When one opens their bible to the first book they read something like this: "The First Book of Moses Called Genesis". Over the millennia billions of faithful have lived and died believing that Moses wrote Genesis and the four books that follow. Since we have seen that this was not the case, that indeed numerous and unknown hands composed the five books of Moses over the course of centuries, then we should keep in mind that the bible opens on a foundation of fraud.
Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." First of all, we have no hint as to the identity of the author of those words. We know he is not "Moses." Moreover, we are not told by whose authority the author writes, nor how he came by the information he presents. We know one thing, which is that the writer wasn't there when God did the creating, so he's not relating firsthand information. And so, at the very beginning of the bible the reader must accept on faith the honesty of an anonymous person who purports to explain the mysteries of the universe and to speak for God.
We might also wonder why, if Genesis is the opening chapter of humanity's book of life, did this "god" miss the supreme opportunity to explain to his creation who he is, how he came to be, where he dwells, how we may communicate with him and, most importantly, the purpose for creating man? In other words, why did not this god inform humanity, bluntly and in language all could understand, the purpose of life? Why omit this vital element in human existence and leave it to dozens of successive anonymous, biased writers, and countless thousands of so-called theologians and self-appointed "men of God" over the coming centuries? Why allow these men to weave their piecemeal theories from obscure, contradictory bible verses, and ultimately cause chaos, war, death and destruction? Could the answer be that no god wrote the opening verses of Genesis, and that the priestly composers of this primitive book had yet to formulate the complex theology of present-day Judaism and Christianity?
First of all, the Hebrew word translated in English as "God" is not the proper name Yahweh, or Jehovah, which the King James translators always translate as "lord", and which will be introduced much later in Genesis. "God" is translated from the Hebrew word "elohim." The problem is that "elohim" is not only mistranslated, it is used throughout the ot in such a way as to constitute a fraud, since it is a plural word meaning "gods." So, Genesis 1:1 should read: "in the beginning the gods created the heaven and earth." The reason for this fraud is obvious to those doing their homework. A reference to plural deities flies directly in the face of Judaism's fundamental doctrine of monotheism (i.e., the doctrine of one god), which has scriptural backing elsewhere in the ot. It does, however, clearly identify the origin of the Genesis creation account, since the much older Babylonian creation accounts tell of "gods" creating the heavens and earth.
The standard rabbinical excuse for this mistranslation is that "elohim" is not meant to convey a plurality of beings, but "to show awe and respect", the "the plural of dignity", or "a way of expressing the majesty and greatness of God".1 This might reassure most, but a dedicated researcher will soon discover that the excuse is shot down by the Torah itself, an example being Genesis 1:26: "And [elohim] God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." There is no mistaking that the "elohim" are talking among themselves making plans to make "man" in their image, which they do, and which, as we shall see, are at least two beings. The word "man," by the way, is Strong's number 120 and it is used here to denote "mankind," or "species."2 These meanings also recall the doctrines of the ancient and pre-Genesis Sumerians, who believed that the gods were in the image of man.[HRt]
The fact is that the ancient Hebrews had a word to designate one god. It was "el," which is used in Genesis 21:23; 31:13; 35:1,3; 43:14; 46:3; 49:25, and in Exodus 15:2; 20:5; 34:6, etc., where it is translated as the singular word "God." Most revealing is that one can find that the plural "elohim" (aside from the deceptive mistranslations already mentioned) is elsewhere translated as "gods" when "elohim" is referring to pagan gods. The most revealing instance of this is found in Genesis 3:5: "For God [elohim] doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods [elohim], knowing good and evil."3 Here the deception is laid bare.
When referring to the Hebrew God, the translators render "elohim" singularly, but when referring to pagan gods, they use the proper plural translation. Let's have this clear by looking at Genesis 31:30-32, where we find the story about Rachel stealing her father's pagan god-idols. Notice how the scriptures are translated:
And now, though thou wouldest needs be gone, because thou sore longedst after thy father's house, yet wherefore hast thou stolen my gods? [elohim] 31 And Jacob answered and said to Laban, Because I was afraid: for I said, Peradventure thou wouldest take by force thy daughters from me. 32 With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, [elohim] let him not live: before our brethren discern thou what is thine with me, and take it to thee. For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them.
If further evidence of translating dishonesty is needed, there is none better than Psalms 82:1: "God [elohim] standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods [elohim]." Not only does this verse reveal the true meaning of elohim, it tells us that there are other gods, over whom the allegedly supreme Old Testament God rules. We can carry this on to Job 1:6 where we find the story of "sons of God [beney ha'elohim]" coming to present themselves before the "lord [Yahweh]" in a heavenly court—a striking resemblance to the pantheon of Zeus in Greek mythology, which is something that will be explored later.
In Job 6, "God" is translated from the plural elohim, but at the end of the verse one god is singled out, whom the translators call the "lord". This is yhwh, or Yahweh, whom the King James Version translators translate as Jehovah. So, we have a number of gods in the story of Job 6, one evidently being considered supreme, which explains Psalms 82:1 where we find God judging among the gods. All of this takes us into the New Testament books of Colossians (1:15-18) and John (1:1-3), both of which make it plain that Jesus was more than just the son of God: he was God himself and did the creating outlined in the book of Genesis. Such a tangle of gods and their roles helps us unmask the truth about the bible's origins.
As we've already covered, like their neighbors the ancient Israelites believed in and worshiped numerous deities (polytheism). This old religion continued until the Babylonian Captivity when Jewish scribes began rewriting old legends and composing a new national bible. It was then that polytheism was abandoned and the present doctrine of monotheism was developed. It was then that the scribes skillfully wove the paganism of their ancestors into the monotheism doctrine of one supreme god, Yahweh, or Jehovah, who, as history reveals, was himself but a remake of a pagan Canaanite deity. These facts explain why the ot composers go out of their way emphasize that Yahweh was one god while retaining the names of their former pantheon of deities in their new scriptures—causing later rabbis to use the excuse that these gods are but Yahweh's many titles. Overlooking these nonsensical excuses, Israel's forgotten deities may be found scattered throughout the Old Testament as El Shaddai, which, if literally translated, means God of the mountains; El Olam or God the Everlasting One; El Elyon or God Most High; El Ro'i, or God of Vision; El-berith, or God of the Covenant, which is used in Judges 9:46 for the pagan god Baal; El-Gibhor, or Mighty God; Adonai, or lord; Yahweh-Jireh, or The Lord Foresees; Yahweh-Rophe or The Lord Who Heals; Yehweh-Nissi, or The Lord of Battle; Yahweh-Shalom, or The Lord of Peace; Yahweh-Tsidkenu, or The Lord Our Righteousness; Yahweh-Rohi, The Lord Our Shepherd; Yahweh-Sabaoth, or The Lord of Hosts.
The fact of ancient Israel's polytheism explains why we have two distinct and contradicting creation accounts in Genesis involving more than one god. Hence, we have the elohim, or gods, creating in Genesis chapter 1, and a later creation story which shows up in Genesis 2:4, and which features one of the elohim called Yahweh, or the "lord god" (Yahweh Elohim). But the origins of Genesis go much deeper than ancient Israel's polytheism.
When the Jewish scribes were busy composing their scriptures to rival the holy scriptures of their Babylonian captors, they had no shame in plagiarizing. In fact, as we saw in Rabbi Professor Adolphe Franck's outline, Jewish scholars are quite candid in admitting that pagan mythology was borrowed and employed by the Torah's composers and later Torah editors, which, some contend, was for the benefit of the primitive Israelites. What that means is that the ancient Israelites, who believed in the mythical gods of ancient Canaan, would more easily swallow a new religion if their old cherished mythology was incorporated into the new. This was helped along by the fact that the myths of virtually all ancient Middle East faiths were derived from the myths of Sumer and the later refinements of Babylon, which means that the "primitive" Israelites essentially already believed the myths being written into their new bible—the chief difference being that their priests wove all the old Israelite gods into one deity.
The borrowed Genesis myths of Babylon were referenced by the Jewish scholars who wrote in the prestigious Jewish Publication Society's JPS Torah Commentary on the opening verses of Genesis:
These myths about a cosmic battle [with dragons] at the beginning of time appear in the Bible in fragmentary form, and the several allusions have to be pieced together to produce some kind of coherent unity. Still, the fact that these myths appear in literary compositions in ancient Israel indicates clearly that they had achieved wide currency over a long period of time.4
No matter the motives of the ancient Jewish scribes or the excuses of fundamentalist Christians, the fact remains that Mesopotamian mythology is the foundation of Genesis, of which we may be certain because Genesis is but a replay of the far older myths of Mesopotamia—the latter predating the former by some 2,000 years.5 More than this, the editors of The Anchor Bible note that the Yahwist composer of Genesis (or "J"), ". . . incorporated Mesopotamian data in his treatment of the origin of man—most of which, incidently, are missing in P—is shown by much more compelling evidence than the mere agreement of initial clauses." The editors go on to note the presence of pre-Hebrew Akkadian and Sumerian words in the text of Genesis creation account:
. . . the geographical term 'Eden', Akk[adian] edinu, Sum[erian] eden, which is especially significant in that this word is rare in Akk[adian] but exceedingly common in Sum[erian], thus certifying the ultimate source as very ancient indeed. The traditions involved must go back, therefore, to the oldest cultural stratum of Mesopotamia.6 [The presence of Mesopotamian myth in Genesis supports the archeological findings and analysis of Professor Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in their book, The Bible Unearthed, whom we quoted in the the study Where Christianity Really Got Its Old Testament .]
With the undeniable muddle of who or what was creating the heaven and the earth, let us move on to the Hebrew word "shamayim" (Strong's #8064) in Genesis 1:1, which means "sky" and in which the clouds, stars, etc. are located. Except for the earth, the Genesis "shamayim" was an empty sky, or space. Here we have the source for the Christian belief that the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun and planets orbited the earth, which is why we still say that the sun is rising or setting. So strongly held was this belief that when the great scientist, Galileo (1564-1642), made the mistake of disputing the biblical teaching that the earth did not stand still, but orbited the sun, he was arrested by the Holy Inquisition, tortured, and finally recanted:
I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the movement of the earth.
Continuing in Genesis 1:2 we read: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." From what did God create the heavens and earth? And even if you can give this question an answer, from whence came the materials used in creation? Also let's again note that the bible is clear that the earth is a stationary structure, which is understandable since the book was written by people who imagined that their feet were planted on firm ground. Consider these scriptures as evidence: "Thou, lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth." (Hebrews 1:10) The sun, moon, and stars were created after the "foundation of the earth" was laid. (Gen. 1:9-18) Proverbs 30:4 tells us from whence men got the idea that the earth was flat: "Who hath established all the ends of the earth?" "He established the earth upon its foundations, so that it will not totter, forever and ever." (Psalm 104:5) "The world is firmly established, it will not be moved." (Psalm 93:1 & 1 Chronicles 16:30) "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof?" (Job 38:4-6) "For the pillars of the earth are the lord's, and he set the world on them." (1 Samuel 2:8) "It is I who have firmly set its pillars." (Psalm 75:3)
Among other things, the above scriptures tell us that the ancient Jewish scribes/composers borrowed from the pagan myths of their day since these sources taught that the earth was mounted on great pillars.
J. Edward Wright, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Arizona, extensively covers this history in his book The Early History of Heaven. Explaining the Egyptian concept, he writes:
The celestial plane itself is either supported by pillars, staves, or scepters, or is set on top of the mountains At the ends of the earth . . . Although these supports appear typically in pairs in Egyptian iconography, the pair in fact represent four supports, thus "the four corners of the earth." The tombs of pharaohs Tutankamon, Seti I, and Ramses II in addition to the figures of the celestial cow or woman have alternative depictions of the sky being supported by pillars or by people holding staves of some kind. These images also appear in many texts. . . . I see the glory of thee and the fear of thee in all lands, the terror thee as far as the four supports of heaven. [Victory Hymn of Thutmose III] . . . The idea that these pillars kept the earth in place inspired the scribe of Thutmose III to state in his inscription describing Thutmose's renovations of the Karnak Temple in Luxor were done "in order that this temple be established like the heavens, abiding upon their four pillars" . . . Amenhotep III, regarding the many pillars in the Karnak Temple , states "Its pylons reach heaven like the four pillars of heaven." Otherwise, the sky rests on the tops of the mountains: "I know that mountain of Bakhu upon which the sky rests . . . 7
Since we know that the earth is not flat, nor is it supported by four celestial pillars, this leave the question of how a god, if he was truly the creator, would have made such a fundamental mistake when "inspiring" his holy priests to write out the account of his creation? While we leave Christians to mull over that question, let's move on to the other problem of earth's creation, which is how anything composed of matter can be without form? That is a scientific impossibility! Moreover, the Hebrew words translated as "without form and void", are "tohu" and "bohu," which carry the meaning "chaos" and/or "confusion." Both of these words harken back to the Babylonian creation myth where the creating spirit was called the "spirit of chaos," and which explains to the informed why this verse is found in Genesis. But the real focus here is that Isaiah 45:18 contradicts Genesis 1:2: "For thus saith the lord [Yahweh] that created the heavens; God [elohim] himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the lord [Yahweh]; and there is none else."
Before discussing the contradiction, first notice that Yahweh was one of the elohim, or gods, doing the creating in Genesis 1:1, which is a clear example of the scribes fusing the multiple gods of ancient Israel into one deity. Now, the reason Isaiah 45:18 contradicts Genesis 1:2 is because the same Hebrew word translated "without form" in Genesis 1:2 (tohu), is used in Isaiah 45 and translated as "vain" (Strong's # H8414).8 In other words, Genesis 1:2 tells us that God, or the elohim, created the earth in tohu, and in Isaiah 45 we are told that these same elohim, or gods, did not create the earth in tohu. We are left with a vial question: Which is it? In which instance is the bible telling the truth?
Despite those who would argue that this is a minor point, the fact is that we are dealing with a book purporting to be the word of God, and directly inspired by him to be written for our edification. (2 Timothy 3:16 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.") If it is indeed the word of the being who designed the universe, with all its wondrous complexities, then should we not expect that this god could produce a simple error-free record book—especially if that book is the much-touted book of life for all humanity? Another way of explaining it is if an automotive technician can write a flawless how-to book about a 1956 Chevy Bel Air, then can we not expect the designer and creator of the universe to flawlessly write something far less complex—to at least be consistent from one book to the next? This question becomes even more important when, as we are solemnly warned, that failure on our part to live by every word therein will cause us to be cast alive into a fiery pit to forever burn! (Matthew 4:4, Matthew 7:23, Mark 9:44-48)
Going back to Genesis 1:2, we read that the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters. In Hebrew "spirit of God" is "ruwach elohim" (Strong's # H7307 and # H430). The definition of "ruwach," or "spirit" includes "anger, a region of the sky, air, tempest, vain and wind". Once again this word harkens back to the Babylonian creation account where the spirit of chaos, the creative force, was defeated in a heavenly war by the gods of the deep, or the elohim. After this war, the elohim, led by the supreme god Baal, a "sky god," or "ruwach elohim," "set the Universe in order, and created all things anew. He is therefore Tutu, 'the creator,' a merciful and beneficent god. He is the one who brings the dead to life; who redeems; 'the merciful one'; 'he with whom is salvation'; 'may his word be established, and not forgotten.'"9
Although the Babylonian myths and their influence on the Genesis tales have been thoroughly discussed and documented in this author's detailed study, Satan: the Lies, the Myths, the Human Tragedy perhaps it would be good to here briefly review the Babylonian creation account: In the beginning was the supreme Mother-Goddess Tiamat and her consort, the Father-God, Apsu. It was these gods, or elohim, who created the universe, which was a vast sea.10 Tiamat, the great dragon or serpent, was known as the spirit of Chaos (or Tohu Bohu) dwelling in the "deep" 11; she was the supreme creator who created the other deities, both male and female.12
The editors of The JPS [Jewish Publication Society] Torah Commentary commenting on Genesis chapter 1 note that the Hebrew word translated as "deep" ("tehom"), means the cosmic abyssal water that enveloped the earth, which is a concept found in the Babylonian creation myth. Most revealing is that the commentary's editors draw a parallel between the Hebrew and Babylonian accounts by discussing the Mother Goddess Tiamat, and her connection to the "deep" of Genesis 1:2. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that the Hebrew word "tehom," or "deep," is actually derived from the Babylonian goddess Tiamat, which seems likely given the heavy borrowing by the Genesis composers from the Babylonian creation account.13
In the course of time the supreme gods Tiamat and Apsu created more gods, or elohim. The most powerful and all-wise of these lesser gods was their son Ea, who was "God of the Deep" and who, in later history, was known as Enki, "Lord of the Earth." He was espoused to his sister, the goddess Damkina, the "Lady of Earth," and was the father of Baal-Merodach the "lord," who would later create the first man, whom he named "Adamu."14 Of interest here is that the Semitic word "ba'al" (or baal) is often translated as "lord" in the ot.
Because the primitive Israelites originated in Canaan, they naturally worshiped the baals, which is why the composers of the ot spent gallons of ink condemning Israel for their idolatry. The editors of the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (Vol. 2, page 2, article "Baal") note that the cult of the baals continued in ancient Israel
. . . until the post-Exilic period (6th cent. on), and were evidently overcome only by the reforms and compromises of the priestly party. Even in the Talmud, however (compiled about 500 C.E.), evidences of the far-reaching influence of the concept and cult of Baal upon the life and religion of Israel persist in what must have been a current axiom of that day, mitra ba'ala de'ar'a hu, 'the rain is the Baal (husband) of the earth.
The importance of Baal on Israelite history is why some Israelite personal names were composed using the god's name, an example being Ishbaal, or "Man of Baal," who was one of King Saul's sons. It also explains why the god's name show up in numerous Israelite place names. Some examples are Baal-hermon, Baal-gad, Baal-perazim and Baal-zephon. This is touched on by Gary Greenberg, President of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York, who writes:
Regardless of my own views, the Hebrews depicted in the Bible never embraced a pure monotheism, nor was there a single universal religion. Many important biblical characters in post-Exodus times, for instance, had names ending in 'Baal,' who was a major Canaanite deity. Gideon, one of the most famous of the early Judges, also was known as Jerub-baal, and Saul, the first King of Israel, had a son named Esh-baal and this son succeeded him on the throne. These Baal names became an embarrassment to the final redactors of the early Bible books and they either added fictional glosses to the text to explain the apparent inconsistency or they changed the Baal name to 'Bosheth,' a Hebrew word meaning shame. . . . Under King Josiah (640-609 B.C.), many severe religious reforms were instituted and strong opposition to idol worship emerged. Whether pure monotheism became part of Hebrew religion at this time we can't know for sure. But, by this time, the earlier beliefs had become embedded in Hebrew traditions and writings. Ultimately, a single redactor or, most likely, a school of redactors sometime in the fifth century B.C. gathered the main sources and traditions together and produced the first version of biblical history in its present form, editing as best they could to eliminate inconsistencies between monotheism and earlier religious beliefs.15
Returning to the Babylonian creation account, at some point the lesser gods, who lived in the highest part of the universal ocean and were therefore called "high gods," took council and decided to bring order to the "chaotic" universe. This could only be accomplished by deposing their parents.
The original hero of the coming conflict was the supreme "high god" Ea, but he is supplanted in later, evolving Babylonian creation legend by his son Baal-Merodach. This "reassignment" of roles disguises the fact that Baal-Merodach and Ea were originally one and the same deity. It is, therefore, Baal-Merodach who confronts his mother and father in a great battle to gain control of the universe.
When the Great Mother, the dragon of Chaos, learned of the conspiracy to displace her and Apsu, she took council with some loyal children, the sons of god, or the elohim. The decision was made to go on the offensive and confront the high gods. But in the first conflict Baal-Merodach kills his father Apsu, whom he castrates.16 In great anger the dragon Tiamat ascends to the realm of the high gods, or elohim, with her loyal children, the sons of god, who are, in Semitic legend, poetically referred to as stars. A titanic battle ensues and the great dragon Mother Goddess is defeated and killed by Baal-Merodach.
In this ancient Babylonian myth we have the first clue that we are here dealing with the most primitive account of the Christian Satan—or what would in time become Satan. It is found in the address of Baal-Merodach to his mother when he confronts her: "Thou hast exalted thyself, and with wrathful heart hath prepared for war against the high gods and their fathers, whom thou dost hate in thy heart of evil."17 The connection between these words and the Christian concept of Satan is found in a scripture in the Jewish Tanakh, or what Christians know as the Old Testament.
In Isaiah (14:12) is this curious poetic verse, which we reproduce from the translation of the Jewish Publication Society's Tanakh (the inset comments [ ] are from the footnotes of these verses):
How are you fallen from heaven, O Shining One, son of the Dawn! [A character in some lost myth] How are you felled to earth, O vanquisher of nations! Once you thought in your heart, I will climb to the sky; higher than the stars of God I will set my throne. I will sit in the mount of assembly, [i.e., the assembly of the gods in council] on the summit of Zaphon: [the abode of the gods] I will mount the back of a cloud, I will match the Most High.
The King James Version reads thus:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
The pedigree of this poetic dirge is proven when we compare it to a more-ancient Canaanite dirge, which is for the fallen Morning Star of Babylon:
How hast thou fallen from heaven, Helel's son Shaher! Thou didst say in thy heart, I will ascend to heaven, above the circumpolar stars I will raise my throne and I will dwell on the Mount of Council in the back of the north; I will mount on the back of a cloud, I will be like unto Elyon. 18
It is no coincidence that the dirge found in Isaiah also mentions Babylon, which clearly takes us back to the prototype for all the ancient myths of Mesopotamia and in particular the Tanakh. Going on to Genesis 1:3 we read:
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. . . . And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.
In verse 14 we read:
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
The above verses present us with two distinct problems. First why would an omnipotent creator, whose awesome abilities are advertised in the very prospect of creation, create the earth's plant life before creating the sun? Sunlight is an essential nutrient required by every life form on earth, yet we are asked to believe that God made green plants, that require chloroplast to process nutrients from sunlight (and we won't even get into photosynthesis), the day before there was any sunlight to process. Such an oversight would also mean that every tree and blade of grass would have frozen solid the moment it was created! And what held the earth in place before the creation of the sun? Bluntly speaking these are mistakes that no high school science student should make, so how can any logical person accept that an all-wise god made these fundamental mistakes when creating the heavens and the earth? And speaking of plant life, Genesis 1:29 tells us that God gave humanity every plant and tree as food fit to eat. We all know that the majority of plants are not fit for food, and in fact many are deadly poisonous! And what about marijuana? Presumably God also thought this good for human consumption.
Another problem is that evening (night) and morning (daylight) result from the earth's rotation with respect to the sun. Without a sun there would have been an evening or night, but there could have been no morning, which means that there could have been no measurable day until the fourth day, which indeed means that the fourth day was actually the first day of creation. On top of this the mention in this verse of creating the stars presents another scientific error, since the creation of stars is a process that is still ongoing. Matter coalesces; stars ignite, shine, and eventually burn out or explode, all of which requires countless millions of years. Moreover, the light we are seeing from the most distant stars now known, are radiating light that take millions of years to reach earth. In other words, stars did not come into existence 6,000 years ago, as Genesis 1:16 must plainly be interpreted.
Okay. How do we come up with 6,000 years since the creation? By noting verse 27 where God created man in his own image. In other words, man was created in the same week as the sun, moon, earth and stars, which makes all these "creations" the same age. According to biblical chronology (which is succinctly spelled out in the patriarchal genealogies), the years from Adam to Jesus account for 4,000 years, and it has been 2,000 years from the time of Jesus to the present. Hence the bible reveals that mankind and the heavens and earth are approximately 6,000 years old. If this is so, then what about the remains of countless humans who date much older than 6,000 years? What about the so-called Kennewick Man, who dates back 9,000 years? Indeed, what about the dinosaurs, whose remains date millions of years in the past—a question to which we shall later return?
Faced with the scientific evidence to the contrary, how can any logical man or woman still believe in the authority of the Genesis creation story? The fact that the opening pages of the "holy bible" presents the reader with such glaring errors should make any logical-thinking Christian pause and search for an answer—like considering that perhaps the tales of Genesis belong with the ancient world's other creation myths—just curious relics of the past.
If what we've covered thus far fails to convince the reader of that last observation, then consider Genesis 1:31 wherein God pronounced everything he had made to be "good". Was it? Was it so? Overlooking the fact that Genesis 6:6 tells us that not everything that God created was "good", as we are assured, let's reflect on the cruelties of nature—the worst examples belonging to man—and seriously reconsider the statement. A bird of prey ripping pieces of flesh off a captive creature being devoured alive is good? A parasitic wasp laying its eggs inside a caterpillar, and the hatching larvae eating the host caterpillar alive from the inside out is good? Cancer cells eating the life out of its host is good? A tsunami washing away 400,000 people is good? A hurricane, tornado or volcano is good? Bluntly stated, nature's destructive cruelties should convince any thinking person that if a god did indeed design such a planet, he and his creation was anything but loving and merciful!
But how about taking a break from my own observations and consider the insight of a beloved American author?
In the early 1900s Mark Twain examined the reason behind God's creation of the common housefly. In his "Thoughts of God" from "Fables of Man," he observed:
How often we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the designing and the execution of some of His works. Take the fly, for instance. The planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him; and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name. It is believed by some that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want. In the course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these persons, but out of this vast multitude there has not been one who has been willing to explain what the want was. At least satisfactorily. A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have not been willing to undertake the contract.There is much inconsistency concerning the fly. In all the ages he has not had a friend, there has never been a person in the earth who could have been persuaded to intervene between him and extermination; yet billions of persons have excused the Hand that made him—and this without a blush. Would they have excused a Man in the same circumstances, a man positively known to have invented the fly? . . .
When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for pastime, but in the way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of long and pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reaching, purpose in view; that his character and conduct were planned out with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen and fore-ordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puzzled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and the consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.
Let us try to think the unthinkable: let us try to imagine a Man of a sort willing to invent the fly; that is to say, a man destitute of feeling; a man willing to wantonly torture and harass and persecute myriads of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if they wanted to, and—the majority of them—poor dumb things not even aware of his existence. In a word, let us try to imagine a man with so singular and so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it is fair and right to send afflictions upon the just—upon the unoffending as well as upon the offending, without discrimination.
If we can imagine such a man, that is the man that could invent the fly, and send him out on his mission and furnish him his orders: "Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth, and diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting; worry and fret and madden the worn and tired mother who watches by the child, and who humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. Settle upon the soldier's festering wounds in field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also prays, and betweentimes curses, with none to listen but you, Fly, who get all the petting and all the protection, without even praying for it. Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch who is perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gum them thick with plague-germs—feet cunningly designed and perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning—carry this freight to a hundred tables, among the just and the unjust. the high and the low, and walk over the food and gaum it with filth and death. Visit all; allow no man peace till he get it in the grave; visit and afflict the hard-worked and unoffending horse, mule, ox, ass, pester the patient cow, and all the kindly animals that labor without fair reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter; spare no creature, wild or tame; but wheresoever you find one, make his life a misery, treat him as the innocent deserve; and so please Me and increase My glory Who made the fly."
Speaking of creating cruelty, let's now focus on the fact that Genesis has two completely different accounts of man's creation. In the six day account God, or Elohim, creates male and female, but in the single day account of Genesis 2:7 God, or Yahweh, created a single human male who "became a living soul." This brief English statement hides an interesting fact. The Hebrew word for translated soul is "nephesh," which essentially means breath. This is of interest because "nephesh" is used throughout the ot in reference to animals as well as man, which means that there was nothing "spiritual" about the soul of the first man, at least from a biblical perspective. Even more insightful Ezekiel 18:4 tells us that the soul (or "nephesh") that sins shall die, which flies directly into the face of many cherished biblical doctrines—such souls, at death, either going to heaven or a burning hell. Significantly, those who dig a bit deeper into their bibles will find that this unknown element of the human soul is also related to the spirit of God, or (in Hebrew), "ruwach Elohim."
Strong's Concordance gives this meaning for ruwach Elohim:
7307. ruwach, roo'-akh; from H7306; wind; by resemblance breath, i.e. a sensible (or even violent) exhalation; fig. life, anger, unsubstantiality; by extens. a region of the sky; by resemblance spirit, but only of a rational being (includ. its expression and functions):—air, anger, blast, breath, X cool, courage, mind, X quarter, X side, spirit ([-ual]), tempest, X vain, ([whirl-]) wind (-y)." The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon gives this meaning for ruwach: "breath, wind, spirit, wind of heaven, storm wind, north wind, sea wind, day wind, evening wind, four winds, rushing wind.
In other words God's spirit and man's spirit are one and the same thing: Air—and in the case of God, hot air! But more importantly, the etymology of ruwach Elohim reveals the Sumerian and Babylonian origins of Israelite theology since it recalls the Sumerian and Babylonian creative deities (the elohim), who were the sky and wind gods who created man out of clay—a man the Sumerian god named Adamu! (Again see this author's study Satan: the Lies, the Myths, the Human Tragedy where the Jewish tales of Adam, Eve, the Garden of Eden and the Sumerican/Babylonian creations tales are thoroughly dissected.)
Returning to the six day creation account wherein God/Elohim created both male and female, let's note that the translation is not quite correct. The Hebrew word for "man" is "ish"—a word that is consistently used throughout the Old Testament, and indeed is used in Genesis 2:23 when God makes Eve out of Adam's rib. But "ish" is not used in Genesis 1:27. Instead when referring to the newly-created Genesis man, God calls him "ha-adam", or "the adam," which some translate as the "earth thing" or the "groundling" (Strong's number 120).
So who and what was "the adam?" History provides the missing clue to the strange tale of the newly-created earth-thing of Genesis: He was Adamu of the Babylonian creation story, who was made by the Babylonian creator-god out of blood and clay—explaining the connection of the biblical Adam to the color red!19
In one of the most blatant contradictions of the entire bible, in Genesis chapter 2 God/Yahweh forgets that he had already created a woman for his man, and we find him fretting over Adam being alone.20
Okay, let's forget this oversight and put Genesis 2 into perspective: Even though he had made a mate for every creature on earth, unbelievably the omnipotent creator of the universe discovered that he had overlooked the principle ingredient for human propagation—the human female! But the story grows more absurd with each verse. Genesis 2:18: "And the lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19 And out of the ground the lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him."
What we are reading here is the omnipotent creator of the universe bringing animals to Adam as potential breeding stock, but discovering that none were fit for the purpose. Now lest you think this is Darrell Conder's interpretation of this account, consider that the learned rabbis of Orthodox Judaism, who preserved the book of Genesis for all believing Christians and Jews, teach in their holy book, the Talmud (Nashim Yebamoth 63a), that Adam had sexual intercourse with all the animals in the Garden of Eden and found none to be a fit help mate!21 After this perverted tale, we find God/Yahweh causing Adam to fall into a deep sleep, whereupon he took one of Adam's ribs and created Eve.
So, which tale is correct? Did God create a male and female during the creation week, as Genesis 1 clearly states, or did he create the female later after he decided Adam couldn't propagate with a female sheep? Both accounts can't be true.
It's no mystery why the tale of Adam's rib and Eve's creation came to be in Genesis. Long before there were Israelites, the ancient priests of Mesopotamia perpetuated fables about the mother goddess's ability to create life from the ribs of humans. She was Nin-ti, also known as the "Lady of the Rib" and "Lady of Life."22 When this is added to the myths about male gods giving birth to humans from their sides, we can easily figure out how the myth of Eve's creation came about. In fact, when the original Jewish priests were "borrowing" Semitic myth for their new Tanakh, there was a debate among the them as to whether Eve was created from Adam's rib, tail, face, or side (the Hebrew translated "rib" also means "side"): "All these opinions are preserved and given equal standing in the talmudic and midrashic literature."23
Returning to Genesis 1:27 we are presented with a distinct component of the ancient mystery religions, which features the belief in and reverence of a mother goddess. If God/Elohim created male and female in "his image", then clearly verse 27 teaches that Elohim, or the "gods" of Genesis are male and female, which is a fundamental of Mesopotamian mythology, and which again ties this account to the place of its origin. (Again the reader is referred to the author's study Satan: the Lies, the Myths, the Human Tragedy for a complete history of this connection.)
Okay. After the contradictory accounts of humankind's origins, Genesis 2 goes on to muddle some other details. For instance we are told in Genesis 1:11-12, 26-27 that trees were created before man was created, but in Genesis 2:4-9 we are assured that man was created before trees were created. In Genesis 1:20-21, 26-27 birds were created before man was created, but in Genesis 2:7, 19 man was created before birds were created. In Genesis 1:24-27 animals were created before man was created, while Genesis 2:7, 19 has man being created before animals.
Perhaps the most important part of chapter 2 is the tale of God/Yahweh resting from his toil: "And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Okay; how about us not asking why this omnipotent creator needed to rest, since religionists will argue that God did this to set an example for mankind and to establish a Sabbath day—although this is technically not the seventh day since God failed to create the sun until the fourth day? (i.e., a day is measured by the "setting" of the sun: Leviticus 23:32.) The reason this verse is important is because the rest of the creating elohim and their sanctification of the seventh day preserves a myth that long predates the history of the Jewish people. For instance the Assyrians incorporated a restful sabbath day in their creation account,24 while the Babylonians considered the seventh day a danger for those who worked:
The shepherd of great peoples shall not eat flesh cooked on coals nor baked bread, nor change the garments on his body, nor put on clean garments, nor make sacrifices. The king shall not ride in a wagon, nor speak as a ruler. The seer shall make no pronouncements in the place of mysteries. A physician shall not lay his hand upon a sick person. It is a day unsuited for doing anything. This day occurred "In the official calendars [of Babylon] on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days . . . 25
The similarities between the above details and the Jewish Sabbath cannot be ignored, nor is it surprising that the ancient Jews, heavily picking over the myths and legends of ancient Mesopotamia while imprisoned in their Babylonian/Persian captivity composing their holy bible, would include a sabbath day of danger. Undoubtedly this is why we find that the word "sabbath" isn't even derived from Hebrew, but from the Babylonian word "sabattu," which means "a day of rest."26 All of this takes us to another, but related subject: the measurement of a biblical day.
According to the Genesis creation chapter a day was measured from "evening" until the "morning", which (depending on the season) is approximately twelve hours. This is revealing because the ancient Babylonians, from whom much of the Genesis creation account was borrowed, measured their days from sunrise until evening, which was about twelve hours. Whatever the reason for the reversal of the time scheme, the Genesis 12-hour formula for measuring a day is at odds with the remainder of the Torah, which tells us that a day was approximately twenty four hours—from evening to evening.
In Leviticus 23:32, we are clearly instructed that the Sabbath rest begins at evening and continues until the next evening. The following scriptures also backs this understanding: Ex. 12:18: "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even." Deut. 16:6: "But at the place which the lord your God shall choose to place his name in, there you shall sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that you came forth out of Egypt." (Also see, Lev. 11:24-25; Lev. 22:6; Deut. 23:11; Deut. 24:13; Neh. 13:19.) Here is the question: If the seventh day was Yahweh's way of instituting a Sabbath day of rest, then which way of calculating the hours in that day is correct? Is it twelve hours, as Genesis tells us, or twenty four hours, as we find elsewhere in the Torah?
What we have here is another of the many contradictions of "God's word"—and this doesn't even take into account Yahweh supposedly telling his people to measure time "at the going down of the sun", which is absurd since the sun doesn't move and if the bible was the word of the creator, then this statement shouldn't be in there!
While on the subject of the Sabbath, it should also be pointed out that the day is considered a memorial to the original day of rest. But how can anyone rightfully observe the Sabbath since there has been no perpetual calendar from creation? In other words, to correctly calculate what day is now the seventh day, we have to know exactly on what day that original "Sabbath" day occurred! Moreover, what of the majority of Christians who nullify the whole question by their abandonment of Yahweh's eternal Sabbath for the first day of the week, meaning their Sunday institution instead of the Hebrew Sabbath? (The Sabbath was to be kept forever, as clearly stated in Exodus 31:17. For those who argue that it was commanded for Israelites only and not obligatory for Christians, Galatians 3:29 says that if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Matthew 4:4 commands you to obey "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." To have eternal life, Matthew 19:16-17; Mark 10:17-19; Luke 18:18-20 command believers to keep the commandments, one of which was to keep the Israelite Sabbath day holy—although Paul slaps Jesus and Yahweh in the face when, in Colossians 2:16-17, he tells Christians to not worry about which day to keep.)
Actually, these questions are academic, as the whole creation week is nullified in Genesis 2:4 "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the lord God [Yahweh Elohim] made the earth and the heavens." Here we have Yahweh Elohim (Yahweh and the gods) creating the heavens and the earth and everything in them in one day. The Hebrew word for "day" here is "yom" (Strong's H3117), and is defined as the "warm" part of the day, which means God created the heavens and earth in a few hours within one day's time. And so, a few hours, a dozen hours or twenty-four hours, anyway you slice it Genesis 2:4 completely contradicts Genesis chapter one's six day creation account!27
Of course the answer here is that we are dealing with two separate Jewish creation legends which were woven together as one at the time of the Babylonian Captivity—something we've already explain. Now some may want to argue that the points raised here are "minor" and "nitpicking." Perhaps, but this doesn't disguise the fact that we are supposedly reading a book written by the inspiration of God—the Yahweh Elohim (lord God) who did the creating. Herein is the real problem of Genesis! If we concede that the book was written by a man or, as easily demonstrated, by a series of Jewish priests scattered over centuries, then the problems are allowable. However, if we demand that the accounts are "God-inspired," then we cannot ascribe the human failings found in Genesis to the creator of the universe, for admitting such a thing strips the book of its divinity and relieves the faithful of their obligations.
To be fair we should note the fundamentalist answer to problems of Genesis. Now don't expect a scientific answer here, because fundamentalists have none. What we find are "answers" like the following 1987 claim of Christian minister W. H. Venable, who said that it was possible, from a scientific point of view, that the information God intended to convey through the scriptures could be received error-free by us today, even though there was textural corruption and editing, or distortion during translation, during the centuries. He made this claim based on a mathematic demonstration called "Shannon's Theorem," which relates to sound transmission, and which in essence states that "If the amount and character of the noise in a given channel are known, then a system of encoding can be devised which, when utilized, will make possible virtually error-free transmission of information between originator and recipient." How this relates to Genesis is explained thus:
Techniques involving encoding of information, decoding by the recipient, redundancy, and the identification of the character of noise that is anticipated could be utilized to ensure that the intended message was correctly received by the intended recipient. Venable wrote [Venable, 1987, p. 169]: "The Bible, by its own witness, consists of an ensemble of messages emitted by its originator, God, into the noisy channel of human history. Clearly, its divine Originator knew the character and magnitude of the noise in the channel of transmission when He composed the messages in the ensemble. Equally clearly, He would have no difficulty encoding the information in this ensemble of messages in such a way that it could be inerrantly received by every intended recipient, in spite of the effects of the noise upon its individual message elements-that is, in spite of scribal errors, editorial or redactional emendations, or by any other occurrences that would cause the text viewed by the recipient to differ in some ways from the text originally committed to the channel of transmission. Indeed, two or more recipients possessing texts differing from one another at various points could still inerrantly receive the same information, because these variations would not nullify the error-free character of the transmission."28
Again, let us seriously consider the being who, we are to believe, designed the universe and created all its wondrous components, and then wonder if such a being would have allowed his alleged instruction book to be so corrupted that it only could be explained by a 20th century mathematical theory on the transmission of sound? When the eternal lives of every man, woman and child depends on it, do you really believe such a being inspired the unscientific nonsense of Genesis chapter one, or does logic tell us that Genesis chapter one is from the pens of scientifically ignorant men? If you still are not sure, then hold on to your hats because we are by no means finished with our study of the book of Genesis. In the next installment we shall uncover errors that only compound those uncovered thus far.
The "Fall" of Man
In the King James Version of the bible one finds that Genesis chapter 3 is titled "The fall of man". It is in this chapter that we find one of the most famous of biblical tales—the infamous Eden talking serpent/snake incident in which mother Eve brought about the fall of mankind.
Now let's get serious here! If this tale wasn't contained in a book which is touted from cradle to grave as the word of God, would anyone give such nonsense any real consideration? I suppose the question is academic since we all know that billions have, and hundreds of millions still do, which to a logical mind is the height of imbecility. Nevertheless, we're going to seriously examine the tale by first going to the root of the talking snake tale—back to ancient Babylon by way of Zoroasterism, from whence it was directly borrowed by Jewish scribes while in the Persian portion of their Babylonian captivity. (Again, this history is fully outlined in this author's booklet Satan: the Lies, the Myths, the Human Tragedy.)
Like the Genesis account, Babylonian myth taught the "doctrine of original sin," a concept that is attributed to the first man, who was called Adamu. The Mythology of All Races informs us that, "The doctrine arose in the orthodox priesthood as a defense of divine providence, when a Babylonian school of philosophers challenged the ancient teaching of the Sumerians, who held that the gods are good and just. It was not they who sent disease and sorrow into the world, not they who created man to die, but pain and mortality originated in the ignorance of a great ancestor, tricked by the jealousy of a god, and so passed forever the great opportunity of mankind."29 However, we find a more complete account of man's fall in the Tagtug legend of Paradise wherein Adam is called Adaptu. In that tale the Creator God, who is called Anu, wanted to keep man in ignorance of the secrets of heaven and forbade him to eat of the "tree of the knowledge", meaning that man would forever be ignorant of evil. But the Father God Ea tricked Adaptu into gaining this forbidden knowledge because certain of the gods were jealous that man had been offered immortality.30 (As discussed in this author's Satan study, these jealous gods were later develop into rebellious demons by Jewish and Christian legend.)
Now let's read the account in Gen. 2:16:
And the lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
From here we pick the story up in Gen. 3:1:
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Let's first notice something usually overlooked by most bible readers, and conveniently never mentioned by ministers or priests: The serpent did not lie in his conversation with Eve! Strictly speaking, it was God who had not told the truth because God not only backs the serpent's claim about Adam and Eve knowing good and evil in Gen. 3:22, he negates his own promise to kill Adam and Eve "in the day" they ate the forbidden fruit since Adam lived to the age of 930 years (Gen. 5:3-4) after his "sin." In other words, the serpent told the truth and Yahweh lied!
Of course the usual Christian argument here is that God meant that Adam would die a "spiritual" death, not a physical one, which is why he lived for nearly a thousand years after eating the forbidden fruit. But that excuse really doesn't hold water since the same word translated "die" in the forbidden fruit tale is used elsewhere in the Tanakh/Old Testament to mean a physical death, such as in 2 Sam. 12:13-14; besides, if God meant for Adam to die a "spiritual" death, then why the hell didn't he just say that? Couldn't he have simply threatened "for in the day you eat the forbidden fruit, your soul shall surely die!"?
Going past this, let's wonder out loud why God would not want man to know good from evil? To any logical mind God's concern doesn't make sense! Indeed, if the Lord didn't want man to know evil, then why did he allow an evil "serpent" into the Garden of Eden to tempt Eve? In other words, why did God put evil on earth? To put this into perspective let's compare what allegedly happened in Eden to the relationship between a parent and child. What loving mother or father would do what a supposedly loving God did to Adam and Eve in the Genesis story? Would any loving parent allow a cunning, evil creature into their home to lure their innocent beloved infant children into an act that would cause their deaths? Speaking as a father, this author will answer for all with a resounding NO! But we, who are taught by our Judeo-Christian heritage that God is the very essence of love and mercy, are to believe that God turned loose the most diabolical creature ever created—universally accepted as Satan the Devil—on two helpless, innocent children, and then stood back and watched the predictable results, for which he pronounced a death sentence on them for their mistakes. If this is an actual account of God's actions in the Garden of Eden, then we have concrete evidence that he is in no wise a loving, merciful being!
Leaving the question of God's morality in the Eden incident, let's ask how Adam and Eve could be held responsible for eating the forbidden fruit, since they had no concept of good and evil? Indeed, they would have had no concept of death, since nothing about them had ever died. This means the concept of good and evil and the threatened punishment would have meant nothing to infant-like Adam and Eve, and yet God held them responsible and set about to exact punishment.
In Gen. 3:7 we read of Adam and Eve: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." This verse (along with the writings of Paul) has been used by the Christian Church to teach that the original sin involved sex. With some stretching one might take the word "evil" from the phrase "good and evil" and place it with the naked bit and conclude that man's downfall somehow involved sex—especially when immediately after man's downfall we read that Adam "knew" Eve, meaning they copulated. From this statement we may conclude that prior to the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve had remained virgins. But if this is the case, then by what means did God intend mankind to be "fruitful and multiply", which was the command he gave the male and female at their creation? On top of this, how could Adam have been that naive about sex since rabbinical tales relate that he had already "done it" with a variety of animals back when God had overlooked the creation of a human woman. I mean, after the bestiality thing one could hardly pass Adam off as a sexual innocent!
It is true that modern day apologists now preach that sex was not the "evil" behind man's fall, but the fact is that the early Christian Church fathers taught thus and it was so deemed for countless centuries and formed the backdrop for the church's persecution of women during the Holy Inquisition. (See this author's study, For the Love of God.) Moreover, it's not hard to discover from whence the "sex & fall of mankind" concept originated since it was part and parcel of the legend borrowed for the Genesis tales.
In the Gilgamesh Epic (Tablet 1, column iv, lines 16ff), we find the story of Enkidu who was sexually tempted by a courtesan and from whence it was declared that he "now had wisdom" and "broader understanding". Enkidu's temptress tells him "You are wise Enkidu, you are like a god" and marks the occasion by making him clothing to cover his nakedness.
Anyone with a pea for a brain can see how this ancient legend was borrowed and woven into the tale of Genesis 3:7 wherein Adam and Eve's new wisdom made them sexually aware. Sewing some figs leafs skirts to cover their nakedness, Adam and Eve hid themselves from Yahweh, who was walking in the Garden in the "cool of the day." It is in this portion of the tale that we find a measure of God's deceit when he feigns ignorance and asks why Adam and Eve were hiding themselves and if they had eaten the forbidden fruit. (See Prov. 15:3, Jer. 16:17, 23:24-25, Heb. 4:13, scriptures telling us that God knows everything—even when a sparrow dies, or how many hairs you and I have on our heads, which is the message of Matthew 10:29-30) Of course Adam did the human thing and blamed his wife, who also did the human thing and blamed the snake. Of course, I shouldn't say that blaming someone else for one's failings is the "human" thing to do, since it's one of Yahweh's tradmarks! He certainly does it in the tale of Adam and Eve, since he set them up for their downfall. (As we progress in our study of the Old Testament/Tanakh we shall see ample evidence of Yahweh blaming and punishing others for things he caused.) Geting past the fact that God was being deceitful when he asked his incriminating questions, why in the world was he walking in the Garden in the "cool of the day"? What kind of a god needs to cool off at the end of the day? Apparently Yahweh did, and well it was since his temper flared when he discovered Adam and Eve's "sin!" First he turns his temper on the snake—not just him, but every damned snake from then until now:
And the lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. (Gen. 3:14)
This verse accounts for the Christian claim that God's curse is why snakes "crawl" on their bellies, and it is why we are to believe that it was a literal snake, possessed by Satan, that tempted mother Eve. If this is true, then it raises the question of the serpent's appearance prior to its "fall." That leads us to the strange Jewish myth that the serpent was once an upright walking, talking creature about the height of a camel: "Like man he stood upright upon two feet, and in height he was equal to the camel."31 (For those wanting an in-depth study of this story, I would suggest Pictures of the Serpent or Snake who WALKED in the Garden of Eden (A Later Hebrew Recasting of the Mesopotamian "Serpent-dragon gods": An/Anu, Ningishzida/Gishzida, Dumuzi/Tammuz, Inanna/Ishtar, Enlil/Ellil and Enki/Ea)" by Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld y de la Torre, M. A. Ed., Posted on the Internet here.
Although some years back the world's more ignorant biblical apologists trumpeted an absurd claim that the skeletal remains of an upright, walking snake-creature had been found in Mesopotamia—since proved to be a hoax—they conveniently ignored (and still ignore) the fact that the fossil record show that present day snakes are the same as their ancestors of a million years past! However, all the talk of snakes confuses the fact that most Christians accept that the talking serpent of Genesis was none other than Satan the Devil, which is indeed implied in John 8:44 and Revelation 12:9, 20:2 and is given weight by the original Hebrew word nachash, which roughly means "shining one" and tying into the above New Testament scriptures.
Conveniently overlooking his part in the drama, the wrath of our vengeful Genesis deity hands out the same kind of uneven justice to mother Eve as was given to the serpent. Lying about killing Eve in the day she ate of the forbidden fruit, in Genesis 3:16 Eve learns of her fate: "To the woman [God] said, 'I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.'"
Every good fundamentalist Christian woman knows that the reason women suffer the pain of childbirth was because of mother Eve's sin. The same for every good Orthodox Jewish woman. In his Antiquities of the Jews (I:4), Josephus explains: "[God] also made Eve liable to the inconveniency of breeding, and the sharp pains of bringing forth children, and this because she persuaded Adam with the same arguments wherewith the serpent had persuaded her, and had thereby brought him into a calamitous condition." Scientifically speaking, we all know this is pure nonsense! Such BS might have worked on superstitious ancient ignoramuses, but surely we all understand why a woman experiences pain during childbirth—just like we all understand why it hurts if we accidently sit down on a sharp nail!
Getting back to the Adam family's punishment, not only did God boot Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, he cursed the soil with thorns and thistles so that Adam and all his descendants would have to undertake back-breaking toil in order to scrounge a few miserable potatoes and corn stalks from farming. Now this punishment is in direct contradiction to God's assurance elsewhere in the bible that he doesn't punish the children for the sins of their fathers, such as in Ezekiel 18:20: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." (See this author's study For the Love of God for a complete discussion on this major biblical contradiction.)
Well, the "evils" of sex leads to pregnancies, so in time we find Eve screaming like hell as she gave birth to two sons, Cain and Abel, instead of just painlessly popping them out while munching on a salad. (Gen. 4:1-2) Like his father, Cain took up farming, but Abel (who must have been the wiser of the two) decided that raising thorns and thistles wasn't his thing and took up shepherding. Little did he know but he had chosen a profession that was pleasing to the Lord.
Even though the good Lord had cursed their torturous labors, he nevertheless expected regular sacrifices from his human grunts. Now we all know what kind of sacrifices Yahweh wanted since the bible makes it abundantly clear that sinners (for the slightest infraction) were to slit the throat of an innocent lamb and splash its blood and burn its guts on his "holy" altars. We are assured that there's nothing that more appeases the Lord than the "sweet odor" of burning entrails arising to his heavenly throne—something (coincidently) that also greatly appealed to the far older Semitic gods of Mesopotamia. Anyway, apparently Cain didn't know this because we have the story in Genesis of his bringing some of his produce, along with some thorns and thistles, to appease a bloodthirsty god! (We know he brought along thorns and thistles because—remember—Yahweh had cursed the Adam family's farming labors.) Although the details are lacking, undoubtedly Cain got a royal reaming and went away "very wroth" with a fallen "countenance".
In this part of the tale we find another bible booboo because God tells Cain that if he fails to do "well" that "sin" lies at his door. What sin? This was over two thousand years before Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. I mean, the only commandment on earth was not to eat of the Tree of Life, which was no longer possible since God had booted the Adam family out of Eden and set an angel with a flaming sword to guard the entrance. But it seems that the Lord was making up rules as he went along, and told Cain what he could do with his basket of veggies.
And so it came to pass that whoever wrote Genesis 4:8 tells us that Cain bashed out the brains of his brother Abel in what must have been a hell of a dispute over the love of God. Of course what no preacher will ever focus on is that the omnipotent creator sat up in heaven knowing what Cain was about to do, and watched this whole sorry episode unfold without lifting a holy finger to stop it! We know this because Psalm 44:21 says that "For he knoweth the secrets of the heart." Job 42:2 reveals that "No thought can be withholden from thee." Proverbs 15:3 tells us that "The eyes of the lord are in every place." Jeremiah 23:24 declares: "Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth?" Acts 1:24 says that "Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men." Jeremiah 16:17 and Hebrews 4:13 adds to the understanding of the Yahweh's complicity in the murder of Abel.
As Abel lay moldering in a nearby field, Yahweh, again practicing deceit by feigning ignorance, asked Cain about Abel's whereabouts. When Cain lied with that infamous reply—"am I my brother's keeper"—the Lord let him have it with both barrels! But hold the presses! Yahweh didn't pronounce a death sentence on Cain, which is what is demanded throughout the rest of Yahweh's bible for far less crimes—but he sentenced him to back-breaking toil: "And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; 12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth." (Gen. 4:11-12)
Now wait a minute here! Wait just one damned minute! Back in Genesis 3:17 when God was pronouncing punishment on Adam, we read this: "And to Adam he said . . . cursed is the earth in thy work: with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. 3:18. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth." So, what the hell kind of punishment was the Lord dishing out to Cain for bashing out his brother's brains? I mean, he was already scratching out a miserable living from a thorn-laden soil, so what else was new? Well, Cain being the obvious doofus he was, didn't know he had escaped by the skin of his teeth and bitched unto the Lord that his punishment was greater than he could bear, whereupon he left and went to dwell in the land of Nod—which brings us to Genesis 4:16 and this curious notation: "And Cain went out from the presence of the lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden." Since Job 42:2, Psalm 44:21, Psalm 139:7-8, Proverbs 15:3, Jeremiah 16:17, Jeremiah 23:24 and Acts 1:24 tell us that God knows everything, sees everything, etc., then how could Cain have "went out from the presence of the lord"? But moving past this point, let's single out another problem with the tale of Cain and Abel.
When God failed to kill Cain for his murderous rage, Cain pointed out that everyone he met would seek his life in retribution. Genesis is very clear that after Abel was murdered, that Eve bore Adam another son who was named Seth because "God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel for Cain slew him." (Gen 4:25 World English Bible) This means that besides Cain only two people were then alive on earth—both of whom happened to be Cain's parents. So it's hard to imagine his complaint valid. But what is more puzzling is that not only did God not demand the death penalty for Cain's sin, he protected Cain from retribution by tattooing him with a godly mark and personally promising a curse on anyone who might kill Cain. Certainly everyone—both of them—knew about God's petty vindictiveness and had no desire to provoke him. So, Cain and his new, needless tattoo were safe. And so, presumably it was in Nod that Cain had sex with Mrs. Cain and produced a son named Enoch.
We have no clue as to where in the world Cain found a wife, since until that time God's word makes it very plain that only four people existed on the whole planet. The standard excuse is Cain married a heretofore unmentioned sister, or perhaps a niece. In other words, Cain committed incest, which was a sin in throughout the bible, unless one happened to be "righteous before the lord," as was Abraham, Lot, et al.! The story of Cain becomes even more confusing when we learn that he built a city and named it after his son. For Pete's sake! Where in the world did Cain find the citizens to people his new town? Moreover, this little notation tells us that the Lord's punishment of Cain was nullified since building a city and going into politics was a hell of lot more lucrative than farming thistles and thorns!
To understand the confusing story of Cain we need to first consider the meaning of his name, which in Hebrew means "smith," an etymology that reflects in his descendant Tubal-cain, the "first" metalworker ("Tubal" means "smith" in Sumerian and Akkadian).32 This brings us to the fact that Semitic metalworkers worshiped a deity called Elath-Yahu, which is a combination of Yahweh and El-Lat or Allatu.33 From this point we can see more clearly that the story of Cain murdering his brother was borrowed from the Sumerian tale of Dumuzi and Enkimdu.
Dumuzi was a shepherd and Enkimdu was a farmer, and both sought the favor of the goddess Innana. When the goddess selected the shepherd Dumuzi for her favor, it provokes rage from Enkimdu. In a later version of this tale, called The Descent of Inanna, Dumuzi, like Abel, dies a violent death at the hand of his enraged brother. This early tale is likely the prototype for later Mesopotamian myths wherein one finds a rivalry between brothers, often with fatal results and is why we find the tale of Dumuzi and Enkimdu being borrowed by the composer of Genesis and being revered today by bible-thumping fundamentalists.
Speaking of Cain, his great-grandson was named Lamech, (Genesis 4:19) who was the first recorded biblical personality to have more than one wife. In other words, he practiced polygamy. Far from condemning such a horrible practice (horrible because multiple wives were little more than sex slaves to their "husbands"), Yahweh condones polygamy throughout his word: Genesis 16:1-4, Genesis 25:6, Genesis 26:34, Genesis 31:17, Exodus 21:10, Deuteronomy 21:15, Judges 8:30, 1 Samuel 1:1-2, 2 Samuel 12:7-8, 1 Kings 11:2-3, 1 Chronicles 4:5, 2 Chronicles 11:21, 2 Chronicles 13:21, 2 Chronicles 24:3, Mt.25:1, etc.
Our next Genesis oddity is found in 5:24: "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." Of all the little notations of the bible, this one has caused more controversy and discussion than any dozen combined. Supposedly it tells us that Enoch did not die, but was "translated" unto heaven—an interpretation that has spawned a lot of theology. This is backed up in the New Testament book of Hebrews 11:5 "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him." John 8:51 adds the words of Jesus on the subject: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. This promise is followed up in John 11:26 "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." However, Romans 5:12 declares "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men." Hebrews 9:27 relates "And as it is appointed unto men once to die." Hey folks: someone isn't telling the truth here!
Genesis 6:1-2: "Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose." (NKJV). The standard Christian excuse for Genesis 6:1-2 is that these were not literal sons of God, but sons of Seth, who is presumed to have been a "godly" man. This argument falls apart when one reads ancient Jewish literature on the subject, such as 1 Enoch 6:1-2:
In those days, when the children of man had multiplied, it happened that there were born unto them handsome and beautiful daughters. And the angels, the children of heaven, saw them and desired them; and they said one to another, "Come, let us choose wives for ourselves from among the daughters of man and beget us children." (Isaac Translation)
and Jubilees 5:1:
And when the children of men began to multiply on the surface of the earth and daughters were born to them, the angels of the lord saw in a certain year of the jubilee that they were good to look at. And they took wives for themselves from all of those whom they chose. (Wintermute Translation).
We should also consider that the bible itself tells us that "God's sons" included both good angels as well as Satan and his fallen angels, or demons. (Job 1:6, Job 2:1, Job 38:6-7) So there is no doubting that the "sons of God" means what it says, and with a little foray into Greek mythology with its "Titans," or giants, and where gods frequently mated with earthly beauties producing heros like Achilles and Hercules, we can easily see from whence the Tanakh composers found their inspiration for this out of place tale! This is made certain when one considers the tremendous influence of Hellenistic culture on the ancient world and the Tanakh composers' desire to present their holy book as a cosmopolitan work.
With this we come to the multitude of problems presented in one of the most widely known biblical tales, the Great Deluge.
Noah and a Waterlogged Tale
Once upon a time this old globe was a very wicked place to live. Now we're not talking dumping chemical wastes, buying elections or doing interns in the Oval Office wickedness. No! Once upon a time humans were into some really nasty things . . . . well, we don't know what nasty things because God neglected to tell us in his word, but we know these people were rotten, filthy and perverted to the core because Yahweh decided that the only solution to the world's ills was to wipe away the whole miserable mess down to the last unborn babe and last blade of grass! We read in Genesis 6:6 that it "repented" Yahweh that he had created man, which is a clear statement that Yahweh changes his mind. (Also see EX 32:14, NU 14:20, 1SA 15:35, 2SA 24:16) Even though we have a blunt statement here, it directly contradicts Numbers 23:19-20, 1Samuel 15:29 and James 1:17 where we are assured that Yahweh does not change his mind! Both can't be correct!
But, not letting another little flaw in God's infallible word tie us up, let's get on to a tale that all know by heart. We'll do that by first taking a glance at the ten generations between Adam and Noah, which, Genesis 5 tells us, took some two millennia to play out. This works out to some two hundred years in between begettings (or having sex and/or procreating to the biblically ignorant). Now it's true that some of those guys had life spans of nearly 1,000 years, but presumably they sexually matured at a normal age, so are we to believe that men "in those days" abstained from "doing it" for two or three hundred years before becoming the proud fathers of bouncing baby boys? As does so much in Genesis, the answer lies in the fact that our Genesis patriarchal pedigree chart was "borrowed" from ancient Sumerian and Babylonian history.
Among the thousands of surviving pre-Genesis clay tablets from Sumer and Babylon we find ancient Sumerian and Babylonian king lists that feature patriarchs who also lived absurdly long lives. Indeed, in the Babylonian deluge tale we find a list of ten kings (keep in mind the ten generations of Noah here), with the last one being Uta-Napishtim, who, like Noah, reigned before a vengeful god sent a universal flood to destroy all life on earth. For those uninformed who might want to blurt out that Noah wasn't a king in the Genesis account, you should know that the ancient Jewish historian Josephus relates that Noah was indeed the king of Mesopotamia just before his vengeful deity destroyed the entire earth.34
In 1853 the tablet containing the Gilgamesh Epic was unearthed at Nineveh from the library of the last Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, who reigned in the 7th century bce. For nearly twenty years it lay in the British Museum untranslated. On 3 December 1872 George Smith, who had deciphered the tablet, sent shock waves through fundamentalist Christian academia when he announced to the newly-formed Society of Biblical Archaeology that tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic contained an account of a universal flood that was, in most respects, identical to the Genesis account of Noah and his flood. In the resulting storm not only was Smith proved correct, within a decade more tablets, unearthed at various locations in Mesopotamia, revealed the same tale. Even more disconcerting, the tale was eventually dated to a time of at least one thousand years before the time Moses allegedly wrote Genesis—and thousands of years before the Genesis account was actually composed!
Knowing full well that Smith's evidence proved that bible composers had borrowed the tale of Noah's flood, Christian and Jewish scholars scrambled to find answers to this embarrassment. Many and sundry absurd excuses surfaced, the most popular of which was that Satan (knowing in advance God's plan for humanity's salvation) counterfeited portions of God's holy word in pagan myths. Because this excuse opened more questions than it answered, more honest scholars simply accepted that the Jewish scribes purloined the story during their captivity in Babylon.
To demonstrate the reason religionists were shocked, let's look at the flood portion of the Gilgamesh Epic:
Shurippak—a city which thou knowest, (and) which on Euphrates' banks is set—That city was ancient, (as were) the gods within it, When their heart led the great gods to produce the flood. There were Anu, their father, Valiant Enlil, their counselor, Ninurta, their herald, Ennuge, their irrigator. Ninigiku-Ea was also present with them. Their words he repeats to the reed-hut: "Reed-hut, reed-hut! Wall! Wall! Reed-hut, hearken! Wall, reflect! Man of Shuruppak [Uta-Napishtim], son of Ubar-Tutu, Tear down (this) house, build a ship! Give up possessions, seek thou life. Despise property and keep the soul alive. Aboard the ship take thou the seed of all living things. The ship that thou shalt build, Her dimensions shall be to measure. Equal shall be her width and her length. Like the Apsu thou shalt seal her.' I understood, and I said to Ea, my lord: 'Behold, my lord, what thou hast thus ordered, I shall be honoured to carry out. But what shall I answer the city, the people and elders?"Ea opened his mouth to speak, Saying to me, his servant: "Thou shalt then thus speak unto them: I have learned that Enlil is hostile to me, So that I cannot reside in your city, Nor set my foot in Enlil's territory. To the Deep I will therefore go down, To dwell with my lord Ea. But upon you he will shower down abundance, The choicest birds, the rarest fishes. The land shall have its fill of harvest riches. He who at dusk orders the hush-greens, Will shower down upon you a rain of wheat. With the first glow of dawn, The land was gathered about me." (Too fragmentary here for translation] The little ones carried bitumen, While the grown ones brought all else that was needful.
On the fifth day I laid her framework. One (whole) acre was her floor space, (660' X 660') Ten dozen cubits the height of each of her walls, Ten dozen cubits each edge of the square deck. I laid out the shape of her sides and joined her together. I provided her with six decks, Dividing her (thus) into seven parts.
Her floor plan I divided into nine parts. I hammered water-plugs into her. I saw to the punting-poles and laid in supplies. Six 'sar' (measures = 8,000 gallons), of bitumen I poured into the furnace, Three sar of asphalt I also poured inside. Three sar of the basket-bearers transferred, Aside from the one sar of oil which the calking consumed, And the two sar of oil which the boatman stowed away. Bullocks I slaughtered for the people, And I killed sheep every day. Must, red wine, oil, and white wine I gave the workmen to drink, as though river water, That they might feast as on New Year's Day. . . . On the seventh day the ship was completed. The launching was very difficult, So that they had to shift the floor planks above and below, Until two-thirds of the structure had gone into the water. Whatever I had I laded upon her. Whatever I had of silver I laded upon her, Whatever I had of gold I laded upon her, Whatever I had of all the living beings I laded upon her. All my family and kin I made go aboard the ship. The beasts of the field, the wild creatures of the field, All the craftsmen I made go aboard. . . . That stated time had arrived: "He who orders unease at night showers down a rain of blight." I watched the appearance of the weather. The weather was awesome to behold. I boarded the ship and battened up the gate. . . . Six days and six nights Blows the flood wind, as the south-storm sweeps the land. When the seventh day arrived, The flood (-carrying) south-storm subsided in the battle, Which it had fought like an army. The sea-grew quiet, the tempest was still, the flood ceased. I looked at the weather. stillness had set in, And all of mankind had returned to clay. The landscape was as level as a flat roof. I opened a hatch, and light fell on my face. Bowing low, I sat and wept, Tears running down my face. I looked about for coast lines in the expanse of the sea: In each of fourteen (regions) There emerged a region (mountain). On Mount Nisir the ship came to a halt. Mount Nisir held the ship fast, Allowing no motion.
[For six days the ship is held fast by Mount Nisir.] When the seventh day arrived, I sent forth and set free a dove. The dove went forth, but came back; There was no resting-place for it and she turned round. Then I sent forth and set free a swallow. The swallow went forth, but came back, There was no resting-place for it and she turned round. Then I sent forth and set free a raven. The raven went forth and, seeing that the waters had diminished, He eats, circles, caws, and turns not round. Then I let out (all) to the four winds And offered a sacrifice. I poured out a libation on the top of the mountain. Seven and seven cult-vessels I set up, Upon their plate-stands I heaped cane, cedarwood, and myrtle. The gods smelled the savour, The gods smelled the sweet savour, The gods crowded like flies about the sacrificer.
As soon as the great goddess [Ishtar] arrived, She lifted up the great jewels which Anu had fashioned to her liking: "Ye gods here, as surely as this lapis Upon my neck I shall -not forget, I shall be mindful of these days, forgetting (them) never. Let the gods come to the offering."35
Any honest person must admit that the above, which predates Genesis' flood tale by many centuries, must be seriously considered as the latter's prototype and thus the origin of the Genesis flood account. But sometimes honesty is blind, as proved here in this typical answer from Christianity:
Scholars and critics promote the following false assertions when they compare Christianity to the stories of other religions. Plagiarism. If the stories are similar and they believe one source is older, they automatically claim that this proves that one was stolen from the other. But, Moses did not plagiarize the story from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Noah was the common ancestor of all races and Abraham, the ancestor of the Hebrews came from that region where the Gilgamesh stories emerged. So the difference in the stories that Moses wrote is probably because God corrected the stories as He gave Moses the task of writing down the history in the Torah.36
There are several obvious problems with the above excuse, not the least of which is the author's blind faith that the Israelite god Yahweh existed, that Moses existed and that "God" inspired anyone to write anything! However, for those not suffering from blind faith, the discovery of the Gilgamesh Epic (and more recently the Dead Sea Scrolls) should explain why it has been that Christian scholarship has often battled with archeology when it comes to publicizing such embarrassing documentation. But let's let the blind lead the blind here and forget the Gilgamesh Epic, and use a bit of logic, which we're going to do by scrutinizing the tale of Noah, his ark and the Great Deluge.
Among the teeming masses of vile, perverted, rotten, filthy sinners throughout the world, we are told that Noah and his household were to be spared death, because, as the Yahweh expressly states in Genesis 7:1, Noah was "righteous" before the Lord! The problem with this godly pronouncement is that God's inspired word tells us in Romans 3:10 "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one." We can only wonder who to believe here, since both scriptures can't be right!
Okay. So let's pick the former scripture as inspired, consign the latter as crap, and just say that Noah was spiritually pristine—better even than all those new-born infant babes, who were destined to be drowned by Yahweh because of his/her filthy perverted life style. Yahweh's favor meant that old Noah had to enter the ship-building business. Now, we're not talking about a barge, yacht or slave galley here! No! We are talking about a BIG, KING SIZED floater—bigger than anything the world had ever seen, or would see for almost 4,000 years!
We won't bother with the debate over how long it took Noah and his three sons (Ham, Shem and Japhet) to build their floating monstrosity—a time frame over which Christians have furiously debated (120 years is often suggested by a careful reading of Genesis). The only certainty is that it must have taken Noah and his three sons a hell of a long time to fulfil Yahweh's command. For the carpenters among our Christian readers, perhaps you could explain to the rest of us how it was that in the decades it took Noah to build his ark, the wooden structure could be preserved from the destructive effects of the elements (think wooden patio and rain damage here)?
Anyway, let's just say the ark "miraculously" survived the elements, and let's overlook how it was that Noah & Sons, Boatbuilders—just the four of them—were able to cut down trees, saw them into planks, forge nails, make pitch and then build the largest ship the world would know for the next 4,000 years. We know that they did the impossible because God's word tells us that they did, which is why in Genesis 6:19 we find God's instructions for Noah's great voyage:
And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. 20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. . . 22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
Now notice Gen. 7:2:
Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. 3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
You've probably noticed that we have a contradiction in God's infallible word between the two accounts regarding the numbers of animals to save. The reason for this is most likely due to the conflicting "J" and "E" sources of Genesis, although fundamentalist Christians will be loathe to admit that. Such a person is Arnold Mendez who makes his case in something called the Good News magazine. He writes:
Atheists, agnostics, unbelievers and liberal scholars have all scoffed at the biblical account of Noah's ark and the Flood. But their criticisms rest on some mistaken assumptions. . . . Those who scoff at the Genesis story often picture the ark as a small vessel, complete with the giraffes' heads sticking out the front and the elephants' tails hanging out the back, sinking under the weight of an overloaded cargo of millions of animals. But this concept is based on several misconceptions. . . . Even a cursory reading of the sixth chapter of Genesis will reveal some often overlooked, but very important details. The Bible nowhere states that Noah had to take on board the ark representatives of every living creature. (Noah's Ark: Was It Possible? 2003 United Church of God, an International Association.)
First notice the demeaning way that Mr. Mendez paints "atheists, agnostics, unbelievers and liberal scholars" by invoking the childish picture of an ark with giraffes' heads "sticking out the front and elephants' tails hanging out the back". It is an age-old Christian trick to subliminally prejudice a reader against anyone daring to question the bible. Actually, the only depictions of "giraffes' heads sticking out the front and the elephants' tails hanging out the back" this writer has ever seen comes not from "atheists, agnostics, unbelievers and liberal scholars" but from children's bible stories, refrigerator magnets, bedside children's lamps, etc.—all of which have been produced for a Christian market and sold in Christian bookstores. "Atheists, agnostics, unbelievers and liberal scholars" simply ask people like Mr. Mendez some embarrassing questions to which they respond by publishing claptrap.
Unfortunately for Arnie Mendez and his ilk the bible does say that Noah took on board a representative of every living creature: Genesis 7:15: "And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life." Since bible inerrantists so often insist on a literal meaning of scripture, then we will insist that Yahweh is commanding Noah to take aboard the ark two of every breathing creature.
Speaking of inerrantists, they all seem to depend on a handful of "how it could have happened" retorts that completely sidestep the most embarrassing questions raised by scientific experts, whom they label as "scoffers" and "liberals". For instance, any high school science student should know that the earth contains millions of species (insects alone consisting of an estimated 10,000,000 species). But as an example of fundamentalists distortion, notice how Arnie Mendez glosses over the numbers to explain how Noah could have taken them all on board the ark: "According to John Woodmorappe (Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, 1996, p. 7), the total of the animals that Noah would have needed in the ark to meet the biblical requirements would number between 2,000 and 16,000—not in the hundreds of thousands as many might suppose." To the ignorant believer, this might pass without thought, but let's remember that Yahweh said at least a pair of all living things had to be brought on board the ark. If Noah had obeyed Yahweh's command, then the ark had to have contained at least some 20,000,000 living creatures! Essentially Mendez plays hide-n-seek games to avoid facing this embarrassing truth.
Brushing off the animal issue, Mendez prudently avoids answering specific arguments against the Flood account, which keeps his readers ignorant of the scientific opposition. This author knows how this tactic works since he too used it when he was a fundamentalist Christian minister and wrote and/or preached in favor of tales like Noah and the Flood. However, to be fair men like Mendez are being pushed aside by more scholarly religionists who are honest enough to explain that the contradictions in the Flood account are due to the "J" and "E" sources who originally composed Genesis. This is easily seen in a number of instances throughout Genesis and most especially in the tale of Noah and the Flood. Here is a blatant example found in chapter 7 where two separate accounts are obviously blended:
5: And Noah did according unto all that the lord [Yahweh] commanded him. 6: And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. 7: And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. 8: Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 9: There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.10: And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 11: In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.12: And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.13: In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; 14: They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.15: And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.16: And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the lord shut him in.17: And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
Notice that the same details, such as Noah and his family entering the ark, are twice repeated in these tedious verses, showing clearly a weaving of two different stories. Indeed, it is things like this that have prompted some religionists to abandon a literal interpretation of the bible, arguing that bible stories are allegorical from which a lesson may be learned. However, those who can't quite bring themselves to throw out the baby with the bath water demand that the answer to the many problems of the Flood tale may be found not in a universal flood interpretation, but a regional splash about. By arguing over the translation of the Hebrew word "erets" (Strong's #776) and whether or not it should read "earth" or "land," numerous bible-thumpers have found a loophole in the Flood story. Despite ancient Jewish tradition and learned rabbinical pronouncements to the contrary, they demand that "erets" be translated "land" and thereby are free to argue that it was just a local flood and that only the varments in the region where Noah lived crawled, creeped or hopped aboard the ark to be saved. With this twist, they feel they have their answer to all the impossibilities of the Flood tale.
Okay, whatever. Let's just agree that Genesis tells us that one big passel of critters boarded the ark. Maybe that would explain why there was no room for Noah's grandfather Methuselah. You see, when one mathematically analyzes the patriarchal pedigrees they're going to find that Methuselah died one year after the Flood—that is unless you happen to believe that the Septuagint contains God's word. In that case you're going to find that Methuselah died some fourteen years after the Flood. Since both versions of God's word tell us that the old boy survived the Flood, we are left with a problem of numbers.
Genesis tells us that only eight people survived the Flood; but old Meth (as we call him around here) makes nine. In other words, if Genesis can't even get an accurate count on eight or nine people, then how in the Christian hell can fundamentalists seriously argue about thousands or millions of animals that may or may not have boarded the ark? In fact, Genesis can't even get the right number of days that it rained upon the earth. Genesis 7:17 tell us that it was forty days, whereas both Genesis 7:24 and Genesis 8:3 claim it was one hundred fifty days. Any way you slice it, these verse contradict one another. Well, since they do and the fundamentalists have no logical answer, let's just move on and look a bit closer at the size of Noah's floating gopherwood menagerie.
According to Gen. 6:15 Noah built a ship that was about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.37 To the ancient world and even into the 20th century, these dimensions were very impressive; but there were problems. Robert Moore explains:
Arkeologists cannot have their cake and eat it; they can't have a cataclysm of the magnitude of the biblical flood and still expect the ark to survive. Each year approximately two thousand ships succumb to the forces of the sea, in conditions that are like the horse latitudes compared to the deluge. These include structurally sound steel freighters larger than the ark, some of which have vanished so fast in a 'mere' hurricane that people have even suggested a paranormal force behind their destruction.38
According to ship-building expert A.M. Robb, there existed an,
. . . upper limit, in the region of 300 feet, on the length of the wooden ship; beyond such a length the deformation due to the differing distribution of weight and buoyancy became excessive, with consequent difficulty in maintaining the hull watertight." (p 355) Even in the twentieth century, the largest wooden vessels were little more than 300 feet [compared to the ark's 450 feet]; these boats leaked so badly that even with constant pumping and iron reinforcement they were unsafe for either rough seas or extended voyages.39
Ignoring the fact that Noah's barge was a tad unseaworthy, our next obstacle to believability is its intended cargo. Dr. Jan Lever, a Professor of Zoology at the Free University of Amsterdam, has estimated that the number of animals going into the ark would be about 2,500,000—that's two million five hundred thousand! It's unlikely that anyone with an ounce of logic will need to be convinced that 2.5 million varmints squeezed into something the size of a football field is an impossible proposition. Moreover, to compound things we must consider that these pairs did what animals do best, and propagated while on their boat ride so at the end of the ride Noah's floating zoo would have increased by millions. Into what space were these critters jammed?
Based on the dimensions provided by Genesis, it has been estimated that the ark had a total volume of about 1.5 million cubic feet. Give or take a few feet, an animal the size of a squirrel or rabbit would need about three cubic feet, while an elephant would require about 1400 cubic feet. Mathematicians and zoologists have come up with a figure of about ten cubic feet of living space per animal on board the ark. In other words, by no stretch of the imagination was there enough living space for Noah's zoo. Even more damning, these figures do not take into account the added space need for food and water storage containers, nor the space needed for the additional critters born in the year that the ark bobbed above a flooded world.
Now let's consider the care of these millions. Two elephants would consume about 62 tons of food for the duration of their ark ride. Seven pairs of one species of cow would consume about 191,100 tons of food. What about those animals (wolves, lions, etc.) that eat meat? Two wolves would have eaten one sheep about every three days. Even if we believe Noah took in seven pairs of sheep, in seven weeks time sheep would have become extinct! What about all the fresh water required for these animals. (Two elephants would require about 152,000 tons of water in a year.) Since the water outside the ark would have been unfit for consumption (think a mixture of ocean water contaminated with bloated, decaying flesh here), where was all the required fresh water stored on the ark?
Okay. Let's give some space to an inerrantist here. Michael S. Cole, M.D., trying to find a way around the question of fresh and salt fish survival in a mass of blended sea and fresh water, assures us: "Freshwater fish certainly cannot survive in saltwater. But, there are numerous examples of saltwater fish being able to survive for extended periods in fresh water. Keep in mind that the whole Flood period was a miracle of God, and I see no reason not to believe that He could keep saltwater fish alive during the event."40
Well Dr. Cole, who shoveled the estimated 800 tons of manure that would have accumulated during the year? Does your "miracle of God" excuse extend to poop control? How could eight people feed, water, shovel manure and generally care for 2.5 million animals? On top of this, the experts assure us that a boat with the dimensions of the ark could not float with the kind of weight we are discussing here. That means the ark would have sat like a millstone when the waters of the Flood rose around it.
Having only about 1.5 million cubic feet available in the ark, it has been expertly estimated that Noah would have required an additional 43 arks to fulfill God's command—and that's just to house the animals, not the food and drinking water! Such astronomical figures inspire some "how-it-could-have-happened" Flood defenders to suggest that God caused Noah's living cargo to fall into hibernation during the voyage, thereby bypassing the need for Noah feeding and watering his cargo. With this excuse they overlook Gen. 6:20-22 where God commands Noah to gather food for his animals. Hmmm . . .
But once again let us have Michael S. Cole, M.D. give us his insight: "There is no doubt in my mind that God could have calmed the animals during the storm, as easily as Christ calmed the Sea of Galilee. (Mark 4:37-41). It is entirely possible that God even caused many of the animals to hibernate throughout much of the trip."41 Well Michael, if the good Lord was so intent on universal murder as a punishment for mankind's sins—sins that he would not bothered to define until the time of Moses—then why not kill off humanity via some of the more inventive but less catastrophic ways we find elsewhere in the bible?
Considering feeding time at Noah's zoo, let's think about all the different, exotic animals and birds and their essential special diets. It would have taken eight people years to grow and/or gather all the required speciality foods and to build the special accommodations (such as climate controlled chambers) some of these creature require to survive. (Yes, yes, yes; I know: another "miracle" of God here). And what about the dinosaurs? We have fossil evidence proving that they once lived on this earth. If we believe the Genesis creation account, then they were created in the same week as Adam, and therefore were clearly living at the time of the Flood; and since God commanded Noah to take all living things aboard the ark, then we must allow that Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus rex, Giganotosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus and their pals also stomped aboard. In that case, something with the dimensions of Noah's ark would have accommodated only a few of those monsters.
The fact is that most bible apologists don't bother to mention dinosaurs. The few who venture into this no-win question, offer a variety of inventive excuses, such as perhaps Noah took aboard only the babies of each species. Michael S. Cole, M.D., writes: "A very real possibility was that the animals Noah put in the Ark were not full grown. It would not take as much food for young samples of each species."42 Others brush off the dinosaurs by claiming that God used the Flood to kill them off—conveniently forgetting the fact that Yahweh commanded Noah to save at least a pair of all living things and said nothing about taking the opportunity to polish off "undesirable" species.
Another far-fetched excuse is that a common ancestor was all that God required Noah to save, and that after the Flood all the animal species we have today descend from that original saved pair. Here's one such argument:
For example, horses, zebras and donkeys are probably descended from an equine (horse-like) kind, since they can interbreed, although the offspring are sterile. Dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals are probably from a canine (dog-like) kind. All different types of domestic cattle (which are clean animals) are descended from the Aurochs, so there were probably at most seven (or fourteen) domestic cattle aboard. The Aurochs itself may have been descended from a cattle kind including bisons and water buffaloes. We know that tigers and lions can produce hybrids called tigons and ligers, so it is likely that they are descended from the same original kind. (See How did all the animals fit on Noah's Ark? by Jonathan Sarfati.)
The problem with the above is that fossil records before and after the supposed time period of the Flood don't support Jon Sarfati's post-Flood animal evolution. The folks at Religious Tolerance write:
Creation scientists teach that the fossil remains of land animals which have been found trapped in the many rock layers were all actually alive at the time of Noah's flood. These few generations of animals all drowned. Some turned into fossils and were trapped in the layers of sedimentary rock which were laid down during the 150 days of the flood.
With our present knowledge, it appears impossible to harmonize this belief with the actual number of fossils in existence.
Robert Schadewald wrote: "Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota, has studied the Karroo Formation [in Africa]. He asserts that the animals fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the size of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A minute's work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion animals in the Karoo formation could be resurrected, there would be twenty-one of them for every acre of land on earth." That is, if all of the fossils of animals in the Karroo Formation had been alive at one time, were drowned during the flood of Noah, and ended up evenly spaced around the entire land surface of the earth, there would be 21 animals per acre. A very conservative estimate is that there are about 100 fossils elsewhere on earth for each fossil in the Karroo Formation in Africa. Thus, assuming that all of these animals were evenly distributed, there would have been over 2,100 living animals per acre of land—"ranging from tiny shrews to immense dinosaurs" when the flood hit. This is clearly impossible. (CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE BIBLE'S FLOOD STORY AND THE FOSSIL RECORD)
Some put up the argument that insects were not included in God's "to be saved" list, so these were probably not brought aboard. Jonathan Sarfati writes: "The Flood wiped out all land animals which breathed through nostrils except those on the Ark (Genesis 7:22). Insects do not breathe through nostrils but through tiny tubes in their exterior skeleton." Admittedly this excuse relieves the inerrantists of the need to explain about the special needs required for the roughly 10 million insect species on earth. However, logic dictates that their exclusion would have doomed to extinction all insect life on earth. Realizing this error, fellow inerrantists claim that insects could have survived the Flood outside the ark by living on pieces of floating debris. Arnold Mendez uses that excuse: "Many insects could have thrived on floating patches of vegetation." Right Arnie! There those little green, red, blue and black polka-dotted critters were clinging to "floating patches of vegetation" in the midst of the most devastating hurricane-force flood the earth had ever known—and they did so for nearly one year without all their speciality needs and without the "floating patches of vegetation" becoming waterlogged and sinking amidst the crashing, rolling, whirlpooling waves of the Flood. Without doubt Arnie, another "miracle" of God!
Let's get past the number of creepy crawlies that boarded the ark and consider how they made the journey to Mesopotamia where old Noah and his three boys were busy hammering and sawing. How did they get there? Did Noah go on a collecting expedition? Do we accept bible thumping "logic" that God inspired a pair of each animal on earth to travel to Mesopotamia? If so, then how long would it have taken a North American snail or a fluttering butterfly from Argentina to make it all the way to Noah's house—not to mention the question of how a snail could have crossed oceans, rivers, lakes, snow-capped mountain peaks, deserts, etc. This is a critical consideration since some insects only live a few days. What about the slow-moving giant tortoises from the Galapagos Islands, or the sloths from South America? They would have had to start their journey to Mesopotamia before the creation of the earth to have made it in time for the sailing of the SS. Ark! (This doesn't even take into account their special dietary needs during the journey.)
Okay, let's just say it was another "miracle" and that they all made it in time for their boat ride. When the deluge started we are told that it rained for forty days and nights until the waters of the Flood covered the highest mountain top to the height of fifteen cubits. (The 40 days duration is declared in 7:17, whereas, if you remember, both Genesis 7:24 and Genesis 8:3 say it was 150 days!) This would mean Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, was under about 22 feet of water, which places the Flood level over 29,000 feet, or some five miles deep! That is as high as a 767 jet now flies. From whence came all this water?
If the Genesis account is true, the falling rain would have had to produce about 726 feet of water per day, 30 feet per hour, 6 inches per minute, 1 inch every 10 seconds! Let's take this math further and notice that in Gen. 7:20, 8:4-5 that after the rain ceased, the water level began to drop at the rate of 15 cubits in 74 days. If a biblical cubit equals 18 inches, then the water level dropped about 4 inches per day. This means that it would have taken at least 87,150 days for the earth's water level to be back to normal. That's almost 239 years after the Flood! (Do you now see why apologists like Arnold Mendez and Jonathan Sarfati go to any lengths to avoid discussing the specifics of the Flood tale, or why they're so eager to fall back on the "miracle of God" excuse?) All these numbers have created a lot of headaches for religionists, which is bluntly admitted by the well-known bible apologist, Gleason Archer:
Formidable scientific problems are raised by a universal flood, according to [Dr. Bernard] Ramm's summary. Problems such as: 1. According to the best estimates, to cover the highest Himalayas would require eight times more water than our planet now possesses. 2. The withdrawal of so great a quantity of water constitutes an almost insurmountable problem, for there would be no place to which it could drain off. The mechanics of this abatement of water would certainly be difficult, for the atmosphere could not possibly hold that much water in evaporated form, and it is doubtful if any underground cavities in the earth could receive more than a small fraction of this additional volume of water. 3. Scarcely any plant life could have survived submersion of under salt water for over a year, and the mingling of ocean water with the rain must have resulted in a lethal saline concentration. . . . practically all marine life would have perished, except those comparatively few organisms which can withstand tremendous pressure, for 90 percent of present marine life is found in the first 50 fathoms. . . 4. Certain areas of the earth's surface show definite evidence of no submersion. . . . It cannot be maintained, however, that even a local flood will solve these scientific difficulties. . . . How could the level have been that high at [Mt.] Ararat without being the same height over the rest of the world?43
With a darrellwconder.com pat on the back for a bit of honesty, let's elaborate on Mr. Archer's observations by concentrating on the altitude of the ark. At the height of the Flood it would have been floating as high in the atmosphere as a jet flies without any pressurized cabins for the inhabitants. What about oxygen? I mean, what the hell did everyone breath way up there? What about the freezing temperatures at this altitude and the effects on those tropical animals that would die under such conditions?
Speaking of oxygen, Gen. 6:16 tells us that the ark had only one small window. How could so many creatures breathe with only one little itsy-bitsy window that God sealed for at least 190 days (150 days plus an additional 40 days; Gen. 8:3-6)? Even worse, if God did indeed seal the boat (as we are assured in Gen. 7:16), then there was no way to dump the accumulated tons of dung and lake-size pools of urine, so what about the methane gas that would have built up inside the ark? Hey, we're talking a powerful bomb here—just waiting for Mrs. Noah to light an oil lamp! (From the National AG Safety Database we read: "Methane is continuously produced in manure pits and released into the air at a steady rate. A colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas that is lighter than air, methane generally dissipates from a confinement building. The primary danger of methane accumulation in a facility is the risk of a fiery explosion from a spark if the methane/oxygen mix is in proper proportions. The risk of fire is greater in a poorly-ventilated structure.")
Coming back down to earth and outside the ark, what about the effect of so much water on the surface of the earth, a question Arche
