The Work of Kersey Graves
Appendix XI to Volume II
of
The Irish Origins of Civilization
by
Michael Tsarion
Introduction
A religion which sedulously opposes its own improvement can do nothing essential toward improving anything else...On the contrary, it must check the growth of everything it touches with its palsied hands - Kersey Graves
Throughout my work I have attempted to discover where the various Judeo-Christian traditions originally came from. Seeking these origins is, in my opinion, of vital importance for it yields invaluable information about the present sorry human condition.
However, the question of origins must remain secondary to the more vital question concerning the validity of the myriad tenets of religion (specifically of Judeo-Christianity). The question of primary importance concerns whether or not the various religious tenets, customs, doctrines, dogmas and traditions have any rational value. Do they contribute to humanity's healthy development or do they restrain and inhibit such progress? Do they contribute to the spiritual wealth of nations and peoples, or are they a corrupting influence? Do they explain the mysteries of microcosm and macrocosm, or do they prevent understanding? After all, concern is warranted when we hear illustrious churchmen and theologians, in the vein of Tertullian and Augustine, loudly proclaiming that belief in God is legitimate "because it is absurd."
Do Christian tenets breed love of virtue and truth, as great philosophy should, or do they subvert the natural intelligence of human beings, thereby leading to greater mental infantilism and moral meltdown? Do they provide insight for a philosophically-minded seeker, for naturally moral men, or do they satiate the sullied palates of fools, huxters and sadists? Are we knee-deep in the latter sort of creature today because of irrational belief in a psychotic god, a hypocritical religion, and a sadistic, necrophiliac priesthood?
I never reason on religion. None but the disciples of devils reason. Its dangerous to reason on religion - Rev. Moody (American Clergyman)
By far the greater part of those who embraced the Christian religion in this its infancy being men of mean extraction and wholly illiterate, it could not otherwise happen but that a great scarcity should be experienced in the churches of persons possessing the qualifications requisite for initiating the ignorance and communicating instruction to them with a due degree of readiness and skill - Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (17th century German Church historian)
Certainly we understand Judeo-Christianity to be antique, and we now have a fair idea as to where and how it originated. What must be addressed is its overall significance. That which served mankind yesterday may be of little use today. That which inhibited man's natural evolution is of no value. That which poisoned and drugged humanity in the past must not be allowed to so infect incoming souls who must be allowed to inherit a sane and safe world in which they can know truth directly, and in which they can know themselves, as the great oracles of old directed.
In the course of my expose I intend to clearly show how the Universal Intelligence (Voice of God) works with, or communicates through, the consciousness of human beings. Indeed, it is my contention that the force known as God, works through or is the human reason. The reason is the Creator's true revelation to man. Therefore it follows that the nature of any man's character - as well as his moral sensibility or virtue - depends on the manner in which he utilizes reason.
It is for man to perfect, by use, the faculty that makes living an enriching and meaningful experience. To understand and apply religious tenets and principles presupposes good moral intention and a mind already sanctified. Only a rational mind can understand the supposed communications of God, should God exist. Reason is, therefore necessary to true revelation. Since reason is greater than revelation, we see how damaging and sinister it is when we are told by clerics to never question the scriptures or ask whether the "infallible" words of God make rational sense. The priests and pastors are quite content to have us do what Saint Augustine did and believe the scriptures "because they are absurd." Millions of people show themselves more than capable of such self-deception.
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent....Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen - (I Corinthians 1:10 & 27, 28)
If human reason is the "God" within, then it logically follows that anything that confounds or subverts reason must be the cause of corruption and confusion. It follows that the irrational and unsound must be exposed, routed out and cast aside. To have things remain as they are ensures that progress will be stymied. This is real Holy Work. It is by way of deconstructive and apophatic reasoning that we come upon the Truth in all areas and matters.
Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness, destruction - Ayn Rand
The splendid gardens of the human reason and imagination must be kept clean of the weeds of superstition and error. A lie concerning the world, or the divine, is a lie that must be exposed by reason - a reason that is sharp and decisive.
The word sanity comes from the same root as the word sanitize and so, like bodily health, the mind must also be hygienic in order to operate excellently. Unfortunately most minds are anything but hygienic. Our environment is saturated with corrupting and contaminating agents that intoxicate both the mind and the emotions. Man's spurious religious beliefs are in our opinion the chief source of psychic intoxication, absurdity and spiritual delirium.
Reason exalts man, and the right operation of reason leads us toward the truth of ourselves. It allows us to glean a meaning for existence and for our role in the world. The correct use of reason is deconstructive in nature. Reason deciphers, discriminates, judges and identifies falsity. Mentally and spiritually, reason is - despite its limitations - the supreme agent of hygiene.
With this in mind we see that anything which confounds reason must be considered evil. In our opinion the Judeo-Christian creed, as presented and codified by the churches, is such an evil. To prove our contentious and iconoclastic statement, we present the reader with the very material in the Old and New Testaments that we consider irrational and, therefore, morally and spiritually subversive.
...for the better part of 2000 years the Old Testament was the sole record of the Mesopotamian patriarchal era. There was no way for anyone to know if it was fact or fiction…it was taken on board for history - Laurence Gardner
There is nothing holy about the Bible, nor is it "the word of God." It was not written by God-inspired saints, but by power-seeking priests. Who but priests consider sin the paramount issue? Who but priests write volumes of religious rites and rituals? No one, but for these priestly scribes were sin and rituals imperatives. Their purpose was to found an awe-inspiring religion. By this intellectual tyranny they sought to gain control, and they achieved it. By 400 BC, they were the masters of ancient Israel. For such a great project they needed a theme, a framework, and this they found in the Creation lore of more knowledgeable races. This they commandeered and perverted – the natural to the supernatural, and the truth to error. The Bible is, we assert, but priest-perverted cosmology - Lloyd Graham (Myths and Deceptions of the Bible)
. . .
THE BIBLE OF BIBLES
(Selections from Kersey Graves)
In this section it is our privilege to present the work of the great American scholar Kersey Graves (1813-1883).
This master revisionist and critic of religion had his work suppressed and condemned, and his great books are difficult to find today. Along with Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Kersey Graves was one of the great American free-thinkers dedicated to help remove the ancient chains of superstition from humanity. That these exceptional men's names are not known to the average American, and to the people of the world is in our opinion a travesty that we are committed to set aright. The quotes and the excerpts presented here are abstracted from the book composed in 1923 entitled The Bible of Bibles.
The interested reader is also referred to his previously penned masterpiece entitled The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors. Both works are available from Amazon.
Preliminaries
There are many errors in the Bible. The learned know it; and the unlearned better not know it - William Penn
The many errors, absurdities and contradictions presented here have not gone unnoticed by the Protestant and Catholic clergymen. They have had their apologists and experts make their futile attempts to account for the unaccountable and to explain the inexplicable. However, as humanity progresses, and as their various subterfuges become exposed, the harder their labor becomes. It becomes more and more difficult for them to convince rational men why they should merely accept the Bible as the inspired word of God.
Of the many strategies employed by the clergy to explain the gross errata, there is one of especial perfidy and importance. It is reliance on the testimony of spurious "historians" who most likely never existed. This is not as incredible a strategy as we may first believe. It has served to cover many inconsistencies that compromise the professed accuracy and legitimacy of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Since the scriptures themselves are of spurious origin, it is but one duplicitous step more to create fictitious experts, commentators, authorities and clerics to ostensibly "explain" corrupt texts that must either be accounted for or cast aside forever. Our amazement is lessened when we understand just how easy it is to fake, forge and falsely authenticate. It is not in the art world alone that we find the artifice of the forger and plagiarizer. The greatest examples of this kind of fraudulence are to be found in ecclesiastical circles. The only difference is that the experts in the art world are truly ignorant of their errors in judgment, whereas the experts in the latter case are the culprits in need of exposure. The forger who destroys the original from which he has worked is less likely to be found out. His crime can possibly, in practice as well as in theory, live forever.
When we open a Biblical encyclopedia and see the names and sketches of the many illustrious historians, commentators, clerics, theologians and Church Fathers, it is not our first thought to doubt their existence. We do not automatically suspect that these figures of the past are concoctions. Those with names such as Herodotus, Paul, Eusebius, Josephus, Origen, Tertullian, and so on, have not had their existence proven beyond doubt and, once we are on to the game, we soon can judge from what ancient Roman "think tank" their names and identities were born. Outside the brave work of Conor MacDari, John Remsberg, Kersey Graves and James Wheless, few writers have taken on the task of delving into the professed existence of the many "historians" and "theologians" put before us since the early centuries AD; those to whom millions have turned for explanations of Biblical conundrums.
In short, there is a scandalous campaign of forgery to be exposed, one of massive scale designed to rob man of his sanity and sound judgment, one meant to cover a barrage of garbled inconsistency and illogical philosophy that could not, in any rational age, hold sway over the minds of men - Mtsar
Quotes from the Master
The Quaker church (of which this author was once a member) have a clause in their discipline forbidding their members to read pernicious books..."such books and publications as contain language which appears to sanction crime or wrong practices, or teach bad morals" ...the Christian Bible may be ranked with works of this character - Kersey Graves (Bible of Bibles, 1863 AD)
...its chronology is unreliable, chimerical, and incorrect; its history contradictory and incredible; its philosophy fallacious; its logic unsound; its cosmology foolish and absurd, its astronomy fragmentary and childish; its religion pagan-derived, its morals defective, sometimes selfish, often extravagant, and in some cases pernicious...It is often dark, ambiguous, and mysterious, as well as contradictory, not only in its lessons on morality, but in its account of the simplest occurrences, this rendering it comparatively worthless as a moral guide - ibid
The Gospels and Epistles thus voted into favor were not arranged together in the form of an authentic Bible until...the Council of Laodicea in the year 353. After this, council after council was called to vote in or vote out some of the books adopted by previous councils, and to settle some important church dogmas. The first council voted the Acts of the Apostles and Revelations out of the Bible...but the second council, which met in 363 voted them in again. Another council, which met in 406, voted them, with several other books, out of the Bible again. And thus were books and dogmas voted in and voted out of "the infallible and inspired word of god," and altered and corrected, time after time and century after century, by twenty-four different councils, composed by bigoted bishops and clergymen, so quarrelsome and belligerent that they resorted to fisticuffs fighting in several of the councils - ibid
The version of the Old Testament made under Ptolemy Philadelphus, 287 BC - the most reliable version extant - the Bishop Usher pronounces a spurious copy, full of interpolations, additions, and alterations. He says, "The translators of the Septuagint added to, and took from, and changed at pleasure," and Saint Jerome says that Origen did the same thing with the "New Testament." Bishop Marsh testifies, in like manner, that Origen, who first collected the Bible books together, confessed that he made many alterations in them before they fell into the hands of the Council of Nice. Dr. Bentley admits that the best copy of the New Testament contains hundreds of irreparable omissions, errors, and mistakes. The Rev. Dr. Whitby says, "Many corruptions and interpolations were made almost in the apostolic age." Dupin says, "Several authors took the liberty to add, retrench, correct divers things"...We are told that Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, made countless numbers of alterations in the Bible of the sixth century for the purpose of making them suit his Church. Eusebius says he found so much proof that the Gospel of Matthew had been altered and corrupted, that he rejected it as being unworthy of confidence. Victor Wilson informs us that a general alteration of the Gospels took place at Constantinople in the year 506, by order of the Emperor Anastasius, St. Jerome complains that in his time many alterations had been made in the Bible...Scaliger testifies that the clergy and the churches put into their scriptures whatever they thought would serve their purpose. Michaelis says, "They thrust in and thrust out as best suits fancy" - ibid
There is one text in Galatians (3:20) which, Christian writers inform us, has received no less than two hundred and forty interpretations at different times by different writers; that is, two hundred and forty guesses have been made at the meaning of this one text- ibid
The Roman-Catholic Bible differs essentially from that of the Protestants, having fourteen more books. The Bible of the Greek Church differs from both. The Campbellites have a translation of their own. The Samaritan Bible contains only the five books of Moses. The Unitarians, having found 24,000 errors in the popular translation, made another translation containing still many thousands errors. The American Christian Union, having found many thousands of errors in the King James Translation, are now engaged in a new translation. How many more are we to have, god only knows. Martin Luther condemned eleven books of the Bible...and thus made a Bible for himself. Paul's Epistles to the Hebrews he denounced in strong terms...Dr. Lardner and John Calvin each condemned five or six books, and had a Bible peculiar to themselves. Grotius places the heel of condemnation on several books of the Bible. Bishop Baxter voted down eight books as uninspired, and unworthy of confidence. Swedenborg accepted only the Four Gospels and Revelation as inspired. The German Fathers rejected the Gospel of Matthew...The Bible of the learned Christian writer Evanson did not contain either Matthew, Mark, or John. The Unitarian Bible does not contain Hebrews, James, Jude, or Revelation. The Catholics denounce the Protestant Bible, and the Protestants condemn the Catholic Bible, as being full or errors - ibid
Source of the Problem
All the orthodox systems committed a fatal error at the outset in assuming that their religions were derived directly from God, and consequently must be perfect and unalterable, and a finality in moral and religious progress. Such an assumption will cause the downfall, sooner or later, of any religious body which persists in propagating the error. Religious institutions, like all other institutions, are subject to the laws of growth and decay
The implied assumption of the churches, that their doctrines are too perfect to be improved and too sacred to be investigated, and their Bible too holy to be criticized, is contradicted both by history and science; and this false assumption has already driven many of the best minds of the age from their ranks
A religion which sedulously opposes its own improvement can do nothing essential toward improving anything else...On the contrary, it must check the growth of everything it touches with its palsied hands
Suppressive and Regressive
...no church in any age of the world has inaugurated any great system of reform for the improvement of society, but has made war on nearly every reform set on foot by that class of people which it has chosen to stigmatize as "infidels"
Believing the Absurd
Saint Augustine furnishes another striking illustration of the total wreck of mind and moral principle which an obstinate determination to accept the Bible with all its errors is capable of effecting. Having found a great many absurdities in the Bible which he could not reconcile with reason and sense, and hence discovering he must either give up his Bible or his reason, he chose the latter alternative, and declared in his "Book of Sermons" - "I believe things in the Bible because they are absurd. I believe them because they are impossible," as glaring an absurdity as was ever issued from human lips. Such a desperate expedient to save his Bible and creed from going overboard shows that they had demoralized his mind, and made a complete wreck of his reason
Naturally, the rational person cannot believe an absurdity. However, the unsane person has no problem at all doing so. We must understand how easy it is for the psychologically insecure, existentially vagrant individual to distort the world into a form which suits his own warped vision and mentality. The toxic mind not only sees a toxic world, it creates one. It is a disturbed and insecure mind which requires a god to rely upon. The mind that cannot feel its own empowerment and that has no sense of Self, is able to center its belief on a dubious, unrealistic, invisible power, essentially greater, and in most cases, external, to itself. This person with this kind of mental disease will then cleave to the company of other people of the same persuasion. These minds will assume their own "Consenus-Trance" and will follow their psychically projected "holographic" god wherever it seems to lead them. If and when the higher centers of logic demand a rational explanation for such antihuman actions and beliefs, the irrational person forcibly quells the remonstrations, repressing all dissent beneath an inflexible and morbidly rigid non-negotiable set of equally irrational pseudo-arguments. This kind of behavior in turn fosters great unconscious unrest that, in its own turn spurs the host to yet further dangerous identification with the supposed source of his pseudo-peace and salvation. Regardless of what horrors occur on the external stage, and regardless of what angst is felt within, there is little chance of breaking the spell or the hex. Once man venerates an authority and wisdom-source outside of himself, he is condemned to live estranged from the true source of wisdom that exists within his own temple. The man so divided from his own sanctity is a plague upon the world, a curse to everyone and everything he encounters - Mtsar
By faith ye are saved, and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God - Paul (Ephesians 2:8)
Many World Bibles
More than twenty sacred books have been found in various countries, which, if not in all cases denominated Bibles, have at least been venerated and used as such, and, properly speaking, are Bibles...All of these Bibles possess some common characteristics.
- All of them claim to be inspired
- All were claimed to be an embodiment of wisdom and knowledge far transcending the ordinary attainments of man
- All were penned by inspired men, who were shielded from the possibility of erring while writing them
- Each Bible is a finality in religious knowledge
- Each one is an authority from which there is no appeal
- It is a sin to question or doubt the truth of any of them, or to suggest the possibility of their containing errors
- Some of them were written by god, some by angels, and others by inspired men
- Each one points out the only safe and certain road to heaven
- He who is a disbeliever in any one of these holy books is an infidel
- Each one is to effect the salvation of the whole human race
Paul on the Bible-less Gentiles
In an astounding passage in his Epistles to the Romans, Paul admits that men can have morality and ethics without the need of any Bible. He says:
The Gentiles, who have not the Bible, do by nature the things contained in the Bible
One can only wonder why we have not heard more debate about this passage. And if Paul (the supposed author) really meant this, we have a great deal to debate. This passage is letting us know that one does not necessarily need the Bible to be moral, a great contradiction to what has been said by the clergy who set forth the Bible as man's only means to morality and salvation.
There is another passage containing the same strange message from Paul:
The invisible things of God are clearly seen and understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead - (Rom 1:20)
So we are to understand nature as a teacher of the ways of God, not the Bible. The very essence of God is discerned through the physical and natural world. Why was this fact not taught by those who went around, in the name of Christianity, slaughtering all the nation's indigenous people?
In same vein, we find Jesus himself saying: Know ye not of yourselves what is right?
"Authorized" Does Not Mean "Authentic"
Anyone who is familiar with the elements of the higher criticism knows that there are two stories of the Creation and the Fall of Man in the Book of Genesis. The first, or Priestly Account, was written in the fifth century BC, and extends through the beginning of Genesis through verse 3 of chapter 2. The second, or Jehovistic Account, begins with verse 4 of chapter 2, and extends through the third chapter. This version of the story was written in the eighth century BC. It is interesting to note the second narrative is about three-hundred years older than the first.
In the Priestly Version: The earth emerges from the waters. it is saturated with moisture
In the Jehovistic Version: The world is at first a dry plain. There was no vegetation, because "the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth."
In the Priestly Version: Birds and beasts are created before man.
In the Jehovistic Version: All fowls of the air are made of the ground.
In the Priestly Version: Man is created in the image of God.
In the Jehovistic Version: Man is made out of the dust of the ground. It is only after eating of the forbidden fruit that god said: "Behold, the man is become as one of us."
In the Priestly Version: Man is made Lord of the whole earth.
In the Jehovistic Version: Man is merely placed in the garden to dress it and keep it.
In the Priestly Version: Man and woman are created together, as the closing and completing work of the whole creation.
In the Jehovistic Version: Man is created first, then beasts and birds are, which are named by man. Finally, woman is made out of a the man.
Orthodox Christians claim that both of these stories must be believed, even though they contradict each other at numerous points - John G. Jackson (Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth)
The Wrath of Jehovah
Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty-Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve, to satisfy we know not what caprice; no doubt to while away his time, which must weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that he might have some new slaves. He generously placed at their disposal the whole earth, with all its fruits and animals, and set but a single limit to this complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge - Mikhail Bakunin (God and the State)
Then, remembering that he was not only a God of vengeance and wrath, but also a God of love, after having tormented the existence of a few milliards of poor human beings and condemned them to an eternal hell, he took pity on the rest, and, to save them and reconcile his eternal and divine love with his eternal and divine anger, always greedy for victims and blood, he sent into the world, as an expiatory victim, his only son, that he might be killed by men. That is called the mystery of the Redemption, the basis of all the Christian religions. Still, if the divine Savior had saved the human world! But no; in the paradise promised by Christ, as we know, such being the formal announcement, the elect will number very few. The rest, the immense majority of the generations present and to come, will burn eternally in hell. In the meantime, to console us, God, ever just, ever good, hands over the earth to the government of the Napoleon Thirds, of the William Firsts, of the Ferdinands of Austria, and of the Alexanders of all the Russias…Such are the absurd tales that are told and the monstrous doctrines that are taught, in the full light of the nineteenth century, in all the public schools of Europe, at the express command of the government. They call this civilizing the people! Is it not plain that all these governments are systematic poisoners, interested stupefies of the masses? - Mikhail Bakunin (God and the State)
Creation From Nothing
The first text in the Bible is evidently an error. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1)...The assumption involves two impossibilities. First, a creation could not take place without something to create from: "Ex nihilo nihil fit" - "out of nothing nothing can come" -Graves
God's Home Before the Creation
If God "created the heavens" (Gen 1) and heaven is his "dwelling place" (see 1 Kings 8:30), then where did he dwell before the heavens were made?
Creation of the Light
God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he did not make the light-producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day.
As we are told God created the light (Gen 1:3), the conclusion is forced upon us, that, prior to that period, he had spent eternity in darkness..."God saw the light that it was good" (Gen 1:4). Hence we must infer that God had just got his eyes open, and that he had never before discovered that light is good. Of course it was good to be delivered from eternal darkness.
Dividing Light From Darkness
"And God divided the light from the darkness" (Gen 1:4). Hence, previous to that period, they must have been mixed together. Philosophy teaches that light and darkness never can be separated any more than heat and cold, as one is only a different degree of the other.
Birth of the Earth
The Bible teaches that the earth came into existence three days before the sun, but science teaches us that the earth is a child or offshoot of the sun.
"And the earth was without form, and void" says Genesis 1:2. But we wonder how it can be an earth at all then given the usual and rational meaning of the word void. How can an empty nothing be a something with a name? The Bible is off to a great start.
Vegetables Before Animals
According to the Bible, the vegetable kingdom was created before the animal; but the learned geologist Hitchcock, although a Christian by profession, in his "Elements of Geology" says "An examination of the rocks shows us that animals were created as early as vegetables' (and he might have said much earlier). And yet the Bible says vegetables were created on the third day, and animals on the fifth day. (See Genesis 1)
Creating Sun and Moon
In the Bible we are told by the author that Jehovah created "mornings" and "evenings" before he created the sun. Is this another miracle, or just the product of the reasoning and scientific knowledge of the authors of this garbled travesty, composing centuries later, during the Dark Ages, after Christianity had already come into existence to plague the world?
The Bible tells us that "God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and god set them in the firmament to give light to the earth (Gen 1:16-17). That is, he made two round balls, and then stuck them into holes scooped out of the firmament for the purpose. This seems to be the idea. Here is disclosed the most egregious ignorance of astronomy. Think of that stupendous solar luminary, as much larger than this pygmy planet as a man is larger than a mouse, being hung up or stuck up above us for our sole accommodation. How sublimely ridiculous!
The Lord's Strange Creation Timetable
The Bible represents the great world-builder, the almighty architect, as spending five days in plodding and toiling at his little mole-hill of ours before he got it finished...and then made such a bad job of it that he repented for having undertaken it...But when he came to make the countless worlds, the vast suns, and systems of suns...these were all made in a few hours. "And he made the stars also."
God Gets Dog Tired
According to the Bible, God became so tired in the business of world-making that he had to take a rest of a whole day...but geology and philosophy both teach that creation never was begun, and never will be finished, but is going on all the time.
More Insanity in the Making
Due to the controversy over the idea of a six-day creation, Biblical authorities came forth with a seemingly clever explanation. Without precedence they declared that a Biblical "day" was really a period of a thousand years. This seemed the right amount of time to cover the glitch in understanding. A hundred years might sound too short a time, and a million years was certainly too long in their minds. So, with no more ado, a Biblical "day" became a thousand years. Naturally, by the same logic a Biblical week could then be any amount of millennia, and a Biblical year could be any amount of aeons. All this bunk, when it would have been so simple to just have been given the actual length of time in the first place. But of course, we know that this was the problem. The amount of time to create the creation had to be left vague, since there was no such creation as is stipulated in the Bible. The creation, as mentioned in the Bible, is a creation of imagination for the imagination. There is not a shred of fact in it.
...we are told that a day in the Bible means a thousand years. Then, as the Sabbath day constitutes one of the days spoken of in the Bible, and was provided as a day of rest, Christians and the Bible believers should rest a thousand years at a time; and as God rested a whole day (a thousand years), he must have been as tired of resting as he was of world-making.
Which Came First?
The Bible teaches that whales, fish, and birds were made on the same day; but geology assures us that fish came into being long before fowl...The Bible teaches that beasts and creeping things were all made on the fifth day of creation; but geology tells us that reptiles and creeping things crawled upon the earth millions of years before beasts came into existence.
Creation of Eve
According to the Bible, a serious blunder was made by Jehovah in the work of creation, by exhausting all the materials in the process of world-making and man-making, so that nothing was left to make a "helpmeet" for Adam; and this blunder caused the necessity of robbing Adam of one of his ribs...But common sense teaches us that a small crooked bone but a few ounces in weight could not furnish half the material needed to constitute a woman. The Parsees , with a little more show of sense, tell us that the rib was used merely as a back-bone, around which the woman was constructed.
In the first chapter of Genesis we are told that Adam and Eve are created together, at the same time, whereas in the second Chapter Eve is created after Adam. (Perhaps this was an editing error).
Adam's Free Time
As the Bible teaches that Adam named all the beasts, animals, and birds, it must have occupied a great number of years for the Lord God of Moses to have caught and taken the several hundred thousand species to Adam to receive names in all the three-thousand languages, and then convey them back to their respective climates. The question naturally arises, Why should Adam give them names...when there was nobody present to hear it and be benefited by it? And nobody could have remembered half the names had they been present.
No, no one could have remembered the billions of animal names, and we can assume that Adam could not have remembered all the names he came up with for all the world's animals. Perhaps he wrote them down with pen and ink provided by the Lord. Perhaps, he was literate enough to read and write as well as name animals. One thing is for certain, Adam must have had a lot of free time to make this task his priority.
Two Creations
There are two Creation stories in the first book of the Bible. One can be found in Genesis Chapter 1, and the other in Chapter 2. In the first Chapter we read that the animals are created before Adam, and in the second Chapter, they are created afterwards. This is a major contradiction in the very same book, just lines away from each other. If this is the level of accuracy in the Bible, we are in trouble from the start. But then we encounter yet another contradiction. In chapter one we read that the earth is created several days before the firmament (heaven), whereas in the second Chapter of Genesis we read that earth and heaven are created on the same day.
Reason for Adam's Creation
Again, the account is contradictory. Genesis 1 says that Adam was created in gods image, but in Chapter 2 he was made to "till the ground" for there was no one to carry out this function. Pity god did not create an already tilled ground when he fashioned the earth. In the first story, Graves notes that man appears to be godlike, and therefore has dominion over the whole earth, whilst in the second chapter he is now a humble servant made to labor in the gardens of the Lord.
- This contradiction is also found between the various world accounts of man's creation. In our book Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation, we consider these contradictory accounts and highlight the alternative story of Adam and Eve and their supposed disobedience and "Fall." We explore the stories that were left out of the Bible, in which the Tree was guarded to prevent man eating of the forbidden fruit that would make him into a god, and in which we are given a very different portrayal of the serpent than the one provided in the Bible.
Tree of Life
There were two trees in the garden. They are central characters in the primal drama and yet we are told so little about them. One has been referred to as the "Tree of Life" and the other as the "Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil." These attributions are not explained and we are left to imagine what these trees really are and why they were put, as distractions, before the innocent pair whom god had filled with desire to sin. However, when we do our homework we discover that the Tree was a seminal creation image employed first by the Gaelic Magi in Ireland. From Ireland the symbol of the World Tree was transported to the Teutons and the Norsemen, and from there to other locales. The Tree was a symbol of organic creativity, of the movement and mystery of nature. It was a symbol which stylized the descent of creative energy from the supernal realms to the physical. The World Tree was the reverse of the physical tree. Instead of its life-force coming from the ground upward, the World Tree's vital force descended from on high downward. There were 22 branches on the Tree of Life, though the life-force traveled usually through 9 or 10 main centres or spheres. It was such a known and important leitmotif within the Gnostic and Hermetic Traditions of old, that it turned up in the Book of Genesis which, for all its contortions and unnecessary embellishments, is a replica of the Egyptian (and Irish) Creation Myths.
That little is said of the Tree, except that it is an object of desire and forbidden intent, tells us that little was known of it by the Bible authors who appear to not be personally privy to the depth of the original canon that they were plagiarizing. Wherever else the Tree story appears in the world, it is always in the keeping of envious gods who are afraid that its secrets may be known to the angels and human creatures.
In all these legends the serpent is the guardian of the tree, set there by god to protect it from the curious. In some stories the guardian is a monkey; the monkey being a form of the Egyptian god Thoth. In most cases the forbidden secrets of the Tree are available only to those who have the inherent ability to accept the secret. In the authentic telling of the legend, those without the inherent capacity for an understanding of the secret are neither attracted to the secret nor altered in any way from its proximity. In the tangled re-telling of Genesis, it is clear that the primal parents were being punished not for acting on sinful desires put in them by the Lord himself, but for their free-will, their free choice of action against the Lord's meaningless prohibition.
They are penalized and ruined due to the operation of natural drives. They are disobedient to god but obedient to their own senses, their own heart's desire and their own natural inclinations. Though the serpent has come down to be a symbol of temptation, a proper reading of the drama shows the serpent to be more a symbol of independence and freedom. A slave is slave even if god is his master. And slavery is not spiritual, not in any time or in any place. Disobedience can only occur if one has to rebel against something that restrains. And such rebellion is a good and necessary thing. God does not reward man for his natural disobedience, but the serpent does. Man is bestowed total comprehension when he eats of the tree. He does have his eyes opened, and does not die, as Jehovah said he would. The serpent's word is more true than god's word. Adam becomes a god in his own right, and this is surely what compromises the god of the Old Testament. It is that Adam becomes his own authority that rankles the orthodox status quo. And this self-dependence is as taboo now as it was then. Sadly, most men have subconsciously accepted the Orwellian programming of "Obey and be Free!" Some few, however, know this Double-Speak to be the monstrous psychic tyranny it always has been.
It grieved him to the heart that he had made so rebellious a creature as man - (Gen 6:6)
Adam Tormented
Adam was told that he would suffer death if he ate of the forbidden fruit. But as Graves relates, how would Adam have known or have feared the nature of the threat since he had never seen anything dead. And we can also question why Adam would have feared death if, as we are told, he was meant to be made in the image of god. Did our progenitor fear as we fear? Was his mind, even at that early time, filled with anxiety and foreboding?
Did God create beings in his own image and then treat them as if he wished to tantalize them and render them unhappy? It would seem that he created man for no other purpose than to tease and torment him, and quarrel with him. Common sense would suggest it to be the act of an ignoramus or a tyrant to implant in man the desire to eat fruit which he did not allow him to eat...God must have had the power without the will to prevent the act of disobedience, which would make him an unjust and unmerciful tyrant. Or else the will without the power, which would make him a weak and frail being, and not a God.
The "God" spoken of in the Book of Genesis, and throughout the Christian scriptures, is psychologically speaking a projection of the human ego, which came into being 13,500 years ago in order to offset the complete psychic breakdown suffered by survivors of the great earth cataclysms and upheavals now known to have wrought havoc throughout the globe at that time. This "god" is an extension of the human drive or will to exist and is phylogenetically very young. It acts like a child and is patently animistic and violent. Like William Blake's devilish Orc, the ego was born in flames. Man could not have survived without the advent of the ego which, like a muscle, saved human consciousness from complete traumatic overload. However, since the ego was born from trauma of unimaginable magnitude, its drives are "spastic" and overly sensitized to threat. Should a threat appear from outside, the ego reacts with flight or fight tendencies. It does this on the personal level and collective level. The scriptures make a great deal more sense when it is understood how God is made in man's image. Man (Adam) has indeed been tormented by the God that saved him from annihilation. This "God" energy functions best under pressure of trauma, and this is why our world and our thinking is so malignant. Silence, calm, peace and respite are not conducive criteria for the existence of the ego or pseudo-self - the projector of the vengeful, brooding God who hides in plain sight.
Julian Jaynes…has suggested that human consciousness has changed its character even in historical times, the ego as we know it was not really in existence, except under extreme stress. And then it presented itself almost as an exterior intrusion into consciousness, like the voice of a god - Terrence McKenna (Institute of Noetic Sciences Magazine. September-November 2000 edition)
In the Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that self-consciousness emerged even more recently – at the time of the Bronze Age, some five thousand years ago. According to Jaynes, there was no sense of "I" before this period. It was their first experience of the Thinking Mind's internal monologue, Jaynes speculates, that ancient peoples attributed to hearing the voice of god, or being addressed by spirits Gregg D. Jacobs (The Ancestral Mind)
Uniqueness of Jehovah
There is nothing very unique about Yahweh, as Massey, Kuhn, Graves and others have shown. He was not the only god of the Israelites and his name can be found in earlier times among differing peoples, later falsely purported to be the Israelites of the Old Testament. Moreover, every epithet given to Jehovah ("lord of heaven," "the most high," etc,) were used time and time again for Marduk, Baal, and other gods and deities of the ancient world. If Jehovah was so unique, why did his followers not come up with brand-new epithets? Why borrow from nations thought pagan and infidel? No, facts are facts; there is nothing unique or holy about the Jehovah of the Bible.
The truth is, the imaginary God of the Jews was a suspicious, cowardly, and jealous being. He was constantly getting into hot water. He appeared to live in perpetual fear day and night that some other God, or some of his own creatures, would encroach upon his rights. In this case he seemed to be alarmed for fear those ignorant, deluded tower-builders and world fanatics would succeed in reaching the heavenly home, perhaps bind him, and cast him out of his own kingdom. What superlative nonsense is the whole story! And yet millions believe it to be divinely inspired, and many thousands of dollars have been spent in printing it, and circulating it over the world - Kersey Graves (Bible of Bibles)
Jehovah's Anger
Man's god is nothing but a projection of his own ego-consciousness. Many are the proofs for this psychologically legitimate assertion. But one of the best proofs concerns the "all too human" traits of Jehovah.
...that a being infinite in power, infinite in wisdom, and filling all space throughout the boundless universe, should be a victim to the weakness and ungovernable impulse of passion...A being, therefore, who is assumed to possess such a weakness is self-evidently not a God, but merely a imaginary being, fit only to be worshiped by ignorant slaves - Graves
A few excerpts:
The Lord is a man of war - (Exodus 15:3)
Behold, the Lord rideth on a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor...And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof - (Isaiah 19)
You will recompense them, O LORD, According to the work of their hands. You will give them hardness of heart, Your curse will be on them. You will pursue them in anger and destroy them From under the heavens of the LORD! - (Lamentations 3)
God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies - (Nahum 1:2)
Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him –(Nahum 1:6)
Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds. May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double-edged sword in their hands, to inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with fetters, their nobles with shackles of iron – (Psalms 149:5)
Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book - (2 Kings 22:13)
See, the Name of the LORD comes from afar, with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke; his lips are full of wrath, and his tongue is a consuming fire - (Isaiah 30:27)
Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God - (Exodus 34:14)
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble; and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the LORD Almighty, in the day of his burning anger - (Isaiah 13:13)
If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to my enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges on the enemy - (Deut 33:42-43)
They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn to the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs on them; I will spend my arrows on them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts on them, with the poison of serpents of the dust – (Deuteronomy 32:21-24)
Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good - (Jeremiah 18:11)
Behold, the Lord rideth on a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor...And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof - (Isaiah 19)
First Act of Genocide and Mayhem
Man's heart is evil from his youth - (Genesis)
God creates man and then laments that he has created such a wayward and evil thing. He first declares his world "good" but then, strangely, finds it so full of flaws, so full of evil, that he decides to eradicate the whole of his creation. He is full of remorse for creating man, but after he wipes out all creation, he is remorseful about that also, and promises never to do such a thing again (Gen 9). So Jehovah's response to evil in the world, is to commit an act of global genocide. We can only wonder at these accounts, and surmise that what god really objected to was not Adam and Eve's natures, but their lack of obedience. Was it the free-will exercised by the primal parents that so infuriated the Lord? Obedience is after all considered the foremost virtue in the Bible. And the opposite of obedience to authority is free will. Is this the reason for the wrath in the Book of Genesis? It certainly seems to be so.
The Deluge (Flood)
The story of an Ark, a Flood and of the world's destruction did not originate with the Bible's version. In fact, the story of Noah is quite a late rendition. Thousands of years before, the Irish Nuah or Nuada, brought his people to safety on Ireland's shores in long boats constructed to weather the destruction of Atlantis and the lost continents of old. All of the great nations had stories of a great flood and of the few survivors. The Persians and Chaldeans had their survivor Xisuthra, who was warned by god in a dream, and who was told to save his wife and daughter and every pair of animals in the world from the coming destruction by rain. The Greeks had their Deucalion whose story is almost identical. The Chinese have their Fohi, the Brahmins their Manu, and the Hindus their Satravarata. One legend the world over.
For Shem, Ham and Japhet, the Hindus have a Sherma, Charma and Jyapheta - (Kersey Graves on the sons of Noah)
Building the Ark
God then goes to a drunkard ("man just and perfect") called Noah, and tells him to ensure his own family's survival by building a peculiar vessel that would ride out the cataclysms that the Lord was about to visit on the whole earth. Into this vessel two of every animal on the earth was to be loaded with enough food for its survival. This strange craft is 550 feet and has one small window of 18 square inches. Every animal that "creepeth" on the earth are gathered, and they embark in the ark in one day.
The Lord instructed him (Noah) to build and ark five hundred and fifty feet long, ninety feet wide, and fifty-five feet high - about the size of an eastern warehouse...
And God ordered to be taken into this ark food sufficient to supply these millions of mouths. This alone would have required forty such vessels. As it was declared that God destroyed everything every living thing from the face of the Earth, it would have been necessary to have food stored away to last several years, until the earth could have had time to be replenished with a new crop of grass and vegetables...
Noah's Character
We are told that Noah became so drunk as to strip off all his clothing, and two of his sons, to avoid seeing him in that situation, walked backward, and covered him: for which at his father cursed him. Thus it was that Noah, although "a righteous man" was not a very modest or decent one.
A Very Full Ark
Consider for a moment what amount of food would be required for each species of animal. The four elephants...would consume a ton of hay in two days, making more than one hundred and fifty tons in twelve months. The fourteen rhinoceroses would consume one thousand and fifty tons. And then the horses, cattle, sheep, goats, asses, zebras, antelopes, and other mammals, would require at least two thousand tons more; making in the aggregate three-thousand two-hundred tons. This alone would have filled every inch of the vessel. The seven hundred and eighty-four thousand birds (one hundred and twelve thousand species) would require grain, which would make it necessary to store several thousand bushels. The three thousand flesh-eating animals, including lions, cats, dogs, jackals, hyenas, skunks, weasels, crocodiles, snakes, eagles, hawks, buzzards, etc. would require about forty wagon-loads to be slaughtered and fed to them each day, for all would require fresh meat but the buzzards - Graves
And, of course, the list of ark inhabitants goes on considerably. There would have been otters, and kingfishers and storks, 900 species of fly-catchers and all manner of insects for them to feed on throughout the day and night, owls with field-mice to feast on, ant-eaters with millions of ants to satiate them, 442 species of monkeys requiring fresh fruit, millipedes, fleas, lice and cockroaches, etc, - Graves
And think of the immense labor required to obtain this innumerable collection of animals. In the first place, either Noah or his god must make a trip to the polar regions to obtain the white bear, the reindeer, the polar dog, etc, And then the Rocky Mountains must be scaled to find and catch the grizzly bear. Some time and labor must have been required to obtain the rattlesnakes, copperheads, vipers, cobras, snapping-turtles, etc. of the torrid zone - Graves
And how could this immense multitude of respiring and perspiring animals live and breathe in a vessel with but one little twenty-two-inch window, and that in the third story, and shut up most of the time to keep the rain out, especially if some giraffe had been disposed to monopolize it when it was open by thrusting its head out...And what was there to prevent the nine hundred carnivorous animals from devouring the sheep, hogs, poultry, rabbits, minks, hedgehogs, etc. as they tumbled pell-mell down the mountain together - Graves
But let us observe more closely the actions of Noah with his three sons and their three anonymous wives that, according to the Bible were the sole survivors of the corrupt world that existed before the great Flood, after spending a total of 375 days in their enormous ship! We will have to go into detail here, and read from the biblical text to make sure that the duration of the episode of the flood was not a mere 40 days, as almost all religious people are inclined to believe:
And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth - (Genesis 7)
Even while the Ark had settled for 70 days on land...and the raven is flying to and fro...after seven more days the dove is sent off...and finally by New Year's Eve the dove does not return any more...a very strange fact for a paired dove, that has lived a year in the ark. The dove does not return because the water had "subsided from off the earth." However, Noah did not decide to leave the ark, even then. He sat tight in the crowded ark for 57 more days until without making up his mind to open the ark even though the dove had left the ark never to return a couple of months before. It appears that the dove...did not play any role in Noah's decision to leave the ark, where the beasts of the Earth must have been living in a suffocating environment after an entire year of confinement - Michael Kalopoulos (Biblical Religion: The Great Lie)
God's Trouble-Making Serpent
The idea of God creating a serpent to thwart and defeat his plans and designs, or permitting him to do it, is absolutely ridiculous.
If God knew, when he created the serpent, that his machinations would bring "death and sin and all our woe" into the world, the act would prove him to be an unprincipled being. And, if he did not know it, he must have been ignorant and short-sighted, and not fit to be a God...It would seem that the serpent was superior to Jehovah either in knowledge or veracity; for his statement relative to the effect of eating the fruit proved to be true, while that of Jehovah proved to be false. (See Genesis 3:3)
Crazy Story of Cain
How could Cain find a wife in the land of Nod (Gen 5:17) when he himself had killed the whole human race excepting his father and mother? There were then no women to make wives of. Why did Cain build a city (Gen 4:17), when there was nobody to inhabit it? As there were "workers of iron and brass" in this city, does it not furnish evidence that there was a race of people who had attained a high state of civilization before Adam was made...If Cain did find a wife in the land of Nod, is it not evidence that some of his ribs had been converted into women before Adam's time?...Did not Jehovah know, when he accepted Abel's offering and rejected Cain's, that he was sowing the seeds of discord that would lead to murder?
And we note also that Cain did not require any "serpent" to spur him to his murderous deed. So, was his action prompted by his own nature given him by god? Nowhere does it say otherwise. In this case, we have human beings whose malefic actions are not prompted by any external agency. How is this to be explained away?
Crazy Story of Moses
The story of the birth of Moses is a direct copy of that of Sargon the great Babylonian King. But if it were true, this is what we are being told:
The Pharaoh becomes hostile to half Israelites like Moses' mother. He orders that all Israelite children should be killed at birth. We are not told the reason for this decision. The mid-wives disobey the Pharaoh, saying that the Israelite women give birth so fast and lively that they get their too late to do any killing (see Exodus1:22). Moses therefore survives, and his hidden by his mother. After a period of three months she strangely changes her mind about hiding him, and places him in a basket and sets him onto the river Nile, within shot of the Pharaohs palace. She comes so close to the palace that an unnamed Pharaoh's daughter espies the basket as it is travels through the reeds. We are not told why a loving mother who has been hiding her child from death, should suddenly decide to put her child onto the river for the crocodiles to eat. After the Pharaoh's daughter has her servants retrieve the basket, she falls in love with the foreign child and decides to take for herself. The fact that it was totally against the law for any unmarried Pharaoh's daughter to adopt a foreign child does not seem to worry this author, who penned this preposterous story centuries after the time it was said to have occurred. Nevertheless, the next amazing thing that happens concerns the immediate appearance of Miriam, the sister of Moses, who happened to be in the area watching what was happening. Now, seemingly with no care for her own security, she appears to the Pharaoh's daughter to ask her whether she needs a maid to look after the child she has just that moment found among the bulrushes. The Pharaoh's daughter decides that it would be a good idea to get a maid to look after the child, and Miriam suggests that she has the perfect care-giver - the original mother of Moses. She deceives the Pharaoh's daughter who, unwittingly, entrusts her son adopted infant back into the care of the real mother. We are not told why, at this point, the Israelite child is still not in mortal danger that was, after all, the reason for casting him out onto the river. We are never told why the son of Asiatic shepherds would be a threat to the King of Egypt, why his daughter would go against sacred law, or why she would not have care-givers of her own for her child. We are not told why Moses' mother was so close to the Pharaoh's palace, or why Miriam the strange sister should suddenly just appear at the right moment and be able to approach the bathing Pharaoh's daughter, who seems to be hanging around the banks of the Nile to wash herself, in public, as it seems.
Note: (Did This Nonsense Happen?) - The scholars of the Bible vehemently assure us that, despite the implausibility of these tales, they are accurate and historical. They say that the name Moses does mean something in Hebrew so obviously Moses actually existed. And they have gone to the Talmud and the Koran to verify the Bible, and to the Bible to verify the Talmud, and to the Bible to re-verify the Koran. They have gone to the three books written by the same gang of liars to confirm the jive of each. Great scholarship. So, by this same token if a thing is not found mentioned in either the Bible, the Koran, or the Talmud, then it does not exist at all. Goodbye Mount Everest, and all those who have foolishly believed in you. You are not mentioned in the three magnificent tomes of religion, so you don't exist - get it!. Goodbye Pacific Ocean, Chartres Cathedral, and Hyde Park; goodbye Simon and Garfunkel, you aren't mentioned, so you don't, you can't exist. Wow! - a name, like "Joseph," actually meant something in Egyptian (or in Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, etc,), which means, of course, that Joseph, the Bible's Patriarch, must have lived. The name is real, and so the man must have been also. This is the kind of thing that passes for proof in Biblical circles, and which has convinced the masses of the Church goers and Bible bashers. The scholars think they can use sophistry to convince us that there was no malignancy in the minds of the chroniclers and authors of this clap-trap. However, their own words betray the truth, once we know how to read between lines. Here is a perfect example of lies being made palatable. (This quote is from Ahmed Osman's book Christianity: An Ancient Egyptian Religion.)
It is reasonable to assume that scribes who wrote their accounts of these happenings many centuries later did not invent the facts but based what they wrote on genuine historical events whose memory had been transmitted orally for generations, with the distortions and accretions that are inevitable when stories are passed on by word of mouth.
Moses, Greatest Writer Ever
...the man Moses, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. (another Christian assurance; Acts vii, 22), sat down in the Wilderness of Sinai and under divine inspiration wrote his Five Books of prehistorical history, codes of postexilic divine Law, and chronicles of contemporary and future notable events, including four different names of his father-in-law...(Wz.: Jethro, Ex. iii, 1; Reuel, Ex. ii, 18; Jether, Ex. iv, 18, and Raguel, Num. x, 29, while a fifth name, Hobab, is awarded him in Judges iv, II), together with a graphic account of his own death and burial, and of the whole month afterwards spent by all Israel mourning his death - James Wheless (Forgery in Christianity, 1930)
Death of Aaron, Brother of Moses
He (Moses) also records the death of his brother Aaron at Mt. Hor (Num. xx, 28; xxxiii, 38), just six months before his own death; though, in amazing contradiction, he elsewhere records Aaron as having died at Mosera, just after leaving Sinai (Deut. x, 6), thirty-nine years previously...and thus nullifies the entire history of the wonderful career and deeds of Aaron as high priest during the whole 40 years of wandering in the Wilderness, of which the Books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers are largely filled - James Wheless (Forgery in Christianity, 1930)
Facts on the Exodus
Chapter 47 of the Book of Genesis, we read that Joseph was given the right by Pharaoh to bring his father and brothers into Egypt, to live in the area known as Goshen. It is from this event that the Israelites begin their stay in Egypt. God declares that his people will spend 400 years in Egypt as slaves (Gen. 15:13). However, in the same book, we have another figure given for the years of slavery. In Exodus 12:14, we read that the period of enslavement was 430 years.
The Red Sea Story
The Israelites come to an impassable sea. God causes a great wind to descend that is so strong it parts the waters pushing them back for a time, allowing the Israelites to cross. Of course we are not told how the Israelites could cross the Red Sea in such a wind, one so powerful as to push back millions of gallons of water. One would think that this wind would be more of a deterrent than the waters themselves.
Jehovah Captured
We are told, in the early books of the Bible, that Jehovah was contained in the Ark of the Covenant and carried around by the Israelites. He was carried by David into war against the Philistines who were winning many victories against the Lord's "Chosen People." Nevertheless, the Philistines slew 30,000 Israelites, captured the Ark with the Lord Jehovah inside, and took it with them as booty. After many decades, the Philistines decided they could not use the Ark and gave it back to the Israelites. As it was being driven home by two cows, it nearly fell off a cliff (Exodus 20:4). A character called Uzzah, seeing that it was about to topple from the road, stretched out his hand to save the cart. He was thanked by being destroyed by the Lord. When the Ark was passing through the city of Bethshemesh, the Lord killed 50,000 people just because two curious citizens had looked upon the Ark.
We must ask how it is that God can be carried round in a box, and then be captured by enemies who then, later, return God to their enemies. We can ask but we can be sure to receive few rational answers. We might also want to avoid the histories that clearly refer to, and even depict, the Hindu Ark and the Egyptian Ark that were also carried aloft by the priests and that operated miraculously.
Daniel, Reader of Dreams
We are told that Daniel was brought before the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to interpret his dreams. We are not told why Daniel could do what all the Babylonian Magi could not do for their king. Nevertheless, we also find that the king had even forgotten his dream completely. Daniel had to remind the king what his dream had been, before he set to interpreting it. This seems a very convenient set up, making the miraculous prophecy about as convincing as any stage conjurors legerdemain.
Prophecy and Magic
Prophecy, magic, astrology and the arts of divination are considered taboo by God and his ministers. However, the Bible itself is packed with prophecy. Is not the whole Book of Revelation, one long prophecy? And in Matthew 1-2, is not the angel who visited the "virgin" Mary, not making a direct prophecy when he says that a child, a savior, will be born unto her? Did not Jesus prophesize when he told his disciples that he would "come again?" Did not John the Baptist not prophesize that one would come who was "greater" than he? Additionally, did not Jesus prophesize the falling of the temple, the betrayals of Peter and Judas, and did not the "three wise men" know about the birth of Jesus through prophecy? Are not the births of Samson, John the Baptist, and Jesus miraculous. Do Aaron and Moses not engage in magical practices when they do the "rod and snake" trick in front of Pharaoh and his priests? Yes, prophecy and magic is all through the Bible, executed by those who are meant to be the elites among Biblical dramatis personae. Yet, the church forbids believers to empower themselves by Divination. What a mockery! What hypocrisy!
One Tongue, or Many?
"The whole earth was of one language and one speech" (Gen 11:1). In the preceding chapter there is a long list of different tongues or languages, and nations; and it is declared they were "divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, families, and nations." How contradictory!
Joshua Stops the Sun
Fohi of China had the sun stopped eight hundred and fifty years before Joshua, the son of Nun, ever saw the sun. Bacchus and other God-Men of Egypt had it stopped four times. While in Greece Phaeton was set after it to hurry it up, and increase its speed...The Chinese annals state that the sun stopped ten days during the reign of the Emperor Yom. Arjuna of India stopped it several days for his own accommodation.
Yahweh killed more enemies than Joshua did by throwing huge stones down on them from heaven. The kinds were captured hiding in a cave and executed by Joshua. To endorse this story, the author tells us that five of these large stones are laid at the entrance of the cave 'to this day' - Thomas L. Thompson (The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel)
The Miracles of the Bible
Almost the only evidence we have in any case of the actual performance of a miracle is the report of the writer who relates it....There is not a miracle related in either the Old or New Testament that has not a parallel reported in the Bibles or sacred writings of the Orientalists.
Continue to Kersey Graves Page II
Disclaimer:
Some material presented will contain links, quotes, ideologies, etc., the contents of which should be understood to first, in their whole, reflect the views or opinions of their editors, and second, are used in my personal research as "fair use" sources only, and not espousement one way or the other. Researching for 'truth' leads one all over the place...a piece here, a piece there. As a researcher, I hunt, gather and disassemble resources, trying to put all the pieces into a coherent and logical whole. I encourage you to do the same. And please remember, these pages are only my effort to collect all the pieces I can find and see if they properly fit into the 'reality aggregate'.
Personal Position:
I've come to realize that 'truth' boils down to what we 'believe' the facts we've gathered point to. We only 'know' what we've 'experienced' firsthand. Everything else - what we read, what we watch, what we hear - is what someone else's gathered facts point to and 'they' 'believe' is 'truth', so that 'truth' seems to change in direct proportion to newly gathered facts divided by applied plausibility. Though I believe there is 'truth', until someone representing the celestial realm visibly appears and presents the heavenly records of Facts And Lies In The Order They Happened, I can't know for sure exactly what "the whole truth' on any given subject is, and what applies to me applies to everyone. Until then I'll continue to ask, "what does The Urantia Book say on the subject?"
~Gail Bird Allen
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Urantia Book, 44:0.11 - The Celestial Artisans
Never in your long ascendancy will you lose the power to recognize your associates of former existences. Always, as you ascend inward in the scale of life, will you retain the ability to recognize and fraternize with the fellow beings of your previous and lower levels of experience. Each new translation or resurrection will add one more group of spirit beings to your vision range without in the least depriving you of the ability to recognize your friends and fellows of former estates.
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Princess Bride 1987 Wallace Shawn (Vizzini) and Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya)
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -
Urantia Book, 117:4.14 - The Finite God
And here is mystery: The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality -- actuality -- of that man. The more man withdraws from God, the more nearly he approaches nonreality -- cessation of existence. When man consecrates his will to the doing of the Father's will, when man gives God all that he has, then does God make that man more than he is.
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Urantia Book, 167:7.4 - The Talk About Angels
"And do you not remember that I said to you once before that, if you had your spiritual eyes anointed, you would then see the heavens opened and behold the angels of God ascending and descending? It is by the ministry of the angels that one world may be kept in touch with other worlds, for have I not repeatedly told you that I have other sheep not of this fold?"
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Urantia Book, Foreword - 0:12.12 - The Trinities
But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience—God-consciousness.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.3 - The Mystery Of God
When you are through down here, when your course has been run in temporary form on earth, when your trial trip in the flesh is finished, when the dust that composes the mortal tabernacle "returns to the earth whence it came"; then, it is revealed, the indwelling "Spirit shall return to God who gave it." There sojourns within each moral being of this planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designedly intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.1 - The Mystery Of God
And the greatest of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The manner in which the Universal Father sojourns with the creatures of time is the most profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of mysteries.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.6 - The Mystery Of God
To every spirit being and to every mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious and divine self that can be discerned or comprehended by such spirit beings and by such mortal creatures. God is no respecter of persons, either spiritual or material. The divine presence which any child of the universe enjoys at any given moment is limited only by the capacity of such a creature to receive and to discern the spirit actualities of the supermaterial world.
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Urantia Book, 11:0.1 - The Eternal Isle Of Paradise
Paradise is the eternal center of the universe of universes and the abiding place of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and their divine co-ordinates and associates. This central Isle is the most gigantic organized body of cosmic reality in all the master universe. Paradise is a material sphere as well as a spiritual abode. All of the intelligent creation of the Universal Father is domiciled on material abodes; hence must the absolute controlling center also be material, literal. And again it should be reiterated that spirit things and spiritual beings are real.
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Urantia Book, 50:6.4 - Planetary Culture
Culture presupposes quality of mind; culture cannot be enhanced unless mind is elevated. Superior intellect will seek a noble culture and find some way to attain such a goal. Inferior minds will spurn the highest culture even when presented to them ready-made.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.6 - True And False Liberty
True liberty is the associate of genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control; false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his fellow beings.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.9 - True And False Liberty
How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and subjects.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.8 - True And False Liberty
There is no error greater than that species of self-deception which leads intelligent beings to crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of depriving these persons of their natural liberties. The golden rule of human fairness cries out against all such fraud, unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness.