Words I never heard in the Bible

Sunday musical excursion #43

The book of Genesis, or Bereshit as it’s known to speakers of Hebrew, is the biblical authority for the covenant established between God and His chosen people conferring upon them the territory of Israel.

No one knows for sure who wrote the book of Genesis, but scholars are united in one thing: it was not Moses, to whom the Jews ascribe its authorship. According to Bishop Ussher, a 17th century bishop of Armagh in what is today Northern Ireland (1581-1656), the world was created at 6 p.m. on 11 October 4004 B.C. (proleptic Julian calendar). Moses, who is supposed by Jews to have written the book of Genesis, was born, according to Bishop Ussher, in 1571 before the year 0, whereas Rabbinic Judaism suggests his life spanning the years 1391 to 1271 before 0, thus removing Moses from the date of creation by 2,500 years from the date proposed by the Church of Ireland. This means that Rabbinic Judaism places Moses writing the book of Genesis at about 2,600 years after creation occurred according to Bishop Ussher, and at least 4.5 billion years after geologists’ and astronomers’ estimations.

Even assuming Bishop Ussher was right, which it’s pretty universally accepted now he wasn’t, Moses writing about the creation of the Earth when he might have been able to is a little like us writing about Moses today. Because scholars are also united in one other thing about the book of Genesis: it was written around the year 500 before the year 0.

Image: Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome. The Bible at the time contained an error (only one?), which stated that Moses had horns. He didn’t, he had beams of light emitting from his head. Much more logical.

Now, we do know that Moses existed, and that he made a number of journeys to Egypt in a sort of shuttle diplomacy seeking a resolution for the Jewish peoples, who the Pharaoh of Egypt suspected could unite with Egypt’s enemies and attack his realm. How very prescient the Pharaoh was, because this is precisely what the Jewish people did in 1967 (after the year 0).

What is striking about these voyages of diplomacy on the part of Moses is the fact that he wasn’t entirely non-partisan in the matter. We know now that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter also weren’t entirely neutral in their diplomatic efforts between Israel and Egypt, but Moses also wasn’t, since he was Jewish.

What exactly Moses all got up to in his lifetime is a matter of some speculation, for it’s generally accepted the accounts in the Bible are more legendary than factual. Moses was given to fits of temper and he possessed huge human strength. When he saw a Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian slave-master, he did not simply restrain the slave-master, which should have been well within his capabilities; instead, he killed him. I don’t know if you have ever tried to lift a tablet of stone of any size greater than a pebble, but I can assure you that stone is very heavy. When Moses espied the golden calf that his followers had manufactured (quite how, I’m not certain) whilst he was receiving God’s law in the form of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, he was not only carrying two enormous tablets of stone with the law inscribed on them, but he hurled them to the ground in anger, breaking them and necessitating his going back up the mountain to ask God if He didn’t have, perhaps, a copy that he could use, because … the dog ate the originals.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Ten Commandments are fantastic, for what they say, and for what they don’t say and for how Jesus emended them when He came along. But the story of how they were bestowed on mankind requires a certain amount of psychotropic influence in my view.

- You lot, can you just wait here for a while, I’m … popping up the Mount.

- Where’s he going?

- Dunno, somewhere, behind that bush, the one that’s not burning. Y’know, better not to ask.

- Right, okay.

…

…

- Anyone got a pack of cards?

- No, clean forgot. But, I tell you what. I’ve got a crucible here, and we should be able to scrabble together some gold somewhere. Why don’t we build a fire and melt the gold down into the form of a calf?

- What a stupendous idea. Let’s!

(Some time later, Moses reappears.)

- What the dickens is that!?

- Well, we though you had constipation, so we made a golden calf.

(Moses throws down the Law, thereby breaking same.)

- Bugger! Now I’ll have to go back and get another one!

- Ask Him if He can’t write it down on paper, perhaps?

- Don’t be wet! How could paper last an eternity, might I ask? Wait here! And destroy that abomination before I get back.

- Yes, Mo’.

Moses is supposed to have died on Mount Nebo at the age of 120. He saw the burning bush, he escorted the enslaved Jews across the Red Sea, which conveniently parted to allow them across, and they didn’t get bogged down in the silt. He received God’s law, twice, because he broke it once. He got mad at a golden calf. He was found as a baby among the reeds of the River Nile by the princess of Egypt. He had, even for a lifespan of 120 years, quite an eventful life. But if he wrote in Genesis that God had covenanted with His chosen people to bestow upon them the land of Israel, then it was not an entirely non-partisan position for the author to take, and it somewhat presumed that oppressed peoples will always be preserved by God, and that their oppressors will ultimately meet with an untimely death; and, if that is still true in this modern era, the Jews have to brace themselves for some pretty awful recriminations by their chooser of peoples.

If you peruse the available films made by non-partisan western film-makers (Along the Green Line, The Settlers, and so forth), again and again one encounters this claim by the Israeli Jews: that God bestowed the land upon them as His chosen people, and therefore it is their destiny to drive from it anyone not of their race who is upon that land, as undeserving vermin. And that it is right and proper for them to take possession of what is theirs and always has been.

And the basis for these assertions is the book of Genesis. A biblical text of questionable authorship, written by … a Jew. Meanwhile an internationally recognised court of law (the International Court of Justice) has ruled that Israel must away from the Occupied Territories. Israelis’ answer to that is to refuse, on the grounds that the territories are not occupied: they are theirs by right.

In land law, unopposed occupation of land for 30 years (it varies from one country to the next) results in positive prescription: the land becomes the occupier’s. However, this principle is dependent on the lack of any opposition. No matter, the Israelis see the opposition to their occupation as being raised by a party that has no entitlement anyway.

I find it a tad ridiculous that I should be resorting to fact-checking the claim by a modern nation that its occupancy of land that was formerly the land of another nation is founded on a biblical text written 2,500 to 4,000 years ago. The most ridiculous part of this exercise is the aspect that, whatever conclusion I reach, if it is not in favour of the current occupant, I will be labelled as a hater of that occupant, an antisemite, and thereby implicitly invite others to criticise and even harm me.

Because I am a gentile, this would make those who harbour such sentiments against me antigentiles. Antigentilism is becoming a widespread expression of hatred by non-gentile persons. It is about time that a crime was established to prohibit acts of antigentilism, to protect those of us who simply wish to fact-check biblical claims of land ownership against the biblical texts upon which they are based.

I shall be writing to my member of parliament. Meanwhile, Simon & Garfunkel are at least glad to be home.

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Keep the Customer Satisfied

Written by Paul Simon

Performed by Simon & Garfunkel

From their 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water