Tag: Judaism

Sepphoris Mosaic

Sarah, Mother of the Jews

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Weaving one tale inside another

The Jewish Bible is a great book, apart from the parts that lay out the Jewish religious law in too much detail to keep the readership entertained. It features tales about the Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And, 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. And they wrote it for religious purposes rather than producing an accurate account of what transpired. That is how historians look at the Jewish Bible. If you believed it all, do not blame the Jews for writing good stories but for your gullibility. You also do not think reptiles live among us because scriptwriters in Hollywood made a film in which they do, or do you?

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 land on a tiny planet near an insignificant star inside one of those galaxies? To answer that question, imagine you are John Ronald Reuel Tolkien writing tales about Hobbits. You can write a story about someone who makes up a story about you. Tolkien could have written about a Hobbit writing about his creator Tolkien. And by the way, the Shire might be an insignificant spot in an infinitely large universe, but Tolkien hardly cares about the rest of the universe. Only the Shire and those Hobbits have his interest.

If Tolkien can do that, God can do it too. 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. Most of these stories are fantasy. Hence, the first question you should ask is: can God have played roles 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 story a Hobbit wrote in that story. And what about the Hobbits starting a religion with an imagined creator? And then the truth comes out, Tolkien reveals himself, and the Hobbits all laugh. So it can be done. And indeed, strong women, who could have been God in disguise, appear in the Jewish Bible.

Hiding it behind human motivations

There is another reason why powerful women appear in the Jewish Bible. The Israelites were too few in numbers and were 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 that aim, the authors of the Jewish Bible invented a new type of hero. Rather than valiant warriors, their heroes were virtuous people who helped others like Boaz,1 people with weaknesses like David, and risk-averse shrewd people. Abraham was not a courageous warrior, nor was his son, Isaac. Cunning had to compensate for that. Jacob cheated on his brother Esau and took his birthright. Meet the Jewish hero. He has no honour, lacks the courage to defend his wife and defrauds his brother. But luckily, he has God on his side.

Heroes die, but the cunning and cowardly remain alive. That is why there are still Jews while other nations made a one-way trip to the dustbin of history. And so, the authors of the Jewish Bible also refashioned the role of men and women in family life. The stories of Jewish patriarchs were about family life and domestic affairs where women had a central role. And women played a crucial part in Jewish victories. That undermined male authority in war. In several cases, women achieved triumph on the battlefield or determined the fate of men.1 Jacob defrauded Esau of his birthright and deceived his father, Isaac, with the help of his mum, Rebecca. Esther saved the Jewish people from a plot in the Persian court. The Jewish Bible does not depict events suggesting Rebecca or Esther could have been God in disguise. But there are a few other stories that catch the imagination and qualify. 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. But his wife, Sarah, was barren, so she ordered Abraham to sleep with her slave Hagar so Hagar would bear a child in her name. Those were the days when slavery was still legal, and you could get away with that. Once Hagar was pregnant, she began to look down on Sarah. Sarah then mistreated Hagar, and she fled. But God sent an angel, the famous Angel of the Lord, who in Christian thinking might be Jesus but did not say he was, 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 a covenant to Abraham. It required the circumcision of all the males. Sarah was to become the matriarch of the Jewish people. 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 most significant 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. And so, the Pharaoh’s servants took notice and informed the Pharaoh, who took her as his wife. For that reason, God 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 does not tell. Abraham did the same in Abimelech’s kingdom, thus knowingly bringing Abimelech in 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, they might have locked up Abraham in a mental ward. If Abraham was God’s husband, it could make 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?

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 when 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 have done an excellent job hiding that. But God can also play undercover roles 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. Even then, it seems quaint to me, but perhaps I do not understand women and their fantasies well enough.

Joseph and Asenath

Jacob had twelve sons, but Joseph was his favourite. His brothers conspired against him and sold him as a slave. Joseph ended up in the household of Potiphar, an Egyptian and one of Pharaoh’s high-ranking officials. Joseph did well there and became Potiphar’s favourite. Joseph was well-built and handsome, so Potiphar’s wife 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 apt at explaining dreams. That eventually brought him to the Pharaoh, whose favourite he became also. The Pharaoh made him a Viceroy and put him in charge of the granaries.

Joseph is one of the Jewish patriarchs, but he married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian high priest. The Jewish Bible tells us nothing about her, but people may have had second thoughts about this arrangement as marrying pagans was a controversial matter. A later story about their marriage explains how Joseph, after he escaped Potiphar’s wife, ended up in the bed of a pagan priestess. According to this tale, Asenath was proud and despised men but became impressed by Joseph’s looks.

Joseph first did not want to marry a pagan priestess who bowed before idols and did not worship the God of the Jews. Asenath showed repentance and changed her faith. An angel from heaven came to her chamber to bless the marriage. When Asenath told Joseph of the angel, he changed his mind and married her. Asenath’s change of faith appears insincere and induced by her desire to marry Joseph. Nevertheless, God blessed the marriage. 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 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 successfully transformed itself into an ireful cloud of fire that helped Moses lead the way into the Promised Land.

Zipporah saving Moses’ life in this way fits the supposed agenda of the authors of the Jewish Bible, which is to undermine male authority so Jewish men would not strive to posthumously get the prestigious Darwin award for their 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 human 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 also was the wife of Uriah, broke 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 may have planned to seduce him. The alternative explanation, that there was no room inside the house to bathe, appears less convincing. 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 did not 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 heard that the Lord loved David. And if you have not, you might qualify for an ear transplant. But the subsequent course of events did not demonstrate that. From then on, everything went downhill. In hindsight, this sequence of incidents brought the son of Bathsheba to the throne. The prophet Nathan foretold David that his act cursed 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, in which 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. Thus, Bathsheba could have been God in disguise.

That might explain why the Lord loved David so much, as it cannot be due to his superior moral virtue. And it presents us with a reason why he could not resist Her. David is a historical figure, so there could be truth to the story. It 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. And no one would ever have thought Bathsheba had something to do with the angry cloud dwelling in that tent. Remarkably, the name Bathsheba consists 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 God in disguise. Thus, the pun may be intentional even though the Hebrews missed it due to the constraints of their language.

Deborah, the founder of the Jewish nation

Sarah is the fictional matriarch of the Jews. The real Mother, insofar as anything is real in this fictional world, can be extracted from the texts in the Jewish Bible with the help of historical analysis. 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. The oldest part of the Jewish Bible likely is the Song of Deborah (Judges 5). Historians believe it dates from that era. As the story goes, Deborah was a tribal leader during this age.

Deborah was the fourth judge in the Book of Judges, but the remainder of the book dates from centuries later and could be largely fictional. Only Deborah may have lived in that era in that role. If you take that view, the Song of Deborah is the starting point of the Jewish Bible. The song likely did not pop up out of nowhere. Jewish tribespeople could have composed it to celebrate the victory brought by their heroine, Deborah. She could be the earliest historical person in the Bible. She attributed the triumph to the Jewish deity Yahweh, so the history of the Jews as Yahweh’s people might have started with Her.

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: 11 November 2023

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

1. Wright, Jacob L. (2014). The Bible’s Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future. Coursera.

Mohammed receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel

Religious experiences and miracles

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The Jewish people still exist after 2,500 years, while they have not had a homeland for most of the time. That is a remarkable feat, most notably because the Jews are supposed to be God’s chosen people. It is also a bit of an enigma that Christianity replaced the existing religions in the Roman Empire. Somehow, the message of personal salvation through Christ caught on. A pivotal moment was the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 AD. He made Christianity the favoured religion in the Roman Empire.

A few centuries later, a small band of Arab warriors created an empire stretching from the Atlantic to India, spreading a new religion called Islam. Is it a realistic scenario that the illiterate camel driver Muhammad became a crafty statesman after seeing an angel telling him he had messages from the God of the Christians and the Jews? Historians can explain it, but it is an account of what happened rather than an explanation. The question is, could it occur without someone pulling the strings?

We only know this world, so we cannot answer that question. Proselytising religions like Christianity and Islam have a built-in inclination to grow. That may not be a comprehensive answer. Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same deity. Our universe could be a simulation, and God might be the explanation. But who is to say it cannot happen otherwise?

When Islam arrived on the scene, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians in the area already believed in an all-powerful creator. Muhammad had met them on his travels, so he was familiar with these religions. Before that, Christianity had faced an uphill struggle. While the Roman state suppressed this religion, pagans left their gods behind and accepted the Christian God as the only true God. And they did so in large numbers.

That begs for an explanation, even though the conversion to Christianity was a gradual process that took centuries. The number of Christians increased 2-3% per year between 30 AD and 400 AD. Each Christian may have converted just one or two persons on average. Over time, exponential growth made Christianity grow from perhaps 100 followers in 30 AD to 30 million in 400 AD. Most people lived miserable lives, and the promise of an eternal blissful existence in the afterlife may have been too tempting to resist. But the most often cited reason for conversions were stories about miracles Christians did.1

An early miracle was Jesus appearing to a few followers after his crucifixion. The New Testament tells of miracles the disciples allegedly performed. These stories may be fabricated or exaggerated, but miracles are a consistent theme in Christianity until today. The Roman Catholic Church has a rich folklore with relics that supposedly have magical properties because Jesus has touched them. The most famous relics are the Crown of Thorns in Paris, the mysterious Holy Grail, the chalice from which Jesus drank, and the Shroud of Turin, a piece of linen cloth with the supposed image of Jesus’ face.

Many of the miracles attributed to these relics are unverifiable or can have other causes like luck, but a few cannot explained away that easily. The Roman Catholic Church keeps a record of them. On message boards, people tell stories about prayers heard and miraculous healings. Many of these stories might result from chance or other causes like a misdiagnosis or lying to get attention, but that is not always the case. And so, there may be more to it than science can explain. Some Muslims also venerate relics. Istanbul houses several relics of the Prophet Muhammad, such as a tooth, a footprint, dust from his tomb, and swords. His beard is in a Turkish museum. However, Muslims don’t have the degree of reverence for those relics as Roman Catholics.

A recurring event is the appearance of the Virgin Mary and other miracles related to her. Thousands of people have seen her. For instance, she appeared several times in Venezuela. She showed herself to Maria Esperanza Medrano de Bianchini in 1976, who received exceptional powers. She could tell the future, levitate, and heal the sick. In Egypt, Mary appeared at a Coptic Church between 1983 and 1986. Muslims also have seen her there. There have been many more Virgin Mary appearances. The most notable sequence occurred in Portugal at Fatima between 13 May and 13 October 1917.

On 13 October 1917 was the grand finale when the sun spun wildly and tumbled down to earth before stopping and returning to its normal position, radiating in indescribable beautiful colours. More than 50,000 people witnessed the show. They had gathered because of a prophecy made by three shepherd children that the Virgin Mary would appear there and perform miracles on that date. Faking this seemed hard to do, considering the technology available in 1917. A lack of holographic equipment would have made the effort challenging.

Jesus also appeared a few times, but less frequently than the Virgin Mary. An intriguing account comes from Kenneth Logie, a preacher of the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Oakland, California, in the 1950s. In April 1954, Logie was preaching at an evening service. During the sermon, the church door opened. Jesus came walking in, smiling to the left and the right. He walked right through the pulpit. Then he placed his hand on Logie’s shoulder. Jesus spoke to him in a foreign tongue. Fifty people witnessed the event.

Five years later, a woman gave testimony when she suddenly disappeared, and Jesus took her place. He wore sandals and a glistering white robe. He had nail marks on his hands, which were dripping with oil. After several minutes, Jesus disappeared, and the woman reappeared. Two hundred people have seen it. It was on film as Logie had installed film equipment because strange things were happening.2

One can imagine such events convince people the message of Christianity, even though most peculiar, is correct as Zeus and Thor failed to show up and do some tricks. It is also notable that the Virgin Mary did the most miracles. The explanation might be that God is a Mother, Jesus was the Son of God, and she was the birth mother of Jesus. The Virgin Mary replaced God as a Mother when God became a Father. In this way, she became the surrogate for God, appearing to have a power greater than Jesus.

Latest revision: 29 March 2024

Feature image: Mohammad receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel. Miniature illustration on vellum from the book Jami’ al-Tawarikh, by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 AD. Public Domain.

1. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. Bart Ehrman. Simon & Schuster (2018).
2. How Jesus Became God The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee. Bart Ehrman. HarperCollins Publishers (2015).

Building a nation with religion

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Israel emerging

The Jews started as tribal people in Canaan, the area currently covered by Israel and Palestine. Tribal means there were no states. For a long time, the area was under Egyptian control. The earliest known reference to a land named Israel is on an Egyptian stone engraving dating from around 1200 BC. It lists the enemies the Pharaoh Merneptah allegedly defeated during his campaigns. Among the defeated nations was Israel, which had revolted against its Egyptian overlords. The engraving does not provide any detail, so perhaps there was a skirmish or two with a few local hill dwellers.

After 1150 BC, Egypt suffered droughts, food shortages, unrest, corruption, and endless bickering in the royal court, causing it to retreat from Canaan.1 Storytelling made the events more spectacular over time, transforming the retreat of the Egyptian army and its causes into an epic drama, with The Lord sending plagues to Egypt to make the Egyptians release the Israelites, Moses freeing Israelites from Egyptian oppression featuring an ireful and fiery cloud that split the Red Sea and drowned the Egyptian army.

The people of Canaan lived from agriculture, which required territorial defence that states could best provide. Several small kingdoms emerged. Among them were Israel and Judah. This situation lasted until new imperial powers emerged on the scene four centuries later. At first, the Israelites were polytheists. They worshipped several gods and goddesses. One of them was Yahweh. Archaeological finds indicate El was the supreme deity in the Canaanite belief system, but also the generic word for god. The goddess Asherah was his wife.2 The names El and Yahweh could depict the same deity, so possibly there was more devotion to Yahweh than other deities early on. The Song of Deborah suggests so.

Map of Israel and Judah
The kingdoms of Canaan

States and kings can use religion to justify themselves. It matters a lot whether a powerful entity like a god or a goddess supports the state and the king, for only the stupid defy the gods. And you do not want to be an idiot, do you? The kings of Judah, and perhaps also Israel, thus promoted a national religion around Yahweh. Other kingdoms in the region also adopted national deities. Milcom was the deity of Ammon, while Moab had Chemosh to defeat its foes and supply the country with blessings (1 Kings 11:33). Even today, the United States calls itself One Nation Under God out of fear that without divine protection, it would soon collapse and overrun by its enemies.

Yahweh thus became the deity of the state religion in Judah and possibly Israel. Many still worshipped other gods, as having multiple options is more prudent. If Yahweh forsakes you, perhaps Baal or some other deity can help you. The Jewish Bible testifies to tensions between those who still worshipped other gods and goddesses alongside Yahweh and those insisting on worshipping Yahweh alone. As Yahweh had become the favourite deity of the Israelites, El became the generic word for god, and Asherah became Yahweh’s wife. Archaeological findings, for instance, records of Jews living in Egypt, testify to this.

Writing the Bible

As time passed by, new empires arrived on the scene and set their eyes on Canaan. The Assyrians overran Israel in 720 BC. The Babylonians conquered Judah in 597 BC after taking over the Assyrian Empire. The Babylonians deported many inhabitants while others fled to Egypt. The Jewish communities in Egypt, Babylon, and Judah became dispersed. The authors of the Jewish Bible tried to reconnect them by showing that they share a common heritage. They belonged to a larger group, a nation or tribe, a family with common ancestors. The Jewish Bible likely became a compilation of tales from these communities and royal archives of the former kingdom of Judah. The Jewish Bible depicts the history of Israel and Judah from the perspective of Judah.

The Persians later conquered the Babylonian Empire. The Persian emperor Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish people to return to Canaan. He commissioned the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. Those still living in the area were not keen on a group of religious zealots entering their land. They opposed the plan, and a political struggle unfolded. After seven decades, Ezra and Nehemiah succeeded in rebuilding the temple. Jewish society was on the brink of being wiped out. Israel and Judah existed no longer. The remaining Jews were in danger of mixing with the surrounding population. Jewish leaders had to find a way to keep their people together. Marrying outside the community became frowned upon, and the Jews became a seclusive group. The authors of the Jewish Bible aimed to preserve Jewish identity around a common religion, history and cultural heritage.

The Jewish religion gradually became monotheist after a monotheist religion named Zoroastrianism became the official religion in the Persian Empire. The prophet Zoroaster believed in a good creator and an opposing evil power. And it had considerable influence. It brought Judaism monotheism, messiahs, free will, heaven, hell, and, of course, that horned fellow named Satan. Zoroastrianism not only affected Judaism. Some of the Greek philosophers around 400 BC were also monotheists.

Before that time, the Jews were henotheists, which means they believed other gods existed but only worshipped Yahweh, or at least should. That is why the commandment is ‘you shall have no other gods before me’ rather than ‘you shall believe there is only one God.’ Yahweh was a jealous one and did not appreciate offerings to other gods, such as Baal. Most texts in the Jewish Bible have that henotheist perspective.

The Jews wrote most of their scriptures between 600 BC and 300 BC, but there are older parts from the royal archives from Judah. The earliest source could be the Song of Deborah. Possibly, it dates from the 12th century BC. Little evidence supports the historical account in the Jewish Bible dealing with the time before the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. That does not mean that these stories are entirely fictional. David may have been king of Judah and not of a united kingdom like the Jewish Bible says. Archaeologists uncovered a 9th-century BC stone engraving with lettering BYTDWD in Northern Israel, possibly referring to the House of David. Another engraving found in the former kingdom of Moab contains these same letters.

Creating a nation

The authors of the Jewish Bible used the idea of a unified kingdom to promote unity between people from Israel and Judah. A shared history made the inhabitants of Israel and Judah and their offspring all descend from one great nation. The purpose of the Jewish Bible was to create a Jewish nation around a shared history and religion. That can be a reason to imagine a unified kingdom that once existed. If you go back in time to before the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the history of the Jews becomes murky. No written records exist from these times. The tales about Abraham, Isaac, and Moses may have been legends from different communities merged into a single narrative to promote a single Jewish nation.1

The survival of the Jewish people has been hanging by a thread for a long time. They were a small nation crushed by great powers. They always hoped for a Messiah who would save them from oppression like Moses once did. Great powers came and went, but the Jewish people remained. After more than 2,500 years, the Jews are still around, so their nation-building project proved a successful long-term survival strategy. They even managed to reclaim their original homeland. It is also remarkable that Judaism stood at the cradle of Christianity and Islam. And so, the Jews have played a central role in world history. Today, Jews have an imposing power over many parts of the world. It is an impressive feat, considering their numbers. What do they still need a Messiah for?

Historical analysis

How do historians and scholars look at the Jewish Bible? Apart from the lack of archaeological evidence, they find the account of early Jewish history in the Jewish Bible too neat to be correct. It presents an agreeable genealogical line extending from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, who had twelve sons who just happened to become the twelve tribes of the nation. Jacob and his family went to Egypt during the days of Joseph. Later, Egypt began to oppress the Israelites, and they escaped under the leadership of Moses. The Egyptians kept records, and they tell nothing about the Exodus. One might at least expect an Egyptian stone engraving telling how the Pharao victoriously cast out 600,000 Israelites via the Red Sea with the help of the great god Ra who split the waters and left the Israelites to drown.

Moses passed the mantle on to Joshua, who brought Israel into the Promised Land. After Joshua died, a series of judges took over. They governed Israel and saved it from its enemies. Each judge came from a different tribe of Israel, which is also unbelievably neat. Then came Saul, Israel’s first king. He was not up to the task, so David replaced him. After the death of David’s son, Solomon, his successor, the kingdom split in two. The descendants of David ruled only in the South, Judah. The northern part, called Israel, had several dynasties.

The simplicity is deceptive. It is possible that many of the people described in the Jewish Bible have lived but originally had very little to do with each other and have been brought together to create a single history of Israel. Abraham may not have been the father of Jacob, Moses may not have been the brother of Miriam, and David may not have been the successor of Saul. These stories may originally have been local tales from tribes and petty kingdoms that later became part of the Jewish nation. Thus, you can see the Jewish Bible as a nation-building project rather than an account of history,1 so you should not expect it to be factual. The stories in the Jewish Bible come from several sources and have been written and rewritten several times over the centuries.

Textual analysis

It shows how the authors of the Jewish Bible wove the story of Isaac and Rebecca into the broader history of Israel. Biblical scholars try to uncover the construction process of the texts. They look at different sources within biblical texts, additions and other editing techniques. Genesis 26 tells about Isaac living in the Philistine land of Gerar, west of Judah.

Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, was attractive. When his neighbours asked him about Rebecca, he claimed she was his sister, so Isaac followed Abraham’s footsteps. Isaac feared the Philistine men in Gerar would kill him and take his beautiful wife. One day, the King of the Philistines, Abimelech, gazed out his window and spotted Isaac and Rebecca fondling. He demanded an explanation. Abimelech feared one of his subjects might have slept with her, which could make his kingdom subject to divine retribution.

Abimelech then issued a decree stating that whoever touched Isaac or his wife shall be put to death. Rebecca would become one of the matriarchs, a crucial figure in Israel’s history. Isaac prospered among the Philistines and eventually became mightier than them. Everywhere Isaac went in the waterless environs of Abimelech’s kingdom, he discovered water sources, and his success aroused jealousy among local inhabitants. That amount of luck captures the imagination.

Instead of fighting for his territories, Isaac moved on and ended up in Beer-Sheba in the south. Abimelech visited Isaac there. The Philistine king blessed him. Isaac invited him for a feast. After eating and drinking all night long, they exchanged oaths of peace. Later that day, in another stroke of unbelievable luck, Isaac’s servants found another water source. Isaac named this well Beer-Sheba, referring to his treaty with the Philistines. The story also had a political agenda, which was showing that Beersheba was part of Israel.

A closer look at Genesis 26

Genesis 26 contains two kinds of material, which are the story about Isaac’s clan and how he came to possess towns in the far south and Beer-Sheba, and the broader narrative of the book of Genesis, which links this story with the other parts of Genesis to make it a coherent history of the nation. There are multiple ways of looking at the text. Hence, different scholars may come to different conclusions. One way of viewing Genesis 26 is as follows, with the parts that link the story into a broader narrative underlined:

1 Now there was a famine in the land—besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time—and Isaac went to Abimelek king of the Philistines in Gerar. 2 The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. 3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. 4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.’

6 So Isaac stayed in Gerar. 7 When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, ‘She is my sister,’ because he was afraid to say, ‘She is my wife.’ He thought, ‘The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebecca because she is beautiful.’ 8 When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebecca. 9 So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, ‘She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?’ Isaac answered him, ‘Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.’ 10 Then Abimelek said, ‘What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us. 11 So Abimelek gave orders to all the people: ‘Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.’

12 Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold because the Lord blessed him. 13 The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. 14 He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. 15 So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. 16 Then Abimelek said to Isaac, ‘Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us.’

17 So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar, where he settled. 18 Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them. 19 Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. 20 But the herders of Gerar quarrelled with those of Isaac and said, ‘The water is ours!’ So he named the well Esek because they disputed with him. 21 Then they dug another well, but they quarrelled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. 22 He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarrelled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, ‘Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.’

23 From there he went up to Beersheba. 24 That night the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.’ 25 Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.

26 Meanwhile, Abimelek had come to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his personal adviser and Phicol the commander of his forces. 27 Isaac asked them, ‘Why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away?’ 28 They answered, ‘We saw clearly that the Lord was with you; so we said, ‘There ought to be a sworn agreement between us’—between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you 29 that you will do us no harm, just as we did not harm you but always treated you well and sent you away peacefully. And now you are blessed by the Lord.’ 30 Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank. 31 Early the next morning the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and they went away peacefully. 32 That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, ‘We’ve found water!’ 33 He called it Shibah, and to this day the name of the town has been Beersheba.

34 When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca.

The first five verses are part of the broader narrative, except the first part of verse 1. In verse 6, the story itself starts. Abraham comes up in verses 15 and 18. The intervention of The Lord in verses 24 and 25 is also part of the broader narrative. The mention of Esau at the end is part of the encompassing story. And that raises the question, where were Jacob and Esau all that time? They were adults at the end of Genesis 25. One explanation is that Genesis 26, without the underlined parts, once was a separate story.

The stories about their sons Jacob and Esau seem wrapped around the story of Isaac and Rebecca and their dealings with the king of the Philistines to create a broader narrative. Genesis 25 contains the story about the birth of Esau and Jacob and how Esau sold his birthright to Jacob. That story resumes at the end of Genesis 26. In Genesis 27, Jacob seized his father’s blessing with his mother’s help. These interweaving narratives come from different sources.

One is the P-source or priestly source. It tells an independent story of Israel. The authors merged it into the narrative. According to the P-source, Jacob did not flee for Esau because of stealing the birthright but because he was in danger of a mixed marriage. The P-source describes how Esau married a Hittite woman and how Rebecca asked Isaac to send Jacob away so he would find a woman who would not make her life miserable.

There is an older account of Isaac and Rebecca and how they came to possess Beersheba. Around it is wrapped a story of their children, where Isaac is the son of Abraham and the father of Esau and Jacob. Another small story tells how Rebecca sent Jacob off to find wives from her own family. Another source tells about how Jacob stole the birthright from his brother Esau. The authors of the Jewish Bible thus wove an older story and two other sources into a broader narrative.1

Theories from scholars

There is reason to believe the P-source is a late source dating from after the exile in Babylon. It deals with the identity of Israel and its relation to others. Mixed marriages outside the Jewish people became a huge issue after the defeat of Judah. Marrying within the clan or the nation helped to continue a community defined by a common culture. Therefore, the marriages of Esau to Hittite women caused concern for Rebecca.

Another source is the J-source or Jahwist source. A part of Genesis 25 comes from the J-source. It tells about the birth of Jacob and Esau. It continues in Genesis 27 and 28 with how Jacob stole the birthright of Esau and pursued the deal with the help of his mother, Rebecca. Jacob then had to flee for Esau. According to the J-source theory, the J-source has incorporated an older source into the broader narrative. Later, the P-source altered the reason why Jacob had to flee.

The formation of the earliest sources, the histories of Israel, whether it be the history of Israel’s ancestors and the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the exodus leaving Egypt and the conquest of the land, are built upon the linking of stories from separate individual representatives of clans brought together to create the idea of a Jewish nation. Many scholars suppose the first chapters of the Jewish Bible – the Jews call it Torah – consist of four sources spliced together.1

There is more to say about the research of scholars into the Jewish Bible, but for our purpose, this short explanation suffices. It gives us an idea of how the first chapters of the Jewish Bible describing Israel’s earliest history emerged and how scholars look at the texts and arrive at their conclusions. If you are shocked to find out that much of the Jewish Bible is a fairy tale and the remainder is not an accurate account of what transpired, I can only say that Jews are good at fabricating stories. After all, they run Hollywood.

Latest revision: 4 November 2023

Featured image: Torah scroll (public domain)

1. The Bible’s Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future. Wright, Jacob L. (2014). Coursera.
2. “El the God of Israel-Israel the People of YHWH: On the Origins of Ancient Israelite Yahwism”. In Becking, Bob; Dijkstra, Meindert; Korpel, Marjo C.A.; et al. Only One God?: Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the Veneration of the Goddess Asherah. Dijkstra, Meindert (2001).

Lucretia Garfield. Library Of Congres

The identity of God

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We live inside a virtual reality created by an advanced civilisation to entertain an individual we call God. That could be the purpose of our existence. The advanced civilisation probably is humanoid, which means God is much like us, with human imaginations and desires. The programme runs a script, so thinking of us as mere worms would be a delusion of grandeur. Real worms decide for themselves how they grovel and when. Welcome to the Theatre of the Absurd, where we are actors on a stage, and no one thinks. You might believe conspiracy theorists are nutters, and many of them indeed are, but apart from that, they are not paranoid enough by far. They are part of the plan, even if they do not want to. And they cannot escape their fate, not even by suicide.

So what about René Descartes, that world-famous fellow who once said, ‘I think, therefore I exist.’ Was he wrong? He begins with an assumption, ‘I think.’ He then arrives at a logical conclusion, ‘Therefore I exist.’ And so, he stamped a realness certificate on his person. But did Descartes really think? Even if he did not, he might still have an existence. Only that is dubious. Do Spike and Suzy exist? They are comic characters created by Willy Vandersteen, who does not exist anymore if he had ever done so because he stopped breathing. If you go down that road, everything you imagine exists. I just imagined a unicorn. Do unicorns exist?

Philosophers might discuss such questions for centuries, but scientists agree that merely thinking of a unicorn does not make it real. So, if God exists, we do not. We are imagined beings like unicorns. The God we imagine also does not exist because the things we imagine do not exist. There is only the God that exists in reality. But who is God? If we are here to entertain God, what is the fun of standing at the sideline? Why not take part yourself? We cannot know God. But if God plays roles and becomes one of us, we might identify some of those persons. The starting point could be Jesus, as there is a good chance he knew God as a person.

The gospels tell us that Jesus called God his Father as if it was a close personal relationship. And all four official Gospels infer Jesus was the bridegroom but do not mention the bride. The Church tells us that Jesus married the Church. But the Church did not exist when Jesus lived. A historian would call it an anachronism. An example of an anachronism is that the Roman Emperor Caesar took an aeroplane to Egypt to spend his holidays. There were no aeroplanes in the Roman Empire. And the Gospels do not say Jesus married the Church. Why should the Church lie about Jesus’ marriage? Is there something we are not allowed to know? Christians believe God is love.

The Bride of Christ probably was God in the person of Mary Magdalene. She made Jesus believe he was Adam reincarnated and that She was Eve reincarnated, that Eve did not come from Adam’s rib but that Eve gave birth to Adam, and that they were an eternal couple living from the beginning of Creation until the End of Times. Jesus was God’s son because Adam was. Hence, Adam is the Son of God (Luke 3:38), Jesus is the Firstborn of all Creation (Colossians 1:15), and Christians are born of God the ‘Father’ (John 1:13). Muhammad probably also married God in the person of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, but unlike Jesus, he did not know.

Jesus and Muhammad have lived. The accounts of their lives may not be accurate because they date from decades after they died, but the early history of the Jews in the Jewish Bible – the Jews call it Tanakh – is mythical. Archaeological evidence does not support it. Moses never brought the Jews from Egypt into the Promised Land. Still, this story likely has a historical origin. Around the time Moses supposedly lived, the Egyptians who governed Canaan left, giving the Israelites a victory for which they had not fought. They might have seen it as a miracle, and the Israelites came to suspect that their favourite Canaanite deity, Yahweh, had something to do with it. Stories retold in evenings at campfires grow more sensational over time. Eventually, God split the Red Sea, drowned the Egyptian army and let the Israelites escape.

The Jews gradually formed a nation after the Egyptians had left. The Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, calls it the Era of the Judges. Local tribal leaders organised warfare and settled disputes. Thus, they were judges. As the Tanakh tells us, these judges had nationwide authority, but that probably was not the case. The oldest source of the entire Tanakh is the Song of Deborah. Historians think this song dates from shortly after the Egyptians left. Such a song likely did not pop up out of nowhere. Deborah brought victory to one of the local tribes that later became part of the Jewish nation. Deborah attributed that victory to their God, Yahweh. Deborah, also called the Mother of Israel, could be the earliest historical figure in the Tanakh and the founder of the Jewish nation. And so, She could have been God Herself.

The God of Abraham, known as Yahweh, the Father, and Allah, thus is a veil behind which the owner of this universe has operated so far. She only revealed Herself to Jesus. It made Jesus a unique prophet who developed grandiose views about himself as the Son of God who lived eternally from Creation to the End Times. No evidence suggests Jesus was indeed Adam. God made him believe he was. If so, he likely will not return, and we should expect a stand-in.

Jesus’ followers knew God married Jesus, but the Gospels don’t mention that essential fact. Scholars might have asked themselves why there are no eyewitness accounts or why Paul remained silent about what had transpired. Here is your answer. But why did the early leaders of the Church do it? To Jews, it was blasphemous to say God was a woman who married Jesus. Christianity had Jewish followers who had heard of the miracles Jesus did but did not know about his marriage to God. Non-Jewish converts had fewer issues with a goddess marrying a godlike human who lived eternally. Romans, Greeks and Egyptians all had myths about goddesses, godlike humans and gods having sex with humans. To them, it was business as usual, thus not particularly exciting.

Obfuscating the marriage, changing God’s gender, and introducing a virginity cult surrounding Jesus’s mother might have been the elected solution to resolve a controversy that tore the early Church apart. The leaders of the early Church probably felt uncomfortable about what they did, and some words in the Gospel of John suggest so. The compromise resolved the controversy and became Christianity as we know it.

God has a peculiar sense of humour. That can hurt your feelings. Try to understand the spectacle from God’s perspective. She lives eternally, or at least thousands of years, and uses us to pass Her time. And we are less than worms in God’s eyes. Those who anticipate the End Times expect them to be epic. That might still come to pass. The lyric Gimme The Prize by Queen could be a prophecy in disguise. It says, ‘I am the God of kingdom come,’ thus implying that the God of the coming kingdom will be a Queen.

That is a queer pun, also because Freddy Mercury was the performing artist. Queen also made a song named I Want to Break Free. In the accompanying video clip, Mercury dressed as a drag queen. Here in Western Europe, we found his performance funny, including Mercury’s gayish manners, and we had a good laugh. That was quite different elsewhere, for instance, in the United States. And now, it seems that early Christians have performed a gender change on God. This one is for the haters of the community of LGBT, and all those other letters and the plus-sign they added to make it even more inclusive, ‘Another one bites the dust.’ The leaders of this world are put on notice, ‘Give me your kings, let me squeeze them in my hands.’ And the battle is fought and won.

Lack of humour also plagues Muslims. Many are easily insulted. A Mohammed-drawing contest organised by the Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders angered Muslims in Pakistan. A Pakistani cricket player offered money to assassinate Wilders. But God doesn’t care. God even made Wilders do it. You can slit as many throats as you like, but humour will never die. If the nature of the relationship between God and Muhammad becomes public, it could alter gender relations within the Islamic community, and Pakistan will never be the same. Islam is one of God’s pranks. And so is Christianity.

The meddling of the Church Fathers with the relationship between God and Jesus gave Christianity its unique and baffling theology. Drinking Christ’s blood, eating his body, and the resurrection of the dead could be good ingredients for a motion picture called Zombie Apocalypse. Indeed, some of the Roman persecutions of Christians were due to a moral panic caused by a belief that Christians were a cannibalistic sect eating human bodies and drinking human blood. That is what they say about Satanists nowadays. But the outlandishness of Christianity begins with the idea that we are all cursed because Eve and Adam sinned. And then came Jesus, who sacrificed himself for our sins so you can save yourself by following him. There could be a silver lining to it. The belief in a Messiah might save humanity from destroying itself. And perhaps that was God’s plan all along.

Latest revision: 6 April 2024

Featured image: Lucretia Garfield