this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Atheism

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The crazier part is that Abraham almost certainly didn't exist, so people made up a guy who starts hearing voices, tries to kill his kid, and then starts cutting off the tip of their dicks.

The more interesting part of the patriarch period in the Bible is how it is poorly masking the matriarchal tradition underneath though, from Abraham's wife's name change (from 'chief' to 'princess') and being the first gebirah ("great lady") to the way her son Isaac's blessing on his sons is the only place the male form of gebirah is found in the Bible, in a blessing that the recipient's "mother's sons" bow down to them (pretty odd for a patriarchal blessing).

But the more fun prophet story is the one of the guy who can suddenly talk to God after discovering a burning bush and subsequently creates a double layered tent in which he continues to talk to God and everyone knows that's happening because a cloud of smoke appears. Not only is the anointing oneself and going into a tent how the Scythians hotboxed cannabis in Herodotus, but as of its discovery in 2020 an 8th century BCE Judahite temple's holiest of holies is the earliest archeological evidence of cannabis use in a solely religious context.

That second guy I can at least get a bit behind. He certainly seemed to know how to party.