Religious / Political Skulduggery

“Silicon Valley, the politically liberal technology hub is an unlikely incubator of conservative Christian activism.

But a group of its venture capitalists is backing an ambitious project that seeks to affect the 2012 election by registering 5 million new conservative Christians to vote.

The nonprofit organization ‘United in Purpose’ is using sophisticated data-mining techniques to compile a database of every unregistered born-again and evangelical Christian and conservative Catholic in the country.

Through partnerships with Christian organizers and antiabortion groups, United in Purpose hopes to recruit 100,000 “champions” to identify unregistered Christians and get them to the polls as part of its Champion the Vote project. Profiles drawn from its database, which numbers more than 120 million people, will enable organizers to target potential voters with emails and Web videos tailored to their interests.

Most of its financial supporters remain anonymous, but one of its main backers is technology entrepreneur Ken Eldred, a generous Republican donor. Its board includes Reid Rutherford, a Silicon Valley solar-energy plant developer.

“Our goal is to raise up a body of believers and that they elect a lot of godly leaders,” said Bill Dallas, chief executive of United in Purpose.”   From the LA Times Here  My emphasis.

Well that’s kinda’ scary…a group of some of the richest people on the planet are going to enable millions of heretofore unregistered religiously conservative (read evangelical fundamentalists) people to vote…but only for GODLY candidates.  This in combination with the religiously controlled Republican Party candidates will mean hard times for Democrats and Obama supporters next year.

Now I am truly not advocating for a godless country (well, maybe that) and/or the suppression of political advocacy for a chosen candidate.  That would be UN-American and devious.  What I would advocate is that we make our best effort to expose what is going on here.  This is an attempt to take over a Democratic Republic by religious thugs…and make no mistake, we are talking about thugs here.  The stated goal of the leadership is to take over America in the name of the Christian Religion and rule as if we were living in Old Testament times.

That sounds to me like the scenario for Margaret Atwood’s book, The Handmaid’s Tale.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where my sex-life is under control of the government, or if a women, my reproduction rights were controlled by religious zealots, a world where women are once again reduced in status, homosexuals were summarily executed by the state, and heresy and blasphemy were also capitol crimes.  You know…like the Dark Ages.  Leviticus 24:16 states that those who speak blasphemy “shall surely be put to death”. 

This country is inching closer and closer to a religious war.
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Truth Honesty And The American Way

“The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy.” -– George W. Bush, 2003

George Bush is a right wing evangelical fundamentalist dupe.

Happy 4th of July and thank goodness we can rotate our leaders.

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Metal Working Before God Created The Earth??

If you believe in a evangelical fundamentalist God

What in modern times is the country Armenia, was in ancient times a very valuable resource for mankind…it is thought that much of mans knowledge of metallurgy was gained here around the ancient city of Metsamor.  It was occupied from around 7,000 BC to perhaps 1700 AD and was an astronomical site as well as metallurgical.

Excavation of the ruins has discovered a very large metal industry including a foundry with 2 kinds of blast furnaces.  The foundry is known to have extracted and processed gold, copper, and several types of manganese, zinc, strychnine, mercury, and iron.  Metal from the foundries of Metsamor found their way to Egypt, Central Asia and China.

Several Huge underground caves have been uncovered that are believed to have been storehouses for base metal, as well as a grain storage for winter months.  The first iron in the ancient world may have been forged here.

It is believed that metal working got its start there about 5,000 BC…one more blow to the Young Earth Creationists who STILL believe the earth was formed by a Mesopotamian god around 4000 + BC, and Tubal-Cain invented metal working well after the creation, but before the “Flood” on or about 2400 BC

There are many very ancient human sites around the Armenia/Turkey area going back at least 9,000 to 11,000 years or more.  The whole Babylonian/Turkey/Armenia/Iran/Iraq/Israel/Egypt area is the largest cradle of human civilization…although humans were not originally from there, when we migrated out of Africa to the areas they were found to be very conducive to human life.

Pretty cool chart about the petroglyphs and early writing in the area
http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/Images/countries/Turkish%20pics/alphabetbig.jpg
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Republican Version of Health Care?

Well Arizona Republicans are unveiling their version of a health care plan to us poor citizens.
Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, said that SB 1593 eliminates existing laws which require that companies that want to sell their insurance to Arizona residents be licensed and regulated by the state Department of Insurance. They say the increased competition will provide more opportunities for Arizonans to get the coverage they want at a price they can afford.  I’m sure nothing could go wrong there. 😦

Ms. Kate Brophy McGee said that is good news for those who don’t want or need that kind of coverage and the costs entailed. Conversely, those who want coverage for specific conditions can shop for a policy which includes that.  The bad news is of course that unregulated non-licensed companies will be free to do whatever they want and run their business in a shady manner and the poor insured people will be screwed many times over…again.  Part of the Republican agenda is to unregulate most all businesses.

Also to be considered is that the legislation wipes out more than two dozen mandates for what conditions must be covered for policies issued in Arizona. These range from chiropractic care and breast reconstruction to even how much time a woman would be allowed to remain in the hospital following child birth.  And let’s not forget that unregulated private insurers would be free to dis-allow anything they want. It would be much worse than the present day system where you often have to get a lawyer to make them pay up for many illnesses.

The Republicans are destroying the middle class in America and the above is just one more way they are f*cking over us.  We Democrats are helping to put these clowns in office…we have to get off our duffs and vote in ALL elections.  Set up rides for older voters, do the neighborhood walk door-to-door, volunteer to help your party.  Lets make the coming elections a shutout for Republicans.

Remember, in the 2012 presidential elections the Republicans will probably front a evangelical fundamentalist religious candidate such as Romney or Huckabee…we really don’t want 4 or 8 years with a religious fundamentalist leader again…George Bush was bad enough and he was an idiot.  Romney and Huckabee are very smart and they DO have an agenda they will not speak of.
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Creation Science and Intelligent Design are Lies

“Albuquerque (New Mexico) Rep. Thomas Anderson introduced a bill that said teachers can’t be punished for sharing information with students, including different opinions on evolution, human cloning and climate change.

“The wording of the bill isn’t that bad, but it would lead to very obscure consequences in our public schools. Why are these people so concerned about other knowledge being provided? Different theories exist. Students should know about it,” Anderson said.”  Full story
http://www.koat.com/education/26812193/detail.html

This particular story kind of caught me by surprise.  I’m used to the crazy religious fundamentalists in the Deep Southern states trying to pass legislation to enable teaching of their “Intelligent Design” or “Creation Science” lies. I never imagined that a Southwestern state such as New Mexico would fall into the cradle of lies that evangelical fundamentalists weave. I guess you can’t stop stupid, all this time I thought the line was drawn at the Texas border.

They try to introduce these lies in schools under the guise of being “fair” and “teaching the controversy” …so the students can develop critical thinking skills. They try to make it seem that to be fair we should give the students the chance to decide on their own.

One of the replies to the story states: “When I was a kid, we were taught both so we could make up our own minds. Socialists don’t like different opinions…”

There is a serious flaw with these kinds of assertion from the religious. Public schools are not in the business of teaching lies and mistruths; they should only be teaching what is known to be true. It is not up to students to “Decide” or make up their own mind about which story is true.  They go to school to learn about the real world…not some looney made up religious lies about our origins and history.

When these students go to any reputable college to learn science…there is no choice, or deciding of, which science they are to be taught.  Go to Notre Dame, go to University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, go to the University of Utah…ALL religious schools.  Sign up for science classes and guess what…they teach real science; not Intelligent Design (ID), not Creation Science, which by the way are neither intelligent or science.

I can’t find any reputable college that teaches anything but real science. I can’t find a one that teaches ID or Creationism, so just how real is this religious “science” and why should it be taught in public schools? How can people like Rep. Thomas Anderson and his ilk in the Southern States think they are doing a good thing and “Helping” our schools, students, or society?  They are not.
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Jesus Was/Is A Myth

If one follows the many earth sciences closely enough you are presented with facts that if followed deeply enough and cogitated about long enough, reveals to you that all is not as it seems.

For example, science tells us that actual humans (Homo-sapiens…us), have walked the earth for near 200,000+-  years. Among scientists this is pretty much an un-disputed fact, Other, almost humans, walked the earth for several million years…some modern day European and Asian people have actual DNA from some of these ancient ancestors, meaning there was inter-breeding and viable, fertile offspring.

DNA and the old bones are telling this story…this is indisputable, non-judgmental,   unbiased science that is narrating the story of our ancestors life, not a book written by goat-herders–millions of years after the real beginning of the tale.

All of the above, and more, leads us to the necessity to re-examine and measure many old tall tales that have been passed off as truth to billions of people…namely the Biblical myths of our earthly Genesis.  Moses nowadays is thought to be pretty much a mythical figure.  His “contribution” to the Bible (The Pentateuch) is probably a product of earnest Jewish scholars of the sixth or seventh century BC …long after the reputed time of Moses…trying to keep a tribe together

We know that the essential stories of Genesis…Adam/Eve, Noah, dispersion of language, slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt, Exodus, exploits of Joshua, etc. are mythical or allegorical tales.  Some people may think this is not a big deal, but some cogitation on the subject proves otherwise.  In fact if these stories are not true, the consequences ricochet through time…to the story of Jesus, and then go even greater lengths to prove the whole chapter–maybe the whole book–is only myth.

Follow this: there was no Adam/Eve as portrayed in the Bible. The Bible gives clues that much of civilization and early technology was miraculously “there” almost as soon as the story got going. This irrevocably puts the stories into the fifth or sixth millennia BC…a time that is extremely well researched and known about by our earth sciences.  The bone evidence and DNA evidence agree in their respective branches that there was never a time when our ancestors only numbered 2 in the case of Adam/Eve, and further out, the 6 mythical procreating members of the mythical Noah’s Ark.

As stated above man/womankind has walked the earth for 200,000 +- years…there was never an Adam/Eve couple six or eight or ten or fifty thousand years ago.  No Adam and Eve mean no “Original Sin” which irrevocably means there was no need for a Jesus to die as “blood atonement” for non-existent sins.  If you think about it God said, before Paul invented Original Sin, that children are not guilty of the sins of the father. Also the blood atonement think is kind of stupid…it’s nothing but theater, a contrivance to batten up a weak plot line.

With that thought in mind we go to some thoughts of people who are, or were, in the front lines of scholarship in matters of the Christian religion.

“It is important to recognize the obvious: The gospel story of Jesus is itself apparently mythic from first to last”…Robert M. Price, professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute

“We can recreate dimensions of the world in which he lived, but outside of the Christian scriptures, we cannot locate him historically within that world”…Gerald A. Larue, The Book Your Church Doesn’t Want You to Read.

“The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel” …Bishop John Shelby Spong.

“According to the declaration of the Second Vatican Council, a faithful account of the actions and words of Jesus is to be found in the Gospels; but it is impossible to reconcile this with the existence in the text of contradictions, improbabilities, things which are materially impossible or statements which run contrary to firmly established reality”…Maurice Bucaille, The Bible The Quran And Science

“Jesus is a mythical figure in the tradition of pagan mythology and almost nothing in all of ancient literature would lead one to believe otherwise. Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived and walked as a real live human being must do so despite the evidence, not because of it”…C. Dennis McKinsey, Bible critic, The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy

“Even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn’t one anymore. All attempts to recover him turn out to be just modern re-mythologizing of Jesus. Every “historical Jesus” is a Christ of faith, of somebody’s faith. So the “historical Jesus” of modern scholarship is no less a fiction”…Robert M. Price, Jesus: Fact or Fiction

“So unreliable were the Gospel accounts that “we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus”…Rudolf Bultmann, University of Marburg

So Prof. Bultmann is saying that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are unreliable, so bad that we can’t be sure about Jesus. Just how much faith can we put in the Gospels?  Let’s see what some other scholars believe…

“We know virtually nothing about the persons who wrote the gospels we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John”…Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, The Gnostic Gospels.

“All four gospels are anonymous texts. The familiar attributions of the Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John come from the mid-second century and later and we have no good historical reason to accept these attributions”…Steve Mason, professor of classics, history and religious studies at York University.

“The gospels are so anonymous that their titles, all second-century guesses, are all four wrong”…Randel M. Helms, Who Wrote the Gospels?

“But even if it could be proved that John’s Gospel had been the first of the four to be written down, there would still be considerable confusion as to who “John” was. For the various styles of the New Testament texts ascribed to John- The Gospel, the letters, and the Book of Revelations– are each so different in their style that it is extremely unlikely that they had been written by one person”…John Romer, archeologist & Bible scholar, Testament.

“Paul did not write the letters to Timothy to Titus or several others published under his name; and it is unlikely that the apostles Matthew, James, Jude, Peter and John had anything to do with the canonical books ascribed to them”…Michael D. Coogan, Professor of religious studies at Stonehill College.

“Yet today, there are few Biblical scholars– from liberal skeptics to conservative evangelicals- who believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually wrote the Gospels. Nowhere do the writers of the texts identify themselves by name or claim unambiguously to have known or traveled with Jesus”… Jeffery L. Sheler, The Four Gospels

“The bottom line is we really don’t know for sure who wrote the Gospels”…Jerome Neyrey, Weston School of Theology, Cambridge, Mass.

“The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus… The library of such books has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts us: all of these books relate to a personage concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of contemporary information — not one! By accepted tradition he was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age historians flourished; poets, orators, critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident in his life”…Moncure D. Conway, Modern Thought

Some really bad press for a few people from the Christian religion. They keep saying there is all this evidence that their religion is the true one.  I’m wondering where it is.

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Yet Another Muslim Bombing

It seems that Sweden is very quickly being taken over by Muslims, and the rest of the western world should be taking notes and preparing themselves, as we are in a 400 year old war with Islam and most people don’t even know it.

Excerpt from a story by Fjordman in Europe News
“On the 11^th of December 2010, the first-ever suicide bombing in Scandinavia occurred when Taimour Abdulwahab, an Iraqi-born Muslim and Swedish citizen with a wife and children in Luton, Britain, was carrying explosives and mistakenly set off an explosion near a busy Christmas shopping street in Stockholm just before he could murder dozens of people.”

Here was a man who had a good life, a good family and one would think every reason in the world to be satisfied and live in peace.  But, his mind was contaminated with a terrible religious virus called “Islam”.  This virus causes its victims to do crazy things like takeover airplanes and fly them into occupied buildings, strap bombs to their bodies and kill innocent men, women, and children, kill (or try to) cartoonists for drawing a likeness of Muhammad, kill their women who talk to a single Christian, or in some way besmirch the family “honor”.

“Prohibiting all forms of criticism or mockery of Islam and its Prophet is an essential part of Sharia, Islamic religious law. According to Islamic historical sources, individuals such as the poetess Asma bint Marwan were killed by the followers of Muhammad for having done nothing other than mocking Islam. This then became a part of the Sunna, the personal example of Muhammad and his companions, which is the most authoritative source of Islamic law next to the Koran itself. It was for the same reason that Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam in 2004. Yes, mainstream, traditional Islam today stipulates that those who mock Islam deserve to be murdered. No other major religion on this planet dictates anything similar.” My emphasis. This alone is legal reason to outlaw Islam.

“If a single non-Muslim says anything critical about Islam, his entire community can in principle be punished for this. Basically, this means that if one cartoonist in Germany, the USA or Denmark makes a cartoon mocking Muhammad, this could potentially trigger Jihadist terrorist attacks against his entire country for “waging a war against Islam,” because his “tribe” is held collectively responsible for his actions. This was exactly the Islamic logic behind Taimour Abdulwahab’s terror attack in Stockholm. There is no such thing as an individual in this culture; the tribe is everything. Muslims, being good hypocrites, are always the first following an Islamic terrorist attack to state that all Muslims should not be punished for the actions of a few, yet this is precisely what their own laws prescribe for non-Muslims.” My emphasis. This shows how treacherous the Islamic religion is…they cannot to be trusted under any circumstance.

This just in (late 12-31-10)…Muslims set off bomb outside a church in Egypt, killing at least 11 Christians of the Copt sect. Watch for details on your local news on New Year’s Day…so sad.

“Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single political person, faction, or class, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.

Don’t be fooled by your local Muslims talk of Islam being a religion of peace…it is not…it wants to rule our world and it is working tirelessly to that end.
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Arabs Are Always Angry

An Arab journalist friend explained, “Arabs are always angry. They always look for the bad and then harp on it.” Yahoo News 11-08-10.  Sounds like recent Republican swipes at President Obama.  In fact that’s exactly what the Republican and Right leaning, biased political media / radio pundits (think…all of Fox news, the Tea Party, and Rush Limbaugh and his ilk) have been doing consistently since Obama’s inauguration.  The amount of scurrilous, abusive and offensive crap emanating from these clowns is disgusting.  In earlier times, in this country, there would be a tremendous outcry from the common folk, and the hate-spewing guilty ones would lose their jobs.

The fundamentalist religious asshats (like Baptist minister Mike Huckabee) who support and now control the Republican Party are consistently ragging on everything our President does, conveniently forgetting how screwed up George W. Bush was and how badly he screwed over our country.  How many stories have you EVER noticed about the opposition party bitching about a President visiting a country friendly to America in the past?

The amount of vitriolic, misleading, crappy, hate-mongering speech coming from the Republican side of our political system today makes me ashamed I was a Republican supporter and voter for nearly 50 years. I voted for Bush and it has been the only vote I have ever cast that I became ashamed of (well maybe Nixon a little).  How about in the interest of fair-play we treat our present President with more respect and give him a chance…after all he has done some good things.
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Was Moses a Real Person

A few wandering families — poor, wretched, without education, art or power; descendants of those who had been enslaved for four hundred years; ignorant as the inhabitants of Central Africa, had just escaped from their masters to the desert of Sinai.

Their leader was Moses, a man who had been raised in the family of Pharaoh and had been taught the law and mythology of Egypt. For the purpose of controlling his followers he pretended that he was instructed and assisted by Jehovah, the God of these wanderers.

Everything that happened was attributed to the interference of this God. Moses declared that he met this God face to face; that on Sinai’s top from the hands of this God he had received the tables of stone on which, by the finger of this God, the Ten Commandments had been written, and that, in addition to this, Jehovah had made known the sacrifices and ceremonies that were pleasing to him and the laws by which the people should be governed.

In this way the Jewish religion and the Mosaic Code were established.

It is now claimed that this religion and these laws were and are revealed and established for all mankind.

At that time these wanderers had no commerce with other nations, they had no written language, they could neither read nor write. They had no means by which they could make this revelation known to other nations, and so it remained buried in the jargon of a few ignorant, impoverished and unknown tribes for more than two thousand years.

Many centuries after Moses, the leader, was dead — many centuries after all his followers had passed away — the Pentateuch was written, the work of many writers, and to give it force and authority it was claimed that Moses was the author.

We now know that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses.

Towns are mentioned that were not in existence when Moses lived.

Money, not coined until centuries after his death, is mentioned.

So, many of the laws were not applicable to wanderers on the desert — laws about agriculture, about the sacrifice of oxen, sheep and doves, about the weaving of cloth, about ornaments of gold and silver, about the cultivation of land, about harvest, about the threshing of grain, about houses and temples, about cities of refuge, and about many other subjects of no possible application to a few starving wanderers over the sands and rocks.

It is now not only admitted by intelligent and honest theologians that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch, but they all admit that no one knows who the authors were, or who wrote any one of these books, or a chapter or a line. We know that the books were not written in the same generation; that they were not all written by one person; that they are filled with mistakes and contradictions.

It is also admitted that Joshua did not write the book that bears his name, because it refers to events that did not happen until long after his death.

No one knows, or pretends to know, the author of Judges; all we know is that it was written centuries after all the judges had ceased to exist. No one knows the author of Ruth, nor of First and Second Samuel; all we know is that Samuel did not write the books that bear his name. In the 25th chapter of First Samuel is an account of the raising of Samuel by the Witch of Endor.

No one knows the author of First and Second Kings or First and Second Chronicles; all we know is that these books are of no value.

We know that the Psalms were not written by David. In the Psalms the Captivity is spoken of, and that did not happen until about five hundred years after David slept with his fathers.

We know that Solomon did not write the Proverbs or the Song; that Isaiah was not the author of the book that bears his name; that no one knows the author of Job, Ecclesiastes, or Esther, or of any book in the Old Testament, with the exception of Ezra.

We know that God is not mentioned or in any way referred to in the book of Esther. We know, too, that the book is cruel, absurd and impossible.

God is not mentioned in the Song of Solomon, the best book in the Old Testament.

And we know that Ecclesiastes was written by an unbeliever.

We know, too, that the Jews themselves had not decided as to what books were inspired — were authentic — until the second century after Christ.

We know that the idea of inspiration was of slow growth, and that the inspiration was determined by those who had certain ends to accomplish.

This was written in 1894 by Robert Ingersall in his book “About the Holy Bible”

Sargon the Great and Moses

Sargon of Akkad / Mesopotamia (c.2300BC to 2215BC)
His birth story from Wikipedia Here
“My mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not. The brothers of my father loved the hills. My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates. My high priestess mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes; with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me. Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener. While I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me her love, and for four and […] years I exercised kingship.”   
The river would have been the Euphrates.

Moses of the Hebrews / Egypt / Promised Land / Israel (c. 1396 BC+- to Feb-Mar 1271 BC+-
His birth story From the Jewish Encyclopedia Here
In the Exodus account, the birth of Moses occurred at a time when an unnamed Egyptian Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born be killed by drowning in the river Nile. Jochebed, the wife of the Levite Amram, bore a son and kept him concealed for three months. When she could keep him hidden no longer, rather than deliver him to be killed, she set him adrift on the Nile River in a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch. Moses’ sister Miriam observed the progress of the tiny boat until it reached a place where Pharaoh’s daughter (Bithiah, Thermuthis) was bathing with her handmaidens. It is said that she spotted the baby in the basket and had her handmaiden fetch it for her.
Hmmm…Sargon the Great, who we know was real, was born in secrecy and his mother built a small craft and set it / him free on the river. Story from somewhere around 2300-2200 BC in the Babylon / Mesopotamian area.  Sargon is the first individual in recorded history to create a multi-ethnic, centrally ruled empire, and his dynasty controlled Mesopotamia for around a century and a half.

Moses whom many Biblical scholars now think may be a mythical character who lived around a thousand later than Sargon…if he (Moses) were real, has the same birth myth as a great historical character who lived a lot earlier. Also to be considered in this story is that those same Biblical scholars think that the story of Moses and his writings was a pious fraud, written by Hebrews who were exiled in Babylon (Mesopotamia) in around 587 BC to help bring the Hebrews tribes together in faith.

One could reasonably conclude that parts of the birth myth of Moses was “borrowed” from Mesopotamian writings they came into contact with in Babylon.

Also one could look at the mythical Gilgamesh flood story (circa 2700 BC), the greatest surviving work of early Mesopotamian literature, and see some mighty close similarities with the story of Noah and his Ark…which was part of the Pentateuch that Moses was supposed to have written around 1270 BC, but was probably written by Hebrew scribes in the 6^th century BC.

I think this part of Biblical myth can also be reasonably thought of as another Hebrew “borrowing” of storyline from the Mesopotamians.  Boy those Hebrew’s are sharp…

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