Category: religion

Sign Hell, Norway, CC BY-SA 3.0

Satan and Judgement Day

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Satan has always been God’s trustworthy servant. Some experts on the matter say he began his career as a serpent in Eden and later took charge of the furnaces that burn the evildoers for eternity. Others disagree and claim he is a fallen angel named Lucifer who didn’t do any grovelling in Eden. His task was to make God look good. We like to believe God cares for us, but prayers often remain unanswered while bad things transpire, such as misfortune and unpleasant neighbours. How can an almighty, good God allow this to happen? The obvious answer is that there is no god, or God doesn’t care. That is not what we like to hear. Once the Israelites had done away with Baal, Astarte and the others and switched to monotheism, they had to address this uncomfortable issue.

Suddenly, they had no one to blame for their misfortune except themselves. How could that happen? After all, the Israelites were God’s chosen people. Did they do something wrong? So, if things went wrong, it was time to repent, prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah claimed. There usually was some idolatry or depravity occurring in their midst. That must have made God angry, the prophets proposed. But even when the Israelites prayed relentlessly, lived according to the Ten Commandments, and did all the prescribed rituals and offerings, things often didn’t improve. Why? It was a tricky question.

The Israelites dedicated an entire book, the Book of Job, to the issue, dubbed the problem of evil. Job was a particularly pious and virtuous man who was doing well. But on a fateful day, Satan challenged God by claiming that Job’s devoutness was due to his prosperity. His belief was insincere, Satan argued. God could not allow the mere possibility of insincerity and agreed to test Job and let Satan ruin Job. Even after the loss of his possessions, his children, and finally, his health, Job still refused to curse God. Job did everything God could expect of a faithful servant and more, or so it seemed.

Job’s friends tried to comfort him and figure out why he was suffering and what he could do about it. They suggested Job might have done something wrong. But Job proclaimed his innocence and complained about his fate. In the end, God showed up, telling him to shut up. His sin was hubris because he thought he didn’t deserve to suffer. Everything happens for a reason. It wasn’t entirely satisfactory, so Satan’s role gradually enlarged over time, and he came to do the dirty work so God’s hands remained clean. Still, in the Bible, God killed millions, while Satan only murdered a dozen. And nothing ever happens without God willing it, so God is responsible for Satan’s mischief also. The problem of evil remains unresolved and continues to boggle many minds today. How can a good God let evil happen or even do evil? That we are mere amusement was something few could think of, let alone accept.

The Quran says Satan is a fallen angel named Lucifer (Iblis) who, unlike the other angels, refused to bow to Adam. It alludes to Isaiah, where the morning star fell from heaven (Isaiah 14:12-14). Isaiah probably referred to a Babylonian king, but Luke says that Jesus saw Satan falling from heaven (Luke 10:8). A scribe probably noticed the similar phrasing and had his eureka moment. He could explain how Satan popped up and couldn’t resist sharing his findings with the other scribes, so it became the Christian interpretation of Isaiah’s words, which Islam took over. Also, Satan’s unwillingness to bow to Adam comes from an obscure Christian source. The Quran notes, ‘The angels prostrated themselves, all together. Except for Satan. He refused to be among those who prostrated themselves.’ (Quran 15:30-31) Then follows a conversation between God and Satan (Quran 15:32-42),

God said, ‘O Satan, what kept you from being among those who prostrated themselves?’

Satan said, ‘I am not about to prostrate myself before a human being, whom You created from clay, from moulded mud.’

God said, ‘Then get out of here, for you are an outcast. And the curse will be upon you until the Day of Judgment.’

Satan said, ‘My Lord, reprieve me until the Day they are resurrected.’

God said, ‘You are of those reprieved until the Day of the time appointed.’

Satan said, ‘My Lord, since You have lured me away, I will glamorise for them on earth, and I will lure them all away except for Your sincere servants among them.’

God said, ‘This is a right way with Me. Over My servants you have no authority, except for the sinners who follow you. And Hell is the meeting-place for them all.’

Like in the Book of Job, God and Satan appear to be on speaking terms, or even better, work together on a grand scheme and discuss what to do. Many Jews see Satan as an agent of God who tempts us into sinning so that he may accuse us in the heavenly court. That is also what the Quran says. A Christian might ask why the angels should have prostrated themselves before Adam. Jesus was the second Adam, so God made Jesus, the firstborn of the world, superior to the angels and made the angels worship Him (Hebrews 1:1-7). Satan is an imaginary character like Spike or Suzy. Satan is not the only red herring. The End Times are another. Suppose there will come an End Times. What can we know about it? So, what is the worth of the prophecies in the Bible and the Quran?

The book ‘The Virtual Universe’ addresses the consequences of predestination. A prophecy is like a premonition. Why can fortune-tellers sometimes make accurate predictions? And why are their predictions unreliable at the same time? The answer is that the scriptwriter knows the future but not us. And so, the script can make predictions come true to the point that we notice that something is off, while the proof of foreknowledge remains elusive.

We can’t know the future because our knowing will alter it. If I know I will have a car accident tomorrow, I will remain home, and the accident will not happen, so if I am to have that accident, then I shouldn’t know. I may pass a sign saying, ‘You will have a car accident tomorrow’ and laugh about it, and the next day, I will find out it was a sign. As long as I don’t believe it is a sign, it can be precise.

And so, the prophecies of the ancient Greek oracles only made sense in hindsight. In 1914, no one could have guessed that the licence plate number on Franz Ferdinand’s car, in which he was assassinated, referred to the end date of the upcoming world war triggered by that same assassination. The prophecy in Revelation can’t be accurate because too many people take it too seriously. If many people expect the End Times, they can’t know the specifics about that event. And no one knows the hour, not even Jesus knew. The specifics mentioned in the Bible may turn out to be correct in unsuspected ways, such as the prophecies of the Greek oracles. But we will only know in hindsight.

Latest revision: 14 July 2025

Featured image: Photo of a sign in Hell, Norway, taken by Matthew Mayer in 2001, released under GFDL. ‘Gods’ means cargo or freight in Norwegian, while the old spelling of ‘expedition’ has since become ‘ekspedisjon’. God’s Expedition, however, is a popular reading with English-speaking tourists.

Dutch replica of Noah's Ark. By Ceinturion.

Genesis from Where?

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Creation of the world

Where do the first chapters of Genesis come from? They deal with Creation, the fall, and the flood. Who wrote them? These stories mostly ran in Mesopotamia, the birthplace of several ancient civilisations. These civilisations are much older than the Jewish nation and had myths about Creation and the flood that are at least 1,000 years older than the Jewish Bible. The Jews lived in exile in Babylon when they compiled their scriptures. They took local myths to write the first chapters of Genesis. A Babylonian creation myth, the Enūma Eliš, is a bit like the first chapter of Genesis,

When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primaeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods, none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods amid heaven,
Lahmu and Lahamu were called into being.

Both Enūma Eliš and Genesis start with chaotic waters before anything comes into being. Genesis says, ‘The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.’ In both, a fixed, dome-shaped firmament divides these waters from the habitable Earth, and both have descriptions of the creation of celestial objects and the ordering of time.

The purpose of creation myths is to explain why we exist. Humans are naturally curious and desire answers to such questions. Another purpose is justifying the social order. The peasant population toiled to support the lavish lifestyles of the elites, who were the priests and the rulers. And so, the gods, or God, created man to work the ground, bring offerings to the temple, and pay taxes. The Jewish Bible lays out in great detail the required offerings to the temple and the priests in Leviticus, so Judaism looks like yet another peasant-exploitation scheme devised by priests.

Men and women

The creation of man in Genesis resembles the creation account in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, which describes how the gods, tired of working on creation, created a man to do the job. They put a god to death and mixed his blood with clay to produce the first human in the likeness of the gods,

In the clay, god and man
Shall be bound,
To a unity brought together;
So that to the end of days
The Flesh and the Soul
Which in a god have ripened –
That soul in a blood kinship is bound.

In Genesis, God created humans in the likeness of the gods (1:26) and rested after six days of hard labour (Genesis 2:2-3). God then made a man to work the ground (Genesis 2:5) and made him from soil (Genesis 2:7). In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods created the first man in Eden, the garden of the gods in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The same happened in Genesis (Genesis 2:14). There is another story about the origin of man in the story of Enki and Ninmah. The gods, burdened with creating the Earth, complained to Namma, the primordial mother. Namma then kneaded some clay, placed it in her womb, and gave birth to the first humans.

The Mesopotamians thus had at least two creation stories: one in which the gods created humans from soil and another in which a goddess gave birth to humanity. The story of Eve and Adam in Genesis relates to these two tales. Likely, Adam was Eve’s son in the original tale, and the Jewish scribes used the first story to tailor the story of Eve and Adam to their theological requirements. Adam’s purpose was to be a companion to Eve rather than to work the garden, as the Bible now claims.

The epic further details that the first man, Enkidu, was wild, naked, muscular, hairy and uncivilised. The gods then sent a nude woman to tame him. By making love to him for a week, she turned him into a civilised man of wisdom, who was like a god. She made him a meal and clothed him. In Genesis, Eve made Adam eat (Genesis 2:6), which gave him the learning of the gods. Eve and Adam were naked (Genesis 3:7) before the Lord gave them clothes (Genesis 3:21).

The Epic of Gilgamesh differs from the Genesis account, but the similarities are striking. In both stories, a god creates a man from the soil. The man lives naked in nature. A woman then tempts him. In both accounts, the man accepts food from the woman, receives knowledge, covers his nakedness, and leaves his former life. The appearance of a snake stealing a plant of immortality in the epic is also noteworthy. There were likely similar stories circulating, and we have only a few remaining clay tablets. There might also have been a story where the first woman, Eve, gave birth to the first man, Adam.

The Great Flood

The Great Flood in Genesis also closely resembles the account in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Few scholars doubt that the epic is the source of the biblical narrative. The epic notes that the city of Shurrupak, situated on the banks of the Euphrates River, had grown. The deity Enlil could not sleep because of the sounds the city made. To deal with the noisy humans below, the gods agreed to drown them all.

The deity Ea warned his friend Utnapishtim and asked him to build an ark. With his children and hired men, Utnapishtim built an enormous boat and went on it with his relatives, animals, and craftsmen. The storm god, Adad, sent a terrible thunderstorm with pouring rains that drowned the city. Then, the gods regretted what they had done.

After seven days, the weather calmed. Utnapishtim looked around and saw an endless sea. He saw a mountain rising out of the water. After another seven days, he released a dove into the air. The dove returned, having found no place to land. He then released a swallow that also came back. Then, he released a raven that didn’t come back. Utnapishtim disembarked and made an offering to the gods.

According to the Bible, everyone had grown evil. Only Noah was blameless and faithful. For that reason, God decided to send a flood to wipe out humanity, but to spare Noah and his family. God then ordered Noah to build an ark that could also harbour males and females of every animal species and provide food for them all.

The flood came for forty days. No one survived. After forty days, Noah sent out a raven. Then, he sent a dove to see if the waters had receded. Once the waters receded, the Lord instructed Noah to leave the ark with his wife, his sons, and their wives, and to release the animals. Noah then disembarked and made a sacrifice.

The Greek version

A long time ago, there was a great war between the Olympic gods and the so-called Titans. Some titans sided with the gods. Prometheus, whose name means ‘thinking ahead’, was one of them. He foresaw that the Olympic gods, led by Zeus, would win the battle, so he sided with them. After the battle, Zeus rewarded him by letting him create various life forms. Prometheus, with Zeus’ permission, first created animals and then decided to make upright figures, modelled after the gods. Without consulting Zeus, Prometheus then breathed the breath of life into humans, displeasing the supreme god. Prometheus also stole the fire of the gods and gave it to the humans.

Zeus punished Prometheus for his transgressions by tying him to a rock. Every day, an eagle came by to peck out his liver, which would grow back during the night, a torment without end. A hero named Heracles, however, later liberated him. Zeus also punished the humans. He ordered Hephaestus, the god of blacksmithing, to create a beautiful but dangerous and inquisitive new creature, the woman. Zeus then sent the woman, whose name was Pandora, to humankind, gave her a box and warned her in strong terms to never look inside, even though he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist her curiosity. All the gods had put dangerous gifts within the box.

The men, impressed by her looks, adopted Pandora. One day, the curious Pandora could no longer resist the urge and decided to open the box. Out of the box then popped up all the disasters that have plagued humanity since then: famine, disease, earthquakes, and war. The disaster spreads like lightning among the people who, until then, had lived free from troubles and disease. Women told an alternative account in which Pandora didn’t open the box, but her husband, a brother of Prometheus named Epimetheus, whose name means ‘thinking afterwards’. There are a few noteworthy parallels with the Bible:

  • The humans were created in the image of the gods.
  • The creation of humans happened by breathing the breath of life into them.
  • The creation of woman occurred after the creation of man.
  • The woman’s curiosity brings disaster to humankind.
  • Pandora’s box plays a role similar to the tree of knowledge in Eden.

The ancient Greeks also had a flood myth. The Greek supreme god, Zeus, had decided to punish humanity with a flood. King Lycaon of Arcadia had sacrificed a boy to Zeus, who, appalled by this offering, decided to put an end to human evil by unleashing a deluge. Deucalion and Pyrrha survived Zeus’ world-destroying flood by building an ark. Warned by the titan Prometheus, they sailed on away and landed on Mount Parnassus, where the goddess Themis instructed them to repopulate the earth by throwing stones that would turn into new people. The similarities between these stories suggest that cultures influenced each other, yet also diverged in significant ways.

Latest revision: 23 September 2025

Featured image: Dutch replica of Noah’s Ark. By Ceinturion CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons.

My guide plausibility

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Plausible means that it can be true, but what we think is plausible depends on what we believe, and that often depends on the information we have. Humans are imaginative beings who invent stories, such as religions, but there is only one truth. The truth doesn’t depend on what you or I believe. An advanced post-human civilisation may have created us for the personal amusement of one of its members, who is God to us. That has remained hidden behind some of the world’s religions. The evidence suggests that God is a woman who assumes roles as an ordinary human in this world to pass the time.

You can speculate too wildly or fail to see the bigger picture if you only accept what can be proven. I have tried to avoid those pitfalls. This account leaves no significant questions concerning the reason for our existence unanswered. It is plausible as an overall explanation, but it doesn’t answer many of the irrelevant questions scholars are debating. And there is still the Great Unknown. We are inside the simulation and don’t know what’s outside, just like a Holodeck character doesn’t know it’s on the Starship Enterprise.

We all connect the dots in different ways. We can easily get lost as we make up stories and believe them. In other words, we are religious creatures. The quest for truth is different. Using the available information, we can rule out options. Information affects probabilities, but the quality of information matters. Most of the Bible is doubtful. With the help of scholars’ work, we may make guesses about what happened, but it remains a leap to arrive at an account that explains it all. That still requires a clue, which I received. Apart from God being a woman from an advanced humanoid civilisation, there are other possibilities, such as:

  • This world is like a Big Brother house. Our creators entertain themselves with us. Mary Magdalene wasn’t God, but something made Jesus believe it.
  • There are no humans left. Artificial intelligence has completely taken over. It runs this script to keep itself busy. The AI may think of itself as a woman.
  • Or, I am the post-human who wrote this script for myself to become the hero who found it all out and finds the perfect love. I don’t think so, but it is possible.

The evidence suggests God is a woman from an advanced humanoid civilisation. Each piece of evidence is insufficient on its own. Their validity lies in the combination. The findings answer several questions without resorting to religious dogma. To name a few. Why is Christianity about love? Why does this religion have such baffling teachings that differ from Judaism and Islam? Why did the Jewish God gather so many worshippers via Christianity and Islam? Why was Jesus the Son of God? Why was he the Bridegroom? And was Muhammad a prophet of God? You now have answers that make sense.

I wrote this not to upset you but to tell you the truth. I may have encountered God in a dormitory when I was a student. She was one of the students living there, an overbearing figure who dominated the group. She made my life miserable and forced me to leave because I didn’t fit in. Since then, I never saw Her again, but over the years, a few strange incidents occurred, reminding me of Her, and nineteen years later, during a psychosis, She had a message for me, which was, ‘I am Eve, and you are Adam, and together we will recreate Paradise.’ It implies that I am the stand-in for Jesus. And so, I have checked to see if that could be true. This book is the result of that effort. My name isn’t Enasniël Drogoel, but you will know my identity soon enough if this is for real.

Tribes have myths about common ancestors. It enables them to unite, feel connected, and cooperate for the common good. The myth of Eve and Adam is a story that can unite humankind, encourage cooperation, and prevent an impending apocalypse. And we are a self-destructive species. Only when we believe we are not worthy of God’s grace and need a saviour, and follow this individual like sheep, can we save ourselves from our foolishness. So, if God is willing, this will become The New Religion, and you can save yourself by embracing these wonderful tidings.

Latest revision: 16 July 2025

Sepphoris Mosaic

Sarah, Mother of the Jews

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Weaving one tale inside another

The Jewish Bible is a good read, apart from the sections that lay out the Jewish religious laws in excruciating detail. It features tales about the Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promised Land under the guidance of a wrathful cloud. It is nearly all made up. Writing and editing the Jewish Bible took centuries. The authors wrote it to promote their religion rather than to provide an accurate account of history. That is how historians look at the Jewish Bible. If you believed it all, don’t blame the Jews for writing good stories, but yourself for your gullibility. You could have known if you had put some effort into educating yourself. And you don’t think reptiles live among us because scriptwriters in Hollywood made a film in which they do? Some do. That is how imagination becomes religion.

But what does the almighty owner of quadrillions of galaxies have to do with the Jewish Bible, a product of the fantasies of a petty nation dwelling in a small area on a tiny planet near an insignificant star inside one of those countless galaxies? To answer that question, imagine you are John Ronald Reuel Tolkien writing about Hobbits living in The Shire. The Shire might be an insignificant spot on a tiny planet in an infinitely large universe, but Tolkien hardly cares about the rest. Only the Shire and the Hobbits have his interest. Tolkien could write a story about a Hobbit who makes up stories about his maker.

If Tolkien can do that, God can do it too. After all, that is one of the perks of being all-powerful. If God is a woman and has been among us as Mary Magdalene, what roles did God play among the Jews? In other words, which women in the Jewish Bible were God in disguise? Inquiring minds want to know because many of these stories are fantasy. At best, these are local tales that may or may not have some connection to actual events and have become integrated into the biblical narrative. Hence, the first question you should ask is: Can God have played a role in stories that never happened in the story?

Tolkien can write a story in which a Hobbit writes a story in which Tolkien enters the Shire disguised as a Hobbit. But that story never happened in the story Tolkien wrote. It is a tale that a Hobbit wrote in Tolkien’s story. The Hobbit might not even realise that the Hobbit in the tale is Tolkien in disguise, but he thinks it is just a Hobbit with a special role in the story, because that is the plot Tolkien created. I hope you haven’t lost track. That is the level of deception we are talking about here. And what about the Hobbits starting a religion with an imagined creator? Then the truth comes out. Tolkien reveals himself, and the Hobbits all laugh. And then it turns out that, even though the story that this Hobbit wrote never happened, it featured Tolkien disguised as a Hobbit. So it is possible. And indeed, strong women, who could have been God in disguise, appear in the Jewish Bible.

Hiding it behind human motivations

Powerful women also appeared in the Jewish Bible for a mundane reason. The Israelites were too small a people and thus too weak to defend a territory. They had to survive as a minority in the lands of others. Military adventurism would be fatal for them. To facilitate the right attitude among Jewish men, the authors of the Jewish Bible invented a new type of hero. Rather than fearless warriors, their heroes were virtuous individuals who helped others, such as Boaz,1 people with weaknesses like David, and risk-averse, shrewd individuals. Abraham was not a courageous warrior, nor was his son, Isaac. Resourcefulness had to compensate for that. Jacob cheated on his brother Esau and took his birthright. Meet the Jewish hero. He is a family man, but lacks the courage to defend his wife’s honour. Yet he is shrewd and defrauds his brother. And he has God on his side.

Heroes die, but the cunning and timid remain, even more so if God is on their side. That is why there are still Jews, while other nations made a one-way trip to the dustbin of history due to their excess testosterone and stupidity. And, of course, they lacked divine support. That is why the authors of the Jewish Bible refashioned the role of men and women in family life. The stories of Jewish patriarchs focused on family life and domestic affairs, in which women played a central role. And women played a crucial part in Israel’s victories.1

That undermined male authority in war. In several cases, women achieved triumph on the battlefield or determined the fate of men. Jacob defrauded Esau of his birthright and deceived his father, Isaac, with the help of his mother, Rebecca. Esther saved the Jewish people from a plot in the Persian court. The Jewish Bible doesn’t depict events suggesting Rebecca or Esther could have been God in disguise. There are, however, a few stories that catch the imagination and qualify. According to the Bible, Jewish history begins with Sarah and Abraham. There was something special about Sarah, the matriarch of the Jews.

Sarah and Abraham

The Lord allegedly promised Abraham that one day, his offspring would be as countless as the stars and own the land between Egypt and the Euphrates River. His wife, Sarah, was barren. She asked Abraham to sleep with her slave, Hagar, so Hagar would bear a child in her name. Those were the days when slavery was not forbidden, and you could get away with that. Once Hagar was pregnant, she began to look down on Sarah. Sarah then mistreated Hagar, and Hagar fled. But God sent an angel, the famous Angel of the Lord, who ordered Hagar to return and submit herself to Sarah. Hagar bore Abraham a son, Ishmael.

That could have been good enough, but the Lord chose differently and presented Abraham with a covenant. It required the circumcision of all males, and Sarah was to become the matriarch of the Jewish nation. At the time, Abraham was one hundred years old, and Sarah was ninety. Abraham and Sarah laughed when they learned this. Remember, 4,000 years ago, there were no erection enhancement pills or fertility treatments. Sarah became pregnant and bore Isaac.

Like in most traditional agricultural societies, Jewish religious law prescribes that men precede women in inheritance. Daughters can only inherit if there are no sons. Nevertheless, being a matriarch of the Jewish people is crucial because you are a Jew if your mother is one. Your father is irrelevant to your Jewishness. God was particularly picky as to who was to become the matriarch of the Jews. In this sense, the Jews are not primarily children of Abraham, as the Jewish Bible says, but children of Sarah in the same way Christians are children of God.

Abraham feared for his life because of Sarah’s beauty. When the Egyptians asked if Sarah was his wife, he said she was his sister. The Pharaoh’s servants took notice and informed the Pharaoh, who took her as his wife. God then inflicted severe diseases on Pharaoh and his household. That is divine justice. God punished the Pharaoh because Abraham had deceived him. With a God like that, you don’t need Satan. Not surprisingly, that horned fellow was nowhere to be found in this tale. Perhaps he enjoyed a sabbatical. The Bible doesn’t tell. Abraham did the same in Abimelech’s kingdom, thus knowingly bringing Abimelech into mortal danger. King Abimelech then received threats from God after he planned to take Sarah as his wife. Luckily for him, God didn’t have a bad mood that day.

To us mere mortals, an intriguing question might be, what made Abraham worthy in the eyes of God? Is it that he intended to sacrifice his son when a voice asked him? If it had happened today, we would have locked up Abraham in a mental ward. If Abraham was God’s husband, it makes more sense. In any case, God works in mysterious ways, and a ram presented itself, and that same voice then asked Abraham to sacrifice the animal instead. That was a narrow escape. If that ram had not been there, there would have been no Jewish people, and world history would have been entirely different. That is chaos theory at work here, or is it God’s plan?

In family matters, God sided with Sarah. The Angel of the Lord summoned Hagar to return to her mistress, Sarah. Later, God told Abraham to send Hagar away. Sarah wanted this. Sarah became the matriarch of the Jews because the Lord commanded. The Lord thus represented her well. Had this been a scrap of history, Sarah might have been God in disguise and done an excellent job of hiding that. However, God can also play an undercover role in events that never took place. That is a perk of writing the story yourself. And why does God desire bits of male reproductive organs in exchange for making a covenant? That is indeed most peculiar unless the Lord is a Lady. Another, and probably better, explanation is that it is a hygiene measure. The Jewish Bible describes the rules for ritual hygiene that Jews are required to follow in great detail.

Joseph and Asenath

Jacob had twelve sons, but Joseph was his favourite and the best-looking one. His brothers were jealous and conspired against him. They sold him as a slave. Joseph ended up in the household of Potiphar, an Egyptian and a high-ranking official in Pharaoh’s court. Joseph did well there and became Potiphar’s favourite. Joseph was handsome, so he caught the eye of Potiphar’s wife, who wanted to sleep with him. When he refused, she accused Joseph of trying to seduce her, and Potiphar put him in prison. There, Joseph became the prison warden’s favourite. Joseph was adept at explaining dreams. That eventually brought him to the Pharaoh, who also made Joseph his favourite. The Pharaoh made him a Viceroy and put him in charge of the granaries.

Scholars believe that the biblical story of Joseph was once a separate story that originated in the Jewish community living in Egypt at the time when many other Jews were in Babylonian captivity. The story resembles several Egyptian tales about a seven-year famine, divine dreams, and a wise vizier who helped the pharaoh and priests to restore the land. One of these stories, in fact, is inscribed on a large monument called the Famine Stele near Elephantine, an Egyptian colony on the Nile River where many Jews also lived.

Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian high priest. The Jewish Bible tells us nothing about her. That raised questions as marrying pagans became a controversial matter for Jews. A later story about their marriage explains how Joseph, after he escaped Potiphar’s wife, ended up in the arms of a pagan priestess. How could God have let this happen? An explanation was needed and invented, and they named the story Joseph and Asenath, which was quite to the point. According to this tale, Asenath was proud and despised men, but became impressed by Joseph’s looks.

Joseph first didn’t want to marry a pagan priestess who bowed before idols and didn’t worship the God of the Jews. But lo and behold, Asenath showed repentance and changed her faith. And then an angel from heaven hurried to her chamber to bless the marriage. When Asenath told Joseph, he changed his mind and married her. It thus must have been convincing. Asenath’s change of faith appears insincere and may have been motivated by her desire to marry Joseph. Nevertheless, God blessed the marriage, which is remarkable considering the high standards that usually apply. Asenath might have been God in disguise if only this had actually happened.

Zipporah and Moses

A fellow named Moses allegedly led the Israelites out of Egypt. A burning bush claiming to be God commanded Moses to return to Egypt to free the Israelites. Moses then took his wife, Zipporah, and their sons and started his journey to Egypt. On the road, they stayed at an inn, where that same burning bush supposedly came to kill Moses, which is a reason why you should not believe it happened. Zipporah saved Moses’ life by circumcising their son and touching Moses’ feet with the foreskin, saying he was her bridegroom of blood (Exodus 4:24-26). Later, the burning bush allegedly transformed itself into an irate cloud of fire, which helped Moses lead the Israelites into the Promised Land.

Zipporah saving Moses’ life fits the agenda of the authors of the Jewish Bible, which is to undermine male authority so Jewish men wouldn’t strive to posthumously win the prestigious Darwin award for their military adventures and terminate the Jewish people in the process. After all, the success of Moses’ mission depended on Zipporah having rescued him from the consequences of his daring attempt to let his son remain uncircumcised. God somehow was particularly keen on that foreskin. Zipporah knew what God was about to do and the reason why. But Zipporah reading God’s mind? No mere mortal could accomplish such a feat, not even Jesus. Hence, Zipporah might have been God in disguise if only this had happened.

Bathsheba and David

Bathsheba, who was the wife of Uriah, brought ruin to David and his kingdom. While Uriah served in the army to fight one of David’s wars, Bathsheba conspicuously bathed on a rooftop near the royal palace, where David could see her naked. She intended to seduce him. The alternative explanation that there was no room inside the house to bathe isn’t persuasive. David ordered Bathsheba to come to his place. And so She did, apparently without even saying it might be a bad idea. She became pregnant after sleeping with him. David then commanded Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to go home, hoping he would sleep with his wife so the scandal would go unnoticed. But Uriah didn’t out of solidarity with his comrades on the battlefield. David then asked his commander to place Uriah on the frontline of the battle so he would die. After Uriah died, David married Bathsheba. Bathsheba turned out to be a true fate changer. She also bore the future king Solomon.

You might have learned that the Lord loved David, but the subsequent events don’t demonstrate that. From then on, everything went downhill. In hindsight, this sequence of incidents led to the son of Bathsheba ascending to the throne. The prophet Nathan foretold David that his act would bring a curse upon his house. David’s eldest son, Amnon, was murdered by his half-brother Absalom after he had raped Absalom’s sister Tamar. Later, Absalom declared himself king and started a revolt against David, and David’s troops killed him. That eliminated two potential heirs to the throne. In David’s old age, Bathsheba secured the succession to the throne of Solomon. The marriage was a grave sin, but God nevertheless loved Bathsheba’s son, who was to become king. Bathsheba could have been God in disguise.

That might shed some light as to why the Lord loved David so much, as it cannot be due to his moral virtue. And it presents us with a reason why he couldn’t resist Bathsheba. David is a historical figure, so there could be truth to the story. It, however, also fits the agenda of the authors of the Jewish Bible. Even Israel’s greatest king, David, had faults and crumbled in the hands of a woman. But who would have thought Bathsheba had something to do with the angry cloud dwelling in that tent? Remarkably, the name Bathsheba is composed of two parts: Bath and Sheba. Bathsheba seduced David by bathing naked on a rooftop near the palace. The Queen of Sheba later visited Solomon. That is a bit odd. Hence, the Queen of Sheba may also have been an avatar of God.

Deborah, the founder of the Jewish nation

Sarah is the matriarch of the Jews, but she never lived in that capacity as a historical figure. Still, the Jews have a real matriarch insofar as anything is real in this world. She is also in the Jewish Bible. The Jewish nation gradually emerged after Egypt retreated from Canaan around 1150 BC. That left a power vacuum in which states gradually developed from tribal leadership. It corresponds with the tribal era of the judges in the Bible. One of the oldest texts of the Jewish Bible is the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), dating back to the era before the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.2 Deborah was a tribal leader during this age.

Deborah was the fourth judge in the Book of Judges. Only Deborah may have lived in that era in that role. The Song of Deborah, not Genesis, is the actual starting point of the Jewish Bible. The song likely didn’t pop up out of nowhere. Jewish tribespeople composed it to celebrate the victory brought by their heroine, Deborah. She is the earliest historical person in the Bible. She attributed the triumph to Yahweh rather than El, so the history of the Jews as Yahweh’s people began with Deborah.

She took part in a battle (Judges 4:8-9). As the story goes, Deborah sent for Barak, the commander of the troops, and said to him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead them up to Mount Tabor. I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.'” (Judges 4:6-7) But it was Deborah who commanded Barak. And so, She might have been the God of Israel in disguise and founded the Jewish nation and religion in person.

Latest revision: 5 December 2025

Featured image: Sepphoris Mosaic. Pbs.org. [copyright info]

1. Wright, Jacob L. (2014). The Bible’s Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future. Coursera.
2. Why is the Song of Deborah considered to be the oldest text in the Hebrew Bible? r/AcademicBiblical (2025). https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1mhfw3z

Khadijah, Mother of the Believers

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Bride of Muhammad

Mother of the Believers is a title Muslims give to the wives of Muhammad. It best suits his first wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. According to Islamic sources, Khadijah was a wealthy widow and Muhammad’s employer. She had been married twice and had children from those marriages. Khadijah was a very successful merchant. Khadijah’s trade caravan equalled the caravans of all other traders of the Quraysh put together. Khadijah neither believed in nor worshipped idols, which was uncommon. Khadijah didn’t travel with Her trade caravans but employed others to trade on her behalf. Muhammad was one of them.

Muhammad attracted Her interest. He was twenty-five, and Khadijah was forty when She proposed to him. The woman proposing a marriage to the man was indeed unusual, most notably given the time and place where it occurred. She was wealthy and way out of Muhammad’s league, so that he wouldn’t have considered it. The marriage between Khadijah and Muhammad was both happy and monogamous. When he was without Her on one of his journeys, Muhammad never had any desire for other women. They had six children, of whom four daughters survived.

Muhammad returned home, shocked after the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him for the first time. He told Khadijah what had happened, trembling, no doubt. She comforted him like a mother and supported him thereafter. Khadijah’s moral support made Muhammad believe in his mission, and Her financial support was indispensable. Apart from a wife, Khadijah was thus like a mother to Muhammad, in the likeness of Eve and Adam. She was Muhammad’s boss in more ways than one. Like Jesus, Muhammad married God. However, unlike the Bride of Christ, the Bride of Muhammad is still well-known. Only after Khadijah’s death did Muhammad marry several other women.

Quran origins

Muslims believe that the Quran was revealed to Muhammad by God, with the Archangel Gabriel serving as the intermediary. The Quran lacks chronological order and repeats itself. Scholars believe its historical accuracy is inferior to that of the Bible in describing the same events. And so, you might find it hard to believe that this scratchy collection of sayings, which Muslims claim has unparalleled artistic value and is so brilliantly composed that it is beyond the capabilities of even the brightest minds to reproduce, is the word of God and meant to correct corruptions in previous Jewish and Christian scriptures, as Muslims claim. But God works in mysterious ways. The first Muslims memorised the verses and didn’t write them down.

Memorising such a lengthy text for decades is prone to errors. And the Muslims fought several battles that took the lives of some of those who knew these verses. To reduce the risk of verses going lost in this manner, the early Muslims divided the task of memorising the Quran and assigned multiple men to recall the same verses. How well they did that is anyone’s guess. It explains a great deal about why the Quran is the way it is. Those who later wrote down the Quran didn’t edit the verses or present them chronologically because humans shouldn’t distort God’s words. If only early Christians had shown that kind of reverence for their scriptures, Christianity would have been an entirely different religion.

Historical analysis suggests that much of the Quran originated from previously extant Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian sources. The Arab desert was far from Rome, so local Christians could hold deviant views that the Church considered heretical, such as that Jesus didn’t die for our sins, that Jesus was human and not the Son of God and that Jesus didn’t die on the cross but that there had been some ploy to make people believe that. The Quran mentions that Jesus created birds from clay and breathed life into them (3:48-49, 5:109-110). The Gospel of Thomas mentions this. Speaking from the cradle, Jesus defended his mother against accusations of sexual immorality (Quran: 19:27-30).

Parts of the Quran have no previously known sources. They could have been part of God’s message that the Archangel Gabriel supposedly dispatched to Muhammad. The Quran also adds a few juicy details to existing stories that the Jews have failed to mention in their Bible. These might have been local tales circulating in the area. An example is King Solomon gathering an army of ghosts, men and birds, entering the valley of the ants, and ants talking to each other (Quran 27:15-18),

Indeed, We granted knowledge to David and Solomon. And they said in acknowledgement, ‘All praise is for God Who has privileged us over many of His faithful servants.’

And David was succeeded by Solomon, who said, ‘O people! We have been taught the language of birds, and been given everything we need. This is indeed a great privilege.’

Solomon’s forces of ghosts, humans, and birds were rallied for him, perfectly organised.

And when they came across a valley of ants, an ant warned, ‘O ants! Go quickly into your homes so Solomon and his armies do not crush you, unknowingly.’

In virtual reality, these things can happen. We have no evidence, but some things are more plausible than others. Talking ants are as believable as a serpent talking to Eve. Still, Muslims claim Muhammad was the last prophet before the End Times and that the Quran corrects mistakes and omissions in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. At first glance, this is not particularly convincing, but the Quran contains a few discrepancies that seem more meaningful in hindsight:

  • The Quran discusses Adam’s creation extensively but says little about how Eve came to be. The story of the rib is absent. The Quran claims that humans originate from one soul (Quran 39:6), like the creation in God’s image (Genesis 1:27).
  • The Quran doesn’t blame Eve for the Fall. Eve and Adam transgressed together. One passage explicitly blames Adam (Quran 20:120-121).
  • There is no original sin in Islam. The Quran states that Eve and Adam repented, and God forgave them (Quran 2:37, 7:23). The Quran doesn’t claim that Jesus was a redeemer for the sins of humankind.
  • The Quran names Jesus the Son of Mary and confirms the virgin birth, thereby implying that Jesus had no father, and because Christians call him the Son of God, it opens up the possibility that God’s name was Mary.
  • In the Quran, God orders the angels to prostrate before Adam, while the New Testament says that the angels must bow before Jesus, implying that Jesus could be Adam. The repeated mention could signal importance.
  • Finally, the Quran stresses the return to Paradise 147 times. Although the Jewish and Christian scriptures pay little attention to our return to Eden, the Quran mentions it so often that it could be of the utmost importance.

God ordering the angels to bow before Adam and Satan refusing to do so was a Jewish theme that some Christians, and later the Muslims, took over. One of the earliest accounts of Satan’s fall as a result of the conflict with Adam comes from the Life of Adam and Eve, a retelling of their lives from around 200 AD. God first formed, animated, and endowed Adam with the image and likeness of his creator. The archangel Michael brought him to bow before God. God then confirmed the creation of Adam in His image and likeness. Then, Michael summoned the rest of the angels and ordered them to bow before Adam, but Satan refused. The sevenfold repetition of this theme in the Quran suggests that there may be more to it than some obscure story entering the Quran by accident.

The Hidden Secret

The Quran claims that God is the greatest schemer (Quran 3:54, 7:99, 8:30, 10:21, 13:42) and capable of deception (Quran 4:88, 5:41, 11:34, 14:4). The existence of different religions and theological disputes is part of God’s plan. Otherwise, the message of Islam would have been more convincing. After 1400 years, that message has yet to convince 80% of the world’s population. The Quran is said to contain a hidden secret. Chapter 74 of the Quran is named The Cloaked One or The Hidden Secret. The former name is the translation of its title, while the latter refers to its content. The cloaked one is Muhammad. The chapter further mentions that 19 angels guard hell. The conflating of cloak and hidden secret suggests a disguise. About the number 19, the Quran says (Quran 74:31),

“We have made their number [that of the angels] only as a test for the disbelievers so that the People of the Book [Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians] will be certain, and the believers [Muslims] will increase in faith, and neither the People of the Book nor the believers will have any doubts, and so that those hypocrites with sickness in their hearts and the disbelievers will argue, ‘What does God mean by such a number?’ In this way, God leaves whoever He wills to stray and guides whoever He wills. And none knows the forces of your Lord except He. And this description of hell is only a reminder to humanity.”

Muslims insist it contains a clue proving the divine origin of the Quran. The verse suggests that the number 19 holds significance beyond the number of angels mentioned. In 1974, a fellow named Rashad Khalifa claimed to have discovered a mathematical code hidden in the Quran based on the number 19. It gave rise to a numerological cult and countless films on YouTube made by beard-wearing men that can bore you to death.

Numbers are meaningless, but the Quran implies there is more to that number and that it contains a proof of some kind, a hidden secret. So, what could the hidden secret be? Chapter 19 is titled ‘Mary’ and is about the Virgin Mary, the stand-in for God, the Mother Goddess. The hidden secret may be that God’s name was Mary, something only God could know. The cloak may refer to God appearing as a man while being a woman, or to the Virgin Mary, as the veil that conceals God’s identity.

Virgin birth

The Quran corroborates the virgin birth of Jesus (Quran 4:171) and claims that Jesus is not the Son of God, thereby implying that Jesus had no father. The virgin birth is a miracle of the Mother Goddess. Christians invented that tale because, if God is Jesus’ Father, then he can’t have a human father. Jesus was Adam, the Son of Eve, so it also replaced Adam’s birth from the Virgin Eve. The Quran consistently names Jesus the Son of Mary (Quran 2:87, 4:171, 61:6), while Christians call him the Son of God. Perhaps there was a Christian tradition in the Middle East that did so. Archaeologists excavated near the location commonly known as Armageddon, a 5th-century AD Greek inscription stating ‘Christ, born of Mary.’1 The odd thing is that it doesn’t say Son of God.

The Quran claims God has no children and that Jesus was not God’s son (Quran 6:100-102, 17:111, 18:4-5, 19:88-92). The reason is that the Meccan supreme deity, Allah, had a wife and children before God claimed this title. And the Virgin Mary wasn’t God either. The repetition of the phrase Son of Mary suggests importance. It stresses that God is not Jesus’ father, and it may imply that God’s name is Mary.

The star and crescent became the symbol of Islam. This symbol has a long history predating Islam, as it was associated with a Moon goddess. The moon represents the woman, and the star the child (Genesis 37:9). Hence, the Islamic symbol is akin to the Madonna and Child, or to the relationship between Khadijah bint Khuwaylid and Muhammad. She was fifteen years older and could have been his mother. The Son of God thus means Son of Mary, as Mary Magdalene was God. The appropriate picture is the Madonna and Child, along with the crescent-and-star symbol of Islam. And so, the same symbolism sneaked into Islam in the same sneaky fashion as it did with the Madonna and Child in Christianity, which is very sneaky indeed, and adds substance to the saying, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’

Return to Eden

Like Christians, Muslims believe Jesus will return (Quran 4:159, 43:61). Even more crucial, however, is our return to Eden, only sparsely mentioned in the Jewish Bible (Ezekiel 36:22-38) and the New Testament (Revelation 22:1-5). The Quran refers to Eden using terms like Gardens and Paradise 147 times, or 3 * 7 * 7. If you’re into numbers with religious significance, that is most remarkable. It is even more significant because humans wrote and edited the Bible, so if there are magic numbers in it, some scribe probably did that during a lifetime of boredom and number crunching. The Quran, however, is the result of decades of oral recitation, during which parts were changed or lost. And none of the reciters knew the entire Quran by heart. After several decades, they wrote down the verses as the reciters remembered them, without a significant redaction process.

God ordering the angels to prostrate before Adam seven times in the Quran is more miraculous than Jesus saying seven times ‘I am’ in the Gospel of John. The latter is not even a miracle, because someone could have done that intentionally, and probably did. In that sense, the Quran is uncorrupted by humans. The numerological signs, such as verse 36:36, which says that God created everything in pairs, and the fact that 36 is six times six, are God’s jokes. In all likelihood, no human ever decided to arrange the verses to create such a pair within a pair in a verse that says God created everything in pairs. Paradise is supposedly the final destination of the righteous. The Quran refers to the Garden of Eden with phrases such as ‘fruits from that garden’ and ‘spouses.’ For instance (Quran 2:25),

And give good tidings to those who believe and do righteous deeds that they will have gardens [in Paradise] beneath which rivers flow. Whenever they are provided with a provision of fruit from there, they will say, ‘This is what we were provided with before.’ And it is given to them in likeness. And they will have therein purified spouses, and they will abide therein eternally.

The promise of spouses in Paradise was a ploy to make horny young men fight for Islam without fear of death. And it worked well as the initial blitz of Islam was nearly as spectacular as Hitler’s. The New Eden is a central theme in the Quran, while the Jewish Bible and the Gospel hardly mention it. The repetition implies that it is of the utmost significance. Here, the Quran corrects Judaism and Christianity. Jews and Christians view God’s plan as a journey from the depraved city of Babylon to God’s city of Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem. Instead, we might go to the New Eden, as it is the core of the final revelation given to Muhammad, at least if we take repetition as a sign of importance. God’s plan, thus, is to bring us to the Final Gardens of Paradise, modelled after Eden.

The idea of a New Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity has a historical origin. The Jews compiled most of their scriptures during their exile in Babylon and shortly after. Babylon was a centre of empire and civilisation. After the Jews had returned to Israel, they interpreted their journey as a move from the depraved city of Babylon to God’s city of Jerusalem. They received assistance from the Persian leader Cyrus the Great, who conquered the Babylonian Empire and permitted the Jews to return to their homeland. Christians took over this theme. If we go from Babylon to Eden, we get a new theme. Babylon represented advanced civilisation. In Eden, life was simple. That is where this seems to be heading.

Latest revision: 16 October 2025

1. 1,500-year-old ‘Christ, born of Mary’ inscription found in Israel. Mark Milligan (2024). Heritage Daily.

Featured image: top small written Arab phrase “Umm ul Muminin”(Mother of the believers), then in centre Big written “Khadijah”, and bottom small written Arab honour phrase ‘Radhi allahu anha.’