How Dan Destroys The Bible

First, a word from Thomas Paine:

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian tales, without the merit of being entertaining; and the accounts of men living to eight or nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology.

Thomas Paine - The Age Of Reason

And, self-evidently, Thomas Paine is right.

So, what is the evidence?

A few facts, all from the Bible itself:

And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.

Genesis 14:14

Clearly, this could only have been written after there was a place named Dan, just as an account of someone going to, say, New Hampshire, could only have been written during or after 1629 when New Hampshire was first named.

And now this:

And they took the things which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came to Laish, to a people that were at quiet and secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire. And there was no deliverer, because it was far from Zidon, and they had no business with any man; and it was in the valley that lies by Bethrehob. And they built a city, and dwelled therein. And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.

Judges 18:27-29

So now we can place the writing of Genesis after the events described in Judges 18 since before then, the place was called Laish.

All this takes place after the death of Samson, as related in Judges 16. Samson is reputed to have died some 330 years after Moses died and certainly after Joshua who succeeded Moses and died reputedly aged 110 (Joshua 24:29).

So, whoever wrote Genesis must have written it long after Moses died and probably at least 330 years after. Therefore Moses could not have written Genesis.

So, as Thomas Paine points out, Genesis is just "an anonymous book of stories, fables, absurdities and downright lies". Moreover, the author was also clearly ignorant of the history of the place about which he/she was writing stories, not realising that Dan was not so named in those times, hence this is not even reliable history even if we ignore the poor chronology. It is as made up as Harry Potter or Peter Pan.

Genesis was clearly written long after the establishment of the ancient Israel and is at best merely folklore and at worst made up. As the Bible itself shows, the entire foundation of the Abrahamic religions as the word of God as related to Moses, has no basis in fact.

There is no basis whatever for the idea of God, of Creation, of Heaven and Hell, of Satan, Of Angels, of the "Fall of Man", of Original Sin, of the need for forgiveness and redemption including the need to 'accept Jesus' or for his supposed sacrifice, or for all the absurdities in the story of Noah, the flood and the ark, or indeed any of the basic tenets of any of the three major monotheist religions.

They are based on nothing more than "stories, fables, absurdities and downright lies".

And all this can be readily discovered by reading the Bible itself.

Can anyone suggest a reason why no preacher, Bible thumper, Pope, priest, Sunday-school teacher or neatly coiffured televangelist claiming to be a Bible scholar has ever pointed to this childishly simple biblical refutation of everything they preach as biblical truth?

Obviously, a desire to preach and teach truth can have played no part in it.

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