How many times is hell mentioned in the Bible?

The HyperTexts

How many times is "hell" mentioned in the Bible?

How often does the word "hell" appear in the original Hebrew Bible, which constitutes the Old Testament of the Christian Bible? As the table below demonstrates, according to the consensus opinion of modern Bible scholars, the word "hell" as a place of eternal suffering was never mentioned, not even a single time, in the entire Old Testament! In fact, the Hebrew language lacks any word that means "hell." That's a very curious omission, don't you think, if an all-wise God gave the Bible to the ancient Hebrew prophets! And while some Christian Bible translations still contain a small handful of cryptic references to "hell" in the New Testament, those references raise a perplexing question: Why does "hell" suddenly pop up in a few stray verses here and there in the later-written books of the Bible, when in earlier biblical chronologies covering thousands of years there had never been any mention of "hell" or any possibility of suffering after death?

Other questions addressed here include: Where is hell located, according to the Bible? Is hell on earth, underground, or in some other dimension? Is hell eternal? Will human beings go to hell forever? Will Satan and other fallen angels go to hell forever? Since hell was obviously not there originally, when was hell added to the Bible, and why? Why was hell added to the Bible, if God and the Hebrew prophets never mentioned it even once? Is there any proof of hell in the Bible? And why does it seem that only one writer of the Bible knew anything about a place called "hell"?

If these questions interest you, they are answered in the table below, and in the Q&A that follows, using the Bible itself as evidence. Also, I have created a simple, logical proof that there is No Hell in the Bible, which you read without annoying ads or any requests for money or subscriptions, by clicking the hyperlinked title.

by Michael R. Burch, a "recovering fundamentalist"

According to the consensus opinion of modern Bible scholars, the word "hell" did not appear a single time, not even once, in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament (OT). And the word "hell" is increasingly hard to find in the New Testament (NT) as well. You can easily confirm this yourself, by using an online Bible search tool to scan various Bible translations for the word "hell." Or you can save time and effort by referring to the table below, which was produced by Gary Amirault, a Bible scholar who has extensively researched and written about the question of "hell" as a biblical teaching. I have added two translations to his original list: the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), sponsored by the famously literal and conservative Southern Baptist Convention, and the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), produced by more than a hundred Bible scholars working for the Roman Catholic Church. The good news is that evangelical Protestant Bible experts and Catholic Bible experts agree: There never was a "hell" in the Bible!

The word "hell" does not appear in the Bible because:

(1) The Hebrew word Sheol clearly means "the grave" not "hell." Everyone went to Sheol when they died, not just the wicked. Sheol was not a place of suffering, because in Job 14:13, a much-beset Job asked to go to Sheol to escape suffering! He clearly meant that if he died, his suffering would end in the grave. Sheol was not a place where God was absent, because King David said in Psalm 139:8 that when he made his bed in Sheol (i.e., when he died and was laid in his grave), God would still be with him. And Sheol was not an eternal inescapable prison, because in Psalm 49:15 the Sons of Korah said that God would redeem them from Sheol, by which they meant that they would be resurrected from the grave to new life. Furthermore, the prophet Ezekiel and the apostle Paul agreed that all Israel would be saved, and yet in Genesis 37:35, Israel himself said that he would be reunited with his son Joseph in Sheol. How can all Israel be saved if Israel himself is in "hell"? In each case Sheol clearly means "the grave" or "the abode of all the dead, good and bad" and cannot be interpreted as "hell" unless "hell" is heaven!

(2) The Greek word Hades also clearly means "the grave" not "hell." Everyone went to Hades when they died, not just the wicked. Hades contained heavenly regions like the Elysian Fields and the Blessed Isles. The Greek hell was Tartarus, which is discussed below, in section 4.

(3) The place name Gehenna also does not mean "hell" because Gehenna is a valley in Israel also known in Hebrew as Gehinnom, or the Valley of Hinnom. Today Gehenna is a lovely park and tourist attraction. Wonderful archeological discoveries have been made there, such as the healing pool of Siloam and the oldest Bible verses ever discovered, inscribed on small silver amulets. Those verses are the benediction "The LORD bless thee and keep thee; the LORD make his countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee." Those are wonderfully comforting words to have been discovered in "hell," don't you think?

(4) The Greek hell was Tartarus. This is the only word in the Bible that actually means "hell" in either Greek or Hebrew. But the word Tartarus appears just once in the entire Bible, in 2 Peter 2:4. And that verse is about fallen angels awaiting judgment, so it is not eternal and is not for human beings. The only verse in the entire Bible that contains a word actually meaning "hell" is about a place where Satan and other fallen angels will await judgment.

The bottom line is that only one major translation of the Bible, the King James Version, contains the word "hell" in its Old Testament. As you can see below, the New King James Version cuts the number of Old Testament references to "hell" almost in half. But all the remaining OT verses are mistranslations, according to the Bible scholars who produced the other translations. And if there really is a "hell," how is it possible that none of the Hebrew prophets knew anything about it, and never mentioned any possibility of suffering after death? Why were "hell" and any possibility of suffering after death never once mentioned to Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel, Lot, the people of Sodom, Moses, Joseph, the Pharaoh who defied God repeatedly, Job, Jonah, David, Solomon, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, or any of the other Hebrew prophets?

"HELL" IN THE BIBLE	OT	NT	Total
King James Version (KJV), based on inferior corrupted texts	31	23	54
New King James Version (NKJV), still wrong about Sheol being "hell"	19	13	32
New International Version (NIV) the best-selling Bible, still wrong about Gehenna	0	13	13
American Standard Version (ASV)	0	13	13
New American Standard Bible (NASB)	0	13	13
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) Southern Baptist literal translation	0	11	11
Revised Standard Version (RSV)	0	12	12
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)	0	12	12
Revised English Bible (REB)	0	13	13
New Living Translation (NLT)	0	13	13
Amplified Bible (AMP)	0	13	13
Darby	0	12	12
New Century Version (NCV)	0	12	12
New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) Roman Catholic	0	0	0
Wesley's New Testament (1755)	0	0	0
Scarlett's N.T. (1798)	0	0	0
The New Testament in Greek and English	0	0	0
Young's Literal Translation (1891)	0	0	0
Twentieth Century New Testament (1900)	0	0	0
Rotherham's Emphasized Bible (1902)	0	0	0
Fenton's Holy Bible in Modern English (1903)	0	0	0
Weymouth's New Testament (1903)	0	0	0
Jewish Pub. Soc. Bible Old Testament (1917)	0	0	0
Panin's English New Testament (1914)	0	0	0
The People's New Covenant (1925)	0	0	0
Hanson's New Covenant (1884)	0	0	0
Western N.T. (1926)	0	0	0
NT of our Lord and Savior Anointed (1958)	0	0	0
Concordant Literal NT (1983)	0	0	0
The N.T., A Translation (1938)	0	0	0
Emphatic Diaglott, Greek/English Interlinear	0	0	0
New American Bible (1970)	0	0	0
Restoration of Original Sacred Name Bible	0	0	0
Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures, OT (1985)	0	0	0
The New Testament, A New Translation	0	0	0
Christian Bible (1991)	0	0	0
World English Bible	0	0	0
Orthodox Jewish Brit Chadasha [NT Only]	0	0	0
Original Bible Project (Dr. James Tabor)	0	0	0
Zondervan Parallel N.T. in Greek and English	0	0	0
Int. NASB-NIV Parallel N.T. (1993)	0	0	0
A Critical Paraphrase of the N.T. (1960)	0	0	0

Q: Where is hell located, according to the Bible?

A: The Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades were both located beneath the earth, because both words mean "the grave" or the "abode of the dead" and graves are underground. But as explained above, these words clearly do not mean "hell." The Hebrew Gehenna was a physical valley in Israel, and also does not mean "hell." The Greek Tartarus does mean something like "hell" but, as explained above, was not eternal and was not for human beings according to the Bible. Its location would be underground, because it was part of Hades.

Q: Why do you say only one Bible writer knew anything about a place called "hell"?

A: As I have explained on this page, the Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek word Hades clearly mean "the grave" not "hell." The word that actually means "hell" or something like "hell" appears in only one Bible verse (2 Peter 2:4), which refers to a sort of holding cell for Satan and other fallen angels, meaning that it is not eternal and is not for human beings. This leaves us with only one word, Gehenna, which might possibly mean "hell." But as I pointed out previously, this is an obvious mistranslation, and the table above confirms that most Bible translators agree. But let's play Devil's Advocate (pardon the pun) and suppose Gehenna really does mean "hell." This raises a huge question "mark" (pardon the second pun) because the term Gehenna originates with the original gospel of Mark, which was clearly used as the primary source of the later gospels of Matthew and Luke. This would mean that only one writer of the Bible — whoever wrote the original gospel of Mark — knew anything about a place called "hell."

Let's think about it for a minute...

Does it seem likely that for 6,000 years or more, only one writer of the Bible would know anything about the single most important thing for human beings to know, if hell actually exists? That being, of course, how to avoid it.

And how on earth could God be considered loving, merciful, compassionate and just, if he sent billions of human beings to a hell that he never bothered to inform anyone about?

And why were other writers of the Bible, such as Ezekiel, Isaiah, Zechariah, Peter and Paul, confidently saying that everyone would be saved, if there was a place of infinite suffering? Why did Peter, in the first recorded Christian sermon after Pentecost, speak of the "RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS, WHICH GOD HATH SPOKEN BY THE MOUTH OF ALL HIS HOLY PROPHETS SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN." According to the Hebrew prophets, when they spoke of the resurrection, everyone was going to be resurrected and saved. According to Peter, this was the message of all the "holy prophets since the world began." I am sure Gehenna is yet another mistranslation, but if it isn't, how can anyone explain one writer knowing something that none of the major prophets knew anything about? Were they false prophets, to confidently declare that God would save everyone in the end? Or have grotesque mistranslations and horrendous theology led Christians to accuse their God of being capable of infinite evil? Is this the great apostasy the Bible warns about? If God is good, and never said he would punish anyone for all eternity, what does that say about his disciples who now accuse him on a daily basis of either causing or allowing human beings to suffer for all eternity, meaning he should never have created anything in the first place?

Q: Is hell eternal?

A: According to the Bible, there is no reason to believe in an eternal hell, or in unremitting suffering after death.

Q: Will human beings go to hell forever?

A: Not according to the Bible when it is translated correctly.

Q: Will Satan and/or fallen angels go to hell forever?

A: Not according to the only Bible verse that contains a word that actually means "hell." That verse (2 Peter 2:4) says fallen angels will await judgment in Tartarus. So even that hell is not eternal, but a sort of holding pen.

Q: When was hell added to the Bible?

A: Since there is no mention of "hell" or suffering after death in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), the most likely source of "hell" is the silent period between the writing of the last books of the Old Testament, and the first books of the New Testament. During this silent period, Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East. According to the Greek philosopher Celsus, the ancients used the threat of "hell" to control the ignorant masses, but Celsus said no wise man believed in "hell." Ironically, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, the only Jews who believed in "hell" were the Pharisees! Perhaps they saw how the Greeks and Romans used "hell" to control human behavior, and deliberately added "hell" to their warped religion (which Jesus Christ strongly, sternly and vehemently criticized).

Q: Did Jesus believe in hell?

A: As explained above, "hell" was a belief of the Pharisees, in all likelihood adopted from the pagan Greeks. In his parable of Lazarus and the rich man (presumably a rich Pharisee), Jesus seems to have been ridiculing the pagan Greek vision of the afterlife. We can clearly see the Greek vision of Hades, with its heavenly regions separated from the hellish pit of Tartarus by an impassable abyss. The "saved" and the "damned" could chat with each other across this abyss, but couldn't cross it. Jesus mocked the Pharisees by putting a Gentile beggar they considered "unclean" in the "bosom of Abraham." Why? Because the Pharisees claimed they would be saved by their "special relationship" to Abraham. Jesus put the rich Pharisee who claimed he would be saved by his "special relationship" with Abraham in the dark, fiery pit of Tartarus. But that doesn't mean Jesus believed in such an absurd afterlife. What he did would be like me telling a flat-earther: "Please be sure not to fall over the edge of the world when you get there!" If you read the parable, you can see that Jesus was mocking the Pharisees for their absurd belief in a pagan "hell" that had never once been mentioned by God or the prophets.

Q: Why was hell added to the Bible, if God and the Hebrew prophets never mentioned it at all?

A: Please see the answer immediately above. The most likely answer is that the Pharisees adopted the myth of hell because it suited their evil purposes. But it is also possible they were foolish enough to fall for the ancient con game, and actually believed in hell, as so many Christians do today.

Q: Is there any proof of hell in the Bible?

A: No, none at all. To confirm this, read the Bible from the beginning, and you will see that no one was ever threatened with "hell" or any possibility of suffering after death, in thousands of years of Bible chronologies. If there really was a "hell," God and his prophets would have warned human beings about such a terrible place, and would have explained how to avoid it. They would also have warned human beings about the terrible risk of bringing children into the world, if they could end up suffering in hell for all eternity. But of course there are no such warnings anywhere in the Bible. And to be considered just, God would have needed to warn the entire planet about the existence of hell. But of course Native Americans and multitudes of other people never heard a word about "hell" until 1,500 or more years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. If any of those uninformed people woke up in hell after death, God could not claim to be loving, wise, merciful or just. Thus, the idea of "hell" has always been incompatible with the idea of a loving, wise, just God who is able to save. A God who is able to save does not need a "hell." Only a God who is unable to save would need such an infernal place.

Q: Is the Bible inerrant and infallible?

A: The Bible is not "inerrant" or "infallible." A true religion cannot be based on lies, so Christians should be honest about the Bible. The Bible contains obvious errors and contradictions. For example:

CONTRADICTION #1: GOD CAN NEVER BE SEEN, YET HAS BEEN SEEN MANY TIMES

The Bible says "No man hath seen God at any time" (John 1:18) but after seeing and wrestling with God the patriarch Jacob/Israel said, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." (Genesis 32:30)

In fact, Jacob named the place where they wrestled Penuel, meaning "Face of God" or "Facing God."

There are many conflicting Bible verses on this subject and they fall into three categories: (1) God can never be seen in eight Bible passages; (2) God can be seen without any problem in 22 passages; and (3) it is instant death to see God's face, and thus Moses was only allowed to see God's backside.

According to the Bible, God was seen face-to-face by at least 82 different people in the Old Testament, including Adam and Eve (Genesis chapters 1-3), Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:4-6), Job (Job 42:5), David (Psalm 63:2), Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1-2), Amos (Amos 9:1), Abraham (Genesis 12:7, 17:1, 18:1-33, Exodus 6:3, Acts 7:2), Sarah (Genesis 18:1-15), Isaac (Genesis 26:2, 26:24, Exodus 6:3), Jacob/Israel (Genesis 32:30, 35:9, 48:3, Exodus 6:3), Moses (Exodus 3:16, 4:5, 33:11, 33:23, Numbers 12:7, Deut. 34:10), and by 70 elders of Israel including Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu (Exodus 24:9-11). There are more such verses, but 22 passages involving 82 people seem sufficient to demonstrate that God can and has been seen according to the Bible. This does not include many hundreds or thousands of people who saw Jesus before and after the resurrection. Jesus said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." (John 14:9) Also, please keep in mind that the Bible says man was created in God's own image, meaning God has a human likeness and thus can be seen. Also, if God cannot be seen, he is not all-powerful because there is something beyond his ability.

And yet eight Bible verses say God cannot be seen and has NEVER been seen: Exodus 33:20, John 1:18, 5:37, 6:46, 1 John 4:12, 1 Timothy 1:17, 6:16, and Col. 1:15. John and Timothy are especially emphatic on this point.

In the third category, God can be seen but not his face, which is instant death to see; thus Moses and Ezekiel were only able to see God's backside or his loins: Exodus 33:20, Ezekiel 1:27-28.

This controversy comes to a head in Exodus chapter 33. First we are told that "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend." (Exodus 33:11) But then just a few verses later, in the same chapter, God tells Moses, who has asked to see his glory, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20) God then shows Moses his glory by mooning him! (Exodus 33:21-23) And yet there are numerous verses, itemized above, in which Moses and 70 elders of Israel saw God face-to-face and even shared a meal with him!

How do we explain such contradictions? Clearly, dueling theologians altered the Bible to make it conform with their religious beliefs about God. Some thought God was humanlike, others than he was an invisible spirit. Theologians of both stripes clearly had a hand in Exodus, since the book says God can be seen face-to-face, but that to see his face is instant death, just a few verses apart.

CONTRADICTION #2: GOD AND THE DEVIL ARE THE SAME BEING!

Who caused King David to conduct a census of the fighting men of Israel?

• God caused David to take the census, then became enraged at what he had caused and slaughtered 70,000 men before finally repenting of the evil he had caused, just as Jerusalem was about to be destroyed, which would have greatly increased the death toll. (2 Samuel 24:1-15)

• Satan incited David to take the census. (1 Chronicles 21 1:1) This is the first appearance of name Satan in the Christian Bible, a name that had never been mentioned in biblical chronologies covering thousands of years.

If the Bible is infallible, God and Satan must be the same being. The two accounts are nearly identical, except for the entity who caused or incited David to take the census, with too many identical details for there to be any doubt about this being the same event. Why do these parallel accounts say God and Satan are the same being? It seems obvious that the author of Chronicles used Samuel as his/her source, but thought it was wrong for God to slaughter 70,000 men for something he had caused to happen, and thus chose to blame a brand-new-to-the-Bible fall guy, Satan. (The snake in the Garden of Eden story was not Satan, but just a snake whose punishment was to crawl on its belly; if the snake had been Satan, he would have been punished when he was not in the form of a snake, but there is no mention of any other form of punishment or of any relationship of the snake to Satan. Also, if the real culprit was Satan, it would have been wrong to punish snakes for something they didn't do.)

Different translations use different terms for God's influence on David: "caused," "made," "provoked," "incited," "moved" and "stirred up." But every translation out of 34 that I studied made it clear that God used his influence to either cause or strongly persuade David to take the census.

CONTRADICTION #3: GOD IS PERFECTLY GOOD, YET CREATES EVIL AND COMMANDS EVIL

Jesus said a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit (Matthew 17:17-18) and thus a good God cannot do evil or issue evil commandments. And yet over and over again the authors of the Bible accused their God of committing horrendously evil acts and issuing horrendously evil commandments.

• The Bible says "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." (James 1:13)

• But the Bible also says "And it came to pass ... that God did tempt Abraham." (Genesis 22:1) And what God tempted Abraham to do was evil beyond imagining: to slit his son's throat and make him a burnt offering. (Genesis 22:2) Christians claim Abraham being willing to murder his son (without consulting Isaac's mother) made him a "man of great faith," but of course only a lunatic would obey a disembodied voice commanding such unthinkable evil. After all, we don't call the Son of Sam a man of faith for obeying voices he heard commanding him to commit murder.

In any case, the biblical God most certainly did tempt Abraham, creating a clear contradiction with the author of James.

And God did more than just tempt David in the previous contradiction, since he either "caused" or "incited" David to take a census that so wildly enraged him that he slaughtered 70,000 men and was ready to wipe out Jerusalem before he finally repented. (2 Samuel 24:1-15). And that wasn't an isolated event, since Jehovah kept hardening the heart of the Egyptian pharaoh in order to have an "excuse" to slaughter multitudes of innocent animals and children during the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Forms of the word "harden" appear 14 times in this account (Exodus chapters 5-10), making it clear that God was in control and was using the pharaoh to demonstrate his "signs and wonders."

• The Bible says God is the author of evil (Amos 3:6, Isaiah 45:7, Lamentations 3:37-38, Jeremiah 18:11, Ezekiel 20:25) ... but ... God is not the author of evil (many other verses and the entirety of Christian dogma).

"Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" (Amos 3:6)

"Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good?" (Lamentations 3:37-38)

According to the authors of such Bible passages, God is all-powerful and in complete control of everything. As demonstrated by his influence on King David and the Egyptian Pharaoh, men are robots controlled by God and he causes men to do evil things so that he can flaunt his power by murdering multitudes of innocents, including children, infants, babies and unborns (as in the Great Flood).

"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7)

Here, God is speaking and confesses that he creates evil. That is, unless human beings were putting words in God's mouth, in which case the Bible would be far from infallible. But in any case there is a clear contradiction between Jesus saying a good tree cannot bear evil fruit and the verses above.

"Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live." (Ezekiel 20:25)

Here, God deliberately creates evil by giving human beings evil statutes (commandments) and judgments. Examples of such evil statutes and judgments include biblical passages that command and/or condone the worst crimes known to mankind: slavery, sex slavery, infanticide, matricide, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the ghastly stoning to death of boys for being stubborn and girls for being raped or not proving their virginity by bleeding sufficiently on their wedding nights. The real Creator would have known that not all girls bleed the first time they have sex, so these were obviously human commandments, not commandments authored by an all-wise God.

• God prohibits human sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21) ... but ... The "spirit of God came upon" Jephthah and he murdered his daughter as a burnt offering (Judges 11:30-31).

• God will not keep his anger forever (Jeremiah 3:12) ... but ... according to the same prophet God will keep his anger forever (Jeremiah 17:4).

• Don't let the sun go down on your wrath ... but ... The biblical God will harbor his wrath against nonbelievers and many Christians (the goats) forever, by condemning them to infinitely cruel, purposeless "hell."

• God knows everything and has perfect knowledge of the future ... but ... God had to murder Job's children to see if he would remain faithful (Job 1:1-19).

In conclusion, the authors of the Bible repeatedly accused their God of grotesque evils like mass-murdering children, infants, babies and unborns. Then they would turn around and claim the same God wanted human beings to be righteous. However, Jesus saved all his sternest criticism for hypocrites who "talk the talk" but don't "walk the walk." The teachings of Jesus are incompatible with a God who demands righteousness then becomes a serial murderer of innocents. How to resolve such a conundrum? We can (1) not believe in gods; (2) believe that God is good but not in control of Nature; or (3) believe that God controls nature and alternates between being benevolent and violently evil. But what we cannot do, in my opinion, is pretend that obvious contradictions in the Bible don't exist. It is simple enough to understand why the authors of the Bible accused their God of so much evil. Any God who controls nature automatically becomes schizophrenic, alternating wildly between good and evil, from a human perspective.

OTHER CONTRADICTIONS

There are many other contradictions and obvious errors in the Bible...

Who was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary? Was Joseph's father Jacob (Matthew 1:16) or Heli (Luke 3:23)? The Bible is full of such obvious contradictions. An all-knowing God would know the name of Joseph's father, the authors of the Bible, not so much.

The Bible says trees and other plants were created before the sun (Genesis 1:11-19). That is obviously wrong. The writers of the Bible did not understand that the sun's gravity is required for surface life to exist on our planet. Without the sun's gravity, the earth would be a frozen globe whizzing aimlessly through deep space with a surface temperature a few degrees above absolute zero. Surface life would be impossible. There are no trees at the North or South poles, even though they receive sunlight. A sunless earth would be immeasurably colder than the North and South poles.

The Bible says "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." (Ezekiel 18:20) But it also says "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." (Exodus 20:5) We know the second verse is deeply wrong. And yet the author of Revelation put words in Jesus's mouth in the second chapter, making Jesus say that he would personally murder children for their mother's sins. But one of those sins, eating foods offered to idols, was not a sin according to Jesus, Peter and Paul, who all said Christians can eat anything they please! In fact, Paul specifically said that he could eat foods offered to idols. (1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Titus 1:15) Would Jesus murder children for a non-sin someone else committed, really? An all-knowing God would know whether it was a mortal sin to eat foods offered to nonexistent gods, the writers of the Bible, not so much.

The author of Revelation also got the names of the twelve tribes of Israel wrong, leaving out Dan and Ephraim. An all-wise God would not have forgotten the names of the tribes of Israel, and he would have understood that there were actually fourteen tribes if Joseph is included along with his sons! But in any case, Dan and Ephraim were tribes of Israel, so the Bible is not inerrant.

The author of Revelation said Jesus had "paps" (female breasts). Nowhere else in the Bible is God or the Messiah described as being a hermaphrodite, although some pagan "gods" had such attributes.

Revelation also says four times that God has seven spirits. This is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible and conflicts with Bible verses that mention "the" (singular) spirit of God.

These are just a few of many examples that the Bible is not inerrant or infallible. And the greatest error of all has been a "hell" that Jehovah and his Hebrew prophets never mentioned once in biblical chronologies covering thousands of years.

Bible Contradictions "From the Beginning"
by Michael R. Burch

Is the Bible the infallible, inerrant word of God, or does the Bible contradict itself? It is quite clear that the Bible contradicts itself, repeatedly. This is because different human beings with very different beliefs wrote the Bible over many centuries. Here are some rather obvious examples "from the beginning." The first three chapters of Genesis contradict themselves, they contradict reality and science, and they contradict the Christian beliefs that God is all-loving, all-compassionate, all-merciful, all-wise and all-just. Nothing could be further from the truth...

• There are two contradictory creation accounts: Genesis 1:1 to 2:3, and Genesis 2:4-25.

• In the first creation account, trees and other plants were growing before the sun was created! We know that didn't happen. (Genesis 1:11-19)

• In the first creation account there were seven days of creation, with male and female humans created at the same time, with no rib removal, and both being given dominion over the earth, as equals, together. (Genesis 1:26-31) However, the "dominion" thing would prove to be a false prophecy, since human beings have never had dominion over viruses and other disease-inducing microbes, nor over mosquitoes and tse-tse flies, etc.

• In the first creation account the order is (1) a watery earth which is somehow lit without a sun; (2) the sky as a solid transparent dome ("firmament") which separates the water of the seas from the rainwater above because the ancient Hebrews did not understand evaporation; (3) land with trees and other plants but still no sun to make anything grow; (4) the sun, moon and stars, which are tiny lights embedded in the solid dome of the sky and are not needed for plants to grow; (5) birds and fish; (6) land animals and humans; (7) a day of rest. (Genesis 1:1 to 2:3)

• In the second creation account there is a single day of creation in which the creation order is (1) Adam first, out of the dust of the ground; (2) trees, but only in the Garden of Eden; (3) a single river to water the Garden of Eden which forked into four named rivers; (4) animals, to be helpers for Adam; (5) Eve last, from a manly rib, to be his helper (a mite chauvinistic, no?). Thus the second order of creation is completely different from the first. (Genesis 2:4-25)

• Both biblical orders of creation are clearly wrong. We now know the proper order: (1) the oldest stars many billions of years ago, (2) our sun, (3) the earth, (4) the moon, (5) sea life, (6) land life, (7) birds after a long process of evolution from dinosaurs, (8) many other species not created all at once but appearing and disappearing over enormous spans of time, (9) human beings very recently on the cosmic time scale.

• Apart from the obvious fact that the authors of Genesis were clueless about the order of creation, there is a huge contradiction in the role of women. In the first creation account, men and women were created simultaneously, as equals, and were given dominion over the earth together (however over-optimistically). In the second creation account, Eve was only created as a helper and an afterthought, after none of the animals were found to be suitable "helpers" for Adam. As if an all-wise God didn't know in advance that Adam wouldn't be happy mating with a chimpanzee!

• Genesis claims Adam and Eve became like God, knowing right from wrong, when in reality the biblical God did not know right from wrong. Rather, Jehovah became the first murderer when he slaughtered animals to give their skins to Adam and Eve as clothes. Why didn't he use his superpowers to give them clothes of cotton, wool, or some other nonlethal fiber? Does God not grok that it's wrong to murder animals when their deaths can easily be avoided? Furthermore, Jehovah unjustly murdered Adam, Eve and all their descendents (us, and our mothers) when he had denied Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil, meaning they couldn't have known it was "wrong" to eat the forbidden fruit. That was like putting poisoned milk before two babies and warning them that it would be "wrong" to drink the milk, when they couldn't understand the concept of "wrong" any more than than two kittens. Good parents would not fail to baby-proof the lethal milk, or fruit. And why on earth did Jehovah sentence all the innocent animals to suffer and die when they didn't eat the forbidden fruit and didn't gain the knowledge of good and evil? According to the logic of Genesis the animals should have remained immortal. Throughout the Garden of Eden account, the biblical God never displays a sense of justice and does not know right from wrong himself. (Genesis 3:21)

• The Genesis creation account accuses human beings of being responsible for suffering and death entering the world. But the fossil record proves that trillions of animals suffered and died long before human beings existed. Paul's gospel, which he claimed to have received directly from God, claimed that Jesus was the "second Adam" sent to "atone" for the sin of the "first Adam." But the real Creator would have known there was no perfect Garden of Eden and thus no "fall." Obviously, Paul either lied about the source of his gospel, or someone else made that bogus claim later, pretending to be Paul.

• In any case the Bible begins with a series of obvious contradictions that cannot be reconciled.

IF HE COULD FORESEE THE FUTURE, WHY DID THE BIBLICAL GOD MAKE SO MANY MISTAKES?
by Michael R. Burch

The Bible makes little sense because it claims that its "god" was all-wise and knew the future before it happened, and yet he made mistakes. A "god" who knew the future could have foreseen, for instance, that Saul would be a terrible king. He could also have foreseen that David would be an even more terrible king. David was clearly not the "man after God’s own heart" if Jesus was. Rather, David was the Jewish Hitler. He slaughtered every woman when he "smote the land." (1 Samuel 27:9) David ordered the slaughter of the lame and blind when Jerusalem was taken from the Jebusites because he "hated" the handicapped. (2 Samuel 5:8) Jesus, of course, had compassion for the handicapped. David tortured people in brick kilns (ovens), shades of the Nazis! (2 Samuel 12:31) And David never repented, because with his dying breath he commanded the assassination of Joab, ostensibly for having shed innocent blood. But it was David who had offered Joab the captaincy of his armies for murdering the handicapped! According to the Bible, David was the Jewish Hitler, and the antithesis of Jesus.

1 Samuel 27:9 — "And David smote the land, and left neither man nor woman alive..."

2 Samuel 5:8 — "And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house."

2 Samuel 12:31 — "And he [David] brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem."

1 Chronicles 20:3 — "And he [David] brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David with all the cities of the children of Ammon. And David and all the people returned to Jerusalem.

Another example can be found in the book of Job, where Satan persuades God to murder Job's children in order to "test" his faith. But a God who is all-wise and can foresee the future doesn't need to murder anyone, much less children, to know what will happen. The Bible is a collection of badly-told fairy tales, and in their tellings of tall tales the authors of the Bible often made their "god" seem far worse than the Devil. I read the Bible from cover to cover at age eleven, then wrote this epigram to express my conclusion:

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch

Later, as an adult, I read the Bible from cover to cover again. I also studied many books written by Christian authors like C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham and Watchman Nee. And I came to exactly the same conclusion. No one can make the biblical "god" seem in any way to be "good." The "god" of the Old Testament was diabolical, a serial murderer of multitudes of men, women, children, infants, babies, unborns and animals. But the "god" of the New Testament was infinitely worse, because he would either cause or allow billions of human beings to suffer for all eternity in a purposeless "hell" for the "sin" of guessing wrong about which earthly religion to believe. Atheism makes a lot more sense than believing in an all-powerful, evil God. After all...

Atheists give God the "benefit of the doubt."—Michael R. Burch

THE IMMACULATE DECEPTION
by Michael R. Burch

Catholics believe Mary was immaculately conceived for the same reason Protestants believe Jesus ascended into heaven before a crowd of witnesses, with angels explaining what was happening, when the so-called "Ascension" obviously never happened.

Both beliefs are ancient cons, invented long after the fact.

If the Ascension had actually taken place, all the books of the New Testament would mention the most marvelous event ever witnessed by human eyes. But only one book, Acts, mentions the Jerusalem miracle, so obviously it never happened. The loopy Ascension was cobbled into Acts well after the source text for Mark, Matthew and Luke had been written. Bible historians commonly estimate Acts to have been originally written between 70 to 90 AD, because it demonstrates knowledge of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, which occurred in 70 AD. That would have been after the death of Paul, circa 62 AD. Furthermore, the oldest extant copy of Acts dates to around 250 AD, which is plenty of time for embellishment. After all, Elvis fans were saying he had been seen alive shortly after his burial.

It doesn’t take long for big fish stories to balloon, as any gossip can demonstrate.

In Acts, Jesus became Superman, soaring off into the clouds before an astonished Jerusalem crowd, with angels preaching a sermon, but no other New Testament writer was aware of this event even though Acts says the apostles were in the crowd. How is it possible that the apostles all failed to mention the most marvelous event in human history?

And why would the writers of the gospels mention minor miracles but not the greatest miracle of all?

The Christian Bible quickly evolved from an empty grave and a big question "Mark" — pardon the pun — to outrageous claims of Jesus flying into the clouds like Superman.

The gospel of Luke says in passing that Jesus was "carried" into heaven as if it was a minor thing, but Luke said that happened in Bethany. Since the author of Luke is believed to have also been the author of Acts, he would not have given two different locations and completely different circumstances for an actual ascension. Thus it seems obvious that neither original text had an "ascension" and that the conflicting "big fish" stories were added by different copyists after the fact. After all, who could possibly forget where Jesus was when he rose into the heavens, and who could forget the Jerusalem event with its sermonizing angels, if it actually occurred?

And if Jesus left the planet for the last time by soaring dramatically into the clouds, why did the writers of the four gospels and Acts all give completely different accounts? Who could possibly forget such an exit? And why did the apostles who were in the Jerusalem crowd never mention the event to Paul, so that he could communicate the miracle to the churches he founded and stayed in touch with via his epistles?

Obviously, it never happened.

Similarly, if Mary had been conceived immaculately, all the books of the New Testament would have mentioned the miracle, so obviously the "Immaculate Conception" was also contrived later, emphasis on "con." And a LOT later, since the official declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception came in 1854, with the Bull Ineffabilis (i.e., Ineffable Bullshit) of Pius IX.

That's a serious delay, don't you think?

But let’s not single out Pope Pius the not-so-pious because Protestant pastors tell equally implausible lies, such as children passing from heaven to hell on a single day at the unknown "age of accountability" which no Bible writer ever mentioned in terms of salvation.

Why did the writers of the Bible seem intent on making their God seem infinitely worse than the Devil? If God is good, how is that not blasphemy?

In any case, the big fish stories kept getting bigger and bigger. This is clear from the Bible’s five bogus accounts of what happened after the resurrection, none of which agree with each other…

In the original gospel of Mark there was just an empty grave and the book ended with a huge "question Mark." There were no guards, no one saw Jesus or spoke to Jesus, no one ran to the tomb, and the women told no one what they saw. That account seems believable. Did someone add the bit about the young man saying Jesus had risen, after the fact? Did someone else greatly expand on that later, turning one young man into two angels?

Did Jesus survive the crucifixion? Surely not, because no one who knew him saw him or spoke to him after his death, according to the one possibly true account.

Did someone steal the body in order to give it a proper burial? That seems more likely. Of course a body stolen from a grave is not all that incredible, especially if the grave was left unguarded, as it undoubtedly was. The Roman guards were another after-the-fact addition. Who guards the tomb of a nondescript carpenter? All the stuff about Jesus entering Jerusalem while being hailed as a king was undoubtedly made up later too, since the Jews were a literate people and no one outside the Christian Bible ever mentioned anything about a "messiah" entering Jerusalem to wild acclaim, cleansing the temple, appearing before Herod and Pilate, then being crucified. The Roman rulers of Palestine sent reports to Rome and they never mentioned anything about a threat to the Roman Empire named Jesus, nor anyone matching his description in the gospels.

If Jesus was crucified, it was a non-event to the literate world.

These are the problems with the gospel of Mark, widely considered to have been the source for the other gospels:

• If there are no mistakes with God, the Almighty let us know right away that he was not the author of the gospels, as so many Christians claim. The author of Mark made a mistake in his second verse because the prophet in question was Malachai: "It began as the prophet Isaiah had written: God said, 'I will send my messenger ahead of you to clear the way for you'." (Mark 1:2) This error was corrected by another author, in Matthew 3:3, meaning the Bible is not infallible because it contains errors and contradictions.

• Mark made another mistake when he said Abiathar was the High Priest who gave King David the consecrated shew-bread. That was Abiathar’s father, Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:1-6). The author of Matthew 12:1-8 corrected this mistake also, creating another clear contradiction in the "infallible" Bible.

• Mark made a more serious mistake when he had Jesus misquote the Ten Commandments: "You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.'" Matthew 19:18-19 corrected this mistake.

• Mark never mentions a virgin birth, which appears only in Matthew and Luke. Paul never mentioned the virgin birth. It seems obvious the virgin birth was the big fish getting bigger over time. To save space I will abbreviate this BIGFIB.

• According to Mark, Jesus was the "son of Mary" with no claims of her virginity and certainly no "immaculate conception" which is another BIGFIB.

• Paul said Jesus was "born of a woman" not "born of a virgin." It seems obvious the "virgin birth" was a later embellishment unknown to the earliest Christians.

• Mark does not mention the three wise men, the Magi, who appear only in Matthew, another BIGFIB.

• Mark does not mention Herod mass-murdering babies, something that never happened and is only mentioned in Matthew, another BIGFIB.

• Mark mentions some of the "miracles" of Jesus, but Paul knew nothing about the "miracles" and never mentioned them, suggesting that the "miracles" were later additions to the texts that became the four gospels. Dick Harfield, a noted Bible scholar, said: "If indeed these miracles actually occurred, Paul never knew about them and was never told about them. More likely, the gospel writers developed these miracle stories long after the time Paul had written his epistles, bearing in mind that Mark, the very earliest New Testament gospel, was not written until about 70 CE, probably long after Paul died." The "miracles" of Jesus are another BIGFIB.

• And let it be noted that an "earliest" date for Mark of 70 CE doesn’t mean that it wasn’t heavily massaged and doctored later. It obviously was, as I explain herein.

• It must also be noted that several of Mark’s "miracles" were obviously borrowed from more ancient savior myths of god-men who became sacrifices for the sins of mankind. Such "elder" savior figures, all born on December 25 at the winter solstice (explained below) include Dionysus, Mithra, Krishna, Attis and (especially) Horus:

Horus was the son of a Father-God, Osiris, and he appears in ancient Egyptian mythology 3,000 years before the alleged birth of Jesus.

Horus was the KRST, Jesus the Christ.

Horus was also a member of a Trinity — Atum the Father, Horus the Son, Ra the Holy Spirit.

Horus was also born of a virgin, Isis, who was called Isis-Meri or Isis-Mari. Notice the similarity in names? While this claim of Isis’s virginity has been disputed by Christian apologists, she managed to get pregnant despite her husband Osiris having been murdered and his dismembered penis having been eaten by a catfish! Sounds pretty "virginal" to me.

The iconography of Madonna and Child is very similar between Isis and Horus and Mary and Jesus.

Horus had a stepfather Seb or Seth, a name which is linguistically close to Joseph.

Horus was also born in a lowly place: Horus in a cave, Jesus in a manger.

Horus was born on December 25th, the winter solstice when the sun begins to ascend and the days begin to lengthen (References: Septehenses, Religions of the Ancient Greeks, p. 214; Massey, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, pp. 39-40). This date was adopted as the "birthday" of Jesus for the same reason as for previous son/sun saviors who "rose from the dead" and/or raised others from the dead. Why did it take three days to resurrect? Around the winter solstice, the sun ceases apparent motion for three days when in the vicinity of the Southern Cross, before commencing to rise higher in the sky, the first indication of the coming of spring and regeneration (References: Acharya, The Christ Conspiracy, pp. 154-155; Maxwell, That Old-Time Religion, p. 41; Bonwick, Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought, p. 174; Massey, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, pp. 10, 98)

Horus also fled a king who was trying to kill him as a baby. Horus’s mother Isis took him to the Nile Delta because the tyrant Seb/Set/Seth was trying to kill him. Only the gospel of Matthew mentions Mary taking the baby Jesus to Egypt because Herod was trying to kill him. This seems like a rather obvious "borrowing" doesn’t it?

Horus was also baptized with water by a baptizer, Anup.

Horus also performed miracles such as walking on water and healing the sick (References: Doane, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions, pp. 256, 273; Massey, Ancient Egypt The Light of the World, pp. 623-661).

Horus also had 12 disciples (Reference: Massey, Ancient Egypt the Light of the World, pp. 600-607)

Horus was betrayed by one of his disciples (Reference: Acharya, Suns of God, p. 93)

Horus was crucified, buried for three days, then resurrected (References: Churchward, The Origin & Evolution of Religion, p. 135; Bonwick, Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought, p. 157; Massey, Ancient Egypt the Light of the World, pp. 628-629).

Both Jesus and Horus have been called: the Savior, the Good Shepherd (Horus was depicted with a shepherd's crook on his shoulder), the Bread of Life (both Horus and Jesus were born in "houses of bread": Annu and Bethlehem), the Light of the World, the Lamb of God and also the Lion, the Son of Man, the Word, the Fisher, and the Winnower.

Horus was also identified with a cross, the Tat.

Horus raised his Father from the dead (which Jesus did in a sense if he was "one" with his Father).

• Mark mentions the "Transfiguration" but Paul knew nothing about it, so it seems like an obvious after-the-fact fabrication. Another BIGFIB.

• The "miracles" that supposedly occurred during the death of Jesus on the cross are all highly suspicious. There are no accounts outside the Bible of any of the death-day "miracles." Take, for instance, the tearing of the temple curtain. As Dick Harfield noted: "One of the supposed miracles highlighted in the gospels is the tearing of the temple curtain from top to bottom at the very moment of Jesus’ death. One should wonder how anyone observing Jesus’ last moments on a cross outside the city walls could have been aware of what was happening in the inner sanctum of the temple. Further evidence against this supposed miracle comes from Josephus, a priest prior to the temple destruction in 70 CE, who later wrote about the curtain in careful detail without mentioning any damage or repairs."

• The original ending of Mark has only an empty grave and a young man (not an angel), and no one sees Jesus or speaks to him. The women tell no one, so no one runs to the tomb. Thus all the nonsense about the mad dash, angels, the resurrected Jesus telling Christians to handle vipers and drink poison, etc., is a BIGFIB.

• In the original version of Mark, Jesus spoke to no one after the empty grave was discovered. But by the time Acts was written, Superman Jesus spent 40 days preaching to his disciples in Jerusalem while magically filling them with the Holy Spirit, but no one bothered to communicate anything that the Resurrected God said during those 40 days! Seems a tad suspicious to me. And why didn’t the authors of the gospels know that Jesus preached for 40 days in Jerusalem? Another BIGFIB.

• The resurrected Jesus also misled his disciples in Acts when he told them, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Unfortunately, Jesus was unaware of how big the earth is, and none of his disciples would reach North America, South America, Australia, etc. Did an all-knowing God lie to his disciples, or were human charlatans making things up? Another BIGFIB.

• Mark said nothing about the Ascension, which is also a BIGFIB.

Saint Paul, who created the Christian religion with his epistles, knew nothing about any miracles at the tomb, or the virgin birth, or the miracles of Jesus, or the "Transfiguration" or the "Ascension."

How can we explain that?

Very easily…

After Paul and the other apostles were dead and gone, charlatans kept increasing the size of the big fish.

The Catholic church went further with its glorification of Mary, while Protestants kept exclusively magnifying their favorite carpenter.

It is all hogwash, and the fact that Paul didn’t know anything about the most magical hogwash means it had to have been added after the fact. Paul was trying to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, so of course he would mention fantastic confirmations for which there were living witnesses. But the miraculous events were made up and there were no witnesses, other than to a possibly empty grave.

Why would the charlatans lie?

Duh, to make money and to control the minds and behavior of the gullible masses. Which they continue to do to this day, especially in Trumpland, er, the United States.

However, the "immaculate conception" pales in comparison to the cobbling of a pagan "hell" into the Bible:

There was no mention of "hell" in the Old Testament in chronologies covering many thousands of years. Adam and Eve were never warned about "hell." The wicked people at the time of the Great Flood were never warned about "hell." The people of Sodom were never warned about "hell." The pharaoh who defied Jehovah repeatedly was never warned about "hell." Moses, the great lawgiver who spoke to God face-to-face according to the Bible, knew nothing about "hell" and never mentioned eternal punishment when discussing the penalties for breaking the commandments. If there was a "hell" it would have been, by far, the most important thing for Jehovah and the prophets to warn the Israelites about, but it was never even mentioned. It makes absolutely no sense to go on and on about temporal punishments if there were eternal punishments, so obviously "hell" did not exist if an all-knowing God had anything to do with the authorship of the Bible.

And, indeed, the Hebrew language did not have a word that means "hell." This has been acknowledged by both Catholic and Protestant translators of the Bible, since the word "hell" has disappeared from the Old Testaments of all accurate Bible translations. And from the New Testaments of the more accurate translations as well, since Hades and Gehenna do not mean "hell." In fact, Hades had heavenly regions like the Elysian Fields and Blessed Isles. The Greek "hell" was not Hades, but Tartarus, a word that appears only once in the entire Bible, in a verse that is not about human beings but fallen angels awaiting judgment. Bible scholars know such things, but the average Christian remains clueless about "hell" in the King James Bible being an egregious mistranslation, if not a deliberate bit of chicanery.

A make-believe "hell" popped up without explanation in a tiny number of NT verses, probably added long after all the apostles, who would have known better, were dead. Did an all-just God create "hell" and completely forget to announce it, or did human charlatans make it up? If there suddenly was a real hell, it would have been incumbent on a just God to inform all the world immediately, but no one was informed, even in the Promised Land. According to loopy Catholic and Protestant theology, billions of souls woke up in a hell they had never been warned about, for not believing in someone they had never heard of. Are they supposed to agree that God is "just"? Are the angels?

After human charlatans had clumsily stitched "hell" into the Bible without explaining when-why-how it popped into existence, the Catholic church invented infant baptism, which had never been discussed anywhere in the Bible, to keep an all-powerful God from sending babies to hell. The Protestants chose another non-biblical path: an "age of accountability" that had never been discussed in terms of salvation anywhere in the Bible. No one knows what the age of accountability is, or why Jesus and Paul completely forgot to mention it, when it’s so incredibly important to parents (not to mention teens and preteens). Nor can anyone explain why Jesus, who saved the thief on the cross with a nod of his head, would fail to nod his head at 13-year-olds, if the mysterious age turns out to be 13.

Next the Catholic church needed "Limbo" to keep an all-just God from unjustly punishing babies who weren’t splashed with magical water by magical priests, for all eternity. From what I have been able to gather, Catholic popes have waffled back and forth about "Limbo" rather than using their superpower of being able to speak infallibly on this most important matter. Why has there not been another Ineffable Bull to settle this all-important matter once and for all? Does an all-just God allow babies to suffer for all eternity for not being splashed with magical water by magical priests, or does he "only" separate them from their mothers and fathers for all eternity without purpose? In either case, how can this God be considered loving, compassionate, merciful, just or wise? He is indeed a devilish Deity!

Insanity ruled all Christian sects that adopted the belief in hell. There was no way to keep Jesus, who had preached the parable of the Good Samaritan, from being the world’s greatest hypocrite by refusing to save people of other religions, much less universally unsplashed babies where baptizing babies was unknown. Jesus reserved all his sternest criticism for hypocrites, but the Good Samaritan put religious differences aside to save a man of another religion. How could Jesus fail to practice what he preached? Was he less than perfect or did the charlatans who kept changing the texts that became the New Testament tell so many lies that they couldn’t keep them all straight?

I think you know which way I’m leaning.

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch

If one screams below
what the hell is above?
—Michael R. Burch

If Jesus actually lived, "a mountain of myth was piled on top of a molehill of reality." — Brian McClinton

Those interested in how and when the myths of Jesus grew may find the following of interest…

DATING THE GOSPELS AND ACTS

We can see the "big fish" getting bigger and bigger by considering the vast differences between the book of Acts and the original gospel of Mark, which is widely considered to have been the first gospel written. Another common theory among Bible historians is that the Synoptic Gospels — Matthew, Mark and Luke — were all based on an older source document, called the Q-Source or Q-Text.

Mark appears to be the oldest gospel, but could not have been written prior to 70 AD as we have it, for reasons I explain below.

Matthew appears to be "younger" than Mark because (1) Matthew demonstrates knowledge of the final separation of the early Christian church and Jewish synagogue, circa 85 AD. (2) Matthew appears to use Mark as a source, correcting quite a few of Mark’s errors.

Luke also appears to use Mark as a source and seems to also date to circa 85 AD at the earliest.

John is widely believed to have been the last-written gospel, circa 90-110 AD at the earliest.

Acts is generally dated to circa 80-120 AD at the earliest.

I will consider Mark to be the oldest gospel here, but if there was a Q-Text the argument remains the same: the texts were being heavily massaged and embellished. This was noted by the Greek philosopher Celsus in his debates with the early church father Origen. Celsus accused the copyists of the Bible of making so many changes to the gospels that they appeared to be drunk! This was reported by a Jewish critic of Celsus who quoted him as saying: "The Christian believers, like persons who in a fit of drunkenness lay violent hands upon themselves, have corrupted the Gospel from its original integrity, to a threefold, and fourfold, and many-fold degree, and have remodeled it, so that they might be able to answer objections."

Celsus also accused the Bible copyists of plagiarism: "The resurrection of the dead, and the divine judgment, and the rewards to be bestowed upon the just, and the fire which is to devour the wicked, are stale doctrines and there is nothing new in your teaching on these points."

Did Celsus give us a vital clue as to the reasons for the wild embellishments? Critics of the new religion were claiming that other "savior" gods and demigods, such as Horus, were superior to Jesus. What did the Bible copyists do, in order to answer these objections? They borrowed the "miracles" of other mythical saviors and claimed Jesus also walked on water, raised the dead, etc.

A critical factor in dating the gospels and Acts is the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, which occurred in 70 AD.

This is what Jesus says in Luke 19:41-44:

41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you."

This is clearly a false prophecy because some of the great foundational stones of the Jerusalem Temple remain standing to this day. You can see them in a segment of The Naked Archeologist or view them yourself on a sightseeing tour. Without a doubt the author of Luke was aware of the temple’s destruction, he thought it had been completely destroyed, and he tried to make Jesus seem like a prophet, but failed miserably.

"Beware your lies will find you out."

In Mark 13:1-2 the author also demonstrates knowledge of the temple’s destruction:

1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!" 2 "Do you see all these great buildings?" Jesus replied. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

Matthew 24:1-2 repeats the same false prophecy:

1 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 "Do you see all these things?" he asked. "Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

But notice how much more elaborate the Luke version has become. The big fish was clearly growing, clearly being embellished. The minnow was becoming a whale.

Also, notice how the authors did not consider what previous authors had written to be the "sacred word of God." Who would dare change a word of what God Almighty had said? But the authors of Matthew and Luke liberally changed the words of Jesus to suit their personal theology.

In any case, such charlatanry gives us an "earliest possible date" for the gospels of 70 AD. Yes, the Q-Source may have been older, but by the time the oldest extant version of Mark was written, the embellishments had clearly begun. The oldest extant version of Mark could not have have been written as we have it before 70 AD. And it was undoubtedly embellished well after 70 AD.

We see the embellishment reach a crescendo when we compare the "empty grave" and "resurrection" accounts of the original Mark to the "Superman" account in Acts, which I discussed previously.

But we also see that the earliest extant version of Mark had been embellished. Did an earlier, lost version of Mark end with the empty grave, without the white-robed young man prophesying to the distraught women? That would explain their silence better. How could they have failed to report such an astonishing prophecy? After all, the disciples would have had to journey to Galilee if they wanted to see their beloved friend. Who could rob them of that opportunity by failing to relay the prophecy? If the young man in a white robe was an Angel, as the later embellishments claim, who could fail to relay the message of an Angel made on behalf of someone who had claimed to be God in the flesh? (Unless that was another embellishment.)

Is it possible that the oldest version of Mark has this strange ending to explain the fact that there was a considerable "lag time" between the death of Jesus and tales of his "resurrection"? If so, blaming women was not uncommon back then, thinking of Eve and Pandora.

WILD DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN THE WRITERS OF THE BIBLE

The New Testament records blazing disagreements between Paul and James. Paul said salvation was entirely by grace, while James said works were necessary. James and his sect, the "Judaizers," also said Christian men needed to be circumcised. That was an obvious no-go with Gentile men. Paul vehemently replied that James and his ilk were "still under the law" and said he wished they would castrate themselves! That is a blazing disagreement.

In Galatians chapter 5, Paul accuses James and the Judaizers of putting Christians under a "yoke of slavery." He says, "Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all." (Bad news for all the circumcised Christian men today.) In verse 12 Paul says, "As for those agitators [the sect of James], I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!"

This demonstrates how hypocritical Christian churches are about their "belief" in the Bible. Paul said in no uncertain terms that to be circumcised is to lose one’s salvation and become a slave to the law. But multitudes of Christians have their sons circumcised. The sect of James won, the "infallible" word of God was ignored, and according to Paul the majority of Christians became slaves to the law.

There are other similar conflicts between Bible writers:

Paul took a Nazarite vow, which means he didn’t cut his hair, but another NT writer, pretending to be Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:14 said it was a shame for a man to have long hair. Evidently, the charlatan had never heard of Samuel or Samson, who took Nazarite vows and never cut their hair, as men consecrated to God. The false Paul wrote: "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?" This is rather amusing, since nature teaches no such thing and Samson was the Hebrew Hercules as long as he let his flowing locks get longer and longer. This also illustrates how the copyists of the New Testament texts did not consider them to be sacred or divinely inspired. They changed whatever they pleased, willy-nilly.

The idea that the writers of the Bible were in perfect agreement with each other is bogus. Paul said women could be apostles (i.e., Junia) and pray and prophesy in church, but another writer modified 1 Timothy to say that women had to be silent in church, after Paul had said otherwise in the same epistle!

Can a true religion be based on lies?

The writer of Revelation was clearly a Judaizer (of the school of James, not Paul) because he had Jesus saying that he (Jesus) would personally murder children for their mother’s sins. Who can believe Jesus threatened to murder children? One of the "sins" this fictitious Jesus said he would murder children for was their mother eating foods offered to idols, but both Jesus and Paul said Christians can eat anything they want, and Paul specifically said that he could eat foods offered to idols.

God would know whether it was okay for Christians to eat food offered to idols, but the bickering human theologians did not agree.

The Bible writers also disagreed on whether God would kill children for their parents’ sins. God would know if he was a serial murderer of children, but the bickering theologians had wildly different ideas.

One OT school of thought was that God controlled everything that happened and thus God was the author of evil. We see this belief in the book of Amos: "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" (Amos 3:6)

The authors of the Bible accused their God of wantonly murdering children, infants, babies and unborns. When every pregnant woman on earth died in the Great Flood, it was God performing the abortions. When children died in plagues and natural disasters, it was God inflicting his wrath on them. God was all-powerful and controlled everything, so of course he controlled evil as well as good!

Another school of thought developed over time, but it was a long time coming (long after Moses and the books of the Torah). In this school of thought, God was perfect in justice and thus a scapegoat was needed to account for evil. This is why the character of Satan was introduced during the account of the census of King David. According to the author of the census account in 2 Samuel 24:1-17, God ordered David to take a census, then became enraged over what he had caused and murdered 70,000 Israelites who had nothing to do with the matter. The writer of the same account in 1 Chronicles 21:1-14 evidently thought his God should not be that wicked, so he introduced a new character to take the blame for the census. This character was Satan, who had never been mentioned to that point in the Christian Bible (the snake in the Garden of Eden was sentenced to crawl on its belly and was never heard from again; poets like John Milton would identify the snake with Satan in the distant future). According to the author of Chronicles, it was this new character Satan who induced (not ordered) David to take the census, getting God off the hook for inciting the census (although not for murdering 70,000 innocent people). If the Bible is "infallible" then clearly God and Satan are the same being!

Yes, there were deep divisions within the early Christian church, with cries for castration, but there were strenuous disagreements that existed in Old Testament times as well.

For instance, the writers of the Bible repeatedly disagreed about whether God could be seen or not, sometimes in the same book and at least once in the same chapter (Exodus 33). Some Bible verses say God cannot be seen at all because God is a spirit or because to see his face would be instant death. One Bible passage (Exodus 33:18-23) says human beings can only view God’s backside, not his face, which is why God mooned Moses when Moses requested to see his glory. But other verses say Moses spoke to God face-to-face and that Moses’s face glowed from the encounter.

A number of Bible verses clearly and emphatically say that God cannot be seen and has never been seen, both in the OT and NT:

• "No one has ever seen God." (1 John 4:12)

• "No one has seen God at any time." (John 1:18)

• Jesus told his disciples: You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form." (John 5:37)

• God "alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see." (1 Timothy 6:16)

• "No one who sins has seen Him or knows Him." The Bible says all have sinned, thus no one has ever seen God. (1 John 3:6)

• God told Moses: "You cannot see my face, for no man can see me and live." (Exodus 33:20)

• Thus even the great prophet Moses was not allowed to see God’s face, only his backside. (Exodus 33:23)

But human beings who saw God include:

• Adam and Eve (Genesis chapters 2-3).

• Abraham saw and spoke with God more than once, in Genesis 12:7 and Genesis 18:1-33. In the second encounter, Abraham and Sarah had a meal with God, followed by a face-to-face discussion about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah between Abraham and God.

• Hagar saw God and said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." (Genesis 16:13)

• Jacob/Israel wrestled with God and named the place of the encounter Peniel, meaning "For I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved." (Genesis 32:24-32)

• Moses met God face-to-face: "So the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend." (Exodus 33:11)

• Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and 70 elders of Israel all met God together, saw him, and ate and drank with him: "So they saw God, and they ate and drank." (Exodus 24:9-11)

• Balaam saw God and fell down, with his eyes wide open. (Numbers 24:4, 16)

• Micaiah saw God sitting on his throne. (2 Chronicles 18:18-22)

• Isaiah saw God sitting on a throne and said, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." But of course he lived. (Isaiah 6:1-7)

• Ezekiel saw God sitting on his throne. (1 Ezekiel 1:26-28)

• Samuel saw God at Shiloh. (1 Samuel 3:21)

• Daniel saw God sitting on his throne and Daniel even described his hair as being "like pure wool." (Daniel 7:9-14)

• Amos saw God standing beside an altar. (Amos 9:1)

How do we explain such wild disagreements? If God authored the Bible, obviously he would know whether he could be seen by human eyes or not. But the men writing the Bible were making things up, and they did not agree with each other. Each writer wrote what he believed, or wanted to trick other people into believing, and that explains the dichotomy.

RIDICULOUS BIBLE VERSES

These many ridiculous Bible verses, some of them ridiculously evil. The Bible is especially ridiculous and evil when it comes to women and children…

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. (Psalm 137:9)

In this gruesome passage, the presumably God-inspired psalmist longs to enjoy slaughtering innocent babies over an ancient grievance.

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19: 17-18)

Here we have a clear contradiction between the God-inspired psalmist and God himself, unless it’s cool to be a racist and bear grudges against other people’s children, to the point of bashing their heads against stones. But it’s hard to imagine Jesus going along with that, so what gives? On the other hand, Jehovah slaughtered children, infants, babies and unborns right and left. And as we will see below, Jehovah forced parents to eat their own children. Hey, are we absolutely sure Jesus and Jehovah are the same person, really?

But perhaps they are, because the author of Revelation has Jesus Christ vowing to personally murder children for their mother’s sins: "I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins (kidneys) and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works." (Revelation 2:20-23) This passage of the New Testament clearly rejects the idea that Christians are saved by grace and says Jesus will judge and personally murder the children of Christian families for their mothers' sins! Jesus will search a mother's kidneys (?) and if he doesn't like what he finds, he will kill her children―rather redundantly―"with death." Does this sound like "the wisdom of God" or satanically evil nonsense?

Moses, the first and greatest prophet of the Hebrew Bible, and the lawgiver who claimed to have received his instructions directly from God, commanded his warriors to slaughter captured mothers and their male "little ones" (i.e., babies and toddlers) while keeping only the virgin girls alive, obviously as sex slaves. (Numbers 31:9-18)

Moses said "men of God" could sell their own daughters as sex slaves, with the option to buy them back if they failed to "please" their new masters! (Exodus 21:7-8)

Moses commanded that girls who had been raped should either be stoned to death (a grotesquely brutal method of execution) or sold to their rapists, meaning they would become sex slaves who could then be raped "legally" for the rest of their lives! According to the highly dubious "wisdom" of Jehovah and Moses, only girls who were raped in fields where no one could hear their cries for help, were to be spared. Any girl raped in a populated area was to be considered guilty without a trial and was to be either murdered or sexually enslaved, with the cash payoff going to the "real victim"―the raped girl's father! (Deuteronomy 22:23-29)

The Bible is full of grotesque commandments about women and children. Are such verses the "wisdom of God" or the ravings of primitive witch doctors? The answer is obvious to all but the willfully blind.

If she bears a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purification threescore and six days. (Leviticus 12:5)

Baby boys are cool, but God despises baby girls. Get that girl-corrupted blood outta here!

Women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire, but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:9-13)

Due to the fairytale of a perfect Garden of Eden, men are superior and women should be seen and not heard. Women should be submissive and do as they’re told, in silence. BTW, God hates braided hair, so don’t go there! But this was a false Paul speaking, as I noted previously. Earlier in the same epistle Paul had given instructions for women to speak in church, including to teach (prophesy).

Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matthew 5:28)

Yes, and all adulterers go to "hell" so now we know why the biblical God was so down on women: They’re too damn attractive! (And this also explains why women shouldn’t braid their hair. It’s all starting to come together now!)

Any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, for it is one and the same thing as if she had had her head shaved. For if a woman does not have her head veiled, she may as well have her hair cut off. (1 Corinthians 11:5)

God really, really, really does not like seeing women’s hair! Turns out the Taliban is close to God’s heart on the hair thing.

Because the angels are watching, a woman should wear a covering on her head to show she is under authority. (1 Corinthians 11:10)

The angels also hate to see women’s hair. Why? Probably because they have more hair and prettier hair than men! God and the angels prefer men, so it all makes perfect sense. And the Taliban concur, and we all know how wise and godly they are. It’s unanimous! Women's hair is offensive to God, the Angels, the Taliban and the false Paul!

Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leaves no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. (Mark 12:19)

Bang your brother’s wife, and get her pregnant, that’s an order! Never mind if she’s still mourning, or would rather not have sex with you, or would rather not have children, just do it!

Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery. (Luke 16:18)

Hey, waitasec! If we put the last two verses together, by banging his brother’s wife the brother-in-law committed adultery, if he was married and put away his first wife in order to bed his sister-in-law. According to Jesus all adulterers go to hell, so Moses was aiding and abetting the Devil! Or did some seriously deranged witchdoctors put words in God’s mouth?

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39)

Victims of rape and incest should not only submit to evil, but must ask for more (and bear their rapists’ children according to the "family values" GOP).

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched." (Mark 9:43)

According to Jesus, there will be handless people in a perfect heaven. And because all Christians have done things they shouldn’t have done, all Christians should be handless!

For whosoever hath a blemish shall not approach [the altar] … or he that hath a flat nose. (Leviticus 21:18)

God wants his worshipers to have perfect skin and round noses. Good to know.

A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:2)

God really, really hates illegitimate children (even though they had no say in the matter) and holds it against them and their descendents for 300 years, or longer. What happened to not letting the sun go down on your wrath, Mr. Hypocrite-in-the-Sky?

For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him. (Leviticus 20:9)

Kill your kids if they lose their temper and use a bad word in the heat of the moment. How many kids would be alive today if we followed this evil commandment? The kids I grew up with all cursed like sailors.

Then because of the dire straights to which you will be reduced when your enemy besieges you, you will eat your own children, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord has given you. (Deuteronomy 28:53)

God gives us children so he can force us to eat them later. Lovely fellow, the LORD, if his witchdoctors are correct about what he's up to! Since God sees everything in advance, when he "gave" the children to their parents, he knew they would become cannibals and devour them.

If in spite of this you still do not listen to me [i.e., to my bizarre and evil commandments] but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.(Leviticus 26:27-30)

God is really into enforced cannibalism. Never mind the innocent children being killed and eaten. Couldn’t an all-powerful God have come up with some form of punishment that doesn’t involve slaughtering and devouring innocent children? Is this what you would do, if you were an all-powerful judge and jury?

But if the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die. (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21)

The "tokens of virginity" are bloody bed sheets on a girl’s wedding night. And many brides in Old Testament days were child brides. If a child doesn’t bleed, she is to be assumed guilty of not being a virgin and stoned to death in front of her parents. Of course the real God would have known that not all girls bleed the first time they have sex, and he would have known that the ghastly punishment didn’t fit the "crime." Jesus would reject stonings for the "crime" of having sex outside marriage.

Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, "Go up, you bald head! Go up, you bald head!" So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. (Kings 2:23)

God answers prayers for 42 kids to be slaughtered for calling a bald man bald. What happened to turning the other cheek?

If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity. (Deuteronomy 25:11-12 NASB)

Of course there is no corollary verse about a man touching a woman’s genitals! And it’s okay for women to grab male genitals as long as they’re foreign genitals, go figure.

He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:1)

Apparently God has a thing for testicles. Keep men with testicular cancer out of your churches!

Yet she increased her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth when she engaged in prostitution in the land of Egypt. She lusted after their genitals as large as those of donkeys, and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions. (Ezekiel 23:19-20 NET)

Should kids be reading this book, really?

Now it came about at the lodging place on the way that the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and threw it at Moses’ feet, and she said, "You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me." (Exodus 4:24-25 NASB)

Poor Moses! First God tried to kill him, but failed, which is odd because he’s supposed to be all-powerful. Then Moses’s wife circumcises their son and throws the bloody foreskin at him. Tough day at the office! Wonder what the poor kid thought.

And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people. (Leviticus 20)

Menstruating is a "sickness," the blood is a "fountain" and just seeing it is a capital crime. Good to know. Never would have guessed it.

Thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness. (Leviticus 18:19)

God really, really, really does not like menstrual blood, which seems odd if he created it. Are we absolutely sure finicky men didn’t make up this nonsense?

And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. (Matthew 5:40)

Double down on crime! Right here we can tell that Trump is not a true Christian because he’s spent his life in court, fighting to keep his cloaks rather than meekly donating them to his enemies.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39)

"Please sir, may I have another?"

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matthew 10:35-37)

You are commanded to "love" someone who rips your family apart more than you love your mother, father and children. Makes perfect sense, Jesus being perfect and all.

Whoever utters the name of the Lord must be put to death. The whole community must stone him whether alien or native. If he utters the name, he must be put to death. (Leviticus 24:16)

Jesus Christ, more insanity! … Oops! … Now you have to kill me!

Revelation says human beings will be tortured with fire and brimstone "in the presence of the Lamb and Holy Angels." (So much for hell being "separation from God.") According to John of Patmos, the fire-breathing author of Revelation, there will apparently be a torture chamber in heaven, at the foot of the throne of God. (Revelation 14:10)

Forget the evils of Nazi torture chambers here on earth―there will be eternal torture in the afterlife! That would make God infinitely worse than the Devil if it were true, especially when he has the ability to save but chooses not to do so. Would any of us choose to torture our enemies for a second, much less all eternity? Will Jesus reject his own parable of the Good Samaritan and cause or allow the saints of other religions to be tortured incessantly? Is that the "good news" of the gospel? If these thoughts trouble you, please take the time to read There is no "hell" in the Bible!

I agree with Mark Twain, perhaps the most prominent American critic of the Bible, when he said it wasn't the Bible verses he didn't understand that bothered him ... it was the horrific verses that he understood all too well!

Christian theologians would have us believe the Bible is the "word of God" and that a God who is perfect in love, compassion, wisdom and justice authored it. But surely no sane person can believe the verses above came from a loving, compassionate, wise, just being. And there are many more where those came from.

In my opinion, the ten most satanic ideas found in the Bible and/or created by the Bible are:

• Hell and eternal damnation without purpose, for guessing wrong about which religion to believe, all without any evidence whatsoever.

• Predestination, with an all-powerful, all-controlling God determining who would be "saved" and who would be "damned" long before they were born.

• Genocide of entire nations and cities including women, children, infants and babies.

• Ethnic cleansing, which goes hand-in-hand with genocide.

• The ghastly stoning to death of boys for misdemeanors and girls for being raped or not bleeding on their wedding nights.

• Sex slavery, including fathers selling their own daughters as sex slaves.

• Slavery, with men being freed after seven years but women and girls remaining slaves for life.

• Women being labeled "witches" and murdered for supernatural "crimes" that did not occur and could not have been proved if they did.

• The brainwashing required to persuade billions of people to believe such evil nonsense is the "wisdom of God."

• The enforcement of this bizarre religion on innocent children by their parents and other adults they trust.

Is the Bible the "infallible" and "inerrant" word of God, as many Christians claim? No, it is easy to prove that the Bible is far from "infallible" or "inerrant." According to the Bible, Jesus Christ said a good tree cannot bear bad fruit (Matthew 7:18). If Jesus was wrong, the Bible contains an error. If Jesus was correct, and if God is perfectly loving, merciful, wise and just (as Christians claim), and if the Bible is God's inerrant word, then obviously the Bible cannot contain palpably evil commandments issued by its Author. But the Bible does contain many palpably evil commandments that are directly attributed to its god, Jehovah. The Bible says Moses spoke to God face-to-face, as a man speaks to a friend, and that God gave Moses the commandments that are now enshrined in the Bible. Bible literalists will often try to worm around the Bible's evil commandments by claiming they were directed at people other than the Israelites. This is NOT true. The opening verses of Deuteronomy clearly explain that Moses is speaking "unto ALL Israel" and that Moses revealed ALL that he had been told by Jehovah to ALL Israel:

"These be the words which Moses spake unto ALL Israel ... Moses spake unto the children of Israel, according unto ALL that the Lord had given him in commandment unto them." (Deuteronomy 1:1-3)

So according to Deuteronomy, Moses was speaking to ALL Israel and he told them ALL that he had been instructed by Jehovah. But the book of Deuteronomy does not pass the "bad fruit" test of Jesus Christ. The evil commandments given by someone pretending to speak for Jehovah include:

• Stoning children to death for misdemeanors, a ghastly form of execution (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). Children can be murdered in this grotesquely cruel fashion for being stubborn and eating or drinking too much. That would include most children in any era, especially ours today.

• Murdering girls by stoning them to death if they failed to prove their virginity by bleeding on their wedding nights (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). When women are stoned to death in Muslim nations, many Christians call Islam a false religion. But here the author of Deuteronomy commands the same evil in the name and authority of Jehovah. But the real Creator would have known that all girls don’t bleed the first time they have sex. This is clearly someone pretending to speak for Jehovah because the real Creator could not have made such a stupid mistake. And even if the girls had had sex, it was still evil to murder them, since none of their stoners were without sin. Jesus made this clear in the New Testament, so how could he have endorsed this evil commandment as a member of the Trinity?

• If a girl is raped, either murder her or sell her to her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:22-31). If she is raped in a town, assume she didn’t cry out and murder her. If she was raped in a field, assume she did cry out and no one heard her, so let her live. If she is not engaged, instead of murdering the girl she can be sold to her rapist with the money going to her father. Is this the "word of God" or the cruel, barbaric insanity of primitive men? This commandment would allow any rapist with money to assemble a harem of sex slaves!

As we will see below, the Bible clearly commands and/or condones the worst crimes known to humankind: slavery, sex slavery, matricide, infanticide, ethnic cleansing and genocide ...

In the third of my top ten biblical evils above, if a girl was raped within earshot of a city or town, it was to be presumed that she had "encouraged" her rapist, by not crying out for help. No thought was to given to any possibility that her rapist may have held his hand over her mouth, or a knife to her throat, or that she was simply too terrified to scream. But even if the girl had deliberately chosen not to scream, why should she be murdered or forced to become a sex slave? Even if she had consensual sex, she should not be murdered or forced into sexual slavery! You can read the passages above and form your own conclusions, but they seem incredibly barbaric, cruel and unjust to me. And these passages are only the tip of the iceberg, as the Bible contains many other grotesque commandments attributed to prophets like Moses, to Jesus and the apostles, and to a supposedly all-wise, compassionate, loving, just God.

How are such things possible? There is a simple (albeit horrifying) explanation for the sex slave verses. Like many primitive tribes, the ancient Hebrews prized boys over girls. Boys were seen as boons because they could farm and hunt, helping to produce food and support their parents as they aged. But girls were "valuable" only if they were virgins, in which case their fathers could marry them off in return for dowries (a form of sex slavery). But when a girl was raped, she lost her primary "value" and because her father risked having to support her for the rest of his life, Moses' macabre "solution" was either to kill her, or have her rapist buy her from her father for cold cash. According to this bizarre "logic," a rich man could acquire a harem of sex slaves by raping girls, then buying them when they were no longer virgins and had lost their monetary value. But how can this possibly be the "wisdom of God" unless God is the Devil?

Many Christians call Islam a "false religion" because Muslim girls have been stoned to death for being raped. But the same barbaric thinking is enshrined in the Bible. Should the pot call the kettle black? What about the immense beam in the Christian eye?

There are many satanic verses in the Bible. Here are 17 incredibly evil verses, taken from a single chapter:

Deuteronomy 22

13-21: If a man takes a wife but begins to "hate" her, he can claim that she was not a virgin on her wedding night. If she cannot prove her virginity by producing blood-stained "tokens" of her virginity, her husband can have her stoned to death, a truly horrible method of execution! Of course not all girls bleed the first time they have sex, so this is not only evil, but wildly unjust and sheer barbaric folly.

22: Murder people for having sex.

23-24: If a girl or woman is raped anywhere except in a field, assume that she could have cried out for help but didn't, then stone her to death on this bizarre and wildly unjust assumption.

25-27: If a girl or woman is raped in a field, assume that no one could have heard her, so let her live. In other words, rape victims are guilty if they can possibly be heard, taking no thought for the fact that the rapists might have gagged them, or knocked them unconscious, or held knives to their throats, or terrified them into silence.

28-29: If a girl or woman is not betrothed to anyone and is raped, her rapist can buy her as a sex slave by making a cash payment to her father. If he does this, he is responsible for "taking care of her" from that point on. In another passage the Bible makes it clear that a female sex slave could only be kept as a slave if she was repeatedly raped! If her master failed to repeatedly rape her, she had to be set free! (Exodus 21:7-11)

The passages from Deuteronomy and Exodus that I have quoted on this page make it clear that female sex slaves had to "please" their masters sexually, and that male masters were required to repeatedly rape their sex slaves or else the slaves had to be freed. Can anyone believe this is the wisdom of an all-wise, all-just God?

No one with any human compassion or sense of justice can read chapter 22 of Deuteronomy without blanching. How did such a grotesquely evil book come to be in the Bible? The Bible itself explains how, in the account of the boy-king Josiah and the Levites who "discovered" a "lost book of Moses." The book was surely Deuteronomy. The Levites used the "book of Moses" to go on a murderous spree, killing anyone who disagreed with their bloody cult.

How anyone can read such evil madness and claim the Bible is "the word of God" is beyond me. Perhaps parts of the Bible are inspired: that is a matter of faith (or superstition). But Jesus said a good tree cannot produce bad fruit. If he spoke for God, then God cannot produce evil commandments. If Jesus was wrong, the Bible is not "infallible." In any case, the Bible's satanic passages can only be explained as the product of evil, twisted minds. Good people and enlightened beings do not command such horrors. As the old saw goes, "The proof is in the pudding." Deuteronomy chapter 22 and other similar passages of the Bible prove that its pudding is often rancid.

The Bible repeatedly commands and/or condones racism, sexism, religious intolerance, homophobia, slavery, sex slavery, matricide, infanticide, ethnic cleansing and genocide. While Christians often try to gloss over horrendous Old Testament verses by claiming that the New Testament is "better," in reality the New Testament is worse, because it says human beings will suffer eternally in "hell" for having sex and other non-crimes. If you had to choose, would you prefer eternal torture to being stoned to death? And yet no civilized court or judge would consider either death or torture for any sort of consensual sex, and even rapists are not tortured for their crimes in civilized nations. So if the Bible is the "word of God," it seems God has a lot to learn about justice, or else he has no ability to keep human beings from pretending to speak for him.

Once again, you know which way I'm leaning.

But if the Bible is "inerrant" things get much worse because Jesus said just thinking about sex (i.e., "lust") is the same as committing adultery. Since another New Testament verse says all adulterers will go to the Lake of Fire, it seems every human being is condemned to hell, since everyone thinks about sex once they reach puberty. What a horrible religion to teach to young, highly impressionable children! What happens when they reach puberty and start thinking about sex? If they believe the Bible is the "word of God" they may feel all the weight of God and hell resting on their slender shoulders. I know I did as a young boy.

Teaching children about "hell" is child abuse, pure and simple. We don't allow priests and pastors to abuse children physically, so why do we allow them to abuse children emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, with the grotesque dogma of "hell"?

It seems completely obvious to me that the Bible's satanic verses could not have originated with a God who is loving, wise, compassionate and just. Thus the claims of Christian theologians, popes, priests and pastors that the Bible is the "inerrant" and/or "infallible" word of God are patently ludicrous. No one can "prove" that any verse in the Bible came from God, but we can easily prove that many Bible verses could not have come from a loving, wise, compassionate, just God. After all, no one would call a man loving, wise, compassionate or just if he murdered or tortured girls for being raped, or having consensual sex. But how many girls were murdered or enslaved, thanks to the commandments of Moses? And how many children (and adults) have been terrified because they thought about sex, and believed their thoughts condemned them to "hell"? One shudders to wonder.

And "Bible believing" Christians are obviously lying to themselves, and to the world, when they claim to "know" that homosexuality and sex before marriage are "sins," based on the evidence of the Bible. According to the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, slavery is "the will of God," as Jefferson Davis pointed out to Congress before the Civil War. Four of the seceding Southern states used the Bible to "prove" the "godliness" of slavery, in their formal declarations of their reasons for leaving the Union. We also know from Mark Twain and other anti-slavery writers that the Bible was used to justify slavery in churches and schools throughout the antebellum South. But if not a single one of the writers of the Bible knew that slavery was an abomination, how can we possibly credit what they said about homosexuality and extramarital sex?

Why not be honest, and admit that Bible writers who called extramarital sex "evil" and sex slavery "the will of God" were primitive barbarians with no sense of justice? Even Jesus and Paul deserve criticism, because according to the Bible they spent a great deal of time debating matters of diet and Sabbath observance, while never saying a clear word against the practice of slavery, even though they ministered to slaves and their masters. Hell, Paul even returned an escaped Christian slave, Onesimus, to his Christian master, Philemon! The book of Philemon would later be used by American slavemasters to "prove" they had the right to demand that other Christians return escaped slaves to them. Was it "wise" for Jesus and Paul to make it seem slavery was kosher with God, by failing to denounce it?

The Bible contains many satanic verses. Revelation is an especially grotesque book which prophesied that Jesus Christ himself would murder the children of a woman who was having extramarital sex: "I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins (kidneys) and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works." (Revelation 2:20-23)

Are these the words of a loving, wise, just, enlightened being? What happened to love, compassion, forgiveness, and the message of Saint Paul that salvation is by grace? What sort of ogre kills children for their mother’s actions? Where is there any justice in killing people (much less their children) for having sex? And what on earth do the kidneys have to do with morality?

Revelation 14:10, one of the most horrendous verses in the Bible, or any book, says that human beings will be tortured with fire and brimstone "in the presence of the Lamb and Holy Angels." So much for hell being "separation from God." According to John of Patmos, the fire-breathing author of Revelation, there will be a torture chamber in heaven, at the foot of the throne of God, and the "saints" will scream for vengeance and blood, rather than call for love, forgiveness, compassion and mercy.

The Jesus of Revelation is an inhuman monster slated to become the greatest mass murderer in the history of the Earth, if the prophecies of John of Patmos come to pass. According to Revelation, after all earth’s innocent creatures have sung the praises of God, Jesus and the Angels will proceed to torture and destroy them. But how can loving, compassionate, wise, just, enlightened beings do such terrible things to innocent creatures? If he can blink his eyes and create a better world, why not do it without all the unnecessary mayhem?

The Hebrew Bible is full of atrocities committed in the name of God. But with the introduction of "hell" in the New Testament, God and Jesus became infinitely more savage than even the mass-murdering, women- and child-killing "heroes" of the Old Testament, such as Moses, Joshua, Caleb and King David.

Was David "the man after God’s own heart," really? According to the Bible, David killed every woman when he "smote the land" and he ordered the slaughter of the lame and blind when Jerusalem was taken from the Jebusites. David never repented, because with his dying breath he commanded the assassination of Joab, ostensibly for having shed innocent blood. But it was David who had awarded Joab the command of his armies for slaughtering the lame and the blind!

Isn’t it time to be honest about the Bible and its Satanic verses, and stop giving such a dreadful book to young, innocent, highly impressionable children, telling them it’s "the word of God"? How can Christians say it’s a "sin" to lie when they’re dishonest about the Bible and its human origins? (Assuming that God isn’t really the Devil, and didn’t actually command the slaughter of rape victims, mothers, babies and the handicapped.)

Is the Bible "infallible"? The idea is patently ridiculous. I read the Bible from cover to cover as a boy and was horrified time and time again by what it said about "men of God" like Moses, Joshua, Caleb and David. I agree with Mark Twain: it wasn’t the verses I failed to understand that bothered me ... it was the verses that I understood all too well.

A God who is good cannot command sex slavery and the murder of rape victims. A God who is good cannot command the stoning to death of boys for being "stubborn" and girls for being raped. And yet the Bible repeatedly commands such terrible things. So the obvious problem for Christians is that the Bible contains what Salman Rushdie called "Satanic verses" when he wrote about highly dubious verses in the Koran.

Orthodox Christianity seems to have no sense of justice. A good human doctor who is able to save a patient doesn’t allow the patient to die because he's an atheist, an agnostic, a Muslim, or a homosexual. But according to orthodox Christianity, even though Jesus Christ was able to save the thief on the cross with a nod of his head, he won’t bother to nod his head at billions of other people, simply because they didn’t "believe" in him. But of course Jesus never bothered to introduce himself to them personally. And if Jesus is such a cruel, unjust, petty being, why should anyone believe in him?

Shouldn’t believing in Jesus involve believing something good about him? If Jesus is good, wouldn’t it be blasphemy to say that he would send people to hell for not believing in him, for guessing wrong about which religion to believe or not believe, when he was either unable or unwilling to speak to them personally?

Who would do that, but the Devil? Has the Christian religion evolved into Devil worship? Are Baptist pastors and Catholic priests blasphemers?

If I had a son and refused to ever speak to him, what right would I have to demand that he "believe" in me? Christians insist that I need to "believe" in Jesus, but that insistence is wildly unjust. If Jesus wants me to believe in him, he should use his superpowers—which presumably include the ability to speak—to communicate with me. If he is unable or unwilling to communicate with me, he has no right to punish me for concluding that he either doesn’t exist or lacks the ability to communicate with me directly. And it makes absolutely no sense for him to expect me to believe things about him based on what the Bible says, because verses in the Bible turn him into a monster. The only way I can believe anything good about Jesus is to not believe the main tenet of orthodox Christianity: that he will only save the "chosen few." What a ghastly thing to believe about anyone! What sort of monster would I be if I sent Einstein and Gandhi to hell for not "believing" in me, when I had deliberately chosen never to speak to them, or lacked the ability to speak to them?

If you were able to save other people from a terrible fate with a nod of your head, would you save them, or turn your back on them in a fit of pique? Many Christians try to evade what their "faith" has done to Jesus by asking what a human judge would do with a rapist or murderer: "Should people who are guilty go unpunished?" But the purpose of a prison sentence is to protect the innocent and rehabilitate the criminal, not to cause mindless, unremitting suffering because the judge's ego wasn't gratified. And of course human judges are not able to "save" in the way that Jesus has been said to be able to save people who are seemingly beyond hope, such as the thief on the cross and murderers on their deathbeds. If Jesus is able to save by grace, as the Bible claims, then he is obviously not in the same predicament as human judges who sometimes have no choice but to lock people up for extended periods of time.

If Jesus is able to save Christians at the last minute despite the fact that they’re far from perfect, why would he fail to save everyone? If he plans to save Christians who acted as if he was a petty egomaniac, would it make any sense whatsoever for him to send Einstein and Gandhi to hell, when they never blasphemed his good name? (And isn’t it ironic that non-Christians like Einstein and Gandhi have more faith in the goodness of Jesus than most Christians?)

CLOSING THOUGHTS
by Michael R. Burch

The Christian religion was a big part of my family's life, but I ended up being the black sheep.

Why?

The Bible says trees grew before the sun was created, that a solid-but-transparent “firmament” in the sky holds back rainwater like a dam, and that stars are tiny pinpricks of light that can fall to earth. Is it a book of science or ancient superstitions? The Bible commands slavery, sex slavery, infanticide, matricide, ethnic cleansing, genocide and the ghastly stoning to death of children for non-sins and misdemeanors. Is it a book of ethics and morality or primitive voodoo? The Bible according to orthodox theology says billions of souls will go to an infinitely cruel and purposeless hell for guessing wrong about which religion to believe. Are Christians wise to believe in such an evil, unjust god?

Surely those who believe in Christ should "rightly divide the word" and give Jesus the benefit of the doubt by not attributing the Bible's satanic verses to him as part of the Trinity. Nothing can be more contrary to both faith and reason, than to claim God is perfect in love, compassion, mercy, wisdom and justice, then to say he authored commandments to, for instance, stone rape victims to death. If God is good, how is that not blasphemy?

For me the Bible's most inspired passage is Paul's epiphany on Divine Love in 1 Corinthians 13. In his epiphany Paul says that if God is not Divine Love, he is nothing, and all the words of the Bible are so much useless noise: clanging gongs and tinkling cymbals. And Paul tells us that Divine Love thinks no evil, holds no record of wrongs, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, never gives up and never fails. Such love is incompatible with racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, cherry-picking people to be saved, and with hell.

Christians should use Paul's epiphany as a litmus test, and disregard all biblical commandments contrary to it.

Paul's description of Divine Love in 1 Corinthians 13 is the gold standard, so why settle for less? And why accuse Jesus Christ, if you are going to name your religion after him, of being an atom short of Divine Love?

After all, to fall an atom short of Infinity is to fall infinitely short.

#BIBLE #HELL #LIMBO #MRBBIBLE #MRBHELL #MRBLIMBO

Related Pages

Donald Trump: 666 Mark of the Beast

There is no "hell" in the Bible!
What did Jesus teach about Hell?
How many times is "hell" mentioned in the Bible?
Is there a word meaning "hell" in the Hebrew language?
Was "hell" in the Original Hebrew Bible?
Is "hell" mentioned in the Old Testament?
Is "hell" mentioned in the New Testament
Is the word "hell" in the Bible at all?
Why is "hell" not Biblical?
Hell is not in the Bible!

Is the Bible infallible, or the inerrant word of God?
Is the Bible the Word of God?, The Bible's Satanic Verses
Is the Garden of Eden story true?
Is the Bible an Extraordinary book?

John of Patmos: Boom or Bust?
Bible False Prophecies

www.thereisnohell.com
www.tentmaker.org

The HyperTexts