A Bible Study by the only people truly qualified to study the bible — those who don't believe.

Ain't God a bitch.

Exodus 24

So we all know from our previous reading that God has promised the Land of Canaan to the Hebrews.  All they have to do is kill or remove all the people who actually live there.  Great gift idea for any of you with anniversaries coming up. There’s your ring, Honey Just break in and steal it.    At first it seems God himself is going to do a little personal ass-kicking but this soon dilutes down to merely aiding the Hebrews with their battles and that “aid” becomes increasingly nebulous as the Bible progresses.  But… But, God extracts a price for this help, never-the-less — complete and abject obedience.  This willingness to be subservient soon takes the form of glorifying Yahweh at all times.  Because the one thing you can get the tyrant who has everything is utterly abject and sycophantic praise and, of course, building great and costly temples and altars to him and sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.  Don’t forget the power of a little blood to bring a God to orgasm.  God loves Kink.  However before we dip too deeply into that Pot O’ Piss, let’s tie up a few loose ends.

First, God calls Moses back up to the Mountain for a little one on one time.  Apparently, the boys need to bond.

Then He said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord , you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel, and you shall worship at a distance. “Moses alone, however, shall come near to the Lord , but they shall not come near, nor shall the people come up with him.”

Again, Moses is the only one capable of approaching God too closely.  Why?  Because the wires, plaster and paint would be to easily recognized for what it is, or perhaps I should say, the great cloud of smoke. The most prominent sign of any cult is always a limited access to the deity, and Moses is a genius at playing that game.  Here, he likely takes only the people who are in on the scam or those “Elders” naive enough to unquestioningly believe. Even stupid people in genuine awe tend to be convincing.  Even though I know that it’s a violation of several laws of physics, if some Deliverance hillbilly/fuktard comes bolting past me screaming about zombies and the apocalypse, I’m going to be looking nervously over my shoulder for a few hours.  Evolution has designed us to take emotion seriously, the stronger the better.  Can anyone explain how else Glenn Beck is popular.  Christ on a stick! That guy gets on my nerves.

Emotion was the earlier of the two motivators, much earlier.  It has been around in its basic state for a few hundred million years.  Reason, by comparison, has hardly lasted more than a few thousand, and a good look around makes me doubt it’s here now.  Reason is a hastily tacked on prototype software which, although useful, is a bit buggy when integrated with the previous operating system.  We always find our root programing a bit more compelling, even if it’s illogical– with some people especially so.  Beck, I’m looking at you.

So Moses and his Elders went up and dined with God.  Well… Not really with God, more like one the lower slopes of the mountain.  Here they saw –

Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself.

It does make you wonder what Moses fed them.  Do mushrooms grow on Sinai?  Eat these magic toadstools and you will see God… and the Devil… and unicorns… and, well…  dogs playing poker?  WTF?   Have you ever noticed that deep religious experience is indistinguishable from being completely fucked up on hallucinogens?  Coincidence?  I think not.

Remember that Moses keeps all the rest of the people away from any close view of God.  Give them some of the sacred bubblegum to chew on the way up and — Poof!  Instant Deity. Just add drugs.  I can just imagine the scene.  Elders masturbating on cactuses and shit, thinking that they’re all now part of God.  I have to admit that for all his other faults, Moses knew how to party.  Damn, that bitch had the best drugs!

So God then calls Moses up to the mountain to receive the stone tablets for which he is famous for, the tablets of the law.  We’ll cover this under the Great Golden Calf Fiasco in a few posts.  Please stay tuned, but for now I wish to point out this hilarious little blurb.

Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank.

The elders have seen God and his sapphire highway and the great Yahweh was gracious not to kill them all for it.  He invites them up for dinner and then receives credit for not butchering them all for the temerity for accepting the invitation. That guy’s a sweetheart.  By this standard if I have dinner guests over, I should receive some sort of medal for not shooting one of them.  Don’t you just love those absolute standards of morality.

But now we must return to the point at hand, the demand for sacrifice.  For this, we need to go back to just before the Divine Shroomapalooza.   Moses comes to the people to tell them of his… I mean God’s plan and to build an altar to the Lord — an altar with twelve pillars representing the twelve tribes — an altar on which to sacrifice animals to please God with the spilling of blood, and this brings me to the today’s question.  Why does the “God of Love” demand any sacrifices but specifically bloody ones? This becomes a more fascinating question the longer one looks at it, and I’m sure we will be back to cover this several times in the course of our Biblical journey. Here is Moses’ way of appeasing his God.

Then he arose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent young men of the sons of Israel, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord . Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and the  other half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!” So Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

The young Hebrews run about finding living things to sacrifice to the lord.  Well and good, I guess, but one has to question why?  By today’s standards of reason and knowledge, why does God love the idea of his people sacrificing animals to him?  And this question refuses to lie quietly in the bottom of the barrel with the rest of the “mysterious ways” shit but stirs restlessly in my mind.  Exactly what is it with sacrifice that gives God a chubby?   I mean we all have our kinks but what’s God’s?  It is not an idle question but integral to the relationship Christians have with their Deity, a relationship of demanding obedience, fawning subservience and slavery.  Damn! Where do I sign up?  Um… Oh yeah… Never mind.

The evidence of the historicity of ancient sacrifice lies everywhere in the archeology and writings from the ancient world.  Gods of Europe and the Middle East demanded sacrifices of their people and many demanded them in a similar way.  In comparing the burnt offerings to the Olympian Gods as told by Homer and those to Yahweh as laid out in the Old Testament one finds great similarities, too great to be coincidence.  These were peoples separated by little and very likely linked by trade route and human migrations.  In the same way that technological advances such as agriculture and metal-working spread across the land, ideas of religion and myth oozed right along behind them.  These later were not nearly so beneficial and the shared ideas and techniques of sacrifice were among the worst.

There are a few different types of sacrifice demanded by the gods.  The first is the simple bloodless offering usually consisting some agricultural product such as grain or wine but could be anything of value.  Next came the blood offerings, the sacrifice of a living animal.  These were usually burnt at least in part so that the smoke would rise to the heavens and please the gods, at least in the Greek mythos, but the Hebrews also subscribed to the practice.

In addition, with the passage above we can readily see that the blood of the sacrificed was thought to have a magical power.  This is a very common idea throughout history from the Greeks to the Roman rite of Taurobulium or bull killing where the officiant was drenched in the blood of a sacrificed bull.  From the Aztecs who soaked their altars with human blood to the ancient idea of witchcraft, blood has been thought to hold a special significance for controlling the world around us. Even in the Christian mythos, a document signed in blood had more binding power than any merely inked contract.  Blood ruled.

But again, why?  Now I fully understand why an ancient people ignorant of the ways of nature and science would believe that their butchery would propitiate a vengeful god.  That’s not the point.  I’m not criticizing them. They did amazing things with the knowledge they had.  As any long time reader of this blog knows, I’m criticizing the people alive today who demand we all take the Bible with its bloody sacrifice as the one true moral and historical guide to the universe. Dammit!  These are the people who should know better.

So let’s ask these people, these Biblical literalists, why does God want or demand sacrifice? What is it with cutting an animal apart and pouring its blood all over his altars that turns him on?  Why does the smell of burning animal flesh fill him with benevolence?  Although the Hebrews never practiced the abhorrent rites of human sacrifice, in basic concept, is this much different from the Aztecs slaughtering thousands on their altars to their gods to make sure the sun rose another day? In today’s society, I find it difficult to believe that intelligent and decent people can read these passages and not tremble with shame for their worship of such a god.  Oh yes, Christians talk constantly about the “New Covenant” and how it has replaced the old.  In fact, the Hebrews themselves gave up the practice before long, far ahead of many of their contemporaries, but none of this even mitigates the fact that the Christian’s perfect and unchanging God once demanded the bloody sacrifice of animals.  What logical and just being would do this?

Imagine the scene as described above.  Bulls were sacrificed and the blood collected.  We aren’t told how many , but it’s more than one.  Half of that blood is poured over the altar and half sprinkled over the people.  Even at a minimum, all the blood from of a single bull drenches the sacred altar, sticky, gooey, the air rich with the metallic tang.  Is that a rite you’d want to attend?  If a group practiced that today, would they be looked on as a dangerous cult?  Of course they would!   The literalists demand that we accept this book as unchanging morality, but how many of them today would look on a sect that restarted this ancient and approved practice?  The fact is that their unchanging God changed.  And continues to as the needs and wants of his followers change.

But that’s just a small part of the problem I have with the idea of sacrifice.  The scope of our questioning, while valid at this level, must be expanded to encompass the idea of sacrifice in its entirety.  Why does God demand any sacrifice from those he professes to love?  At its heart, sacrifice is not a tool of love.  It’s a device to prove loyalty.  Those that sacrifice show the world that they revere their god, but in the real world who demands such a show from their loved ones?  Do parents demand costly sacrifices from their children as proof of their devotion? Perhaps, but is this right?  Do husbands or wives insist on expensive gifts from their spouses that demonstrate adoration? Maybe. But is this a healthy part of any relationship?  Remember, this is an all-powerful god who can get anything he wants with merely a thought.  The closest analogy I can come up with is a billionaire demanding his working class son bring him costly gifts on regular occasions, or he will be cut from the will.  A god who can afford anything has little right to demand even the smallest of sacrifices from those who follow him.

We do have people in our world who do demand such sacrifices, dictators and tyrants, narcissists and egoists, bitches and bastards.  These all fit the requirements.  But are these people worth admiration let alone worship?  Have you ever noticed that when you take God and all his divine attributes and make him a human, he is an asshole, and not just the everyday garden variety of asshole, but a real nutless buttplug of an asshole, the Grand High Poobah of jackasses, a monster through and through.  I’ve always thought that if God became human we’d be at war with him in a day or two.

By the blackened bowels of Christ, how could any decent human being worship a creature like that?