Lloyd M. Graham is out to show that the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments as we know them, are not “holy” nor are they the “word of God” revealed. The stories of the Bible were set down by power-seeking priests eager to inspire awe and to gather flocks who would take part in their rites and rituals, and they weren’t very original, either.
In Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, Graham reintroduces us to the true origins of Adam and Eve, who were derived from a Babylonian account; to the story of Noah’s flood, which was the result of over four hundred years of flood accounts from various ancient civilizations; to the man named Moses who was fashioned after the Syrian story of Mises; and even to the laws of the Bible, which were patterned after the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. Graham points out the 137 similarities between the story of Jesus and the story of the Egyptian god Horus, and the hundreds and hundreds of similarities between the story of Christ and the Hindu god Krishna.

For any reader interested in history or theology, Graham’s book is essential, eye-opening, and controversial reading. If you are an atheist, you’ll be eager to read these arguments in support of your beliefs. If you are agnostic, you will want to have this evidence at your fingertips as you weigh systems of belief and disbelief. If you are religious, you will want to know how your faith came into being and how a study of history might shake or support your beliefs.

Auszug. � Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Deceptions and Myths of the Bible

By Lloyd M. Graham

Skyhorse Publishing

Preface, 
Premise: A Genetic Cosmo-Conception, 
Causation, 
Energy (Source), 
Planetary Elements, 
Qualities, 
Laws, 
Biologic Forms, 
Cosmic Forms, 
Summary, 
The Scriptures: The Concealed Truth Revealed, 
Chapter I Genesis or Creation, 
The Priestly Account, 
Divine Fiat, 
Eden, The Garden of Eden, Paradise, etc., 
Chapter II The Jhwhistic Account, 
Genesis: Second Chapter, 
Chapter III The Serpent, 
Come Back to Erin, 
Chapter IV Genesis: Third Chapter, 
Chapter V Genesis: Fourth Chapter, 
Chapter VI Noah and the Flood, 
Chapter VII The Tower of Babel, 
Genesis: Eleventh Chapter, 
Chapter VIII, 
Abraham, 
Isaac, 
Jacob, 
Chapter IX Joseph, 
Chapter X Exodus, or Evolution, 
Chapter XI Mount Sinai and the Laws, 
Chapter XII Joshua, 
Chapter XIII Judges and Kings, 
Judges, 
Samson, 
Samuel, Saul and David, 
David, 
Psalms, 
Solomon, 
Chapter XIV The Prophets, 
Isaiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, 
Elijah, 
Elisha, 
Chapter XV Ezekiel's Vision, 
Chapter XVI Daniel, 
Chapter XVII Jonah, 
Chapter XVIII Job, 
Chapter XIX The New Testament, 
The Mythical Nature of Christ, 
The Social Context, 
Chapter XX The Gospel Story, 
Chapter XXI The Miracles, 
Turning the Water into Wine, 
Feeding the Multitude, 
Walking on the Water, 
The Transfiguration, 
The Crucifixion, 
The Resurrection, 
Chapter XXII Revelation, Part I, 
Chapter XXIII Revelation, Part II, 
Ephesus, 
Smyrna, 
Pergamos, 
Laodicea, 
Thyatira, 
Sardis, 
Philadelphia, 
Chapter XXIV Paul, 
Chapter XXV Christianity: Its False Doctrines, 
Chapter XXVI The Church: Its False Foundation, 
The Dark and Middle Ages, 
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Genesis or Creation

The Priestly Account

Divine Fiat

Heaven and earth, centre and circumference were made in the same instance of time and clouds full of water and man was created by the Trinity on the 26th of October, 4004 B.C., at 9 o'clock in the morning.

Dr. John lightfoot, 1654.

This was priestly knowledge of Creation in the seventeenth century A.D. What then of the seventh century B.C.? It should be understood that there was at that time no knowledge of man's natural development — anthropology, or of the creative process — cosmogony. To its priestly scribes this world was the center of the universe and man the sole concern of its Creator. That there were other worlds and galaxies was quite beyond their comprehension.

So let us realize that priests are not revealers of truth but only keepers of traditions, and that the purpose of both the scribes and their later translators was not to reveal the truth but to lay the basis of a theistic religion, based on the supernatural and the terrifying. This accounts for the presence here of the awesome word God. The original Hebrew did not use this singular word, or its equivalent, but the plural Elohim, many gods or aspects. Had this been followed, the mental darkness of monotheism might have been dispelled. It should also be noted that the word genesis does not mean "something out of nothing." It is a derivative of the word gene, the life germ, thus implying generation, growth. This is the key to the Mystery and if we would solve it we must make a clear distinction between the God of religion and the Creator of worlds. The one is a human ideal, the other a cosmic principle. These things understood, the interpretation offered here will not seem so preposterous.

We will not bore the reader with a verse-by-verse analysis but as with the Bible it seems a good way to begin. And so to Genesis 1:

1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

This very first verse disqualifies the Bible as authority, for it implies the aforesaid lack of knowledge. The author did not know how the world was created, and so he said a God created it. This is ignorance's way of explaining what it does not understand. The author's resort to it here is reminiscent of something a literary critic once said: "Whenever an author introduces a Chinaman in his story, I know that he is then writing about something he knows nothing about — 'the inscrutable Chinee.' "So with the author here: he too is writing about something he knew nothing about, namely, Causation and Creation, "revelation" to the contrary.

2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

"The Spirit of God" is a false term due to the idea of a personal Deity. The Creator, on the contrary, is not a spirit, nor has it a spirit; it is spirit in the sense of substance, a morally unqualified principle, whose modus operandi is that of violence. Here it moved very gently upon the waters. No mention is made of the violence involved in the creation of a world which includes the sun period, nor the trillions of years of time. No word of a "war in heaven," as of John the Revelator, nothing about a beast, a devil, a Satan-opposer — just peaceful creation by word of mouth. This is woeful ignorance of cosmogony.

In all other ancient cosmologies we find the Creator battling with some cosmic monster, out of whose body the world was formed: Sosiosh with Tiamat, Odin with Ymir, the Rig-Veda gods with Parusha, etc. This we say is pagan ignorance and Genesis the Hebrews' superior wisdom. This, for instance: "Where the Babylonian poet saw only the action of deified forces of nature the Hebrew writer saw the working of God. And that insight was Inspiration." And right there natural creation became supernatural, and that "inspiration," superstition. The result was twenty-five hundred years of benighted worship instead of welfare. This is the error and the evil this book fastened upon Western man and only now are we beginning to suspect it.

By the time this account was written the Hebrews had lost all knowledge of Causation and Creation and Genesis 1 is the result. In writings much older than this we find their Yahweh battling with Leviathan, the dragon, the serpent, Isaiah, 27:1. Psalm 74 reads thus: "Thou breakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness." And in the Apocryphal Book of Enoch we read: "In that day shall be distributed for food two monsters; a feminine monster, whose name is Leviathan, dwelling in the depths of the sea, above the springs of waters; and a male monster whose name is Behemoth. ..." In job41:10, God and Leviathan are as one: "None is so fierce that dare stir him (Leviathan) up: who then is able to stand before me?"

Why then is this aspect absent in the Priestly account? Besides the fact that the priests needed the divine, the perfect, the supernatural for their religion, its absence is due to the translators' ignorance of the words they were translating, words such as bara tebom, tohu, bohu, and others. These do convey a hint of warfare and violence. The original Hebrew reads thus: "In the beginning Elohim (many gods) bara (not created, but cut out) the heavens and the earth. And the earth was tobu and bahu, and darkness was on the surface of the tehom"

Tebom is the primordial...

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