Is The Christian God Of The Bible Moral? 
Part Two: The Origin of The Ancient Hebrew God
An InDepth Look At Morality From An Atheist Perspective
Written By: Jason Rimbaud

In part one we narrowed down which god and denomination we would use as our control subject to discover if god is moral. We will be using the christian god of the bible to try and answer this question. 

Modern christianity finds its roots in the ancient texts of the Hebrews, who not only wrote the book, believed in the book, and committed horrible acts of rape, genocide, conquest, and murder of anyone who stood in the way in their single minded quest to obtain the promised land in the name of Yahweh. 

But to understand the god, you have to understand the origins of that god. 

WHERE DID THE GOD OF THE BIBLE COME FROM?

The ancient Middle East was located in the region that includes modern day Egypt, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, the Gulf states, and Turkey. This is also commonly referred to as the Near East. 

We know the earliest civilization was established sometime around 3500 BC by the Sumerians, in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and is widely regarded as the cradle of civilization. Between 10,000 BC to 3,000 BC it is thought the people of Mesopotamia not only invented cities, agraculture, and math, but they invented the first forms of writing. 

Just so we are clear, it was not around this time when god created the world in seven days, that is just a myth in the ancient Hebrew bible that was stolen from much earlier oral traditions. This was just when humans stopped being hunters and gatherers. Because agriculture was established this gave the people populating these areas the ability to focus on other things, like cities, math, and pursuing a more civilized life.  

Just because this time period is when all these things began, the people had been around far longer than the first written language. Archeological evidence has established that the Hebrews definitely started settling in Canaan around 1200 BC. The Egyptian record from 1207 BCE noted above consists of the pharaoh boasting about his conquests in Canaan, including Israel. But it isn’t until 840 BCE that the Hebrew god Yahweh is first mentioned in written form on the Mesha Stele. 

So for all those hundreds of years, the god of the Hebrews was passed down in the finest way possible, orally. 

Many, if not most biblical scholars today, both religious and secular, agree that the ancient Hebrews cobbled together many different pagan beliefs from both Mesopotamian and ancient Near Eastern Cosmology. They borrowed heavily from different established belief systems and adapted them to their, at the time, unique view of worshiping a single deity instead of multiple deities. 

While many tribes had a single deity they worshiped as a protector god, they had many other deities they consulted for other mundane things. For example, the Egyptians had dozens of gods they worshiped depending on what they needed at any given time. If you can’t get pregnant, sacrifice some animal to Min and she can help you conceive. 

During this same timeframe, instead of Min if you were Greek, you’d pray to Demeter to help with fertility issues. To get knocked up, you wouldn’t pray to Ra or Zeus for something so trivial. But the ancient Hebrews prayed to their own god for everything. Poor god, he didn’t have the staff to answer all those prayers, maybe that’s why even if you pray to it today, the odds of your prayer being answered is no better than the flip of a coin, 50%. 

I did find it interesting in my research, the goddess Demeter, of classical Greece, was a woman while her counterpart, Min, a god depicted with an erect cock and a flail in one hand. The Greek god of fertility is associated with the changing of the seasons while the Egyptian god had an erection. This is the perfect metaphor for current thinking about women's reproductive rights. 

For comparison, it is believed that Yahweh, was around during the same time period as Zeus, supposed descendant of the great Titans who were responsible for creating the world as well as Ra, descendant of the great Egyptian creator of life. 

So around the time the ancient Hebrews were just beginning to proclaim Yahweh, the one true god and creator of all life, other cultures already had their own established creation myths firmly locked in place. And in some cases, for far longer. 

THEN WHO IS THE CHRISTIAN GOD BASED ON?

Yahweh is based on several older deities who had been around far longer. Seir, Edom, Paran, and Teman are all likely model candidates for the Hebrew god. And to a much lesser degree, Canaan. You remember him, the god of the land the Hebrews forcibly took and murdered everyone living there. Interesting that some of their god’s characteristics were taken from a vanquished god. 

If you remember your bible stories, Canaan was the promised land that had been gifted to Abraham and all his descendents because of idolatry. Yep, those pesky Canaanites believed in multiple gods so Yahweh had them all murdered. Apparently, Yahweh is just an insecure god, that a different people living in a different land worshiping other gods, sent him around the twist. Those fuckers. 

Granted, it did take him some four hundred years to make good on his promise and Abraham was long dead by the time Joshua marched into Canaan and kicked those multiple god worshiping assholes right off the fucking planet. That served those idolaters right, believing in another god. 

Is the Hebrew god of the bible a real living god, a metaphor, or just a delusion for tent dwelling sheep herders who were a bunch of animal fucking, woman raping, mass murderers who coveted their neighbor’s oxen? Or was he just an excuse to justify their horrific blood lust? 

I can hear a few of you ask about why have I mentioned animal fucking twice now in referring to the ancient Hebrews? 

Leviticus 18:23 says, “Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it, that is a perversion.”

If you have to write down in your holy book that one shouldn’t fuck animals, then people must have been fucking animals like it was christmas. I can only imagine it was an orgy of animal fucking. Though to be fair, Leviticus 18 is pretty much nothing but laws about who or what you can stick your penis into. 

And the first time they wrote it must not have taken because two chapters later they had to add an addendum in Leviticus 20:15, “If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he is to be put to death, and you must kill the animal.”

I can kind of see if a man is going out raping animals, then he’s probably a deviant, but to murder him, that’s a bit overkill. And then to say the poor animal that did not consent to be fucked should also be killed, that’s just some cavemen type shit right there. 

And before you think it was just those horny men sticking their dicks into any ole warm hole, verse 16 continues, “If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” I guess even in ancient times donkey shows were quite the attraction.

Okay, you’ll concede the animal fucking, but raping women, not in my bible you might say. You’re wrong, in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 states, “If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

Not only is this a very immoral act, forcing the woman to marry her rapist, but since she is viewed as property of the father, she has to be bought by the man, so the father gets his payment for property rendered. That goes to show you how the ancient Hebrews thought about women and they’re place in society, nothing more than objects to be traded and bought. 

This ancient belief that obsessed about virgins is so foreign to me. I don’t know about you, but I’ve fucked a few virgins in my life and the sex never was that good. I’d rather a Castro slut any day over a virgin who doesn’t know which end of the dick to suck. 

WHEN DID THE HEBREWS INVENT THEIR GOD

It is thought that the Hebrew religion was first established sometime in the late Bronze Age, 1550 to 1200 BCE or the Early Iron Age, 1200 to 800 BCE. To put that into context, the earliest known god available through historical records is Inanna, a Sumerian goddess of love, fertility, and war. She was also known as Ishtar in later Mesopotamian culture and her name appears in some of the first cuneiform texts from the Uruk period, dating all the way back to the late 4th millennium BCE, sometime before 4000 to 3001 BCE. The Sumerians inhabited what we know as modern day Iraq.

So Yahweh is nowhere near old enough to have been the first god of the world. Though Yahweh is old enough that most modern christians do not know or have forgotten, there were many older religions that bear a striking resemblance to the god of the bible and many of its earliest practices.

We’ve already established that Yahweh was clearly modeled on earlier gods and this is telling evidence that if a god/gods/divine exists, Yahweh could not be one of those gods. The Hebrew religion is a pieced together belief system they stole from their neighbors, literally picking and choosing which myths to adapt to their own god concept. 

In choosing which established myths to bastardize into their new religion, like the earlier Babyalonian creation myth the Enumah Elish. The major difference in these two creation stories, the Hebrews gave credit for the creation of everything to a single deity while the Enumah Elish cites multiple deities. They also declared themselves Yahweh’s chosen people. 

I guess if they were chosen and all other peoples were Gentile, that gave them divine right to slaughter anyone they deemed their enemies. Though they didn’t always kill everyone, they often kept all the females so they could rape them later. All of this behavior could be justified if they were doing as Yahweh commanded. 

WHEN WAS THE BIBLE WRITTEN

The oral tradition of Yahweh had been around longer than when they started writing their holy book, the Torah, which means the law of god given to Moses. The Torah consists of the first five books of the modern christian bible. They are also the most difficult to read due to the horrendous acts it depicts, all condoned and commanded by a supposed loving moral god that modern christians pattern their lives after even to the present day. 

The final version of the Torah was completed, sometime during the Persian period 539-332 BCE. Though some scholars believe it might have been even earlier during the Hellenistic period. Some claim Moses wrote it, while others believe god inspired Moses to write it. But no matter who wrote it, or what oral traditions it was eventually copied from, the Hebrews believed it was the law of their god, Yahweh. 

So now that we have a very rudimentary understanding of where and how the origin of the Torah and the christian god came out, let’s look at how it survived when so many other religions and belief systems fell away to history. 

HOW DID THE ANCIENT HEBREW RELIGION SURVIVE

Remember the ancient Hebrews inhabited a region of the world that warred amongst themselves constantly, murdering and overthrowing established tribes and religions seeming at will only to then be conquered by someone else and the whole thing would just start all over again. So the entire region slipped between probably hundreds of gods as different tribes would conquer different regions.

The bible claims the great Exodus occurred sometime around 1225 BCE, during Ramsey’s the Second reign. Which would mean some forty years later, the Hebrews would march into Canaan and finally fulfill the promise of Yahweh that was made to Abraham and all his descendents. 

Apparently that promise wasn’t forever because in 740 BCE, Mesopotamian’s, called the Assyrian’s conquered the Israelites and then some thirty years later scattered them to the four corners of their empire or just absorbed them into their empire when they rebelled against their rule. This left the Hebrews without a cultural identity for a few hundred years. The Babylonian’s conquered Jerusalem in 587 BCE, once again thrusting the Hebrews under the rule of a false god. 

Just on a side note, it seemed that even the ancient Hebrews seemed to have shitty memories of their one true god. They were constantly forsaking Yahweh which in turn would mean Yahweh would turn away from the Hebrews essentially taking away the protection, and they would get conquered. Then after loud cries and many sacrifices, Yahweh would forget how shitty of worshipers they were and take them back like some kind of battered housewife. 

This syndrome somehow kept the Hebrew faith alive as the Hebrews continued to be scared shitless of pissing off their all knowing, all powerful, extremely vengeful god who had already destroyed every human on the planet in his anger. Yet they continued to worship that god, who battered whom in this relationship?

So when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple in 587 BCE, the Hebrews were once again a subjugated people. This time to Nebuchnezzar II who not only burned the temple to the ground, he took with him back to Babylon most of the population of the city. The bible chronicles these events in 2 Kings Chapter 25. Once again, the Hebrew god was defeated by Marduk and delivered into slavery. So much for their all powerful god.

When Cyrus the Great defeated the Assyrians, with the help of the Babylonians, their territory was divided amongst the Persians, Babylonians, and Egyptians. Judah was overseen by Babylon who were finally defeated in 538 BCE by the Persian army. 

If you recall, in Daniel 5, it has Belshazzar, King of Babylon, having a feast. He gathers all the nobles of the court, and they drink out of the sacred cups and vessels they had stolen from the Temple when they conquered Jerusalem. And as they are drinking, a hand appears and writes on the wall. And no one in the kingdom could interpret what the words mean. So Belshazzar calls forth Daniel and promises him all sorts of riches if he could tell him what the words mean. 

The bible, in Daniel 5:25 states, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN. And basically, Daniel translates that to mean, because you have defiled our precious artifacts, god has numbered the days of your reign, you have been found wanting, and he will give your kingdom to the Medes and Persians. 

And the bible says that very night, Belshazzar was killed. Though that’s not entirely the way it happened, but this very real all powerful god, the I AM THE I AM, couldn’t destroy the Babylonians, he had to allow the Persians, in the guise of Darius II, to free the Hebrews. 

We know that Judah, the Hebrews, the Israelites, whatever you want to call them, never had a time during the Assyrian reign or the Persian reign which lasted over two hundred years, where the Hebrews ruled over themselves. This christian god of the bible didn’t seem to be so powerful in the wake of all those other gods that kept conquering them. 

Around this time, Cyrus the Great decreed the Hebrews could return to Zion and rebuild the Temple. This was the catalyst in saving the religion of the Hebrews from disappearing all together. 

Cyrus is one of the most influential people that had ever lived, because if he did not allow the Hebrews to return and rebuild their temple, the basis for their faith, we would not have Christianity, nor Islam. So Cyrus could be credited for single handedly saving the Christian faith. 

The Persians believed in a monotheistic religion called Zoroastrianism, which recognized only a single deity named Ahura Mazda. This religion was based on the teachings of the Persian prophet Zoroaster and this was the official religion of the Persian Empire. Where the Persian’s were extremely smart in appeasing their conquered nations, tribes, city states, they allowed everyone to practice their own religion. As long as you paid your taxes, sent your armies when called upon, you pretty much had free reign to govern your own lands as you saw fit. 

So the Persian’s allowed the Hebrews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple the Babylonian’s had destroyed. They were ruled over by a Persian governor but the Hebrews finally had their religious identity back. 

So the Hebrew’s slowly gained their city back, they were right where god promised them to be, and over time they grew in influence due to Persia’s rule. This time period called the Iron Age, sometimes called Achaemenid Empire, was a global hub of culture, religion, science, art and technology for more than two hundred years. 

For over two hundred years, the Hebrews kept their religion alive, propagating the belief system of their god that was based on an earlier version they had already forgotten about. 

Hebrews were allowed to work in the civil service and even formed military units that were deployed all over Persia. They were even allowed to re-establish the sacrificial ritual at the Temple. 

Sacrificial rituals, blood sacrifice, was the key in Ancient Hebrew worship. They had adopted a far older pagan tradition of pushing their sins forward through the rite of blood sacrifice of certain animals. This was a practice that believed Yahwah demanded blood offerings in return for forgiveness of sins. 

This was not uncommon in this era, almost every culture practiced this ritual blood rites, and the Hebrews were no different. Just as in every culture, when you must offer blood to a god, providing these animals became a huge factor in the economy of Jerusalem as merchants from all over the Near East shipped these animals to be slaughtered at the Temple. 

And while the Bible explicitly states the Priests were not to accept money for the rite of sacrifice, that didn’t stop the priests from getting involved in the buying and transporting of these beasts that the Hebrews then bought to be sacrificed. Thus whoever controlled the sacrificial beasts, controlled Jerusalem. Tell me again how religion hasn’t always been about control, money, and power.

Under Persian rule, the Hebrews prospered as they had not been allowed for years. And though the Persians thought of them as unclean because they were not Muslim, they were allowed some positions of esteem in the Empire. Though they never regained their political power, they did use this time to introduce new theological ideas into their Holy Books. 

So if one of the reasons Hebrew’s survived was the tolerance of the Persians, the reason it spread across the known world was in 331 BCE, a figure invaded Persia with a mission of revenge he inherited from his father. His name was Alexander the Great, and was the very last King of Kings, the last Persian King and maybe second only to Darius II, the greatest Persian King. 

When Alexander conquered Persia, anyone that resisted was met with swift and total punishment. While anyone who surrendered without a fight, was forced to bow to Alexander’s will. And while he took away all political power from everyone and put his own people in charge, he did allow them to keep their cultural and religious notions unimpeded. 

Once again, the Hebrews got lucky as Alexander marched across the Persian Empire. Alexander professed to have a dream and when he approached Jerusalem, and when the High Priest came out to bow the knee to his army, the High Priest matched the description of the man from his dream, so Alexander allowed the Hebrews to incorporate into his Empire without the spilling of a single drop of Hebrew blood. 

The Hebrews made a deal with Alexander, a deal that allowed them to gain a religious foothold in regions otherwise not available to them due to the Muslim influence of the Persian’s. So entwined were Alexander and the Hebrews, the Hebrews incorporated the name Alexander into Hebrew culture as a sign of honor. 

Once again the all powerful Yahweh was defeated by a false, fake god, Zeus. A god that Alexander believed he was the living son of. It’s crazy that the Greek gods, the Persian gods, the Babylonians god, the Egyptian gods, have all fallen away to myths where the one god they each defeated over and over again, somehow has continued on as the one true living god. 

By the age of 29, Alexander was dead and his empire, one of the largest the world had ever seen up to that point, was thrown into chaos. Alexander’s generals divided the Empire and once again the Hebrews were caught in the middle between two warring Greek generals on the precipice of defeat. 

The Hebrews of the time were split down the middle. One side being Hellenistic Jews, who had softened their old traditions and thought the Greek’s were superior to the more primitive beliefs of the traditionalists. They tried to get their fellow Hebrews to denounce the strict old beliefs but the Hebrews dug their heels in and once again revolted. And after several years of fighting, the miracle of Chanukah was born. 

This went on for a while until the Roman’s stepped in and decided to conquer even more than Alexander ever dreamed. And once again, the Hebrews were relegated to second class citizens with no real political power. But they were pretty much left alone. So as they always did, they’re pesky habit of trying to convert everyone to Judaism once again created issues. And the moment a peaceful prophet proclaimed himself as the prophesied Messiah, the Hebrews promptly had him murdered. 

The Messiah was not a love thy neighbor kind of guy, at least not to those traditionalists who wanted a warrior Messiah to come so he would literally kill all the Romans that dared destroy the temple for the final time in 70 CE. 

And the new followers of this hippy Messiah, declared him risen after three days, giving birth to christianity which has been a blight on the world ever since. And these early Christians, all who were Hebrews, the chosen people that their god sent his only son to be murdered in a blood sacrifice for everyone’s sins, past, present, and future, believed that Christ was going to come back in their lifetime to liberate them from bondage. 

The three day thing always made me scratch my head. He supposedly died on Friday evening, and then rose early Sunday morning. That is more like a day and a half then three days, but christians have never been strong at critical thinking. And how much of a sacrifice was it really? He is killed, and then 60 hours later is risen up from the dead. That’s not a sacrifice, that’s like giving up a weekend. 

Even amongst the Hebrews, from the very beginning there was infighting regarding this fledgling religion. The early christians thought they would get revenge for the Romans destroying the temple. A temple that was no longer warranted because Christ died on the cross for all the sins so they didn’t have to do their blood magic ritual anymore. None of it makes any sense, but it’s not my religion is it. 

And you even had other traditionalists, Hebrews, that wanted to destroy those christians because they thought it was a false religion because christ was not the Messiah. So it wasn’t until a man named Saul, a Jew, who had a mission to destroy all christians, saw a bright light on the road to Damascus and promptly converted to christianity. He also ushered in this new reasoning that non-Hebrews could convert to christianity. 

A bunch of Christian’s were martyred during this timeframe. The traditionalists, Hebrews, hated the christians. Because the christians dared to give up on their arcane beliefs in a murderous, vengeful god who would rather kill everyone than a hippy dude that said can’t we all get along. Thus began numerous belief systems, discussions on should christians still believe in magic, was christ the Messiah? And scholars of different sects started writing their holy books, trying to solidify whichever doctrine they held at the time. 

This sect over there had different holy books than that sect over there. This one kept all the magic, the giants, the demon fucking, while that one over there threw out most of the supernatural accounts as they tried to gather their holy books. 

And how it has been since time began, these zealots looked to grow their particular religion by going after the wealthy, the powerful, the influencers of their day. And since the christian belief is extremely rigid in comparison to most, they were smart about their recruiting process. 

They’d tell a wealthy person, you can still have multiple wives, you can still fuck the boys, but your kids can’t. And with each generation they’d take back a few more of the pagan rites until some two hundred years after christ, a good portion of the Roman Empire believed in some form of Christianity.  

They were strong enough politically that in 312 AD, Emperor Constantine suddenly converted to christianity publically when he gave christ credit for a decisive victory over his enemies. He was famously a pagan in a country filled with some six million christians, many of whom were part of the ruling class, so his conversion was more than likely purely political. It didn’t really matter if he was a true believer or not, because he was responsible for organizing christianity, the canonization of the modern christian bible, and spreading it through the known world when he made it the national religion.

The council who decided the bible, threw out all the fringe holy books that many zealots wanted to include. So as crazy as the modern bible already is, once upon a time it was even crazier with magicians, giants, sorcerers, and all manner of demon fucking. 

One of the arguments I hear from many christians, is the claim that if it wasn’t true, it would not have survived all these thousands of years. What they fail to realize, or maybe they don’t even know, when it is made the state religion and flung throughout the world, of course it would survive in some form or another. And they also don’t realize that the christianity of the Ancient Hebrews, is a far cry of the modern christianity. 

But by that logic, the same argument could be made for Islam. That’s an even newer religion and it rivals christianity in popularity. Matter of fact, Islam is closer to their holy books and they know who actually wrote them. A lot more than the christian bible holy books, where a good portion of the authors is not known and written some fifty to eighty years after the events they describe. 

And lastly, just because so many people believe in something, doesn’t make that something true. For a long period of time, the entire world believed the earth was flat, or that the sun revolved around the earth. Didn’t make that any more true. 

WAS THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE REALLY INSPIRED BY GOD?

To riddle that answer out, let's look to see how the bible stacks up what we know about the universe against the claims of a book written by sheep herders who really didn’t want you to stick your dick into anything but a virgin and sold females at the fathers whim. We need to be able to look at the bible with reasonable, testable, methods and leave out feelings, faith, and fear. If over 2 billion people believe in this book and based their entire lives on it, I for one would like to know how it holds up to a bit of reason. 

The Torah, a book claimed to be dictated by god himself, claims that the entire world and everything in it was created in seven days. And for all you apologists out there saying that seven days was used because at the time the ancient Hebrews had no concept of millions much less billions of years. Okay, but then what about the order of creation, god’s inspired book got the order wrong. Not once, but twice. Did you know there are two completely different versions of the creation myth in Genesis. And yet both of them got the order of creation wrong. In the first version, plants were made before the sun. In the second, man was made before the sun. Fine, I’ll give you the seven day argument, but how did this amazing god get the order of creation wrong, fucking twice?

The claim that all of humanity came from two people. Well science and genetics have proven that claim to be false. The bible claims there was a world-wide flood, no evidence can be found to support this claim. The bible claims that all of humankind lived together and spoke the same languages in a place called Babel. I’ll get more into that particular craziness later on, but god was so worried that humans were getting along so well and it knew that together they could do anything and would no longer have a need for him, so he confused their languages and cast them over the face of the earth. We know that never happened. The bible claimed that god stopped the sun in the sky so Israel could defeat its enemies. We know that is impossible, as the sun doesn’t rotate around the earth like those primitives believed. To make this happen, god would have to stop the earth from rotating, disrupting all sorts of natural laws that would have caused chaos not to mention losing gravity. The bible also claimed a man lived in a belly of a fish for three days and did not die. I could go on for pages of just the craziness the bible claims to be true in the first five books alone. 

Then there is the whole claim regarding the Exodus. That in itself is problematic for archaeologists as they have never found evidence of Israelites in large numbers populating in Egypt. Most believe the Israelites were indigenous to Canaan. Then the claim that Jericho was a large fortified city during this time period is also laughable at best. 

According to archaeological evidence, Jericho during the time of the Exodus was likely a relatively small settlement, with most experts agreeing that the city was not a large metropolis as depicted in the bible but rather a smaller settlement with a defensive wall which contained about 5-6 acres in size. Yes Jericho is one of the oldest cities in the world, and yes they found two different walls that had been ruined by some means, but not at the time the bible claims. 

I think most rational people can see at best the bible is a bunch of metaphors and allegories written to control the Israelites like many other religions of the day and at worst, utter bullshit written by people who thought the world was created in seven days by a god that never defeated anyone. 

Sadly, the world we live in is not filled with rational people so we will continue on with our quest to see if we can reason out if their god was a moral god and if he deserves our worship. 

In part three we take a look at the Exodus story in greater detail.