Once a while when I stumble upon interesting social issues or write ups, I post them here for interested persons to read and consider them. I guess because some of these issues are not the usual Jackie Appiah, Nadia Buari and Yvonne Nelson stories, some people think they should not be on here.
Anyway, I came across the below article this morning written by a Ghanaian “Kwaku Ba” and a student of all religions like “myself” so decided to have a look at it since the heading was enough to catch my attention. It had about 132 intelligent comments from various Ghanaians pouring out their minds and thoughts.
It is an interesting article and worth reading it if you are a student of all religions or a person who is in seek of knowledge among other things. If you are the fanatical Christian type like my Mum who cannot have objective view about Christianity, then please skip to the next gossip article on here.
__________________________________________________
Recent reviews of biblical scripts have shown the Bible is increasingly unable to stand up to scrutiny and scientific evidence. I it is becoming increasingly worrying that the Bible may not be able to claim authority on any issue relevant to our physical reality we call the universe, particularly the final direction and divine plan for humans. Some examples include some of the most famous and strong beliefs of the Judeo-Christian faiths such as the narrative of the six day creation story, the Tower of Babel, the great flood, and Jonah and the whale, among others. In each case the details of the entire stories, that are hardly ever mentioned by the religious faithful, did not stack up to the scrutiny of the narrative, or contained certain statements and claims that fly in the face of known scientific facts.
In comments related to recent articles published on this website, this author has been challenged to review the original Hebrew Scriptures for a proper perspective of the Bible. As always this author took up the challenge and actually mobilized resources to acquire the original bible written in Hebrew as well as companion materials to facilitate the translation of the Hebrew scripts. Snippets of this review which is on-going are presented in this article. These snippets are then put into perspective of some of the other religious traditions that existed before or concurrent with the time period in which the Bible?s original texts were written.
It is clear that the religious particularly Christians do not actually read the bible for themselves except for the few cherry picked passages given to them by their pastors. As one famous atheist said, the more you read the bible for yourself, the more false and untenable you see it to be. Generally speaking, Christians believe in a single God who exists, as a trinity, the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. This triune God is typically thought to be all-knowing, all loving, all seeing, all hearing, and all powerful. But is this what the Bible actually presents in a factual manner? Let us start at the beginning of the Bible and review some of the claims and core beliefs of the Judeo-Christian faiths.
Genesis 1:1 states that ?In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth?. The original Hebrew scriptures do not say ?God?. The word used is Elohim, which is plural for El which means God or a god. This is the same word from which we also get the following words or names:
Allah, the name of God as used by Islam. Gabriel meaning Strength of God Michael meaning who is like God?
Raphael meaning God’s medicine Ariel meaning God’s lion Daniel meaning God’s Judgement Israel meaning one who has struggled with God Immanuel meaning God is with us Ishmael meaning God Hears or God Listens
And many other examples.
So the bible actually says in the beginning gods (Elohim) created the heavens and earth. Who were these gods? Were they the angels or some other unidentified heaven-based beings? We would assume that this all-powerful being would make it crystal clear who actually created the universe, in his own book of final authority.
Now, does the original Hebrew text say -heavens or heaven? The Hebrew word that is used is Shamayim which means sky. So the correct translation of Genesis 1:1 is In the beginning gods created the sky and the earth. There is no heaven mentioned in this scripture, just sky. The concept of heaven was invented and added later.
The creation account goes on to say the earth was without shape or form and darkness was on the face of the deep. The deep here ostensibly referring to water. So after the heavens and the earth were created the earth consisted of only water. The narrative continues that the spirit of God was moving over the surface of this water. So what is the meaning of the spirit of God? The Hebrew word being used here is Ruah which means wind, breath or air. So the spirit of God is synonymous with the breath of God blowing over the water, or a wind from God blowing over the water. Now the Hebrew word for the movement of God in this instance is Merahefet which means
flapping, like for example a bird. So the fact is the Hebrew text says a wind was blowing over the face of the water. This wind was like that coming from the flapping of some kind of bird or flying creature. It is interesting that this creation account is similar in some ways to the Greek creation account that posits a great bird called Nix was flying over a void when it laid a golden egg into the wind that resulted in humans. This is also very similar to the ancient Egyptian creation story which pre-dates the bible, in which, in the beginning there is a dark ocean abyss referred to as the goddess Nun who produces an egg from which the sun god Ra hatches out of. It is worth noting that Ra is the pre-eminent god of ancient Egypt, who is always symbolized by the sun and also gold.
The above can be correlated back to Genesis because the golden sun produces light which is the first thing created in Genesis. . Remember in Genesis the light is created first and later in the story the sun is created three days later, even
though we know from astrophysics that this scenario is scientifically non-factual and not defendable. And also because the very phenomenon of a day is due to the fact that the earth rotates perpetually, alternating which side faces the sun (day) and which one faces the darkness of space (night). That aside where is the sun anyway?
Currently we know it is exactly 8 light-minutes away from us in space, approximately 95 million miles away. In other words if we were to travel at the speed of light it would take us 8 minutes to get there. However the bible does not confirm this fact. The bible actually posits the sun is within our atmosphere. Of course the bible does not call it our atmosphere it uses the same word Shamayim which means sky. According to Genesis, an expanse separates the waters below it from the waters or oceans above it, and they are all part of the sky.. This expanse in the Hebrew text
is called Rakia. So according God when you are looking up at the sky where the sun is you are actually looking at on overhead ocean being held up by some divine object (Rakia) or by some divine power. Some biblical scholars have posited this expanse is some sort of solid transparent crystalline dome. That is why in later Latin translations the word Rakia was changed to the Latin word Firmamentum (Firmament in English). The firmament is therefore a solid object holding the upper ocean above in place, in the sky. Today we know for a fact that this description is false, and not such object or overhead ocean exists.
It is interesting that the Book of Gensis is not the only text claiming that a solid object or expanse is holding up an ocean in the sky. In the ancient Egyptian religion, the sun god Ra is seen as walking on the water or riding his boat across the ocean sky.
Now let us go to the second creation account in Genesis chapter 2 which is substantially different from the account given in Chapter 1. In this narrative Adam is created, then animals are created to keep him company but after it is realized that none of the animals can be a suitable mate for Adam, then Eve is created. Apparently the omniscient creator did not foresee this happening. Adam and Eve are then provided with a tree that they are ordered not to eat from. But Eve is tricked into eating from this tree and becoming knowledgeable and hence infecting the whole
world and all humans yet to be born with this knowledge. This is interesting because in the Greek creation story the first couple is Epimetheus and Pandora. After Pandora was create she was given to Epimetheus as a wife, and she was a given a box that should never be opened. But out of curiosity Pandora was tempted and opened the
box anyway. By so doing she released evil spirits that were confined to the box to now unleash pain and suffering on the world.
Later Adam and Eve have two sons Cain and Abel. The time came for them to make offerings to God. It turned out that God liked Abel?s offering of slaughtered animals better than Cain?s offering. This made Cain so angry that he killed his brother. This is interesting because in ancient Egyptian text Set kills his brother Osiris because Osiris was favored by the goddess Isis. In another episode Ra decides to punish humanity for pursuing evil deeds, by wiping out all humans except for a righteous few. To do this he creates the goddess Sekhmet, the lion goddess to perform the killing by chasing and eating all the humans. In the Hebrew text we have a flood occur for this same purpose, to wipe out humanity except for a righteous few.
Another worrying example is the original Hebrew text does not contain the phrases ? the Lord your God. This phrase is ubiquitous throughout any modern bible, however it does appear even once in the original Hebrew text. What appears is – YHWH your God. This is the so called tetragrammaton. Hebrew scribes of Judaism changed this phrase to ? Adonai , meaning Lord, to replace the tragrammaton because they deemed it disrespectful to mention the real name of God continuously over and over just like that. Later some claimed the correct pronunciation of the tetragrammaton is something to the effect of ? Yehowa, or Jehova. This was later adopted by the Jehovah?s Witnesses?. The Jehovah?s Witnesses?, bible called the New World translation completely replaces the phrase ? the Lord your God with – Jehovah your God throughout the bible.
These are a but a few of the examples that cast serious doubt on the veracity and even the originality of the Hebrew scriptures. It is easy to see that the concepts of the bible are not even original but were copied and modified from pre-existing religions of that era. What makes it worse is that by studying the original Hebrew texts we can see that the translated versions we have today contain changes, mistranslations, editing and even outright plagiarism, by scribes church fathers over the generations. And apparently the religious are completely oblivious of these facts. The few who are aware claim it is irrelevant and the details don?t matter, just accept Jesus. But that is false. This is a document that claims it has omnipotent authorship. Therefore it must be 100% true and accurate, not even 99%. Otherwise the authorship is not divine, but rather human based on the perspective of that particular human author. So if the omniscient being was unable to prevent these
falsehoods from being written in his book then one may argue that this being is not omnipotent. If this is true then he is not God and by extension one may argue therefore that there is no god, but we shall leave that for another debate for another day. So back to the defining question of this essay. Is the bible an original, inerrant document? No. Not at all. The bible as we know it today copies and modifies pre-existing ideas at the time it was written. It contains many non-factual statements, several questionable translations, and many mistranslations. It also contains editing and modifications by scribes and copiers over the generations who inserted their own ideas and understanding as they saw fit and necessary.
Written By: Kwaku Ba/Ghanaweb.Com
10 Comments