The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion: Decoding the Old and New Testaments

By Donald R. Nuss

No one knows exactly what happened two thousand years ago in the Holy Land. The four Gospel authors proclaimed their versions, and the fathers of the emerging Christian church trumpeted them to be the Gospel Truth. In The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion, author Donald R. Nuss examines evidence that contravenes what has been accepted for centuries. It asks questions that ministers and priests cannot or will not answer, such as: Is the Bible historically accurate, the word of God, or an amalgam of half truths, myths, and fiction?

The result of fifty years of research, The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion serves as a Biblical handbook. Insightful commentary explains how each author of the Old Testament influenced the conduct of the ancient Israelis and how some provided source material for New Testament Gospel authors. Nuss explores the Bibles mystique, reveals its beauty, exposes its blemishes, and analyzes, praises, and criticizes its inconsistencies, contradictions, and mendacity.

In this thorough examination, Nuss seeks to explain why religion inspires, elevates, and gives encouragement to many, but incites, irritates, and inflames others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450250146

Donald R. Nuss

DONALD R. NUSS earned an engineering degree from U.C. Berkeley and served as a Lt. Comdr. in the Navy during World War II. He had careers in retail, real estate, and construction, and has published four other books. Nuss lives in Southern California with his wife, Lorraine. They have two daughters, five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Book preview

THE ANATOMIES OF GOD, THE BIBLE, AND RELIGION

Decoding the Old and New Testaments

DONALD R. NUSS

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion

Decoding the Old and New Testaments

Copyright © 2010 Donald R. Nuss

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Bible quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the new Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright c 1989 by Division of Christian Education of the National Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.. Used by permission

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Dedication

To my loving wife of sixty-four years, Lorraine, who helped me produce our daughters, Laurel and Marlee, who with their husbands, Richard and Scott, created our grandchildren, Derek, Jason, Megan, Ryan, and Kyle. And the first three, with their spouses, Jennifer, Kelly, and Shawn engendered our seven great-grandchildren: Jasmine, Tyler, Trevor, Cameron, Rachel, Austin, and Hunter Not quite up to Abraham’s output, but I am grateful.

Prologue

What really happened in the Holy Land in those years 1,500 B.C to 150 A.D. when the two great religions of the Western world began? No one knows. There exist many historical accounts of how neighboring cultures and personalities, including the Babylonians the Romans, Cyrus II of Persia and Alexander the Great, influenced and impacted the people of this area: but there is only one book about the lives of the citizens of Galilee, Judea and Canaan during this time—the Bible. Is this great book historical, factual or is it an amalgam of truth and fiction? Is the Old Testament just an anthology of ancient history, kingdoms, prophecies, and poetry or is it the holiest of books? Were Mark’s, Matthew’s, Luke’s and John’s Gospels historically accurate or literary fantasy?

The Anatomies of God, the Bible and Religion, Decoding the Old and New Testaments has two functions. The first is to create a biblical handbook. The Old Testament, a wild, epic story covering 1500 years and thousands of strong, willful people pursuing a love, hate relationship with their God, Yahweh, is condensed. But each book retains the essence of what those ancient authors wanted to inscribe for future generations about the events they were witnessing. Insightful commentary explains how each author influenced the conduct of the ancient Israelis and how some provided source material for New Testament Gospel authors.

The condensed New Testament is different. Instead of a cast of thousands, there is only one man, Jesus. Instead of 1500 years, his story lasts only one year in the Synoptic Gospels and three in John’s.

The second function is to explore the Bible’s mystique; to reveal its beauty and expose its blemishes; to analyze, to praise and to criticize its inconsistencies, contradictions and mendacity. It also discovers unique answers to centuries-old questions. Anatomies takes a fresh look at the Bible from perspectives that contradict what has been taught for centuries, asking questions that ministers and priests cannot or will not answer.

The Judeo, Christian religions supposedly have one God in common but the Bible describes two. The God of the Old Testament loved and protected the ancient Israelites, unless they disobeyed him, and punished others. The God of the New Testament accepts only those who have faith in Jesus. Is there a third God for everyone else? Two chapters explain these puzzles. Four others explore the Origins of the Bible and the Myths, Literature and Miracles of the Old Testament

Two major story lines flow through The Anatomies’ treatment of the New Testament. The first is an investigation on who wrote the four Gospels and why they did it. The second is an inquiry into the quotations credited to Jesus. Did Mark, Matthew, Luke and John truly record what Jesus said? Were they from his mouth or from their pens? Did Jesus compose the parables or did these Greek educated authors? The Anatomies provides the answers.

Why does religion inspire, elevate and give encouragement to many but also incites, irritates and inflames others. Years of investigative research were needed to discover the answers to these and other questions that never were taught in Christian seminaries, schools or churches.

I witnessed the horrors of World War II and have lived in a world where 20 percent of its people live miserably near starvation, two-thirds experience quiet desperation, and natural disasters kill hundreds of thousands of innocent souls each year. These tragedies compelled me to investigate the premises of God and religion that promise so much, on the one hand, and deliver so little on the other. Years of research and an uncompromising passion for discovering the truth are my credentials.

For fifty years I have read the Bible several times, studied scores of other books, researched sources, talked to religious scholars, and used my deductive powers to unravel the mysteries of the Bible and religion. My conclusions are revealed in The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion.

Seminarians, ministers or priests could not have written The Anatomies because their churches’ restrictive doctrines prevented them from doing so. Their ecclesiastical positions had to coincide with what they had been taught starting with their catechisms. I was under no such restrictions. For two thousand years Christians have accepted as the Gospel Truth what Mark, Matthew, Luke and John wrote. Were they deceived?

Author’s notes: In The Anatomies, the books are arranged in the chronological order in which they were written. Paul wrote his Epistles in the fifties of the first century. Mark, the first Gospel writer, wrote his Gospel in the seventies; Matthew recorded his in the eighties; and Luke and John composed theirs in the nineties and possibly into the first quarter of the second century. With few exceptions, the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible was used as the source for quotations.

Acknowledgments

Nearly everyone in the Western World has heard of the Bible. It is considered the Holy Book, the foundation of Judaism and Christianity. Many people take its various messages literally, passionately believing every word came directly from God. Another substantial group accepts it but benignly ignores it, reluctantly allowing it space in a library or on a book stand. Some reject it completely, believing it to be no more than a collection of myths and fiction; others acknowledge it has historical value.

Many philosophers and biblical scholars question how the Bible has been interpreted and used by the organized church with its dogmas and doctrines. These truth-seekers first expressed doubts about the divinity and truthfulness of the Bible beginning in the second century.

In the fifteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer, was the first to reveal that the Catholic Church’s position was wrong; the earth was not the center of the universe. In the sixteenth century, Galileo confirmed his finding and was eventually forced by the church to recant his views and spent the last years of his life under house arrest.

Voltaire, in the seventeenth century, not only criticized church dogmas, but he nearly destroyed the French church by stating, Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Charles Bradlaugh, Christopher Hitchens, and Dennis Didorot challenged the Bible and religion in the nineteenth century. For a while, their conclusions became the dominate philosophy in the Western World. A Vatican counter effort restored a balance between conservative Christians who remained loyal to traditional belief and the liberals who questioned the validity of those conclusions.

To understand what happened two thousand yeas ago, biblical scholars today study not only the canonical books but also those of recent architectural discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the fifty-two non-canonical book find near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in December, 1945. The well preserved Gospel of Thomas was one of those books. The complete Nag Hammadi library is itemized in Appendix D.

I have a great admiration for those thinkers that challenged the religious status quo of past centuries. They did so at a great risk to their lives and properties. I am thankful for their discoveries plus those of the modern biblical scholar. Their revelations laid the foundation for the discoveries disclosed in The Anatomies of God, the Bible and Religion. Many of their books are listed in the Bibliography.

I owe an immeasurable debt to my friend and biblical scholar David Thomas, who for four years guided me through the intricacies of the Bible holding my feet to the fire until I presented credible proofs for my findings. He should present me with a bill from his optometrist for eye damage caused by reading several drafts of The Anatomies.

I am grateful to Father Rick Byrum, Dr. Ronald Wood, Dr. William Lycette, and Dr. Robert Kraszewski for their instructive time, constructive criticisms, and encouragement. The Anatomies could not have been completed without the help of these gentlemen, the ground-breaking revelations of the present-day biblical scholars, and the forbearance of my wife, Lorraine.

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Acknowledgments

Book 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Book 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Book 3

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Book 4

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Book 5

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Book 6

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Book 7

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Book 8

Chapter 80

Book 9

Chapter 81

Book 10

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Book 11

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Bibliography

About the Author

Book 1

Faith, Reason, and God

Chapter 1

Faith versus Reason

The resolution of an argument, a controversy, or a conflict begins when a common ground of understanding is established. In science and engineering there exists a benchmark, a foundation upon which all advances in understanding rests. Even in the esoteric field of philosophy, different views and conclusions can be argued satisfactorily. Other disagreements between men can be resolved by referring to a common set of laws. Only in religion does an unbridgeable chasm exist between men of differing beliefs or faiths.

There is little common ground between those who readily accept the supernatural and those who don’t, between those who believe Jesus was the Son of God and those who say he was only an exceptionally gifted man. The man of faith believes religion is a gift from God. He gladly accepts a creed, performs acts of piety and worship, takes the sacraments, observes rituals, and performs sacrifices. He beseeches God to help him observe the commandments and live a life worthy of his grace. He believes in the miracles, revelations, and prophesies as revealed in the Bible. To others, religion is a man-made concept; man is master of his fate, and all events can be explained as natural phenomenon. Some of these nonbelievers place Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as the modern equivalent of and successors to the mythologies of the Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.

The Bible epitomizes the divide between the man of faith and the doubter. The former accepts the Bible as a sacred work; it is the repository of divine revelation. Its inconsistencies are excused; it is above questioning and only requires proper interpretation, the believer says. To the skeptic, it is a collection of human writings: poetry, history, prophesies, and guidance. To him, it belongs with the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer, and Shakespeare. He considers the Old Testament to be a history of the ancient Israelites, and the New Testament as a sketchy one-year biography of the mystical man, Jesus. There can be no compromise between these two men.

If the Bible is the Word of God, then it has to be taken literally; the Bible is an infallible instrument. That interpretation was acceptable to mankind when he had no scientific knowledge. Until geology, meteorology, and anthropology were understood, the universe being made in six days was unquestioned; Joshua could have made the moon and sun stand still; and Moses could have parted the Red Sea. Men of faith continue to accept the Bible as an infallible instrument; every exaggeration, every discrepancy, every incongruity, and every contradiction has an explanation, they say.

Two great philosophers disagree on the genesis of faith. John Locke said, There is one sort of proposition which challenges the highest degree of our assent upon bare testimony, whether the thing proposed agree or disagree with common experience, and the ordinary course of things, or no. The reason whereof is, because the testimony is of such a one as cannot deceive, nor be deceived, that is of God himself. This carries with it an assurance, beyond doubt, evidence beyond exception. This is called by a peculiar name, revelation; and our assent to it, faith; which as absolutely determines our minds, and perfectly excludes all wavering, as our knowledge itself; and we may as well doubt of our own being, as we can whether any revelation from God be true. So that faith is a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and leaves no manner of room for doubt or hesitation. Only we must be sure that it be a divine revelation, and that we understand it right.

Thomas Hobbes believed that, Faith depends only upon certainty or probability of arguments drawn from reason or from something men believe already. Faith does not come by supernatural inspiration or infusion but by education, discipline, correction, and other natural ways, by which God worketh them in his elect, at such time as he thinketh fit. Consequently when we believe that the Scriptures are the word of God, having no immediate revelation from God himself, our belief, faith and trust is in the Church, whose word we take and acquiesce therein.

John Locke believed faith comes directly from God. Hobbes said it is a gift of God, but man acquires it through education and discipline. Contrasting views are put forward by Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. Both believe science is enough and that religion is a response to a neurotic need. Freud says that if a man does not have science or art than belief in religion is justified. For ‘life’ as we find it is too hard and we cannot do without palliative remedies. Freud had an ongoing adversarial dialogue with theologians. He believed religion was a proper study for scientific investigation and resented their conclusion that science was incompetent to sit in judgment. Freud declared, If we are not deterred by this brusque dismissal but inquire on what grounds religion bases its claim to an exceptional position among human concerns, the answer we receive, if indeed we are honored with an answer at all, is that religion cannot be measured by human standards, since it is of divine origin, and has been revealed to us by a spirit which the human mind cannot grasp.

Marx had a dismal view of theologians. He said, Theologians establish two kinds of religions. Every religion but their own is an invention of men, while their own religion is an emanation from God. He also said, Religion is the opiate of the people.

The relationship between church and state has been considered by leading religious and political thinkers: Plato, Aquinas, Augustine, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. Plato believed the justice of the state and its laws must be founded not only on nature but also upon religion and a right belief in the gods. Rousseau was concerned with which religion. He says, What the state needs is a purely civil profession of faith, of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject. Montesquieu believed in a Christian theocracy. The principles of Christianity would be infinitely more powerful than the false honor of monarchies, than the human virtues of republics, or the servile fear of despotic states. Old Testament Jews formed a theocracy, and one has been tried several times in the last thousand years. Each was a dismal failure.

Three positions can be taken regarding the relationship between church and state: complete separation (U.S. Constitution), integration between the two (sixteenth-century England), or subordination to the church (sixteenth-century Spain). Hobbes, Augustine, and Roger Bacon argue for integration between church and state. They would place kings in the service of the priesthood and make a supreme pontiff who governs both spiritually and temporally. Aquinas declared that no civil law can be valid or binding if what it commands is contrary to divine law. Georg Hegel believed the state should require all citizens belong to a church.

The question that should be put to those who believe as these four do is what is divine law? Men write all laws. Declaring certain ones to be divine does not make them so. The Frenchman Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) believed in the preeminence of reason and believed the church’s emphasis on faith was a form of mind control or brainwashing, the term used today. In the middle of the eighteenth century, he declared war on Christianity and the Catholic Church. He emphasized the faults of Christianity in history. He minimized the persecution of Christians by early Rome and said it occurred far less frequently and murderously than the persecution of heretics by the church. He thought that priests had usurped power by propagating absurd doctrines among ignorant and credulous people and by using the hypnotic power of ritual to deaden the mind and strengthen these delusions. He charged that popes had extended their sway and had amassed wealth by using documents now generally admitted to be spurious. He declared that the Spanish Inquisition and the massacre of the heretical Albigenses were the vilest events in history. Voltaire believed man’s reliance on faith instead of reason allowed him to accept these church-imposed horrors. His attacks accelerated religion’s decline in France, ending in its temporary demise in the French Revolution of 1795.

Thomas Jefferson was a serious critic of religion. In a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, in 1787 (see Appendix B), Jefferson observed, Question with boldness even the existence of God. Because if there be one, he must approve of the homage of reason, not that of blindfolded fear. About Joshua stopping the sun, he wrote, How contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped and have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time resumed its revolution, and that without a second general prostration. Jefferson edited the Bible and wrote the Jefferson Bible, omitting any references to miracles.

Reasonable men cannot agree on the proper role of religion in society. There are opposing views on every aspect of religious endeavor. There appears to be more compatibility between believers and skeptics or atheists than there is between different groups of devout men of faith. Religious control of government has led to bloody repression, and an absence of religious thought has preceded moral degradation. What is the proper role of religion in the governing of men’s affairs? Is religion a divine revelation or a human contrivance in which man immerses his desperation?

Chapter 2

God and the Creation

One of the goals of The Anatomies of God, the Bible and Religion is to explain the phenomenon of three gods: the demanding but loving God of the Ancient Israelites, the god of the conservative Christian who believes that God only can be reached through a belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and the modern skeptic who believes that god can be discovered through science This chapter explores some of the information that guides the man of scientific reason. Genesis 1:1in the Old Testament [Hebrew Bible], is a good place to start.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. This quotation is the New Revised Standard Bible’s version of the first sentence of the book of Genesis. It and similar translations express the two thousand-year-old belief as to how the earth began. From about 2,000 B.C. until the Renaissance began [1378 A.D] there were no discussions or debates about the creation of the universe. No one dared challenge the edict of the powerful religious leaders of Judaism and Christianity—God did it in six days.

Since the Renaissance, however, doubts have risen. Perhaps there are other explanations. Brave men, at the risk of being declared heretics and being punished with excommunication or death, challenged the existing dogma. Starting with Copernicus, scientists and scholars in increasing numbers banded together and broadcast their findings. The priests, ministers, rabbis, mullahs, and common people of faith resisted these new ideas with all their strength, but the great debate that began then has continued undiminished until the present time.

During the nineteenth century, scientific thoughts, enforced by the antireligious efforts of Charles Bradlaugh, 1833–91, a political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the nineteenth century; Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson; and Dennis Didorot, 1713–84, a French philosopher, writer, and prominent figure during the Enlightenment who is best known for serving as chief editor and contributor to the Encyclopédie. Their combined efforts eclipsed organized religion and became the dominate philosophy for a while, but religious-resilient forces, led by the Vatican, counterattacked and restored balance.

Science in the last thousand years has corrected and changed many of the conclusions of ancient and medieval men. For example, we now know that the earth revolves around the sun and is not the center of the universe. Men using the Edwin Hubble telescope made the remarkable discovery that changed how we understand the beginning of the universe—the big bang. With this satellite telescope and calculations of the speed with which the stars are racing away from each other, astronomers can look backward 15 billion years when our current universe was born. Astrophysicists now theorize that at that time all of the material in the universe was compacted by gravity into a dense, superheated mass, which at a critical stage exploded, sending debris in all directions. Our Earth, sun, and stars were part of that debris.

Some scientists theorize the universe re-creates itself on a regular basis. An expansion phase with cosmic objects flying in all directions away from each other is followed by a contracting phase with the all the stars, planets, supernovas, black holes, and other cosmic detritus imploding back to one infinitely dense and hot mass waiting to explode into its next expansion phase—an endless cycle: explode, expand, contract, and explode. This theory is a plausible one for the existence of our universe but does not explain the source of the original mass.

On a clear night one can see millions of stars. These stars, our sun, and planets, including Earth, are all part of a small galaxy known as the Milky Way, which consists of 200 billion stars and has a diameter of 600 thousand trillion miles. There are more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Billions of stars in one galaxy multiplied by 100 billion galaxies creates a staggering total that few men can comprehend. If all the grains of sand in all of the deserts and beaches on Earth represented the cosmos, the Earth would be represented by one grain.

If one year was equivalent to the 15 billion years since the present universe began, then the time of man’s existence (estimated at 4 million years) would be about one minute, and the time sequence from Abraham until now would be less than a nanosecond.

If only 5 percent of the stars had planetary systems, there would be millions of planets in the universe that could be capable of supporting life. Unfortunately, we here on Earth will never know. Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second, and the nearest planet capable of supporting life is thousands of light-years away.

Man cannot accept the idea that perhaps the universe has no beginning and will have no end. In man’s experience and conscience, there has to be a beginning and ending, a cause and effect. The word limitless is incomprehensible to man’s finite mind. Maybe there has always been a cosmos with no beginning or ending.

If it had a beginning, what came before it, a vacuum? The idea that the universe could sprout from a vacuum is even more prodigious.

If the universe had no beginning, always existed, where did it come from? Some scientists speculate that our cosmos simply calved off an older and bigger one. That conclusion, however, only begs the question: where did the older one come from?

The age of the universe is unknown—unless it is forever. The big bang, the beginning of our galaxy, is estimated to have happened about 15 billion years ago; our Earth started about 4.5 billion years ago; man evolved about 4 million years ago; and the concept of God about six thousand years ago.

Besides Genesis 1:1, there are other beliefs about God and Creation. To the atheist, the creation happened by chance; man is a random accident, the master of his fate, and everything is the result of his intellect and good or bad luck. The agnostic hedges his bets; maybe God exists, maybe he doesn’t. The deist subscribes to one God who, after creating the world and its laws, retired and allowed man’s intelligence and morality to govern human affairs. The pantheist believes the universe and everything in it defines God. God is not a separate entity but the totality—God is the universe and every rock, river, plant, and creature, including man, is a part of him. The theist holds that God created man and the universe; he is separate but immanent in everything. Others believe that the universe was simply a gift from a supreme being.

Some view God as Michelangelo painted him on the Sistine Chapel ceiling—a larger-than-life, fatherly man. To others, he is a spirit who can be contacted by prayer. Is he the demanding God of the Old Testament? One who promised everlasting rewards providing the beneficiaries obeyed his laws, his commands, and his plans? Or is he the selective God of the New Testament who is only available to those who believe Jesus is his son and their savior?

Perhaps God is a gigantic electromagnetic field of intelligence that envelops the universe. Perhaps in man’s brain there is an antenna that could be used to pick up signals from this field. Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Galileo, Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking knew how to use their antennas and were able to tap directly into the mind of God.

Man originally had a one-on-one relationship with God. He talked directly to him and believed he was answered by him. The Old Testament prophets had such an ongoing dialogue. The religious leaders of other cultures did rain and harvest dances to get God’s attention and sacrificed some of their tribe’s worldly goods to encourage a reciprocal gift, a positive answer to their entreaty. For centuries this arrangement worked, but eventually, the individual was persuaded that what one could do alone, a group could do better, and organized religion was born. The individual was convinced by his religious leader that his personal relationship with God was not correct and that if he didn’t conform, he would be declared a heretic and would be punished by the wrath of God, which was often implemented by his church through dismissal, torture, or death. So the individual relinquished his personal relationship with God and replaced it with a standardized form of supplication through dogma and liturgy.

Different groups contrived diverse beliefs on how to worship, and this deviation, and the importance given to it, has been the curse of mankind for more than two thousand years, causing more strife and bloodshed than all of the other disagreements experienced by the human race. The tragedy is that many of these beliefs were not based on a solid foundation of historical or verifiable truth but on distortions caused by ignorance and religious fervor. Men were willing to go to war and commit unthinkable horrors to fight and die for beliefs that perhaps were the result of zealous misrepresentations.

Is there a God? If so, what is he? Did he create the dinosaurs that roamed the earth 500 million years ago, and if he did, why? Knowledge of God’s true nature is beyond man’s experience and comprehension. Every individual will contemplate a different God or none at all. If all of these ideas were combined, the result could not define God or his true nature. In the Old Testament, he is a demanding God; in the New Testament, he is a loving father figure.

Some believers think God needs to be recognized and understood, not worshipped, placated, or feared. They believe prostrations and rituals lack an understanding of God’s true nature and are the modem equivalent of the ancient practice of sacrifice, where people and animals were slain and put on an alter to garner favors and to forestall retribution from an angry and vengeful God. Man wanted a trade-off: worship given for prayers answered. Many have concluded that God does not reward men for fidelity and virtue or punish for impiety or sin. There is no evidence that the good succeed and the bad fail or that the ones who pray daily are any richer, more powerful, or happier than the ones who don’t. To them, God seems beyond the good and evil practices of man. God has infinite assets unknown to man. If man cannot understand how the universe began, how can he know God?

Ongoing discoveries built on those of Galileo, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking are slowly but surely being combined into a grand unified theory of physics that, if we are smart enough to complete it, will go a long way to answer the remaining unknown questions of how the universe works. Man, at an accelerating rate, is discovering knowledge previously known only to God.

Other famous men have added their voices. Marcus Aurelius said: There is a universe made up of all things and one God who pervades all things. Plotinus: God is present through all. Spinoza: Whatever is, is in God and nothing can be conceived without God.

In the affairs of men, God seems to be neutral. Maybe God created the canvas; man painted the picture; he has put his laws in place. God doesn’t care which team wins a football game, who wins the lottery, who gets promoted, or who wins the hand of the most beautiful girl in school. He won’t decide who lives or dies or what country wins a war. God is totality, and the universe and everything in it operates under his laws, the natural laws. His law of geology controls the cooling of the earth’s core and the movement of the tectonic plates. It decides where and when an earthquake will happen to relieve the earth’s internal stress and strain.

Hurricanes, monsoons, and other violent storms are caused by meteorological variances in the temperatures of the oceans, the land, and the air and changes in atmospheric pressure, his law of meteorology. These storms will cause havoc and loss of life, but God cannot and will not interfere with his laws. Fires, floods, tidal waves, and other natural disasters happen by the confluence of natural forces. Great loss of life occurs, and yet God remains impassive. Prayers to be saved from disasters cannot supersede natural laws. If a man ravages himself with alcohol and dangerous living, should God interfere? Wars are caused by the insane ambition, greed, and fear of men. Disease is the result of a successful malevolent invasion of a human’s immune system; poverty is the result of not preparing for the vagaries of the prevailing economic system and/or bad luck. All of these negative forces are part of God’s natural laws that govern man’s existence. Man can eliminate violence, disease, and poverty by continuing discovery and use of these laws. God would not suspend his own laws, the laws of nature

Albert Einstein gave us the essential structure of the cosmos and proved that at the speed of light, time stands still. Relativity, his theory of space and time, and the discovery that light comes from particles forever changed how we view our world. Enrico Fermi and Philo Farnsworth discovered how to send sounds and pictures through the air. Robert Goddard showed how we could overcome gravity by his development of rocketry. During the past hundred years, astronomers have discovered quasars, pulsars, black holes, and planets orbiting distant suns, meaning life is possible elsewhere in the universe.

Ludwig Wittgenstein refined mathematics; Alexander Fleming developed penicillin, which conquered many ancient scourges of mankind; Alan Turning pioneered computer science; and James Watson and Francis Crick cracked the secret of life, DNA. All of these discoveries brought mankind unforeseen benefits. Where did these secrets come from? Did they come from the mind of God? And if a grand unified theory is completed, will man know in its entirety the mind of God?

Scientists observe dying stars in the universe. Eventually, within a few billion years, our sun will die too. It will expand greatly, emitting temperatures that will destroy all life in our planetary system. It will become a super nova and collapse on itself. The planets will be drawn into its gravitational field, and they and the sun will cease to exist. Will God cease then also, or will he continue to rule over a lifeless universe? What would be God’s purpose in such a world?

If God created the world, then he did so in a planned, logical way—every particle empowered for a purpose and everything in it place. This universe would operate under God’s rules, the natural laws: gravity, centrifugal force, Newton’s Laws of Motion, and Einstein’s theories. God would never violate his own rules. Would he breach and transcend his own cannons by allowing certain men to perform miracles contravening these forces? Would God ignore his laws of gravity, centrifugal force, and motion to stop the rotations of the moon and sun for Joshua? Would he change the rules of chemistry so that a man could change water into wine?

There were two devastating earthquakes in 1999—one in Turkey and one in Taiwan—with a total loss of life exceeding fifty thousand people. In 2007 a tidal wave killed two hundred thousand in Indonesia. Why didn’t God cause a miracle and save the victims? Because God operates within the laws he created. He withheld interference in these terrible events, because they happened by natural forces in the structure he created.

Miracles happen daily through the exigency of scientific discoveries operating through God’s natural laws. A fall from a forty-story building will end in death when the body strikes earth. Gravity is at work, and all the prayers in the world will not change the result. A million lottery tickets are sold, and there is one winner. Is the result due to the lucky person’s prayers, or is it the result of the mathematics of chance? Ten women are stricken with breast cancer. Five live, and five die. Is this result caused by the more powerful prayers of some or because they have a successful combination of good health habits, genes, and better medical treatments? If God could interfere with his laws, wouldn’t all babies be born without deformities? Wouldn’t everyone have an equal chance in life? Wouldn’t wars, accidents, poverty, and cruelty be eliminated?

Modern magicians create marvelous illusions. They can make elephants disappear in front of your eyes; saw people in two and separately rotate their half bodies; change a sword into a snake; and defy the natural law of gravity by levitating a person. Miracles? No. We know they are great feats of dexterity and disciplined trickery. God, however he is defined and understood, operates under natural laws and invites man to discover and utilize them.

Man has been discovering these laws for millions of years and has created modern miracles because of them. Perhaps the first was the discovery of fire, which must have amazed early man and filled him with wonder as it advanced his standard of living. Man’s ability to reduce ore to metal allowed the manufacture of tools to plant seeds, to reap the harvest, and to make weapons to protect his family. The invention of the wheel reduced the back-breaking work of moving objects and performing tasks. Discoveries are being made at such a rapid pace today that it is difficult to keep abreast of them. In medicine, electronics, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, communications, and propulsion, man’s horizon is exploding. Man is relieving God of many of his secrets. God provides the framework for man to continue to peer into his mind. Work within the natural laws, and he is with you. Work without, and he is absent. Look within and see God, but don’t ask for miracles that violate the mind of God.

The cosmos was and is a physical phenomenon that has always existed in one configuration or another, or it was created by God from a vacuum, from nothingness. If he did, then he dictated that it be governed by his natural laws. This question will never be resolved, but the adherents to the God theory could declare victory by stating that they agree with the scientists that the universe expands and contracts and that man was a result of millions of years of evolution, but the big bang and evolution factors were both part of God’s plan.

More than three thousand years ago, the ancient Israelites had a God, Yahweh, a powerful God who made a covenant with them. Mostly unknown authors wrote thirty-nine books—the Jewish Bible to the Jews and the Old Testament to the Christians—about this God and their love for him. Nearly half of Anatomies is devoted to the essence and critique of these thirty-nine books.

Two thousand years ago, a man like no other man, Jesus, burst forth in the same region, the Near East, and changed men’s lives forever. Four men wrote Gospels; one man wrote numerous Epistles about him and his ministry. The second half of this book attempts to dissect these books and explain both accepted and critical views.

If God is eternal and is the totality of everything that was and is and will be, then all men were part of God before they existed as men, are part of God when alive, and will be part of God after their lives as men on Earth have ceased. Man and everything else in one form or another have been in the universe since the beginning—if there was a beginning—and will be there to the end. This is the true meaning of immortality.

Book 2

An Introduction to the Old Testament

Chapter 3

Authorship and Origins of the Old Testament

The Old Testament developed roughly over a millennium; the oldest texts appear to come from the eleventh or tenth centuries B.C. The first five books, the books of Moses, established the laws for the Israelites; the next twelve tell their history. The five books of poetry follow, and the Old Testament concludes with the lives of five Major Prophets and twelve Minor Prophets. The books of the Old Testament are not in chronological order. Many episodes are told two or three times in books distant from one another. Four of the five books of poetry (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon) were the last completed and the last to be received as scripture, although parts of them may be very ancient.

Traditionally, the books of the Old Testament were named for the man considered the author. For a thousand years, but especially since the middle of the eighteenth century, biblical scholars have made discoveries that challenge the traditional view about who wrote the Bible. It was previously believed that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books are also known by the Christians as the Pentateuch, which is from the Greek meaning five scrolls and by the Jews as the Torah, which is from Hebrew meaning instruction. Also, it was accepted that the Prophet Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations and that half of the Psalms were penned by King David.

It is beyond the scope of this book to detail the six hundred years of biblical investigation that has been expended to discover the authorship of the Bible. For readers who are interested in this exciting and tedious detective work, the author recommends the brilliant and unique Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman, who is a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego. Three men separately made the discovery that Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible: Henning Bernard Witter, a German minister, in 1711; Jean Astruc, a French professor of medicine and court physician to Luis XV, in 1753; and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, a respected scholar in Germany, in 1780. They concluded that there were two sources responsible for the first four books, because many of the stories are told twice in separate places in the Bible. There are two stories of the creation of the world: one in Genesis 1, and one in Genesis 2. There are two stories of the covenant between God and Abraham, two of the naming of Abraham’s son Isaac, and at least six others are told twice using different styles and dates.

Later scholars concluded there were four sources, not two. Three were identified as J, E, and P. The writer identified as J used Yahweh/Jehovah when referring to the divine. The man identified as E referred to him as Elohim. Priestly matters and the law were written by a writer identified as P. Their input was dominant in the first four books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Leviticus) but, except for a few lines, were absent from Deuteronomy. There are contradictions between these five books and the later ones in the Bible: the vocabulary is different, and there are differences in recurring expressions and phrases. Deuteronomy was independent, from a fourth source subsequently called D.

Much is known about J, E, and P—when and where they lived and what they wrote—but they were never identified. D has been.

A German biblical scholar, Martin Noth, proved in 1943 that there is a strong similarity between Deuteronomy and the next six books of the Bible: Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings, known as the six books of the early prophets. The language is too similar for coincidence. They are a thoughtful collection of writings telling a flowing, continuous story of the history of the people of Israel and their land. Various people wrote sections of these books, such as the court history of David and the stories of Samuel, but the finished product was arranged and edited by one person. This man arranged the texts, added comments of his own, wrote introductory sections, and recorded a history that extended from Moses to the Babylonian conquest of Judah.

Noth’s case was strong. Joshua begins where Deuteronomy ends; themes and terminology that begin in Deuteronomy are developed in Joshua, Samuel, and Kings. Deuteronomy was produced at the time of the Prophet Jeremiah, during the reign of Josiah. The book of Jeremiah uses the same language style as that of Deuteronomy with many of the same phrases, favorite terms, and metaphors. Further, the book of Jeremiah is filled throughout with the same language. Baruch, son of Neriyah, was the scribe to Jeremiah who took dictation from the prophet, transcribing the words to scrolls. Baruch is mentioned many times in the book of Jeremiah and credited with writing documents for the prophet. It is apparent that the author, collaborator, and recorder of Jeremiah and Deuteronomy was Baruch, son of Neriyah.

In 1980, Nachman Avigad, an archaeologist, exhibited a clay seal impression that he had discovered. The seal and the impression can be dated, and this one was from the early sixth century BC. The impression was in Hebrew script, and translated it states, Belonging to Baruch son of Neriyah. Many biblical scholars believe he was the author/editor of eight books of the Bible: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and Jeremiah.

P is credited with being the largest source of the five books of Moses. Biblical scholars reason he was an Aaronid priest from Judah, probably from Jerusalem, and was alive before the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 587 BC.

In Genesis, experts determined that J was responsible for the stories of Creation, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the flood, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Joseph and his brothers, Jacob in Egypt, and many others. E had duplicate stories of the Creation, the flood, Joseph, Jacob in Egypt, and a few others. P also duplicated Creation, the flood, and Jacob and added the generations of Noah’s sons, Abraham’s migration, and other stories

E was the major writer of Exodus with the stories of Yahweh summoning Moses, Moses and Pharaoh, the Red Sea and many others. J and P duplicated the first three and added several others. P alone is credited with the Ten Commandments, wrote the entire book of Leviticus, and was the major contributor to the book of Numbers. J had the next highest input with E contributing little, as indicated earlier. D was the author of the Book of Deuteronomy.

In the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, several scholars questioned various lines and passages in biblical text that seemed odd or out of place. These included:

•   Isaac ibn Yashush: An eleventh-century Jewish court physician in Muslin Spain who observed that Genesis 36 appeared to be a list of Edomite kings who would have lived long after Moses was dead.

•   Abraham ibn Ezra: A twelfth-century Spanish rabbi who noted several passages in the first five books that were incongruous to Moses’s time and place.

•   Ostatus: A fifteenth-century bishop of Avila who concluded that the passage about Moses’s death and others could not have been penned by Moses.

•   Isaac de la Payere: A French Calvinist who argued that the phrase across the Jordan is the way a person living in Israel talks about the territory of the Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites and shows that whoever wrote the story must