A Bible review

If you are a parent, you may not want to leave this book lying around the house. Much of the material is not suitable for children. The very first chapter has nudity, fratricide, incest, genocide, and more incest. Not even the most lurid soap operas would dare go so far. The book is undoubtedly well-written. In many parts, the prose soars, although the long lists of names do make it dangerous to read while operating heavy machinery. Also, would any sane parent really name their child Meschech or Togarmah? It is this which first raises doubts about this book, which claims to be true both factually and morally.

Indeed, the name of the book’s author is itself problematical. Although believers call the book God’s Word, it is not really clear who God is. In Genesis chapter 32 verse 29, God simply refuses to reveal his name to Jacob, but later he tells Jacob to call him El Shaddai (Gen. 35:11). Later still, he introduces himself simply as El (Gen. 46:3) – presumably because by then he felt comfortable enough with Jacob to be informal. However, Jacob ignores both these names and prays to God as Abaoth, Abrathiaoth, Sabaoth, Adonai, and Astra. Obviously, Jacob didn’t feel he knew God well enough to address him by one name, let alone one syllable. In Hosea 2:16, God instructs Hosea to stop calling him Baali and address him as Ishi, though this reviewer does not believe that this would have stopped the giggling. In Exodus 6:2, God calls himself Yahweh but pronounces it YHWH, which is why so many of the prophets had twisted tongues.

Nobody knows what was behind all these name changes, but some theologians speculate that God may have owed people money. Additionally, God did not choose to write his own Word, but employed ghost-writers instead. Maybe he was too busy sending plagues or maybe God writes like Lloyd Best. Theologians believe that it is this plenitude of scribes which has led to the Bible being so contradictory, but those contradictions lead to a deeper problem: for if all these writers were inspired by God, and if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then surely it was within his power to ensure that the Bible was error-free. Far from being factually accurate, however, the Bible is riddled with mistakes. Indeed, God’s writers even get their history wrong. For example, one of the most famous Biblical stories is that of Joshua bringing down the walls of Jericho. However, although it is true that walls of Jericho did fall, archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, by dating Mycanaean pottery shards found in the ruins, found that the destruction had occurred no later than 1300 BC. This was 70 or more years before Joshua could have learnt to blow a trumpet.

The Bible writers also seem to have invented key events and personalities in the book. Evidence uncovered by archaeologists after the Six-Day War of 1967 reveal that the account of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt in Exodus was made up out of whole cloth. Archaeologists also now believe that Abraham, Isaac and other Biblical patriarchs didn’t even exist but were created out of local lore. Even the famous King Solomon, if he existed at all, never built a fabulous city at Jerusalem. It seems that the Bible writers were using details of their own time, round about the middle of the first millennium, to tell stories of events that happened – only they didn’t, really — at the beginning of the early second millennium. And God didn’t even call down to his prophets and say, “Hey, bub, get your facts straight or I’ll give you boils!” Perhaps the hotline from Heaven wasn’t working that day, and it seems the divine phone wasn’t fixed till the Catholic Church came to foot the bill, in return for which God made all Popes infallible.

But the wrong history is not the worst error in the book. Far more egregious are the scientific ones. Indeed, for an omniscient being, God is astonishingly ill-informed. He believes the Earth is flat (Revelations 7:1 speaks of the “four corners of the Earth” and Job 9:6 of the Earth’s pillars) and that the sun moves (Joshua 9:12 and Job 9:7). But the most glaring errors are at the very start of the book, since the Biblical account of creation contradicts the facts of both astronomy and evolution. And here, factual error is exacerbated by ethical transgression, for the creation story in Genesis is plagiarised wholesale from another book, the Enuma elish of the Babylonians. This is where the Bible really falls down. Factual errors are not fatal to a book, even if what is essentially a work of fiction claims to be absolute truth. But if a book is presented as a moral guide, then the very least it should do is promote moral behaviour. Instead, what do we find?

At the very start of his book, God lies to Adam and Eve, telling them they would die if they ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (Gen. 2:17-18). Not only did they not die, but Adam lived to the ripe old age of 930 years. Later, God admits, “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7). This verse underlies many of God’s actions, such as his promotion of genocide (1Sam 15:18), his using two she-bears to kill the 42 small children who mocked the prophet Elisha (2Kings2:23-5), as well as his insistence that death is the proper punishment for defying one’s parents, adultery, homosexuality (Leviticus 9:9-11, 13) blasp hemy (Lev. 24:15) and a woman not being a virgin on her wedding night (Deuteronomy 22:21). Such laws account for the moral narrow-mindedness of people like Anglican archbishop Calvin Bess, while God’s Word also explains religious leaders like pastors Winston Cuffie, Clive Dottin, Vishnu Lutchmansingh, and Terrence Browne: “The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets” (1Kings 22:23). All this is not to say that the Bible isn’t a good read. But it is to say that you shouldn’t believe everything – in this case, most things – that you will find between its covers. This Good Book is available at all leading bookstores, as well as bookstores which only follow.