone's feelings and you're in for the duration! However, you should be under no illusion here. The powers-that-be don't give a rat's ass about anyone's sensitivities. Hate speech legislation isn't designed to protect people's feelings—they're on the book for one thing, and one thing only.
Essentially the Zionist state of Israel exists because of the Holocaust. Had there been no Holocaust, there would be no Israel. That's why the Holocaust has grown into a trillion-dollar industry and that's why belief in it must be sustained at all costs.(1) It is not an exaggeration to say that Zionism is the Holocaust industry and the Holocaust industry is Zionism. Over the years this unholy partnership has grown so great that it now controls America's national media, educational institutions, political and banking systems. That's why the American taxpayers have built the Israeli military into the most powerful force in the Middle East and indeed in many parts of the world. That's why Zionists, after they invaded, stole and ethnically cleansed Palestine, can rob, torture and murder what's left of the native population with little or no repercussions. That's why this entire world is on the brink of a giant abyss.
I say this because, in short, the Holocaust industry has placed Zionism at the head of the coming New World Order and that deadly peril knows no bounds in achieving its aims. However, there is one little problem that threatens the whole house of cards: the Holocaust is not quite the tale promoted in countless multi-million dollar Hollywood films, television productions, newspaper and magazine articles and books. Nope! Today honest scholarship and a handful of honest scholars hang over the tale of the Holocaust industry and Zionist aims like a Damocles Sword.
Now, no one disputes that Jews were systematically rounded up and deported from Germany and the conquered territories, and that many died tragic deaths. But today an ever-growing number of brave historians are disputing the official Holocaust tale by citing documents like those from the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris which states that 1,485,292 Jews died from all causes during the Second World War. Indeed, some historians have found evidence that brings even that revised figure into question, and argue for a death toll dipping down to a few hundred thousand. Either way there's a hellava difference between those numbers and the 6 million figure promoted by various Zionist enterprises to keep the Holocaust cash cow thriving—and it's a hellava difference compared to the some 70 million so-called gentile deaths in World War Two!(2)
So, if you're a dedicated Zionist how do you keep your cash cow safe in a world that is increasingly hostile to your goings-on? Answer: hate crime legislation!
In a guilt-ridden, occupied nation like Germany it was child's play to make criticism of the Holocaust industry a crime punishable by huge fines and years in prison. I say "occupied" because Germany's government isn't its own. After America and England murdered millions of German women and children with terror carpet bombing and ethnic cleansing during and after World War Two, and after Eisenhower murdered a million German POWs when the war ended, these benevolent conquerors imposed a new Americanized government on what was left of the German people. However, America didn't give the prostrate Germans things like our inconvenient Constitutional rights. Nope! Thanks to Zionists like Henry Morganthau, Jr. (Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury and author of the murderous Morganthau Plan that would have led to the starvation deaths of 10 million Germans), today's Americanized Germans have no inalienable right to free thought or expression.(3)
Owning, reading, giving or discussing this book in Germany will get you five years in prison.
The same situation pretty much exists in other European nations and British Commonwealth nations, like Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Serbia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tasmania and the United Kingdom.
In the U.K. hate crime laws go by tidy little tags like "incitement to racial hatred" or "incitement to religious hatred" and can include such horrendous crimes as openly complaining about Islamic fundamentalist immigrants who target native Anglo-Saxon girls for rape. The same is true in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which are undergoing a national crisis of Islamic males raping Scandinavian girls.(4) In those countries countless people are in prison or have been heavily fined for stating aloud what everyone knows to be true. But this is the price Europeans are forced to pay because they silently stood by and allowed the Holocaust industry to buy off their politicians and pass hate crime legislation. And make no mistake: in every single instance, including this country, the people behind the push for hate crime legislation have been Zionists or their front "persons"!
So, where's all this leading?
Last month, after years of trying to shove hate crime legislation down our throats, America's self-serving House of Representatives finally passed a hate crimes bill (249-175) and sent it on to the Senate. Unless there's a massive outcry by the American people (which is about as likely as someone getting up from the sofa to manually change channels on their big screen t.v. instead of using the remote) and those bugaboos in the Senate cave in, I have little doubt that we will soon have a hate crime law on the federal books. When that happens our once-powerful nation along with its First Amendment will be (as Margaret Mitchell might have said it) a civilization gone with the wind.
Indeed, the potential for this kind of Orwellian society was what caused British comedian Rowan Atkinson (famous in America for his Black Adder t.v. series) to write a solemn letter to the Times of London when Parliament was debating hate crime legislation back in 2001:
But you need to understand that religion, race and sexual orientation is only the strawman for an insidious racket. In case you're not getting the picture, let me spell it out: the real reason for hate crime legislation is shielding from scrutiny and criticism both Zionism and its ultimate goal of creating a New World Order. That's it in a nut shell and it's a picture that is easily proven thanks to one little fly in the NWO ointment.Religion As a Fit Subject For Comedy
From Mr. Rowan Atkinson
Sir, I hope that I am not the only person in the creative arts who feels great disquiet about the proposals outlined by the Home Secretary in the Commons today, to introduce legislation to outlaw what has been described as "incitement to religious hatred" (reports, October 16). Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures.
Supporters of the proposed legislation would presumably say that neither I, nor any of my colleagues in the comedy world, are its intended targets, but laws governing highly subjective or moral issues tend to drag a very fine net, and some of the most basic freedoms of speech and expression can get caught up in it.
I have always believed that there should be no subject about which one cannot make jokes, religion included. Clearly, one is always constricted by contemporary mores and trends because, after all, what one seeks above all is an appreciative audience. However, would a film like "Monty Python's Life of Brian", criticized at the time of its release for being anti-Christian, be judged under the proposed law? Or that excellent joke in "Not the Nine O'Clock news" all those years ago, showing worshippers in a mosque simultaneously bowing to the ground with the voiceover: "And the search goes on for the Ayatollah Khomein's contact lens"? Not respectful, but comedy takes no prisoners. However, in period and in context it was extremely funny and I believe that it is the reaction of the audience that should decide the appropriateness of a joke, not the law of the land.
For telling a good and incisive religious joke, you should be praised. For telling a bad one, you should be ridiculed and reviled. The idea that you could be prosecuted for the telling of either is quite fantastic.
Yours faithfully,
ROWAN ATKINSON
October 15 (Published Wednesday, October 17, 2001.)
Back when Hollywood was in its infancy, Zionists took complete control of the new motion picture industry because they recognized the tremendous potential. Never in the history of the world was a propaganda tool more powerful than motion pictures. Once in control these new self-appointed lords of public opinion recreated the Western world. Today Hollywood Zionists can truly boast that they have recreated America in their image and after their likeness. If you doubt me, take a look at the December 19, 2008 column by well-known Los Angeles Times writer Joel Stein. He titled his piece "How Jewish is Hollywood? A poll finds more Americans disagree with the statement that 'Jews control Hollywood.' But here's one Jew who doesn't." Let me give you a dose of Stein's bragging:
I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.
How deeply Jewish is Hollywood? When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp. President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish). If either of the Weinstein brothers had signed, this group would have not only the power to shut down all film production but to form a minyan with enough Fiji water on hand to fill a mikvah.
The person they were yelling at in that ad was SAG President Alan Rosenberg (take a guess). The scathing rebuttal to the ad was written by entertainment super-agent Ari Emanuel (Jew with Israeli parents) on the Huffington Post, which is owned by Arianna Huffington (not Jewish and has never worked in Hollywood.)
The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.
As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you'd be flipping between "The 700 Club" and "Davey and Goliath" on TV all day.
I appreciate [ADL director Abe] Foxman's concerns. And maybe my life spent in a New Jersey-New York/Bay Area-L.A. pro-Semitic cocoon has left me naive. But I don't care if Americans think we're running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.(5)
As Mr. Stein says, Zionists not only control Hollywood, they control the major television networks, the banking and financial systems and the judiciary and legislative branches of the federal government. Moreover, their brothers-in-arms have almost the same dictatorial control in those nations that have passed hate crime legislation. But, the only thing that is standing in the way of the final implementation of a New World Order is First and Second Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. And the only thing that has kept these two amendments from biting the dust is the tremendous informational network called the Internet, which isn't yet under Zionist control. On the Net, 24/7, Americans can say and write anything they damn well please and hundreds of millions from around the world are listening and watching! That is why American hate speech legislation is vital to the New World Order and why it has been on the agenda for decades.
When President Obama criminalizes "hate speech" in America the party's over. Down will come the Internet and the collective asses of true Americans are fried!
Someone once said "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it!"
A few days ago America commemorated Memorial Day. Looking beyond all those Memorial Day sales, picnics and beach parties, you might care to remember that it's a day to stop and remember and honor those who've fought and died—who lie forever buried in the sands of far-away foreign lands—to preserve our nation's precious freedoms. Of course maybe you're one of those who are content to ignore the sacrifices of our dead heroes and whoop it up at a Memorial Day cookout. Maybe you're content to continue along with the lowing herd as it marches blithely towards the gates of the meat packing plant. But I'm one old bovine who deeply appreciates the sacrifices made by our nation's soldiers and in their memory I will continue to think and write and bellow loud and long while there's still time! I say screw hate crime legislation and I say those who promote it are traitors to all our nation stands for—or used to stand for!(6)
Additional reading:
1. See Professor Norman G. Finkelstein's bio and information on his 2000 book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering Posted at wikipedia.org. In his book, Professor Finkelstein argues that the Holocaust allows the state of Israel "one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, [can] cast itself as a victim state" in order to garner "immunity to criticism.'"
2. For the evidence of Holocaust revisionists see Did Six Million Really Die? posted at www.zundelsite.org
3. For a partial history of the Zionist orgy of hatred of Germany during and after World War Two, see David Irving's "Introduction to the Morgenthau Plan" posted at www.fpp.co.uk. For information on the deliberate murder of German POW by Dwight Eisenhower, see Other Losses by James Bacque. (Key Porter Books, Fenn Publishing; 2 Revised edition 1999.)
4. See Islam Watch's article detailing the epidemic of Islamic violence against Scandinavian women posted at www.islam-watch.org.
5. Joel Stein:How Jewish is Hollywood? A poll finds more Americans disagree with the statement that 'Jews control Hollywood.' But here's one Jew who doesn't. LA Times, December 19, 2008, posted at: www.latimes.com. Also see Neal Gabler's book, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. Anchor Books, 1989.
6. See "Hate Crime Legislation—Back Door to Censorship" by Jim Simpson, Sunday, May 10th, 2009 posted at frontpage.americandaughter.com
Okay! I'll admit it: I should have written a review when I first got my paws on Fred R. Coulter's new bible translation—some two years ago—but what the hell? I mean, after some 2,000 years of bibles raining from the sky, what's a year or two, more or less?
Now, as far as publishing goes, Fred's new bible is damned impressive—even if it is produced in China! Whew! Talk about your luxury binding, this baby sports a pure lambskin cover (doubtlessly the rest of the little Chinese lamb wound up in a Mongolian stir-fry), and gold leaf edges, as well as that usual toilet paper-thin bible paper with that delicious new bible smell that could only come from a combo of leather processing, glue, paper & printing chemicals!
Cracking the covers, one of the first things I noticed was Fred's braggadocio that he produced his new bible on his own—no committee nitpicking and haggling over where to or where not to place a comma. In other words, this is Fred's baby from start to finish! And the title Fred gave to his new bible is a mouthful: The Holy Bible In Its Original Order A New English Translation A Faithful Version with Commentary. Lord Almighty! That's one impressive title, and (if I may be a tad bit critical here) one that promises a heapin' helpin' of self-righteousness! Come on Fred! To me such a title bespeaks of a man with an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore. Hey—even Herbert W. Armstrong, Fred's one-time boss and mentor, declined the invite to write his own bible—and old Herbie had an ego that would have made Mt. Rushmore look like someone's backyard rock garden!
Let me tell you something that maybe, just maybe, you've never contemplated: when a man or a committee of men produces a new bible, what they are admitting is that all those who've gone before are in some way deficient—meaning, their bibles were crap. I say "crap" because if a bible contains one little itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie mistake, then it's not God's word. The bible itself is very plain on this point. In fact, Fred's not shy in admitting this since he complains that virtually all bibles, beginning with the Septuagint down to the King James Version and beyond, are corrupt. And who do you suppose Fred blames for this situation? Does he blame the original nameless, faceless shysters who penned the first corrupt manuscripts? No. Like a good Protestant Fred goes for the throat of the Roman Catholic Church, specifically St. Jerome, whom he accuses of deliberately mishandling the "Holy Scriptures" and causing "great spiritual harm to untold numbers of people for over 1500 years." (p. 3)
That's quite an all-encompassing accusation, but at least Fred takes some of the heat off Jerome when he explains that the old boy had help: "Satan the devil and the political, secular, atheistic, sexist and religious establishments of this world have united in their efforts to destroy true Christianity and the truth of the Word of God." (p. ix) "The devil made 'em do it!" I suppose that's as good an excuse as any why the "holy bible" is a leather-bound book of crapola.
Let me be clear that I don't give a holy hoot about St. Jerome. But what I read in Fred's complaint is that for 1500 years God sat impotent on his heavenly throne while "untold numbers of people" were spiritually harmed and lost their salvation because God had to wait for Fred R. Coulter to be born and then learn enough Greek to translate a new bible! If you think I've missed the mark, consider what Fred has one of his flock—a man named Philip Neal—write on page v of his new bible.
After first reminding us all of Matthew 24:35 and God's promise that his bible would never be lost or destroyed, Neal writes "In spite of the attempts of men whose goal is to modify or corrupt the Word of God, the promise of God stands sure. Down through the centuries, God has guided faithful men to reproduce accurate copies of the original God-breathed Hebrew and Greek text." Did he, did he indeed? Well, you're gonna see a few examples of God's guidance as before I'm through with Fred's new bible. Anyway, after bragging up Fred's new bible, Neal sums up Fred's efforts like this: "This combination of diligent effort and faith in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit has led to a translation that accurately and faithfully sets forth the true meaning of the text of the New Testament." In other words, Fred has Neal telling us that when one opens Fred's new bible, they're not seeing the result of Fred's human efforts, but are actually holding a book written by the Holy Spirit of God himself! Ooowee! That's one hellava claim—especially when we consider it in light of the warning that follows next.
Philip Neal reminds one & all that a translator is to translate the "Word of God" in "a precise, authentic and faithful manner—neither adding to nor taking away from the words of God! (Rev. 22:18-19.)" Failure to faithfully execute this command leads to a dreadful fate: being hit with the horrible plagues outlined in the terrifying book of Revelation, followed by an iron boot to the nether regions of hell!
Call me Mr. Picky, but I couldn't help but notice that Fred's new bible has 12 pages of introduction followed by 116 pages of selective history, insults to those whose beliefs don't match his own, gripes & insults about other bibles, positive quotes from Christians who shore up his own theology, and endless scriptural quotes to convince the reader that his own brand of Christianity is the one true faith. That's 128 pages added to "God's word" before one ever gets to the first chapter and verse of Genesis! In fact, the last part of his bible's title says it all: A Faithful Version with Commentary. If you write a bible with commentary, then by-god folks you're adding to the bible! But Fred wasn't through when he added 128 pages at the beginning of his bible. Nope! At the end of his bible Fred tacks on another 120 pages in the form of appendices promoting his brand of warmed-over Armstrongism. That's 248 pages of additions to a book that warns its believers of dire consequences should they add to or take away from the thing—and these 248 pages don't even include the numerous instances when Fred adds lengthy "commentary" to "original" scriptures! Well, since we're to believe that Fred and God wrote this thing together, let's just pretend that all is well in Oz and look at the actual bible.
According to Fred, he used two primary sources for his translation work: the Masoretic Text for the Old Testament and Robert Estienne's Greek Text of 1550, or the so-called Textus Receptus, for the New Testament. Here, I'm going to focus on the "original Greek" of the New Testament.
The long and short of the matter is that Fred, like all good Protestant translators before him, denounces the far older Western Greek Texts of Roman Catholicism's Latin Vulgate as corrupt, and opts for the more recent Byzantine Greek Texts, which are so called because they surfaced inside the Eastern (Orthodox) Christian Church when it formally split from the Western Church, or Roman Catholic Church, in the eleventh century. The fly in the ointment is that, 1) the oldest surviving Byzantine texts date back only one thousand or so years, and 2) in many important instances, the thousands of extant manuscripts not only differ from the Western Texts, they also differ in comparison with each other.
To correct this mess, in the sixteenth century bible translators decided to essentially reconstruct a new Byzantine Greek edition of the New Testament, which they did by artfully weaving together the conflicting manuscripts. The most famous attempt at this came from the great Catholic scholar, Desiderius Erasmus, working in Basel, Switzerland in 1516. I say "attempt" because the old boy's work left a lot to be desired. You see, old Erasmus was in a competition with Alcala de Henares University to become the first to get a translation of the Byzantine Greek New Testament into print. By cutting corners, Erasmus slopped his way through his translation until he slapped out his New Testament long before the University's Complutensian Polyglot translation hit the presses. As a purely political move, Erasmus dedicated his new translation to Pope Leo X "as a patron of learning."
As an example of his sloppy methods, Erasmus rarely used the oldest Byzantine manuscript because "he was afraid of its supposedly erratic text." And in the case of the book of Revelation, he used only one manuscript, which just happened to be missing six verses. As a substitute for the missing versus Erasmus snatched them from the Latin Vulgate for "what he supposed the Greek text should read." (The Oxford Companion to the Bible, p. 490.) Such crappy scholarship is why Erasmus' Greek New Testament has words that do not agree with any known Greek text and is why one contemporary English critic called Erasmus' work the "least carefully printed book ever published."
The bad news for Fred's new bible is that Erasmus' translation, which became known as the "Textus Receptus" or the "received text," forms the foundation of later Greek translations, specifically for the translation of Robert Estienne, who is also known as Robertus Stephanus in Latin and called Robert Stephens by 18th and 19th-century English writers. I say it's bad news for Fred because he brags up Stephens' Textus Receptus as the one on which is new bible is founded.
Fred writes: "A great deal of uncertainty about the state of the Greek New Testament needlessly exists among the ranks of textual critics today.… In spite of the uncertainty being expressed by the editors of the most popular Greek texts on the market today, there is a standard, reliable Greek text available for use. After researching the alternate Greek texts—eclectic or critical and Majority Text—we stand firmly behind the tradition of the Textus Receptus (1550 Stephens Text). Our choosing the Textus Receptus does not imply that it is perfect in every detail, for no text has been untouched by human hands; however, the Stephens Text is a highly reliable New Testament text, which is 98 percent or more in agreement with the Byzantine Text, which was the dominant form of the Greek text during the age of manul copying. We believe that the Byzantine Text, more than any other, represents the original God-breathed words of the New Testament." (p. 85, Fred's emphasis.)
I'm going to resist the temptation to point out the failure of Fred's all-powerful god to preserve his "God-breathed" holy word—a book that is essential for the eternal salvation of all humankind—from the tampering of Catholic monks. But I will point out that "98 percent" reliability spells disaster for a book that promises infallibility!
Now the really bad news for Fred's new bible is that old Bobby Estienne/Stephanus/Stevens' translation of the "original Greek" is essentially a copy of the fifth Erasmian text with variants! When he departs from this source, Fred's "inspired" translator used the Greek of the Biblia Complutensis, which was produced in 1502 under license of Pope Leo X by Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo, Spain. In his work the good cardinal used the great codices of the Catholic Church (i.e., the Western Texts behind the Latin Vulgate) to augment his limited collection of Byzantine codices, which tells us immediately both the underlying scholarship of Stephanus' text and that of Fred's bible.
In other words the "inspired original Greek" behind Fred's new bible—the infallible word of God of which he boasts—is traceable only to 1502-1516 where we find that it was essentially a piecemeal composition as reconstructed by three different men—and Catholic men to boot! And who knows how and by what means they came to select from the thousands of differing texts the final verses for their New Testament?
Blatantly ignoring these inconvenient facts in his 248 additional bible pages, Fred, with Estienne's grinning ghost looking over his shoulder, boldly proclaims "Indeed, the New Testament was written by, or its writing was supervised by, the chosen apostles of Jesus Christ. Therefore, one can have full faith and confidence that the original Greek text—as preserved in the Byzantine text—is the very Word of God." (p. 47.) In other words, if you have faith in the Byzantine texts, Pope Leo X, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, Erasmus & Robert Estienne, you can have faith that Fred R. Coulter has produced an infallible bible from the "original" Byzantine Greek—especially since Fred has assured us all that the Holy Spirit was his co-author!
You know, when I find a religious book, bible or not, spouting this kind of crap, it really gets up my nose. But for me, the real kicker in Fred's new bible is his vicious attack on "atheistic" scholarship. I say this because Fred assures his readers that the bible is easily proven to be God's word, or is "God-breathed" as he likes to call it, and he "proves" his case by quoting the bible! Yep! That's it! For Fred R. Coulter, Holy Ghost-inspired bible translator, the bible is God's word because the bible says it is God's word—and "atheistic" scholarship be damned!
To make sure his readers don't seriously contemplate the utter folly of this "proof," Fred shores up his declaration by tossing in quotations from fundamentalist preachers like Dr. Edward F. Hills: "From his perspective as a textual scholar and classicist, Dr. Hills asserted that the has witnessed many Bible students 'panic and become virtual unbelievers in their biblical studies' because they have felt 'obligated to depend almost entirely on the writings' of scholars, 'most of whom are unbelievers' (ibid., p. 113). To avoid possible 'catastrophes of unbelief' that accompany such an indepth study of the biblical texts, Hills wrote: '… we must always emphasize the Christian starting point that all our thinking ought to have. If we are Christians, the we must begin our thinking not with the assertions of unbelieving scholars and their naturalistic human logic, but with Christ and the logic of faith.' …" (p. 84, quoting from Hills' book The King James Version Defended. The emphasis is Fred's.)
What Fred and Dr. Hills are advocating is giving scientific study of the Greek New Testament texts the boot and putting one's faith in Christ—which actually translates to having faith in men like Hills and Fred. In fact, he says as much when he writes: "Ultimately, believers must place their confidence in God's promises to preserve His word intact." (p. 85.) Since Fred wrote his own bible, what does that tell us about where his followers must put their faith?
Oh, regarding Fred's list of quoted scholars, I want to single out my old friend Josh McDowell. Yep! Old By-Gosh Josh, who probably wouldn't even bother to spit on Fred's church if it were on fire, is employed by Fred on page 85 of his new bible: "The historical reliability of the biblical manuscripts can be verified using the same principles for confirming the reliability of other historical documents. Author Josh McDowell offers an indepth review of this evidence. It can be found on pages 23-109 in his book The Best of Josh McDowell: A Ready Defense." (p. 84.)
Josh McDowell! josh mcdowell! JOSH MCDOWELL! As a little six-year-old agnostic friend of mine used to say, "yeah, right!" (For my opinion of Josh McDowell, see my article By-Gosh Josh: An Answer to Eric V. Snow.)
Listen, that massive army of agnostic/atheist bible translators and scholars denounced by Fred, Hills and Josh did use the same scientific tests for the bible as they do for all other historical documents, which is why they gave the bible a unanimous thumbs down! But you know what? I say to hell with arguing over scientific tests, or faith, or any other method of selling a bible. Simply turn to the pages of Fred's new bible with an open mind and you're going to find it full of contradictions and outright frauds from Genesis to Revelation. That's a fact, and one that puts Fred Coulter's The Holy Bible In Its Original Order A New English Translation A Faithful Version with Commentary right where it belongs: serving as a coaster under my coffee mug!
(As has been my policy for the 15 years I've been on the Net, I will offer a link to Fred R. Coulter's website so that you can read his material and make an informed judgment: http://www.cbcg.org You can buy Fred's bible through Amazon.com for $89.00: www.amazon.com/Holy-Bible-Its-Original-Order. For more insight into the history of the Old and New Testament, see my booklets How Christianity Got Its New Testament, and How Christianity Got Its Old Testament, which are posted free on this website in the Things You Never Heard In Church Series.)
Do you remember a creep named Jeffery Dahmer? Back in the late 70s through the early 90s he tortured, raped and murdered seventeen young men and, in some cases, ate parts of their bodies. More recently, over in Germany, a whacko named Armin Meiwes advertised on the Internet—a website called The Cannibal Cafe—for a young man who wanted to be eaten. His post stated that he was "looking for a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed." In March 2001 a fellow nutcase named Bernd Jürgen Brandes answered the advertisement and helped Meiwes cut off and eat a part of his own body. Eventually Meiwes, who videotaped the whole thing, killed Brandes and over the next 10 months consumed a large portion of his corpse, which he kept in a freezer under some frozen pizzas.
For those of you out there with some still-functioning grey matter, I would like to suggest that for a few minutes you seriously consider the concept of a cannibalized god. Would you please consider what it means to worship a god that you are required to eat—a god whose blood you must drink in order to obtain eternal life? I mean, when it comes to gory stories of Jeffrey Dahmer and Armin Meiwes, all sane people shrink in disgust. But when it comes to chewing the fat of Jesus Christ, Christians smile like simpletons and open their beaks like chirping fledglings in a nest! Now blubber what excuses you will, but I tell you that something isn't quite right with that picture. I guess the short answer is that God's word tells you do it—at least that was my excuse when I used to cannibalize Jesus every Passover/Easter season: "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. 27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." (Matthew 26:26)
But let's be fair. Jesus didn't originate this religious cannibal fetish. Nope! That distinction belongs to his father—the grand old man in the sky. It was the Father who set up the whole gory business of eating his son. Of course this is no surprise to those who have the courage to peer outside their so-called holy book and study the origins of their faith. Long before the world had (unfortunately) heard of Jehovah & Jesus, man-made gods were obsessed with blood and, in many cases, with being eaten by their faithful. That's why Jewish priests, during the Captivity, saddled their god with a blood fetish when they composed their holy books. Judaism simply borrowed the bloody attributes of far older religions so that they could instantly gain respectability among the ancient world's most popular religions. (For more detail, see my booklet Where Christianity Really Got Its Old Testament.)
Now if you're tempted to think I'm going overboard on the cannibal thing, then you should consider the horror those ancient rabbis wrote into your so-called bible—Jehovah's obsession with blood and gore. Take Deuteronomy 12:27 for example: "And thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, upon the altar of the LORD thy God: and the blood of thy sacrifices shall be poured out upon the altar of the LORD thy God, and thou shalt eat the flesh."
True, the scripture above concerns sloshing about the blood & guts of animals on the holy altar of God. And true, the Old Testament, or Tanakh, condemns human sacrifice as barbaric. But this condemnation is specifically reserved for the worship of the "pagan" gods Baal or Moloch. When it comes to glorifying his own vanity, Yahweh/Jehovah/God/LORD/the Holy One of Israel doesn't bat an eye in accepting human sacrifice.
Judges chapter 11 is a perverted, disgusting tale, if ever one was penned. There we are introduced to a creep—an Israelite judge named Jephthah—who makes a vow to sacrifice the first thing that comes out of the door of his house as a burnt offering (verse 30) in exchange for Jehovah's help with slaughtering the Ammonites. When his only beloved virgin daughter pops out the door to greet her dear old dad on his return from slaughtering twenty towns full of people, Jephthah keeps his vow to Jehovah and hacks her into pieces, sloshes her blood upon Jehovah's altar and burns the gory mess in thanksgiving to his bloody-thirsty god. Without doubt this horrible ending was acceptable to Jehovah because he sat up there in heaven and didn't lift a holy finger to stop the cold-blooded murder of an innocent girl to satiate his desire for absolute obedience!
In II Samuel 21:6-10 we find another example of blood sacrifice to appease Jehovah, which happened when King David came to the throne. God cursed Israel with a famine because the former King Saul had sinned by murdering some people called Gibeonites. The only way to pacify the homicidal Jehovah was to hang seven of Saul's sons on crosses and then murder them. (A fair-minded person should wonder aloud why God didn't stop Saul from murdering the Gibeonites in the first place, and why he then compounded his crime by adding seven more murders on top of it? He or she should also wonder how this tale squares with God's promise that he doesn't punish children for the sins of their fathers. Oh, and I'm going to resist the temptation here to note a bold contradiction between II Samuel 6:23 and II Samuel 21:8, which has to do with the number of children born to Michal, Saul's daughter, whose sons were murdered in the tale!)
Okay, so a human sacrifice isn't the same as eating someone. Fine, but you should be aware that God has no problem with cannibalism. The Holy One is perfectly willing to sit up there in heaven and look down as his chosen ones are eaten alive! Indeed, it seems to be his prescription for those who break any of his 613 Old Testament/Tanakh laws. But now hold on! The Lord does such things, so we are assured, because he loves his people and simply wants to teach them right from wrong.
And so "fatherly love" is why God, in Deuteronomy 28:52-58, threatens his beloved children with cannibalism should they fail him: "And he [your enemies] shall besiege thee in all thy gates ... And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave: So that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left him in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates. The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates. If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD."
Now maybe I'm a simpleton, but as a father I would be a tad bit less harsh with my children for disobedience. I mean, what the hell is it with this "loving" god anyway? Couldn't he perhaps wipe out a sinner's life savings, or give his house dryrot for sinning—instead of unleashing the scourge of cannibalism? Well, if you are a serious student of the bible you will know that when Jehovah gets pissed, he's quite inventive in his punishments. What I mean is that the Holy One of Israel is just a bit twisted when it comes to revenge. If you think I'm stretching the blanket here, I'm gonna give you a medley of scriptures to make my point.
We'll start in II Kings 6:26-29: "As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, 'Help me, my lord the king. The king replied ... 'What's the matter?' She answered, 'This woman said to me, 'Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we'll eat my son.' So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, 'Give up your son so we may eat him,' but she had hidden him." Lamentations 4:10: "With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food when my people were destroyed." Leviticus 26:29: "And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat." Isaiah 9:19-20: "Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother. And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm." Isaiah 49:26: "And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine." Jeremiah 19:9: "And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend." Ezekiel 5:10: "Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers." And finally Zechariah 11:9: "I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another."
Yep! The Lord thy God will sit up there in heaven and watch as his chosen ones butcher their children like suckling lambs and toss them into boiling pots and stuff baby stew into their bellies because dad sinned by raping his slave—no, wait; owning a slave and raping her wasn't a sin. Okay, let's say dad sinned by eating a "cud-chewing" rabbit. God's prescription for the wayward Israelite: dad grab the kids by the throat and mom rattle those pots & pans!
Anyway you slice it, Jehovah has a blood/cannibal fetish, which brings us back to Jesus Christ and the Passover/Easter season. To recap, let's read Jesus' words, this time in John 6:53-56: "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him."
Like father, like son! Come to think of it, like Saturn, like Ninib and like all the other cannibalistic gods of yore.
It's not my purpose to write extensively about the cannibalistic nature of God. I've done that in other articles. My purpose here is to get you to think clearly enough to actually examine your bible in the light of reason and sanity. You can start by telling me what is sane about a god and/or a religion that is obsessed with blood and wholesale murder? Come on! Don't you realize that the Judaic/Christian blood obsession has been the justification for oceans of spilled blood? (Think George W. Bush and his declaration that God told him to invade Iraq!) Don't you understand that if this biblical insanity isn't checked it may well lead to the destruction of this planet? Well, if you skip merrily off to Easter or Passover this year and take a bite outta your god, then I guess the answer is no. You are still one of the legion of bleating sheep out there who, by your profound stupidity, have turned this world into a place more frightening than Dante's Inferno!
By now you've probably heard or read about Pope Benedict's public relations faux pas, which is to say his reinstatement of Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson. From around the world Jews are hopping mad and have presented the Catholic Church with a list of demands to soothe their outraged dignity. All and well. But isn't it time that someone, somewhere, raised the question of a Jewish double standard? There are a number of examples I could use, but let's take the fact that until three years ago sex slavery was legal in the so-called Holy Land.
It's high time that Christians face the ugly facts and understand that Israel is a 'hot spot' for male tourists who want no-strings-attached sex, and the prostitutes in question, some as young as twelve, have been kidnapped—mostly from Russia or other former Soviet Bloc countries—and are being forced to perform sex through violence and intimidation.
The typical scenario is this: a poor Russian girl with few employment prospects in her homeland will read an advertisement for jobs in Israel. The advertised job may be for an au pair or housekeeper, a secretary, hotel worker, model or dancer. The girl may be lured with promises of marriage to a wealthy man in another country through sham marriage broker companies. Once the girl answers the advertisement she comes in contact with an organized crime ring and is kidnapped. She and a group of other hopeful Russian girls are taken to Israel, often through Egypt where gangs of bedoins routinely transport them across the Israeli border.
Once in Israel, the girls are stripped of their passports and informed in no uncertain terms of their slave status. Those who don't readily comply are beaten and tortured into compliance, and/or told things like their parents' home will be burned down or their younger sister kidnapped and sold into sex slavery if they cause trouble. Once processed, they are sold in auctions to crime bosses and kept in brothels where they are hired out for various sex acts an average of 15-20 times per day.
In a March 30, 2006 article in the Canadian Jewish Tribune, Julie Lesser interviewed Canadian journalist and activist Victor Malarek: "'Newspaper ads from modelling and employment agencies promise exciting jobs, but the women are duped,' Malarek told the Jewish Tribune. 'They must submit, or they are raped, beaten and tortured. There are between 5,000 and 10,000 trafficked women in Israel and more than 280 brothels in Tel Aviv alone. It is a human rights issue the Jewish community knows about. They have a voice and they must use it.'" (The Jewish Tribune.)
The fact is that human trafficking was legal in Israel up until October 2006, when, due to tremendous international pressure, an anti-human-trafficking law was finally passed by the Israeli Knesset. However, according to the U.S. State Department, as of 2008 Israel was still not in compliance with the new law. In other words, the law is on the books and sex slavery continues as before! In fact, trafficked women don't generally get help from the police, one reason being that many brothel customers are police officers. Just as bad other regular customers are rabbis and other ultra-orthodox Jews and Israeli soldiers—who get discounts if they are in uniform!
The purpose for this commentary is not to report on this horrific crime—the Internet is full of information for those who want to know. My purpose is to point out to Christians (as they are the main audience of this web site) that forced prostitution and sex slavery—as well as other forms of slavery—is currently commonplace in the so-called Holy Land—a nation that portrays itself to the world as a pious example to the rest of us, as a beacon of light and democracy to the nations, as a protector of human rights and dignity. It truly is a travesty to me that Christians can't seem to see through the sham and, even more, the "holy" book that stands behind it.
The hard truth is that Judaism is founded on the priciples laid down in the Old Testament and the Talmud. In the Old Testament, prostitution is condemned only in those instances where it is connected with pagan worship or when the prostitute in question is the daughter of a priest or a betrothed or married woman. A single girl can prostitute herself without fear of condemnation, as long as it's not connected with pagan worship. Examples abound in the Old Testament of God permitting the selling of foreign girls into sex slavery to Israelite men. Modern Israel operates on these principles.
The inconvenient truth is that the Modern State of Israel is not in any way compatible with Christian values. If you choose to be a Christian, as least learn this lesson about Judaic values and stop equating them with your own.
Further Reading:
U.S. Department of State web site
Jerusalem Post
Video detailing human trafficking in Israel (very graphic).
The Jewish Tribune The Trusted Voice of the Canadian Jewish Community: Trafficking in women a worldwide epidemic, Malarek says
Up to '10,000 trafficked women in Israel and more than 280 brothels in Tel Aviv alone'
By Julie Lesser
Recipe for 20th century nation-building:
1) Assemble an international group of wealthy, terroristic-minded men & women under the banner of God and the bible. Quote scripture to sanction your actions.
2) Pick your spot based on ancient superstitions and "bible prophecies." Quote scripture to sanction your choices.
3) Bribe, blackmail & threaten to gain the backing of the richest, most powerful nation on earth to achieve your aims. Quote scripture to hide your dishonesty.
4) When the time is right, invade. Quote scripture to sanction your invasion.
5) Indiscriminately kill any living thing and then ethnic cleanse the remaining inhabitants. Quote scripture to sanction your murders and ethnic cleansing.
6) Steal all valuable real estate and give it to your relatives and friends. Quote scriptures to sanction your theft.
7) Rename the stolen land the state of Israel. Quote scriptures to sanction your new name.
Recipe for keeping your nation unassailable in the 21st century:
1) Ensure that your supporters control all major media outlets, including entertainment.
2) Produce decades' worth of films, documentaries, commentaries & articles promoting your cause and denouncing anyone who questions.
3) Buy, blackmail & threaten until you have gained the unreserved backing of the most powerful politicians on earth.
4) Buy, blackmail & threaten until you have your die-hard supporters in every major academic institution in the free world.
5) Gain a majority foothold in major economies of the free world.
6) At the first sign of dissent, charge anti-Semitism and cry "Holocaust."
7) Call your political movement "Zionism" and do as you please.
Unless you've been holed up in Las Vegas on a two-month drunk, you've surely seen the heart-wrenching photos coming out of the land of Palestine, which a group of American-funded terrorists renamed Israel back in 1948.
For the so-called Israelis, who are quite practiced at murdering stone-throwing children with sophisticated high-powered American-made weaponry, it's business as usual. It's another year in the proud tradition of killing in the name of God.
For the so-called fundamentalist Christians, who proudly proclaim a belief in every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God, it's an exciting time to be alive. For these consummate hypocrites, the dead, mutilated faces of Palestinian children is prophecy being fulfilled.
Now there's not much use in me belaboring the point. Since 1995 Lawrence, Linda and I have been on the Internet proving to anyone unafraid to think for themselves, the truth about the Jewish and Christian bibles. And so, either you are an ignorant, cowardly Christian fundamentalist or Jew who wholeheartedly believes in a racist, murderous deity, or you're a humanist who can see no excuse on this earth for an "Israeli" to use his American-made F-17 jet to machine gun a group of Arab children.
There's no middle ground.
To hell with politics. To hell with religion. To hell with sticking your head in the sand. Either you stand up to the bought-and-paid-for American political and media whores who allow the so-called Israelis to plunder, torture and murder at will, or you are part of the problem. And to you who claim that "prophecy" is being daily fulfilled in the Middle East, I tell you that it's your ignorant belief in an ancient superstition that has brought down the deadly scourge of Middle East unrest. It's your blindness that allows a sophisticated group of international terrorists to use an ancient blueprint for Armageddon to do what they do to the cheers of fundamentalist Christians who are too ignorant to understand that they're being used!
As we drag our sorry selves into another year, any sane person must concede that the problems facing the planet are enormous, as are the potential consequences. And, as always, "men of God" are in full form preaching impending doom and offering salvation—for a fee. So, what else is new? They've been doing this for nigh on 2,000 years. What they haven't been doing for most of that time is defending their so-called word of God from critics.
Long gone are the days when one could be arrested, tortured and burned alive for questioning the illogic of "God's word." On the other hand, it's not been all that long ago that one could be arrested for opening a store or ploughing a field on the Christian "Sabbath." Nor is it a dim memory when publishing material like we do on this page would send one to prison.
As late as 1919 an Australian editor named Robert Samuel Ross (1873-1931) was charged with seeking to "vilify Almighty God and bring the Holy Scriptures and Christian religion in contempt among the people." The offending item was a satire—Bolshevism Has Broken Out In Heaven—God Abdicate—from a recent issue of The Daily Liar—wherein bolsheviks were portrayed ascending to heaven, ransacking its kingdom, torturing the angels and rolling their own cigarettes with pages torn from the Book of Judgement. Ross was found guilty of a "vile and indecent attack on Christian Religion," and sentenced to six months hard labor, which, after concentrated international pressure, was later reduced to a heavy fine.
In England, the climate was every bit as treacherous as in the colonies. In 1911, 1917 and 1921 John William Gott, editor of the Truthseeker journal, accumulated twenty-three months and two weeks in prison for publishing "blasphemous" matter. In fact Gott's 1921 sentence has the distinction of being the last conviction for blasphemy in England.
Even with their First Amendment guarantee of free speech, Americans were not immune to prosecution for publically questioning the "Holy Scriptures." Many states had laws against blasphemy, such as this nineteenth century Massachusetts statute, which, by the way, is still on the books: "Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior."
Thankfully, our present "godless" society allows a certain measure of intellectual freedom, which has forced present-day bible thumpers into the position of defending the absurdities of their "holy" bible—like the defensive article I found in a recent issue of a fundamentalist Sabbatarian magazine.
Before I plough into it, I'm going to be magnanimous and give the article's author the benefit of doubt, which is to say, as a courtesy I'll take it for granted that he sincerely believes what he writes and is fundamentally ignorant of what his bible really shovels out.
Okay. The article in question can be found in the January 2009 edition of televangelist Gerry Flurry's pro-Zionist Philadelphia Trumpet. Titled "King Solomon's Mines—Found!" author Robert Morley declares that the re-dating of an ancient copper mine in Jordan proves the bible is God's word: "As politicians seek to sign away chunks of Israeli territory, the stones cry out about Israel's link to the land and testify of the Bible's authenticity" he blathers! "Those who relegate King David and his son Solomon to the realm of petty tribal chieftains, or even myth, are having a lot of explaining to do lately. Archaeology is yielding up proof after proof that not only is the Bible an extremely accurate historical document, but that the nation of Israel's tie to the land is irrefutable.... In a stunning discovery reported in October, archaeologists believe they have uncovered one of the lost mines of King Solomon. It is not a little mine either—it is a massive structure, and, moreover, the find fits perfectly with what the Bible says about events surrounding the time of Israel's richest king." (www.thetrumpet.com)
Now Mr. Morely, archaeology has never yielded up "proof after proof that not only is the Bible an extremely accurate historical document," and "that the nation of Israel's tie to the land is irrefutable." Archaeology rarely does that. What it does is quite the opposite, which I have painstakingly detailed in my "Things You've Never Heard in Church" booklet series, such as Where Christianity Really Got Its Old Testament. Another booklet is Genesis: in the Beginning). And yet another is Satan: The Lies, the Myths, the Human Tragedy! Moreover, with the mountain of historical, archeological, geological and astronomical evidence discrediting the entire bible, I sincerely doubt that scholars of any stripe are scrambling to find explanations over the re-dating of one ancient muddy hole in the ground. I say this especially since those involved in the dig are merely speculating that they've found one of Solomon's "lost mines." Indeed, when pitted against the monumental evidence that proves the bible as humanity's greatest fraud, what you are trying to sell here is a macabre joke—even if the mine does turn out to be conclusively dated to the time of Solomon.
It's not that I blame you for declining to wade into the bible's multitude of errors and frauds, since accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative is a proven money maker. I mean, when a salesperson wants to sell a piece of junk they're hardly going to point out the problems to a prospective buyer. No. That onerous task falls to the buying public, which usually fails to do its homework before slapping down its hard-earned cash. This is precisely why selling junk and bullshit is such a huge success.
In her article "Biblical 'Solomon's mines' confirmed by dating" in the October 2008 New Scientist, Catherine Brahic writes: "It's not every day that science and the Bible come together to tell a piece of history. Modern dating methods have determined that huge mines in Jordan are 3000 years old, supporting the idea that they were the Biblical mines of Edom ruled by King David and his son Solomon." (www.newscientist.com)
As glowing as her statement sounds at first read, both Brahic and the man who has been excavating the site since 2008, Thomas E. Levy of the University of California San Diego, admit that the evidence doesn't prove that the mines belonged to the legendary King Solomon. Levy notes that they could have belonged to regional Edomite leaders, who are conveniently not mentioned in the largely fictional Old Testament/Tanakh stories. In fact, Levy honestly concedes that his data doesn't answer whether or not King Solomon ever actually existed, "but, he says, we've brought empirical data that shows we have to reevaluate those questions." (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 28, 2008. Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0804950105).
With the mountain of evidence against the tales of the Old Testament/Tanakh, in my opinion the only reason for "reevaluating" questions about King Solomon, and for digging about in a scorching hot desert to re-date an old mine, is to further the political cause of Zionism—which is the very point that Mr. Morely makes with his article!
If anyone really wants an answer to Dr. Levy's old copper mine (and Zionism), then I suggest a thorough reading of The Bible Unearthed, Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. In that work, authors Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, a contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine, show, with a tremendous amount of archeological evidence, that the tales of ancient Israel's glory days are fiction. Based on Finkelstein and Silberman's research, the copper mine in question could have only belonged to either Edom or to Egypt, which might answer why Egyptian artifacts were found at Levy's dig.
Now, let's have this clear: a 3,000-year-old copper mine in ancient Canaan—whoever it belonged to—does not erase the fact that David and Solomon's "glorious" history was largely fabricated many hundreds of years after their supposed lifetimes by politically-motivated Jewish scribes during the Captivity. And more importantly, it does not erase all the hundreds of serious questions that litter the entire Old Testament, starting in Genesis 1:1.
These facts compel me to ask you, Mr. Morely, why you ignore the clear evidence of biblical fraud in favor of one little re-dated muddy hole in Jordan? Since I doubt you will answer, then I'll speculate that your efforts are made to shore up the humbug you and your ilk preach from a humbug book to a duped audience predisposed to believe your humbug.
Morley ends his article by writing: "The detailed accuracy of the Bible is continually being proven correct—word by word, stone by stone, day by day."
If Mr. Morely and his boss, "God's prophet" Gerald Flurry, are truly wanting to publish information about the "accuracy of the Bible," then let them start by outlining and then answering all the horrendous problems that I, and thousands of others, have delineated. But since that is as likely to happen as the second coming of Christ, then let me ask the dynamic duo one parting question: since Dr. Levy's evidence relies solely on radiocarbon dating and both you, Mr. Morley, and your boss Flurry seem to unquestionably accept it as fact, does this mean that you both are ready to accept radiocarbon dating method as reliable? (Hint: for those who don't know, most fundamentalists decry "radiocarbon" dating as "unreliable.") If so, then you must concede one damned big biblical inaccuracy: the dating of the heavens and the earth.
Come on, Mr. Morely; radiometric dating gives the age of the earth into the billions of years while your bible bluntly gives us a Universe that is approximately 6,000 years old. Since both can't be right, someone is telling a whopper!
But go hence with good cheer, Mr. Morely. Fortunately for your "work of God" and its income, ninety-nine percent of those who believe in the bible never, never obey Thessalonians 5:21's command to prove all things and hold fast to that which is good!
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