Point of fact, - this may come as a shock - outside of the biblical tales, there is no historical evidence Moses ever existed at all - never mind being the author of the books of the Old Testament (or the author of the account of his own death!). There are several other heroes of old legends and myths whose tales include all the main points of Moses’ story. The Mosaic legend reads just like many other legends of heroes in the ancient world; the foundling baby given a place of rank, being the deliverer of his people, conversing with god, etc. It is a persistent and pervasive aspect that most of the Bible – including the story of Jesus of Nazareth - a central character, of course - appears to be made of whole cloth with no historical record of the man or his miracles.
Now, back to the story of the Chosen People:
During the over-long trek out of ‘bondage’ while lost in the desert for forty years (!), Moses, who lead the Israelites with his brother, Aaron, got tablets from god with god’s commandments incised on them, so the story goes. This took a while; who knows why? But Moses was gone so long that the Israelites grew impatient and started thinking a different tribal god might do them a better turn than this constant meandering under an open sky. They made a Golden Calf with the help and guidance of Moses’s brother Aaron and took to worshipping it. This kind of indicates the level of sophistication of this group as a whole. It also may indicate the level of commitment which Aaron had to the god of the Israelites.
(BTW, gold? The slaves had gold? They had gold enough to make an idol of gold to worship? After trekking through the desert; high-tailing it from Pharaoh’s army? Let that sink in: they were slaves… they had gold… and they lived amongst common Egyptians… as slaves… in a rather prosperous way... and their ‘god’ was stymied by the earthly king, Pharoah? Tell me when any of this makes a lick of sense. The mantra re-echoes: Making sense of nonsense is nonsensical.)
Well, the ‘One True’ god of warfare and thunder got jealous of the golden calf, naturally, as Bronze Age gods, it seems, were wont to do. Yahweh was a jealous and an angry god, so, ‘he/it’ told Aaron, who led the one, faithful faction of imaginary Israelites who didn’t worship the golden idol, to slaughter all of the other unfaithful factions as a punishment. Sure… No angel of Death and lamb’s blood this time; kin-slaying was the way to handed this revolt.
(To make this mass murder of kinfolk more ironic, the stone tablets Moses carried down the mountain contained one law which read ‘Thou shall not kill!’. Ineffable as always…)
But that wasn’t harsh enough for the god of the imaginary Israelites. He/It then caused a plague to kill the ones who remained from the kin-slaying. Nice, right? The imaginary survivors still had a long way to go to get to the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ so, on they went, following the baffling signs and signals until, at last after 40 (!) years, they found the ‘Promised Land’.
Forty-years in the desert is a bit much. The Israelites had to walk a distance of 450 miles or something. That’s certainly a hike; but 40 years? Flaming pillars at night and fluffy columns of clouds during the day made for the worse GPS system of all time. Walking 4 miles an hour for ten hours a day would have landed them in the vicinity of Jerusalem in less than 2 weeks. It might be mentioned here that deserts are rather known for their dearth of potable water. What did they drink for 40 years? Their own tears? Oh, right… water gotten magically from the rocks… and maybe the mana from heaven was juicier than your average imaginary, miraculous bread-stuff. Maybe…
All in all, YHWH made one hell of a tour guide; especially one who claims to be all that he/it is. 40 years to walk 450 miles; a week’s walk through the desert that took more than a generation.
And they say ‘Survivor’ was drawn out…
WTF?
Next stop; the Promised Land. Take a look at an old map. Find the ‘Promised Land: Judea. Now, imagine, if you can, buying a time-share holiday home in the Sinai desert. Next, realize that loads of other people already lived there who didn’t want any part of handing it over to a bunch of ex-slave goat-herders who couldn’t find their way out of a desert for 40 years. One might imagine that the only ‘milk and honey’ to be had was what they brought with them. Along with their gold (!). What sort of cretin would accept such an awful fabrication of fiction as ‘god’s holy word’?
Don’t answer that…
Perhaps one should start with the idea that, for centuries, unless one believed and professed absolute faith in the inerrancy and historicity of the Bible, openly and consistently, one would be imprisoned, tortured and burned at the stake. Even if one publically declared themselves wrong and recanted one’s heresy, one would still be burned at the stake in former times for the ‘Greater Glory of God’.
(See the section on ‘Believers’.)
Another thing that should bug any critical thinker about this Ten Commandments episode is this little bit; ‘Stone Tablets’? Really? WTF? How crude, rude and totally ordinary. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, got plates of gold from the Angel Maroni. We’re supposed to be impressed by stone tablets from a talking, burning bush that was also the mouth-piece for a blood-thirsty divine psychopath?
A talking snake!? Please…
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