genesis 18-19 - sodom and gomorrah

Previously, I noted how the Bible rushes past some topics, whereas it draws others out to ridiculous lengths. Entire chapters are devoted to peripheral subjects, while important sequences of events are compressed into a verse or two. Fortunately, the next two chapters are an exception. Chapters 18 and 19 do a fairly good job of setting up the story and bringing it to a conclusion. A few details are lost, but, for the most part, this section moves along fairly well.

Too bad its contents are reprehensible.

There are many Christians who attempt to argue that the Bible does not in fact condemn homosexuality. As much as I respect the motivations of these Christians, I must disagree with them: the Bible unequivocally condemns homosexuality.

However, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not a good example of this. It is vague, inconsistent, and open to considerable interpretation. The reader is left with the impression that it is not homosexuality as such that this section condemns, but gang rape. Further, given that the term “sodomy” has been used to refer not only to anal penetration, but to any “unusual” sexual activity, it would seem that at least two different interpretations arose from this tale.

Also, Lot himself provides a terrible moral exemplar.

The story begins in Chapter 18. God appears to Abraham in the form of three avatars. Abraham invites the three men into his tent to rest, and a great deal of detail is wasted on the preparations for their meal. The men repeat that Sarah will bear a child, which amuses her greatly due to her age. They then prepare to continue on their way.

The three avatars have come to judge Sodom. For a moment, God wonders if he should share his intent to destroy the city with Abraham. When he does, Abraham asks if God if he intends to destroy the righteous inhabitants of the city along with the wicked. Abraham convinces God not to destroy the city if at least fifty righteous people can be found there.

Abraham continues to argue, and convinces God not to destroy the city if forty righteous people can be found there.

Abraham continues to argue, and convinces God not to destroy the city if thirty righteous people can be found there.

Abraham continues to argue, and convinces God not to destroy the city if twenty righteous people can be found there.

Abraham continues to argue, and convinces God not to destroy the city if ten righteous people can be found there.

God, who must be getting as tired of this as I am, hurries on his way, having agreed to the ten-righteous-people promise. None of this matters anyway, though, because God doesn’t even bother to look for ten righteous people once his representatives have arrived in the city.

As Chapter 19 opens, two angels enter Sodom. This is inconsistent with the preceding chapter, which referred to three “men”. This numerical inconsistency, along with the change from “men” to “angels”, suggests that Chapters 18 and 19 were derived from different source texts. This may also explain why God conveniently forgets his ten-righteous-people promise.

Lot sees the angels and invites them to spend the night at his house with his wife and two virgin daughters. That night, the house is surrounded, and the men (or people) outside demand that Lot send the angels outside so that they might “know” them. Lot begs the crowd to reconsider, and offers his two daughters instead.

This is a troublesome passage. First of all, there is the use of the term “know”. As Religious Tolerance explains, the term is used (in its original Hebrew) 943 times in the Tanakh/Old Testament, mostly in the sense of “to know a fact”. Only on about a dozen occasions is it used as a euphemism for sexual intercourse.

As mentioned in Chapter 14, Sodom had recently been invaded by foreign armies. The people would still be on alert for more enemies. The arrival of these two strange men in the city would no doubt raise their suspicions. It has been suggested that, therefore, the crowd simply wants to interrogate the angels, and it is in that sense that the word “know” is used.

Further complicating the conventional reading, the KJV refers to “the men of the city, even the men of Sodom…both young and old, all the people from every quarter” (Genesis 19:4) The problem here is that the original Hebrew could refer either to male humans alone, or to people in the general sense (analogous to the English word “man”). It is also unlikely that “both young and old, all the people from every quarter” would not include women and children in the mix.

Regardless, Lot’s offer of his two virgin daughters in place of the two angels causes those arguments to collapse. If the mob’s intent were not sexual, then why would Lot make this offer? This still does not necessarily imply homosexuality, but, regardless, the people of Sodom would have to be extremely debauched to make this demand.

This is not a very good passage on which to base moral lessons, however, given Lot’s offer: “Please! You can rape my two young daughters if you leave these strangers alone!”

The angels ward off the mob, and reveal to Lot that they have been sent to destroy the city. In the morning, Lot, his wife, and his daughters flee the city with the angels, with Lot being oddly cantankerous during the journey. The angels warn them not to look back, but Lot’s wife cannot help herself, and, in a nicely psychedelic touch, is turned into a pillar of salt as Sodom and Gomorrah and all the plains thereabout are destroyed with fire and brimstone.

The oddly inappropriate moral lessons are not yet over, however.

Lot and his daughters escape and take up residence in a cave. It appears that Lot’s daughters believe that they are the last living people on Earth, and worry that they will never have children. Therefore, they decide to get their father drunk, and each then sleeps with him and conceives a son.

So one of our “righteous moral exemplars” offers his two virgin daughters for a mob to gang rape. Later, those two righteous daughters incestuously rape their own father.

But it is homosexuality that is wrong. Go figure.

genesis 16-17 - slave abuse + penises

In Chapter 12, you might have felt sympathy for poor Sarai, Abram’s wife. Abram basically prostituted her out to Pharaoh in exchange for wealth.

In Chapter 16, prepare to lose all that sympathy. The story goes like this:

Sarai, as previously mentioned, is barren. She wants a child, though, and convinces Abram to impregnate Hagar, her “maid” (i.e., slave girl). Abram does this, after which Hagar starts to “despise” her mistress (Wouldn’t you? It’s not like Hagar had a choice in the matter). Sarai asks Abram to punish her, but Abram says, basically, “She’s your slave. You punish her.” Sarai does so harshly, and Hagar flees into the desert.

Once again, we have an example of a victim being punished for being victimized.

An angel (avatar) of God appears to her and provides water. The angel commands Sarai to return to her owner, promising that her “seed” will be numerous.

So, one again, we have God approving of the victim being punished.

Hagar bears a son, whom Abram names Ishmael – just as the angel prophesied! I bet you didn’t see that coming.

Chapter 17 is about penises. (Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t write it!)

First, though, God once again repeats his promise to Abram. That’s the one in which he will give Abram’s lineage all the lands of Israel (described many times as much larger than the modern-day state). Also, that Abram’s “seed” shall be greater in number than all the sands on the beach, or all the stars in the sky. Needless to say, neither of these things ever happened.

Abram is here renamed Abraham. Sarai is renamed Sarah later in the chapter.

Now we get to the penises.

In order to commemorate this promise (which, again, God never fulfills), he commands that Abraham and all his male offspring circumcise themselves. Also, their male slaves must be circumcised. God goes into quite a lot of detail here. Infants are to be circumcised eight days after birth. Everyone else has to be circumcised immediately: Abraham himself at age 90, and Ishmael at 13. Anyone who is not circumcised will be cast out and made a pariah.

Ten of the 27 verses in this chapter are about circumcision.

One has to wonder what cutting off the foreskin of the penis has to do with God (not) giving the land of Israel to the Hebrews. Considering how it all turned out, you can’t help but wonder if this was not all part of some elaborate divine practical joke.

God also promises that Sarah will now conceive a child of her own. Furthermore, this child, Isaac, will be Abraham’s heir, despite being his second son. Ishmael won’t make out too badly in the long run (relatively, anyway), but you have to wonder if that whole Hagar thing in the preceding chapter was really necessary if God was just going to circumvent it anyway.

genesis 13-15 - boring

There are fifty chapters in the Book of Genesis. In some of these, a lot happens, so much that the details are glossed over. Those sections deserve to be expanded into several chapters. Other chapters, however, contain almost nothing of importance. They are genealogies, or, as in the case of our present subject, devoted almost entirely to a single issue which could easily have been communicated in a couple of verses at the most. The next three chapters are examples of the latter.

In Chapter 13, we are told that Abram and Lot are both rich. Both have lots of flocks, herds, and tents. There is not enough room in Canaan – where they have returned – for both of them. Abram suggests that they separate into two groups. Lot chooses Jordan, which lies to the east. Abram remains in Canaan. God repeats his promise to Abram.

That’s it. That’s what this entire chapter is all about. There is a brief mention here of the wickedness of the men of Sodom (Genesis 13:13), but, since that won’t be important until much later, I will wait until then to discuss it.

Chapter 14 describes the sack of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by a coalition of neighboring armies. No mention of their “wickedness” is made here. Lot had settled in Sodom, and is captured. An escapee from the battle tells Abram about his nephew’s capture, and Abram sets off after him with his army of slaves (Genesis 14:14). Lot is returned to Sodom, along with all the treasures which the attackers had taken. The end.

Chapter 15 at least contains an interesting sequence in which God commands Abram to engage in a bit of extispicy, or divination by examining the entrails of animals. This is noteworthy because it produces a vision in which Abram glimpses the Egyptian captivity.

This is one of the passages that fundamentalist Christians cite when they claim that the Bible is full of prophecies that have been fulfilled. This is dubious, however. The extant Tanakh/Old Testament was compiled long after its original source texts were written. Those texts had been revised over hundreds of years, often to support concepts that were not important when they were first written, but which became important later on. Thus, there is no way to know which came first: the vision, or the Egyptian captivity.

If the Egyptian captivity actually occurred, that is (but we still have a long way to go before we get that far).

…

I must admit that it is around this point that I lose tract of which source is which. That is because the phrase “LORD God” begins to appear. Up until now, I have used the terms “God” and “LORD” as markers for the Priestly and Jahwist sources respectively, but “LORD God” confuses that.

I can say that we start encountering the Elohist source around this time. It exclusively used the term “Elohim” for God, whereas the Priestly source used both “Elohim” and “El Shaddai” (In earlier posts, I stated that the Priestly source used the term “El”; that was an error on my part. “El” comes from the ancient Semitic religion, but you can still see its influence on these later terms.) The Elohist source mostly echoes the content of the Jahwist and Priestly sources, but adds a new spin on some of them. When possible, I will note this; one example is particularly intriguing.

genesis 12 - spousal abuse

Abram is an asshole. Let’s just admit that right up front. One would expect the person on whom three major religions are based to have had some sense of honor or moral character, but Abram has neither of these.

Nevertheless, in Chapter 12, Yahweh has arbitrarily chosen Abram to be one of his favorites:

Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:1-3)

Thus, all of Abram’s moral failings are overlooked and forgotten, even when they are truly outrageous.

Abram takes his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot, all their belongings, and all their slaves (euphemistically translated as “souls” here (Genesis 12:5)) and travels into the land of Canaan. Here, in a passage that could have been inspired by the tower scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (“What? The curtains?”), Yahweh tells him that, one day, all this shall be his.

What is to be done with those annoying Canaanites is glossed over for the time being. Instead, we follow Abram’s adventures in Egypt.

And here…here…holy crap!

And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon: Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee. And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair. The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels. (Genesis 12:11-16)

[Emphasis mine] Yep, you read that right. Abram tells Sarai to identify herself as his sister, not his wife. She is then taken into Pharaoh’s harem (that’s what “house” here means), and Abram is repaid for her services. So basically, Abram pimps out his own wife to Pharaoh! Gah!

But if that weren’t bad enough, the game is rigged in Abram’s favor:

And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram's wife. (Genesis 12:17)

So Abram lies to Pharaoh, tricks him into taking his own wife as a concubine, and takes all the things Pharaoh gives him in return. And then Yahweh punishes Pharaoh! Abram even gets to keep all his ill-gotten booty.

Maltheism is religion based on the worship of an evil god. Elohim might have his positive aspects, but Yahweh is just…well, just look at who he chooses to represent him!

And people say that this is a “good book”? They say that it contains uplifting moral lessons? These sorts of actions are not performed by people whom God punishes. They are performed by the very people whom Yahweh has chosen to favor. It is the victims of these tricks whom Yahweh punishes.

Based on stuff like this, what kind of god do you think Yahweh is?

genesis 11 - the tower of babel

Genesis 11 is divided into two parts. The first part relays the story of the Tower of Babel.

As mentioned previously, Genesis 11:1 asserts that all humans spoke the same language at this time, despite what Genesis 10 had to say on the issue. This discrepancy may be because we have returned to using the Jahwist text, as indicated by multiple uses of the term “LORD”, meaning Yahweh.

“They” are journeying from the east, when “they” find a plain in the land of Shinar, where “they” dwell. Who “they” are is unclear. Recall, however, that the garden was planted “eastward in Eden” (Genesis 2:8), also in the Jahwist text. Thus, this could provide continuity with a more easterly creation of the proto-Hebrews.

The people decide to build a city and a tower, and to give themselves a name, in order to unify themselves. Yahweh comes down to see the city and the tower, and is terrified. The construction indicates that, soon, there will be nothing beyond human capability. Yahweh then suggests “let us go down” (Genesis 11:7) to confound the people’s language, sew confusion, and scatter them so that they cannot complete the tower.

That Yahweh must “come down” to view the city and tower illustrates once again the limited nature of the Jahwist deity. So does his concern that humans may soon be able to accomplish anything they desire. This idea is fairly common among ancient mythologies: humans regard themselves as the rightful equals of the gods, and it is only due to the caprice and unfairness of the gods that they are kept inferior and subservient. That this idea is manifested in the Torah/Pentateuch reflects how much this early version of Judaism had in common with other mythologies of the region.

Yahweh’s use of the phrase “let us go down” is also revealing. I have mentioned previously the polytheistic nature of the ancient Semitic religion, and the henotheistic nature of early Judaism. Once again, the “royal we” was not used in Ancient Hebrew, so this is a definite reference to multiple divine beings.

Christian apologists would hold that God is speaking to the angels here, but God should not need the assistance of the angels in carrying out his plan. There is also no evidence of this in the text. Furthermore, angels have not yet appeared in the Bible, and there is evidence that, when they do, they are merely manifestations of God himself, analogous to Hindu avatars.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Yahweh is speaking to other beings similar to himself. This falls squarely in line with the concept of the seventy children of El in the ancient Semitic religion.

The second part of Genesis 11 is – you guessed it! – another lengthy genealogy.

Once again, we can skip the details and just focus on a couple of interesting points.

First, all the individuals named here live well beyond the 120-year human lifespan set down (by Yahweh himself, incidentally) in Genesis 6:3. The longest lifespan cited is 600 years (Shem), and the shortest is 148 years (Nahor). One could say that at least the trend is going down, but this won’t be the last time this limit is forgotten.

Second, we are introduced to a number of very important personages here. First up is Abram, a descendant of Shem, one of the three sons of Noah. Abram is later renamed Abraham, and is considered the ultimate founder of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We shall follow his adventures more closely in upcoming chapters.

We are also introduced to Lot, son of Haran, one of Abram’s brothers. Lot will play an important role very shortly. Finally, we have Sarai, Abram’s wife. Normally, women in the Bible aren’t even named. Sarai is an exception, but only for dubious reasons. First, she is barren. (As the SAB puts it, why is it that it is only women in the Bible who are barren?) Second—

Well, you just won’t believe it until you’ve read it for yourself!

genesis 10 - genealogy + miscellanea

But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. (Titus 3:9)

Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do. (1 Timothy 1:4)

[Emphasis mine] It is with that good advice that we mostly skip over Genesis 10, which is pretty much nothing but a genealogy.

There are a couple of points of interest, however.

By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations. (Genesis 10:5)

These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations. (Genesis 10:20)

These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. (Genesis 10:31)

[Emphasis mine] We will be told in the very next chapter – Genesis 11:1, as a matter of fact – that there was only one human language prior to the Tower of Babel incident. As the passages above show, however, the author of Genesis 10 apparently disagreed.

Also, that whole “Curse of Ham” thing. Never becomes important again – in the Bible itself, at least.

genesis 9:18-29 - the curse of ham

The second part of Chapter 9 may be only 12 verses in length, but they are chock full of goodness. This is typical of the Bible: either one thing (or nothing) is covered excruciatingly slowly, or many things are covered so quickly that the reader’s head spins. I wonder if this was on purpose: bore the reader to the point of exhaustion, and then fill his head with a lot of facts he is too tired to question.

Noah has three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These were actually introduced way back in Chapter 6 (Genesis 6:10), but it is only now that they become important. It is from these three men that all the peoples of the world are the descended. This is an important point. Pay attention: you will be graded.

Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine, and gets drunk off the wine. He falls asleep naked in his tent. Ham sees his father naked, and tells his two brothers. Shem and Japheth cover Noah, but take the precaution of approaching him backwards and not looking at him as they do so.

When Noah wakes up, he knows “what his younger son had done unto him” (Genesis 9:24). So he curses—

Wait! What?!

All the Bible says is that Ham saw Noah naked. There is no evidence here that this was anything other than an accident. If so, it is hardly likely that he would have reported it to his brothers.

Yet Noah knows “what [Ham] had done unto him.” This implies that Ham’s offense was far greater than seeing his father naked. The offense is so great that Noah curses not only Ham, but his offspring, the Canaanites. Thenceforth, the Canaanites will be enslaved to the descendants of Shem and Japheth (Genesis 9:25-27 – when the King James Version uses the word “servant”, it is translating the Hebrew word for “slave”).

Either Noah is seriously overreacting here, or the Bible has left quite a bit out. It has been suggested that Ham raped his drunken father, but there is absolutely no evidence in the text itself to support this. And, once again, if Ham had done this, why would he have told his brothers about it? Prideful boasting? We are given no evidence of any sort of grudge between Noah and his son, or reason to believe that Ham is an evil sort of person.

Basically, this comes out of nowhere, blindsiding the reader, and providing yet another justification for the worst abuses of Christianity.

You see, the “Curse of Ham” was the principle Biblical passage used to support the enslavement of black Africans. Recall that Noah’s children produce three human lineages. For ages, Europeans divided humanity into three races. The “Negroid” race, to which black Africans belonged, was identified with the Canaanites, the cursed descendants of Ham. God had ordained that the Canaanites would serve the members of the other two lineages, so it was only proper that black Africans would be enslaved.

This argument, if one can call it that, reached its height of popularity in the United States, where the enslavement of black Africans became institutionalized. Although slavery had been practiced by virtually every culture in history, it was only in America that it was identified with one particular race of people. In the south, a free black person was an oxymoron; by definition, a black person was a slave, and it was primarily on this Biblical passage that that idea was based.

Thus ends the story of the good and righteous Noah: with his enslavement of an entire people for what was likely nothing more than his own bruised ego. Noah lives to be 950 years old, despite God having, at the start of this whole episode, restricted human lifespans to 120 years (Genesis 6:3).

It is on that unfair and depressing point that we must end this entry.