2 Genesis, Chapter 12 - enter Honest Abe
Gen 12 is a relatively short chapter, so we’re going to chat about a few other things along the way, if that’s OK with you - I just knew it would be.
Gen 12:1 “Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country and thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:The New American Bible relates that the phrase, “and thou shalt be a blessing:” is probably reflexive, which is to say that future people, “‘shall bless themselves through you’ (i.e., in giving a blessing, they shall say, ‘May you be as blessed as Abraham’)” So far, The New American has been unexpectedly straightforward, so I will accept this offering as quite likely the case, though shortly, we will see that even they try to give themselves a little wiggle-room when addressing a touchy subject that could result in illuminating Abram/Abraham in, shall we say, a less than favorable light --
12:2 “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:”
God continues:
Gen 12:3 “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curseth thee: and in thee shall all of the families of the earth be blessed.The New American Bible tells us that the “substance that they had gathered, and the souls they had gotten” refers to their belongings and the “slaves and retainers that formed the social aggregate under the leadership of Abraham.” In short, this god’s pick of the litter was a slave-owner. “But that was the custom of the times --” you may well whine. Now I KNOW your Momma threw THIS one at you: “Well, if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?” She did, didn’t she? I thought so. Quite a coincidence that this Abraham owned slaves, and four millennia later, another Abraham would free them - or is it? Of course it is, I’m just messin’ with you.
12:4 “So Abraham departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abraham was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.
12:5 “And Abraham took Sarai his (sister/) wife, and Lot, his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.”
The important thing I’d like you to take out of verse 12:4 above is that, “Abraham was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.”
One of the few things that I do best, besides lying on my back on a warm Summer’s day, is noticing things that others tend to overlook. It is in that vein, that I present the following: I don’t usually skip ahead and reveal upcoming events, but in this instance, I will make an exception - Gen Chapter 17:1 tells us: “And when Abram was ninety and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram,” and in the process of their little chat, this god promised that he would give old Abe a son through Sarai, his sister/wife, who would no longer be called Sarai, but Sarah, at which Abram fell on his face (at 99, that’s never a good idea), and among other things, said: 17:17 “Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?”
This revelation is important for one reason, in that it establishes the age relationship between Abe and Sarah - obviously, when 17:1 is considered, Abe was 99 when he had this conversation, and in his reasoning, if he went home, popped a Viagra, and got busy that very evening, he would (17:17) be 100 when his child was born. Simultaneously (and at the same time), Sarah (again, 17:17) would be ninety. Ergo (another thing I’ve always wanted to say), if Abe would be 100 and Sarah 90, their age difference is obviously ten years. If anyone is not in agreement with my calculations, please raise your hand - I see no hands raised, so I can only assume we’re all on board.
I’ll explain my interjection shortly. but meanwhile, back to “Little Tent on the Prairie”:
Gen 12:6 “And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.”Common sense should tell you, that if you’re going to travel through a land called, Canaan, you’re likely to run into an occasional Canaanite - that’s like taking a trip to Mexico and being surprised at encountering Mexicans! The “place of Sichem” was probably a little village called Shechem, where Jacob/Israel will, in the future, run into a tiny problem with the boyish hi-jinks of his sons.
The Catholic Encyclopedia agrees, giving Shechem as an alternate spelling, and relates that it is destined to be “the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel.”
To continue:
Gen 12:7 “And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, Unto thy seed I will give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord who appeared to him.“Beth-El” is Hebrew for “House of El.” Remember that, for the time not far off when we’ll have a long talk about “El.” Roman historian Eusebius of Caesarea and his son, Jerome, also an historian (as well as having been in charge of the translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Aramaic, into the Latin Vulgate), both describe Beth-El in their time as being a small village that lay 12 Roman miles north of Jerusalem. “Hai,” on the other hand, is Hebrew for “is” or, “to live,” but the location of the “Hai” of Gen 12:8, seems to have escaped Google Maps (or any other I could locate). In the process of searching, however, I DID discover that the word in Chinese is an obscenity, though which, they didn’t say - it’s really a wasted day, when you don’t learn something.
12:8 “And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Beth-el and pitched his tent, having Beth-El on the west and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar to the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.”
Boys and girls, as painful as it may be, it’s time to pull some of the wool away from your eyes. One of the reasons that the Bible has enjoyed such a long run, apart from the threat of eternal hell-fire, has been that throughout the past two millennia, artists - sculptors, painters and composers alike have glamorized the principals of this drama with exquisite works of their particular fields of art, and in the process, demonstrated all of the wondrous capabilities of the Human mind. Michelangelo saw Moses in a block of marble and chipped away everything that wasn’t Moses; Rembrandt van Rijn, master of light-on-canvas, depicted Moses destroying the tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written, and then there are the myriad of composers, whose names would fill this page, whose compositions can bring about actual euphoria, dedicated to, and often written expressly for, the Judeo/Christian religion. THESE were the kinds of Celebrity Endorsements that could really sell a product! And did.
As I will illustrate at the end of this entire treatise, if Jesus (whose actual name was Yeshua) reappeared today - five-foot six, long, black, greasy hair and scraggly beard, a homeless, itinerant preacher, who rarely bathed and who depended on the generosity of others for his food and lodging, and when these weren’t offered, went hungry - he would be rejected by all but the blind, and likely, a good percentage of them. Those who are actually expecting the return of Jesus are looking for the tall, strapping, clean-cut, hazel-eyed, every-hair-in-place Nordic image with which we were raised, and for most, I suspect, nothing less than that will do. And yes, many people of dark skin, are also looking for the same Germanic Jesus! Sadly, it’s not easy to break free of lifelong indoctrination.
As we proceed, I expect to disillusion those of you who still hold illusions, by trying to reveal to you these people, not as they have been glamorously portrayed by various artists through the ages, but as they actually were, and let you ask yourselves if you’d really buy a used car from these guys.
Below are modern day equivalents of how Abram and his entourage must have appeared, living their daily lives - though Abe, et al, would have been even more primitive, if that can be imagined.
Am I ridiculing these people? No, I most emphatically am not. Their way of life has been handed down to them through countless generations of ancestors - they would be as lost in any other world, as you or I would be in theirs. I only want you to envision, the next time you rise in the pew to sing, “Amazing Grace” or sit enthralled at the tonal acrobatics of Handel’s “Messiah,” that the beliefs passed on to you from your ancestors, originated with theirs.
Givet Hamoreh (Moreh hill) south of Mount Tabor
Here we have, “the plains of Moreh,” complete with Moreh hill. This area would have been typically representative of the land in which Abram, then later, his son, Issac, and still later, his grandson, Jacob/Israel lived.
They would have dwelt in tents very similar to these, rather than the versions the movies present, whose interiors look large enough to accommodate a Green Bay/Cowboys game.
And they would have lived like this.
Not quite as you’d imagined, is it? Pictured, is no doubt a good man who, I would hope, cares deeply for his many children, who chooses to live as he does, and as such, I find no fault with him. But if he told me he had personally held conversations with an omnipotent entity who created the universe, and that that entity, from time to time, told him what to do, where to go, and had made him promises as to what would happen in his future - then yes, he and I would have some serious credibility issues.
In the event any of you believe I am offering these photos as a means of denigrating Abram's life, and believe he lived in some sort of palatial mansion, I offer this painting, done sometime in the last four or five hundred years, depicting what an artist believed Abram's pastoral life may well have been like:
Abraham, Issac and Sarah
Now that we have a better picture of who and what it is we’re discussing, let’s continue.
After an undisclosed time, Abe pulled up his tent stakes (Gen 12:9) and journeyed further south. But there was a famine in the land (Gen 12:19), so Abe decided to go even further south into Egypt, to try his luck down there. Having left Ur, home of Nanna/Sin, the moon god, to live in Haran, home of Nanna/Sin, the moon god, he would have had no problem fitting in with the Egyptian culture, which, among others, worshipped Thoth, the moon god.
But there was one minor complication:
But understand, we’re not talking about some mousey little clerk behind a desk at the Bureau of Oxcarts, we’re talking about Pharoah! The Great Kahuna! Cock of the Walk! King of the Roost! (Ok, no more!) Pharaoh can have any woman he wants! Who do you think he’s gonna take to the prom - Angelina Jolie or Kathy Bates? (Luvsya Kathy, but I’m just sayin’ --)
Another observation you might find interesting - when we encounter a Pharaoh, and we will several times in Genesis - he’s never named. Don’t you think that if any of these guys were really there, they’d hesitate to do a little name dropping? Don’t misunderstand, I’m not suspecting a conspiracy - it’s not that they don’t tell us because they don’t want us to check the Pharaoh list (though that would be very convenient, wouldn't it?) - I believe they don’t tell us because this was written a millennium or two after the time when it was alleged to have happened, and the writers had no idea who was Pharaoh at that time. I have no idea who was President of my own country in 1847, but I'm sure that’s just me.
Regrettably, The New American Bible, isn’t quite so forthcoming regarding Abe’s relationship with his sister/wife. Listen to this waltz:
Where did we leave off? Oh yeah, Abe was getting rich from pimping out his 65-year old sister/wife.
But before we get all personally involved with this ancient soap opera, think for a minute - not only are we expected to suspend our disbelief and imagine the greatest ruler in Egypt having any form of desire for a 65-year old woman (unless he had some serious Mummy issues), but we’re also expected (12:19) to believe that Pharaoh was at least considering the option of taking her as his wife! I don’t care what the movies and Romance Novels say, in those days, NO ruler, be it man or woman, ever married for love. They married to unite their country with another strong group, so as to enlarge their territory, or create an alliance upon which they could depend in case of war with another nation, but never for love, or for that matter, even lust - unless you count Henry VIII, but then, if it didn’t work out, he had his own unique version of quickie divorce.
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
Not quite as you’d imagined, is it? Pictured, is no doubt a good man who, I would hope, cares deeply for his many children, who chooses to live as he does, and as such, I find no fault with him. But if he told me he had personally held conversations with an omnipotent entity who created the universe, and that that entity, from time to time, told him what to do, where to go, and had made him promises as to what would happen in his future - then yes, he and I would have some serious credibility issues.
In the event any of you believe I am offering these photos as a means of denigrating Abram's life, and believe he lived in some sort of palatial mansion, I offer this painting, done sometime in the last four or five hundred years, depicting what an artist believed Abram's pastoral life may well have been like:
Abraham, Issac and Sarah
Frankly, I'm not seeing an appreciable difference --
After an undisclosed time, Abe pulled up his tent stakes (Gen 12:9) and journeyed further south. But there was a famine in the land (Gen 12:19), so Abe decided to go even further south into Egypt, to try his luck down there. Having left Ur, home of Nanna/Sin, the moon god, to live in Haran, home of Nanna/Sin, the moon god, he would have had no problem fitting in with the Egyptian culture, which, among others, worshipped Thoth, the moon god.
But there was one minor complication:
Gen 12:11 “And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his (sister/) wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon:Did Abe not give this any consideration before deciding to make the trip? And it was certainly not too late to turn around. Abe had choices, and made them, but others would have to live with the consequences.
12:12 “Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.”
Gen 12:13 “Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister: (that certainly wouldn’t be far from the truth!) that it may be well with me for thy sake; (for her sake? What did she have to gain?) and my soul shall live because of thee.Ok, now you will more clearly see the reason for my earlier interjection - why I worked so hard (I’m still out of breath!) establishing that Sarai was ten years older than Abram. Abe left Haran (Gen 12:4) at age seventy-five. We have no way of knowing how long it took him to reach Beth-El from Haran, nor how long he camped at Beth-El, nor how long it took him to travel from Beth-El to Egypt with all his belongings, relatives, slaves and cattle, goats and sheep. It could well have been a year, but it really makes very little difference. At the very least, Sarai would have been sixty-five years old! Now I’m not saying that there aren’t any attractive sixty-five year old women out there - what kind of sexist would I have to be, to say that?
12:14 “And it came to pass that when Abram had come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was fair.
12:15 “The princes also of Pharoah saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.”
But understand, we’re not talking about some mousey little clerk behind a desk at the Bureau of Oxcarts, we’re talking about Pharoah! The Great Kahuna! Cock of the Walk! King of the Roost! (Ok, no more!) Pharaoh can have any woman he wants! Who do you think he’s gonna take to the prom - Angelina Jolie or Kathy Bates? (Luvsya Kathy, but I’m just sayin’ --)
Another observation you might find interesting - when we encounter a Pharaoh, and we will several times in Genesis - he’s never named. Don’t you think that if any of these guys were really there, they’d hesitate to do a little name dropping? Don’t misunderstand, I’m not suspecting a conspiracy - it’s not that they don’t tell us because they don’t want us to check the Pharaoh list (though that would be very convenient, wouldn't it?) - I believe they don’t tell us because this was written a millennium or two after the time when it was alleged to have happened, and the writers had no idea who was Pharaoh at that time. I have no idea who was President of my own country in 1847, but I'm sure that’s just me.
Gen 12:16 “And he (Pharaoh) treated Abram well for her sake: and he (Abram) had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maidservant's and she-asses, and camels.”For those of you who, like myself, may be having a little problem with the veracity of this inerrant chapter in this inerrant book, let me stir the pot just a little more. The New American Bible, which I’ve often praised thus far for being extremely forthcoming for a Catholic publication, on this subject (12:16) doesn’t disappoint: “Domesticated camels probably didn’t come into common use in the ancient Near East until the end of the second millennium, BCE.” The end of the second millennium didn’t come into being until the year 1000 BCE; although there is no agreed upon account of the dates for Abram/Abraham (remember what I said about the age of Superman?), the accepted dates among the Jewish Orthodox are 1812-1637 BCE, while our old friend, Archbishop Ussher, like you surely knew he would, had his own set of dates: 1976-1801 BCE. In either case, it was clearly long before the domestication of camels. Can you see more and more how these little discrepancies add up to confirm that these books were written a millennium or more later than the events, by those who were not there? I love a good fantasy, but don't sell me Grimm's Fairy Tales as an inerrant book.
Regrettably, The New American Bible, isn’t quite so forthcoming regarding Abe’s relationship with his sister/wife. Listen to this waltz:
“...although Abraham’s deceit may not be fully defensible, his statement was at least a half-truth."Now that is some fancy footwork! Spin it any way you like, Terah was the father of both of them! It’s in the book --!
(Sarai, then, must have been Abe’s half-sister - same father, different mother)
"Sarah was indeed a relative, called a 'sister' in Hebrew. Moreover, the ancient traditions on which this story and the parallel ones in 20:1-18 and 26:6-11 are based, probably come from the Hurrian custom of wife/sister marriage. Among the Hurrians, with whom Abraham’s clan lived in close contact at Haran, a man could adopt his wife as his sister and thus give her a higher status.”
Where did we leave off? Oh yeah, Abe was getting rich from pimping out his 65-year old sister/wife.
Gen 12:17 “And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. (This god plagued Pharoah, while Abe got rich?!)“...and all that he had.” Had I been Pharaoh, I’d have stripped that boy in a Cairo minute and taken back everything I'd ever given him, just for the deception, if not for the plagues. You gotta hate plagues! If this is this Bible’s god’s pick of the litter - what does that say about his judgment?
12:18 “And Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that thou hast done to me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
12:19 “Why sayest thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way.
12:20 “And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him (Abram): and they sent him (Abram) away, and his wife, and all that he had.”
But before we get all personally involved with this ancient soap opera, think for a minute - not only are we expected to suspend our disbelief and imagine the greatest ruler in Egypt having any form of desire for a 65-year old woman (unless he had some serious Mummy issues), but we’re also expected (12:19) to believe that Pharaoh was at least considering the option of taking her as his wife! I don’t care what the movies and Romance Novels say, in those days, NO ruler, be it man or woman, ever married for love. They married to unite their country with another strong group, so as to enlarge their territory, or create an alliance upon which they could depend in case of war with another nation, but never for love, or for that matter, even lust - unless you count Henry VIII, but then, if it didn’t work out, he had his own unique version of quickie divorce.
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
Posted by archaeopteryx at 12/1/2011 6:09 PM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: religion atheism Abram Sarai sister/wife Egypt Pharaoh Canaan Schechem Christianity Judaism Islam biblical inerrancy biblical mythology The New American Bible slave-owner land of Canaan Shechem The Catholic Encyclopedia Beth-el House of El Eusebius of Caesarea Jerome Jesus Yeshua the plains of Moreh Moreh hill Haran Nanna/Sin Thoth the Egyptian moon god domesticated camels Archbishop Ussher Hurrians god
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: religion atheism Abram Sarai sister/wife Egypt Pharaoh Canaan Schechem Christianity Judaism Islam biblical inerrancy biblical mythology The New American Bible slave-owner land of Canaan Shechem The Catholic Encyclopedia Beth-el House of El Eusebius of Caesarea Jerome Jesus Yeshua the plains of Moreh Moreh hill Haran Nanna/Sin Thoth the Egyptian moon god domesticated camels Archbishop Ussher Hurrians god
Re: "Jesus" was "Yeshua." May I disagree?
Osiris + Apis = Oserapis = Serapis;
YHWH + Zeus = YH-Zeus - Jesus.
Just as Osirapis was invented to merge two warring cultures, so, too, was YHWH merged with Zeus (plus "dying-resurrected Greek gods) to become YHZeus, a merging of Jewish and Greco-Roman gods. The name "Yeshua" is the equivalent of Joshua, which is just another attempt to turn a mythological created "god" into a historical person.
He was a mythological god-character that the Romans named YH-Zeus.
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First of all Paula, of course you may - it says so in our contract (see above: "this site is dedicated to freedom of thought").
I had intended mentioning that that was one of the extant theories once I wade through all 39 books of the Old Testament and reach the part about Jesus/Yeshua/YH-Zeus in the New.
Although the amalgamation of the Egyption god Osirus with the bull-god Apis (the equivalent of the Canaanite god, Ba'al, son of El, who will be discussed in an upcoming chapter) is documented, several theories abound regarding the origin of Jesus/Yeshua/YH-Zeus, and I intend presenting them all and allowing the free thinkers to think freely and the skeptics to - well, skept.
One thing on which I pride myself is that 99.9% of everything I say on this site, I say, not in the manner of a Christian preacher who says, "THIS is exactly what happened and the exact way it happened!" Instead - the flood story for example - I demonstrate that every culture had a flood story, but no indication they all occurred simultaneously. That an actual flood DID occur 400-500 years BEFORE the biblical one, in 2900 BCE, flooding a small area in Iraq, from whence the early Hebrews migrated, and that it was incorporated into the story, "The Epic of Gilgamesh," written well before Noah's "flood" and used some of the exact phrases used in the Noah story. Then I demonstrate that there isn't enough water in, on, under, or above the planet to submerge all of the mountains and that no one could have lived for a year in a sealed, pitch-black ark filled with methane gas. I follow that by the revelation that in relatively nearby Egypt, despite excavations exposing millennia of long-buried soil, there was found no trace of flooding for more than five thousand years. I then allow the free-thinking readers to draw their own conclusions as to the validity of the biblical flood story. So also would I do with the story of Jesus/Yeshua/YH-Zeus.
One of the questions your premise raises is this: the New Testament was written originally in Aramaic; if you're saying that YH-Zeus was a Roman invention, wouldn't that require a Roman to first write the entire New Testament in Aramaic? (Paul, of course was Roman, and theoretically, could have done that.) We know now, in hindsight, that the religion caught on, but in New Testament times, there were a myriad of competing cults - wouldn't doing that have necessitated an enormous amount of effort, with relatively little assurance of success?
While it's true that "Yeshua" is used for Joshua 28 times in the Hebrew Bible, "Yehoshuah" is used for Joshua 218 times. In other instances, Jesus is referred to as, "Yeshu". Sometimes, in the absence of facts, you just gotta go with the odds. My original point was: 1), to take a little wind out of the sails of Preachers who delight in hawking, "Jeeeeeeesus!" and 2), to suggest that his Momma and Daddy never called their kid "Jesus," as in, "Shut the door, Jesus! Were you born in a barn?!"
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
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