Genesis

“In the beginning…”

You know the story. Genesis.

A primeval account of creation, not just of Earth, but of the entire universe. Firmament. Day and night. The animals. Man and woman, then, in the following chapter, man again, followed by rib woman.

It’s fun to note that Ethiopia and Assyria and the Euphrates are clearly named even though the entire universe has just been created. All of this was documented… but by whom?

Ethiopia and Assyria and the Euphrates were clearly named even though the entire universe has just been created. All of this was also documented… but by whom?

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Everybody knows about the misogynist inclusion of making Eve the excuse for the Fall of Man. Everybody knows the story about God not knowing about Adam and Eve eating the apple, and God not knowing about Cain killing his brother. Seriously discounts omnipotence and omniscience. Common questions include: “Where did Mrs. Cain come from?” Or “Where the fuck was Nod?” And “Who the hell was Cain afraid would kill him?”

We’re not really going to discuss the flood and the ridiculous nature of it, let alone that there are disparaging accounts surrounding it… Was it 40 days, 150, or a year? We don’t need to talk about the fallen angels breeding with the earth girls to create giants behind Mr. Omniscient’s back. No. We don’t need to point any of this out. These are things everyone already knows. The rest of Genesis is just lineage, so we’ll not really focus on that either. Let’s try to figure out why it’s completely fucked up.

One thing to note is that Genesis is dived into the Primeval (first 11 chapters) and the Ancestral (the rest). The Primeval section is incredibly important to Christianity for the concept of Original Sin, thereby linking the need for the Jesus/scapegoat figure. The Ancestral section establishes the Jewish claim to Israel and their covenants with God.

Genesis was allegedly written by Moses, but there are some problems with that. Firstly, dating puts the stories at around 800 to 900 BCE. That is a few hundred years late for this to be possible, according to Biblical scholars. Also, Moses was many generations away from Creation. In the last book of the Torah, he even writes about his own death (spoiler alert). The most damning thing, however, are the contradictions mentioned earlier herein.

Genesis was allegedly written by Moses, but there are some problems with that…

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The accepted theory is that the stories are a collected anthology of the early Jewish cults (sects, if you prefer). These are the Jehovists, Elohimists, Priestly Accounts, and Deuteronomists. A scholarly bible has the designations J, E, P, and D beside each passage of the Torah. This actually started with King Hezekiah, the 13th King of Judah. He wanted unification of the Jewish ideology, which was not unified at all. So, to be inclusive, he combined multiple ideas from multiple sources and started the contradictory, less than rational, and contorted story that we know as Genesis.

Thanks for reading!