"Exodus" Story Reveals Bible's Dishonesty

By MARC McDONALD

Although some might be loath to admit it, many educated adults (even non-fundamentalist Christians) are aware that the Bible is perhaps not the best source of history.

I mean, how many people still take the story of Adam and Eve seriously any more? But I suspect that most people are still unaware of just how totally wrong the Bible is as far as anything remotely approaching real history.

This wouldn't be that big a deal, except for the fact that so many people take the Bible very seriously as a profound book of wisdom. The massive and growing population of Fundamentalists continue to believe the Bible is nothing less than the divinely-inspired, inerrant Word of God.

But the Bible is profoundly wrong in its historical accuracy. The "Exodus" story (recently the subject of a big budget Hollywood Ridley Scott film) is a good example. Some people might question certain fantastic aspects of the story (like the parting of the Red Sea). But I think most people accept that there must be at least a kernel of truth to the story's main points (such as that there really was once a big enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt). Many people continue to believe that this has been confirmed in the archaeological record.

But there's a big problem to this belief: it's simply not true. Nothing in the Exodus story has ever been confirmed by any serious archaeologist, despite long quests to try to confirm anything remotely related to the Bible story.

The fact is, even many Bible apologists have quietly abandoned their quest to try to confirm the Exodus story. The problem is that there is simply not a shred of historical evidence that any of this really happened. Forget wild tales like the parting of the Red Sea---there isn't even the slightest bit of evidence that there was an Exodus captivity in the first place.

This whole story is a fairy tale. The fact is, the story of Exodus is one big lie. And if this well-known Bible story is a lie, then, really how truthful is any aspect of the Bible?

The Bible is a dishonest book, period.

A lot of agnostics spend their time attacking the absurdities, contradictions and sheer nonsense of the Bible's philosophical teachings. But if they're trying to convince believers, they're wasting their time. The Bible is so vague and archaic that the sort of people who take it seriously are never going to be dissuaded via that approach.

What agnostics should be doing is attacking the historicity of the Bible itself. People should be aware of just how many of these Bible tales lack the slightest shred of historical evidence to support them.

It's time for humanity to move beyond the fairy tales, nonsense and superstition of absurd books like the Bible.

In much of Europe, this is already taking place. Sadly, in America, large numbers of people continue to take the Bible seriously (and try to ram their twisted beliefs down the throats of other people).

Today's Bible Verse: "Listen, You Rich People, Weep And Wail Because Of The Misery That Is Coming On You"

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"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty."

---James 5:1-4, The Bible, New International Version.

By MARC McDONALD

One of the great political mysteries to me has always been how on earth the money-worshipping, screw-the-poor Right Wing in today's America have somehow managed to convince many people that the Bible supports their twisted beliefs.

In reality, the Bible is full of hard-core socialist messages as radical as anything I've ever written on this blog. To be sure, I've blasted America's greedy rich on a number of occasions on this site. But I've never said that, simply because one is rich, one will almost certainly burn in hell (like Jesus did).

After all, the rich who I target are those who (like the Koch brothers) who seek to destroy organized labor and America's already skimpy social safety net, simply so they can pad their already fat pockets. But I don't condemn all rich people. For a start, I admire George Soros.

Anyway, back to the Bible. It's one thing for deluded Right-Wingers to wrap themselves in the Scripture and to claim that the Bible somehow supports their beliefs. But what disappoints me far more is that the Progressives allow them to get away with this.

The fact is, the vast majority of the Bible is full of archaic, obscure verses that only a fool would claim to understand. However, the Bible does contain a number of verses that are quite clear and unambiguous.

James 5:1-4 is a good example of the latter. This passage doesn't beat around the bush: it very clearly issues a warning to rich oppressors. It condemns the greedy, exploitative rich ever bit as much as anything Marx ever wrote.

The problem is that Bible verses like this languish in obscurity. Right-Wingers carefully tip-toe away from such explosive verses that they no doubt find deeply disturbing. Instead, they dig through the Old Testament, looking for passages that seem to validate their homophobic, bigoted views. And Progressives, as always, sit around passively and allow the Right-Wing to get away with it.

We Progressives need to reclaim the Bible from the bigots, the hate-mongers, the money-grubbers and the supporters of brutal dog-eat-dog "capitalism."

Every time one of these bigoted money-grubbers claims that the Bible supports their views, we need to take crystal-clear Progressive Bible verses like James 5:1-4 and throw it into their faces.