This paper explores the Old Testament's (OT) timeline and plot, and it compares the Bible to known, verified history, attempting to explain discrepancies in an easy-to-understand manner accessible even to those with little knowledge of history.
I will first explain the timeline built into the Bible by its authors/compilers. Then I will comment on the vast differences between actual history and Biblical stories, in order to show clearly that the Bible is not simply "true history," but is a collection of ancient Hebrew/Jewish myths and legends, sometimes containing small kernels of historical reality behind their miraculous and mythic facade.
First, the Bible has an explicit internal time-line. Even though its authors did not use the notation "BC" and "AD," or "BCE" and "CE," it is fairly simple to convert the Bible's dates into modern notation.
Jews used biblical genealogies and verses to create timelines both before and after Christianity, and Christians based their own time-lines on literal interpretations of the bible for most of Christian history.
Before explaining the sources, I will provide here the basic timeline within the Bible. After this, I will cite the specific verses from which this data comes. Then I will provide historical, archaeological, scientific, literary, and analytical commentary.
c. 4112 BC -- (Genesis 1) Elohim, often translated "God," makes the sky and the land in a few days.
(Day 1) makes light and separates it from darkness; (Day 2) makes a giant, hard dome (raqiya, "firmament") (calling it shamayim, "heights" = "heaven" or "sky") to separate the upper from the lower waters; (Day 3) causes land (eretz) to appear in the lower waters and to bring forth vegetation (plants, trees, and fruits) of all kinds; (Day 4) puts lights in the big dome/firmament -- sun, moon, and stars -- for the purpose of lighting the land (eretz); (Day 5) makes the waters below bring forth living creatures and birds; (Day 6) makes the land (eretz) bring forth living creatures -- beasts, cattle, and creeping things -- makes adam (man, mankind, dirt-thing) "in our image" (the image of Elohim, plural), male and female; (Day 7) rests from such strenuous labors on the 7th day and, therefore, makes every 7th day special in perpetuity. New Testament authors believed in this story quite literally.
c. 4112 BC -- (Genesis 2) Before making plants spring up and before sending rain on the land,
Yahweh makes the first human, Adam ("human," or "dirt-thing"), from soil and breath/wind. He then plants a garden and puts the man in it to work it. He then decides the man needs a helper. He makes all the animals from soil and brings them to Adam. Adam names them all, but none is a suitable helper. So Yahweh puts Adam to sleep, takes one of his ribs out, and makes a woman to be his helper. They eventually eat from a tree Yahweh does not want them to eat from, and he kicks them out and curses them. They have offspring and populate the land. They are the parents of all humans. Again, New Testament authors and early Christians believed in this story AND its time-line quite literally. e.g. Luke 3 lists 77 generations of humans from God to Jesus through Adam.
c. 2456 BC -- The Great Flood of Noah.
Yahweh, angry at wicked humanity, sends a great flood that covers all land and every mountain and kills all life on the planet except for the 2 (or 7) of each creature which Noah puts on his boat, enabling them to survive the flood with Noah, his wife, his 3 sons, and their wives. All of humanity must start over in 2456 BC! All of humanity is supposed to be descended from Noah's three sons!
2400's BC -- The Tower of Babel and the Creation of the World's Languages.
Yahweh is apparently quite upset about some people trying to build a tower all the way to heaven (why so afraid?), so he goes down from the sky and confuses people's language, miraculously creating the world's different languages from scratch in a single day. And Yahweh causes the people not to live only in the Middle East anymore, but spreads them out over the whole land (eretz) for the first time.
c. 2166 BC -- Abram/ Abraham is born.
His very names mean "exalted father" and "father of many"! He is supposed to be the ancestor of all Hebrews, Jews, and Arabs. Supposedly Yahweh promises to give a certain section of land in the Middle East (Israel / Canaan / Palestine) to Abraham's descendants through his most special son, Isaac. This land is supposed to be theirs forever. (Basically, this story was an ancient Jewish religious land claim.)
c. 2006 BC -- Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, is born, the eponymous ancestor of the nation of Israel.
Each of the 12 tribes of ancient Israel was supposed to be descended from Israel's 12 sons (and his son Joseph's two sons counted as 2 tribes for land claims, in place of Levi and Joseph).
c. 1876 BC -- Israel's famous 400-year Sojourn in Egypt begins.
Jacob's / Israel's family of 70 goes to live in Egypt, and within a generation become slaves to the Egyptians. They breed like crazy (growing to over 1.6 million fighting men, not counting women and children).
c. 1446 BC -- The Exodus from Egypt.
Moses supposedly leads the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt after Yahweh sends the miraculous, horrendously destructive 10 Plagues upon the Egyptians and then parts the Red Sea for the Israelites while drowning the entire army of "pharaoh." Yahweh supposedly comes down on a mountain top (Sinai or Horeb, depending on the passage) and gives Moses the 10 Commandments and a whole bunch of other laws for Israel. They wander around for 40 years in the desert experiencing more miraculous events before crossing the Jordan River, entering the promised land, killing the inhabitants, and occupying Canaan / Israel / Palestine.
1375 - 1050 BC -- Period of the "Judges" (like Samson).
Israel supposedly experiences recurring cycles. Every time they do what Yahweh likes, he sends them a leader ("judge") who miraculously defeats all their enemies. Every time they forget about Yahweh and his laws, Yahweh causes Israel's enemies to defeat them and make them suffer and cry and pray to Yahweh again.
966 BC -- the fourth year of King Solomon's reign.
Solomon is supposedly the wisest and richest man who ever lived or will live, and he supposedly rules a vast, peaceful Israelite empire stretching from Egypt all the way to the Euphrates River. Supposedly gold was more common in Israel than rocks, and Solomon was famous, and people came from all lands to hear Solomon's wisdom!
There is a very straightforward and easy-to-understand answer. Although some Christians simply rely on the timeline feature of their study Bibles, which will agree with what I have provided (give or take a few insignificant years), anyone can calculate the dates using a Bible and one agreed-upon starting point.
One of the few undisputed dates for a biblical event, corroborated by multiple international lines of evidence, is the 587/586 BC destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Given this date as a starting point, one can use the numbers provided by the Bible itself to reconstruct the Biblical time line of events.
1. 586 BC--Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar.
2. 966 BC--the fourth year of Solomon's reign.
One may use numbers provided in I and II Kings and II Chronicles to find out when certain kings ruled. The Bible provides the following numbers as years of the reigns of the kings of Judah:
1.Solomon 40 12.Jothom 16
2.Rehoboam 17 13.Ahaz 16
3.Abijah 3 14.Hezekiah 29
4.Asa 41 (or 40) 15.Manasseh 55
5.Jehoshaphat 25 16.Amon 2
6.Jehoram 8 17.Josiah 31
7.Ahaziah 1 18.Jehoahaz 0.25 (3 months)
8.Q. Athaliah 6 (or 7) 19.Jehoikim 11
9.Joash 40 20.Jehoiachin 0.25 (3 months, 10 days)
10.Amaziah 29 21.Zedekiah 11
11.Uzziah 52
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Total = 433.50 yrs from Solomon to 586 BC
So adding the years of kingship (434) to 586 BC, we get 1020 BC as the year Solomon began to reign. But Bible scholars point out that some of the lengths of reigns included co-regencies. In other words, a person may have become king while his father was still reigning also; thus, he may have reigned 40 years total, but for the first 7 years his father was king too. In such a case, there would be 7 years of overlapping reigns. If we take into account approximately 50 years in overlapping reigns, we get 970 BC for the beginning of Solomon's reign. This date is acceptable even to the most conservative Bible scholars, and if you look in a Bible dictionary or at a traditional timeline, you will probably find a date close to this one (ex. Harper's Bible Dictionary says "second third of the 10th century," which is c.966-933 BC). For our purposes, it does not matter which date we take, so we shall take 970 BC as the year Solomon started to rule. Solomon's fourth year, then, would be 966 BC.
3. 1446 BC--date of the Exodus from Egypt
I Kings 6:1 says that the fourth year of Solomon's reign was 480 years after the Exodus. If we accept I Kings 6:1 and add 480 years to 966 BC (Solomon’s 4th year), we get 1446 BC as the date of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, and this is a date traditionally accepted by Christians (for an example, see the NIV Study Bible chronology).
4. 1876 BC--the beginning of Israel's sojourn in Egypt
In Genesis 15:13, Yahweh tells Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved for 400 years and return to Canaan in the fourth generation. If we believe Gen. 15:13 and add 400 years to 1446 BC, we get 1846 BC as the year Israel went down into Egypt. Exodus 12:40-41 gives a figure of 430 years; if we use it, we get 1876 BC as the beginning of Israel's sojourn. Either date is traditionally acceptable, and thirty years does not make a big difference. The NIV Study Bible uses 1876.
5. 2006 BC--Jacob (Israel) was born
Genesis 47:28 says Jacob lived in Egypt for 17 years, and he lived 147 years total. If Genesis 47:28 is true, he would have been 130 (147-17) when the family went to Egypt, so he would have been born 130 years before that. 1876 BC plus 130 years gives us 2006 BC as the year Jacob was born.
6. 2166 BC--Abraham was born
Genesis 25:26 says Isaac was 60 when Jacob was born, and Genesis 21:5 says Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born. If we believe these verses, Abraham was born 160 years before Jacob, and 160 years + 2006 BC gives us 2166 BC for the birth of Abraham.
7. 2456 BC--the Great Flood of Noah
Since the Bible gives for every person in Abraham's ancestry his age when his first son is born and when he dies, one may use the Bible's numbers to calculate when certain individuals were born--all the way back to Adam!! See Genesis 11 for Shem to Abraham and Genesis 5 for Adam to Noah and Shem.
2166 BC: Abraham is born
+ 70 --age of Terah when Abraham is born
+ 29 --age of Nahor when Terah is born
+ 30 --age of Serug when Nahor is born
+ 32 --age of Reu when Serug is born
+ 30 --age of Peleg when Reu is born
+ 34 --age of Eber when Peleg is born
+ 30 --age of Shelah when Eber is born
+ 35 --age of Arphaxad when Shelah is born
+100 --age of Shem when Arphaxad is born
+500 --age of Noah when Shem is born
3056 BC--Noah is born
And since we know the Flood occurred in Noah's 600th year (Gen 7:6), we can subtract 600 from 3056 BC (Noah's birth year) to get 2456 BC for the Worldwide Flood.
Note: Different translations of the Hebrew Bible do contain differences in these genealogies. Most translations nowadays rely more heavily on the Hebrew Masoretic text handed down by Jewish rabbis. However, the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures made in the 200s-100s BC, used heavily by ancient Jews and early Christians, has an extra 650 years in the genealogy between Arphaxad and Nahor in Genesis 11:12-24. Even if we were to add the extra 650 years, it would not affect the overall conclusions of this study.
8. 4112 BC--Adam is born, or Yahweh creates Adam.
Using the same process, we can discover when Adam was born, according to the Bible.
3056 BC Noah is born
+182--age of Lamech when Noah is born
+187--age of Methuselah when Lamech is born
+ 65--age of Enoch when Methuselah is born
+162--age of Jared when Enoch is born
+ 65--age of Mahalalel when Jared is born
+ 70--age of Kenan when Mahalalel is born
+ 90--age of Enosh when Kenan is born
+105--age of Seth when Enosh is born
+130--age of Adam when Seth is born
4112 BC -- Yahweh/God created Adam
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If we had taken Solomon's reign as starting in 1020 BC, we would have Adam being created 50 years earlier, which does not matter.
This date, 4112 BC, is quite close to the dates for creation determined by early Christian bishops and writers, later Christian writers, and Jewish rabbis.
Theophilus (d. 181 CE), the sixth bishop of Antioch, in his Apology to Autolycus (Apologia ad Autolycum) created a similar bible-based chronology putting the creation of the world at about 5529 BC. Theophilus and other early Christians used the Greek Septuagint for their Old Testament quotations, not Hebrew texts. The two have differences, accounting for some of the variance. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible has an extra 650 years in the genealogy between Arphaxad and Nahor in Genesis 11:12-24. If we add that in our timeline above, we get Noah's Flood in 3,106 BC and Yahweh's creation of Adam and Eve in 4762 BC. It will not affect our conclusions.
Other famous historical Christian leaders calculated the date of the creation / Adam and Eve using the Bible in a similar manner: Martin Luther (1500s) said 3961 BC, Archbishop James Ussher (1600s) said 4004 BC, and Isaac Newton (d. 1726) said 4000 BC, all using the Masoretic Hebrew Bible. The traditional Hebrew calendar dates the creation of the world by Yahweh in 3761 BC, and various Jewish scholars came up with dates between 3762 and 3758 BC.
For my purposes, it will not matter much whether one uses 5529, 4762, 4112, 3761, or anything remotely close for Yahweh's creation of Adam and Eve, because they are all equally impossible to the point of absurdity in light of modern historical and scientific knowledge.
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The New Testament: It IS important to note that the authors of the New Testament also believed in humanity's recent creation by Yahweh. The genealogy in Luke 3 posits only 77 generations of humans from Yahweh to Jesus through Adam. The author of Matthew also appears to have faith in Old Testament Jewish genealogies, although his genealogy of Jesus differs from (contradicts) that found in Luke.
Now that we have used the information provided by the Bible to make a time line of Biblical events, we can compare the Bible's dates, events, numbers, and concepts of time with what we know of history. For an actual evidence-based, realistic time-line, take a look at this Scientific and Historical Time-line.
The Bible has Adam being created about 4112 BC, which is historically impossible. Even if all of the massive fossil and DNA evidence of human evolution were completely left out, archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age human cultures goes back much further than 50,000 BC, and people were around a long, long time before the Stone Age. By 8,000 BC in Palestine, agriculture, animal domestication, and permanent town sites had already developed -- and this is long before the Bible says Adam even existed! Even those radically fundamentalist Christians who doubt scientists' dating methods (without really understanding them) should note that Adam supposedly lived 930 years; that means he would have still been alive around 3180 BC, right around the time Egypt was developing into an advanced civilization and already had kings! Such a story simply does not fit with history. If Adam really had been alive at that time, everybody would have been happy to be able to go visit with their great, great, great ... grandfather, and instead of there being many different creation myths among various human cultures (many much older than the Hebrews), everyone could have received the true story straight from Adam himself!
Do you remember learning in grade school about the Bering Land Bridge that once connected Alaska and Siberia, the one that served as a route by which Asians crossed into North America? I do. Do you remember learning how long ago that occurred? Scientists previously found evidence from as far back as 12,000 years ago. But both archaeologists and geneticists have continued to discover more, and as new evidence has been collected over the years, it now appears that humans were crossing from 25,000-14,000 years ago.
Geggel, Laura. "Humans Crossed the Bering Land Bridge to People the Americas. Here’s What It Looked Like 18,000 Years Ago." Live Science, February 15, 2019. https://www.livescience.com/64786-beringia-map-during-ice-age.html.
"Genetic studies show that the first humans to cross became genetically isolated from people in East Asia between about 25,000 to 20,000 years ago. And archaeological evidence shows that people reached the Yukon at least 14,000 years ago."
Wang, Sijia; Lewis, C. M. Jr.; Jakobsson, M.; Ramachandran, S.; Ray, N.; et al. (2007). "Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Native Americans." PLoS Genetics 3 (11): e185. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2082466/).
Kids learn these things in school, and they most often do not realize (because nobody points it out!) that all such information renders the biblical view of creation, as well as ancient history, completely absurd.
The more details you look at, the more interesting things you can ponder. In Genesis 3, Yahweh curses the first man, Adam, by cursing the ground, and instead of having the easy life in the garden, Adam will have to farm. "By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your bread," said Yahweh (3.19). So the ancient Hebrew story imagines humans farming grain and eating bread from the time of the very first human couple, Adam and Eve. In reality, thanks to extensive archaeological and anthropological research, we now know that many humans lived as hunter gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years before agriculture was invented. Around 12,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution began, as humans learned to plant and grow food deliberately.
Scientists study ancient remains, bone artifacts, and DNA to explore the past and present impact of plant and animal domestication and to make sense of the motivations behind early cultivation techniques. Archeological evidence illustrates that starting in the Holocene epoch approximately 12 thousand years ago (kya), the domestication of plants and animals developed in separate global locations most likely triggered by climate change and local population increases. This transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture occurred very slowly as humans selected crops for cultivation, animals for domestication, then continued to select plants and animals for desirable traits. The development of agriculture marks a major turning point in human history and evolution.
(Rene J. Herrera & Ralph Garcia-Bertrand, eds. "The Agricultural Revolutions." In Ancestral DNA, Human Origins, and Migrations, Ch. 13. Academic Press, 2018, Pages 475-509, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-804124-6.00013-6. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128041246000136.)
So the Adam and Eve story is but a Hebrew myth. In reality, human cultures evolved slowly, and the transition from hunting and gathering to farming did not result from a divine curse on the first human couple, but happened over many generations and thousands of years.
So we can know clearly that the creation stories in Genesis 1-3 are not true or historically accurate, even without even mentioning other fascinating modern scientific topics, like the dinosaurs that dominated the earth for a lengthy 160 million years, from about 230 million years ago until about 65 million years ago OR evolution. There are so many facts about which the ancient Hebrew/Jewish authors of the Pentateuch (1st five books of the Bible) simply had no clue.
And I have not mentioned the bible's internal problems yet.
Here is just small sampling of literary/logical problems in Genesis 1-3:
Since Elohim spoke in the Genesis 1 story, does this mean the writers thought he had a voice, a tongue, and language? What language could have been used? The Hebrew writers of the first millennium BC simply assumed their god spoke Hebrew, even though the Hebrew language was not the oldest human language and did not exist before it evolved among the Hebrew people.
In Genesis 1, light (1.3, 1st day) is created before the sun, moon, or stars (day 4)! Odd, right?!
In Genesis 1, there is "evening and morning" 3 times before the sun, moon, and stars are made (day 4). Odd, right?!
In Genesis 1, all kinds of plants and trees (day 3) are created before the stars, sun, and moon (day 4).
Backward, right?! I'm sure it made better "sense" back when people like the writers of Genesis imagined that the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun, moon, and stars were simply put up in the "firmament"/vault (yes, heaven was imagined to be a solid dome) to light the earth for humans. The writers of the story, as most people in the ancient world, simply had no idea what stars were, nor did they know that the sun itself is a star.
When the text says, "Let us create human in our image, according to our likeness," what could that image/likeness have been? The writers seem to have imaged that their god, Elohim, looked like humans. (Cf. Gen 4.14; 5.3; 18.1-2; 32.22-32; Ex 15.3; 24.10; 33.11; Num 12.6-8; Ps 18; 29; 68.4, 7-8; Is 40:6-7, 23-24; Dan 7.9) In 5.3, when Adam was 130, he became the father of a son "in his likeness, according to his image." Such an anthropomorphic concept of divinity was typical in the ancient world. Humans created their gods in their own image, then imagined that their gods had created humans in the image of gods.
Now that we know about human evolution from other primates through Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7 million years BP) and Orrorin tugenensis (6 million BP) through Ardipithecus (5.5–4.4 Ma), Australopithecus (4–1.8 Ma), Kenyanthropus (3–2.7 Ma), Paranthropus (3–1.2 Ma), and the genus Homo (2 Ma–present), including Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster, Homo georgicus, Homo antecessor, Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens idaltu, Archaic Homo sapiens, Homo floresiensis, and Homo sapiens, we could ask the question, "At which point exactly did the image become Yahweh's image, since the image has changed so much over time?"]
Genesis 2-3 uses a different designation for god, adding "YHWH" to the "Elohim" of Genesis 1, and Genesis 2-3 seems originally to have been a separate creation story from Genesis 1. If you examine the details closely and compare the two stories, can you discern how they're not a single story?
In Genesis 2.5-8, Yahweh forms man/adam first, then plants. But in Gen 1, Elohim makes plants before mankind.
In Genesis 2, Yahweh forms man first, then animals. But in Gen 1, Elohim makes animals before mankind. Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 seem originally to have been separate popular creation stories that were merged by the compiler of Genesis.
Is the Garden of Eden story of Yahweh cursing the serpent the real reason that snakes crawl on their bellies? The story offers an etiological explanation for why snakes crawl/slither, but it is not realistic. Before the curse, snakes could walk and talk? A talking snake? Really? (Fossil evidence shows that snakes were slithering long before such an imaginary curse upon them was invented by the writers of this Hebrew story. )
And why would Yahweh punish all snakes for what one snake did? How does that make any sense?
Or, if the snake had really been "Satan" in disguise, as later tradition claimed (but not the original authors/stories), why were snakes punished at all (since it was supposedly Satan's fault)?
And if Yahweh did not want Adam and Eve to know the difference between good and evil, would that imply that the god Yahweh preferred that people remain ignorant of good and evil, or forget about good and evil?
And the Bible says Yahweh wanted to prevent Adam and Eve from having both the knowledge of good and evil AND immortality (fruit of the tree of life), because they would become like the gods/Elohim/"us." "Then YHWH Elohim said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, lest he live forever” (Gen 3.22). So Yahweh did NOT want humans to have both knowledge of good and evil AND eternal life. But why then does Christianity claim to offer people both? Did Yahweh change his mind?
Also, note the "us" in the sentence, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." Note that it is plural. Yahweh Elohim is constantly talking out loud, even when there is no other named character to listen. Elohim, interestingly, is actually plural in Hebrew.
Also, if Adam and Eve had no prior knowledge of good and evil, so that they did not know the difference between right and wrong, would they not then be innocent in their disobedience? How could they be blamed or cursed for disobeying, when they clearly could not yet have understood the concepts of good, evil, the value of obedience, the consequences of disobedience, punishment, etc.? If they disobeyed before they had knowledge of good and evil, does it not seem unjust to punish them so severely? Could innocent beings without any knowledge of good and evil reasonably be expected to obey or even to understand the consequences of such a situation? ... The story makes Yahweh out to be a rather bad creator god and father figure. It appears that he should have foreseen the problem and could have taken much better care of his creation.
Did Yahweh not have the foresight to realize there was a danger in him putting naive humans in the same garden as a crafty serpent who might tempt them?
Also, who told the truth: Yahweh or the serpent? Yahweh told Adam (not Eve), "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die" (2.16). The serpent said to Eve, "You will not certainly die. ... For Elohim knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Elohim/gods, knowing good and evil" (3.4-5). The serpent was correct: Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge did not cause their death. It did cause their eyes to be opened, and they did become like the Elohim, knowing good and evil. What caused their death? Yahweh! Haha. Yahweh did not want them to become as powerful as Elohim / gods.
And why not? What would be so bad about that? It is interesting that the serpent is the one who puts Adam and Eve on the path to knowledge and eternal life, which is the same thing Christianity claims to offer. Whereas Yahweh wants to prevent humans from having knowledge and eternal life. Quite thought-provoking.
Notice also that the creators of the Adam and Eve story imagined a god who breathes (2.7), walks (3.8), talks quite a bit, and appears to think and feel like a human. And Yahweh made sound when he walked in the garden. Adam could hear him walking (3.8). So Yahweh was imagined to be corporeal. In other words, this is an anthropomorphic god. Ancient humans imagined gods that looked and behaved like humans, only with more power and longevity. What's even more interesting, perhaps, is the way this story portrays a god who does not seem to be omniscient. We have already seen how he did not seem to anticipate the actions of the serpent or the misbehavior of Adam and Eve. When he comes to walk in the garden and Adam is not to be seen, he asks, "Where are you?" (3.9). When Adam mentions being embarassed about being naked, Yahweh asks, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Adam blames the woman Yahweh gave him. So Yahweh goes to Eve and asks, “What is this you have done?” And Eve blames the serpent. Then he becomes excessively angry and curses all 3 of them! It is somewhat humorous. This kind of god is not a lofty, metapersonal force. Nor is he even a tender, loving, carefully-planning parent. A good parent would not put naive children in such a situation with a crafty serpent and be surprised by the outcome. Nor does a good parent threaten to kill his children if they eat some good fruit. This is a primitive, anthropomorphic deity with a lack of foresight and some anger-management issues!
"The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children." - Denis Diderot: Pensées Philosophiques (1746), No. 16.
"I think the roots of this antagonism to science run very deep. They're ancient. We see them in Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It’s puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it’s more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It’s a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown. What is a human being without a childhood? Our long childhood is a critical feature of our species. It differentiates us, to a degree, from most other species. We take a longer time to mature. We depend upon these formative years and the social fabric to learn many of the things we need to know.
So here are Adam and Eve, who have awakened full grown, without the tenderness and memory of childhood. They have no mother, nor did they ever have one. The idea of a mammal without a mother is, by definition, tragic. It’s the deepest kind of wound for our species; antithetical to our flourishing, to who we are.
Their father is a terrifying, disembodied voice who is furious with them from the moment they first awaken. He doesn't say, “Welcome to the planet Earth, my beautiful children! Welcome to this paradise. Billions of years of evolution have shaped you to be happier here than anywhere else in the vast universe. This is your paradise.” No, instead God places Adam and Eve in a place where there can be no love; only fear, and fear-based behavior, obedience. God threatens to kill Adam and Eve if they disobey his wishes. God tells them that the worst crime, a capital offense, is to ask a question; to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. What kind of father is this? As Diderot observed, the God of Genesis “loved his apples more than he did his children.”
- Ann Druyan, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 27.6, Nov/Dec 2003. http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ann_druyan_talks_about_science_religion/ .
Influences on Hebrew Myth:
Furthermore, certain aspects of the Hebrew creation myths seem to have been influenced by older myths from other cultures. Long before the Hebrews even existed, Sumerian literature had already developed myths of an imaginary paradise, the garden of the gods called Dilmun, where there was no death, sickness, or aging. Like the Eden in Genesis, it was said to be watered by fresh water brought up from the earth, but by Utu the sun-god instead of Yahweh, who had not been invented yet (cf. Gen 2.6). There in Dilmun, the garden of the gods, Enki (god of sea and wisdom) embraced Ninmu, who repeatedly and easily brought forth new life in only 9 days (instead of 9 months; compare the Genesis curse on Eve, increasing pain of childbirth outside of Eden). This happens 3 times, and the 3 offspring help Ninhursag to cause 8 special plants to grow in the garden. Enki wants to know the plants and decree fate; so he eats each of the 8 plants in the garden. For this, Ninhursag curses Enki to death, "Until he is dead, I shall not look upon him with the eye of life," and then she leaves. Later the fox brings her back, and Ninhursag makes 8 healing divinities to heal the 8 diseased organs of Enki from the 8 plants he ate (8x3, 24). The connection of the rib and lady of life is also present in Sumerian literature. Sumerians also had stories of humans being made from clay to serve the gods, a story of a serpent who stole the secret of immortality from a human (Gilgamesh), and stories of incredibly long life spans for early humans, even longer than the life spans in Hebrew myths. The Sumerians also had a Flood Myth, which was the likely source for later adapted flood myths in other cultures. I will mention it later in the section on Noah's flood. For more information on such Sumerian stories, see my other page Creation: Other Ancient Sources Compared to Genesis.
Scribal errors?
Back to the Bible's chronology, some Christians, still hoping that the cores of the stories could be true, actually wondered if "the real numbers" had been written down wrong by scribal error. However, how could anyone have made so many errors on such a great scale? And if such errors can creep into the text, why should the text be considered trustworthy at all, on any point whatsoever? It is perfectly clear that no deity is taking care to preserve the truth from corruption. Furthermore, as you can see if you're paying attention, even without the timeline, the stories still would not be true. They would still be myths, not accurate historical accounts of anything.
Some Christians in recent years, when faced with the historical problems of Genesis, have said to me that perhaps the genealogies and/or certain stories were and are not meant to be "taken literally." They seem to think that such an ad-hoc excuse would then solve their problems and somehow defend the validity of the bible. However, even if all of the genealogies were abandoned and biblical events could be assigned to any date a believer would whimsically fancy, that would still mean that (1) the bible is admittedly unreliable when it comes to its genealogical tables, (2) no Yahweh or God watched over the creation or dissemination of the bible to ensure that it was accurate or that it really was "God's Word," (3) Jews and Christians were reading the bible at face value and erroneously taking both the genealogies and the stories as accurate and true for 2,000+ years, and no God cared enough to correct their false assumptions or claims, (4) the Bible must not actually be "God's Word," but is admittedly a human creation, and (5) such an ad hoc attempt at an apologetic escape route would still not solve the abundant historical and textual problems in the Old Testament stories, as you will see if you continue through this essay thoroughly.
For now I will simply show that most Jews and Christians, including the writers of the New Testament itself, DID take the Old Testament genealogies and stories to be literally and historically true:
Writing in Greek in the 200s BCE, the ancient author Manetho, who (according to other writers) was familiar with Jewish culture and literature and had read Hebrew stories from creation to the flood, wrote, "Now the whole time from Adam to the Flood was, according to the Hebrews, 2242 years" (The Fragments of Manetho, Loeb Classical Library Edition, 1940, 1.5). This supposed fragment of Mathetho comes from the work of the famous Christian bishop, apologist, and writer Eusebius of Caesarea (Chronicle 1.44), writing in the 300s CE. Whether or not Manetho wrote those words, it is clear that the Church Father Eusebius wanted to portray the Hebrew chronology as literally true.
The Jewish historian Josephus was a fairly well-education Jew of the first century CE. He endeavored to write what he said had been handed down to his generation from the creation of Adam and Eve until the Jewish War against Rome, in Josephus' own generation. Josephus believed what his Jewish tradition taught him, that Moses wrote the first 5 books of the bible/Torah, from Genesis through Deuteronomy, and that a person could use the sacred scriptures to calculate the years from the creation of Adam to his present day.
“… these Antiquities contain what has been delivered down to us from the original creation of man, until the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, …” (Josephus. Antiquities 20.11.2)(Josephus, Flavius. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Digireads.com Publishing. Kindle Edition.)
"Now he [Moses] says that this flood began on the twenty-seventh [seventeenth] day of the forementioned month; and this was two thousand six hundred and fifty-six [one thousand six hundred and fifty-six] years from Adam, the first man; and the time is written down in our sacred books, those who then lived having noted down, with great accuracy, both the births and deaths of illustrious men" (Antiquities 1.3.3).
Note: The translator, William Whiston, writing in 1737, put his own calculations from his Protestant Bible in brackets in his translation of Josephus. Protestant Christian Bibles were based on translations of the Hebrew Masoretic text of the Old Testament. Josephus, however, seems to have used Greek manuscripts of the Hebrew scriptures, which apparently differed slightly from some Hebrew texts. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible has an extra 650 years in the genealogy between Arphaxad and Nahor in Genesis 11:12-24. So this English translator in 1737 thought his own calculations were more accurate than those of Josephus. Neither would make any difference in terms of "accuracy," because compared with evidence-based history and science, the stories from Genesis through Deuteronomy are mostly mythical, not historical or accurate.
“... our sacred books. They, indeed, contain in them the history of five thousand years;” (Antiquities.Preface.3)
“Those Antiquities contain the history of five thousand years, and are taken out of our sacred books, but are translated by me into the Greek tongue.” (Against Apion 1.1)
It is perfectly clear then, that Jews 2,000 years ago were reading their scriptures literally, at face value, when it came to the creation of Adam, Moses, the genealogies, and chronology. And they believed they could calculate the number of years since the creation of mankind. And they based their Sabbath day observance on the notion that they were resting on the 7th day just as their god YHWH had rested after creating the heavens and the earth in 6 literal days.
Moreover, in the famous English edition of Josephus' complete works translated by Thomas Whiston in 1737, Mr. Whiston's textual notes show that he, too, interpreted the bible literally, at face value, when it came to the genealogies, the creation of Adam, Moses' authorship of the Torah, etc. For example, in his textual note #48, referring to Josephus Antiquities 1.3.3, he wrote:
"{48} Josephus here takes notice that these ancient genealogies were first set down by those that then lived, and from them were transmitted down to posterity; which I suppose to be the true account of that matter. For there is no reason to imagine that men were not taught to read and write soon after they were taught to speak; and perhaps all by the Messiah himself, who, under the Father, was the Creator or Governor of mankind, and who frequently in those early days appeared to them.
Note only did Whiston think the bible and its genealogies were accurate, he also imagined that humans learned to read and write soon after they "were taught" to speak, AND that "the Messiah himself," Jesus frequently appeared to humans back then and may have taught them the genealogies himself! Such an idea would never be accepted in today's academic circles with the knowledge we now have of ancient history, the bible, languages, evolution, etc.
Whiston's textual note on Josephus 1.1.1, says:
"B.C. 4004.—Creation of the Universe—Institution of the Sabbath—Fall of Man."
Whiston used his Protestant version of the bible to calculate the date of creation. And he believed Josephus made some errors in quoting and interpreting the Hebrew scripture. Nonetheless, this shows that Whiston thought Yahweh really created the universe in 4004 BC. He derived that from his bible. He was writing in 1737.
New Testament authors accepted Old Testament genealogies and stories at face value and used them. So did most Christians throughout the last 2,000 years until in more modern times increasing numbers began abandoning literal interpretations because of embarrassing conflicts with science and history.
The person who wrote the genealogy of Jesus found in "Luke" accepted the Old Testament genealogies quite literally, without the slightest criticism, and claimed there were only 77 generations of humans from God to Jesus through Adam (Luke 3.23-38). The genealogy conflicts with the one in Matthew on multiple points; both cannot possibly be true, so at the very least one is fraudulent. Nonetheless, it is an example of NT writers taking the OT at face value.
Luke 3.38: "... the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God." [See Luke 3 for the rest.]
The writer of Matthew also used OT genealogies to build an alleged genealogy of Jesus, but he only goes back to Abraham, not all the way to Adam (Matthew 1), and his genealogy disagrees with the one in Luke regarding Joseph's lineage: Joseph's father, his grandfather, which son of David he descended from, and more.
The gospels present their Jesus character as accepting at face value the stories from Hebrew scripture, as most Jews seem to have done at that time in history. (Mark 10.5-12; 12.19; Matthew 5.17-20; 19.4-9; 22.23-32; 24.37-39; Luke 20.28; 24.27; John 1.45; 5.45-46; 7.19; 7.22-23)
The Beginning, Creation, Adam and Eve: The Jesus character of Mark and Matthew quotes the Genesis Adam and Eve story as if it were historically true, not a myth or some kind of allegory.
Mark 10.5-12: "5. It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. 6. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8. and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.'" 10. When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
Jesus is presented as believing the Hebrew creation myth and the story of Adam and Eve, accepting them literally at face value, quoting the Genesis story, and even basing some ultra-conservative morality on it, claiming that all divorce is adultery. Matthew 19.4-9 presents the same story from Mark, but the author of Matthew thought it was a bit too conservative for his tastes, so he changed it to have his Jesus character present an except to allow divorce in certain cases.
Matthew 19.4-9: 4."Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5. and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." 7. “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 8. Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
Noah: The writer of Matthew and Luke depict Jesus as believing the Noah story, as any conservative Jew of his day would have:
Matthew 24.37-39: "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man." (See also Luke 17.26)
Luke 17.26-29: 26. "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. 28. “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all."
Sodom and Gomorrah: Matthew and Luke present Jesus as believing a literal interpretation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Matthew 10.14-15: [Jesus, giving instructions to his 12 Apostles:] "14. And if anyone will not welcome you or heed your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. 15. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town."
Here, the Jesus character is presented as accepting literally the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, AND believing in a coming day of judgement on all people past and present, esp. upon any who fail to heed the words of Jesus' Apostles.
Luke 10.10-12: 10. "But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11. ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ 12. I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town."
The King James translation of Mark 6.11 has Jesus saying something similar to Matthew 10 and Luke 10. However, most translations do not have that verse in Mark.
Luke 17.26-29: 26. "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. 28. “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all."
Moses: Matthew and Luke present Jesus as believing a literal interpretation of the story of Moses, the Exodus, and the Law.
Matthew 5.17-20: "17. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. 18. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19. So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20. For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
The Jesus character presented in the gospel of Matthew supports the "Law of Moses" and teaches that everyone should continue to keep and teach its commandments, of which there were 613, not a mere 10.
Luke 24:27: "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He [Jesus] explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself."
Here the Jesus character is claiming to have been prophesied in the writings of Moses. It is not true, as a good historical analysis will show. But that did not stop messianic hopefuls from making such wild claims. See "Prophesies of the Messiah."
John 1.45: "Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, 'We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
John 5.45-46: "45. Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, in whom you have put your hope. 46. If you had believed Moses, you would believe Me, because he wrote about Me."
Here the Jesus character is claiming to have been prophesied in the writings of Moses. It is not true, as a good historical analysis will show. But that did not stop messianic hopefuls from making such wild claims. See "Prophesies of the Messiah."
John 7.19: "Has not Moses given you the law?"
John 7.22-23: “22. But because Moses gave you circumcision, you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath [not that it is from Moses, but from the patriarchs.] 23. If a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses will not be broken, why are you angry with Me for making the whole man well on the Sabbath?"
The writer of the New Testament book of Jude also accepted the Old Testament Adam and Eve story and the genealogies as literally true at face value when he referred to Enoch, the 7th from Adam.
Jude 1.14: "It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, ..."
Likewise, other NT writers referred to the Adam and Eve story, the Noah story, the Sodom & Gomorrah story, the Moses/Exodus story, etc., as if they were literally true. ( Acts 3.22; 7.20, 29, 35, 37; Rom 5.14; 9.15; 1 Cor 15; Eph 5.31; Heb 3.5; 9.19; 10.28; 11.4-35; 1 Tim 2.11-15; 2 Tim 3.8; 3.14-17; 1 Peter 3.20; 2 Peter 2.5, 7-8; Jude 1.14)
The writer of 1 Timothy 2.11-15 not only took the Adam and Eve story literally, but used it to justify the subjugation of women in Christianity.
11. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. 13. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."
Romans 5.14: "Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses ..."
The writer of 1 Corinthians takes the Adam and Eve story literally and uses it to create a theological point, that death entered the world through Adam. But anybody who studies science or history knows that death is a natural aspect of biology and was "in the world" long before Adam and Eve existed.
1 Corinthians 15.21-22: "21. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. 22. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
1 Corinthians 15.44-49: "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being;" the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man." (This writer interprets the Genesis account quite literally.)
The writer of 1 and 2 Peter believed the Hebrew story of Noah's flood literally:
1 Peter 3.20: "... those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water ..."
2 Peter 2.5: "... he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others ..."
The writer of 1 Timothy (traditionally believed to be Paul, but modern scholars doubt this claim) said that ALL Hebrew scripture was inspired by the Jewish god Yahweh and was good for teaching and training in righteousness:
2 Tim 3.14-17: "14. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15. and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17. so that the servant of God a may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The ancient Hebrews had no knowledge of how the universe came into existence or how humans had evolved over time. When their storytellers said a personal being must have made everything in 6 days and rested on the 7th day, they took that literally and even used that as the basis for having a Sabbath day of rest every week.
Exodus 20:11: "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
Exodus 31.17: “It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in 6 days YHWH made the heavens and the earth, and on the 7th day he rested and was refreshed.”
To the Jews, the 7 days of the week were actually modeled on the 7 days of the first week when their god Yahweh allegedly created everything. But that is not a realistic story.
If most Christians were wrong about their interpretation of this aspect of the bible for 1,900 years, then they were likely wrong about other things as well, and one certainly cannot count on any 'Holy Spirit' to be guiding Christians to a correct interpretation of the bible.
If the genealogies were not meant to be taken literally, then why did Christians do so? Theophilus (d. 181 CE), the sixth bishop of Antioch, in his Apology to Autolycus (Apologia ad Autolycum) created a bible-based chronology putting the creation of the world at about 5529 BC. He wrote, "All the years from the creation of the world amount to a total of 5,698 years" (up to the day of his writing)? Note also that Theophilus and other Christians used the Greek Septuagint for their Old Testament quotations, not Hebrew texts. The two have differences. Did their god, their Jesus, and the 'holy spirit' not care enough to correct them?
Both Hellenistic Jews and early Christians created chronologies based on a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. Such was the standard way of thinking. Christians like Tatian of Antioch (fl. 180), Clement of Alexandria (d. before 215), Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235), Julius Africanus of Jerusalem (d. after 240), Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine (260-340), and others quoted earlier Graeco-Jewish biblical chronographers of the Hellenistic period, all basing their thoughts on a face-value reading of Jewish scripture. [Dr. Ben Zion Wacholder, "Biblical Chronology in the Hellenistic World Chronicles," Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 61, No.3 (Jul., 1968), pp.451–452.]
Medieval Jews developed a calendar based upon the number of years since the creation of the world (according to their Bible)? In 1178 CE, the Jewish scholar Maimonides wrote in the Mishneh Torah, Sanctification of the Moon (11.16), that he had chosen the epoch from which calculations of all dates should be as "the third day of Nisan in this present year ... which is the year 4938 of the creation of the world," supporting the notion that Yahweh created the world about 3761 BC. After Maimonides, the Jewish calendar used the Anno Mundi designation (Latin for “in the year of the world,” abbreviated AM), and this became standard in Jewish communities around the world. According to this traditional Jewish calendar, sunset on September 24, 2014 (Gregorian calendar) was the start of the year AM 5775, that is the 5,775th year of the world's existence.
See: Solomon, Gandz (1947–1948). "Date of the Composition of Maimonides' Code." Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, Vol. 17, pp. 1–7. Archived at JSTOR. Accessed November 24, 2014.
Irish Bishop James Ussher (1581 – 1656) was the Church of Ireland's Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (1625 - 1656). Bishop Usher famously used his Bible to calculate the age of the universe. He determined that the first day of biblical creation was October 23, 4004 BC.
As noted above, English theologian and historian Thomas Whiston (fl. 1737), who translated the works of the Jewish historian Josephus into English, believed -- based on his Bible -- that God created the universe in 4004 BC. Whiston made a textual note on Josephus Antiquities 1.1.1, writing:
"B.C. 4004.—Creation of the Universe—Institution of the Sabbath—Fall of Man."
The genealogies in the Bible clearly were not intended to be mere approximations, but even IF the genealogies were mere approximations, that would not solve problems regarding sequence, incompatibility with known history and science, internal textual problems, anachronisms, problems related to comparative mythology, and more.
A person claiming that the genealogies were not to be taken literally should not be allowed to make a blanket statement, but should be required to say which ones are literal and which are not, and why. If the genealogies were not meant to be read at face value, then what criteria should a person use to decide what is literally true and what is not in the bible? Basically, every time science, history, or textual problems force believers into a corner, they are tempted either to deny the science and history or else to say, "Well, maybe the Bible is not literally true," while retaining literal interpretations of other portions of their scriptures solely based on whim, prejudice, and convenience.
If the genealogical numbers were/are not meant to be read at face value, but are playful or symbolic numerological codes, one opens the door for the suggestion that perhaps other significant portions of the bible should likewise not be read at face value, including claims regarding a personal god with a mind, will, and human-like emotions; the very claim that there was a personal creator at all; the claim that humans were created in the "image" of a god; the humanity-destroying flood of Noah (which NT authors accepted as literal history); the Tower of Babel; the Exodus with its concomitant plagues and miracles (which NT authors accepted as literal history, as did Jews until more modern scholarship began to suggest otherwise); the biblical claim that burnt animal sacrifices were a pleasing aroma in Yahweh's nostrils (see below); the Jonah story; angels and demons; the virgin birth of Jesus; Jesus' exorcisms; the literal, bodily resurrection from the dead; the ascension of Jesus into the sky; the claim that God simply cannot forgive sins without bloodshed (Heb 9.22); and so forth.
Could "father" mean "ancestor"? Would that solve the problem? Did "years" really mean "years"?
Others have realized the huge problem with the Bible's timeline and have tried to salvage the Bible's trustworthiness by suggesting that whenever the genealogies said someone was another's "father", they could actually mean he was his "ancestor" instead (example: The NIV Study Bible, textual note on Gen. 5:6).
But the Bible says, "When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth," and "he had other sons and daughters;" and the rest of the lists follow the same pattern.
If you try to replace the word "son" with the word "descendant," the passages make no sense at all: "When Adam was 130 he had a descendant(?), then he lived 800 more years and had other sons and daughters."
Such an attempt to explain the discrepancy is useless. Obviously in context, the writer of the genealogies was trying to present (or at least give the superficial appearance of) a complete family record from David backward in time to Moses to Abraham and even to a mythical first man Adam, just as the New Testament tries to do with Jesus. If you read the Bible passages which I have quoted in this paper, you will see clearly that the author really meant "son" when he said "son" in these lists.
Some may also suggest that "years" didn't really mean years, but the Bible uses the same word for year almost every time, and it uses "years" in other places where the dating is more obviously realistic. For example, the word for years in the genealogies is the same word used for telling how long a king ruled or any other length of time beyond 360-365 days. And anyway, if their year was shorter than 360-365 days, the problem would be even worse, because that would put Adam's creation even later in history; and if their year was longer, we would have even more outrageous life-spans for these people.
In some fundamentalist circles, it is popular to call into question the methods used by scientists to establish chronology in geology, history, biology, astronomy, and archaeology. More often than not, the Christians who raise such doubts do not actually understand the methods involved, or the data, and they are simply doing anything they can muster to avoid facing the errors in their cherished stories.
Here are some samples of dating methods used by scientists in various disciplines. It is important to note that evidence from a wide variety of sources all supports the scientific view AND the historical view over and against the chronology of the Bible.
Stratigraphy: Stratigraphy is a branch of geology that studies rock layers, stratification. ("Strata" are layers.)
The Law of Superposition: Long before radiometric dating had been discovered, humans figured out that in general, the oldest rock layers are on bottom, and rock layers on top of those are progressively younger. Back in the 1600s, Nicolaus Steno established the idea that rock layers should lie over one another in the order of their age, the oldest at the bottom, and the youngest deposited on top. Eventually, geologists learned that there are many exceptions to this, due to geological processes like tectonics, metamorphic folding, subduction, and such. Knowledge of these exceptional processes only refined the basic principal of deeper = older.
Biostratigraphy is a subcategory of stratigraphy that correlates and assigns relative ages of rock strata by using the fossils contained within them. Both rocks and the fossils within them indicate evolution over vast amounts of time. In the late 1700s through the 1800s, people realized that fossils were remains of past life on earth. Geologists noticed that different rock layers contained unique fossil contents that, along with other characteristics, set them apart from other layers. Geologists noticed that older rock layers contained the simplest fossils, and fossils appeared progressively more complex through higher and more recent rock layers. This opened the doors to the use of fossils for establishing a sequence of rock layers through time. Eventually, by the 1900s, radiometric dating would be discovered and would confirm and expand knowledge of stratigraphy.
Correlation: Correlation. When scientists look at fossils in layers of rocks in different places, they make a reasonable assumption that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, layers containing the same fossils in separate locations are similar in age. The consistency of biological succession in different places gives scientists the confidence that such an assumption is reasonable. Such is the available natural evidence.
Radiometric dating is a technique used to date materials like rocks. It involves comparing the observed amount of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates. "Radiometric dating is the principal source of information about the absolute age of rocks and other geological features, including the age of the Earth itself, and can be used to date a wide range of natural and man-made materials. Together with stratigraphic principles, radiometric dating methods are used in geochronology to establish the geological time scale. Among the best-known techniques are radiocarbon dating, potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating. By allowing the establishment of geological timescales, it provides a significant source of information about the ages of fossils and the deduced rates of evolutionary change. Radiometric dating is also used to date archaeological materials, including ancient artifacts." (Taken from the wikipedia article by the same name.) Radiometric dating has repeatedly been confirmed and calibrated by cross-checking it with other dating techniques, such as dendrochronology.
Radio-carbon dating: Carbon dating measures the decay of carbon-14 in organic material and is good for dating objects up to 60,000 years ago. It has been calibrated with dendrochronology, coral dating, and other methods to confirm and increase its accuracy.
For a history and explanation, see "How Old is the Earth: A Response to 'Scientific' Creationism," by G. Brent Dalrymple (1984, 2006), http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalrymple/radiometric_dating.html.
Dalrymple, G. B. (1991). The Age of the Earth. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Rubidium-strontium dating is used by geologists to date rocks. 87Rb (one of the isotopes of rubidium) decays to 87Sr with a half-life of 49 billion years.
Uranium-lead dating is one of the oldest and most refined radiometric dating methods, with an age range of about 1 million years to over 4.5 billion years, and with routine precisions in the 0.1-1 percent range.
Uranium-thorium dating is used to date speleothems, corals, carbonates, and fossil bones. Its range is from a few years to about 700,000 years.
Potassium-argon dating and argon-argon dating are used to date metamorphic, igneous, and volcanic rocks, as well as volcanic ash layers within or overlying paleoanthropologic sites. These methods are good for things over a few thousand years old, and especially for minerals and rocks over 100,000 years old.
Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale: Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools?, by Andrew MacRae, 1997-2004, [Text last updated: October 2, 1998; Links updated: September 12, 2004]. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html.
Dendrochronology: Tree rings show annual growth. Ring data from countless trees, alive and dead, have been put together in a data base that goes back over 9-11,000 years. Data from tree rings have also helped scientists to calibrate other methods of dating, such as radio-carbon dating, to make them even more precise, reliable, and corroborated.
Friedrich, M.; et al. (2004). "The 12,460-Year Hohenheim Oak and Pine Tree-Ring Chronology from Central Europe—a Unique Annual Record for Radiocarbon Calibration and Paleoenvironment Reconstructions." Radiocarbon 46: 1111–1122. http://www.wsl.ch/staff/felix.kaiser/PDFs/Friedrich_Dendro_RC04%20.pdf.
Ice Cores: Ice cores go back over 420,000 years. Locally here in central Texas, UT Austin has a department involved in such studies.
Coral dating: Coral fossils go back 540 million years. Annual growth bands in bamboo corals and others allow geologists to construct year-by-year chronologies that facilitate high-resolution records of past climatic and environmental changes. (Schrag, D.P. and Linsley, B.K. (2002). "Corals, Chemistry, and Climate". Science 296 (8): 277–278. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/296/5566/277 .
Varve Analysis: A varve is a layer of freshwater sediment. It turns out that these layers and their composition are influenced by the orbital motion of the earth. Varve analysis has been calibrated with other methods of dating, and it is reliable over a period of 40 million years, providing an alternate verification to radiometric dating in cases where sufficient record exists to provide a reliable trace.
Obsidian dating measures the penetration of water vapor into volcanic glass over time, and it is useful for determining dates as far back as 200,000 years.
Lichenometry uses the growth of lichen on exposed rocks to date them; it can cover up to 10,000 years.
Paleomagnetism uses the record of the Earth's magnetic field in rocks as a dating mechanism.
Speleothems (mineral deposits in caves) combined with uranium-thorium dating provide evidence for past precipitation, temperature, and vegetation changes over the last 500,000 years.
"The molecular clock is a technique in molecular evolution that uses fossil constraints and rates of molecular change to deduce the time in geologic history when two species or other taxa diverged. It is used to estimate the time of occurrence of events called speciation or radiation. The molecular data used for such calculations is usually nucleotide sequences for DNA or amino acid sequences for proteins. It is sometimes called a gene clock or evolutionary clock." (From the wikipedia article by the same name.)
"The human mitochondrial molecular clock is the rate at which mutations have been accumulating in the mitochondrial genome of hominids during the course of human evolution. The archeological record of human activity from early periods in human prehistory is relatively limited and its interpretation has been controversial. Because of the uncertainties from the archeological record, scientists have turned to molecular dating techniques in order to refine the timeline of human evolution. A major goal of scientists in the field is to develop an accurate hominid mitochondrial molecular clock which could then be used to confidently date events that occurred during the course of human evolution." (From the wikipedia article by the same name.)
Even aside from evolution, there are clonal plant colonies that have been around for 43-80,000 years, far longer than the Hebrew compilers of Genesis thought the land or animals had existed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_living_things.
Natural data from an amazingly wide variety of sources, disciplines, and methods all agree, indicating a vast time-scale for the planet earth and for plant/animal/human evolution. Could that possibly be false coincidence? No. There is simply far too much data from far too many disciplines. And remember that this comes in addition to literary, logical, and moral problems in old Hebrew stories themselves. Here is a scientific timeline that should be compared to the biblical timeline: https://sites.google.com/site/investigatingchristianity/home/scientific-and-historical-time-line.
If we would not trust ancient bronze-age and iron-age Jewish medicine, science, or technology, why would we be so foolish as to give blind credence to their stories and religious sentiments?
Ancient Literature: Not only does the Bible contradict evidence from archeology and the fossil record, but non-Jewish ancient cultures did not think the earth or its people were as young as the Jews thought.
The Greek historian Herodotus claimed that Egyptian priests had lore going back 17,000 years (Histories 2.43). The Greek writer Plutarch records Persians as believing that Zoroaster lived 5,000 years before the Trojan War (Moralia 369e, Isis and Osiris 46). While the Greeks were relying on Persian legends and Egyptian priestly records, not scientific methods, it is still worth noting that Greeks and Persians did not think the world was only a few thousand years old, as the Jews did. They were at least correct in thinking humans had been around for a much longer time.
The Egyptians belonged to a far older culture, and they believed humanity was much older than the Jews later imagined.
The Sumerians/Mesopotamians also belonged to a culture much older than the Jewish culture, and they also believed that people had been around for much longer than the time allotted by Hebrew writers.
The Hindus also thought that humanity and the world was older than the Jews thought.
Since ancient literary literary testimony is unreliable, it makes sense to look to the scientific, logical, natural, evidence-based methods discussed above.
Conclusions:
The only conclusion to make is that the writers did not know their true history, and that the creation story and the Garden of Eden story were merely Hebrew myths to explain how everything came to be. Almost every culture created stories to explain how the world and people came to be.
I address evolution elsewhere: Big Questions: 5. Evolution. Having been brought up in a conservative environment, I never really considered evolution until AFTER I realized that the Biblical creation stories were myths rather than history. According to the abundant available evidence from both fossils and DNA, humans evolved from earlier hominids over hundreds of thousands of years, and these, in turn, had evolved from prior forms. The evidence found in nature is quite obvious when one looks at it enough, and it is certainly contrary to the stories of the Bible.
Now that we know about human evolution from Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7 million years ago) and Orrorin tugenensis (6 million years ago) through Ardipithecus (5.5–4.4 million years ago), Australopithecus (4–1.8 mya), Kenyanthropus (3–2.7 mya), Paranthropus (3–1.2 mya), and the genus Homo (2 mya–present), including Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster, Homo georgicus, Homo antecessor, Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens idaltu, Archaic Homo sapiens, Homo floresiensis, and Homo sapiens, we could ask the question: If humans were created by a personal God, Yahweh, "in his own image," at which point exactly did the image of humans become Yahweh's image, since that image has changed so much over time? It makes no sense. The whole idea of man/mankind being created in a single moment in the image of Yahweh/Elohim is not only false, but absurd in light of modern science and history. So is the idea that Adam and Eve even existed at all, much less in the 4000s BCE as the Bible would have it. And once one sees that the Adam and Eve story is myth, not real history, one must reject also the later Christian ideas of their "original sin" and the need for redemption from it (as if a deity would be so petty and angry that "he" would be incapable of forgiving mistakes apart from a blood sacrifice of an innocent human!).
Many people are familiar with that old question of where Cain found his wife. Gen. 4:17 says Cain lay with his wife, but the author had only mentioned four people being in existence: Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. This has always been one of those small details that do not quite make sense without guessing at some additional information.
But there are other interesting tidbits to find in closely reading these stories. For example, after the Bible tells of Cain's exile for killing his brother Abel, it discusses Cain's descendants, one of whom is named Lamech. In the story, Lamech has three male children: Jabal, the father of all those who live in tents and raise livestock; Jubal, the father of all who play the harp and flute; and Tubal-Cain, who instructed all who work in bronze and iron (Gen. 4:17-22). What the author is probably doing here is repeating a story handed down over generations to explain how some people came to be herders, others musicians, and others craftsmen; that is, it is an etiological myth 1 invented to explain how people learned to do these activities. There are some problems.
First, three chapters later (7:21) everyone but Noah and his small family is killed by a "world-wide" flood, and Cain's line was wiped out, so as the stories are connected in the Bible, Lamech's children could not be the ancestors of all herdsmen, musicians, and metal-workers!
Second, humans learned to make bronze long before they learned how to manufacture iron implements. The Sumerians and Egyptians could make copper alloys and smelt gold and silver not long after 4,000 BC; bronze (a mixture of copper and tin) was discovered in the 3000s in western Asia. The use of iron came about in the 1000s BC (up to 2,000 years after bronze) and, since it was harder to work than bronze, only gradually replaced bronze in the making of weapons and tools. One man was not responsible for the knowledge of working with bronze and iron, nor was he father of everyone who did such work!
Third, the Bible puts metal-working before a global flood. There has definitely not been a global flood since people learned to make iron objects, and there probably has never been a global flood at all, especially since homo sapiens has existed.
Jabal, Jubal, & Tubal-Cain, along with Adam & Eve, the serpent, and Cain & Able are merely Hebrew myth. They are useful now only in understanding how ancient cultures thought about their past.
The Bible has the Flood occurring around 2456 BC, or about 1,500 years before Solomon. The Bible says the flood killed all people except Noah and his family (Gen. 6:13), wiping them from the face of the earth (6:7). Supposedly, all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered with water to a depth of more than 15 cubits, or 20 feet (7:19-20, As if Noah or Yahweh had measured the depth to all the mountain tops and handed the measurements down through the generations!?). Anyway, the Biblical flood occurring at that time is historically impossible. In 2456 BC, Egypt and Sumer were both flourishing civilizations. And we know from history, archaeology, geology, etc. that no flood came along to destroy these civilizations or wipe out humanity. A world flood certainly did not occur when the Bible says it did.
Furthermore, there is no reason to believe it ever occurred at all. The story looks and sounds like ancient fiction: there is the impossibility of fitting all the kinds of animals on board a boat, the use of numerology/mythical numbers (40 days and nights, 7-day spans, 7 of certain animals, the 3-fold sending of the dove at 7-day intervals), the assertion that Noah was 600 years old when it happened and lived to be 950 years old, the assertion that the flood covered the entire earth (or land), etc. It also serves as an etiological/ mythical explanation for rainbows. There are also other large plot holes. For example, if Yahweh were really an all-powerful God and could do almost anything at all, including creating the world, why would he need a human to build a boat for animals and humans to survive a flood he wants to send? Could he not build a boat himself? Or could he not simply remake all animals? And even if a God were displeased, why would flooding the entire world, including children and baby animals, be the best imaginable way to start over? Could he not simply erase the bad people and start over? Why would a good God choose drowning, including for babies? And that's not to mention the fact that a perfect creator should not need to start over at all and should have anticipated any problems and made alterations to prevent such a thing.
That the biblical flood story, specifically, is an unhistorical myth is as certain as can be, historically speaking. However, massive flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers did take place in ancient times, and stories of a massive flood were likely handed down through the generations, since different, but similar versions show up in many cultures.
Interestingly, the Hebrew version of the great flood story was either borrowed or adapted from earlier versions, or it evolved from earlier versions. For example, one earlier Mesopotamian story of the flood said that the assembly of the Gods decided to send a flood to destroy mankind, but that one God, Ea, warned a certain man, Atrahasis (or Utnapishtim), to build a boat with 7 levels and gather onto it living beings and his kinfolk. It rained for 7 nights, then the boat floated for 12 leagues and landed on Mt. Nimush. Atrahasis waited 7 days, then sent out a dove which returned, a swallow which also returned, then finally a raven which did not return. Atrahasis then opened his ark, sent out all the animals, and made a sacrifice to the gods with 7 and 7 vessels. The Gods smelled the sacrifice (just as "Yahweh smelled the pleasing aroma" in the Bible2 ), and Arahasis was blessed. Ishtar, the Mistress of the Gods, lifts up her lapis lazuli necklace, the rainbow, as a promise that she "will never forget these days of the great flood" that destroyed her children. The Mesopotamians had flood stories long before the Hebrews, and one can easily see how much the Hebrew version resembles this example taken from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI (c. 1100, descended from an older Babylonian version c. 1600's BC, which itself borrowed the flood story from an earlier Sumerian version dating from the 2000's BC). The Hebrews had apparently adapted this common story to fit their national religion, replacing Ea and the other Gods with Yahweh, and replacing Atrahasis/Utnapishtim with Noah. (I offer more explicit comparisons in these Notes on the Genesis Flood.)
For more information, I suggest reviewing the history of Egypt and the Middle East, along with the rest of the world when there is time, so that you will see just how certain it is that there was no global flood that wiped out humanity within recorded history. Here is a post (unfinished) I made concerning Egyptian history: AncientHistoryAndTheBible.htm. You may also wish to study flood myths, so that you can see how various cultures have adapted the myth to suit their tastes, just as the Jews did. Again, humans have had continuous civilization in Egypt and Mesopotamia, among other places, without ANY disruption from a global flood, since well before 3000 BC. And even the written history, monuments, and inscriptions of Egypt and Mesopotamia confirm this.
As the story goes, Noah built a vineyard, got drunk, and was lying naked in his tent, when Ham happened to see his father naked and tell his brothers outside, who entered the tent backward to cover their father's body. Upon waking and hearing that Ham had seen him naked, Noah cursed Ham's son Canaan saying, "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. . . . Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem. May Canaan be the slave of Shem" (Gen.9:20-29). An ancient superstition supported by the Bible suggested that such pronouncements (curses or blessings) could not be revoked.
This story was invented to justify the Israelites' land claims over the claims of other tribes and peoples in the land of Canaan. The story was a way for Hebrews to pretend that their actions and desires were destined and divinely ordained.
The Canaanites were not descended from a man named Canaan. The name Canaan means "land of purple," and was given to the region because the coastal cities made and exported purple dye. It was a common tool in myth-making to turn the name of a nation into the name of a man said to be it's ancestor.
Verse 29 says Noah lived 950 years. This means he would have still been alive when Abraham was 50 years old (in 2106 BC)!!! This is not history; this is Hebrew mythology. If the ancestor of all living humans had still been alive in 2106 BC, everyone would/could have gone to visit their great, great, etc. ... grandfather, and the Sumerians would not have had a polytheistic flood story older than the Jewish one placing the flood in the more distant past.
Furthermore, would a decent God really allow a man's descendants, not even the man himself, to be cursed simply because he saw his father naked? Anyway, what is so horrible about seeing someone naked? ... except that it was a moral hang-up for some ancient Jewish people. Would you let several generations of your great-grandchildren be cursed into slavery just because ONE of your children sees you naked? - First, this is ridiculous. Second, this is unjust. Third, this is an obvious example of a myth created to justify prejudice and ethnocentrism and to exalt Semitic peoples over their non-Semitic Canaanite neighbors. Many other nations also used myths for such purposes.
The listing of people descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Gen. 10) is constructed in a manner that matches the geographical knowledge of Jews from the 500s BC (Redford 400-408), which means that it is not a factual, historical genealogy, but was invented at a late date to offer an explanation of where the neighbors of the Jews came from.
In this "genealogy," the names of nations, tribes, and cities known to the Jews are given as the names of individual men, children and grandchildren of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Gomer = Cimmerians, Madai = Medes, Javan (Yawan) = Ionians (a Greek people on the west coast of Asia Minor), Ashkenaz = Scythians, Mizraim = Egypt, Put = Libya (Pywd in Egyptian, Pataua in Persian, a tribe powerful in the 800s BC, later a name for Libya), Cush, Canaan, Ludites = Ludians (Lydians of Asia Minor), Asshur = Assyria, Eber = Hebrews (H-eber-u).
The list of Japheth's sons reflects the geography of the empire of the Medes and Persians in the 500s BC.
The fact the Cyprus (the Kittim) and Rhodes (Rodanim) are listed as sons of Javan (Ionian Greeks) displays the effects of Greek colonization of the eastern Mediterranean Sea from 710 to 610 BC and afterward.
In 644 BC, the Cimmerians attcked Lydia in Asia Minor and took Sardis, the capital. But the Cimmerians lost power, and the Scythians took their place from around 630 BC forward. Since Gomer (Cimmerians) is made the father of Ashkenaz (Scythians) in the genealogy, the writer or his sources must have known that the Scythians followed the Cimmerians, and therefore had to live after 630 BC.
The names listed as sons of Ham were actually the names of countries listed in the order of their political strength specifically during the period from 711 to 593 BC and afterward: Cush, Egypt (Mizraim), Libya (Put), and Canaan. The fact that Cush is placed before Egypt alludes to the time when Cush held sway over Egypt (711-593 BC). Libyans had ruled Egypt from 950 to 720 BC. And Canaan, always the weakest region, comes last in the list. The name Sabteca, listed as one of the sons of Cush, may even come from the Cushite king Shabtaka (697-690 BC).
After 655 BC, Egypt had an alliance with Lydia (Asia Minor, now part of Turkey) and began to use Lydians as mercenaries. This is the only explanation for placing the Lydians (Ludites) as children of Mizraim (Egypt). The author had to have a reason for associating the Lydians of Asia Minor with Egypt in North Africa.
The list names Sidon as the first-born of Canaan. Tyre (the capital of Phoenicia, usually mentioned together with Sidon) is not even in the list, which is very significant. This seems to reflect a time when Tyre was impoverished, such as after Nebuchadrezzar's siege of the city in the early 500s BC (shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem); Sidon was then the leading city of Phoenicia.
Canaan did not get its name from an ancestor named "Canaan." Canaan means "land of purple" (so does "Phoenicia," the Greek name for the region), and it received this name because the people of the region produced and exported purple dye.
This genealogy, with its characters, is fiction created to explain some real history. It merely reflects the world-view of Jews in the 6th century BC.
"And YHWH came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. And YHWH said, 'Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech.' So YHWH scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because YHWH there confused the language of all the earth, and from there did YHWH scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (Genesis 11:5-9)
According to the Bible (esp. Genesis 11), from the creation of the first humans until around the 2400's to 2100's BC, all humans spoke the same language and lived in the Middle East. But suddenly, when Yahweh gets bothered by people building a really high tower in the Middle East, he decides to scatter people around the earth and confuse all their languages. This tale is an etiological (explanatory) myth created by ancient Hebrews aiming to provide some explanation as to how the world's different languages developed and how "Babylon" acquired its name, i.e. because “Babel” sounded like the Hebrew word for “confused.”
However, it is a fact (well-established by biology, genetics, fossils, radiometric dating, history, and archaeology) that humans lived scattered over the earth long, long before the 2400's BC. Simply look up information on the history of any part of the globe, and you will see this. Humans were already all over the place, and had been for tens of thousands of years, and in some places hundreds of thousands of years. China, Australia, India, Africa, and even North and South America -- ALL were inhabited by humans LONG before the setting of this old Hebrew story. But the ancient Hebrews who invented these stories had no way of knowing this.
It is also a fact that different languages, too, had already evolved long before that time. One may even observe the different forms of writing from Egypt and Mesopotamia that developed well before 2400 BC! Inscriptions preserved in ancient Egypt and clay tablets from ancient Sumer dating back to 3000 BC (and some even before that) still survive today to prove this, and many of the writings have been translated. Furthermore, notice that this evidence concerns written languages, which evolved long after verbal languages themselves. As I explained above, humans had continuous civilization in Egypt and Mesopotamia, among other places from 3000 BC on, and these civilizations were not interrupted by any global flood or supernatural creation of multiple languages. The written history, monuments, and inscriptions of Egypt and Mesopotamia confirm this, as does archeology in general. Here is a post (unfinished) I made concerning Egyptian history: AncientHistoryAndTheBible.htm.
Linguistic Evolution: It is also a fact that languages have evolved over time and continue to do so. They were not simply created as static cultural features once for all time. Students of the English language as well as people who learn various languages can see how languages have evolved and continue to do so. Surely no one can deny how differently people speak English in Los Angeles, Wisconsin, New York, East Texas, London, and Australia (or Singapore or India, for that matter). Now consider the differences between Shakespearean English and modern English. Did your English teacher in high school show you what the Old-English Beowulf looked like or sounded like? Did/Do you have trouble reading Shakespeare's plays or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in their original language in high school? One very small example: "thou hast" versus "you have." The older English "thou hast" sounds closer to its German relative, "du hast." Linguistics professors over the last few centuries have gained lots of in depth knowledge on how languages evolve. For example, modern Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian all evolved from ancient Latin. And even ancient Latin, Greek, Germanic langages, Persian/Farsi, and Sanskrit (an ancient Indian language) themselves had all previously descended from a common linguistic ancestor, called "Indo-European," which has in part been recreated by linguists. e.g. English "father," German "Vater," Dutch "vader," Swedish "fader," Latin "pater," Greek "patēr," Sanskrit "pitā," and Farsi "pedar" all evolved from a common Indo-European ancestor. You can see and hear both the similarities and differences. The words for father in non-Indo-European language groups sound more unusual to us because they evolved from a different linguistic ancestor. And notice how the Latin "pater" evolved into Italian "padre," Spanish "padre," French "père," Portuguese "pai" within recorded history. History has "witnessed" this evolution. The modern Romance languages (so-called because they evolved from the Roman language, Latin) did not exist in ancient times. They evolved over the last couple of millennia. And linguists have even discovered various rules that seem to apply to the evolution of languages. Linguistic evolution is a fact of life and history. It is a nice parallel to biological evolution, which is also a fact, despite old, mistaken Judeo-Christian notions to the contrary.
Back to the Tower of Babel story: The name "Babel" was not derived from the Hebrew "confused," as the Biblical author suggests in his word play. Rather, Babel was from Akkadian "Bab-ilani," meaning "Gate of the Gods." (Reference: Harper Collins Study Bible footnote, but I think you can probably just as easily find this etymology on wikipedia or elsewhere on-line.) Would it even make sense to explain the name of a non-Hebrew city based on a Hebrew language that did not even exist in the 2400's BC?
Even aside from historical impossibilities, look at the simplistic theology. Notice how primitive the concept of Yahweh is here. He must come DOWN out of the sky in order to inspect the works of humans. Where is omniscience or omnipresence? This and certain other OT stories depict Yahweh coming down from the sky on certain occasions.
Compare Gen 18.20-21: Then YHWH said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”
A person living today might ask, "Why would 'God' need to come down? Why not act from heaven?" But many ancient peoples told stories claiming that the gods lived in the sky and would periodically come down. See also my paper on Bible passages presenting Yahweh as a storm god.
Notice the plural "us," as well. YHWH speaks to the heavenly court ("let us …"), which acts along with him. See Gen 1.26-27; 3.22 for other "let us . . ." passages; see Gen 6.2; Job 1:6; 2.1; 38.6-7 for references to Yahweh's/Elohim's sons. Yes, Elohim/Yahweh had many sons, in the more ancient belief; eventually these would be re-interpreted.
And why would Yahweh be so afraid of human abilities anyway? And even if he were afraid, surely there are better means of addressing such concerns. For example, a real Yahweh could have appeared to the people, explained his concerns, and asked them to stop. Would that be so hard? Yet no nation but Israel (later in history than this story is set) knew much or cared anything about any god called YHWH.
It is an interesting side note that the Bible never offers any resemblance of a satisfactory explanation as to why a truly universal god, allegedly desirous of a relationship with humanity, would ignore most humans on the planet for most of human history and chose to reveal himself only to a few males within one tribe for a short time, and in mysterious, suspicious, unverifiable ways that suspiciously resemble claims made by other human religions regarding their gods, both before and after Judaism. Of course, the writers of these stories did not even know earth was a planet, nor did they have a clue regarding its population, size, or long history.
What was the real problem in the story, by the way?
A common ancient assumption was that Yawheh did not want people building a tower to heaven. Since ancient Israelites and most early Christians imagined that their god was right up there in the sky above a stationary earth, such an interpretation made sense to them. But as the Roman Emperor Julian, an opponent of Christianity, noted in the 300's CE, "even if men the world over had but one language, they still would be unable to build a tower to heaven, even if they turned the whole surface of the earth to bricks!" (Julian's Against the Galileans, edited by R. Joseph Hoffmann, Prometheus Books, 2004, p. 104). Of course, Julian had the advantage of a good education in Greek science, and he had a somewhat better notion of how vast the "heavens" were, even if his knowledge was still a far cry from modern science.
Julian also wondered why Christians would believe the Babel myth any more readily than the Greek myth of the giants, Otus and Ephialtes, the Aloadae, who planned to pile 3 mountains on top of one another in order to scale the heavens, but were defeated by Apollo (ibid.).
If YHWH's fear was not an assault on his house/court in the sky, what could it have been? Some might suggest that Yahweh knew humans were arrogant and would use technology for ill purposes, but that does not solve the problems of this story. Anyway, can you imagine a real YHWH "up there" who gets angry when modern humans build skyscrapers or cooperate to create missions into space? Can you imagine "him" coming down to check on our technological and scientific projects? If the old story were realistic, why would YHWH stop the Babylonians, but NOT stop modern scientists?
In sum, there are multiple levels on which the Tower of Babel story fails to be true or even realistic.
Date of Composition: The stories as we have them were not composed until during or after the late 700's or 600's BC, LONG after the alleged events (by over 1,000 years!). The writers unknowingly left clues that enable modern scholars to detect the time of writing and the fabricated nature of the material.
Philistines?: The Bible says Abraham (2166 BC) existed in the time of the Philistines (Gen. 21:32,34; 26:1,8,14-15,18), but the Philistines were not even around Canaan until about 1200 BC or shortly afterward. They were apparently part of a group of "Sea Peoples" who invaded Egypt around 1175, were driven out, and then settled in Canaan. Their pottery resembled Mycenaean pottery. If there really was an Abraham and he really had dealings with the Philistines or lived in their land, his time period must have been after 1200 BC, only about 200 years before King David ruled or 160 years before Saul ruled. And in that case there is not much time for any bondage in Egypt or Exodus or 40 years in the wilderness or a time of judges. If Abraham was around at the time of the Philistines, how did his descendants become a whole nation and go through slavery and an exodus in less than 200 years, and how were there 14 generations from Abraham to David (like Matthew 1 says) in those 200 years?!? . . . unless of course Abraham did not really know the Philistines, in which case this aspect of the story was fabricated at a much later date by someone with inaccurate ideas of history.
Camel caravans: There are camels as pack animals in camel caravans bringing gum, balm, and myrrh in the patriarch narratives. Problem: Although camels may have been domesticated as beasts of burden possibly as far back as 3000-2500 BC, they were not widely used in that way in the Levant until well after 1000 BC. The caravan in the Joseph story brought gum, balm, and myrrh. This shows that the writer was specifically familiar with Arabian trade under the Assyrian empire in the 700’s and 600’s BC. (see Finkelstein and Silberman, 37)(Biblical camel references: Gen 12.14-17; 24.63; 30.43; 37.25,36.)
Gerar: The Philistine city of Gerar is important in the patriarchal narratives. Modern archaeologists identify Gerar with Tel Haror. By the late 700's and 600's, under Assyrian influence, it had developed into a strong, fortified place worthy of note, but prior to this time, it was merely an insignificant village. (see Finkelstein and Silberman, 38)
Ammon and Moab: In the early 800's BC, Israel and Judah dominated Moab. In the 700's and 600's BC, Israel and Judah had significant political troubles with the Ammonites and Moabites. The Jewish writer of Genesis 19:30-38 created mythical ancestors of the Ammonites and Moabites. He called them Ben-Ammi and Moab, and in order to insult them, he created the myth that they were both born from incest. (see Finkelstein and Silberman, 39)
Arameans: Arameans are mentioned in the stories of Jacob and Laban. Ancient Near Eastern texts do not mention Arameans as a distinct ethnic group before around 1100 BC. Aram-Damascus became important to Israelites in the early 800's BC, and the Jacob-Laban cycle in Genesis "metaphorically expresses the complex and often stormy relations between Aram and Israel over many centuries." (see Finkelstein and Silberman, 39)
Abram / Abraham: The name "Abram" (exalted father) or "Abraham" (father of many) actually looks like an invented name from a folk-myth. And the Abram figure may even be of Canaanite, as opposed to Hebrew, origin, in which case the Hebrews would have adopted this character from the legends of the people whom they supplanted (just as they adopted the Canaanite word "El" for the supreme God--El, Elohim, El Elyon, El Shaddai). The Israelites were saying, "Yes, my people are descended from a great and holy man named ExaltedFather. Long ago this land was promised to us by our God."
Some Israelite/Jewish individual(s) invented the story of their god's promise to Abraham (along with the story of the curse of Canaan) in order to claim divine right for the take-over and occupation of Canaan and the destruction of the original inhabitants. The story would be used as a claim to the land of Palestine for as long as there would be Jews who believed it. The Israelites and Jews were certainly not the only people to fabricate "prophecies" and put them in the mouths of real or invented people from the past. Ancient nations hardly performed any actions without claiming to do the will of their god or gods through divine help.
[Many European Americans similarly claimed a divine right to take North America from the native population. Genocide is always best when a God favors it, right?]
In the story of Lot and his daughters, the two women decide to get their father drunk and sleep with him so that they can get pregnant and preserve their family line. The two children born from this incestuous union are said to be Moab, father of the Moabites, and Ben-Ammi, father of the Ammonites. This story was invented as an explanation of where these neighbors of the Israelites (800's - 600's) originated (allegedly c. 2100). Since the Israelites felt some kind of racial kinship with the people, their tale makes these tribes descendants of Lot, a nephew of Abraham; but since they were usually enemies, the myth-makers added a little incest as an insult to the Moabites and Ammonites.
For an explanation of the origin of the Aramean tribes, Genesis says Abraham's brother Nahor has 12 sons, one of whom fathered Aram, ancestor of the Arameans (Gen.22:20-24).
Abraham's son Ishmael is also said to have 12 sons who become 12 desert tribes, but the Israelites thought they were superior to these desert tribes (though racially similar); so they made the story to the effect that although the two peoples are related, the Ishmaelites were descended through a slave woman (the concubine Hagar) and were not the special, chosen, "promised" offspring as were the descendants of Isaac.
N.B. The use of the number 12 for such purposes is so typical of ancient mythology in general. The 12 sons of Nahor and Ishmael will be echoed by the 12 sons of Jacob/Israel.
Through a third woman, Keturah (whom 1Chron.1:32 says was a concubine, i.e. slave), Genesis makes Abraham the father of other nations too, like the Midianites, Sheba, and Dedan.3 And the Israelites claim superiority to these peoples too by saying that although they are kin, these other tribes descended through a slave woman and were, thus, not as special.
This should be enough to show you how these myths were constructed
A) to instruct an audience of Israelites and/or Jews probably living in in the late 700's, the 600's, or later,
B) to offer an explanation for where everything and everyone came from,
C) to give ideological support to Jewish/Isaeli political goals, and
D) to exalt the Jews/Israelites over their neighbors.
If you want more information, see the list of suggested reading below.
The story of Isaac's twin boys Essau and Jacob also contains important Israelite claims. The Israelites had neighbors called the Edomites, who claimed descent from a legendary founder named Essau. These were racially similar people, and they lived in the region before the Israelites, but the Israelites became more powerful and enslaved the older nation of Edom. The Israelites afterward invented myths to explain what happened:
that long ago Jacob and Essau were two brothers, both sons of a mythical Isaac. Essau was older and in ancient custom should have been more blessed, but in the story he sold his birthright to his brother Jacob, relinquishing his rights as first-born.
that Jacob deceived his father Isaac in order to win the blessings that would have been bestowed upon his older brother. According to an ancient superstition, a blessing bestowed could not be revoked, and before Isaac died he blessed Jacob, thinking he was Essau, by saying, "Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you." (This myth, then, makes it right for Israel to enslave its neighbors, even though the Edomites were around first; "such was our destiny," they were claiming.)
that at birth, Essau came out first, but Jacob grabbed at his heel- hence Ya-acob, "he who grasps the heel." This is to symbolize Judah-Israel's supplanting of Edom.
that when their mother was pregnant, the babies were jostling each other in her womb, and when she asked Yahweh, he told her that her two children would become two nations and the elder would serve the younger.
Later in history, when the Edomites revolted from Judah, a section was added to the myth to explain the new development. After Isaac had given Jacob the best blessing, Essau came in with tears. So even though Isaac had already blessed Jacob with lordship over Essau, he added for Essau, "It shall come to pass . . . that you will break his yoke from off your neck." Thus, the Jews could claim that both the subjugation and the loss of Edom were a fulfillment of destiny.
This is a demonstration of how a legend often "follows the track of history and evolves according to the pattern of actual events" (Wallis 116; the explanation above was taken from Louis Wallis The Bible Is Human, a dated but well-written resource for understanding many stories of the Old Testament).
The Biblical date for the Exodus conflicts with other information provided in the Bible when compared to history. The person(s) who wrote I and II Kings said the Exodus was 480 years before King Solomon (1 Kings 6.1; which would put the Exodus about 1446 BC), and the book of Exodus says the Jewish slaves in Egypt built Pithom and Rameses (Exodus 1:11). This place called Rameses is mentioned also in Gen. 47:11, Ex. 12:37, and Num. 33:3,5, and is doubtless named after the great pharaoh Ramesses II. But Ramesses II hadn't even been born in 1446 BC, so no city at that time would have been named after him. That is one of the reasons why many modern Christians think the Exodus happened in the 1200s (the time of Ramesses II) instead of the 1400s, and the movie "The Ten Commandments" puts Moses in this later period. If it did happen in the 1200s, then the Bible is wrong when it says it happened 480 years before Solomon.
But neither a 1200s-BC nor a 1400s-BC date for the exodus solves the problem. After the Exodus, Israel supposedly numbered about 2.5 million (deduced from Num. 1:44-46, which gives the number of Hebrew fighting men over 20 years of age as 603,550), but the entire population of Egypt at that time was only 3-4.5 million; scholars know that the numbers are exaggerated, or even complete fabrications. Indeed, the loss of a servile population of 2.5 million, the pillaging of the gold and silver, the destruction of "the entire army of pharaoh" (Ex.14:28), and the great and horrible Ten Plagues (all mentioned in Exodus) would have had a totally devastating effect on Egypt,
"yet at no point in the history of the country during the New Kingdom is there the slightest hint of the traumatic impact such an event would have had on economics or society" (Redford 408, italics mine)!
In fact, Egypt had a mighty empire throughout that period, as is attested by both archaeology and the historical record (for a brief summary, see The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt). Egypt was ruled by Thutmose III for most of the 1400s, and by Ramesses II for most of the 1200s. Both of these rulers were among the greatest pharaohs who ever existed, and both even fought great battles in Canaan and the surrounding area: Thutmose III was hero of the Battle of Megiddo (c. 1457), and Ramesses II fought the Hittites of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) to a stand-still at Kadesh (c. 1275). Around 1259, Egypt and the Hittites signed a treaty dividing control of Syrian trade-routes. The entire period from around 1518 to 1087 BC was called the New Kingdom, a time in which Egypt was very strong and was a respected international power.
This undercuts both the 1400s and the 1200s as likely time-frames for the Exodus, at least the kind of exodus described in the Bible, with its devastating plagues, parting of the Red Sea, and destruction of the entire army of the pharaoh.
In other words, the biblical Exodus account is at the very least extremely exaggerated and erroneous in its chronology.
Was there ever an Exodus at all? There may have been something remotely similar. Some historians believe that the events which grew into the legend of the Exodus could have happened during the time of the Hyksos, who held power in the eastern Nile delta from around 1636 until 1518, when Pharaoh Ahmose drove them out and established the New Kingdom in Egypt (Redford 412-422 argues that the Exodus story is a memory of the Hyksos age kept alive and modified among the Canaanites and adopted by the Hebrews). Others think the exodus may have happened in the New Kingdom, but was simply nothing like the Biblical account.
Was there ever an Exodus exactly as described in the Bible? No way! It's not even a possibility.
In the 1400's BC?
with 2.5 million Hebrew slaves? (huge exaggeration.)
after Yahweh performs magic tricks with Aaron's staff, turning it into a devouring snake?
after the Nile turns to blood?
after plagues of frogs, gnats, and flies that cover “the whole country”?
after “ALL” (Ex. 9:6) the Egyptians’ horses, donkeys, camels, herds, and flocks in the fields die from a pestilence?
after boils come upon humans and animals “throughout the entire land of Egypt”?
after thunder, fire, and hail strike down “everything in the open field throughout all the land of Egypt, both human and animal,” including “all the plants of the field,” and shatter “every tree”?
after locusts cover the entire land so that the land is black and no one can even see the soil, and the locusts eat all the plants and fruit so that not a single green thing is left in the entire country, not a plant, not a tree? (Exodus 10:15 "They covered all the ground until it was black. They devoured all that was left after the hail—everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt.")
after darkness covers the entire land for 3 days?
after Yahweh kills every single first-born male of humans and livestock “throughout the whole land of Egypt” (Ex. 12:29)?
with a pillar of cloud leading the Israelites by day and a pillar of fire by night?
after the sea is miraculous parted for the Israelites but then miraculously returns to its proportions and destroys the ENTIRE army of "pharaoh" (14:28)?
after a sadistic Yahweh repeatedly hardens the heart of “pharaoh” just so he can torture the Egyptians more and more and show how much more he loves the Israelites?
The story is not even remotely historically plausible.
(1.) The story looks and sounds like ancient fiction. It lacks a realistic historical framework. It displays patterns, symbols, and numerology appropriate to myths, legends, and folk tales. Ancient peoples filled their stories with Gods and miracles; they were generally superstitious and unscientific.
(2.) It is internally illogical, with “all the livestock” being destroyed on more than one occasion.
(3.) It is not a just/ fair/ good story, and it is in no way descriptive of a "universal" God of love.
(4.) It is ethnocentric and appears to be the creation of certain ancient Jews who wished to create myths that supported the notion that they were more special than any other people on the face of the earth. Most ancient nations were ethnocentric in this way, believing they were uniquely favored by their particular god(s), and they wrote stories to support such arrogance.
(5.) It is very much contrary to observable, natural human experience. i.e. It is not realistic.
(6.) There is nothing close to sufficient archaeological, historical, or scientific evidence specifically for this particular exaggerated (and deplorable) version of events, and even though Egypt experienced plenty of tumultuous periods, it never endured a disaster so complete. If Egypt really had been destroyed as Exodus says, how would it even have recovered without a single plant or farm animal and with most of the people dead? Anyone who had survived such a catastrophe would have thinned the population even further by resorting to cannibalism and/or would have died of starvation. Any nation in the world could have conquered all of Egypt after such an episode.
(7.) Not only do archaeology and history fail to support the Biblical story of the Exodus, they provide us a picture of Egypt in stark contrast to the Biblical portrayal, from the 1400s through the end of the second millennium BC.
The story of Moses, too, is of doubtful historicity, at least in many details, and it seems to copy many motifs found in ancient myths from other cultures, the kinds of myths that were popular in the ancient world.
Like Moses, Hammurabi of Babylon (c.1765 BC, before the Bible says Moses existed) and Zoroaster (Iranian, c.628-551 BC) also went up on a mountain and received laws from their gods. But the Hammurabi story was older than the Moses story.
The Bible tells a story about how an evil king wanted to kill babies, but one baby was miraculously saved, cast upon the water/river in a container, rescued, and grew up to be a great leader. This was a common motif in ancient stories. Compare the Moses legend to the far older story of Sargon I, king of Akkad (c. 2325 BC). His mother bore him in times of difficulty, placed him in an ark of rushes, and put him into the river, which carried him until he was picked up by Akki, and he grew up to become king.
Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome (700s BC), were likewise thrown into the river Tiber as children during the rule of a wicked king. The boys were washed ashore, suckled by a she-wolf, then found and reared by a shepherd. When they grew up, they returned to their birthplace to defeat the wicked king. They went on to found Rome, and Romulus was the great law-giver, just like Moses.
Cyrus the Great of Persia (c. 585-529 BC) also had a miraculous birth. Because of a dream which foretold the child's future kingship, the wicked king Astyages of the Medes ordered him killed. But he ended up in the hands of a shepherd and his wife (a slave of the king), who raised the child as their own. When Cyrus was grown he led the Persians to take over Astyages' kingdom.
From these few examples alone, one can see that the stories of Moses' birth, exile and return, and receiving the divine laws on the mountain follow common folk-tale/legend motifs. Stories of great leaders were almost always embellished and exaggerated in the ancient world.
I should also mention that the Bible makes Moses 7th in line from Abraham (Ex.6 Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses). Given the numerological importance of the number 7, this is probably another example of myth-making. Similar in their numerological nature are the 400 years of captivity, Moses' 40 days and nights on the mountain, the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, being hidden for 3 months at birth, 3 days of darkness in Egypt, Moses' wife is one of 7 daughters. In Exodus 24:16, Yahweh covers the mountain with dark clouds for 6 days, and then on the 7th day calls to Moses. The author's use of special numbers is characteristic of ancient mythology, not history. I will give more examples of numerology later.
The writer(s) of the Exodus story could not even name who was pharaoh when they were supposedly in captivity (i.e. the writer was not Moses or an eye witness), and whoever supplied the geographical information for the Exodus account had no information earlier than the 500s and 600s BC, over 800 years after the supposed event (Redford 409-410). So the Jews did not write this particular account until around the time of the Babylonian exile or soon afterward, and they filled in missing details with whatever knowledge they had of the world at that time. The same is true of the post-flood Table of Nations in Gen. 10, as I explained above. No wonder their writings contain so many anachronisms. (Also note my explanation above concerning the date of composition for the patriarchal narratives.)
More evidence for the late authorship/editing of the Torah/Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible):
Genesis 36:31-39 lists 8 kings of Edom who reigned well AFTER the time of Moses, AND shows knowledge of later Jewish / Israelite kings in the first millennium BC, AND the passage is clearly written from the perspective of someone who lived AFTER the Edomite kings, not before them (during the alleged time of Moses), and AFTER the development of monarchy in Israel, not before it (during the alleged time of Moses). The writer was looking to the distant past and trying to explain the past for his audience.
"And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." (Gen. 36:31)
The Hadad mentioned as an Edomite king in Gen. 36:35 is the same person as Hadad the Edomite, mentioned in 1 Kings 11:14: "Then YHWH raised up against Solomon an adversary, Hadad the Edomite, from the royal line of Edom." This was allegedly in the 900s BC, long after the time of Moses.
Conservative Jews and Christians, trying to defend tradition -- regardless of logic, evidence, or even the Bible itself -- have often claimed that Moses must have been prophesying the future in Genesis 36:31-39. However, IF Moses had written this while foreseeing the future, he would have written something more like:
"And these are the kings that WILL REIGN in the land of Edom before kings will eventually reign is Israel as well."
The Hebrew language was capable of indicating when it was discussing or portraying future events, but Gen 36:31 does not speak of the future when it discusses events after the life of Moses. It is very clearly discussing the PAST, not the future. It is written from the perspective of someone looking back in time, not forward in time, and it refers to Moses in the third person as someone in the past. So it certainly was not written by Moses or by anyone living in the 1400s BC or the 1200s BC. The phrase "before any Israelite king reigned" and the mention of King Hadad of Edom both show that the author/editor was writing well after monarchy had been established in Israel, i.e. after the 900s BC. The writer was thinking about his nation's past and saying, "long ago, before we even had kings in Israel . . ."
Those conservative Jewish Christian apologists who claim that Moses must have written this passage with prophetic foreknowledge of Israel's future kings speak as if they are incapable of understanding the concept of narrative perspective, and they ignore the Hebrew grammar of the sentence. Gen. 36:31 not only reveals that the author himself is familiar with PAST kings of Israel, but that the author's intended audience also existed at a time long after kings had been around in Israel, and that the audience was expected to be roughly familiar with the history of Israelite monarchy. (Other examples of the knowledge of the kings of Israel: Gen 17.16; 35.11; Deut 17.14-15.)
The author says that Abraham came from "Ur of the Chaldeans" (Gen. 11 & 15, Acts 7:4), but the Chaldeans did not settle in the area of Ur before the 800s or 700s BC, so the writer must have lived after that time.
Again, Gen. 14:14 refers to Abraham's pursuit of an enemy "as far as Dan," but the city of Dan was not founded until time of the Judges, well after the time of Moses; so Moses would not have referred to that city. The writer assumes the audience will recognize the place name.
Gen. 12:6 says, "Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land." This is written from the later perspective of someone living at a time when the Canaanites no longer controlled the region, and he is claiming to be looking back at a time when Canaanites "were in the land." So Moses did not write it; nor did anyone living in the 1400s or 1200s BC, because the Canaanites were still there in the 1400s-1200s. When Moses allegedly lived and died, the Canaanites were still in the land -- a point which is central to the Hebrew narrative.
Deuteronomy 3:11: "Og king of Bashan was the last of the Rephaites. His bed was decorated with iron and was more than nine cubits long and four cubits wide. It is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites." Who is writing that the bed can still be seen in Rabbah in his own time? Someone living later and writing about the distant past.
Exodus 16:35 says, "The Israelites ate manna for 40 years, until they came to a habitable land; they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan." This is written from the perspective of someone looking back to the legendary days of manna, not someone writing during actual days of living on manna. According to Joshua 5:12, "The manna stopped the day they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate the produce of Canaan." The writer of Exodus knows the stories of Joshua already. From the perspective of the writer of Exodus, manna-eating was a past event that discontinued. Since the Bible teaches that the Israelites were still eating manna when Moses died and did not stop until later, under Joshua's leadership, Exodus 16:35 is very clearly not written from a forward-looking perspective a real Moses would have held.
Consider Numbers 12:3, "Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth." Did a real, historical Moses write that? First, humble people usually do not advertise their humility in such a way; second, the reference is in the third person, not the first person; third, this is merely an opinion -- this writer did not know every person on the face of the earth, and he had no basis for such a judgement. This, like the rest of the Torah, is written from the perspective of a Jewish man thinking about the distant past and writing stories to explain the distant past to his fellow Jews.
Deuteronomy 1:1: "These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the wilderness beyond / across the Jordan (i.e. on the east side of the Jordan) — that is, in the Arabah—opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Dizahab."
The Bible teaches very clearly that Moses only led the Israelites to the Jordan River. Yahweh did not allow Moses to cross the river into the "Promised Land." So the writer of Deuteronomy is saying that Moses (3rd person, not 1st) was beyond the Jordan River, on the East side. That means (1) the writer himself was not Moses, but wrote about Moses, AND (2) the writer himself was on the West side of the Jordan River, where Moses was famously never allowed to go, writing stories about Israel's distant past! Again, this narrative viewpoint is from someone living in a place Moses never lived or went.
Some past Bible translators, embarrassed by the non-Mosaic implications of the sentence, dishonestly translated it "this side of" instead of "beyond," in an attempt to solve or hide the problem. For example, the King James Version said "this side Jordan," even though the KJV translates the very same Hebrew word as "on the other side" or "beyond" in many other passages! But NIV more honestly says "east of the Jordan," and the NAS version correctly says "across the Jordan." Here we see both non-Mosaic authorship of the Torah AND the willingness of some translators to lie and change the meaning of their own holy text in order to push a traditional interpretation contrary to evidence.
Deuteronomy 2:12: "Horites used to live in Seir, but the descendants of Esau drove them out. They destroyed the Horites from before them and settled in their place, just as Israel did in the land YHWH gave them as their possession."
The author is describing events AFTER the time of Moses -- like the Israelite conquest of Canaan -- as happening in the nation's past. This is certainly not written from the perspective of Moses or someone living in the 1400s or 1200s BC.
The Pentateuch records the death of Moses without a break in the narrative. Moses would not be writing about how he died, much less in the past tense and in the 3rd person!
The whole Pentateuch is written from a third-person perspective of someone who lived long after the events described and is looking to the past. The Moses stories are written from the perspective of someone writing about what Moses did in the past, not Moses writing about himself in the present. Even passages that refer to Moses writing are not written from a 1st person perspective.
After a little study then, it becomes obvious that Moses did NOT write the Pentateuch as we have it, despite what tradition said.
Sometimes even conservative Bible scholars may admit that the first five books were edited at a later date, but may then claim that Moses still wrote most of it. My point is this: even if a man named Moses did write a set of laws or some part of the Torah/Pentateuch, how could anyone tell which part(s) he wrote? Most importantly, we do know without a doubt that he did not write the version we have. Those conservative theologians have no basis for their opinion other than a tradition that has already been proven unreliable. If Moses even existed and wrote anything at all, it was without a doubt changed, embellished, and augmented, and it is impossible to pick out anything at all that can reliably be said to have been written in the 1400s to 1200s BC, the alleged time of Moses. In the case of Moses and the Exodus, it is often impossible to separate any clear history from myth and legend, just as in the case of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, and many other ancient legendary / mythic figures.
Furthermore, given that Moses was allegedly reared at the Egyptian royal court, what language and script would he have written anyway? Egyptian hieroglyphics? Hieratic cursive? Akkadian cuneiform, like the Amarna letters of the 1300s BCE? Certainly not the script that even the oldest Hebrew bibles are written in.
There are no surviving manuscripts of any biblical books at all from before the 200s BC -- over 1,000 years after the alleged time of Moses. But we do know that the script of the oldest surviving bible manuscripts (the Dead Sea Scrolls) was not a script that could have been used in the 1400s-1200s BC, because it had not yet evolved yet at that time.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that any Hebrew alphabet even existed in the 1400s-1200s BC. The oldest version of Hebrew script ever discovered is Paleo-Hebrew, and it was different from the Hebrew script used in the sources for our bible translations. Paleo-Hebrew appears in a few relics from the 900s through the 700s BC: e.g. the Gezer calendar (900s), the Elah Valley inscription (900s), and the Siloam inscription (700s BC). And scholars even argued over whether the Gezer calender was Phoenician (or Proto-Canaanite) or paleo-Hebrew.
IF Moses existed and wrote anything at all, he would have been writing in a script far more ancient than the actual script of the bible!
Again, the oldest Jewish scripts were different from the script in which the bible is written. The bible is not written in the oldest Hebrew script. That means a lot, if you think about it.
Any belief in Mosaic authorship merely stems from a wish to preserve an outdated tradition. The Old Testament was written well after the time Moses would have lived, if he even existed at all.
We do not know whether there was a real, historical Moses or not, but IF there was, he certainly was not the same as the character presented in the bibles we have, which offers myth and legend mixed in with tidbits of real history.
*** Here are some additional points.
Even if there was a Moses figure in the 1400's BCE, writing in Egyptian, Akkadian cuneiform, proto-Canaanite, or a form of paleo-Hebrew we no longer possess, whatever he wrote is certainly not what we now have, and he certainly did not lead an Exodus of millions of Hebrews from Egypt, with Egypt having been utterly destroyed by divine plagues as described in the bible.
Further, even if a real Moses existed and had some followers and wrote some laws, he did not write the whole Pentateuch (Genesis - Deuteronomy) we now have. The Pentateuch we have is a combination of multiple sources from multiple time periods, and it is written in a script far younger/ later than any script from the 1400s BCE.
But, ... even if a real, historical Moses existed and really had written the stories of the creation, Adam & Eve, Noah & the flood, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he would have been recording myths and legends, not actual history. If Moses did write, and it was later translated into a different version of Hebrew, we do not have what he wrote. And the stories we do have are still myth, not accurate history. They are not true, no matter who wrote them or edited them, or when, or where, or why.
The whole scenario is so unrealistic anyway. How could a writer in the 1400s have known about all these things that supposedly happened so long before he existed, before writing existed yet? How could he know what words Yahweh allegedly spoke to Abraham, or all of the other conversations and events recorded in Genesis? Or how deep the water was during the great flood?! And did Yahweh really speak Hebrew when he was allegedly creating the earth in 4,100 BC, before Hebrew or any human languages even evolved yet? Haha.
Did Yahweh tell these stories to Moses so he could write them down?
---IF so, (1) why would Yahweh give Moses numbers, dates, and information we now know to be false and misleading? (2) And what language did Moses write them in? (3) And why was it not preserved as Moses wrote it?
---IF not, then either (A) Moses made the stories up or heard them from others, or (B) someone else invented them or heard them from others. In either case, they are not reliable!
The Bible is wrong, either way, and its myths and legends covering alleged events before the 900s BC are not historically reliable.
A detailed exploration of who produced the Torah/Pentateuch, when, and how is beyond the scope of this discussion. In summary, there are abundant textual and historical reasons to think that the Torah, as we now have it, is a combination of multiple sources from multiple authors and was edited / redacted more than once. Modern scholarship has put forth the "Documentary Hypothesis," the "Supplementary Hypothesis," the "Fragmentary Hypothesis," and various combinations of these to try to explain the multiple sources and interesting textual features embedded in the narratives as we now have them. Significant writing, compilation, and editing of various parts of the Hebrew Bible as a whole occurred during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judea (late 700s BC), the reign of King Josiah of Judea (600s BC), the Babylonian captivity of the Jews (597–539 BC), the era of the Persian Empire's domination of Judea after many Jews returned to their homeland (c. 539–350 BC), and the Hellenistic period (333–164 BC), when Greek-speakers dominated the region after the conquests of Alexander the Great.
Judah and Israel existed as two separate kingdoms from the 900s/800s to the 700s BC -- the more rural and sparsely populated Judah in the south, and the much more populous and sophisticated Israel in the north. Archaeological surveys suggest that the population of Israel was 10 times higher than that of Judah until the 700s (Finkelstein and Silberman, 238). Beyond what they had in common, each seems to have had unique cultural features, different priesthoods, different tribes, different religious centers, different myths, different versions of various stories, along with religious pluralism and competing political and religious factions. Polytheism/Henotheism is reflected in the archaeology of both Israel and Judah, and even the Biblical texts acknowledge that the people of Judah and Israel worshipped other gods in addition to Yahweh, a practice which the biblical authors condemned. People worshipped Yahweh, the goddess Asherah/Asherata as a wife or consort of Yahweh; Baal ("The Lord," Hadad the storm god); Chemosh; Molech/Melek; the sun, moon, and stars of heaven, and they also honored teraphim (household gods and images of ancestors) in their private homes and kept household shrines and hilltop altars as places they considered holy.
In 733 BC, the Assyrian Empire expanded, conquered parts of Israel, and required tribute from both Israel and Judah. In 721 BC, Assyrian armies destroyed the rest of Israel, taking complete control and deporting many of the upper class people of Israel. At that time, a flood of refugees from Israel came pouring into Judah to the south. Jerusalem became a much bigger city. In 701-700, Assyria also conquered most fortified cities in Judea to the south, and although they failed to destroy Jerusalem in a great siege, they nonetheless exacted tribute from the King of Judah/Judea and reduced his power and territory. However, Judah/Judea remained a nation.
During the late 700s and early 600s BC, according to the Bible, King Hezekiah of Judah, working with the priests of YHWH in Jerusalem, banned the worship of any deities other than Yahweh and destroyed hilltop shrines and sacrifices in the surrounding countryside (2 Kings 18:4). Although Hezekiah paid tribute to Assyria, the sparing of Jerusalem from Assyrian destruction may have boosted the success/reputation of the priests of Yahweh in Jerusalem. The political success of the Yahwists combined with the large influx of refugees from Israel may have spurred the desire to create a narrative combining Israelite and Judaic stories of the past. This is only conjecture, as we do not have evidence that the 5 scrolls of the Torah were written at that time. However, literacy and literature seem to have started and increased by this time in Judah. The earliest versions of the scrolls of Amos and Hosea (from Israel to the north), Isaiah (1-39) and Micah (1-3) from in Judah, and possibly a "scroll of the chronicles of the kings of Judah" (mentioned in 1 Kings 14:29 and 14 other places), along with other scrolls not included in the Bible, were being written during that era. Refugees from Israel could have brought to Jerusalem a "scroll of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel" at this time (a work also mentioned in the biblical book of Kings), along with other scrolls potentially containing stories that were eventually put into the Torah. After the death of King Hezekiah, his son Manasseh abandoned attempts to enforce exclusive worship of Yahweh, and people were allowed their more traditional freedom again.
As reported by 2 Kings 22, during the 18th year of the reign of King Josiah of Judah (622 BC), a high priest named Hilkiah claimed to have "found a scroll of the law in the Temple of Yahweh" in Jerusalem (22:8). This may well have been the core of what eventually became Deuteronomy. It appears to have been written in that century, the 600s BC, just before or during Josiah's reign, and it resembles Assyrian vassal treaties of that era "that outline the rights and obligations of a subject people [in this case Judah/Israel] to their sovereign [in this case, Yahweh]" (Finkelstein and Silberman, 280-281). King Josiah pushed this new book (claiming it was old) as the only true Jewish religion, and he destroyed any religious centers and priesthoods that disagreed, trying to create a unified religion in Judea, centered in Jerusalem. When the Assyrian empire collapsed in 612-609 BC, Josiah even expanded Judah into Israelite territory to the north, attempting to create a unified state under a unified religion of Yahweh-only worship. It appears that at this time, the same man who produced Deuteronomy in Jerusalem also pulled together, reworked, and edited older fragments and scrolls from both Israel and Judea into the first version of the national history of a united Israel -- likely the first version of the first five books of the Bible. The attempt to combine and edit northern and southern myths, legends, and literature into a unified narrative would account for there being threads from multiple versions of certain events, names for characters, place names, names for God, attributes of God, other details, etc. in the Torah as we now have it.
Gen 1 - 2:3 was originally a separate creation story from Gen 2:4 ff., differing (incompatibly) in the sequence of events, details, and the word used for God.
Some stories in the Torah used the word Elohim for God, whereas others used YHWH.
The mountain where Moses talked to God was called Sinai in some versions (most of Exodus, all of Leviticus and Numbers) and Horeb in others (Deuteronomy, Kings, Chronicles, Malachi).
Deuteronomy is the only book of the Torah that prohibits sacrifice outside of Jerusalem. Other stories are told as if there were no problem with sacrificing to Yahweh in other places scattered throughout the land. The first time the ideas of Deuteronomy were practiced and imposed on the people was under Josiah in the 600s BC.
The flood story looks as if two earlier narratives were combined into one.
Josiah's desire to unite all Israel under one monarchy led to the expansion of Judah even into what had once been Israel, at least for a short time. In 612 BC, Babylonians, Medes, and Scythians all cooperated in destroying Assyria's capital Nineveh and dividing Assyria's empire. With the downfall of Assyria, Jewish hopes of a unified monarchy and the dominance of Yahweh-only religion must have run high, but King Josiah of Judah died unexpectedly in 609 BC, and the dreams of the Jewish king and the priesthood of Yahweh failed to find fruition. Still the literature produced under Josiah would remain influential through the era of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews and the subsequent return of many to their homeland.
Upon the fall of Assyria, the Babylonians become the dominant power in the region. They defeated Egypt at Carchemish in 605 BC and took over Syria and Palestine, which included Judah. At this time, they raided Jerusalem and took some Jews as hostages. King Jehoiakim of Judah was murdered in a coup, and his son Jehoiachin became king. Then in 597 BC, the Babylonians captured Jerusalem and took captive to Babylon many important persons, including King Jehoiachin. They made Zedekiah, a son of Josiah, regent in Jerusalem, but he rebelled against Babylon and allied with Egypt. Babylon soon retaliated, and in 586 BC after a long siege, Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who destroyed the city, blinded King Zedekiah, and took him and most of the population into captivity in Babylon. All the cities of Judah were completely destroyed, and the Jews wept in despair from their great suffering and the loss of their homeland. The Yahwists, trying to interpret and explain events, believed that they must have greatly offended their god Yahweh for him to punish them so harshly. Without a king or a kingdom, without their city or temple, they longed for national restoration.
The Jews lived in Babylonian Exile for forty-eight to sixty years, from 597 and 586 until 539 BCE, when Cyrus the Great of Persia captured Babylon and established the Persian Empire. Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem in 538 (For this, Isaiah 45:1 calls Cyrus the "messiah of Yahweh"). The invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, and the subsequent return of many Jews to their homeland inspired highly emotional writings, and many Jews hoped that as they returned from exile their god Yahweh would make them a great nation again and raise up a new king-messiah from David's line to lead them in victory and righteousness. This time period saw renewed prophecies of a golden age soon to come, in which Israel (Judah), its god, and its religious law would become a light to all nations and inaugurate world peace. The writings of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and "Second" Isaiah (chapters 40-66) cover the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent return of the Jews.
Eventually, the Jews rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership of Nehemiah in the middle 400's BC. Also, Ezra the scribe came up from Babylon bringing the Torah of Moses, and he led a conservative revival of nationalistic religion, enforcing observance of the Sabbath day and religious festivals, forbidding intermarriage with other ethnic groups, and reading aloud the Torah of Moses. Additionally, in the 400's BC, the ethnocentric Yahwist Jews rejected unification, intermarriage, or peaceful cooperation with the Samaritans (the mixed descendants of north-Israelite peasants from Assyrian times and other transplanted peoples), and Jews and Samaritans continued to hate each other through Roman times. Those Jews who had married gentiles were told to send away their foreign wives and children, as such intermarriages displeased Yahweh. Ezra the Scribe is credited with reintroducing the Torah to Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile of the Jews. Because of this, Ezra has often been named as a the most significant editor of the Torah as we now have it.
In the 330s BC, Alexander the Great, with his Greco-Macedonian armies would conquer the entire region, and the Greek language would dominate the region for hundred of years. It was during this Hellenistic period, that Jewish scribes in Alexandria, Egypt, produced a Greek translation of the Torah/Pentateuch/ first five books in the mid 200s BC, allegedly for inclusion in the great Library of Alexandria. Other Hebrew scriptures were later translated into Greek as well, and all were combined to form the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures known as the Septuagint, which was influential in the development of Christianity. Any major final editing of the Torah would have been completed in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 200s BC, before it was translated into Greek. There are differences between the Greek Septuagint and the modern, authoritative Hebrew Torah found in the Masoretic Text, but these differences suggest only relatively minor editing (either by the Alexandrian Jews of the 200s, or by subsequent Jews, or both). Rabbinic Judaism considers the Masoretic Text to be the authoritative Hebrew Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible (the Christian Old Testament). It was copied, edited, and distributed by Jews known as Masoretes between the 600s and 900s CE.
In summary, the best available evidence suggests that the first 5 books of the Bible were created and edited much later than the alleged time of Moses, over the course of hundreds of years, with the most important phases likely being the reign of Hezekiah of Judah (729-687 BC), the reign of Josiah of Judah (640-609 BC), the work of Ezra the Scribe (400s BC) upon returning to Judea from Babylonian Exile, and the work of Jewish scribes in Alexandria, Egypt, before translating the Torah into Greek (200s BC).
A little reading to get you started:
Baden, Joel. The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. (Yale University Press, 2012).
Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil Asher. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. (2002, Touchstone).
Friedman, Richard Elliott . Who Wrote the Old Testament. (1987).
The writers of the Moses story and the laws of the bible ascribed notions of morality to their god Yahweh that many modern people, even Christians, now consider to be questionable, primitive, undesirable, and/or even barbaric. Consider the following:
Polygamy: In the Bible Moses/Yahweh never says anything against polygamy, and some of his most famous followers in mythology were polygamous (especially in the early mythology): Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon. While the New Testament does not forbid polygamy, 1 Tim 3:2 (a pseudo-Pauline epistle) demands that overseers/bishops be “the husband of but one wife,” and most modern Christians consider polygamy immoral despite the fact that in the literature Yahweh and Jesus never said so. Mormons have heavily debated this too. Is polygamy acceptable to Yahweh. Yes, according to the Bible, Yahweh desired for many of his chosen leaders to be polygamous!
Slavery: The ancient Jews and their biblical Moses/Yahweh acknowledged the morality of slavery (e.g. Exodus 20:17; 21:1-7). The Mosaic law supports it, even in the ten commandments, and the law of Moses was supposed to be eternal. It was even acceptable to sell one’s own daughter into slavery (Exodus 21).
Beating slaves: Exodus 21:20-21 – If a man beats a slave, it is acceptable as long as the slave gets up within 2 days and can continue his/her work. Why? Yahweh and Moses say that the slave is money/property.
Sabbath: Moses/Yahweh killed a man for collecting firewood on Saturday and was called "just" by worshippers (Num. 15:32-36). Today, according to many Christians Yahweh no longer does such things and does not consider it immoral to collect wood on any day of the week. Did Yahweh give his approval for Roman Christians to change observance from the Sabbath to Sunday, from the 7th day to the 1st day. In 321 CE, the Pagan sun-worshiping Emperor Constantine declared that Sunday was to be a day of rest throughout the Roman Empire. About 364 CE, the Church Council of Laodicea ordered that religious observances were to be conducted on Sunday, not Saturday. Sunday became the new “Sabbath.” By 2000 CE, a majority of modern Christians in the U.S.A. no longer worried about what they could or could not do on the “Sabbath.” Plenty of Christians consider Sabbath observance obsolete or not to be taken too seriously. However, the Bible and its god character Yahweh were intensely (violently) serious about the Sabbath!
Death for some children: Yahweh sometimes ordered the killing of children (e.g. 1 Sam 15). Most modern Christians consider that immoral.
Yahweh punished the descendants of Ham following Noah's curse, which was due to a minor incident involving being seen naked and perhaps mocked while drunk. What did the descendants do wrong? Nothing! They were allegedly punished for something they had no part in! Many modern Christians would criticize such an action if performed by anyone but the Yahweh of their old literature.
Yahweh/Moses ordered the death penalty for the following:
disobedient children (Deut. 21:18-21),
people with other religions (Deut 13:6-10; 17:2-5),
anyone who curses his father or mother (Lev 20:9),
homosexuals (Lev 20:13),
blasphemers (Lev 24:16),
adulterers (Lev 20:10),
and others.
Many modern Christians would consider it immoral to kill another human for such reasons. Plenty consider the death penalty immoral, period.
The writer claims Yahweh/Moses thought it was immoral for a man to have sex with a woman during her period; if it happened, both were to be exiled (Lev 20:18). Many modern Christians do not consider such sex immoral, even if they do not all have such sex. It certainly is not right to exile someone for it.
The writer claims Yahweh/Moses considered it immoral to wear clothing woven of two different kinds of material, or to sow a field with two different kinds of crops (Lev 19:19).
The writer claims Yahweh/Moses considered it immoral to eat rabbits or pigs (Leviticus 11:6-8). Writers of certain New Testament books claim that Yahweh later decided it was okay to eat these animals after all (Acts 10). This is another case where Gentile Christianity won out over Jewish Christianity. Did Yahweh change his mind about the desirability of such actions?
These ancient Jews (like many other cultures and their gods) considered women to be men’s property and generally inferior.
If you study the Mosaic law, you will see that it primarily addresses men. Exodus 20:17 lists a wife among a man’s possessions: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.”
Also, if men were dissatisfied, they could divorce women (Deut. 24), but there was no provision for women divorcing men.
If a woman gave birth to a female child, she was ritually impure for twice as long than she would have been for a male child (Lev 12:2-5).
Many modern Christians do not believe that women actually belong to their husbands, or that female children are more impure.
The writer claims that Yahweh says he punishes the children and grandchildren of sinners for crimes they did not even commit. “I Yahweh your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5; 34:7; etc.). In the minds of many modern Christians, God only punishes people for their own sins. The character of Yahweh was immoral by most modern standards.
“But if any harm follow, then you must give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exodus 21: 23-25). The Jesus in the gospel of Matthew seemed to think his “father,” Yahweh, was a bit harsh in this, and that there was a better morality (Mt 5:38-41).
I have posted the these notes, along with commentary about New Testament and Christian morality, at Christian Morality Evolves. Since no personal, super-human God ever actually speaks for himself in a way that is fair, straightforward, and open to all, it turns out that religious morality is always human morality, invented by humans who merely claim divine authority.
The so-called “Law of Moses” is certainly nothing so amazing as to come from divine origin. It is primitive in some aspects and is obviously a product of ancient people, not of a universal God.
Long before the Hebrews/Jews developed these stories preserved in the Old Testament, ancient Sumerians and Babylonians had developed their own law codes, for which they too had claimed divine inspiration. Indeed, the Hebrew writers borrowed many ideas from their neighbors, but they put these ideas into the mouths of literary characters like Moses and Yahweh in order to lend authority to their laws, inspiring people to obey them. This technique, this "pious fraud," was quite common in the ancient world. Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, and others all claimed to derive their laws from divine sources and inspiration, but it should be obvious to modern investigators that these codes were all actually man-made.
The most famous ancient law code, in existence long before the character of Moses in the Bible, was the Code of Hammurabi (died c. 1750 BC). To compare the dates, even if there really was a historical Moses, the Bible does not say he existed until the 1400's BC, 300 years after Hammurabi. Furthermore, unlike the alleged stone tablets of the 10 commandments, at least one stele (giant stone monument) of Hammurabi's Code still survives and can be viewed in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France (Picture Here). The Code of Hammurabi was written in Akkadian, the language of the Babylonians, on an eight-foot stone stele and was set up in a public place so that all could see it (unlike the alleged 10 commandments, which were supposedly stored in the arc). The stele at the Louvre was once in Babylon, but was later plundered by the Elamites who took it to their capital, Susa, where it stayed until it was rediscovered in 1901. The code of Hammurabi contained 282 laws, written by scribes on 12 tablets.
Anyone can look up the Code of Hammurabi and read it for free on-line. I have done so, and I have composed an outline below comparing the Code of Hammurabi with the later Jewish "Law of Moses." For reference, here is my highlighted copy of Hammurabi's Code, or here is a copy of Hammurabi's Code posted by Yale Law School.
The Code of Hammurabi Compared with the Hebrew/Jewish Law "of Moses":
(See "Hammurabi's Code and the Law of Moses" for my more detailed version with numerous quotations from both the Bible and Hammurabi's Code.)
Both claim that the law is ultimately divine, not derived merely from the human lawgiver.
Hammurabi and Moses are both said to be "called by name" by the god(s).
Both claim to fulfill prophecy.
Both claim that their laws or the benefits of their laws are to last forever.
Both set out blessings for following the laws and curses for disobeying the laws.
Both promote the law of retaliation ("an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth"). This concept is also called Lex Talionis.
Hammurabi 196 "If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out." 197 "If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken." H 200 "If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out."
Lev 24.19-20 "If a man injures his neighbor, just as he has done, so it shall be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; just as he has injured a man, so it shall be inflicted on him."
Exodus 21.23-25: But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Dt 19.21 "Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."
Both voice concern for "widows and orphans." (This concept goes back even long before Hammurabi, to the Code of Ur-Nammu of Ur, Sumeria, 2100 BC, and even further to the Law Code of Urukagina, 2300's BC, Lagash, Sumer.)
Both voice concern for "the oppressed."
Both advocate the taking of oaths "before God" as part of the legal system, the court system.
Both refer to the act of seeking justice in the court system as "seeking justice before God."
Both stress the importance of witnesses.
Both advocate strict respect for parents.
Both have laws concerning animals, like asses and oxen.
Both have laws of restitution.
Both have laws governing the acceptable practice of slavery. Both consider slaves to be of lesser value than free humans. Both distinguish between male and female slaves. Both put certain limits, including some time limits, on certain forms/kinds of slavery.
Both forbid adultery.
Both allow divorce.
Both are male-dominated. Both consider women to be among the property of the man.
Both allow for the paying of a bride price to the father-in-law for the marrying of a woman.
Both allow concubines (female slaves with whom a male may have children).
Both allow polygamy.
Both forbid incest.
Both Babylonian and Hebrew tradition consider their law codes to be "a light" to the people.
Neither code is uniformly more harsh or lenient than the other.
To be sure, there were differences as well. For example,
Although Babylonian religion had animal and grain sacrifices, Hammurabi did not include these on his monuments. The priests and temples would have kept such. The Hebrew code, however, mixes sacrificial laws with other laws.
Babylonian religion was more syncretistic, accepting deities from various cultures. Mosaic law demands the death penalty for worshiping other deities. Ex. 22.20, “Whoever sacrifices to any god other than YHWH must be destroyed."
Again, I list many more details in "Hammurabi's Code and the Law of Moses" along with numerous quotations.
It also is interesting to note that the Jewish system of animal, grain, and liquid sacrifices was basically the same as the sacrificial systems of all the countries around the ancient Mediterranean world. In other words, it was not very unique and did not come from Yahweh, but was merely a local Hebrew variation upon ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern religious views/customs. The idea that god needs bloodshed in order to get over anger issues against humans is quite absurd and primitive. Yet about 39 times (!), the Bible speaks of Yahweh s m e l l i n g the "pleasing aroma" of burnt animal sacrifices:
Gen 8:21; Ex 29:18,25,41; Lev 1:9,13,17; 2:2,9,12; 3:5,16; 4:31; 6:15,21; 8:21,28; 17:6; 23:13,18; 26:31; Num 15:3,7,10,13,14,24; 18:17; 28:2,6,8,13,24,27; 29:2,6,8,13,36. ex. "...sprinkle their (an ox, sheep, or goat) blood on the altar and burn their fat as an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the Lord."
The same can be said for the Torah as a whole. It does not actually come from any god at all. It is merely a local Hebrew/Jewish variation on religious themes that were very common throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern world. This can be seen quite easily when one compares the Bible's law code with other ancient codes.
And Hammurabi's Code was not the earliest law code published. The Sumerians published law codes even long before Hammurabi, e.g. the Code of Ur-Nammu of Ur, Sumeria, 2100 BC, and the Law Code of Urukagina, 2300's BC, Lagash, Sumer.
Gen. 1:1 contains 7 words in Hebrew, 7 days of creation, Cain avenged 7 times, 7 of every clean animal onto the arch, God gives Noah 7 days until the flood, Yahweh's 7-fold promise to Abraham (Gen.12), 7 fat and 7 skinny cows in Joseph's dream, 7-time march around Jericho, Gideon has 70 sons, Samson's hair has 7 braids, King David lives 70 years, King Solomon has 700 wives, etc..
Lamech, whom I mentioned above, was the 7th from Adam through Cain, and served as an example of evil; Enoch was the 7th from Adam through Seth, and served as an example of good. Both lists name 10 males. The "Table of Nations" in Gen. 10 lists 70 (10 x 7) descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The list from Shem to Abraham has 10 names (Gen. 11). The number of Jacob's family to go into Egypt was said to be 70 (Gen. 46:27). Moses was said to be the 7th from Abraham (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses; Ex. 6). 10 plagues upon Egypt, 10 Commandments on stone. Ruth 4:18-22 lists 10 generations from Perez to David. Have you noticed a pattern yet? All important genealogies in the Bible use the special numbers 7 and 10 or their multiples. Does this not seem a bit fishy to you? Especially since the genealogies do not match history?.
Although it is a bit outside the scope of this paper, please note that the New Testament genealogies also use multiples of 7. Matthew 1 names 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to Exile, 14 from Exile to the Messiah. And even though Luke gives a different genealogy for Jesus(!?!), he still uses a special number, 77; Jesus is 77th from God through Adam (Luke 3). Other NT books also use these special numbers.
The flood of 40 days & nights, Israel enslaved 400 years, Israelites 40 years in the wilderness, Moses on the mountain 40 days & nights, 12 spies explore the land 40 days & nights, 40 lashes is the highest punishment (Dt. 25:3), Goliath taunts Israel 40 days, Elijah in the wilderness 40 days & nights, Jesus in the wilderness 40 days & nights, 40 day & nights from resurrection to ascension. Do you see a pattern here?
12 sons of Jacob, 12 sons of Nahor (Gen. 22), 12 sons/tribes of Ishmael, 12 sons/tribes of Israel, 12 spies to Canaan, 12 famous judges/leaders before monarchy, 12 mighty deeds of Samson, Elisha's 12 yoke of oxen, Israel united for 120 years (40 x 3 - Saul - 40, David - 40, Solomon - 40), 12 minor prophets.
The 480 years between the Exodus and Solomon's 4th year was probably derived by multiplying 12 legendary generations of mighty judges by 40 years each (two "special" numbers), giving 480.
There is scholarly research and writing on the use of "special" numbers in the Bible. These numbers -- 3s, 7s, 10s, 12s, 40s, and their multiples -- are jammed all through the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) and suggest that much/most of it should not be taken literally. The examples I have given you are just a few. It is very important to note that these same numbers are found in myths all over the world and were derived largely from ancient astrology and astronomy. For example, the ancients believed there were 7 "wandering stars"/ planets (including the sun & moon), and thus 7 heavens; they had 12 signs of the heavenly Zodiac; the important constellation of the Pleiades (7 sisters) was absent 40 days of the year, and human pregnancy is 40 x 7 days, and in ancient Babylon the number 40 became connected with expectation and patience (exactly as it is used by the Bible). The number 3 became a number for death, darkness, or someone/something missing, because the moon was/is absent from sight for 3 days out of every lunar cycle (every month). The moon "dies" but comes back from the dead/darkness in 3 days. If one studies why these numbers are special and discovers just how much the Bible and other myths use these numbers, the connection between the Bible and other ancient lore becomes more clear. For a more comprehensive analysis, see my paper "The Use of Special Numbers in the Bible."
David: (unfinished) Jewish stories about King David are exaggerated.
Solomon:
According to the Bible, in the 900's BC Solomon supposedly has a vast Israelite Empire from the Euphrates to the Egyptian border, 700 wives and 300 concubines, stables with 40,000 stalls of horses, 1,400 chariots, 12,000 cavalrymen, so much wealth that silver was "as common in Jerusalem as stone" (1 Kgs 10:27); he supposedly "excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom" so that "the whole world" sought his presence (1 Kgs 10:23-4). The Bible's description of his reign are elaborate and make many boasts.
It is interesting to note, then, that Solomon is not even mentioned in a single known Egyptian or Mesopotamian text. How could this be, if indeed "the whole world" sought his presence?
The idea that Solomon "excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom" is equally ridiculous. 1. Archeology does not support the claim regarding wealth. Other kingdoms in history appear to have been far wealthier than Israel at ANY period. 2. This author had no clue as to how rich or wise "all the kings of the earth" were or had been. His knowledge was far too limited. 3. As I imply below, if Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, that implies that worship foreign gods having 700 wives and 300 slave women counts as wisdom, too. Of course, it is doubtful that he had so many wives, assuming he did exist, and it should be noted that these are nice round numbers and multiples of 7, 3, and 10.
Those who look to archaeology to find evidence of Solomon's greatness will be quite disappointed, since the archeological remains do not support a picture of wealth on the scale described in the Bible. In other words, the writers of the Bible exaggerated, to say the least. Nobody other than a fundamentalist psychologically predisposed to believe the Bible would consider it anything but an obvious exaggeration to write that silver is "as common in Jerusalem as stone" for ANY period in Jewish history.
Finkelstein and Silberman deal with David and Solomon at length in their book, cited below. I highly recommend it.
One other aspect of the story I will mention. The Biblical authors ascribe a reign of exactly 40 years each to Saul, David, and Solomon, adding up to a total of 120 years of Israel and Judah being united under one king. These numbers are highly suspicious, as 40's and 12's are numbers typical of ancient mythology.
The remains of a great many places mentioned in the Bible have been dug up or located. Some people have claimed this as a verification of the truth of the Bible's stories, but that is misguided. I am not calling into question the existence of any geographical locations. The relationship between the Bible and archaeology is similar to the relationship between the Greek Iliad and Odyssey and archaeology. We know that the city of Troy (Ilium) existed and that it was attacked by invaders, but that does not verify the stories Homer tells about the characters in the war or the interventions of the Gods, like Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Hera, etc. Just because Troy really existed does not mean the Goddess Athena really helped Odysseus, or that Diomedes battled Ares, or that Aphrodite protected Aeneas. Likewise, archaeologists agree that many Canaanite towns were destroyed around the 1200s and afterward. But that does not mean that we should believe ancient legends and myths about how Israelites conquered the land with Yahweh's help/mandate any more than we should believe Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Athena really guided the Greeks and Trojans. If Jericho's walls crumbled, is that a sign of divine intervention? No. There is no reason to believe that they crumbled because the Israelites marched around the city 7 times and blew their trumpets and Yahweh knocked the walls down himself, or that God really ordered the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, and beast -- quite a brutal and unjust command coming from a god character who is supposed to love everyone according to later apologists.
Modern archaeology backs the claims made in this essay. See, for example, the following books:
Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil Asher. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. (2002, Touchstone).
Redford, Donald. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. (1992).
Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. (1990) Second Edition 2002.
The Jews had their legends and myths just like all other ancient peoples had, so why do some even in this "modern" age think the Judeo-Christian stories were real history while other peoples' stories were make-believe? Evidently, a little priestly authority can go a long way. 1500 to 2000 years of tradition pounded into European minds in a very emotional manner do not easily lose their influence.
Do we still think Yahweh turned the Nile to blood and parted the Red Sea and drowned the entire army of Pharaoh?
If he rained food for Israel in the desert, why doesn't he rain food for the starving people of today; are they less valuable?
Did the earth really open up and swallow Moses' enemies so that they went down alive into Sheol (Num.16:31-35)?
Did Yahweh put a man to death just for collecting wood in the desert on the Sabbath (Num.15:32-36)?
Do we still think he made the sun and moon stand STILL in the sky for about a day while Joshua and the Israelites slaughtered their enemies (Jsh. 10)?
Do we know that Shamgar struck down 600 men with an oxgoad (Jdg. 3)?
Would God really allow a man's descendants (not even the man himself) to be cursed just because he saw his father (Noah) naked? Anyway, what is wrong with seeing someone naked? Except that it was a moral hang-up for some ancient Jewish people? Would you let your great-grandchildren be cursed into slavery just because one of your children sees you naked?
Is the "Tower of Babel" story honestly the best explanation for the world's different languages? Do we not have concrete examples of how languages have evolved over time?
Concerning the tower of Babel, why would God punish people for trying to make a building to reach the sky? And if he punished them for that, why doesn't he knock down every skyscraper we build?
Is it true that Yahweh turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for looking back as the family fled Sodom and Gomorrah, or is that story more likely a local myth associated with the large deposits of salt around the Dead Sea? Does the "looking back" motif not sound like the action of Eurydice in the Orpheus myth, or other characters in other myths?
Did Baalam's donkey really talk to him?
Was Solomon the wisest man who ever lived? If so, why did he worship foreign gods? And if the wisest man who ever lived had 700 wives and 300 slave women, does this mean we can too? Or did he really even have that many wives?
Did the God of the universe really talk to a man named Abraham 4,000 years ago and promise him that his descendants could forever have the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean? Or did the Hebrews invent that story to feel justified in taking the land away from the people who already lived there, and to lay permanent claim to the region?
Was the law written by Moses, or was most of it written by Jewish priests hundreds of years after the supposed time of Moses? Did Hammurabi (1700s BC) get his laws from God too? Why did so many ancient societies claim that their laws were from God(s)? Are any of their claims true? How do you know?
I am NOT saying that the Bible has no truth in it at all, or that Moses or David for certain never existed, or that some ancestors of the Israelites were never in Egypt, but I am explaining that it could not have been the way the Bible says it was. Historians may never be able to separate the real history of ancient Israel from Jewish myths and legends. Too many people still think the Bible is a reliable, or even infallible book, and that God miraculously watched over the whole process of making it so that it would contain no or few mistakes. But the Bible was invented and written by people, just like every other book, religious or otherwise, and it has as many mistakes in it as were in the minds of the people who wrote it.
Unfortunately some people in history, for whatever reason, convinced masses of others that the Bible was perfect and came from a personal, anthropomorphic (human-like) god who watches over the world from a throne up in the sky. 4 And those people who believed such assertions have passed down their misinformed beliefs throughout history. Once a tradition is established, it is very hard to break because people grow up with it, feel good about it, grow attached to it, and then feel robbed, threatened, or afraid when anyone casts doubt on their most cherished traditions. But truth is more important than tradition.
Even this quick analysis of Biblical dates and stories shows us that those who wrote the material either (a) never intended it to be taken literally, (b) merely retold the myth and folklore they heard or grew up with, inventing numbers or using "special" ones, (c) purposely invented stories to achieve some specific effect, or (d) any combination of the above.
It is known that the Bible was not compiled in its present form until well after the Babylonian Exile. Some parts, like Daniel, did not enter the collection until even later. Why then should it be hard to understand that the entire collection is colored by the limited knowledge, bias, personal agendas, and desires of the Jewish compilers after the Exile?
The information presented here and a wealth of other information that will back up the conclusions drawn in this paper can be found in numerous books and other sources. A bibliography follows.
Baden, Joel. The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. (Yale University Press, 2012).
Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil Asher. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. (2002, Touchstone).
Friedman, Richard Elliott . Who Wrote the Old Testament. (1987).
Manly, Bill. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt. (1996),
Redford, Donald. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. (1992).
Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. (1990) (Second Edition 2002).
Wallis, Louis. The Bible Is Human. (1942).
Anchor Bible Dictionary.
Harper's Bible Dictionary.
Encyclopedia Judaica.
Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Mircea Eliade.
These days, so much information can be found on the internet. Wikipedia can often be a decent starting point. YouTube has so many helpful lectures, but it is challenging for beginners to know where to start.
NOVA / Public Broadcasting offered a helpful distillation of research here: "The Writing of the Pentateuch" - Interview conducted in September 2007 by Gary Glassman, producer, writer, and director of "The Bible's Buried Secrets," and edited by Susan K. Lewis, editor of NOVA Online. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/coogan.html.
"Who wrote the Bible? (A history of the Torah)," by Let's Talk Religion (Swedish graduate student Filip Holm), YouTube, August 4, 2019, https://youtu.be/k8vYLSBCAF8.
"Did Moses Write the Torah? Interview with Dr. Joel Baden." by Digital Hammurabi, YouTube, June 24, 2020. https://youtu.be/RbyXNGzi6_U.
"The Origins of Hebrew," by ReligionForBreakfast, YouTube, April 14, 2021, https://youtu.be/vKQ5280A2mM.
Matthew Kruebbe
University of Texas at Tyler
12-07-1999
Updated 2007, 2009
Minor edits and updates 2012, 2014, 2018-2021.
1 An etiological myth is a story invented to explain the cause or origin of something. (etio from Gk "aitia" = cause)(logy from Gk "logos" = account)
2 After the flood, Noah burned some animals on an altar, and "Yahweh smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart, 'Never again will I curse the ground ..." (Gen 8:20-21). About 39 times (!), the Torah speaks of Yahweh smelling the "pleasing aroma" of burnt animal sacrifices: Gen 8:21; Ex 29:18,25,41; Lev 1:9,13,17; 2:2,9,12; 3:5,16; 4:31; 6:15,21; 8:21,28; 17:6; 23:13,18; 26:31; Num 15:3,7,10,13,14,24; 18:17; 28:2,6,8,13,24,27; 29:2,6,8,13,36. ex. "...sprinkle their (an ox, sheep, or goat) blood on the altar and burn their fat as an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the Lord."
What kind of deity likes the smell of burning flesh? Why isn't it clear to everyone that this is ancient superstition?
3 It is interesting to note that in a different passage Sheba and Dedan were said to be grandsons of Cush (Gen. 10). This just goes to show that multiple myths/traditions existed for the origins of tribes, and information from different sources was incorporated into what became the Bible.
4 Hebrew Shamayim and Greek Ouranos both mean sky, which was heaven to ancient peoples