First of all, the basic Christian debate concerning Harry Potter comes from the following passage in Deuteronomy:

“There shall not be found in you one who passes his son or his daughter through the fire, one that uses divination, an observer of clouds, or one divining, or a whisperer of spells, or a magic charmer, or one consulting mediums, or a spirit-knower, or one inquiring of the dead. For all doing these things are an abomination to Jehovah. And because of these filthy acts Jehovah your God is dispossessing these nations before you.” (Deu 18:10-12)

Therefore, divination, magic, talking to the dead, spells – all stuff that takes place at Hogwarts – is out. Christians are upset mostly because Harry Potter is so damn popular, and everybody, even good little Christian kids, would love to be a witch and have magical powers. Although the magic in Harry Potter is little different from the magic in Narnia or the Lord of the Rings, or for that matter Miss Poppins, the brilliant reality of the Harry Potter world is just a little too realistic, not fairtytale enough, and therefore scathingly abused by many, but not all, Christians.

To get back on track – it is in breaking down the passage above that Connie Neal fails so miserably. She says, “Deuteronomy 18:9-14 is God’s list of things we must NEVER try or dabble in… Parents, NEVER offer your Children as Human Sacrifice. I’m sure glad God put that one in there!  Some people actually have given their children as sacrifices to demons or idols. They would kills their children or put them in the arms of an idol called Baal and burn them to death!”

She makes it sound is if, without God’s biblical warning, we’d all be killing our children all the time… but more importantly, she completely misconstrues the biblical quote through her lack of familiarity with Pagan customs. “Passing a son or daughter through fire” does not mean sacrificing them, to Baal or any other diety. It is a practice recorded in many Greek and Roman myths as a magical way of making an infant strong, almost divine. As many pagan heroes secretly received this treatment at the hands of gods in myths, it was probably a widespread practice for parents, hoping to strengthen and protect their children, to pass them through the fire. “Child sacrifice” is not nearly so common or frequent among pagans as Christians love to think it was.

At the same time – she completely ignores one of the most frustrating episodes in the Bible for non-Christians to deal with: the sacrifice of Isaac. If God really wanted to forbid us from sacrificing our children in Deuteronomy, what was he doing commanding Abraham to take his only son Isaac out in the woods and slit his throat? (Although Isaac would probably have been burned up – such was the treatment of offered sacrifices – all of the classic artwork shows Abraham bearing over his son violently with a sword). Was child-sacrifice OK in this instance because God commanded it? Are we supposed to obey all of God’s laws, until he comes and tells us differently? (It would seem so – for there are hundreds, if not thousands of accounts of murder in the old testament… a few of which were not even commanded by God but still applauded by Jews and Christians; most have to do with a Jewish warrior dispatching hordes of rival clans competing for their territory.)

What about Job’s seven sons and seven daughters that God killed (or allowed Satan to kill) in order to give Job a chance to prove his faith? What about Jesus not allowing a loving son to go and bury his father before following him – implying that all family ties are worthless and that only Jesus matters? Maybe I’m branching out too much at this point, but the assumption that there was no love in the world at all, and that parents gladly threw away their children any chance they got, is a dangerous Christian delusion that cannot be tolerated.

As a further note – The problem with Harry Potter in Christians’ eyes is that they believe in magic. They don’t think it’s fantasy; they think it is real, and also forbidden. There is nothing wrong with this belief – as long as it is consistent. If no Harry Potter, then no Narnia or other fantasy tales that include magic.

“Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of the sinners, and has not sat in the seat of the evil men. But his will is in the law of the Lord; and in His law he shall meditate day and night. He shall be like the tree which is planted by the streams of water, which shall yield its fruit in its due season, and its leaf shall not scatter, and in everything he does he prospers.”

“Not so are the ungodly, not so; but rather they are like the chaff which the wind scatters upon the face of the earth. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in judgment, nor the sinners in the council of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous; but the way of the ungodly shall perish. ALLELUIA.”

So, the three little pigs story is pretty much based on Christian theology (or, more precisely, folklore wisdom that got written into the Bible.) The basic idea is that being good, being clean and sinless, makes you strong like a tree (or having built a brick house) and, sinful fun-loving cretans will get blown away by the big bad wolf (i.e. sin or Satan.)

That’s a pretty decent interpretation. But this quote is also anti-Christian. Christ, in both words and deeds, taught that we need to hang out with the sinners, hang out with the prostitutes, drunks and lepers. Christ taught that ‘purity’ is not a physical state that can be spread like the flu, but an internal peace that is self-controlled. Actually this quote is a remnant of Old Testament self-righteousness which Jesus condemns. Don’t be proud. Pray in secret. Don’t assume you’ve made it into heaven, Jesus warns; be prepared.

Building up a strong character is the moral equivalent to a brick house. Charity, kindness, wisdom, and faith are all bricks. But once you’ve built your house, make sure to share it with those in need.

At any rate – a useful tool, with one grave exception: no doubt the purpose of this tool and its primary role will be to justify/prove that the Bible is historically valid. That the places mentioned in the Bible really existed, and therefore the author is reliable and we should believe all accounts as likewise factual, is a common apologetic argument. It’s also stupid. It’s the exact same as saying that Troy is a real, archaeological site, and that therefore all the mythological elements in Homer’s “Iliad” probably happened.

I’ll say it again: archaeological evidence that confirms places mentioned in the Bible only proves that the storyteller was a real person trying to tie his myth in with contemporary events, to make it seem realistic. It cannot not possibly prove any supernatural event also described in reference to that location.

Ok – he got screwed by Laban into working for 7 years for the wrong daughter (Leah) but gets the curvy Rachel too for only another 7 years of work; and he eventually pays Laban back by mysteriously breeding striped cattle and keeping only the strong ones for himself.

But then God gets involved. The purpose is a little unclear, but it seems he feels bad for Leah because Jacob loves Rachel more. (Well, she is the one he wanted, after all.) So God opens Leahs womb but closes up Rachel’s. Rachel can’t stand that her sister is having all the babies, so she makes Jacob sleep with her slavegirl, Bilhah.

“I have fought a fateful battle with my sister, and I have won!” cries Rachel after Bilhah produces a couple of kids (Genesis 30:7). But then Leah took her slave-girl Zilpah and gave her to Jacob, Zilpah bore two more sons. Jacob, meanwhile, is having lots and lots of sex.

But apparently, not enough to please the women. Leah’s son Reuben found some mandrakes (aphrodisiacs) but Rachel wanted them; so she traded sex with her husband in return for the mandrakes, saying, “Very well, he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.”

When Jacob returned from the field, Leah went out to meet him and said “You must come to me, for I have hired you at the price of my son’s mandrakes.”

Jacob is being used for sex by 4 women. Sounds pretty good to me.

In the foreground, a very angry and zealous prophet takes a sword and chops down the prophets of Baal, who flee for their lives, cringing and begging and – in some cases – bleeding to death.

Who are the good guys in this picture? Well, if you’re religious, then Elijah is. Baal, in the Old Testament, is never called a false idol or illusion. Baal is another God, a competitor, who the Israelites turned back to again and again. We don’t know exactly what he offered that Yahweh did not (peace, understanding?) but he was tempting enough to steal Israelites away over and over. Most of the Old Testament prophets like Elijah are testament to the fact that Israel was often and openly worshipping other gods, including Attis, Cybille, Baal and others.

Elijah, being the most holy and most loyal, simply did what any conservative religious person of faith would do when threatened with extinction in the face of other, more popular religous movements: kill all trespassers. Israel was being punished by God because Israelites were worshipping Baal. Solution? Kill the priests of Baal. Burn their temples, destroy (or steal and put in Christian churches) their artifacts. This pattern is repeated throughout the history of the Jews and the Christians, who often did the same thing to Pagan counterparts. But look at the picture more closely – who is holding the sword? Who is angry? Who is wearing laurel wreaths, symbols of peace? Who, in other words, has the real ethical upper-hand?

I’ve said it before and I’ll stress it here, religious tolerance is impossible for the religious mind. If there is only Truth and Falsity, and if God exists, then the eventual, universal acceptance of the Truth is mandatory and inescapable. Whether we help God along by destroying His enemies, slowly convert them to The True faith, or simply let them die out as Other, we cannot afford to let them gain enough power to become serious rivals. And if they do gain enough power to take away supporters of our faith, then tolerance is no longer an option. Take up weapons (of conflict, speech, protest, or whatever) and fight for survival!

Isaac became a farmer, and grew so rich that the Philistines began to envy him. They kicked him out of town, but he dug a new well and settled, increasing his wealth. Later, Abimelech sought him ought and made a treaty with him.

Isaac and Esau

Rebekah and Isaac had twin sons, Esau and Jacob.

Esau was a skilled hunter, a man of the open country, and Isaac preferred him to his brother because of his taste for wild game. Jacob, on the other hand, was a quiet momma’s boy and stayed around the tents all day. But Jacob was crafty: he buys Esau’s birthright for some soup, rather than nicely feeding his hungry brother.

Later, Jacob becomes even more devious (with the help of his mother Rebekah). His father is old and blind and tells Esau to go out in the fields and bring him so meat for a special dish – and that he will give Esau, the oldest son, a special blessing. Rebekah and Jacob quickly kill two lambs to prepare the dish themselves. Then Rebekah dresses Jacob in Esau’s clothes, and even covers his smooth skin with wool from the sheep so to make him seem more like his manly older brother, so that Isaac will be fooled.

And fooled he was! Isaac blessed the wrong son. When Esau comes back and fthe truth is revealed, Isaac is upset but says he can’t take back his blessing. “Your brother came by fraud and took your blessing. I blessed him, and blessed he will remain.”

Esau cries, “Have you not kept a blessing for me?”

Isaac replies, “I have already made him your master; I have given him all his brothers as servants, I have given him grains and wine to sustain him. So what can I do for you, son?” Isaac tells Esau he will live by the sword, homeless, and be his brother’s slave.

Ouch! We must realize – already from this early point in history, the Covenant God established with the Jewish people through the Patriarchs is entirely dependent on characters like Isaac, who cheat and steal. Cheating and stealing was at that time admired, as wit and intelligence; parallels include Homer’s Odysseus and other Sumerian and Near East texts.

Continuing with the narrative, Jacob is sent away by Rebekah, to protect him from the rightfully angry Esau. Jacob is also given instructions not to marry a Canaanite woman. (Rebekah is severely racist and disgusted by the Hittite woman whom Esau marries). Esau learns for the first time how his parents feel about Hittite women so he takes a third wife, still trying to get into his parents good favor. He marries Ishmael’s daughter (Isaac’s niece, Jacob’s cousin.)

Jacob

Jacob’s story is complicated. On the one hand, he represents some of the traits of a blasphemer. He is independent, confident, and brave. Unfortunately, he is not good. His actions are always opportunistic: He’s always trying to turn a quick buck or get something out of a situation. He never does anything for free – not even for God. This is what principally separates him from characters like Noah or Abraham: he has no sense of duty or loyalty to the God of his forefathers.

We might well wonder how Jacob got to be the central character of this divine heritage. Unlike Esau, who was hard-working, loyal, and honest, Jacob is kind of a jerk. It seems God isn’t seeking good people, or even obedient people. Perhaps, at least in regard to Jacob, he was seeking ambitious people. Looking at God as a learner who is increasing his skills at managing the human race, God at this point needs people who need him. If he started with a king, they would say, “What can you give me that I don’t already have?” God takes migrants, who have no status or power. He looks for people who have big hopes and dreams – ambitious people, opportunists who are willing to do big favors for big rewards.

This works for awhile, but Jacob represents the flaw with God’s new approach to divine management: Jacob gets too confident. He is a rich man’s kid. His mother taught him how to lie and cheat his own father, and – instead of punishment, Jacob was rewarded with power and riches. Jacob has become spoiled, and learned how to manipulate too successfully.

This is demonstrated as Jacob travels to Haran to find a wife from his mother’s brother’s family. On the way, he has his famous dream about a ladder coming down from heaven and God speaking to him. God tells him, I am the God of your ancestors, and I will be your God as well, promising Jacob a lot of descendants. Jacob is not so easily convinced as his forefathers. He has some demands of his own:

“If God remains with me and keeps me safe on this journey I am making, if he gives me food to eat and clothes to wear, and if I come home safe to my father’s home, then Yahweh shall be my God.” (Genesis 28:20)

This passage is remarkable! Jacob is bartering with God. Obedience and loyalty have nothing to do with it. Jacob is making demands; it is God who is trying to sell his services to Jacob and Jacob taking Him for a test drive.

Wives, Whores and Sex-Slaves

Jacob finds his mother’s brother, Laban, and falls in love with his curvy daughter, Rachel. Laban promises to give Jacob Rachel’s hand in marriage in exchange for 7 years of work. Unfortunately, Laban is about as trustworthy as his sister, Rebekah. After 7 years of work, Laban gave Jacob a big wedding ceremony, but at night exchanged the brides! He put Leah, Rachel’s older sister, in bed with Jacob and so that Jacob slept with her (can’t return damaged goods). In the morning, Jacob found out he’d been tricked. Laban told him, if Jacob promised to work another 7 years, he would get to have Rachel as well – and in just a week! So Jacob got two brides. These stories come from an oral tradition – they would have been fascinating and exciting stories to tell around a fire. Unfortunately, writing them down doesn’t do them justice.

Jacob loves Rachel more than Leah, but God sees that Leah is unloved so he opens her womb and makes Rachel barren. Leah gave birth to four sons. Rachel is mortified that her sister is more fertile than she is, so she gives Jacob her slavegirl, Bilhah. Bilhah had two sons, and Rachel said, “I have fought a fateful battle with my sister, and I have won!” (Genesis 30:7). Then Leah, seeing that she had ceased to bear children, took her slave-girl Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as concubine. Zilpah bore two more sons.

The moral of the story? a) Life is a fierce competition and you are unworthy unless you own a slave that can make babies b) Slaves should be used for sex and reproduction c) Men should have lots of wives and women to screw.

Leah’s son Reuben found some mandrakes (aphrodisiacs) and Rachel wanted them. She came to Leah and asked for some of the mandrakes, but Leah said “is it not enough to have taken my husband, without your taking my son’s mandrakes as well?”

Rachel said, “Very well, he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.”

When Jacob returned from the field, Leah went out to meet him and said “You must come to me, for I have hired you at the price of my son’s mandrakes.” Leah conceived two more sons and said “Now my husband will bring me presents, for I have borne him six sons.”

Finally, God remembers Rachel (was he too busy or what?) and opens her womb. She gives birth to Joseph.

Meanwhile, Jacob became rich breeding animals. Somehow he managed to breed striped goats and sheep by having them look at reeds when they were mating, and somehow this is a new form of treachery – which the Bible praises as cunning and wit. Through a treaty he made with his father-in-law, Laban, this trick allows him to keep the sturdy and strong animals while giving Laban the feeble ones.

When Laban changed the deal – asking for either the striped offspring or the white ones, Jacob changed his breeding tactics. This he attributed to a miracle by God, telling his wives that obviously God favored him. (Liar!)

Finally, Laban and his family started to get angry that Jacob was somehow cheating them out of their wealth, giving them sickly sheep – so Jacob ran away (Pansy). Rachel, meanwhile, stole all the idols from her father’s household before they left (How low can you get?).

Laban chased after them and accuses Jacob, “What do you mean by outwitting me and then carrying off my daughters like prisoners of war? Why did you flee in secret, stealing away without letting me know, so that that I could send you on your way rejoicing with songs and the music of tambourines and harps? You have behaved like a fool.” (Genesis 31:26)

Laban also says, “Now it may be you really went because you had such a longing for your father’s house, but why did you steal my gods?”

Jacob swears that he did not steal the gods. He tells Laban to search all of his people’s possessions and put anyone to death who was found guilty. (He did not know it was his own wife, Rachel, who had stolen the gods). Rachel, meanwhile, had put the gods under her camel seat and faked having her period so that she didn’t have to stand up for her father’s presence. Another Biblical example of how cunning and lies increase wealth.

Jacob finally heads home. He is still afraid of his brother Esau, and sends lots of rich presents ahead of him to win his favor.

Jacob Wrestles God

There is a curious incident, just before Jacob meets Esau, called “Jacob wrestles an God.”
Someone wrestled with Jacob all night. We don’t know who, but the story makes it clear that it was God. God wrestled with Jacob but could not defeat him. (He did manage to dislocate his hip however – yeah God!) When day was breaking, God begged Jacob to let him go, but he refused. “I will not let you go until you bless me.” Bizarre story… was it an angel? A demon? An Alien?

Esau greeted Jacob with kisses and tears, welcoming back his lost brother. In this Esau once again proves himself a wonderful and loving man – while Jacob is a coward, a thief and as we shall see, a mass-murderer.

Israel Founded on Mass Murder

Jacob’s daughter Dinah gets raped by a son of the region’s headman, Shechem. The boy loves her and wants to marry her. The Schechemites ask for a matrimonial alliance between Jacob’s clan. They offer to pay any bride-price, and promise “the country will be open to you, for you to live in, and move about in, and acquire holdings.”

Not a bad deal. But Jacob’s sons give a crafty answer: they say they cannot intermarry unless the Schechemites first circumcise themselves. The Schechemites agree. Three days later, when the Schechemites are still in pain from the recent circumcision, Jacob’s sons enter the city with swords and slaughter all the males. They kill Schechem and his father, the head-man, and remove Dinah from Schechem’s house. Then they pillage the town in reprisal for the dishonoring of their sister. “They seized their flocks, cattle, donkeys, everything else in the town and in the countryside, and all their possessions. They took all their children and wives captive and looted everything to be found in the houses.” (34:28)

Soon after this – as Jacob’s family is yet again running away, Rachel dies in childbirth. She has given Jacob his 12th son. God renames Jacob “Israel”. Jacob is Israel, and his 12 sons will become the 12 tribes of Israel.

(!!! I for one, am outraged. The Bible is the word of God? I’m disgusted by Jacob, and his clan.)

In my view, following God’s commands does not make you a good person. Those in the Bible who were eager to follow every command without thinking about the consequences, are also those who show the basest human qualities, such as fear, vengeance and selfishness.

By the time God gets to Abraham (in my theory of God’s developing education of free will), He’s learned a few things about human nature. No longer can he command, threaten, or test humans into doing his bidding. He has recognized that humans act out of their own self-interests. They ask “what’s in it for me?” God is approaching the idea of barter or transaction – I’ll rub your back if you rub mine; an idea that will eventually take the form of the covenant; a binding legal document wherein each party is expected to provide certain services to the other.

And so, when God approaches Abraham, he makes some big promises to close the deal:

“Leave your country, your kindred and your father’s house for a country which I shall show you; and I shall make you a great nation, I shall bless you and make your name famous; you are to be a blessing!” (Genesis 12).

Would Abraham have been as quick to obey God if he hadn’t been promised fame and fortune? We’ll never know.

Selling his wife for cattle

Abraham made it down to Egypt to escape a famine in his country. When he was there he said to his wife, Sarai:

“Look, I know you are a beautiful woman. When the Egyptians see you they will say, “That is his wife,” and they will kill me but leave you alive. Therefore please tell them you are my sister, so that they may treat me well because of you.” (Genesis 12:11)

Sarai was taken to the Pharaoh’s harem, and Abraham was “treated well because of her and received flocks, oxen, donkeys, men and women slaves, she-donkeys and camels.”

Nowhere does the text imply that God commanded Abraham to save his own neck by selling his wife into prostitution for slaves and farm animals. It seems to have been only his own cowardice which led to an act which – in most periods of human history and even within the contexts of Christian morality – is strictly vile.

Marriage is supposed to be Sacred Unto God. And even if it isn’t, human ideals about romance, righteousness, love and nobility demand that a man stand up and protect his wife’s virtue. How can Abraham be morally excused?

Interestingly, God punishes the pharaoh with plagues for sleeping with another man’s wife, even though the Pharaoh had no idea she was married. “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’ so that I took her to be my wife?” (Genesis 12:18) This proves that the God of the Old Testament has no idealistic beliefs in universal morality: he will protect his own at any cost, to the detriment of all others.

Luckily, when Abraham was thrown out of Egypt, he got to keep all of the stuff Sarai earned for him in the Pharaoh’s bedroom. He was “very rich in livestock, silver and gold” – making him possibly the richest pimp in Old Testament history.

He earns a name for himself winning a few minor military skirmishes, and God continues to feed him vague promises like “I will give you a very great reward”; around this time God made a covenant with Abraham to give a lot of land (Israel) to Abraham’s descendants. (This is the covenant upon which the Jewish people base their ownership of the land of Israel).

However, Abraham starts to complain about not having any children to continue his line. He sleeps with Sarai’s Egyptian slave-girl Hagar (two more strikes against his moral fiber: sex with children and sex with his own slaves) and Hagar conceives.

Hagar became a little too confident towards her mistress because she was carrying the master’s son – so Sarai requested permission to remind the wench of her place. Abraham said “The slave-girl is at your disposal. Treat her as you see fit,” and so Sarai beat the pregnant girl so badly that she ran away. God takes Abraham’s side of course and tells her to go home and “submit” to her mistress, (more strikes against the moral fiber of God.)

Meanwhile, God is slowly adding clauses to his covenant. In the beginning he was careful to promise much and ask little. But when Abraham was 99 years old, God demands a little more from Abraham’s side – a foreskin.

“Whether born within the household or bought, they must be circumcised. My covenant must be marked in your flesh as a covenant in perpetuity. The uncircumcised male, whose foreskin has not been circumcised – that person must be cut off from his people: he has broken my covenant.”

Maybe God is afraid he won’t be able to tell Abraham’s descendants from all the other humans; circumcision is his method of “branding” humans as his possessions.

When Abramah’s son Ishmael was thirteen years old (and Abraham was already 99), they receive a visitor who promises that Sarai – now to be called Sarah – would have a son, even though she was old and had stopped having periods.

Handing Daughters over to Gang Rape

In the next section, “Abraham intercedes for Sodom”, I find Abraham’s only moral act. God is planning on destroying Sodom because of its wickedness. Abraham pesters God, questioning Him on account of the upright who might live in Sodom. He gets God to promise not to destroy the city if he finds even only 10 upright people there. Apparently – there were not even that many, for Sodom was destroyed. The only person saved was Abraham’s kinsman, Lot. Lot was saved because he took in the angels of the lord and protected them when all the other townsmen wanted to have intercourse with them.

Lot told them, “Please, brothers, do not be wicked. Look , I have two daughters who are virgins. I am ready to send them out to you, for you to treat as you please, but do nothing to these men since they are now under the protection of my roof.” (Genesis 19:8)

It seems like Abraham and Lot have an equal disregard for women. I’ll admit, Lot was in a tricky position. But offering up his virgin daughters to gang-rape to protect two strange travelers doesn’t seem to push him into the Saintly Deeds category. His daughters meanwhile, perhaps after their experience of being raped by all the men in town until sunrise, become sexual deviants. After the destruction of Sodom, Lot was saved and ran off with his two daughters to live in a cave. His daughters, lonely and pining for husbands, decided to make their father drunk and have sex with him. They both got pregnant, and started new races of people.

Abraham, meanwhile, was whoring out his wife again. He had struck on the perfect formula for wealth in Egypt and repeated it while staying in Gerar with the king, Abimelech. Keep in mind, Abraham is still a nomad, a tribesmen, living in tents and moving around shiftlessly. When he comes into a settled territory, he is a guest of the local king. Again he told everyone that Sarah was his sister, and Abimelech sends for her thinking she is single. God promptly makes the entire household barren, but warns Abimelech in a dream that he will die because he has taken a married woman.

Abimelech argues, “Lord, would you kill someone even if he is upright? Did he not tell me himself, ‘She is my sister?’ And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I did this with a clean conscience and clean hands.” Abimelech gets a raw deal. God admits that he’s got a point, but says he’ll die anyway if he touches her, so send her back to Abraham. Abimelech is a little pissed off – Abraham was trying to put him in a trap of sleeping with his wife, and then owing him reparations. “What have you done to us? What wrong have I done you, for you to bring such guilt on me and my kingdom? You had no right to treat me like this.”

Abraham offers a lame excuse and adds, “Anyway, she really is my sister, my father’s daughter though not my mother’s, besides being my wife.”

Again, Abraham makes out like a bandit for his deception. Even though Sarah is 90 years old and hardly worth all the drama, Abimelech gives Abraham a thousand pieces of silver, more cattle and more slaves.

Abraham is a shameless con-man, with a knack for putting people of prestige in difficult situations and then making them buy their way out. Him and his wife are despicable opportunists. (A modern parallel would be getting my wife to seduce some rich married guy and taking pictures to blackmail him.) However, most of their antics are completely forgotten, in favor of the more famous episode involving Abraham and his son, Isaac.

Abraham Sacrifices Isaac

Sarah gives birth at 90 to a son. Immediately she tells Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael, his bastard child, a decision that God supports, “Do not distress yourself on the account of the boy and your slave-girl. Do whatever Sarah says, for Isaac is the one through whom your name will be carried on.” (Genesis 21:12) They give Hagar a little bit of bread and water and send her on her way. She almost dies in the desert. She even abandoned her child at one point, but luckily, God takes pity on them and sends a well; but even this Abraham claims for himself, and bribes the King Abimelech with 7 lambs so that the claim will be recognized.

Finally we get to Abraham’s sacrifice, just about all anybody remembers about Abraham. God wants to put Abraham to the test, so he tells him to kill his only son, Isaac. Abraham took him to the designated place, lies to his face when he innocently asks what they were going to sacrifice, ties him down and takes out his knife. Luckily, an angel showed up to stop him just in time, and they found a ram caught in a bush and killed that instead. They named the place “Yahweh Provides” and Yahweh reiterated his promises. (He didn’t really expand his covenant – he only repeated that Abraham would have lots of descendants, that his descendants would defeat their enemies, and that the world would bless themselves through them.)

This passage is a celebrated event for Christians, Jews and Muslims. It is the beginning of central theology and rituals, and demonstrates what is considered “Perfect Faith” in God. For the non-religious, we can only gasp in awe that willingness to kill our children because the voices told us to do so can be considered moral excellence.

The Death of Abraham

When Abraham’s wife finally died, he used his influence to buy a piece of property for burial. Abraham married again and had 6 more sons – not to mention the offspring from his many concubines. He also searched out a wife for Isaac, to console him from the loss of his mother. Abraham lived a long time, and was intimate with God – although his primary aims seemed always to lean towards the acquisition of wealth and power. When he died he was buried in the cave he purchased. Interestingly – Ishmael showed up to help Isaac bury their father. (Even though he’d been completely abandoned and left for dead.)

Yahweh is a god of shepherds and migrating tribes in tents, and represents their early suspicion with settling down in one place. He turns up his nose at Cain’s agricultural gifts. Even the making of bricks is scorned in the Babel story; God is clearly anti-civilization. (If you, 2,000 years later, now live in one place in a house of any kind, rather than traversing the open terrain – you’re already on God’s bad side.)

Incidentally – The Old Testament was being written by a bunch of exiled Jews living in the splendor of great cities like Babylon. They were jealous of the opulence and thought it must be evil – that God surely wouldn’t tolerate such economic prosperity from their godless enemies.

Obviously the Babel story is a mythological explanation of foreign language, but what if it weren’t? Why would God be so afraid of growth? Maybe he wasn’t quite sure what human beings were actually capable of. They said they were building a tower to heaven, maybe he was afraid that somehow they would accomplish that feat. At any rate, it seems that God got used to cities and realized they weren’t a threat: despite language barriers, the general historical trend of human civilization has taken the form of big cities. Therefore, either God changed his mind and decided to let us build our towers – which introduces the idea that God is adaptable and makes mistakes.

But there is another possibility. What if the story of Babel is actually a prophecy? We live in an advanced nation, a melting pot of cultures where everyone communicates in English. We experienced unchecked economic growth and prosperity until a terrorist attack involving “men of God” knocked out our largest towers, symbols of our power, humbling us. Was the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center planned by the same mastermind behind the Babel conspiracy? I see no difference between Islamic terrorists and fundamentalist Jews or Christians who were anti-establishment; who routinely asked their God to destroy Rome, Babylon and other reigning powers in horrifically violent terms.

And let’s face it – if God was behind 911, he isn’t acting out of character at all; in fact there is historical precedent in Babel. I’d say he’d be an easy conviction. The truth is, we have outgrown the God of the Old Testament. To believe in him literally, to believe he is still with us, still spiteful, still jealous, and still angry, contradicts modernity on many levels. Either he needs to ‘grow up’ and adapt to us, or we need to sell our houses and start herding sheep again.

For most of us, the lure of wealth and success is too powerful. If you live in a big city and are trying to save up some money for your family and are generally in favor of economic progress – buy a small house. Otherwise God might burn it down.

Since there were no obvious benefits from believing in God, the world turned away from Him. Humanity rejoiced in being alive. They reveled in pleasure, licentiousness and freedom. They were having so much fun that even the angels started to sneak off down to earth – one reason being the easy women.

“When people began being numerous on earth, and daughters had been born to them, the sons of God, looking at the women, saw how beautiful they were and married as many of them as they chose.” (Gen. 6)

Of course, the phrase “sons of God” may only refer to the male humans. But we get another enigmatic passage: “The Nephilim were on earth in those days (and even afterwards) when the sons of God resorted to the women, and had children by them. These were the heroes of days gone by, men of renown.” (Gen. 6:4) Were the children of the sons of God the heroes? Or were the Nephilim the heroes? The sentence could be read either way. Nephilim means “fiery serpents,” and generally designate God’s highest rank of angels – although most people would mistakenly associate a burning snake with Hell rather than Heaven.

In any case, God became worried about overpopulation, so he imposed a new rule. Yahweh said, “My spirit cannot be indefinitely responsible for human beings, who are only flesh; let the time allowed each be a hundred and twenty years.” (Gen. 6:2)

But God grew heavy of heart. He “looked at the earth: it was corrupt, for the corrupt were the ways of all living things on earth.” He decided to pull the plug on the project on start over. Rather than start from scratch, he choose one model human that was still functioning very well: Noah. He told Noah to build an ark, for there would be a great flood.

Noah is an interesting character in the Bible – and unique. Noah seems to have had absolutely no personality. He rarely speaks, he is pious and superstitious. He obeys every divine command precisely and absolutely, no questions asked. Maybe he was not too bright. (As evidence of this, immediately after the flood, he offers God a great burnt offering from all the clean birds and animals he had just saved from extinction!) Perhaps this is why God choose him. In fact, God enjoys the sweet smell of the offering, becomes emotional, and promises never to wipe out humans again. (Well, technically he only promises never to curse the earth or wipe out every living thing – if he gets mad again he may still kill all the people.)

Noah himself is never a blasphemer, but maybe this is because God treats him exceptionally well. Indeed, God seems to be extremely confident and good-humored after the flood.  He thinks he’s learned from his mistakes with Satan, Adam and Eve, and Cain. He gives humans some specific instructions to follow: they are to be hunters. They will use the joy of the hunt to purge their violent natures.

“Be the terror and the dread of all animals on the land and all the birds of heaven, of everything that moves on land and all the fish of the sea; they are placed in your hands.” (Genesis 9:2)

God also, for the first time, expressively prohibits murder. Cleverly, rather than enforcing this rule himself and making himself into “the bad guy”, God gives the responsibility and authority of the law to humans:

“He who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God was man created. Be fruitful then and multiply, teem over the earth and subdue it!” (Genesis 9:6)

God is so confident in the success of this “New World Order” that he promises never to send another flood or wipe out all the creatures on earth, and calls this arrangement a covenant – a pact between him and humans – marked by a sign: the rainbow. This is the first instance of a covenant between God and his people. It is remarkable, first of all because it places very few limitations on mankind. They are forbidden almost nothing, except to govern themselves quietly, keep from murdering each other, and eat “meat with blood in it.” God however, accepts a limitation on himself. There is no need for him to make such a promise to his created beings, but out of an effort to treat them with dignity, perhaps with a growing sense of respect for them, he invents the rainbow as a reminder to himself of his responsibilities to humanity.

Noah the Drunk Bastard

But all good things come to an end. Noah, a tiller of the soil, discovered wine and got drunk. He lay in his tent uncovered and one of his three sons, Ham, saw him naked. The other two sons, Shem and Japheth, walked in backwards with their faces turned away, and covered their father with a cloak, without looking at his nakedness. When Noah woke up, they told him that Ham had seen him naked. In a fit of irrational rage and unjust punishments worthy of his creator, Noah cursed Ham’s son, Canaan (Genesis 9:20).

Maybe God didn’t foresee the effect alcohol would have on Noah’s passive personality. What was meant to be one-big-happy-family, turned instantly into division, discord, resentment and jealousy. The following passages describe the “Peopling of the Earth”. By dividing all the various races into descendants of either Shem, Japheth or Ham, the Bible is able to base all future racial hostility and violence on this episode between Noah and his sons.

We are not told why Noah became so upset when Ham saw him naked, but presumably Ham was more progressive in his sexual attitudes, and more comfortable with nudity in general. He is given credit with fathering those communities which will later become centers of sexual depravity like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Remember – although God had now made a law against murder, he had not yet implemented any prohibition on recreational sex. In fact, his call to “Breed, multiply and fill the earth” was an open invitation to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.

Noah offers a perfect foil to the blasphemous characters. Noah is upright, perfect, obedient and full of moral righteousness. He will carry out God’s any command faithfully, without considering the consequences. He is the perfect soldier. To many Christians, he is the spitting image of faith. And yet this did not help him create a harmonious household. He got drunk and loafed around. He punished his grandson for the deeds of his father. Noah is personally responsible for racial segregation. The fact that he didn’t do anything wrong on purpose is meaningless: the difference between him and the blasphemers is that the blasphemers choose their actions willfully and take responsibility for them. Noah was just a drunk screw-up.

Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Able. Able was a shepherd and kept flocks, while Cain tilled the soil. When Cain and Able brought offerings to God, Able’s was “looked on with favor”. Cain’s was not. Why? Nobody knows. Maybe God was in the mood for lamb rather than wheat. Maybe he preferred the “hunter-gatherer lifestyle” to that of agriculture. The text does not tell us that Able was in any way superior to Cain other than through the choice of occupation and their offerings to God. Both sought God’s favor, and Cain was severely disappointed when his offering was refused – he was “angry and downcast”. Cain wanted to be good. He wanted to be close to God. He had taken the first step and was refused.

Now a Christian reading of the story would tell us that “God is a mystery” – that his ways cannot be understood by men, and that he must be obeyed blindly, without understanding. This is also God’s own point of view on the subject; a fallacy he repeats throughout the Bible. “I am God. I don’t need to be fair or just. If I want to eat meat instead of bread, that’s my choice. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.” But we are within reason to ask, how is Able any better than Cain – only Cain was challenged with God’s unfounded disfavor.

Rubbing salt in the wound, God sees that Cain is upset and says, “Why are you angry and downcast? If you are doing right, surely you ought to hold your head high! But if you are not doing right, Sin is crouching at the door hungry to get you. You can still master him.” (Genesis 4:6)

This is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Cain is upset because he received unfair treatment. If he is going to give his allegiance to a powerful deity, he demands that it be just. He feels instinctively that he deserves to be treated fairly – and he is the first human to recognize this. While he is sulking, God comes to him and says “you better stop pouting and control your emotions.” All he wanted was love, and instead was being told “shut up, crybaby”.

So, Cain takes Able out in the fields and kills him. It may not have been the wisest choice, but he was perhaps the first human to feel discriminated against and he acted out.  When God confronts him, he says he doesn’t know where his brother is; “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God flexes his muscles and curses Cain to wander the earth. Rather than cringe with fear and grovel with repentance, as Adam and Eve did, Cain begins to bargain. He acts as his own attorney and gets God to alleviate the sentence. “Look, today you drive me from the surface of the earth. I must hide from you, and be restless wanderer on earth. Why, whoever comes across me will kill me!” (Genesis 4:14)

Most Christians would assume that the guilty have no rights before God. God is all-powerful and all-just, and so whatever he decides is fair. In most Biblical stories, however, the characters who wait for God to stop his blustering angry tirade of empty threats and reason with him calmly, can influence his decisions! So it is with Cain. God puts a protective mark on Cain, so that nobody would kill him. “Whoever kills Cain will suffer seven-fold vengeance.” This is a mark of tremendence power – it is a magical, God-given force field. Although Cain is theoretically “Forced to Wander”, in fact he only needs to remove himself from God’s presence. He settles in the land of Nod, East of Eden, and sets up a prosperous family. His lineage becomes powerful but cruel, and God’s “curse” is actually treasured as a mark of distinction. His great-great-great-great grandson boasts, “I killed a man for wounding me, a boy for striking me. Sevenfold vengeance for Cain, but seventy-sevenfold for Lamech.” (Genesis 4:22)

Although I cannot make a hero out of Cain for killing his own brother, as a blasphemer he shows many of the qualities I respect. He has an innate sense of self-worth and demands to be taken seriously and treated fairly. He knows God, but is not afraid to stand up to Him. (Being a blasphemer takes infinitely more courage than being an Atheist). In the face of God’s wrath, he stays cool-headed and bargains - turning his punishment into a special blessing. Although manipulate may be too strong a word, there are certainly other instances where those who reason openly with God seem to get the upper hand.

The encounter also illuminates God’s attitude towards human transgression. While Adam and Eve had violated a direct order – THOU SHALT NOT EAT FROM THIS TREE – Cain had never been told that murder was prohibited; this was still before the 10 commandments. God was essentially ruling without a rule-book, and handling indiscretions on a case-by-case basis.

The cursing of Cain was an experiment which back-fired. Banishment had little effect on Cain, who seemed happy to go elsewhere and live freely. Worse still, the wandering Cain became a symbol that murderers would go free – under the apparent protection of God. By the time of Lamech, murder was commonplace.