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The Bible is badly written

The bad book,

Some people think the Bible is a “good book”, the work of a perfect God. If you actually read the Bible, you’ll find that this book is not actually good in any way. It’s a very poorly written book full of stupid nonsense, false claims, and terrible advice. This post is about how bad the writing in the Bible is.

The Bible repeats itself way too much. It’s full of random non sequiturs. It does a terrible job when it attempts to quote itself, and when it tries to make analogies. And it constantly contradicts itself.

The Bible says Adam named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of everyone. But Adam wouldn’t have known anything about reproduction at that time, so that’s not a realistic thought process for him to have. He wouldn’t have known what a mother was, because mothers didn’t exist yet.

The Bible seems to indicate that God first gave humans permission to eat meat just after the flood. But two chapters before that, God gives Noah instructions about how many “clean” and “unclean” animals to take on the ark. How could God expect Noah to distinguish between those, if he hadn’t even given people permission to eat meat at all yet, much less told anyone which animals he considered “clean” or “unclean”?

The book of Job has God ask who did some things, where the answer is obviously supposed to be God. What’s the point of asking and giving away the answer at the same time? Maybe there would be a point to these questions if Job had ever said anything unreasonably arrogant, but he hadn’t.

Then it has God state that Job’s friends have not spoken the truth about God, unlike Job. Does the author not realize that he’s having God call himself cruel and unjust? Job is the one who spent almost the whole story talking about how cruel and unjust God was, while his friends did nothing but try to defend God. And now God confirms that Job was right.

Genesis says “Shechem had done an outrageous thing in Israel“. Looks like the author forgot that this story was set in a time before a place called Israel existed. Later, it says “the sons of Jacob came upon the dead bodies” in the city of Shechem. I guess that means the sons other than the ones who had left the dead bodies there?

Joseph says he was “forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews“. Did such a thing even exist in Joseph’s time? He had been carried off from the land of Canaan, which (according to the Bible) did not yet belong to the Hebrews.

It’s unclear what Joseph is trying to do when he tells his brothers to tell the Pharaoh, who apparently hates shepherds, that Joseph’s family tends livestock. Some translations have him tell his brothers to tell Pharaoh that they tend cattle, which implies that Joseph is continuing to take after his father and trying to deceive Pharaoh. But it still wouldn’t make any sense, because even in those versions, Joseph tells Pharaoh that they’re shepherds. If he’s trying to hide the fact that they’re shepherds, he’s doing a very bad job.

It says God avoided harming the Israelites during half of the Ten Plagues, but it doesn’t say so during the plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, boils, or locusts. It also never says the blood or the darkness went back to normal. Either God was being sloppy and forgetful here, or the author is.

While the Israelites were still slaves in Egypt, God told them they should celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread on that day because that was the day he had brought them out of Egypt. No, God, that hadn’t happened yet. Later, he told Aaron to put some manna with the tablets of the covenant law, which didn’t exist yet.

Leviticus 2 starts out like it’s going to tell what to do “when anyone sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands“. It then tells what to do in several more specific scenarios, but doesn’t get around to telling what to do when an ordinary individual sins until 25 verses later.

God makes it sound like a unique attibute of unclean kinds of animals is that touching their carcasses makes you unclean. But then he says the same is true of the “clean” animals. So why didn’t he just say that all animal carcasses make you unclean? There was no reason to bring up the distinction between clean and unclean kinds of animals here.

Most of Numbers 2 is written like God is giving instructions, but the quotation of God ends in verse 2.

The verse that starts with “This is how the lampstand was made:” doesn’t tell us anywhere near as much about that as you would expect from a description that starts that way.

Moses starts a sentence with “When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you”, but then he tells them what will happen at a later time, instead of telling them what will happen when they are in distress and all these things have happened to them.

He starts another sentence with “As you know,” before telling his people a bunch of geographical details about the promised land. Why would they know all that? They’ve never been there. And if they really do know, why is he telling them?

Deuteronomy 12 is a rambling mess, giving rules about eating meat that sound like maybe they’re actually trying to give rules about sacrifices, but not actually saying anything about sacrifices when giving those rules, which makes the rules sound pointlessly obvious, though if the rules really were about sacrifices, they would contradict the other rules in this chapter that actually do mention sacrifices.

Moses lists the animals that Israelites are allowed to eat. All ten of them. Then he says they can eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud. Surely that includes more than just the ten he listed? So what was the point of listing those specific ones?

Then, “of those that chew the cud or that have a divided hoof”, he lists a few specific animals that they’re not allowed to eat. But he implies that any animal that doesn’t have both of those properties is forbidden, so there was no need to list specific animals. It was also pointless for him to say “or that have a divided hoof” in that sentence, since none of the animals he listed in that sentence had those.

Moses tells the people what to do “if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done”, when no detestable thing has been specified.

He says if a guilty person “deserves to be beaten”, then the judge should have that person flogged “with the number of lashes the crime deserves“. That’s awfully vague. This seems like the kind of thing you would want to have more specific laws about. Moses seems to think that this is important enough to make a law about, but not that it’s important enough that the law needs to specify exactly when someone deserves to be beaten, and how much.

When Moses is done giving Israel the laws that he already gave them, he states that he’s now 120 years old and no longer able to lead them. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was saying he was no longer able because he was old. But that can’t be it, because the Bible says he was not weak when he died. So what was he trying to say, then?

Then Moses sings a song where he states that when God divided mankind into nations, he set up boundaries according to how many sons Israel had. That doesn’t make much sense chronologically, since nations already existed before Jacob was even born. And what does the number of sons of Israel have to do with assigning land to all the other nations, anyway?

And then Moses gives a blessing to each of the tribes of Israel. For most of the tribes, the narration includes an introductory line stating that this is what he said about that tribe. But it fails to give the tribes of Reuben, Ephraim, Mannasseh, and Issachar their own introductory lines.

Later, it says “Joshua took the entire land” and gave it to the tribes of Israel. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was saying that Joshua had taken all of the promised land. But that can’t be it, because Joshua never did take all of the promised land. A lot of it was still unconquered when Joshua died. So what was that supposed to mean, then??

In the middle of telling what land Joshua gave the Levites, the Bible states that Arba was the forefather of Anak. Other than that, it doesn’t say who Arba and Anak are, or why we need to know about them. They don’t seem to have anything to do with what it was saying. Except that it had mentioned a place that had Arba in its name. But it doesn’t say how that place is related to Arba, whoever that is.

Then Joshua lets the Israelites know that God is going to bring on them all the evil things he has threatened, until he has destroyed them from the land. Was that statement meant to be conditional on what Israel was going to do? If so, Joshua forgot to say that part. And if not, what was the point of telling them that, if they can’t do anything about it?

The book of Judges tells about a time when the Israelites “turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands.” It should have said some of their ancestors. Not all of their ancestors had been obedient.

It says Samson’s enemies were lying in wait for him all night at the city gate. And that his solution was to break off the city gate in the middle of the night and carry it away. How is that supposed to in any way help him get past his enemies?

In the story of Ruth, Naomi’s sons (who both die young) happen to have names that mean “sickness” and “wasting”. Not very realistic.

A story in 1 Samuel tells how big both the army of Israel and the army of Judah were, and a story in 2 Samuel has David count the fighting men of Israel and the fighting men of Judah separately. Looks like the author forgot that at the time of these stories, Judah was supposed to have been part of Israel. The author also forgets that Jerusalem didn’t belong to Israel yet, and has David go there after killing Goliath, like he’s coming home or something.

In 1 Samuel 20, Jonathan needs to inform David of something that he just found out, even though they both already knew it. So he conveys that information to David using an elaborate secret code, as if he’s unable to talk to him in person for some reason. Then he talks to him in person.

It says hundreds of people flocked to the fugitive David so he could be their leader. It doesn’t say why. It doesn’t say if he had ever done anything to make them want to do that.

In a psalm that David is supposed to have written while Saul was king, it says God has made David “the head of nations“. David was not the head of any nation at that time.

The author of 1 Samuel has a Philistine call David “as pleasing in my eyes as an angel of God“. Why would a Philistine talk like that? This author is not doing a very good job of writing a character who doesn’t believe in the God of Israel.

When David tries to get Uriah out of the war, to go home to his wife, Uriah objects that Israel “and Judah” (which is still not a separate entity, by the way) still have to camp out in tents because of the ongoing war. So, Uriah asks, how could he go home to eat and drink and make love to his wife at a time like this?

Well, when he asks this, Uriah is already eating and drinking at the palace. So the eating and drinking part clearly isn’t a problem for him. It seems the only thing that Uriah really objects to is specifically the prospect of having sex with his beautiful wife. Which doesn’t make much sense, except for the narrative purposes of implying to the reader why David had wanted Uriah to go home in the first place,1 and providing a reason for David to resort to getting Uriah killed.

A prophet gives David a message pointing out that God has given David “all Israel and Judah“. The author continues to forget that Judah is supposed to have been part of Israel. (In reality they had always been two separate kingdoms, but not in the Bible’s version of history. Acting like Judah is distinct from Israel in David’s time is inconsistent.)

When Shimei accuses David of having shed blood in the household of Saul, David acts like Shimei is right, even though David doesn’t kill any relatives of Saul until later. And they act like God disapproves of David supposedly having killed Saul’s relatives, but then when he actually does it, it’s because that’s what God wants him to do.

2 Samuel 20 claims that the whole nation of Israel instantly went from supporting David to abandoning him just because one guy suggested it. But it says the men of Judah stayed loyal to him, which means that what it just said is false. “All the men of Israel” didn’t desert him.

2 Samuel 23 reports what David’s last words were, which is out of place. David doesn’t die till three chapters later. Before he dies, David says he expects Solomon to know what to do, because Solomon is “a man of wisdom“. Looks like the author forgot that Solomon wasn’t supposed to have been wise yet. He doesn’t become wise until the next chapter, after David dies.

When it’s telling about Solomon’s reign, 1 Kings continues to talk about “Judah and Israel“. According to the pseudohistory of the Bible, that’s like saying “California and the United States”.

The Bible’s description of Elisha returning a miraculously resurrected boy to his mother is ridiculously boring and mechanical.

It has the other prophets call Elisha “man of God“, a phrase which in the Bible means a prophet. The prophets are all “men of God”, so why would they call him that? Wouldn’t they call him something more specific, to distinguish him from the rest of the men of God?

The Bible says some time after Elisha died, some people threw another body into Elisha’s tomb because they were in a hurry. It doesn’t explain why his tomb was open.

The story of Esther has the king of Persia state that “no document written in the king’s name and sealed with his ring can be revoked“, while doing just that.

Isaiah takes almost 50 words to say “this is what the Lord says” before getting around to actually saying what the Lord says. And it wasn’t even necessary for him to say that he was going to say what the Lord says at all, since he had already been saying what the Lord says.

God tells Jeremiah he’s going to send four kinds of destroyers, which he names and tries to say what each of them is going to do. But instead of naming any specific ways of destroying, all but one of the things he says they’re going to do are pretty much the same thing, which is killing/destroying. There was no need to say that the destroyers were going to do that. And the other thing he says one of them is going to do doesn’t seem to involve destroying at all, so why is he calling it a destroyer? Or if it does involve destroying, why didn’t he mention that?

When some people are trying to get the prophet Jeremiah executed for predicting disaster, some other people argue that that would just make God angry, and that in a previous case, listening to a prophet who predicted disaster had had good results. After that, a story about yet another prophet is inserted parenthetically in the middle of that story about Jeremiah.

In this story, a prophet who is saying the same thing as Jeremiah does get executed for predicting disaster, and it doesn’t say anything bad happened as a result. So inserting that story into Jeremiah’s story was not only pointless, but kind of undermines the point they were trying to make.

Jeremiah tells the people that God says the people have done what they said they would do. But when they said they would do it, that was part of this same conversation. It doesn’t seem like enough time has passed since they said that just now, for them to have had time to do it. Hosea 6 and Haggai 1 both end in the middle

of a sentence for some reason. In Micah 2, God tries to convince his people that he’ll bring them back to their land, when they’re still not even convinced that they’re going to have to leave their land.

Zechariah sees four chariots, and asks an angel about them. The angel tries to explain what they are and where each chariot is going, but forgets one of them.

The author of the gospel of Luke implies that the Roman census required everyone to travel to wherever their distant ancestors lived, which makes no sense. “Luke” must have made up this part just so that he could claim that Jesus was born where a prophecy said the Messiah was supposed to be born.

The author of the gospel of Matthew has Jesus ride into Jerusalem on two donkeys, because he misinterpreted the prophecy that he was basing his story on.

Jesus complains about something that the teachers of the law and Pharisees do, and something that they don’t do. Then he says they “should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former“. If he wants them to do the former, then why did he complain about them doing it?? What was the point of mentioning it at all?

Matthew inserts the command “Let the reader understand” in the middle of a sentence as if that was part of something Jesus said. Which doesn’t actually help the reader understand anything.

In the parable of the lost son, Jesus says the lost son ended up desperately in need, because of his own irresponsible actions… and also because there was a severe famine affecting the whole country. Adding a famine to the story was completely unnecessary, and weakens the point that the story was trying to make. And then Jesus forgets about the famine, and has everyone have a big feast as soon as the son gets back home.

Mark says the disciples were astonished, and others following Jesus were afraid. It doesn’t say what they were astonished by or what they were afraid of.

Matthew has the Jews declare that the responsibility for the blood of Jesus will be on their children. That seems rather unlikely to have happened. Why would they say that? Doesn’t make any sense.

Jesus was put to death for allegedly claiming to be the king of the Jews, which was apparently considered treason against the Roman emperor. But then how did all the people who actually did call Jesus the king of the Jews get away with it? The Magi, Nathanael, all the people who greeted Jesus when he came to Jerusalem, Pilate, and all the Christians should have been crucified too.

That’s assuming it really was treason to claim that the Jews had a king. But I don’t see why it would be. Can’t a king exist under an emperor without undermining the emperor’s authority? Didn’t the Roman empire already have various kings who were subordinate to the emperor? Like the Herods. Should all those kings have been crucified too?

The Bible says Pharisees, unlike Sadducees, believe in spirits and angels and resurrections. And then it says some Pharisees said Paul should be declared innocent because “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” They said that, not because that was a coherent reason for them to conclude that Paul was innocent, but just because they’re the kind of people who believe in spirits and angels. Sounds like bad fiction writing to me.

In Romans, Paul says “this” will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets. What will? You mean the thing you were talking about three verses ago?

Hebrews 11 tries to promote faith by telling about some Old Testament people who had faith. Then it admits that “all these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised.” Why is the author conceding that, and thereby undermining the whole point of this chapter, when it’s not even true? Half the people this chapter mentions weren’t promised anything to begin with. And the other half kinda did get what they were promised.

Revelation has someone claim that Babylon had boasted that she was not a widow and would never mourn. That does not sound like something that anyone would realistically boast about. The only reason it says she said that is to set Babylon up to be immediately proved wrong by God.

Revelation predicts that Satan will recruit vast numbers of people from multiple nations, and gather them for battle, and they’ll march up and surround Jerusalem… And then God will kill them all with fire from heaven. Well, that was over awfully fast.

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Fallacious reasoning in the Bible

The bad book,

I’ve written before about how the Bible contains a lot of flawed arguments, where the reasoning given really doesn’t logically support the conclusions. Now I’m about to list even more of those non sequiturs, but this time I’ll be focusing more on examples of specific common errors in reasoning. This post is about fallacies, as demonstrated by the Bible.

God told his people to celebrate Passover at a certain time because that was when he brought them out of Egypt. And he said they should eat unleavened bread because they hadn’t had time to make bread properly when they had to leave Egypt. Except those aren’t the real reasons, since they originally did these things just because God told them to, before they left Egypt. So this is just a rationalization (a made-up “reason” for something you had already decided before you thought of that reason).

The book of Psalms states that the fool says there is no God. A lot of people take that to mean that atheists are fools, but that does not logically follow from what the Bible says here. It doesn’t say atheists are fools, it just says fools are atheists. It’s logically possible for all fools to be atheists even if most atheists are not fools.

In Jeremiah, God thinks he’s implying that he’ll keep his promise to David,2 but his logic does not actually imply that. God only says what would happen if day and night were abolished. Since day and night are not being abolished any time soon, this tells us nothing about what will actually happen.

Jesus says when people insult you, slander you, and persecute you, you should be glad, because that means you’re blessed. How does he justify this bizarre claim? By pointing out that that’s how the prophets of the past were treated. But his argument is missing a premise. We would at least have to know that something good happened to those prophets, before we could possibly conclude that it was desirable to be treated like them.

To try to justify his claim that divorce is wrong, Jesus quotes a couple of fragments of scripture from Genesis. He says God “made them male and female”, and “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”. And he concludes that no one should separate what God has joined together.

But even though Jesus says “for this reason”, he’s leaving out the part where the reason was stated. What was the actual reason given in Genesis? The reason appears to be that God separated the woman from the man. Which doesn’t make any sense as a reason for them to be united, but neither does what Jesus is trying to pass off as the reason. Anyway, if you include that part that Jesus deceptively left out because it didn’t support his opinion, a more logical conclusion would be “Therefore what God has separated, let no one join together.”

Jesus lived in a culture where there was a tradition of washing your hands before eating. But his disciples didn’t follow that tradition. Doing something purely because it’s a tradition is indeed not a very good reason to do it. But if some people are washing their hands for a bad reason, that doesn’t mean there isn’t also a good reason to wash your hands. If people are giving a bad reason for something, all that tells you is that you don’t currently know of a good reason to think their conclusion is right. It doesn’t mean their conclusion is definitely wrong.

Jesus wanted to prove that the Messiah doesn’t have to be the son of David, for some reason. (Maybe because Jesus wasn’t actually a descendant of David, but wanted to get to be the Messiah anyway.) So he quoted David calling somebody “Lord”, and pointed out that that’s not how you talk to your son. Maybe he’d have a point if there was any reason to think that David was referring to the Messiah, but there isn’t.

Jesus states that a servant is not greater than his master. Then he somehow concludes that anyone who persecutes him will also persecute his disciples, and anyone who obeys him will also obey his disciples. What additional premise would be required to make these conclusions valid? You’d have to assume that anyone who either obeys or persecutes Jesus is doing it because Jesus isn’t great enough. I think we can assume that Jesus did not intend that to be taken as a premise. So his conclusion remains unjustified.

Paul tries to summarize the commandments against harming people as “Love your neighbor as yourself”. To justify this, he says love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. But doing something that doesn’t harm people isn’t enough to not be harming people. You have to also not do things that do harm people.

Ambiguity

Pharaoh didn’t want to let all the Israelites leave Egypt, including the women and children. So he claimed that Moses had only asked him to let the men go, apparently taking advantage of an ambiguity in the word that Moses had used for “people”.

God says it’s okay for Israelites to be sold, but not for them to be sold as slaves. Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me.

Moses claimed that the rules he was giving his people were not too difficult, by equivocating between the difficulty of following the rules, and the difficulty of finding out what the rules are.

When God made Naomi’s life bitter, she insisted that she should not be called Naomi, because that word means “pleasant”. Who else needs to change their names according to this silly reasoning? Busy Noahs, childless Abrahams, commoner Sarahs, humorless Isaacs, happy Leahs, non-judgemental Dans, uncharitable Hannahs, unpopular Davids, unreliable Ethans, old Cyruses, black-haired Rufuses, deaf Simons, unmanly Andrews, only-child Thomases, arrogant Pauls…

The Bible uses the loaded term “godless” as if it meant lacking morality, making it easier for people to make the baseless assumption that atheists can’t be good people.

Jesus claims that he has not come to abolish what’s written in the Law or the Prophets, he has come to fulfill them. But why is he lumping the law and the prophets together? Seems to me you could only abolish one of those and fulfill the other, not do the same thing to both.

Okay, maybe you could “fulfill” the law by obeying the law, but is something as mundane as that really what Jesus is declaring he’s come to earth to do? And how would you abolish a prophecy? Can you do that? Is that why so many of the prophecies have gone unfulfilled? Because somebody has been “abolishing” them?

Jesus argues against worrying by asking if worrying can make your life any longer. He’s implying that the answer is no, but depending on what you mean by “worrying”, it could be yes. If “worrying” just means a stressful feeling, then no, that’s probably not going to help. But if “worrying” involves doing something about your problems, as opposed to ignoring them, then “worrying” certainly can help you live longer than you would otherwise.

Jesus tries to prove that dead people have been resurrected, by quoting God saying “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. But the present tense word “am” is referring to God; it says nothing about the status of those other guys.

Jesus claims that the Sabbath was made for man, and he concludes that that means this particular man (himself) has authority over the Sabbath. If the Sabbath was indeed made for humans in general, a more defensible conclusion would be that all humans get to make the rules regarding the Sabbath. Or alternatively, a more relevant direction to take the argument would be to simply say that it doesn’t make sense to punish people for rejecting something that was made for their benefit. There’s no need to bring the question of Jesus’s authority into this.

Paul accuses his followers of being “worldly” and “mere human beings”, as if those were bad things. It sounds like he’s trying to trick them into accepting his negative descriptions of them by describing them with words that are normal or positive, and then trying to somehow attach negative connotations to those descriptions.

In Romans 4, Paul seems to conflate different concepts a bit. He doesn’t distinguish between works and work, crediting righteousness and forgiving, or lawbreaking and immorality.

Usually, the Bible correctly describes idols as nothing but inanimate objects (while incorrectly assuming that pagans think the idols are the gods they represent). Compared to that, Paul’s claim that pagan gods are really demons almost seems like a distinction without a difference.

Paul makes a very stupid argument that when God made a promise to Abraham about his descendants, he must have been talking about Jesus, because he used the word “seed”, not “seeds”. And Paul can’t even be consistent about this: In the same chapter, he claims that all Christians are “Abraham’s seed”. So he admits that “seed” can be a plural word.

Whoever wrote Hebrews tries to twist the Old Testament scriptures into supporting his beliefs: He equates two obviously completely different cases and different meanings of “good news” and a promise of entering “God’s rest”, and then another obviously completely different case and meaning of “God’s rest”, and acts like it’s all about the same thing.

The Bible contains a lot of attempts to quote earlier parts of the Bible. Most of the time, those quotes are either misinterpreted, misquoted, or don’t even appear in the earlier scriptures at all.

Personal definitions

In one of Isaiah’s prophecies, God decides to make up his own personal definition of the word “fasting“, using it to mean something other than fasting. And then he complains that the people who are fasting aren’t fasting, because they’re not doing a bunch of other things he’d like them to do, that have nothing to do with fasting. Why not just say what you mean? It would probably be easier to get people to do what you want, if you were more clear about what you want them to do.

Directing his disciples’ attention to an actual child who is in their presence, Jesus condemns “anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble”. Huh? Is he talking about children, or is he talking about believers? Those aren’t the same thing. Why is he acting like those are the same thing?

Jesus told people they could have eternal life if they followed him, but apparently when he says “eternal life”, he means something other than eternal life. Jesus seems to be making up his own personal definitions for the terms he uses, to deceive people into giving up everything for him when he’s not even planning to actually give them what he says he’ll give them.

Paul makes up his own personal definitions too, pretending that words mean something other than what they’re normally used to mean. How else could he claim that righteousness isn’t about what you do? Making up your own nonstandard way to use a word is a common way to trick people who feel a certain way about what the word normally means into feeling the same way about whatever you’re using it to mean.

This train wreck of thought is another example of Paul using a personal definition: First, he makes an obvious statement, pretends it’s a principle found in the law, and tries to prove it using an example that’s not actually an example of what he said. Then he makes up a new way to interpret “dying” that doesn’t involve actually dying, so he can conclude that the obvious statement he made means that people don’t have to follow the law. (And then he insists that he’s not saying you don’t have to follow the law…)

Also from Paul, here’s a particularly ridiculous example of a No True Scotsman fallacy: No True Me. Paul wants to be a good person, therefore whenever he does something evil, that must not have really been him doing it!

The author of Hebrews does an absurdly blatant example of the personal definition thing: He quotes a psalm that has nothing to do with whatever point he’s trying to make, that says how you should respond if you were to hear God’s voice today. And so he concludes that passages about God giving his people rest must not be referring to something that has already happened, because here’s God speaking of another day. A certain day in the future that he has chosen and called “Today”.

But actually no, God did not say anything about a day in the future. He said today. There is absolutely no reason to think that means some time in the future. That’s not what today means.

Peter tries to deny that God is slow to keep his promises, by claiming that to God, there’s no difference between a day and a thousand years. But how God perceives things is irrelevant when he’s making promises to humans. To a human, a day and a thousand years are obviously very different. It would be extremely dishonest to promise a human to do something in a day when you weren’t planning to do it for a thousand years.

In 1 John, it says No True Christian would ever turn against Christianity, and proves it by saying that all the Christians who had turned against Christianity must not have ever really been Christians, because true Christians never would have turned against Christianity.

False causes

For some reason, most people in the Bible don’t seem to be able to accept the concept that anything ever happens without it being the result of someone deciding to make it happen. Ironically, the only person in the Bible who admits that nature does things on its own is God. Everyone else thinks it’s God doing everything.

Even when something bad happens, they’ll assume God did it. Like when Jacob blamed his wife’s infertility on God. (I suppose he would have blamed Satan, but Satan hadn’t really been invented yet.) But despite attributing to God every bad thing that ever happens, they somehow never conclude that God is anything less than completely good.

The Bible claims that whenever the Israelites were oppressed and whenever they were free, it was always because God was punishing them or rewarding them. But why would God protect them only during the times when they had a human protector? Even though they continued to disobey God during those times? God does not appear to be the true cause of these events.

Abimelek, the first king of Israel, would have died from the rock a woman dropped on his head. But he had his armor-bearer kill him with a sword instead, thinking that this way no one could say a woman killed him. It didn’t work. If his head had been in better shape at the time, maybe he would have considered that events don’t have just one cause.

Killing him with the sword doesn’t change the fact that he wouldn’t have died if the woman hadn’t dropped the rock. So he should have expected people to consider the rock to be the cause of his death, and so he shouldn’t have gotten himself killed with a sword, when that wouldn’t do him any good. Not that not doing that would do him much good, either…

There’s a psalm that says with God watching over you, the moon won’t harm you at night, as if God was the reason for that. How much does the moon normally harm you at night?

When some inconsequential person named Hadad said he wanted to go back from Egypt to his own country, the Pharaoh assumed it must be because he thought Egypt was lacking in some way. It was actually because his worst enemies were dead, so now there was nothing keeping him from living in the country he’d been forced to flee from.

Solomon claims that humans trying to build a house, guard a city, or work hard to make a living have no chance of succeeding by themselves. Those things will only happen if God makes them happen. If that’s true, humans should stop pointlessly trying to do those things, and just let God do them for us. But of course that’s not really what we should do, because those things would never get done if we didn’t do them, which means Solomon is wrong.

Solomon notes that people blame God for their misfortunes that were actually caused by their own foolishness. But for some reason he never acknowledges that it’s equally wrong to give God credit for the good things humans do.

The Bible says some foreign kings attacked Judah because the people of Judah weren’t faithful enough to the God of Israel. Yeah, that’s definitely why those pagan kings did that.

When some Canaanites came to attack Judah, King Jehoshaphat made an even more inexplicably obviously wrong guess about their motivations. He thought they must be doing it to repay the Israelites for not having destroyed them when Israel first settled in Canaan. What does he even mean by “repaying”? Rewarding Israel, by waging war against them? Or punishing them because they were disappointed not to have been wiped out, when nobody but Jehoshaphat thinks those people should have been wiped out??

Someone reported to the last king of Judah that Jeremiah had been thrown into a cistern, “where he will starve to death when there is no longer any bread in the city“. Just like he would do if he wasn’t in a cistern. Why are they acting like Jeremiah is going to starve because he’s in a cistern?

In Ezekiel 33, God describes some hypothetical scenarios where people end up dying. That outcome has multiple causes, but God ignores some of the important causes when assigning blame. God’s own actions are a major cause of death in these scenarios, but God wants to put all the blame on somebody else.

Hosea wonders why death isn’t bringing plagues and the grave isn’t bringing destruction. He sounds confused about what causes what. God is confused about death too. God seems to think that if your ancestors are dead, it must be because of something they did wrong.

Daniel says the reason God gave him the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams wasn’t about how wise Daniel was. It was because God wanted Nebuchadnezzar to understand his dreams. But that doesn’t explain why he sent the explanation through Daniel. And it’s not like there can only be one reason. If Daniel’s going to deny that the first one is a reason for God doing this, he should provide another reason (in addition to the one about understanding) that explains why Daniel is involved.

Spurious correlations

Abraham’s servant decided that the first young woman who agreed to give him some water and also offered to give his camels some water must be the one God had chosen to marry Abraham’s son. That sounds like an awfully commonplace occurrence, but this weak evidence was enough to fully convince Rebekah’s father that God wanted him to let this stranger take his daughter away right now.

Judah didn’t want to let his last son marry the same woman his first two sons had married, because God had killed both of them. But Judah seems to be noticing the wrong correlation here and mistakenly assuming it’s the cause. I’m pretty sure God is supposed to have killed the first two sons because of other things they did, not because they married Tamar. Preventing someone from marrying Tamar isn’t going to stop God from killing him.

God said that in order to prove that he had sent Moses, he would give the Israelites this sign: After Moses brought them out of Egypt, they would worship God on the same mountain where God had first spoken to Moses. Looks like God is even worse than Abraham’s servant at picking signs. This is not only a mundane event that could easily happen without God being involved. It’s also something that can’t happen until well after the Israelites have already been convinced to go along with Moses, at which point there will be no need to give the sign at all.

Jonathan decided that if the Philistines challenged him to come and fight, that would be a sign that God would help him defeat them. That’s definitely not an extraordinary enough sign to justify that conclusion. He really should have gotten more solid evidence before risking his life.

Solomon says pride comes before a downfall, and humility comes before honor. The true interpretation of this is trivial: Your pride levels are likely to go up or down along with your circumstances as they change over time, so of course whenever your situation happens to go down it will be preceded by high pride, and vice versa. And the meaningful interpretation is false: You can’t reliably predict that someone’s situation is about to get better or worse based on how proud they are right now. Or based on how well they’re doing right now, for that matter.

When the kings of Aram defeated King Ahaz, he noticed that the kings of Aram were successful, and also that they were sacrificing to certain gods. So Ahaz tried sacrificing to the same gods. It didn’t make him successful.

Similarly, David called to God and then survived his enemies, and he interpreted that as God saving him. Isaiah predicted that people would think the fact that they hadn’t died meant that trusting in God had worked. And the Israelite women living in Egypt told Jeremiah they were going to start making offerings to the Queen of Heaven again, because the last time they stopped doing that, they stopped having enough food.

When Nehemiah’s enemies were coming to kill the Jews and stop the wall of Jerusalem from being rebuilt, Nehemiah prayed to God and posted armed guards at all the vulnerable places. Guess who got all the credit for keeping the city safe.

Just world

The world isn’t fair. People don’t always get what they’ve earned. But the people in the Bible, and the people writing the Bible, tend to assume that the world is morally fair. They think everything that happens to you is a fitting repayment for what you’ve done, because they think the world is run by a just God.3 Naturally, this assumption often leads them to false conclusions.

Leah thought giving her husband a son would make him finally love her (even though he was never interested in her, and had been tricked into marrying her). It never actually worked out that way for her, but she was still sure he would love her now when she had her third son. And when she had her sixth.

Joseph’s brothers were told that one of them would be held captive in Egypt, while the others would be forced to go and take their father’s last son away from him, or else they wouldn’t be allowed any more food. Then when they were on the way home, they found that they seemed to be being framed for stealing from the Egyptian authorities.

The brothers thought all this was happening to them because God was punishing them for what they had done to Joseph. But it was actually because Joseph was secretly there, playing pranks on them. (Joseph, by the way, believed that God was making sure everything would work out right in the end, and therefore his brothers had done nothing wrong by selling him as a slave.)

David said he was okay with whatever might happen to him, because he figured whatever God did to him would be what he deserved, even though he didn’t know what he deserved. He thought if he was upright enough, his integrity would protect him. When his health declined, he thought God must be punishing him for something, even though God pretty much thought David could do no wrong.

David advised people to avoid saying bad things if they wanted to have a good long life, as if there was some kind of connection between those things. He though God always provided the blameless with plenty, even during famines and disasters.

Asaph observed that the wicked were actually doing quite well, while his own life just kept getting worse despite his innocence. He started to wonder why he should bother being good if it wasn’t going to do him any good. He eventually resolved this mental conflict by ignoring the evidence, and baselessly concluding that the wicked would in some way be worse off than the righteous in the end. Another psalm mocks people for supposedly not knowing that all those prosperous evildoers are going to die, but it ignores the fact that the good people will too.

In the book of Malachi, we see one of the consequences of having a false belief in a just world: The people were so used to thinking that way, they thought being personally repaid for their own actions was the only reason to do good and not evil. God complains that now that his people have realized the world doesn’t work that way, they think there’s no reason to do good.

This problem would not have happened if God had encouraged people to focus on the real natural consequences that their actions have for everyone, instead of basing his moral teachings on selfishness and a false belief in a just world.

Mordecai told Esther she would die if she didn’t get her husband the king of Persia to stop Haman from destroying the Jews. But not just because she was one of the Jews. For some reason, Mordecai thought the rest of the Jews would be saved either way, but Esther would only live if she did the right thing.

Ezra thought the reason bad things were happening to the Jews was that they were disobeying God by marrying Canaanites.

Jesus claims that nobody needs to worry about having food and clothing. All they need to do is seek God’s kingdom through righteousness, and then they will definitely have all the food and clothing they need.

At one point, Jesus almost sounds like he gets that the world isn’t just. He points out that some people who had recently gotten killed weren’t worse sinners than anyone else. But then he concludes that if you don’t repent, you’ll perish too. Which would only make sense if people were dying because they sinned.

Another time, Jesus’s disciples asked him if a blind man was blind because he was being punished for his sin. Jesus admitted that it had nothing to do with justice, and God had made that guy blind just to give Jesus an opportunity to show off.

When a snake bit Paul, the islanders of Malta concluded that he must be an escaped murderer that Justice would not allow to live. When some of Paul’s followers got sick and died, Paul concluded that it must be because they had offended God by not having the right thoughts during ritual meals.

Job and Solomon on justice

Job’s friends insisted that if Job was really a good person, he would have nothing to worry about, because they thought bad things only ever happened to bad people. They thought wicked people were never happy for long. They were sure God would never pervert justice, so if bad things were happening to Job, it must be because Job was a bad person. And if all his kids had all gotten killed, it must be because they had done something wrong too.

Job’s friends imagined all kinds of bad things Job must have done to explain what was happening to him. They told him all he needed to do to stop bad things from happening to him was to stop being bad.

As we know from the first two chapters of Job’s story, as well as from God’s statement at the end, Job’s three friends were completely wrong about all that. What they said about God was not true. God had decided to do bad things to Job, knowing that Job had never done anything wrong to deserve it.

But even Job continued to believe that if he actually had been wicked, that would have caused misfortune for him. Though he pointed out that if his friends’ just world assumption was true, they would have a lot more to worry about than he would.

As for himself, Job didn’t know what he might have done wrong, but he wished God would stop keeping track of his sin. That might have been a reasonable response under the assumption of a just God, but God not caring whether Job had sinned or not was actually the reason Job was suffering in the first place.

As cynical as he may be, even Solomon seems pretty convinced that the world is fair. He thinks whether you seek good or evil, that’s what you’ll get. He thinks the righteous get what they want, but the wicked only get what they fear, not what they hope for. You don’t even have to wait for the afterlife. He thinks the righteous get what they deserve on earth, and the sinners even more so. He thinks you can put curses on people, but only if they deserve it. By living a righteous life, you will attain a splendorous crown of… gray hair?

Solomon apparently thinks prosperity is the fruit of righteousness. He thinks everyone who even tries to be righteous finds life, prosperity and honor. He’s sure the wicked won’t go unpunished, and that only the generous people will prosper, not the corrupt people. He says God is generous to generous people and curses stingy people.

Solomon dismisses the wealth of the wicked as deceptive and unreliable compared to the “reward” of the righteous. He thinks you’ll never be able to keep money that you didn’t earn honestly. He thinks sinners will lose their wealth to the righteous, who will be able to pass on their wealth to future generations.

Solomon thinks if you’re a troublemaker you’ll instantly bring disaster on yourself, but you don’t need to worry about ruin as long as you’re not wicked. He thinks wicked people and liars have short lives, because if you pursue evil you’ll find death, but God never lets the righteous go hungry or die. He thinks storms kill the wicked people but spare the righteous people. He thinks you can preserve your own life by avoiding doing evil.

Solomon thinks only wicked people ever get overthrown or forced to leave their land, because the righteous can’t be uprooted, while the wicked can’t even be established. He thinks being righteous makes your life easy and safe, while being wicked will only cause your downfall. He thinks the righteous get rescued, and only the wicked remain in trouble. He thinks the wicked have plenty of trouble, while the righteous are only rewarded and never harmed. He thinks attempts to harm good people always backfire and only harm bad people.

Solomon thinks you benefit yourself by being kind, and you bring ruin on yourself by being cruel. And he claims that sinful men “ambush only themselves“. So he’s not just making an unjustified just world assumption, he’s also denying the existence of the real victims.

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Things the Bible doesn’t say

Misconceptions

There are a lot of things that aren’t in the Bible, but for some reason everybody assumes they are.

Old Testament stories

The Bible doesn’t say Adam had another wife named Lilith. The only “lilith” mentioned in the Bible is some kind of creature that Isaiah said would haunt the ruins of Edom. Possibly a demon, or maybe just an owl. And the word Isaiah uses is plural, so it’s not an individual. The idea of Lilith being a wife of Adam seems to have come from an 8th-century work of satirical fiction.

The Bible doesn’t say Adam and Eve ate an apple. It just says they ate a certain kind of fruit that was forbidden. You don’t think eating apples is forbidden, do you? I’m not sure why anyone would assume the fruit that was forbidden was an apple, when they don’t regard apples as forbidden in any other context.4

It doesn’t say that nudity became sinful when Adam and Eve sinned, or that their sin was actually discovering sex, or anything like that. The first thing God ever said to humans was telling them to reproduce, so he clearly didn’t have a problem with sex. And it never says God thought there was anything wrong with people being naked. That was Adam and Eve’s own sin-induced perception, which God didn’t really seem to agree with.

It doesn’t say Cain and Abel were Adam and Eve’s only children. They were their first, but it says Adam had other sons and daughters. Noah, and therefore everyone after him, was descended from Adam and Eve’s son Seth, not from Cain. (At least not patrilineally.)

It doesn’t say the mark of Cain was a curse of any kind. It says God cursed Cain, but then agreed to also give him a mark that would prevent people from killing him. Having the mark was desirable for Cain. It also doesn’t say Cain’s mark was the origin of dark skin. The Bible never says what the mark looked like. It doesn’t say Ham or his son Canaan had dark skin, either.

The Bible doesn’t say the dove brought back an olive branch to Noah. It was an olive leaf. Only one English version I know of mistranslates it as a branch.

It doesn’t say Job was patient. In fact, Job specifically rejects the idea that there’s any reason he should be patient. His resolve to refrain from criticizing God lasts no more than the first two chapters. Then for the next thirty chapters or so, he does almost nothing but rant about how cruelly and unjustly God is treating him, and how he can’t wait to meet God so he can let him know what God has done wrong.5 I have no idea why people think of Job as patient. What could he have done that would show less patience?

It doesn’t say God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. The Sodomite men in the story do seem to be gay; they all want to have sex with the men visiting Lot, and they aren’t interested when Lot offers to let them have sex with his daughters instead.6 But the Bible never says that was why God destroyed Sodom.

There are two passages in the Bible that give specific reasons for Sodom and Gomorrah being considered evil. One is a list of failings that have nothing to do with sex. The other says they were punished for sexual immorality, but it doesn’t specify what kind of acts they were being punished for.

The Bible doesn’t say Joseph was the youngest son of Jacob. Benjamin was the youngest.

It doesn’t say God killed Onan for masturbating. It says God killed him for refusing to impregnate his brother’s wife. He could have completely avoided any kind of sexual act, and God still would have killed him. It doesn’t say Onan ever masturbated, and God never said there was anything wrong with masturbation anyway.

It doesn’t say Moses grew up not knowing he was a Hebrew. There is no scene in the Bible where he finds out he was adopted.

It doesn’t say the Pharaoh that Moses freed Israel from was Ramesses II. Most Pharaohs mentioned in the Bible, including that one, go unnamed.

It doesn’t say atheists are fools, or that they’re uncommonly evil. That verse in the Psalms says fools are atheists, which is not the same thing. If all fools are atheists, it’s still possible that most atheists aren’t fools. And it says everyone in the world is evil, not just the atheists.

It doesn’t say Jezebel was a prostitute. Apparently some people think she was because it mentions her putting on makeup once?? But in context, it certainly doesn’t seem like she’s trying to seduce anyone.

It doesn’t say Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Every translation I know of calls it a fish. Not that the ancient writers of the story would have even been aware of that distinction. And the mention of the fish in the book of Matthew does sometimes get translated as “whale”. But still, that’s not what the actual book of Jonah says. So why do people always call it a whale?

New Testament stories

The Bible doesn’t say anything about an “immaculate conception”. It does mention a virgin birth, of course, but the immaculate conception is something entirely different. Immaculate conception means being conceived without inheriting sin, which some Christians believe is true of Jesus’s mother Mary. But that didn’t become an official part of Catholic belief until the 19th century, because the Bible says nothing about it.

It doesn’t say how old Mary was when she married Joseph. Getting married at 12 wouldn’t have been anything unusual in the past, but the Bible doesn’t actually mention her age. Or his.

It doesn’t say Mary and Joseph were immigrants when Jesus was born. Some American liberals like to call them “undocumented immigrants” or “refugees” for some reason. They were not any of those things. At least not until they fled to Egypt a couple of years later, which I’m pretty sure is not what those people have in mind.

It doesn’t say Mary and Joseph had to stay in a stable because there was no room in the inn and they couldn’t go somewhere else because she was about to give birth. It just says she gave birth “while they were there”, not necessarily the night they arrived. And it doesn’t even mention an inn or a stable at all! All it says is that Mary put her baby in a manger “because there was no guest room available“. More likely, they were staying with relatives. With the livestock that the relatives had brought into their house, because people did that back then.

It doesn’t actually mention any animals being present when Jesus was born, though.

It doesn’t say Jesus was born on the 25th of December. Winter seems like an unlikely time for a Roman census. Or for shepherds to be out in the fields at night. Based on what the Bible actually says, it’s arguably more likely Jesus was conceived around that date, and born in September.7

The Bible doesn’t say three wise men visited baby Jesus, much less say what their names were. It just says the wise men (however many there might have been) brought him three gifts. It doesn’t say the wise men were kings. They were Magi, which might mean they were mathematicians, astronomers, priests, astrologers, alchemists, or magicians, but not kings. And it doesn’t say the wise men came on the night Jesus was born. It was more like two years later.

The Bible doesn’t say Mary was a virgin all her life. It says Joseph married her, and abstained from sex until Jesus was born. (The author wouldn’t have included that qualifier if he hadn’t mean that they did have sex after Jesus was born.) And later, it says Jesus had brothers and sisters.8

It doesn’t say Christ was Jesus’s last name. His followers called him by the title Christ, because they believed he was the Messiah, which is what Christ means. But other people wouldn’t have called him that. To everyone else, he was Jesus of Nazareth, or Jesus son of Joseph.

It doesn’t say Jesus had long hair.9 According to the Bible, long hair on a man is disgraceful. It doesn’t say Jesus dressed in white, either. The Bible doesn’t say anything about what he looked like. Unless you count the alleged Old Testament prophecies about him, which call him horrifyingly ugly.

It doesn’t say Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Just about all it says about her is that she saw Jesus die and she saw him after he rose and she used to be possessed by seven demons. So where did people get the idea that she was a prostitute? Well, Luke and John both have stories where a woman pours perfume on Jesus’s feet. Luke’s story describes the woman as sinful, and in John’s story the woman is Lazarus’s sister Mary.

But to conclude that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute based on that, you would have to make three questionable assumptions: that both of these stories are supposed to refer to the same event even though they take place in different locations, that Mary Magdalene was Lazarus’s sister (note that there are several different people named Mary in the gospels), and that the “sinful” woman was specifically a prostitute.

The Bible doesn’t say the Jews killed Jesus. At least not directly. It says they wanted to,10 but under Roman rule they weren’t allowed to execute anyone themselves. So they had to convince the Romans to do it. Pilate tried to put all the blame on the Jews, even though he could have easily overruled their wishes if he really didn’t want Jesus to die. But anyway, the Bible says it was really God’s idea. Blame him.

It doesn’t say Saul of Tarsus changed his name and became Paul when he converted to Christianity. He just always had two names, a Hebrew name and a Latin name, because he was born both a Jew and a Roman citizen. He may have used the name Paul more often when he was traveling outside Judea to preach to the Gentiles, because he wanted to be relatable, but he never stopped being Saul.

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The Story of the Exile of Israel and Judah—
The End of the Independent Hebrew Kingdoms

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Where the Samaritans came from, according to the Jews

Jotham’s son Ahaz was an evil king of Judah, so God sent the kings of Israel and Aram to fight against him and defeat him after God had promised they wouldn’t defeat him.11 After God predicted Assyria would destroy Judah, Ahaz got the king of Assyria to instead help him attack Israel, by giving him all the gold and silver from the temple of God.

Hoshea, the next king of Israel, was an evil traitor. When the king of Assyria found that out, he took Hoshea prisoner and conquered his country, putting an end to the kingdom of Israel. The people of Israel were exiled to Assyria, becoming the Ten Lost Tribes. The king of Assyria sent foreign pagans to settle in the former land of Israel, becoming Samaritans.

How Hezekiah used the gift of success

Ahaz’s son Hezekiah was the most righteous king Judah ever had. So God made him successful at everything. Hezekiah successfully convinced God to let his people break God’s law by celebrating the Passover in any way they wanted.

He successfully rebelled against the king of Assyria, so God told the king of Assyria to destroy Judah. But righteous Hezekiah kept the king of Assyria from conquering Judah by giving him all the gold and silver from the temple of God (which his father had already given to the king of Assyria). After Hezekiah successfully convinced the king of Assyria not to conquer Judah, the king of Assyria continued to try to conquer Judah, as God had commanded him, until God got him killed.

Hezekiah got sick, and God sent a prophet to tell him that he would never recover. But Hezekiah successfully convinced the never-changing God to change his mind, and so he recovered anyway.

Men from Babylon came to visit Hezekiah, and he showed them all the treasure and stuff he owned. The prophet told Hezekiah that now that the Babylonians knew about all that treasure, they were going to steal it all some day. And they would kidnap and castrate some of Hezekiah’s descendants. Righteous Hezekiah said he didn’t mind that, since he wouldn’t be around when it happened.

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The End of the Independent Hebrew Kingdoms →
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The Bible’s questions, answered—part 9: Answers to questions in Psalms

The bad book

The Bible contains a lot of questions, and it doesn’t always provide satisfactory answers. So I’ve been answering some of the Bible’s questions myself. This time, I’m looking at questions from the Psalms.

A king asks: Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? Answer: It probably has something to do with how tyrannical you and your God are being.

Someone asks God: Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Answer: Because he doesn’t exist.

He asks: Why does the wicked man revile God? Answer: Because God’s even more wicked?

And he asks: Why does he say to himself, “He won’t call me to account”? Answer: Experience?

Ethan the Ezrahite asks: Who in the skies above can compare with the Lord? Who is like the Lord among the heavenly beings? Answer: Does Satan count? He and God have a lot in common.

Ethan asks: How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Answer: Yes, God never listens to humans. Other than that one time.

He asks: Who can live and not see death, or who can escape the power of the grave? Answer: Enoch and Melchizadek and Elijah.

He asks God: Where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David? Answer: He broke his promise to David, but what’s it to you, Ethan?

Moses asks: How long will it be? Answer: How long will what be? How long will our lives be limited to around 70 or 80 years? It’s still about like that over 3000 years later. Maybe we’ll be able to do something about that eventually, but not by waiting around for God to do something.

Someone asks some fools: When will you become wise? Answer: The Bible claims it’s impossible, but the Bible’s wrong, as usual.

He asks: Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see? Answer: The blind watchmaker does not hear or see.

Then he asks: Does he who disciplines nations not punish? Answer: Judging by what the Bible says about God, it seems like he mainly just punishes people who don’t deserve to be punished.

And he asks: Does he who teaches mankind lack knowledge? Answer: Yes.

He asks: Can a corrupt throne be allied with you—a throne that brings on misery by its decrees? Answer: You mean evil kings like David? Apparently yes.

Someone asks: Had the Egyptians not rebelled against God’s words in Moses’s time? Answer: No, the Egyptians had done exactly what God made them do.

Someone asks: Why was it, sea, that you fled? Why, Jordan, did you turn back? Why, mountains, did you leap like rams, you hills, like lambs? Answer: Because your author is insane?

Someone asks: Why do the nations say, “Where is their God?” Answer: Because you don’t use idols to represent your god, like they’re used to.

Someone asks: How long must your servant wait? When will you punish my persecutors? Answer: Never.

Someone asks: What will he do to you, and what more besides, you deceitful tongue? Answer: He won’t do any more to you than what he does to you, you deceitful tongue.

Someone asks: Where does my help come from? Answer: Helpful people.

Someone asks God: If you kept a record of sins, who could stand? Answer: Poor people who hate their unpleasant lives, but still dress right and get places on time. And rich people with lots of friends. And people who live with Christians, but don’t care about evil, and then get destroyed by Satan. And whoever else God randomly decided he wanted to save.

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The Bible’s questions, answered—part 8: Answers to questions for Job

The bad book,

The Bible contains a lot of questions, and it doesn’t always provide satisfactory answers. So I’ve been answering some of the Bible’s questions myself. This time, I’m looking at questions that Job was asked.

Eliphaz’s questions

Eliphaz asks Job: If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? Answer: Yes. I don’t know why people think of Job as patient.

Eliphaz asks: But who can keep from speaking? Answer: Elihu can, for a while anyway.

Eliphaz asks Job: Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope? Answer: Apparently not. They clearly didn’t do him any good.

Eliphaz asks: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Answer: Who hasn’t?

And he asks: Where were the upright ever destroyed? Answer: On Earth.

He asks: Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker? Answer: lol that doesn’t sound hard

Eliphaz asks Job: Call if you will, but who will answer you? Answer: God will. Sort of. Eventually.

Eliphaz asks Job: Are you the first man ever born? Answer: No.

And he asks Job: Were you brought forth before the hills? Answer: No.

He asks Job: Do you listen in on God’s council? Answer: No.

And he asks Job: Do you have a monopoly on wisdom? Answer: No.

He asks him: What do you know that we do not know? What insights do you have that we do not have? Answer: He knows his own past better than you do.

Then he asks him: Are God’s consolations spoken gently to you not enough for you? Answer: Maybe they would be if God had actually said anything to him…

And he asks him: Why has your heart carried you away so that you vent your rage against God? Answer: Because God is torturing him and ruining his life.

He asks: What are mortals, that they could be righteous? Answer: If a perfect God made them, they must be perfect.

Eliphaz asks: Can a man be of benefit to God? Can even a wise person benefit him? Answer: No, that’s why he… didn’t create us?

Eliphaz asks Job: What pleasure would it give God if you were righteous? What would he gain if your ways were blameless? Answer: He wouldn’t be affected at all.

He asks Job: Is it for your piety that he rebukes you and brings charges against you? Answer: It’s not really a reaction to Job’s behavior at all. It’s just a test, that God failed.

He asks him: Is not your wickedness great? Are not your sins endless? Answer: Yes, they are not.

Eliphaz asks: Is not God in the heights of heaven? Answer: Apparently not. Why would God say he was lifting his hand “to heaven” if he was already in heaven? Why would the Bible say his judgment “rises as high as the heavens” if that was where it was coming from? How could Jesus go to heaven when he died and then come back without having returned to God, if that was where God was? It’s not even possible for God to be in heaven. The heavens can’t contain him.

Eliphaz imagines Job asking: What does God know? Answer: Little enough that he feels the need to perform unethical experiments on people in order to learn more about them.

He imagines Job asking: Does he judge through such darkness? Answer: The Father judges no one.

Eliphaz asks Job: Will you keep to the old path that the wicked have trod? Answer: No, you can’t stay where you’ve never been.

Eliphaz imagines the wicked asking: What can God do to us? Answer: See preceding verse.

Bildad’s questions

Bildad asks Job: How long will you say such things? Answer: 20 chapters.

Bildad asks: Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right? Answer: All the time.

Bildad asks Job: Will former generations not instruct you and tell you? Answer: No, no one from an older generation participates in this conversation. (Unless you count God.)

Bildad asks Job: When will you end these speeches? Answer: Chapter 31.

He asks Job: Why are we considered stupid in your sight? Answer: Because you have faith in the goodness of God, and that’s stupid.

And he asks him: Is the earth to be abandoned for your sake? Or must the rocks be moved from their place? Answer: No, God mainly just needs to stop actively tormenting innocent people.

Bildad asks: Can God’s forces be numbered? Answer: Let me see… Zero. Yeah, that wasn’t so hard.

He asks: On whom does his light not rise? Answer: “Rise”? Are you talking about the sun? Then some possible biblical answers are: Pharaoh, the wicked, Israel, prophets, and Paul.

Bildad asks: How can a mortal be righteous before God? Answer: I already answered that when Eliphaz asked it.

Zophar’s questions

Zophar asks: Are all these words to go unanswered? Answer: No.

He asks: Is this talker to be vindicated? Answer: Yes.

Zophar asks Job: Will your idle talk reduce others to silence? Answer: No.

He asks him: Will no one rebuke you when you mock? Answer: No, no one will not rebuke him.

And he asks: When God sees evil, does he not take note? Answer: If he does, he must not care much. Most of the time he does nothing about it.

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The Bible’s questions, answered—part 7: Answers to questions from Job

The bad book,

The Bible contains a lot of questions, and it doesn’t always provide satisfactory answers. So I’ve been answering some of the Bible’s questions myself. This time, I’m looking at questions that Job asked. But first, a couple of questions from God to Satan.

God asks Satan: Where have you come from? Answer: I suppose God must have created him. What did you do that for, God?

On another day, God asks Satan: Have you considered my servant Job? Answer: Yes, he already told you in the previous chapter what he thought about Job. Have you forgotten already?

Job asks: Why did I not die at birth? Answer: Because then God wouldn’t get to torture you, I guess.

Job asks: Does a wild donkey bray when it has grass? Answer: Yes, donkeys bray for lots of different reasons.

He asks: Is tasteless food eaten without salt? Answer: I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case somewhere in the world.

And he asks: Is there flavor in the sap of the mallow? Answer: Not much.

He asks: Is there any wickedness on my lips? Answer: No, there’s nothing wrong with saying God is unjust. God doesn’t seem to think there is, anyway. After Job spends the whole book insisting that God has treated him unjustly, God says Job has spoken the truth about him.

Job asks: Do not mortals have hard service on earth? Are not their days like those of hired laborers? Answer: I guess so… for the ones that are hired laborers, at least.

He asks: Are not my few days almost over? Answer: No.

He asks: Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food? Answer: Depends on what you mean by “test”. That sounds more like the brain’s department to me.

And he asks: Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding? Answer: Not significantly.

Then he asks: Why do I put myself in jeopardy and take my life in my hands? Answer: You want to challenge God’s apparent assessment of your morality because you aren’t fully aware of just how little God cares about that.

He asks: Can anyone bring charges against me? Answer: Yes, but they’re false ones.

He asks: How many wrongs and sins have I committed? Answer: None that I know of.

Job asks: Who can bring what is pure from the impure? His self-answer: No one. Alternative biblical answer: Elisha can. So can silversmiths. And harvesters. And fathers. God does it all the time, too. Your tongue is a world of evil, full of deadly poison, but that doesn’t stop it from praising God. And evildoers who don’t do God’s will can drive out demons and stuff just as well as anyone.

He asks: If someone dies, will they live again? His implied answer: No. Alternative biblical answer: Yes. Real answer: Not likely, but it depends on how you define death.

He asks: Where is my hope? Who can see any hope for me? Answer: You did just a few verses ago.

And he asks: Will it go down to the gates of death? Will we descend together into the dust? Answer: Yes.

He asks: Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? Answer: Because there’s no just God running the world.

Job asks: How often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out? Implied answer: Not often enough. Real answer: Always. All wicked people die, just like all good people.

He asks: Who denounces the conduct of the wicked to their face? Answer: The people who disapprove of them?

And he asks: Who repays them for what they have done? Answer: The legal system?

Job asks: Who can understand “the thunder of his power”? Answer: Anyone who cares to learn about it.

Job asks: Where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Answer: In wise people.

Questions about God

Job asks his wife: Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? Answer: Yes, of course. Unless we reject the idea that God is completely good, it would make no sense to accept that God did something bad.

Job changes his tune, and asks: Why is life and light given to those in bitter misery, who God has hedged in, who seek and long for death that does not come, who will rejoice when they reach the grave? Answer: You can’t improve things if you’re dead.

Job asks: How can mere mortals prove their innocence before God? Answer: Just be innocent, and he’ll know. He may not care, though.

He asks: Who has resisted God and come out unscathed? Answer: Satan seems to be doing fine so far. Or how about George Carlin? Or Charles Bradlaugh…

Then he asks: Who can say to him, “What are you doing?” Answer: Anyone.

He asks: How can I dispute with him? How can I find words to argue with him? Answer: No problem, he doesn’t even disagree with you. Just keep going.

And he asks: If it is a matter of justice, who can challenge him? Answer: Come on, look at what you just said about him a few verses ago. And a few verses after. It’s not at all hard to beat that. Unless by “who can challenge him”, you mean “Who could be less just?”, or “Who can convince him to stop being so unjust”…

Job asks: If you ask the animals, which of them does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? Answer: I couldn’t get any animals to talk to me about God, so I can only assume that none of them know.

He asks: Could you deceive him as you might deceive a mortal? Answer: Well, the book of Hebrews claims that Abraham knew all along that he wasn’t actually going to lose the son God told him to sacrifice. If that was true, that would mean Abraham tricked God into thinking he had proven that Abraham was willing give up his son for him, when Abraham didn’t actually expect to lose his son at all. So if Hebrews is right, I guess it is possible to deceive God.

Job asks: Is my complaint directed to a human being? Why should I not be impatient? Answer: You might think it would be because God doesn’t like that, but in this case it doesn’t really matter if Job does things God doesn’t like, since this story is about God punishing him even when he’s done nothing wrong.

Job imagines people asking: What would we gain by praying to God? Answer: The same results you would get if you prayed to a jug of milk.

Job asks: Can anyone teach knowledge to God, since he judges even the highest? Answer: Sure, might doesn’t make him right.

Job asks: If I could state my case before God, would he vigorously oppose me? Job’s self-answer: No, he would not press charges against me. Real answer: Yes, he already knows you’re innocent, so telling him so wouldn’t make any difference.

He asks: Who can oppose God? Answer: Jacob can physically overpower him!

Job asks: Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment? Why must those who know him look in vain for such days? Answer: Many answers have been proposed for questions like that. None of them make much sense except that God doesn’t exist.

Then he asks: If it’s not true that God makes sure wicked people quickly die, who can prove me false and reduce my words to nothing? Answer: Uh… you? You’re the one who’s been arguing against that.

He asks: What hope do the godless have when God takes away their life? Biblical answer: Same as anyone else who dies. None. The dead are all cut off from God and he never remembers them again. But don’t worry, that’s no worse than being alive, since there’s no hope for the living either!

Then he asks: Does God listen to their cry when distress comes upon them? Answer: No, God doesn’t listen to anyone.

He asks: Will they find delight in the Almighty? Will they call on God at all times? Answer: Will “the godless” do that? Uh, no.

Job asks: What is our lot from God? Is it not ruin for the wicked, disaster for those who do wrong? Answer: Yes, it is not.

And he asks: What will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account? Answer: You should tell him he shouldn’t have punished you for nothing, since doing that could easily make you give up on trying to please him. But all you’ll actually do is act like God has given you some reason to think you were wrong, when he hasn’t, and when he doesn’t even think you’ve said anything wrong.

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The Bible’s questions, answered—part 6: Answers to questions after the split

The bad book

The Bible contains a lot of questions, and it doesn’t always provide satisfactory answers. So I’ve been answering some of the Bible’s questions myself. This time, I’m looking at questions from Old Testament stories after the kingdom split in two.

The people of Israel ask: What share do we have in David? Answer: Ten shares.

A widow asks Elijah: Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son? Answer: No.

Ahab’s palace administrator asks Elijah: Haven’t you heard that while Jezebel was killing God’s prophets, I hid a hundred of them in two caves and supplied them with food and water? Answer: Apparently he didn’t even hear you just now. He still thinks he’s the only prophet of God left.

God asks Elijah, twice: What are you doing here? Answer: Going on the journey your angel sent him on.

God asks: Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there? Answer: Nobody has to. It was his idea in the first place.

When a Shunammite woman says she’s going to see Elisha, who has performed miracles to help her in the past, her husband asks: Why go to him today? Answer: Your son just died, in case you didn’t notice.

Elisha’s servant asks the Shunammite woman: Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your child all right? Her answer: Everything is all right. Real answer: No.

When Elisha predicts that grain will sell for normal prices tomorrow, an officer asks: Even if the Lord opened the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen? Answer: It’s not magic.

An officer asks the commander that God has chosen as the next king of Israel: Why did this maniac (prophet) come to you? Answer: To tell him to murder a bunch of slaves.

A priest’s son asks the people of Judah: Why do you disobey the Lord’s commands? Answer: Because it’s impossible not to?

Mordecai asks Esther: Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this? Answer: I would think it would have been pretty well known that she was put in that position to replace Vashti.

Haman asks himself: Who is there that the king would rather honor than me? Answer: Esther? Oh, and that guy that saved his life. Him too.

Nehemiah’s enemies ask him: What is this you are doing? Answer: Planning.

They ask them: Are you rebelling against the king? Answer: No.

Later, one of those enemies asks: What are those feeble Jews doing? Answer: Restoring their wall.

He asks: Will they restore their wall? Answer: Yes.

He also asks: Will they offer sacrifices? Answer: Yes.

Then he asks: Will they finish in a day? Answer: No.

And he asks: Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble? Answer: You can’t bring something back to life if it was never alive.

Nehemiah asks the nobles and officials among his people: Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? Answer: Doesn’t sound like the best plan to me. Why would your Gentile enemies care about that?

Nehemiah asks his enemies: Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you? Answer: They think you should stop because they think the Jews are plotting a rebellion.

Nehemiah asks: Should a man like me run away? Or should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? Answer: I don’t see why not. There’s not a law against that, is there?

Nehemiah asks: Why is the house of God neglected? Answer: Because there’s no God living in it.

Nehemiah asks the nobles of Judah: What is this wicked thing you are doing—desecrating the Sabbath day? Answer: Providing people with food.

He asks them: Didn’t your ancestors do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity on us and on this city? Answer: No, I don’t remember Sabbath violations being one of the reasons given for the fall of Jerusalem.

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The Bible’s questions, answered—part 5: Answers to questions in the reigns of David and Solomon

The bad book

The Bible contains a lot of questions, and it doesn’t always provide satisfactory answers. So I’ve been answering some of the Bible’s questions myself. This time, I’m looking at questions in the stories from when David, and then his son Solomon, ruled over all Israel.

Saul’s cousin asks David’s nephew: Why should I strike you down? Answer: You shouldn’t.

Saul’s son asks Saul’s cousin: Why did you sleep with my father’s girlfriend? Answer: Why not? Your father is dead.

David’s other nephew, Joab, asks him: What have you done? Answer: Things David had done in that chapter include waging war against the people he promised not to kill, having children with a bunch of women we’ve never heard of before, and demanding that Abner do him a favor before he’ll allow Abner to do him another favor.

Joab asks him: Why did you let Abner go? Answer: So Abner could continue to help him become king of Israel.

Mephibosheth asks David: What am I, that you should notice a dead dog like me? Answer: A dead dog, apparently. And David is a worm, so maybe he intends to eat the dead dog?

The Ammonite commanders ask their new king: Do you think David is honoring your father by sending envoys to you to express sympathy? Answer: Yes, he thinks that. Also, it’s true.

They ask: Hasn’t David sent them to you only to explore the city and spy it out and overthrow it? Answer: No.

Uriah asks: With the ark of the covenant and the men of Israel currently in tents, how could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? Answer: Well, you’re already eating and drinking at the palace, so that part clearly isn’t a problem for you…

David’s attendants ask: How can we now tell him his child is dead? Answer: By answering his question when he asks if his child is dead.

When David abruptly stops mourning as soon as he finds out his child is dead, they ask him: Why are you acting this way? Answer: Because he thinks he can manipulate God.

A woman asks David: Why then have you done this? When you side against people trying to kill my son, do you not convict yourself, since you have not brought back your own banished son? Answer: No, David never tried to kill his son like the people he condemned in the woman’s story, so no hypocrisy here.

Absalom tells Joab that he had told Joab to ask David: Why have I come from Geshur? Answer: Because Joab wanted you to. Ask him, not David.

Abishai asks: Shouldn’t Shimei be put to death for cursing David? Answer: For speaking? Of course not.

Barzillai asks David: Why should I be an added burden to you? Answer: Because David was a burden to you?

He asks: Why should the king reward me in this way? Answer: Because you provided for him.

The men of Israel ask: Why did the men of Judah steal the king away? Answer: Nobody’s taking your king away. David is still king of Israel. Which isn’t even separate from Judah at this time anyway.

When David tells Joab to count the men of Israel, Joab asks: Why do you want to do such a thing? Answer: So he’ll know how many there are. Also because God told him to.

The prophet Nathan says God asks: Did I ever say to any leader of my people, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” Answer: Well, Nathan had just told David that God wanted him to do that. So either the answer is yes, or Nathan is a false prophet and should be killed.

God imagines future people asking: Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple? Answer: Because he was so bad at demonstrating his existence and superiority that the people decided they might as well be worshiping worthless idols.

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The Bible’s questions, answered—part 4: Answers to questions in the reign of Saul

The bad book

The Bible contains a lot of questions, and it doesn’t always provide satisfactory answers. So I’ve been answering some of the Bible’s questions myself. This time, I’m looking at questions from when Saul was king of Israel.

Some Israelites ask: How can Saul save us? Answer: By threatening to destroy the property of any Israelites who don’t help him fight their enemies.

Samuel asks Saul: Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder? Answer: He did obey the Lord, and he did not pounce on the plunder. He was still going to destroy all those animals, just like God told him to. He just hadn’t done it yet.

Samuel asks: Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? Answer: Who knows? The Bible has some seriously mixed messages on those issues.

After Jesse presents seven of his sons to Samuel, Samuel asks him: Are these all the sons you have? Jesse’s answer: No, there’s an eighth son. Alternative biblical answer: Yes, Jesse had seven sons.

Goliath asks the Israelites: Why do you come out and line up for battle? Answer: Because the Philistines did.

The Israelites ask each other: Do you see how this man Goliath keeps coming out? Answer: Probably. He seems kind of hard to ignore.

David’s brother angrily asks him: Why have you come down here? Answer: To see how you’re doing and to bring you food.

He also asks David: With whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? Answer: Another shepherd.

Goliath asks David: Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks? Answer: He’s coming at you with stones, not sticks.

Saul asks: What more can David get but the kingdom? Answer: Your daughter.

Saul asks his daughter: Why did you deceive me and let my enemy escape? Answer: Because your enemy is her husband.

Jonathan, skeptical of the idea that Saul is trying to kill David, asks: Why would he hide this from me? Answer: Telling you to kill David for him is not hiding it from you.

Jonathan asks David: If I knew my father wanted to harm you, wouldn’t I tell you? Answer: That seems pretty unnecessary when your father has already blatantly tried to murder David several times. Plus, you already did tell him.

Saul asks: Why hasn’t David come to the meal yesterday or today? Answer: Could it have something to do with the fact that you’ve tried to kill him repeatedly?

Jonathan asks a confused boy: Isn’t the arrow beyond you? Answer: No.

The Philistines ask: Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Answer: No, Saul is the king.

Achish king of the Philistines asks: Why must this madman come into my house? Answer: It was the madman’s idea to go to you. Ask him.

Saul asks: Is that your voice, David my son? Answer: No, it’s the voice of David Jesse’s son.

Saul asks: When a man finds his enemy, does he let him get away unharmed? Answer: Depends on how serious their enemyship is, the man’s moral beliefs, his self-control, etc.

Nabal asks: Who is this David? Answer: The son of Jesse.

He also asks: Who is this son of Jesse? Answer: David.

Then he asks: Why should I take my bread and water and the meat meant for my shearers, and give it to this David guy? Answer: Because he deserves a reward for not harming you. /s

Abner asks: Who are you who calls to the king? Answer: Nobody’s calling to the king. He’s calling to the commander.

Ghost-Samuel asks Saul: Why do you consult me, now that the Lord has departed from you and become your enemy? Answer: Because he can’t consult the Lord, because the Lord has departed from him and become his enemy.

The Philistines ask: How better could David regain Saul’s favor than by taking the heads of our own men? Answer: He doesn’t need to. He already did that a few chapters ago.

The Philistines ask: Isn’t this the David who the women of Israel sang about, saying he had slain tens of thousands? Answer: Yes, but they were wrong. He hadn’t done that yet.

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