 
### SATAN'S GUIDE to the BIBLE

A Seriously Humorous Review

### Revelation 2

## Creation – Myth, Metaphor

## and Layers of Historical Allegory

And why women are to blame ... for everything

Copyright 2014 Stuart Lorde-Jardine

Illustrations: Mic Lewis

Cover art: Dave Fymbo

Inspiration: Prince of Darkness

Published by Hades Central

Dire Licence Warning

Your eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away.

Failure to comply with this injunction may result in the beast that comes up from the Abyss attacking you and overpowering and killing you, and your dead body will lie in the street.

As per the biblical book of Revelation 11:7-8 ... possibly.

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

Pastor Samuel Jardine

Table of Contents

Revelation 2:1 - Light of the Elohim

And living in an inside-out goldfish bowl

Revelation 2:2 - Yahweh's Re-Creation Day

And the soulless, rib-woman, good-servant, she-man

Revelation 2:3 Eve and the Talking Serpent

And falling for cunningly naked temptation

Revelation 2:4 - My Brother's Keeper

And the Gardner and the Shepherd should be friends

Further SGB Revelations

Connect with SGB

Revelation 2:1

### LIGHT of the ELOHIM

**And living in an inside-out goldfish bowl**

Genesis 1:1 – 2:3

THE mountain of parchment grew.

Goblins, hobgoblins, leprechauns, pixies and very nearly everyone else from the farthest reaches of Tartarus staggered in with armfuls of writings. From every corner of Gehenna they scrounged and scoured out all the Bibles and commentaries and concordances; haggadic and halakhik Midrashim; expositions on hermeneutics and homiletics and apocalyptic eschatology; apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, and all the writings that any human ever wrote under Divine inspiration and subsequently declared to be the very latest Revealed Word of God. Every note, every sermon, every fragment of papyrus or paper or dried goat skin that had disappeared and left its clergyman owner wondering if the fairies had stolen it, was brought into the throne room.

At last Snikwad bounded up to Satan and bowed gracefully.

'Is that everything?'

More bowing and nodding.

'Everyone out of the room!' ordered Satan.

Snikwad vanished.

'Not you Snikwad ... I need you and Hitch right here.'

Snikwad reappeared immediately.

Hitch waddled through from an adjoining cavern where certain matters that were far more important than lugging piles of dusty parchment from every corner of Hades had to be attended to by no one other than Hitch himself.

'Genesis Chapter One, Verse One,' commanded Satan, pointing to an imposing copy of the Authorised King James Protestant Christian Bible. 'Read it, Hitch.'

' _In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth_ ', intoned Hitch obediently.

'Who wrote that?'

'No one knows, Diabolical Master. Some believe it was an Egyptian-Israelite man called Moses, taking dictation from the biblical deity Yahweh. But I'm afraid there is no independent record of there ever having been a Moses.'

'So can ANYONE verify that the Jewish Yahweh concept of God inspired or authorised the writing of this?'

'Not as far as I know, Mendacious Crepuscularity.'

'So believers just "believe" it's the word of Yahweh without a shred of proof?'

'Believers never offer that jot or a tittle of hard evidence to show that Yahweh, or Jesus, or even the Holy Ghost authorised or inspired _any_ of the biblical writings. One does just have to believe it's true. Which doesn't really matter if your priests or your pastors or your rabbis, and all the rest of your community are believers ... and nobody presumes to ask questions that are just a bit _too_ awkward.'

'Ah yes, belief again ....' nodded Satan knowingly. 'OK Hitch, exactly when did this "In the Beginning" business happen?'

'No one really knows that either, Sire, but certain fundamentalists _believe_ the universe was created by Yahweh and/or Jesus about six thousand years ago.'

'Our journey's not getting off to a very good start here, Hitch. We can't even get past the first verse of the first chapter of the first book, for God's sake. Not Yahweh; not the Bible, and not the Beginning have any basis in independently verifiable evidence. It's all just the addictive mind-trap of religious belief. How can you go forward when you can't even take the first step?'

'You can when you have both belief AND authority, Advertent Damnation.'

'Ah yes, of course. We like authority, don't we Snikwad?'

The sprite grinned and nodded.

'OK Hitch, we've got no evidence that Yahweh exists; we've got no evidence that Yahweh was behind the writing of Genesis, but we do have clear evidence that six thousand years ago marks the beginning of the Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations – not the literal Beginning of the heaven and the earth.'

'That is indeed far more than mere coincidence, I suggest, Most Diabolical One,' nodded Hitch. 'The Israelites – the people to whom the biblical writings belong – had their origins in Sumer. Certain Sumerians believed their civilisation had been created as a fully-functioning entity by God in the city of Eridu. God in this instance was not the biblical Yahweh. God for the ancestors of the biblical Israelites was Enki. Enki was one of the Shaddai gods from Stage One of my Reformation Hypothesis.'

'That's right, you suggest that first the Shaddai, and then the Elohim, and finally Yahweh were three distinct stages in the evolution of "God" in biblical mythology. But OK, what _is_ meant by the word "God" as we have it right here in English in Genesis Chapter One?'

'Ah, the oldest texts of Genesis were written in Hebrew and Greek,' replied Hitch. 'The Hebrew word _Elohim_ is used here and is usually translated as "God" in English. Elohim is a plural word. The group of local male and female deities, collectively called the Elohim, were God for the Phoenicians – or biblical Canaanites – of the Jordan River region during my Stage Two. The priests who wrote and re-wrote Genesis are suspiciously – and I suspect deliberately – unclear as to whether Elohim now means one deity, or multiple deities. Prior to the Elohim, God for much of the Middle East was the Shaddai group of deities from my Stage One, and we do catch fleeting glimpses of them here in this newer version Genesis we have today. Certain Sumerian deities were also collectively known as the "Anunnaki".'

'So the One True God of the Bible is really a number of gods?'

'Yes and no,' offered Hitch.

'Don't jerk me about, Hitch ....' threatened Satan, meaningfully tapping the end of his great pointed tail on the altar.

'Certainly not, Darkest Lord. What I suggest we have here in Genesis are remnants of the old myths of the Shaddai and the Elohim deities acting together as "God". Similarly, in newer Christian beliefs, we have Yahweh, Jesus and the Holy Ghost also acting together as "God".'

'So where are Yahweh and Jesus and the Holy Ghost right now? '

'We don't find Yahweh specifically written of until the second, and much newer, biblical creation myth. And we don't find Jesus here at all.'

'Christians say he's here.'

'Christians try very, very hard to find their Jewish god-man Jesus in these ancient Israelite texts, but no one can offer anything more than a few vague phrases that could be interpreted as maybe referring obliquely to someone who may possibly be understood as perhaps resembling something like Jesus. The Holy Ghost may be here right now ... or the Holy Ghost may not ... it's a mystery.'

'Surely God could have inspired the writers to clearly spell out the exceedingly important theological point that God is really the Christian Trinity, rather than leave it to fanatical human believers to squabble and slaughter each other over who's got God on their side and who doesn't?'

'There's not so much as an uninspired peep about _any_ sort of Holy Trinity in the ancient Hebrew texts, Christian or otherwise, I'm afraid.'

'You also mentioned Greek.'

'The word _Theos_ is used in the newer Greek versions of this myth. Theos comes from an adjective that means approximately "divine" in English. _Theos_ is a broad, abstract, non-specific concept of general Godness, or Divinity. The Greeks used the word Theos to refer to ALL concepts of Divinity. Back in Greek times, no one thought of the pagan Jewish deity Yahweh as God with a capital G. And while the word Elohim can indeed be a name, the word Theos is most definitely not a name. "God" is not someone called Theos.'

'Yes, people also use the English word "God" as a name, but it's not, it's really a job description: like "plumber", or "dentist".

'Indeed. Being a god is what supernatural beings and certain very special virgin-born humans do for a living,' offered Hitch. 'Every plumber and every dentist has a name, and so does every god. I mean, we don't call Joe the plumber "Plumber" with a capital P and declare him to be the only plumber in the telephone directory. And nor too should we call any of the gods in the Bibles or elsewhere, God with a capital G. The writers of the Bibles quite clearly write about other gods who were also members of the same Elohim God League as Yahweh. And they also write about gods from other God Leagues. Not only that, they have Yahweh say things like: "I am Yahweh, your god".'

'Which is just like saying: "I am Joe, your plumber", or "I am Mary, your dentist". Hopefully no one says "I am Plumber your plumber". That would be arrogant and deliberately misleading.'

'But this is indeed what has happened with the biblical Yahweh. People erroneously call him God with a capital G, just like you said Plumber with a capital P. There are numerous plumbers and numerous gods. If you want to claim exclusivity for your particular god or plumber, you need to offer good hard evidence ... and not just the writings of the followers of your particular god or plumber.'

'Hmm,' mused Satan. 'The Greek idea of a non-specific abstract notion of Divinity would be much more modern and sophisticated than the Hebrew idea of a literal Old Man in the Sky.'

'Precisely, Advertency. In my estimation, the Yahwist reformers of my Second Reformation were Greek-speaking Israelites from Egypt. Following Alexander the Great's conquests, they returned to Jerusalem and evicted Jesus' forebears, the corrupt Hebrew-speaking, human-sacrificing, Davidian god-kings, and their old Elohim deities from the temple. There they installed their modern, Greek-influenced ideas of what Divinity – or Theos – meant. The Yahwist revolutionaries revised and re-wrote and added Yahweh and other new ideas and stories to the old Elohim scriptures. We will begin to see their alterations and additions clearly in the next chapter.'

'So here in Genesis Chapter 1, we're reading ancient Middle-Eastern mythologies, influenced by newer Greek philosophy?'

'Yes and no, Diabolical Majesty.'

Satan wrapped an enormous hand around Hitch and squeezed until the flesh and fur oozed between his fingers. 'You're testing my goddamn patience, Hitch.'

Snikwad, who was standing by to turn the page at an instant's notice, flinched in sympathy.

'I can't breathe, Perfidious Lord,' gasped Hitch.

Satan dropped him on the altar again.

'A thousand pardons, Your Most Supreme Fiendishness,' he wheezed. 'What I meant was: yes we _are_ reading multi-layered myths and philosophy, but when the Yahwist revolutionaries re-wrote the myths, they also used these well-known folk tales as cover stories, or allegories, for their Reformation.'

'So when I read this creation myth, I'm not _just_ reading some fanciful story, I'm also reading about some very real human history as well?'

'Exactly, Sire. Under what look to be fantastical old myths, lie layer upon layer of very real history.'

'Better we read on then ....'

Snikwad bounced in agreement.

' _And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep_ ', read Hitch.

'Six thousand years ago the universe was made of water ...?'

'So it says.'

'And there was no light?'

'Apparently not.'

' _And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit (or Wind) of the Elohim moved upon the face of the waters_ ', continued Hitch in a priestly tone.

'You said Elohim ... what happened to the word God? I'm sure it says God in English right here.'

'The word God is a conveniently obscure and much-abused term, as we said. I would rather use the original Hebrew _Elohim_ for my Bible reading, and refer to the newer Greek _Theos_ when we need to. However, I'll use the term Divinity in my general discussions, to mean everybody's ideas of what God _could_ be. If I may, Fiendish Master ...?'

'Carry on, Hitch: you're the model of political correctness.'

' _And the Elohim said, "Let there be light". And there was light_.'

'Where did this light come from?'

'From the Elohim, Master.'

'What sort of light was it?'

'The light of the very Presence, the Grace and the Glory of God ... some say.'

'What, beaming out of their backsides?'

'I'm sure no one really knows the exact source. And I don't know the physics behind the generation of this particular light either, because we don't have any stars in the universe until Day 4.'

'So here we are Hitch. We're in The Beginning. It's about 4,000 years before the time of Jesus, and not the 14,000,000,000 years like the godless scientists with all their ridiculous zeroes and so-called "evidence" say. And despite all the history and the archaeology, there are no Sumerian or Egyptian or Chinese civilisations right now; no Neanderthal or Australopithecine humanoids; no dinosaurs; no vegetation, or continents, or oceans, or planet earth; no Milky Way, or sextillions of stars, or space-time continuum or anything silly like that. It's nada, it's nix, it's biblical-ex-nihilo-this-isn't-mythology nothing. But wait ... our pre-Creation biblical non-universe is actually full of water, and we have the spirit of Jesus, or some other Middle-Eastern folk-deities, fluttering about over the water. Then, abracadabra, a magical light that is the Grace of God suddenly shines through all that universe-filling H20, and praise be, the faith statement of the Intelligently Designed Biblical Big Bang Creation Science Reality has gloriously manifest itself!'

'The Bible says ...'

'The Bible's not exactly giving the godless minions of science much of a run for their fucking money right here is it, Hitch?' roared Satan.

'Not if we take it literally, Blackest Eminence.'

'How else _does_ one take it?'

'As I said, Mendacious Magnificence, it's metaphor and allegory and so forth ... if you please.'

'Go on.'

'Certain ancients understood their flat world to be surrounded by water, because anywhere they went they eventually came to blue water, and when they looked up they saw a great dome of blue sky from which water fell.'

'Quite reasonable, I suppose,' agreed Satan.

'However,' Hitch went on. 'Let us say this biblical Water represents primitive human society prior to the advent of the Sumerian civilisation. Let us also say that the Light represents the learning sent by the Shaddai gods to the Sumerians, about four thousand years before Jesus – which is where we are in real history with this allegory right now.'

'Then we don't get into quite such a bunfight with the boffins.'

'And we open up a whole new field of discovery in these ancient writings. Many cultures see their ideas of God as bringers of Light. When Jesus said: _"I am the Light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in Darkness, but shall have the Light of Life"_ ,' said Hitch. 'We don't usually take it that Jesus literally lights up our planet. We understand him to be using figurative speech. The Wind, or Spirit, we read about here is the unseen Divine influence that we may feel the effect of.'

'So the writers and re-writers didn't take these myths literally?'

'Indeed not, I suggest, Malfeasant One. I think they knew they were stories with layers of meaning. They also understood that the stories were folktales that the ordinary people knew and loved, and took quite literally as the only science they had back then. So the re-writers and re-formers kept the well-known traditional stories alive, and gave them new dimensions.'

'Clever reformers.'

'The Greco-Israelites were very sophisticated people.'

'What happened on Day 2?'

' _And the Elohim said: "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water",_ ' read Hitch.

'What in Heaven's name is a "firmament"?'

'Here it means a big bubble of air in the water that's called "Heaven": like a goldfish bowl, but with the water on the outside.'

'So humans live on something like a pizza with an inverted goldfish bowl plonked on top, floating around in the middle of Jesus' swimming pool, and me and you and Snikwad in a fiery cavern roasting non-Christians underneath the pizza somewhere ...?'

'Quite the perfect explanation, Erudite Crepuscularity: however, this is one of the many places where modern translators can tend to get rather slippery,' Hitch answered. 'Mr Snikwad, would you be so kind as to please open a copy of the New International Version of the Protestant Christian Bible, and also the Good News Bible – the Catholic version will be fine?'

Snikwad leapt into action, and in no time he had a whole array of versions open to Gen 1:6.

'The Good News Bible, the GNB, calls the firmament a "dome"; the New International Version, the NIV, calls it an "expanse". But look here ... both avoid mentioning that the Elohim called the bubble/dome/expanse "Heaven" in the King James Version. The dome of air above the flat earth is now called "sky" in these new Bibles,' Hitch informed him. 'And Heaven only knows where Heaven has gone, now that telescopes and space travel have inconveniently demonstrated that humans don't really live inside a dome with Jesus and the angels floating on the clouds above them.'

'Ah yes, you can still see this version of "reality" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,' said Satan.

'In a similar fashion, Egyptian and Sumerian mythologies have their God concepts forming domes in the midst of the watery universe ... and both are much, much older than the Bible mythology.'

'Really ... and where's _your_ hard evidence for that claim, Hitch?'

Snikwad stood with his arms folded, tapping a tiny foot and frowning.

'The very oldest hard-evidence biblical texts we can hold in our hands are the Dead Sea Scrolls from only about 150 years before Jesus. Sumerian, Egyptian and other hard-evidence texts are far, far older, and they tell very much the same Creation stories.'

Snikwad skittered over the keyboard typing the keywords "Sumerian creation myths" into a search engine.

'There we are. The Eridu Genesis is dated to 2150 BCE,' read Hitch. 'And then we have the Barton Cylinder and so forth.'

Snikwad danced on the keys again, inputting the words "Egyptian creation myths" this time.

'And the earliest creation stories are dated to the Old Kingdom from around 2,780 to 2,250 years before the time of Jesus.'

'It's said that the Bible stories are stories that were _remembered_ by Israelite people for thousands of years before they were finally written down ... which in itself isn't the most reliable way to transmit the inerrant Word of God.'

'Ah, they were remembered, I offer, by Israelite people who were once Sumerians. The writers of Genesis tell us quite clearly that their ancestors came from ancient Sumer, and that they colonised what is now Israel. I suggest the Sumerians brought with them texts and beliefs that were adapted and reformed and revised throughout all the lands of their vast empire. New deities, new traditions, and new texts were added by people from all over the Middle East in the processes of religious evolution.'

'OK, back to the dome, Hitch.'

'The biblical book of Job describes the dome as being: _hard as a mirror of cast bronze_. The biblical book of Isaiah says: _He_ (Yahweh) _sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in_. And the Hebrew word _raqia_ used here also suggests thin sheets of beaten metal. This mythological biblical canopy is simply an adaptation of the older Sumerian and Egyptian canopies. The biblical books of Genesis, Isaiah and Malachi also inform us that the goldfish bowl called Heaven that sits over the flat Earth has windows in it. We will need to remember the windows very carefully.'

Snikwad bounced up and down making rapid tapping noises on the screen.

He had been for another surf on the Internet and brought up on the screen, for the purpose of review, one of the numerous faithful photographic reproductions of a two-dimensional public domain work of art from the Sistine Chapel.

The picture showed a muscular old white man with a grey-white beard hovering in the sky.

'There we are,' said Satan. 'The One Supreme Creator and Ruler of the Christian Cosmos is once again surrounded by naked children and nude young men with nicely rounded bottoms and no pubic hair, and he is indeed pushing the water of the universe out of the way to create a reverse goldfish bowl. Not in the least scientific, but certainly imaginative ... and indeed most probably homoerotic. Little wonder beliefs are heading for extinction.'

'My Most Satanic Darkness, these paintings were commissioned and executed by Europeans whose state of mind obliged them to take the Bible myths literally. It seems beyond the European mind to comprehend the allegorical nature of mythology.'

'Best we find out more about the allegories ourselves then, Hitch.'

'Think of Heaven in this myth as representing a civilised structure: a firm support, or firmament, to hold back the barbarian forces of the Water that completely surrounds it. The ancient Sumerians built dykes to keep back literal waters so they could develop their civilisation and temples on dry land. Here we may see this figurative firmament called Heaven as representing either the Sumerian civilisation itself, or a Sumerian temple, or both.'

'Very good ... very good ... that makes down-to-earth common sense,' said Satan, sitting back in a comfortable chair, crossing his legs and swinging his tail casually. 'Tell me about Day 3.'

'Day 3 sees the Elohim gather the waters under the dome into one place and call them "seas". They then make the dry land appear and call it "earth".'

'How does all that work geologically?'

'I have no idea.'

'More allegories and metaphors ...?'

'Gives a rational explanation.'

'Let's hear it.'

'The Seas we may continue to think of as uncivilised societies beyond Sumer. The Earth, on the other hand, we may think of as the fertile ground wherein the knowledge of the Shaddai and the Elohim may flourish. Think of the Earth as representing the temple library, or metaphorical fields and gardens in the civilisation. So we now have the Water, the Light, the Wind, the Seas and the Earth. In actual Sumerian societies, the priests administered the real fields on behalf of their local Shaddai deity.'

'You better begin sowing and reaping.'

' _And the Elohim said, "Let the Earth bring forth grass and cereals and fruit trees",_ ' paraphrased Hitch. 'Think of these Foods as representing the new cultural knowledge the Shaddai – and then the Elohim – gave to humans. The Sumerians, and also the Egyptians, are renowned for a sudden blossoming of technology and learning. Similarly, when Jesus said things like: _"I am the living Bread"_ , or: " _Every good Tree brings forth good Fruit"_ , we again understand him to be using figurative speech.'

'Yes,' agreed Satan. 'Literal grass and trees won't grow because the sun is yet to be created, and the literal Seas that were moved out of the way would have had to have all been fresh water.'

'Day 4 sees the Elohim finally create Lights in the firmament of the Heaven,' offered Hitch. 'They create two great lights and numerous tiny little stars, and suspend them inside the ceiling of the bowl. We know this because the Christian book of Revelation tells us: _And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind_. So there you are: a good shake of the Heavenly goldfish bowl and hot little stars are going to rain down and obliterate all the Atheists and Zoroastrians and other non-Christians below.'

Satan permitted himself a little chuckle and ruffled Snikwad's ears.

'Putting science and belief and disbelief to one side for the moment,' continued Hitch. 'What we read here is that the greater light is to rule over the day, and the lesser light is to rule over the night. The biblical scholar, Dr Barbara Thiering, suggests that in the Jewish culture of Jesus' time, a Sun refers to a senior priest who administers the daytime activities of the temple. A Moon is a second-rank priest who administers the watches of the night. The Stars are minor luminaries in the temple administration.'

'Symbolically speaking, the order of Creation is therefore perfectly orderly,' said Satan. 'We have Dark Water to which Light is brought; a Firmament is built; the Earth is cultivated; the Food is produced, and Luminaries are appointed to administer it all on behalf of the Shaddai or Elohim.'

'It's very neat, Perfidious Lord. And we do have it written here that the lights in the ceiling of the goldfish bowl were to be for "signs". Now this causes great consternation for certain believers, because it looks suspiciously like astrology, and there is absolutely no way on God's earth there could be anything like pagan astrology in the Bibles. Not even the totally non-astrological star that appeared in the Middle East and scurried all over the sky to guide people to where Jesus lay in a manger. That's not the same thing at all.'

'I suspect the astrology is left over from the earlier versions of this myth ...?'

'Precisely, Sage Perdition: the Yahwist reformers were opposed to what they saw as astrological superstition. However, we still find numerous curious scraps and remnants of the old beliefs in the re-written scriptures. Some are glaring, some are very subtle indeed, and some I'm sure I've missed altogether. The Star of Jesus' time was simply a religious official spreading the news that a potential god-king had been born into the deposed Israelite royal family of King David.'

To keep the discussion rolling along, Snikwad pounced on the keyboard once more and brought up on the screen, for the purpose of review, one of the numerous faithful photographic reproductions of a two-dimensional public domain work of art from the Sistine Chapel.

'And there's Yahweh's bare ass, just as Anyanwu said ...!' chuckled Satan.

Snikwad covered his eyes.

'Why have we got Yahweh and his bare ass right here in Genesis 1, when you're telling us it says it was the Elohim who did the creating?'

'For centuries, the general belief amongst believers has been that the Elohim of Chapter 1 and Yahweh of Chapter 2 are one and the same. For me however, there is an overwhelming number of clues to suggest that we are actually looking at 2 different concepts of God, from 2 different stages in genuine Israelite history.'

'OK,' nodded Satan. 'We shall see. Now in our Sistine picture, Yahweh's butt shot on the left is him creating the trees. The image on the right is him creating the sun and the moon. And these are what Creationist believers put up against cold, hard, evidence-based science ..?'

'They are.'

'Yahweh's not the only one who's got his ass exposed here.'

'Creationism does indeed look very bare, Mendacious Erudition,' Hitch smiled with a bow.

'Pray continue now,' allowed Satan in a most affable manner.

' _And the Elohim said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven",_ ' read Hitch. 'Some folks pounce on the scientific accuracy of Genesis in demonstrating that moving life began in the waters. They are not quite so enthusiastic about the science that demonstrates that fowl evolved from dinosaurs. Flying, feathered dinosaur-fowls did not therefore come forth from the waters on the same day as fishes appeared.'

Snikwad leapt in front of them, tearing the air with his claws and baring his pointed teeth in a ferocious snarl.

'Stupid sprite,' growled Satan.

Snikwad pounced on the screen and pretended to try and shred it.

'Ah the leviathans, Horned Ruler, he's found the leviathans from verse 21.'

Filling the screen was a hideously graphic image of the biblical leviathan monsters that were created at the same time as the fish and birds.

'Well done Snikwad,' praised Satan. 'And a brilliant display of mimicry too.'

Snikwad bowed so rapidly he was a haze.

'Leviathans are mythological creatures. What are they doing in the Bibles, Hitch? Mythological creatures shouldn't be in the Bibles!'

'Some Bible scholars say they're not.'

'Where are they then?'

'Nowhere ... they're only figurative.'

'So when you find something in the Bible you don't like, you can just make it not be there any more by calling it "figurative"?'

'Happens all the time.'

'Who decides what's figurative and what's not?'

'Believers do when atheists back them into a corner and they've got nowhere else to go. Up until then, it's all word-for-word truth,' Hitch explained. 'And "leviathan" is mentioned six times in the biblical writings, so it was probably perfectly true for quite a while before it became figurative. Job 41 tells us of the leviathan: _Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or cauldron_. But it's not mythical ... at all ... ever.'

'What's a Fish?'

'A figurative Fish is an inhabitant of the uncivilised Seas. Usually they live in Darkness and don't eat Food.'

'And a Bird would be some sort of angel?'

'Exactly, Sagacious Mendacity. Angels were messengers of the Shaddai and the Elohim who carried the Bread of Heaven up and down the various Stairways to Heaven.'

'Day 6 must be the big one ...?' suggested Satan.

'Indeed it was. _The Elohim said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature"_. And a comprehensive range of domestic animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals – and maybe dinosaurs like in the Creation Museum in Kentucky – all began roaming the floor of the dome.'

'Evolution didn't happen?'

'It did: in the sense of our religious evolution right here. What we have are grades of human and not real animals. We have unsophisticated Beasts of the Field, and more advanced, domesticated Cattle. And, despite the displays in the Creation Museum, dinosaurs quite obviously don't get a mention here in Genesis.'

'Very good.'

'But there's one more Special Creation yet to be created,' Hitch informed his Dark Lord. ' _And the Elohim said, "Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth"_.'

'What's with, "US" and "OUR"?'

'Ah, I see this as another remnant from the old myths, where the whole Heavenly Council of Elohim deities was involved in the creating. Certain believers who insist that the new male deity Yahweh accomplished all this on his own, however, believe the "Us" was Yahweh talking to his angels. Many, many millions of words have gone in to trying to demonstrate that the "Us" and "Our" we find here, really means "I" and "My". Even though they play Humpty Dumpty and have the words mean just whatever they choose them to mean, they really do wish "Us" and "Our" weren't still there.'

'Christians believe the universe was created by Jesus. So the "Us" right here will mean the plurality of the Yahweh/Jesus/Holy Ghost combo?'

'Indeed.'

'The humans were created as miniature replicas of the Elohim?'

'Yes.'

'So humans look like "God"?'

'Mostly the white ones.'

'And only one man called Adam was created?'

'No, Fiendish Excellency, that contradiction is from the next creation myth. Here we have unspecified numbers of male and female humans as the very last Special Creation of the Elohim. Collectively, the humans were known as "Adam".'

'The "Adam Family".

'As Your Satanic Majesty pleases. The Hebrew word translated as "adam" means "earth", and is related to the word for "red". The Adam Family were also put in charge of the lower orders of Creation.'

'And haven't they done a marvellous job of husbanding the planet's fauna in the last six thousand years? By the way, Hitch: just how long was one of these biblical "days".'

'If you're a fundamentalist, a "day" was an earthly 24 hours. If you're more progressive, you can duck and weave and make a "day" mean as many millions of years long as it needs to be to fit whatever science comes up with.'

'That only works until you reach Day 6,' Satan told him. 'Because everyone can count the who-begat-whoms in the Bibles, and arrive at the incontrovertible truth that _Homo sapiens_ were created as a Special Creation only about 6,000 years ago. You can't duck and weave and dodge and smile your way out of this one, because the begats don't add up to millions of years by any stretch of the imaginality. Now, what happened next to however many of the Adam Family there were?'

' _And the Elohim blessed them_ , (the humans) _and the Elohim said unto them: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it"_.'

'And they sure followed that commandment with gusto,' enthused Satan. 'I mean, six thousand years ago there was only the Adam Family, and now, on some parts of the globe it's standing room only! If we look at this very first commandment, Hitch, it looks to me to be the encouragement of a fertility religion. The Elohim _could_ have told the Adam Family to cover themselves up and be consumed with self-loathing and guilt about their sexuality, and obsess over the sexuality of others, and ban erotic books and movies and genital stimulation devices, and hate gay people and nipples and sex-education and contraception. But no, the party-like-the-world's-just-begun Elohim are putting their primary imprimatur on human fruitfulness ... and there was only one way to faithfully obey God's first Commandment back then, Hitch!'

'Yes, but the Yahwist revolutionaries of the next allegorical myth were uptight, ultra-conservative males who put an end to joyous human sexuality and the Divine Feminine for the Israelites.'

'Trust puritan religious fanatics to rain on the parade. Tell me Hitch, does it say that the Elohim love their creations?'

'The biblical concept of God is said to be the God of Love, Most Diabolical Darkness.'

'But is that actually _written_ here in Genesis Chapter 1?'

'Umm ... not that I can see.'

'Snikwad, I want you to count, on our trip through the Bibles, exactly how many times it is written that a god loves anyone.'

Snikwad nodded enthusiastically.

Hitch moved to a copy of the Good News Bible and read aloud. 'The Elohim say, in the singular this time: _"I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food"_. Everything under the dome of Heaven is vegetarian at this stage of Creation.'

'And this would include Tyrannosaurus Rex, sabre-tooth tigers, humans, and, of course, the 500-million-year-old carnivorous cephalopods the _Nectocaris pteryx_ ,' said Satan, shaking his horns in disbelief. 'Certain imaginative Christian artwork shows lions and lambs and humans all snuggling together as one big Creationist family of happy herbivores. However, because we're not talking about literal food here, we don't have to worry about embarrassing ourselves by taking this seriously, do we Hitch?'

'No, Sire: with the Food, we're talking about different levels of knowledge. Grass is the simplest Food the humans can learn. As they develop, they learn to consume Cereal and then Fruit.'

'What about Meat?'

'Only after another three cycles of religious evolution.'

'So everyone really _is_ metaphorically vegetarian.'

'Precisely, Darkest One. However, the commentators in the New International Version of the Christian Bibles say: "People and animals seem to be portrayed as originally vegetarian". And you can just feel the doubt and the reluctance and the sense of entrapment and obligation oozing from that sentence.'

'Give me more.'

'The Seas are teeming with Fish, and Fish don't eat Fruit, Cereals, or even Grass. Priests at the level of Fisherman go down to the Seas to cast in their nets and bring forth Fish onto the Earth. When Jesus is written of as having said: _"I will make you Fishers of Men"_ , he is once again using the ancient symbolism of his forebears.'

'What happens to the newly converted Fish?'

'The former Fish may now evolve to the level of Beasts of the Field, and thence to domestic animals, or Cattle: some of whom were Sheep. When Jesus also says: _"I am the Good Shepherd"_ and, _"Feed my Sheep"_ , he is again using figurative speech. Priests at the level of Shepherd will then teach the Sheep to eat Grass. Grass is the simplest level of the written Food that grows in the temple library, or Earth.'

'You developed these ideas yourself, Hitch?'

'I started by reading scholars like Barbara Thiering and Karen Armstrong, and then applied their general ideas, Your Most Diabolical Satanity. I am but a humble hobgoblin.'

'Well let's see what else my humble hobgoblin has thought of.'

'The Sheep may study their Grass and evolve to the level of Man,' Hitch continued. 'Barbara Thiering demonstrates that Man – or Adam ─ was as high a promotion as an ordinary person could attain in the Heavenly hierarchy. Under the careful tutelage of Farmer, or Gardener, priests, Man became qualified to understand the more complex Cereal and Fruit. Jesus said: _"I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever"_ and, _"Every good Tree bringeth forth good Fruit"_ , and continued the metaphors.'

'Jesus was a Shepherd; his brother was a Gardener and his father was a Carpenter, and they were descended from King David of Israel,' said Satan. 'So I guess we're not really talking about heavy dudes from the working classes?'

'Not at all, Wisest Perdition. We also have, for example, the Sumerian king, Lipit-Ishtar, who was known as the "Humble Shepherd of Nippur" and the "Stalwart Farmer of Ur". I can't in all honesty see any of these royal personages donning the work-boots and tool-belts and mucking in with the lads. Barbara Thiering gives us the understanding of these "trades" as levels, or holy orders, of priesthood. We find similarities in today's Freemasonry, where middle-class men pretend to be ancient stonemasons by using architectural and construction-trade terminology, but real mortar is never mixed and real chisels are never struck ... I think ... it's a sort of semi-secret boys club where they dress up and play pretend.'

Snikwad tapped the screen to indicate criticism of Barbara Thiering's work.

'Are you basing your ideas heavily on Dr Thiering? It looks like other scholars have shredded what they see as her "bizarre claims".'

'Not at all, Crepuscular Vituperation. Some overly adventurous bricks have been knocked loose in the Thiering wall, and she certainly didn't share how others could independently test her "pesher" technique, but the foundation premise that writers of scripture wrap stories within stories within stories is very solid. Jesus is written of as using parables. Preachers today use parables and allegories and metaphors. Sometimes they hold your hand and _tell_ you they're using parables ... and sometimes they don't. It adds mystery to the hypnotic theatre of religion.'

'Which Sumerian and Egyptian creation myths is this Jewish myth based on?'

'Most Erudite Damner, please let us have Brother Snikwad work a little devilment on the screen ....'

Satan nodded to the faithful sprite, who immediately skittered over the keyboard, bringing up a huge range of sites in the search engine. He smiled a wide cheesy smile that exposed two rows of tiny pointed teeth.

His master popped him on to his shoulder as he scrolled down.

'OK,' said Satan. 'The ancient myths the newer Bible myths are based on, really are easy to find on the Web. The "www" is quite obviously my Satanic "666". The Anti-Christ will be coming to the world through the Internet, you know Hitch.'

'Indeed I have heard preachers preach that very fact, Darkest Perfidy. But before it happens, if we take the most mythological section of Genesis – that's Chapters 1 thru 11,' offered Hitch. 'We find striking similarities to _Atrahasis_ ; the _Enuma Elish_ ; the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ , and _Adapa and the South Wind_. All these non-biblical myths are from the Sumer region. All are in languages that long pre-date the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek. All are from societies that long predate Jewish society and their Israelite predecessors. All their physical texts, fragmentary as they may be, pre-date the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls by a _very_ long time. Genesis Chapter 1 most closely parallels the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Archaeologists put the physical text of the Enuma Elish found at Nineveh at about 700 BCE, which is about half a millennium older than the oldest physical Genesis text.'

'I'm reading here that indeed the Sumerian people believed our planet was a flat disk surmounted by a bowl made of "hard as a mirror" tin,' Satan added. 'They believed the bowl was surrounded by salt water, and inside the salt water was a freshwater sea on which the earth floated. The order of the Babylonian Creation went: Light, Firmament, Earth, Sun and Moon and Stars, Men and Women, and finally Rest ... which is exactly what we find in the newer Genesis myth. The Hebrew word _tehom_ is used in the Hebrew Scriptures for the water of the universe. Tehom is largely understood to be a form of Tiamat, and Tiamat was the salt-water goddess of Babylon. Tiamat's husband was Apsu, the fresh-water deity. Mummu was a goddess known as the Womb of Chaos, and the three of them formed one of the many Holy Trinities that emerged from the swampy, chaotic wastelands of Sumer and beyond.'

'Yes, Tiamat, Apsu and Mummu are some of the mysterious old Sumerian deities I call the Shaddai,' said Hitch. 'These ancient deities pre-date the Elohim, and we have just caught a fleeting glimpse of them and their mythologies in the shadows of the Hebrew Bible. And while the Hebrew texts look to be principally based on Sumerian antecedents, it's useful to keep in mind the Egyptian influences. The Egyptian female deity Nut also formed a dome over the land, and the male deity Tatenen was the "Risen Earth" at the Creation. Both cultures swept across the lands of the Jordan River numerous times: long, long before the publication of the Jewish Dead Sea Scrolls. It is no surprise at all to the independent mind that the Dead Sea Scrolls are founded on adaptations of Egyptian and Sumerian predecessors.'

'Speaking of Holy Trinities, Hitch, did Divinity inspire whoever finally wrote this passage to mention Jesus' part in the Creation process? I mean, it's of paramount theological importance as we said.'

'Not so much as a single word.'

'Well, the Shaddai and then the Elohim – but not Jesus it would seem – certainly had themselves a very busy week back in 4004 BCE, Hitch. They declared Day 7 to be the Sabbath, and took a rest from the exhausting strain of all that Intelligent Designing, and Creation Science-ing, and convoluted conflating of Middle-Eastern mythologies. So let us also have ourselves a sabbatical. Refreshments at once, Snikwad.

The fluffy blur vanished.

Scroll to next chapter or go to: Table of Contents

Revelation 2:2

### YAHWEH'S RE-CREATION DAY

And the soulless, rib-woman, good-servant, she-man

Genesis 2:4 – 25

THE diabolical trio feasted happily on a repast of bitter dhari and the water of gall.

'You've outdone yourself, Snikwad: damn fine spread I say,' praised Satan.

'I particularly like the suggestion of wormwood in the dhari,' added Hitch, helping himself to another trencherful.

Snikwad patted his protuberant tummy and burped contentedly.

'So tell us a little more about the Elohim, Hitch,' Satan requested.

'They were a group of gods, or deities, belonging, broadly speaking, to the ancient Middle-Eastern Phoenicians – or biblical Canaanites as they are also known.'

'And the Canaanites and their gods were given a very bad press by the Yahwist re-writers of the Bibles in Stage Three of your Reformation Hypothesis?'

'The worst.'

'But wouldn't the Israelites from the River Jordan region have been a part of the Phoenician culture? After all, the Canaanites/Phoenicians once ruled much of the Middle East.'

'On archaeological and linguistic grounds, it is indeed most likely that the biblical Israelites were Canaanites themselves. There is nothing to suggest that they were a distinct ethnic group.'

'Did the Israelite people worship the Phoenician Elohim?'

'Yes and ...' Hitch froze mid-sentence. 'Ah, forgiveness, Lord,' he shrieked, dodging the flying bowl of dhari.

Satan smiled.

'I crave your indulgence, My Most Fiendish Overlord. Very, very broadly: the Sumerians and their Shaddai gods colonised most of the Middle East – including what eventually became Israel. The Sumerian Empire faded, and the Akkadian, Hittite, Phoenician, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and other empires waxed and waned, sweeping the ancestors of the Israelites along with them. Broadly again: following the First Reformation, the idea of Divinity changed from the plural Sumerian Shaddai to the plural Canaanite/Phoenician Elohim. Phoenician deities included Dagon, Molech, Asher-Ah, Baal-Hammon and Yam. Yam, I suspect, morphed into Yah, and Yah eventually became known as Yah-Weh – or Jehovah, in a long roundabout way. The Judahites were an Israelite tribe, and in my estimation Yah eventually became the only permissible patron deity of the Judahites and the remnants of other tribes, following the Yahwist Second Reformation. Judahite is where the more modern term, Jewish, comes from.'

'And the other tribes: the Ephraimites, Reubenites, the Simeonites and others, each had their own patron Shaddai or Elohim deity – just as Christian countries have their own patron not-quite-God-because-there-is-only-one-God saints?'

'That is how I expect it to have broadly been. The Yahwist re-writers tell us quite clearly that certain tribes did worship concepts of Divinity other than Yah, and they gave these tribes and their gods a particularly hard time about it. If we had writings from the other tribes, I'm sure we would get a very different picture.'

'Where did Yam/Yah come from?'

'A very good question, my Fiendish Master, and one that occupies many minds. My opinion favours the school that says he began in Sumer as the Shaddai deity Enki. Enki went through a process of religious evolution and became Ea. Ea eventually morphed into the Phoenician deity, Yam. In fact, Yam was one of the 70 (or was that 72 ...? I've forgotten) sons of the chief Elohim deity, El. We may think of Father El as Chairman of the Board of the Heavenly Court of the Elohim. I suspect the Heavenly Court of the Elohim is the "Us" we read about doing the creating in Creation One.'

'Yah does sound perilously close to Yam. And from what you're saying, there are no other known deities in the Jordan region – or anywhere else – that could be an early form this new Yahweh deity.'

'Indeed Yam, or Yaw, looks to have morphed into Yah. In biblical circles they still say "Hallelu-Yah", which means, "Praise Yah",' Hitch informed him. 'Now, certain humans like to imagine they are mimicking life in Heaven. When something important happens down on the floor of the dome, they understand it reflects what has happened upstairs above the clouds.'

'So if there was a board of directors in Heaven, there would be a similar board of directors on Earth?'

'Precisely. The individual members of the Earthly board of the Elohim were priests and god-kings believed to be the representatives of – or literally related to – the individual deities in Heaven. We have in the Bibles a gentleman known as Eli-Jah – which means "My God Jah". Elijah represented Jah/Yah here on the floor of the dome, and was addressed as though he were Yah. We have the same idea today, where the pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, is believed to represent Jesus here on Earth.'

'Wow, that's a lot of power for humble humans,' declared Satan.

'And such power often leads to corruption. We saw it in the Roman Catholic Church, and it lead to the Protestant Reformation. I propose that it happened in Israelite Elohism, and it lead to the Yahwist Reformation.'

'The Christian Protestants did away with the palaces and basilicas and statues that looked like idols. They also did away with a human pope who is the Earthly deputy for the Heavenly Jesus, until Jesus eventually comes back with apocalyptic horsemen and armies of angels to exterminate all the non-Christians. Your Yahwists did the same?'

'Precisely, Mendacious Lord. The old Elohist leaders not only believed that they were created in the image of the Elohim, they encouraged the belief they were quite literally the physical children of the Elohim deities.'

'Ah yes, it's common in human cultures for deities to flutter down and impregnate a human virgin. The Blessed Virgin would then give birth to a god-king. Jesus was a would-be Jewish god-king who was supposedly a son of Yahweh. And Jesus was descended from the corrupt Israelite god-kings who were evicted by the Yahwist Reformation?'

'As I see it, Darkest Holiness. The Yahwists were civilised puritan men. They didn't kill the Elohists: they simply threw them out, knowing full well they would try to regain power for their leader.'

'Jesus is known as the "Son of God" by Christians.'

'He is today. In his own day, he would have been believed to be no more than the son of the local deity, Yah.'

'OK, so the Yahwist Reformation down on the floor of the dome meant there must have been a reformation in Heaven too, and Father Yah replaced Father El as Chairman?'

'Yes indeed. And because Yah-Weh was now the only permissible deity for the Israelites, the other deities look like they may have been demoted to mere angels ... in the minds of the local humans. The myth we are about to read now is a second creation myth. It too is set in the Beginning, but under the myth lies the human politics of later Circles of Time.'

'Ah, Circles of Time, Hitch ... is this a new idea of yours?'

'Yes and ... err, almost, Diabolical Graciousness. It is quite common for humans to believe that history repeats. The Hindu concept of time is cyclical and eternal and degenerative. I propose the view that the writers of the Bibles also held similar beliefs. They observed daily repetitions of sunrise and sunset; monthly lunar cycles; annual solar cycles, and cycles of the stars over decades and centuries. They also observed what they saw as repeating cycles of human history, and they put themselves into a state of the mind that said Divinity was behind the cycles.'

'How long were these cycles?'

'Barbara Thiering identifies a number of beliefs here. We can think in terms of a Millennium. We can also think in terms of Seventy Times Seven. Curiously – with a little judicious tweaking – certain Middle East history underwent repetitions of the same major political events every 490 years or so.'

'The Circles of Time are built up like the layers of an onion, with myths as the surface stories on the skin ...?'

'Yes, and each Cycle had a beginning and an end: an Alpha and an Omega.'

'And each Beginning was a New Creation ...?'

'Exactly. What we are about to read in Genesis Chapter 2 is, I suggest, an allegory of Yahweh's Re-Creation of Israelite society.'

'Or of how the Yahwists reformed Israelite society.'

'Precisely. Today, believers believe – or pretend to believe – that our second creation myth is simply a continuation and an expansion of the first myth. Many, many, many words have gone into promoting that proposition. Once again though, no independent evidence is ever offered to support this creation myth as fact. Everything we know about it comes from the biblical writings only. However, from the very first glance, it looks to be quite obviously a second and very contradictory myth. One really has to not look very hard, or believe really, really hard for it not to be a second myth.'

'Let us then recommence our journey, Hitch,' instructed Satan, leaning back in his armchair and crossing his legs up on the altar.

Snikwad perched himself on his master's big toe.

' _These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh Elohim made the earth and the heavens_ ,' Hitch read from the King James Version.

'Hang on,' interjected Satan. 'Yahweh re-creates everything in a single Day? What happened to the six Days of the Elohim?'

'Different God concept. Different theology. Different details of Creation altogether,' replied Hitch. 'Modern Bible translators however, often choose to smudge out this unfortunate contradiction that they don't want to be there, and the single "Day" of the KJV just disappears and was never really there to start with.'

'So if modern translators can play Humpty Dumpty and have words mean just whatever they choose them to mean in the never-to-be-changed Word of God, we can understand how easy it was for ancient writers to make major changes to the scriptures.'

'Indeed.'

'And "heaven" is now "heavens" in the plural ...?'

'The Greeks had moved on from the worldview of a single dome – or heaven – inside a universe of water. They saw the plural heavens as made of spheres within spheres, like an onion, again.'

'And we're now seeing the influence of the reforming Greek Israelites of the Reformation Hypothesis right here. So who is, "Yahweh Elohim" exactly? It's written as "Lord God" in English.'

'Yah-Weh is possibly the name Yah with the extension "Weh". No one actually _knows_ what the "Weh" means though.'

'Could it mean "Lord"?'

'I speculate the Yahwists may have allowed that connotation for their Hebrew-speaking readers, because in Greek, Yahweh is rendered _Kurios_ : which does mean "Lord".'

'Ah yes, it looks like they're saying that Yah is now the Lord, or Chairman of the Board, of the old Elohim deities,' offered Satan.

'Yah the Son took over from El the Father as the head of the Elohim, following the Yahwist Reformation, I suggest. It's very common in Middle East mythology for junior gods to gain prominence over their parents. Marduk became more prominent than his father Ea; Yah has become more prominent than his father El, and Jesus eventually became more prominent than his father Yah. The prominence of mythological deities reflects the very real military prominence of humans. No one's lowercase god ever got to be God with a capital G through the power of scripture.'

'But the Yahwists aren't declaring Yah to be the only deity in the spheres of the Heavens are they ...?'

'No they're not. But they do, however, hint here and there that they wouldn't mind if Yah – or at least their abstract concept of Theos – took over the world. In Greek, the "Lord God" we have here in English, is _Kurios Theos_. Kurios does mean "Lord", but Kurios is not a name: it's a title. Theos does mean "God", in the abstract sense of Divinity, but Theos, as we have said, is not a name either.'

'Are you on drugs, Hitch? The whole _Yahweh Elohim_ , _Kurios Theos_ , Lord God, business is so damn vague, you can take it just about whatever way you want.'

'That, I suggest was the very deliberate intention of the Yahwists who re-wrote this myth. They were writing for Greek-speaking Diaspora Israelites who saw Theos, or Divinity, as an abstract concept, and didn't believe in human-like deities with names. They were also writing for Hebrew-speaking Israelites in their homeland, who did believe in human-like deities. And they were writing under the very watchful eyes of their Greek overlords, and needed to be extremely careful about any claims they made concerning Theos. The rulers of the Greek Empire did not consider the pagan Israelite Yahweh to be the One Supreme Creator and Ruler of the Universe. The world had to wait many centuries until Christians took over the Roman Empire for that idea to gain prominence.'

'They were writing so it _could_ be taken many ways, because people will always hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest,' nodded Satan.

'Yes indeed, Darkness. The Yahwists were also pragmatic politicians when they needed to be, my Most Perditious Astuteness. Now the passage goes on to say that plants and shrubs had not yet sprung up because Yahweh, the new Lord of the Elohim, _had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground_ ,' said Hitch.

'There is no contradiction there,' interrupted Satan. 'The Elohim began with no Food in the Earth and no Gardener priests.'

'Ah yes, but it's what comes next that's important, Satanic Highness. The Water, or Rain, for the Yahwists was not the old Water of Darkness. Water has positive symbolism for the Yahwists. Jesus used this symbolism when he declared: _"But whoever drinks from the Water that I will give him will never get thirsty again--ever! In fact, the Water I will give him will become a Well of Water springing up within him for eternal life"_ ,' said Hitch, emphasising the Holman Christian Standard Bible. 'If I may read on ...?'

Satan made a graciously condescending gesture, and Snikwad turned one of the great pages.

' _But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And Yahweh Elohim_ (or Kurios Theos, or Lord God) _formed Adam from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul,_ ' paraphrased Hitch.

'Aha, in this New Beginning there was only dry barren nothingness, and then the very first thing the single male deity creates is a single male human,' declared Satan proudly. 'The Elohim created unspecified numbers of male and female humans called Adam as the very last item of their 6 Days. But our single male Yahweh re-starts the show by creating a single male mud-man called Adam as the very first thing on his 1 Day. How is that not a contradiction for even the most conservative of ultra-orthodox fundamentalists?'

'It's not a contradiction if one does not wish it to be a contradiction, Sire. It may simply be the case that one has just not _understood_ what God is telling us right here.'

'Of course. Silly me.'

'And while it may be argued that the length of the "Days" in the first myth can be as many millions of years as you need them to be,' said Hitch. 'One can't do the same with this single Day. We can – as you've said – tell exactly how long ago Adam was created, by counting the who-begat-whoms to and from Jesus. Dr. John Lightfoot – who was once Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge – precisely calculated that: "Heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water ... this work took place and man was created by the (Christian) Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning".'

'And who are we to argue with so eminent a scholar ... eh boys?'

Snikwad shook his head in grave asseveration.

'In a much earlier Sumerian myth, our old friend Ea creates Adapa from mud,' a smiling Hitch continued. 'Ea is the deity we suspect evolved into the biblical Yah, and the name Adam is understood to be derived from Adapa. The Hebrew word for "Adam" does mean ground or earth. What is most important here, however, is that the mud-man in NOT said to have been created in the image of Yahweh,' explained Hitch.

'Yes, your reformers were opposed to anyone who was prideful enough to believe they were an image of "God".'

'Precisely, Darkest Prince, the Yahwists had the very Greek understanding that the human carcase was simply dirt, or clay,' Hitch informed his companions. 'Significantly, I hasten to point out right here, the Hebrew word that is translated as "formed" is often used in association with the pottery trade.'

'There you have it, Hitch!' enthused Satan. 'We've now evolved to the level of Potter. Clever hobgoblin. We have Fishers and Shepherds and Gardeners, and now Potters.'

Snikwad turned cartwheels along the length of the altar to celebrate.

'I'm really only following on from the work of Barbara Thiering, my Liege.'

'You're doing well, my boy. Now, tell me about this "breath of life" business.'

'Well, while the Greek idea was that the human body was only dust, it is important that the body has just had the Breath of Life breathed into it by Kurios Theos. There was, therefore, a little bit of the Divine in every man. When a man died, his ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust body would return to the ground, and his Breath would return to Divinity.'

'More, Hitch, more,' urged Satan, raising his goblet of gall.

Snikwad clapped his tiny paws and smiled his toothy smile.

'In Egyptian theological expression,' continued Hitch, rising to the occasion. 'We have Khnum the "Divine Potter", who creates humanity from clay on a potter's wheel, and his wife Heqet who breathes the "Breath of Life" into the newly formed people. Heqet would evolve to become Hecate in Greek theology. The first reference to Khnum is in the Pyramid Texts from around 2500 BCE, which is more than a millennium before the probably fictional Moses, and more than two millennia before the possibly fictional Jesus or the Dead Sea Scrolls.'

'Where to next, Hitch?'

'The Garden of Eden, Serene Imperturbability. Yahweh Elohim planted a garden eastward in Eden, and made Fruit Trees grow for Food – the simple Grass and Cereals are not mentioned in our evolved world of Potters. Yahweh then elevates the man to the level of Gardner priest and puts him in the Library of the Temple of Eden to tend the Trees.'

'Perhaps the man is there to shoo away the dinosaurs?' guffawed Satan, delighted by his own wit.

Snikwad bent double.

'Only in Kentucky, My Most Risible Perfidiousness.'

'And we have two Magical Faraway Trees in Eden?'

'In the Library of Eden were two Trees the humble Gardner priest was not permitted to read. One was the Book of (Eternal) Life; the other was the Book of the Knowledge of Everything.

'And four rivers had their source in Eden ...?'

'Yes. Two seem to be the Tigris and the Euphrates: whereupon the Mesopotamian Civilisations were built ... and most folks are happy with that understanding. The other two cause some fundamental consternation. One of them encompassed the whole land of Ethiopia: which would make it the Nile – the home of the Egyptian Civilisation.'

'Hmm, the Nile and the Euphrates with the same literal geographic source ...? I think I feel a biblical emendation coming on here, brothers ....'

'Ethiopia stayed quite happily as Ethiopia in the King James Bible, until European Christians finally discovered the real source of the Nile,' Hitch explained. 'Not only had they to cope with the real-life physical traumas of empire-building for the greater glory of "God", and the psychological trauma of not stumbling into the not-so-very-real Garden of Eden of their mythological ancestors, they had to rush home and re-read their Bibles to re-discover that "Ethiopia" was really "Cush", and Cush was, of course, way over on the other side of the Red Sea and nowhere near the Nile ... thank God.'

'And the fourth river?'

'Was the Pison, or Pishon, which encompassed the whole land of Havilah. No one knows which river the River Pishon is: which is a great pity because there was gold and bdellium and onyx there. Genesis Chapter 10, however, inconveniently reveals that Havilah is also in Egypt ... unless you don't want it to be ... and then it's not ... of course. The Pishon, I speculate, may be the River Indus – whereupon the Indus Valley Civilisation was built. It may even refer to the Ganges or Jordan or Karun or Phasis or Uizhun rivers – in truth, this is another biblical truth no one really knows the truth about.'

'If the Library of Eden is allegorical, what do we mean by Rivers?'

'The Rivers were outpourings of Jewish missionaries bringing the Water of Kurios Theos to the barren wildernesses of the pagan world.'

'That's quite straightforward really.'

'It is. And it's quite reasonable for all the figurative Waters to have the same figurative source. And we do find genuine Jewish religious influences in all four regions. Similarly, the biblical book of Isaiah says: _All you that thirst, come to the Waters: and you that have no money make haste, buy, and eat: come ye, buy Wine and Milk without money, and without any price._ ,' Hitch read from the Douay-Rheims Bible. 'All of this is figurative too, I suggest, and is usually understood as such. So too we may understand these myths as figurative representations, and avoid the embarrassment of putting them up against established science.'

'Or the embarrassment of claiming they are compatible with science. By the way, Adam was created sinless and immortal,' Satan turned his head to explain to Snikwad, who was now perched on his master's shoulder. 'And it's because of the very fact that he was _sinless_ that he was never going to die, Snikwad. And like us, he was stark freaking naked. Read on, Hitch, read on, dear boy.'

' _And Yahweh Elohim commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die"._ '

'Wow, we're not getting off to a very good start with our new deity right here,' said Satan. 'The first commandment of the jolly old Elohim was "Get out there and make babies, you guys". With the miserable new Yahweh it's "Read the wrong book and I'll smite you". And I suspect the uptight gentlemen of Yahweh didn't have much regard for women, Hitch ...?'

'Indeed they didn't, Most Equanimous Perdition. The Yahwist reformers were a male-only priesthood with a male-only deity, and they re-wrote the Bible to blame women for, well, pretty much everything really.'

'But we don't actually _have_ any female humans here in Chapter 2. In fact, not only do we not have any women or Grass or Cereal, we don't have any Fish, or Fowl, or Sheep, or dinosaurs or fire-breathing biblical leviathans either. We only have the mud-man and his fruit trees. Best we mount an expedition and beat a path into the depths of the Library, Hitch.'

' _And Yahweh Elohim said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him",_ ' read Hitch.

'Aww, isn't that lovely, Snikwad, the deity's going to turn some more mud into a wife for Adam,' cooed Satan, scratching the sprite behind the ears.

'Yes, that is the general understanding of this verse. But if we look at the word "help", it's what rich folks call their servants. And the word "meet" is an old-fashioned term for "good". So while the male and female Elohim created male and female humans with no hint of gender inequality, the boys of Yahweh are about to have their deity create a "good servant" for Adam.'

'That's the spirit, Hitch. Girls should always know their place. And if you need any back-up, you can just come to the Word of God right here,' chuckled Satan.

'In an attempt to find Adam a suitable servant, Yahweh then creates every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brings them to Adam, so Adam can name them and hopefully find himself a life companion.'

'So our naked mud-man has been created as a first generation, fully-grown Homo sapiens, with no belly button and a pre-Hebrew language so highly developed he can immediately compile a comprehensive zoological taxonomy?'

'So it seems on the surface, Liege. And, if one so wishes, one may use this re-creation of the animals myth, set in about 6000 BCE, to biblically counter the scientifically determined "Cambrian explosion" of groups of creatures about 542 million years ago. Unfortunately though, after all the creatures had finally come off the creation line and their mud had set and they had paraded past Adam, it seems the omnipotent and omniscient Yahweh had failed in his creative efforts. None of the creatures was a suitable help-meet for Adam.'

'So "God" was magically turning biblical mud into giraffes and gerbils in a blundering attempt to find a wife for the planet's first Homo sapiens, and that explains how we now have so many species of animal on Earth ...? And this is what Christians put up against, or say is compatible with, the science of evolution ...?'

'Yes ... it is ... Advertency.'

Satan shook his head.

Snikwad shook his head.

Hitch discretely scrutinised his companions' reactions.

'And Adam wasn't maybe tempted by one of the Sheep ... hmm?' smiled Satan, returning to the game afoot.

'Ah well ...' smiled Hitch knowingly in return. 'We are not talking of literal animals here. We are talking of grades of humans once again. Our new "Adam" is the new Yahwist high priest, and he is restructuring his society following the Yahwist Reformation.'

'Priests understood the allegories under these myths, but the ordinary folk only understood the surface story.'

'Quite so, Sire. Similarly, in Egyptian theology, Atum gives names to the creatures, and Atum is said to be an Egyptian deity upon whom the biblical Adam is also based.'

'So how _did_ Adam eventually get a good servant?'

'Through an act of Divine Surgery, oh Mendacious Highness,' answered Hitch.

' _And Yahweh Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took out one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which Yahweh Elohim had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man._ '

'How could there _possibly_ be any doubt about that, Hitch? The first Homo sapiens male was created from mud, and the first she-man was created from one of the man's ribs. This should be given equal time in every science class in every school on Earth, because it clearly demonstrates the Truth of God and makes a nonsense of the science of biological evolution.'

'You are not alone in that sentiment, Most Diabolical Majesty,' the hobgoblin smiled again.

'Does the she-man have a name?'

'Not as yet. The unnamed she-man/rib-woman/good-servant is nothing more than a scrap of her man. She is lower in the order of Creation than the animals, and is obliged to the man for her very existence. She is created from a piece of his earthly carcase, and nothing is said of Yahweh Elohim breathing the Breath of Life into her. The attitude of the Yahwist reformers to women is starting to become apparent. I suggest that the misogynistic Yahwists are saying she-men do not actually have souls. The Yahwists had very Greek ideas about how corrupting bodily lusts and women could be on men, and very Egyptian ideas about the secondary status of women.'

'Surely this couldn't be what the Good Book's all about, Hitch?'

'Some fervent fundamentalists believe it is, Sire.'

Snikwad tapped the screen once again.

'What do you have for us this time, my pet?' queried Satan, leaning forward to peer at the webpage. 'Well, lookie here brothers, in 1647 CE a Christian gentleman by the name of Valentius Acedalius published a pamphlet with the title: _Women do not have a soul and do not belong to the human race, as is shown by many passages of Holy Scripture_. And he was not without his enthusiastic supporters, I'm sure.'

Snikwad danced over the keyboard again and hopped back onto Satan's shoulder.

'Will you take a look at what he's found for us now, Hitch. In a Sumerian myth, Mother Ninhursanga created a lush eastern garden called "Edinu". She put her husband Enki and their son Adapa into the Garden of Edinu to tend it and keep it.'

'Ah yes, Enki is the deity who morphed into Ea and may have eventually ended up here in the Hebrew Scriptures as Yah-Weh, and Adapa is argued to be etymologically related to the biblical Adam.'

'It must be gratifying to today's "help-meets" though, to see that a woman was originally in charge, and it was she who put the men to work,' said Satan. 'Unfortunately Enki and Adapa fell into temptation, and Enki ate some of the forbidden fruit in the garden. Mother Ninhursanga found out and was none too pleased. She smote Enki and made his "ti" hurt. This is a clever Sumerian pun because "ti" means both "rib" and "life". However, the other deities who made up the Sumerian concept of Divinity interceded on Enki's behalf – just as the Blessed Virgin Mary does for Christians today. Mother Ninhursanga repented and created a new female deity called "Nin-Ti": and everyone was happy again.'

'The mythological Nin-Ti may be understood as "Lady Rib",' said Hitch. 'And we can see here how the ancient rib theme has continued into this newer Israelite historical allegory.'

'Adam appeared at the beginning of one of your Circles of Time ... certain believers believe Adam was the "Son of God" ... and Adam, as we can see, had a scar on his side ...' stated Satan, glancing sideways at Hitch.

'Why, Most Venerable Diabolicalness ... Jesus appeared at the beginning of a Circle of Time ... Jesus is given the title "Son of God" by his followers ... and he too is said to have had a scar on his side ....'

'Pieces of our biblical jigsaw continue to fit together, Hitch.'

Snikwad leapt from his master's shoulder and scurried over the keyboard once more.

This time it was Hitch who examined what the sprite had found. 'Ah yes, of course. There are still a number of folk who believe that because of Genesis 2, men really do have one less rib in their skeletons than women. In fact, the European anatomist, Andreas Vesalius, caused uproar throughout all Christendom when in 1524 CE he actually counted them, and then dared to counter the Word of God with testable evidence.'

'If it's written in the Bible it's truth and it's fact,' said Satan. 'If so-called "evidence" says otherwise, it's the evidence, or human understanding of the evidence, that must be wrong.'

' _And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed_ ,' announced Hitch, reading the very last verse of Chapter 2.

Satan smiled. 'Well here we are in 4004 BCE in the Garden of Eden, boys. We're naked, we're immortal, we never get sick, we're completely innocent, and we don't need to toil for our living: we simply pluck the fruit from the trees and drink Adam's Ale from any of the four rivers. Not only that, the help-meets don't even menstruate, bless them. It's Paradise. It's Heaven right here on Earth, fellas. But this isn't the stuff good Bible stories are made of, something has to come along and spoil it all.'

'Quite so, Witful Satanity,' returned Hitch. 'In earlier cultures our world began in chaos, and, with the help of Divinity, it gradually improved. It was never perfect – and certainly not without conflict – but it was in a constant state of advance, or evolution: which has good affirmative logic to it. In the culture of the miserable old men of Yahweh though, our world began with perfection, but sinful-hearted humans just kept making it worse and worse. Still today, conservative Christian preachers are obliged to remind their flocks of worthless sinners of this negative notion every Sunday morning.'

'We should find out what went so terribly wrong then,' said Satan. 'Before we do, let me ask you Hitch, is Jesus mentioned as part of this re-creation process?'

'No, Atramentous Repugnancy, it's just Yahweh Elohim all by himself right here, and not so much as an oblique reference to his son Jesus, I'm afraid.'

'And Snikwad, does it say that our new Yahweh loves anyone?'

Snikwad shook his head sadly.

Scroll to next chapter or go to: Table of Contents

Revelation 1:3

EVE and the TALKING SERPENT

And falling for cunningly naked temptation

Genesis 3:1–24

THE hardcover copy of _Your Bible and You_ lay open on the altar.

Snikwad pored intently over the text. At last he found the passage he was looking for and beckoned to his companions.

'Ah, so you've found a description of what life was like for the world's first pair of Homo sapiens,' nodded Satan. 'We're to understand they've been enjoying their immortality and nakedness and lots of free fruit in the Garden of Eden ... but we'd better confirm the details.'

Hitch read aloud. ' _And animals of all kinds frolicked in the lovely forests and fields. It was a beautiful world that God made. It was full of treasures – gold, silver, and precious stones; full of food – nuts and fruits and grains, and pure, sparkling water; full of loveliness – trees and ferns and flowers; full of marvellous living creatures – birds, fish and animals of every kind and colour._ '

'Frolicked ...?'

'Yes.'

'Right ... and where did this come from?'

'One of the imps filched it from a motel room in Idaho in the 1980s.'

'It's for children in Sunday school?'

'It's a serious Bible study for the whole family, I'd say. And it does have pictures.'

'Of the mud-man and the nameless ex-rib-help-meet-she-man ...?'

Snikwad flipped through until he came to a large double spread portraying the world's first two humans in their paradisiacal environment.

'Check that out, Hitch,' exclaimed Satan. 'They look like they've just come home from church and taken all their clothes off in the back garden.'

'Believers believe the first humans were created in the image of "God",' responded Hitch. 'And the man and his wife here are white, middle-class, North-Western European in appearance.'

'I detect more than a little of the sin of human pride right there.'

'My Most Malfeasant Lord is undoubtedly correct. Adam looks to have been walking erect for several hundred thousand years ... or at least since his clay dried enough for him to stay upright. He has a handsomely pushed-back hairstyle above a wide, high forehead; a flawlessly straight narrow nose, and a well-defined chin on his inferior maxilla. There's not a hint of a brow ridge, or hunched shoulders, or body hair, or facial hair: but I'm afraid we have too much strategically placed shrubbery to tell if he has a navel or any hairy rude bits. All-in-all though, he looks to be the perfect advertisement for pre-history's very first shaving cream and men's toiletry products.'

Satan chuckled. 'And the she-man is an absolute supermodel here guys. Wow, she's an elegantly coiffed, blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty, with exquisitely plucked eyebrows and what looks to be just a hint of prehistoric lipstick, with a touch of primordial cheek blush ... and no dirt under her fingernails from digging up roots. In fact she looks like Miss Nude Scandinavia 4004 BCE.'

Snikwad rolled on the altar in silent laughter.

'If you've been brought up on a diet of these imaginings piled on imaginings, and if the role models you look up to take the frolicking and the coiffures all very seriously, and they tell you that any doubts you may have about this being real-life fact were put there by me to turn you away from Jesus,' said Satan. 'What hope do you have of escaping the fetters of fundamentalism?'

'Precious little.'

Snikwad cavorted across the altar swinging his genitals and gesticulating towards the screen.

'What the fuck are you doing you disgusting little animal?' spat Satan, flicking him onto a pile of mildewed parchment.

Hitch emitted a high-pitched giggle and tapped the screen at the picture in question. Snikwad had brought up, for the purpose of review, Michelangelo's iconic Sistine Chapel painting of Adam and his creator Yahweh with their fingers almost touching up in the clouds of Heaven.

'We mentioned Adam being created white and all the shrubbery getting in the way,' sniggered Hitch. 'But Michelangelo didn't paint any strategic bushes in the Sistine Chapel, and we can see a very good reason why Adam may have wished he had been created black ....'

Satan looked at the single tiny brushstroke and roared with laughter himself. 'Snikwad, get back up here ... you're a comic genius!'

The sprite bounded back onto Satan's shoulder, sporting a grin, quite literally, from ear to ear.

'All these pictures are evidence of man creating "God" in man's image, and not the other way round,' said Hitch. 'If Christianity had spread eastward instead of westward, Adam and his help-meet might have looked like they came from downtown Tokyo instead of the Upper East Side of Manhattan.'

'Humanity's ancestors are now happy-ever-aftering in the Garden of Eden; but that can't last, because that's not what good Bible stories are made of, as we've said. Do read us the first verse of Chapter 3, Hitch.'

' _Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which Yahweh Elohim had made._ '

'That's me isn't it? I'm the Serpent!' exclaimed Satan. 'I'm right here after all, in the very Word of God.'

Hitch remained hushed.

Snikwad pretended to search for vermin in Satan's hide.

There was silence.

Satan fixed his unmoving gaze on Hitch.

The silence lingered.

Finally, and very, very slowly, Satan stooped until his burning red eyes were level with Hitch's. 'I WANT to be in the Bible ... Hitch.'

'And, and so you are, Most Supremely Diabolical Serpentine Advertent Perditious Mendaciously Iniquitous Father of All Lies and Perfidy ...'

Satan upended the spittoon and slammed it right over Hitch. The muffled squeals from inside informed the Prince of Darkness that Hitch's tail had been left protruding.

Satan raised the spittoon a fraction. 'Finished ...?'

'Yes.'

'Tell me about the Old Serpent,' Satan ordered, lifting the spittoon off.

'Of course, Satanic Lord,' obeyed Hitch, clutching his tail. 'The Serpent has been identified as your very good self by devout Christians for nearly two thousand years.'

'Thank you, Hitch.'

'As an added bonus to that most glorious fact, we can find other layers of meaning right here. You see, the Hebrew word for "cunning" is very close to the Hebrew word for "naked".

'Snakes don't wear clothes, and neither do I.'

'Precisely, Eloquent Advertency: and the translators are hardly likely to have understood that the Serpent was more unclothed than any Beast of the Field.'

'Unless "naked" means something else ...?'

'Quite so. In my estimation, Crepuscular Vileness, Naked means a lack of knowledge. That is to say, the Serpent was not clothed with the wisdom of the gods.'

'So if the Serpent was more Naked than any Beast of the Field, the Serpent must have been a real dumb-ass.'

'Ah, well, it would seem, Perfidious Lord, that although Christians have most definitely found that you are most definitely here, the Jewish priests who re-wrote this tale may have understood that the Serpent referred to a very primitive culture, or class of human.'

'Primitive class of human, eh? Not even as smart as a Beast of the Field ... hmm ... I think I prefer the speculative Christian interpretation of this Israelite allegory, Hitch. Anyhow, this is where I supposedly have my big moment in biblical mythology. Read on, my boy.'

'The King James Bible is rather hard to follow here,' Hitch explained. 'So let's have a look at the NLT Bible, the New Living Translation. The language is more comprehensibly conversational, and as the she-man is about to have a conversation with a serpent, it will suit us better:

' _Really?" he (the Serpent) asked the woman. 'Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit in the garden?'_

' _Of course we may eat it,' the woman told him. 'It's only the fruit from the tree at the centre of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God says we must not eat it or even touch it, or we will die.'_

' _You won't die!' the serpent hissed. 'God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it. You will become just like God, knowing everything, both good and evil._ '

'Putting themselves into a state of the mind that assents to the proposition that this "Eve and the Talking Serpent" conversation really took place six thousand years ago, poses no difficulty whatsoever for fundamentalists?' asked Satan.

'Not in the least, Perditious One. And they often say that it was you speaking "ventriloquially" through a snake. Using words like "ventriloquially" makes one sound very wise and very scholarly ... and, hopefully, one may also look as though one is not actually dealing with stories about talking animals and magic fruit trees.'

'OK, now apparently I told the she-man that their eyes would be opened if they ate this Forbidden Fruit: but I take it the ancestors of all humans weren't created blind?'

'Not at all, Malevolent Master, we can understand Blind to mean a lack of insight into the wisdom of the Divine. If the humans were to read the Tree in the middle of the Library of Eden, they would not be Blind anymore and would become like gods.'

'You just said gods with a lower-case g, but a moment ago you read that they would become like God with a capital G ...?'

'Yes indeed. In Greek the writers have written _Theoi_. Theoi is the plural of Theos, and looks to mean "gods" or "deities" in this case. In Hebrew they have written _Elohim_. Elohim in Hebrew can definitely mean "gods" too ... but we must allow for some ambiguity. I suggest the writers and the re-writers, however, were very clearly saying right here that the humans would become like _gods_ in the plural.'

'But certain folks don't want to entertain the idea of plural gods in the Bible.'

'No they don't.'

'So certain folks will leave plural gods out, and deliberately mistranslate it as the single God with a capital G.'

'They will.'

'But on the other hand, if they want something to be there that's probably not really there at all – like, you know, me, for example – then they'll make me be there.'

'I'm afraid so.'

'And they think that after bearing such false witness, Jesus is going to let them into Heaven ...?'

Hitch smiled and Snikwad nodded.

'The reference to plural gods right here is just another one of many, many clues that suggest the Israelites used to follow numerous Canaanite deities, and that the evolved Canaanite Yahweh is quite a newcomer,' said Hitch. 'And we can see some pretty blatant attempts to cover that up.'

'All right, let's get along and see what I did to bring sin and death into the world,' Satan urged, pointing to the New Living Translation.

' _The woman was convinced_ (of what the Serpent told her). _The fruit looked so fresh and delicious, and it would make her so wise! So she ate some of the fruit. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her. Then he ate it, too._ '

' _At that moment, their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they strung fig leaves together around their hips to cover themselves_.'

'Ah yes, the humans eat the Forbidden Fruit and cover their rude bits with fig leaves,' said Satan. 'Just because Yahweh created humans with rude bits doesn't mean he wants to see them. And he doesn't want them to see each other's rude bits and have ungodly thoughts either.'

'Think of our two humans here as representing the pre-Yahwist culture of the Elohim,' explained Hitch. 'When they read the Fruit of the Tree, they discovered just how primitive they were. They then tried to compensate for it by covering themselves with Leaves. We may think of the Leaves as scraps of parchment from the Elohist scriptures. However, as we know, literal leaves are quite inadequate when it comes to covering nakedness. So too are figurative Leaves.'

Snikwad paraded past sporting an enormous erection.

'What the Hell is it with you and your dick today, Snikwad?' demanded Satan.

Hitch giggled again and could not take his eyes off the magnificent phallus. 'I think he's telling us that the serpent in this tale may represent the human penis.'

'A minute ago we had a talking serpent, and I thought that was bad enough – now you're telling me we've got a talking todger. What next Hitch ...?'

'Oh there's plenty more to come, Crepuscular One,' Hitch informed him. 'And Snikwad is a very long way from being the first to suggest the serpent really means the penis. The Yahwist reformers were misogynists. This is a re-written tale to demonstrate how women brought about the corruption and downfall of the old Elohist culture in Jerusalem.'

Snikwad considerately girded his loins with scraps of vellum and modestly squatted to press individual keys on the keyboard, and brought up on the screen, for the purpose of review, one of the numerous faithful photographic reproductions of a two-dimensional public domain work of art from the Sistine Chapel.

'Well, we're certainly getting an eyeful of penises in this story, boys ... and so is the she-man,' declared Satan, examining the picture from the Garden of Eden. 'Honestly now, she's sitting between the legs of a standing, full-frontally naked – and quite tumescent – Adam, and it looks like she was giving him a blow job before she was distracted by the serpent in the tree. What is it with these celibate Christian priests ...?'

'Yes, it does look like she was being quite the help-meet right there doesn't it,' grinned Hitch.

Snikwad covered his eyes again.

'Nothing happens by accident in these pictures,' Hitch continued. 'Every one of them was thoroughly planned in every detail, and every detail had a message. I suggest the celibate, men-only priesthood who so admired the nude male form, were saying some exceedingly misogynistic things themselves right here.'

'And take a close look at the rib-woman,' said Satan. 'She's got very muscular arms for a girl, and she's got boy-sized nipples on underdeveloped breasts. In fact, she looks only marginally different to the pretty-boys who modelled naked for Their Holy Eminences. Even if they did use male models, I'm sure they knew how to make them female. This looks distinctly like a display of the hypocritical, homosexual sexual preference of the boys in the service of Christ – who were paying for these paintings with the "every one for Jesus, he shall have them all" pennies extorted from the collection plates of Christian Europe.'

'And the serpent is a naked human female from the thigh up, and a snake from the thigh down.'

'What the Hell were they trying to say about me?' fumed Satan.

'I rather think it's more to do with the male-only Christian priesthood claiming women as the source and nature of all evil, Iniquitous Perdition. And notice that both females use their left, or "sinister", hands to conduct the transaction.'

'If I remember rightly, we've got quite a few of Their Eminent Holinesses down here enjoying our hospitality. Thank you Jesus ...! I shall have a quiet word with them about this in due course,' rumbled Satan.

'Perhaps we could ask Mr Snikwad to have the demons throw another log or two on the fire, oh Vengeful Lord of Damnation?' gloated Hitch.

'Splendid idea, Hitch, splendid idea. The fire will loosen their tongues and purge their souls of sin. They understand that lesson very well. It's for their own good you know.'

'My Master is being cruel to be kind.'

'It's no less than we Christian concepts can do, Hitch.'

'When we read the first creation myth, we read only of the Elohim. When we read the second myth, we read only of Yahweh Elohim. But here in the Library of Eden we have both the Elohim and Yahweh Elohim appearing in the same story.'

'Are you saying that the Yahwists have woven Yahweh into an old Elohim story?'

'Exactly, Sire. Originally, this story of Original Sin was about the Shaddai, then it was about the Elohim and their close personal interaction with the male and female Adam Family. The Yahwists have invented the rib-woman and written her in to blame her for leading men astray ... in my estimation.'

'Adam would never have listened to a talking penis. It's only women who are obsessed with penises.'

Snikwad tapped the screen.

'Well, OK, certain unmarried male priesthoods are too. Turn that damn thing off for a while Snikwad; I've had more than enough bare human bits and pieces for one day. So ... Hitch, if I – as Lord of the Underworld – am not part of Israelite culture, what do you make of the serpent right here in Israelite mythology?'

'I'm seeing another Egyptian influence. The Yahwist re-writers were curiously pro-Egyptian and may be referencing the Egyptian serpent Apep, who represents Darkness and Chaos and is the great enemy of Amun-Ra.'

'OK, and if the serpent represents a primitive foreign culture: which primitive foreign culture was it that seduced the female priesthood of the Elohim?'

'The Yahwist reformers were sophisticated Greek Israelites from Egypt: I see them as opposed to what they saw as primitive Semitic cultures from the East.'

'That's right. You were telling me earlier that the supposedly Semitic Bibles can be strangely anti-Semitic ...?'

'In the strictest sense, quite often they are, yes, Most Gracious Devilment.'

'Better we move along then, Hitch.'

'Lord Yah fluttered down from Heaven to have a walk in the Library in the cool of the day,' Hitch informed them. 'Deities regularly did that back when Heaven was only a few wing-beats away. In earlier versions of this story, it would have been one or more of the Elohim who flew down from the clouds. The humans heard Yahweh's voice and hid themselves amongst the books.

' _And Yahweh called unto Adam and said unto him, "Where art thou?"._

'Adam probably figured it was pointless trying to play hide-and-seek with the omniscient Supreme and Infinite Creator and Ruler of the Universe,' Hitch continued. 'The question was rhetorical anyway, because Yahweh knew exactly which bookcase he and his wife were hiding behind.

' _And Adam said, "I heard thy voice in the Garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself"._

" _Who told thee that thou wast naked?"_ roared the angry deity in a language we are not certain of but which Adam and the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith Jnr. could understand perfectly. _"Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"_

" _The she-man whom thou gavest to be with me ... she gave me of the tree, and I did eat,"_ Adam bravely blurted out.

'Yahweh does not hold Adam immediately responsible for his own actions. The wrathful deity pokes his head around the bookcase and bellows at the cowering she-man, " _What is this that thou hast done?"_

" _The Serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."_

'Yahweh then turns to the Talking Penis, (who may have been feeling a little deflated right about then) and pronounces judgement,' said Hitch. 'We'll take the judgement from the NLT because the KJV is too convoluted.

" _Because you have done this, you will be punished. You are singled out from all the domestic and wild animals of the whole earth to be cursed. You will grovel in the dust as long as you live, crawling along on your belly. From now on, you and the woman will be enemies, and your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."_

'I assume snakes used to walk upright prior to this unfortunate incident?' enquired Satan.

'So it would seem, Perditious Lord,' replied Hitch. 'And although fundamentalist Christians will tell us evolution didn't happen, those godless scientists do provide incontrovertible evidence that snakes did evolve from creatures with legs. Now, if the serpent in this myth is you, Malfeasant Crepuscularity, then your offspring and the offspring of the rib-woman have been mortal enemies since this Fall of Mankind from the Grace of God.'

Snikwad rustled a page of the New International Version of the Protestant Christian Bible.

'The NIV commentators give us a very modern Christian insight into this passage of ancient Hebrew Scripture,' commented Hitch. 'They say that here: "The antagonism between people and snakes is used to symbolise the titanic struggle between God and the Evil One ...." ignoring the traditional Jewish owners of these texts who try to point out that neither an "Evil One" nor a "titanic struggle" is part of their culture.'

'And again the Christians acknowledge the use of symbolism when it suits them, and speculate once more as to what it may mean, and then turn around and turn that mere speculation into unquestioned belief,' Satan put in.

'Yes. That is often how belief begins. Some Christians see this passage at the first prophecy ever made,' said Hitch. 'And, of course, it foretells the coming of Jesus. The offspring of the "woman" will be none other than Jesus himself. And Jesus came down from Heaven through the uterus of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Blessed Virgin Mary was a _woman_ ... just exactly as it says here. How incredible is that ...! The NIV tells us: "The offspring of the woman would eventually crush the serpent's head. A promise fulfilled in Christ's victory over Satan – a victory in which all believers will share".'

'All believers, you say? So there you have it: if you put yourself into a Christian state of the mind, you'll share in my defeat,' said Satan. 'I tremble!'

'Returning to possible Egyptian influences,' Hitch went on with a smile. 'We see that Atum subdues the Serpent, Nehebu-Kau. Atum also confronts and condemns Apep the Evil One, the Serpent who opposes Amun-Ra in later theology. We also read of "Defiling Apep with the Left Foot". And in the Greek version of this popular theme, the goddess Eurynome mated with Ophion the snake. But strife broke out here too, and she bruised his head with her heel and kicked out his teeth and evicted him from the Garden.'

'But these Serpent stories from non-Christian religions are just lies put about by me to distract humanity from Jesus and the truth of biblical reality,' Satan offered with his own smile.

'Indeed that is so, Precious Mendacity.'

'What judgement does the visiting deity pronounce on the help-meet?'

" _I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be unto thy husband, and HE SHALL RULE OVER THEE."_

'Hmm .... "He shall rule over thee" ... that's pretty strong stuff,' mused Satan. 'We've seen Bible translators twist the meanings of things they don't like: how are they with this one?'

Hitch and Snikwad went rummaging through numerous texts.

'No question about it: "He shall rule over thee" means, "He shall rule over thee", in the exact, or very much the same, words,' answered Hitch. 'Not one of our versions here is unhappy with putting themselves into that state of the mind.'

Snikwad nodded vigorously in agreement.

'Men wrote this myth?'

'Yes.'

'And men usually do the translating?'

'Yes.'

'And the priests of the Sistine Chapel are men?'

'Yes.'

'And the Israelites once had an appreciation of the Divine Feminine?'

'Yes.'

'And now they don't?'

'The Divine Feminine is gone, Perditious Excellency. The NIV also says of the she-man: "Her sexual attraction for the man and his headship over her will become intimate aspects of her life, in which she experiences trouble and anguish rather than unalloyed joy and blessing".'

'A woman certainly didn't write that. And what does Yahweh do with Adam?'

" _Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife ..."_

'Hang on,' interrupted Satan. 'The wrathful Old Man in the Sky is going to punish Adam for listening to his wife? Now there's a lesson for husbands of the future ....'

" _Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife,"_ Hitch continued, nodding in agreement. _"And hast eaten of the Tree of which I commanded thee, saying, 'Thou shalt not eat of it'. Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."_

'So now we know why men have to toil to make a living. Once upon a time they could just pluck fruit from the trees in Paradise, but a woman spoiled it all when she was seduced by the Talking Penis,' said Satan.

Snikwad tucked his genitals between his legs in a most alluring manner, before slithering seductively up to the screen again. Once there, he hung his head in abject humility.

' _The very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame,_ ' Satan read from the page Snikwad had brought up. 'This is what the Christian Saint Clement of Alexandria wrote concerning women. Charming fellow obviously.'

'Here's an even choicer item, Crepuscular Mendacity. Tertullian – the Father of Latin Christianity – wrote: _In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil's gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die... Woman, you are the gate to hell._ '

'I've never noticed that the entrance to our abode looks like a set of human labia,' mused Satan. 'I must check next time I go abroad on one of my rampages with the demons. Oh, and look, the same sweet gent also wrote: _Woman is a temple built over a sewer_. We live in a sewer with a woman squatting over us, boys!'

'And Saint Augustine wrote: _Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God,_ ' offered Hitch.

Satan quoted Saint Albertus Magnus.

' _Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil._ The Horned Devil ... that's me again, boys! You've just gotta love these Christian saints,' he chortled.

'And Saint Thomas Aquinas writes: _As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence; such as that of a south wind, which is moist,_ ' read Hitch.

'Moist south winds causing defects in female human foetuses,' mused Satan. 'Such ideas would win you a sainthood from the obviously superstitions Catholic Church, but certainly not the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. OK, what do you see as the real meaning behind women spoiling humanity's immortality and life of ease and luxury in the Garden of Eden, Hitch?'

'On the surface we have simple answers to life's complex questions, Sire. But what we seem to find in a deeper layer is a religious demotion. Following this Original Sin, this Fall of Man from the Grace of God's Perfect Plan – or the fall of the corrupt Elohist culture and the Divine Feminine – the Adam people will now only be able to write primitive Thorns and Thistles and Herbs.'

'No more juicy Fruit from the Library of Eden for them,' said Satan. 'And right here is where the help-meet finally gets given a name by Adam. He calls her Eve, the "mother of all living".'

'Eve derives from a Semitic root _hyw_ , which is associated with living and breathing, and in Hebrew, haya means "to live",' Hitch reported. 'Hebat was the Hurrian mother deity, and she was known as "the mother of all living". Hebat may be derived from Kubau, a god-queen and Tavern Keeper of the Sumerian city of Kish. Kubau may have also morphed into the Lydian, Kuvav, and the Greek, Kybebe, and eventually ended up here as the Hebrew Hawwah, or Eve.'

'Wow, God certainly does move around the mythologies in mysterious ways,' said Satan. 'And we once again catch glimpses of the shadows of your original Mesopotamian Shaddai, Hitch. Now, let's see if we can't find Adam and Eve something more suitable to wear than those silly fig leaves.'

' _Unto Adam, also and to his wife, did Yahweh Elohim make coats of skins, and clothed them_ ,' Hitch read.

'So if Leaves were scraps from primitive scrolls, we may take it that Skins were from a higher level of learning?'

'Exactly, Sagacious Master. The Yahwist reformers have written into the old myth that Divinity – expressed as the deity Yahweh for the local folk – brought a more evolved Food we may call Flesh, to the Israelite culture.'

'Do we have kings and priests at the level of Butcher?'

'Not that I have recognised as yet, but I speculate that "Hunter" may be the term. Much of my hypothesising is indeed very speculative. We must treat it with caution.'

'Snikwad and I believe in you – don't we, pet?'

The sprite gave a very tentative series of nods in Hitch's direction.

'Thank you both. But honestly, I prefer to avoid the word "believe".'

'Ah yes: Snikwad and I "accond" to your proposition, Hitch.'

Snikwad smiled and genuflected.

'Most gracious .... Thank you, dear friends. Now, we seem to jump back into the original version of the myth once more,' Hitch proceeded. 'Because God becomes plural again.

' _And Yahweh Elohim said, "Behold, the man is become as one of US, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever ...."_

'Yahweh doesn't finish his address to the Heavenly Court of the Elohim: the "US" just evict Adam from the Garden of Eden so he can go and start tilling the ground to write his thorns and thistles.'

'And the original writers don't mention Eve in the eviction process, because there was no Eve in the original myth,' offered Satan. 'It was the entire Adam Family that upset the gods and the Elohim sent the lot of them packing. The Yahwist re-writers invented Eve and blamed it on her.'

'Exactly how I see it, Splendid Advertency. In earlier Circles of Time, we have men and women offending the gods. In the Yahwist Circle, we have the woman to blame for this Original Sin.'

'And all subsequent humans are tainted with Original Sin, and the only way to be free of Original Sin is to have it washed away by the blood of Jesus the Son of God, who, as we just read, Tertullian said had to die as a bloody human sacrifice to calm Yahweh down, because of this biblical sin, and subsequent human sins from cultures who had never heard of the Jewish Yahweh.'

'The very essence of Christianity, my Supreme Darkness.'

'Adam and Eve read the Tree of Knowledge and weren't Blind any more. You also said a moment ago that if they read the Tree of Life, they would become immortal. I thought they were already immortal?'

'Christians want them to have been immortal, because they want _you_ to have brought sin and death into the world, and they want Jesus to take it away. But the writers haven't written anything of the sort. However, we do find a real Book of Life mentioned later on in the writings, and I suggest this was the book where the corrupt Elohist priests kept a tally of how much money individual Israelites owed them. And they certainly wouldn't want naked mud-men getting their grubby hands on it.'

'Yahweh told Adam if he read the Fruit of the Tree he would die, but Adam was only evicted. So is Yahweh a wimp?'

'No, Great Father of the Underworld. In Israelite society, if someone seriously offended social standards they were cast out and considered "dead". The Yahwists didn't kill Jesus' corrupt Elohist god-king ancestors; they cast them out and declared them and their culture to be "dead".'

'Very good.'

' _After banishing them from the garden, the L_ _ord_ _God stationed mighty angelic beings to the east of Eden. And a flaming sword flashed back and forth, guarding the way to the tree of life_ ,' Hitch read from the New Living Translation.

'Are the mighty beings and the flaming sword still there?' Satan enquired.

'As far as I know, yes. Nothing anywhere in the Bible says they're gone.'

'So when Christian explorers went to discover the source of the Nile, they had to be very, very careful not to accidentally stumble across these guardians of their non-mythological, very real, biblical Garden of Eden,' smiled Satan.

Snikwad drew himself up to his full height, trying very hard to look like a mighty angelic being, and pretending to slash a great two-handed sword through the air in front of the black screen.

'Good sprite,' praised the Prince of Demons.

'Africa and the Middle East and Northern India are not the only places believers have expected to find the Garden of Eden,' continued Hitch with gusto. 'Mars is a good candidate, according to one Brinsley LePoer Trench, who wrote _The Sky People_ , and _Secret of the Ages – UFOs_ , and other meaningful contributions to the collective store of human knowledge. Another is the lost continent of Lemuria, which sank slowly into the Pacific Ocean at around the time Atlantis mysteriously did the same thing on the other side of the planet. Certain people "know" they have a connection to these lost continents.

'And a Baptist minister by the name of Elvy E. Callaway spent the best part of the twentieth century proving that the Garden of Eden was located just off Highway 20 in Northern Florida, USA, on the banks of the Apalachicola River,' he continued. 'This mystical river splits into four – just like in the Bible! And the _Torreya Taxifolia_ grows there, and that's the rare tree that produced the Gopher wood the biblical Noah used to build his Ark!'

Satan sat back in his comfy chair with his hands behind his head and Snikwad curled up on his belly as Hitch spoke on.

'But my very favourite location has to be from Joseph Smith Jnr., the first Prophet, President and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, as they're known,' Hitch enthused. 'The Prophet himself discovered an altar built by Adam after Adam had been evicted from the Garden. The altar was located in Jackson County, Missouri, USA, and the Garden of Eden can be very definitely pinpointed to somewhere near the city of Independence. The Mormon gentleman, Apostle Orson Pratt, wrote in the _Journal of Discourses_ that the name of the altar location, Adam-ondi-Ahman, "is in the original language spoken by Adam, as revealed to the Prophet Joseph". So that solves our question about which language Yahweh used to communicate with Adam and his she-man. Genesis, however, makes no mention of Adam building an altar. Another Mormon gentleman, Apostle John A. Widstow, informs us in _Evidences and Reconciliations_ that: "Latter-day Saints know, through modern revelation, that the Garden of Eden was on the North American continent and that Adam and Eve began their conquest of the earth in the upper part of what is now the state of Missouri. It seems very probable that the children of our first earthly parents moved down along the fertile, pleasant lands of the Mississippi valley".'

Satan's face adopted a serious smile. 'Quite the most plausible of the possibilities. I can see how the good Apostle reconciles a lack of evidence with incongruous absurdity. Can't you Snikwad?'

Snikwad rolled over on his back and nodded up at his master.

'By the way, have we read of either the Elohim or Yahweh loving anyone yet?'

Snikwad shook his head.

'However, I think you've still got a few more little gems for us, haven't you Hitch?'

'Yes I do,' Hitch told them with zeal. 'The "mighty angelic beings" guarding the Garden of Eden in Florida or Missouri or Mars or wherever, are known as _Cherubim_ in Hebrew. Cherubim were big scary statues of winged lions or bulls with human heads that guarded the entrances to temples throughout the Sumerian Region. If the Garden of Eden is really an allegorical Middle Eastern temple or temple library, it would be quite reasonable to find Cherubim guarding it. It seems pastors and prophets in the USA and elsewhere have been barking up the wrong Tree of Knowledge. And the yet-to-be-historically-verified biblical King Solomon had images of a pair of guardian Cherubim carved on the doors of his temple: despite the law of Yahweh that specifically forbade such things.'

'Ah, biblical references to Cherubim and such are more small clues pointing to a culture that existed before the Yahwist Reformation banned these depictions,' offered Satan.

'Just as they were again banned in the later Christian Protestant Reformation,' agreed Hitch. 'This biblical story of the Forbidden Fruit is once more an expansion, extension and adaptation of older Sumerian stories. For example, we have Tagtug the Weaver who disobeyed a supernatural injunction and ate Forbidden Fruit, and knew disease and death. Then there is the Babylonian tale where the serpent Ningishzida helps Adapa search for eternal life. And in the prologue to _Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Underworld_ , we find the huluppu tree which Inanna transplants from the banks of the Euphrates to her Garden of Uruk. In the tree she finds a "serpent who could not be charmed", and she may have also found the dark maid Lilith living in the trunk.'

'Why do men have an "Adam's Apple" and women don't?' queried a grinning Satan.

'Because when Adam bit the Forbidden Fruit, a piece got stuck in his throat, and the lump has been passed down genetically to remind men of the foolishness of their ancestor in hearkening unto the voice of his wife,' laughed Hitch. 'And while we're on the subject of biblical sexism, now is a good time to point out that we are a very long way from being the first to notice that it's there. Post-biblical Jewish traditions arose concerning a wife prior to the submissive, soulless Eve. The _Alphabet of Ben-Sira_ tells us that Lilith was created from the same dust as Adam. Lilith refused to be "ruled over", or be sexually submissive. She flew away from Eden and expressed herself in a very non-submissive way by copulating in the air with demons.'

'That's my boys. Good show fellas ...' Satan bellowed, his voice echoing through the caverns.

A mighty roar, as of a great army, responded.

'Adam and Yahweh got the message, and they resorted to the divine surgery alternative to find him a suitably compliant help-meet. Another traditional post-biblical belief, or prequel really,' Hitch continued. 'Is that the Adam from Chapter 1 was an hermaphrodite, and Lilith was the female half. This explanation helped sort out one of the more obvious not-there-for-believers contradictions between Creation One and Creation Two. Further Jewish tradition has it that Adam and Eve put their cleaving and becoming one flesh on hold, and lived apart for one hundred and thirty years. Adam took matters in hand ─ as men are wont to do in these circumstances ─ and the seed of his ejaculations became demons.'

More roars of approval.

'Elsewhere in the same Jewish culture, it is Lilith who is the mother of the demons because of her expressive aerial acrobatics and such.'

The army went absolutely nuts.

'These demons were believed to seek out newborn boys before they were circumcised,' shouted Hitch through the din. 'So protective amulets were placed around boys' necks immediately after birth to protect them. Lilith appears in the Bibles, but she is translated as "screech owl" in the book of Isaiah. In Akkadian Scripture, Lilitu is a female demon of the night, and Lilitu looks to have evolved from the Sumerian demon, Kisikil Lillake.'

'Sumerian – or more broadly, Mesopotamian – Shaddai origins again, Hitch ...!'

'Indeed Iniquitous Crepuscularity: plus, there is another tradition that says a third, perpetual-virgin wife may have been created for Adam between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 – just as Jesus' mother would maintain her Perpetual Virginity ... despite giving birth to several children. And so the religious evolution rolls inexorably on and on through the minds of humans, as they devise and re-devise the myths and the allegories.'

'Time for us to roll along too. Turn the screen back on Snikwad ... but stay away from that Sistine Chapel for God's sake.

Snikwad pounced on the switch.

Scroll to next chapter or go to: Table of Contents

Revelation 2:4

MY BROTHER'S KEEPER

And the Gardner and the Shepherd should be friends

Genesis 4:1-24

The screen sprang back to life.

'Before we visit Adam – and now Eve – in their banishment,' said Satan. 'How about we have ourselves an historical reality check?'

Snikwad leapt into action on the keyboard.

'Another splendid suggestion, Eminent Darkness,' crooned Hitch.

'OK, ultra-conservative believers put humanity's historical Beginnings at somewhere near Dr Lightfoot's 4004 BCE,' said Satan. 'Moderately conservative believers will allow that planet Earth is up to 10,000 years old – but usually they try to avoid the issue altogether by diverting attention onto Charles Darwin or Joseph Stalin or evolutionary science, or anyone or anything other than the total lack of evidence for Jesus as the Creator of the Universe. Anyhow, counting the biblical begats clearly puts the mud-and-rib creation of the first humans firmly in the 5th Millennium Before the Common Era. And believers can't wiggle out of it by playing Humpty Dumpty with the meaning of a biblical "day", as you say Hitch. So lets us have at look at what conspiracies I've tempted the archaeologists and historians to devise to lead wilful humans away from biblical truths. Who do the _godless_ ones say was inhabiting the Earth, at this period of time, out there in the cold, hard light of non-biblical human history?'

Snikwad bowed politely and waved their attention towards the screen.

'Start with the 5th Millennium BCE,' instructed Satan.

Hitch examined the results of Snikwad's search. 'Independently verifiable historical cultures that pre-existed the Bible Beginning include the Badari and the Merimde on the Nile; the Yangshao; the Proto-Austronesian culture on the south coast of China; the Sredny; the Stog; the Lengyel Cycladic – a distinctive Neolithic culture amalgamating Anatolian and mainland Greek elements; the Vinča; the Yumuktepe and Gözlükule in south Anatolia ... and many more.'

'Non-believers estimate there were about 5,000,000 to 7,000,000 humans on the planet back then ... and not the biblical 2,' said Satan. 'So do we tell Chinese and Egyptians and Anatolians and Greeks and everyone else from a non-biblical background that their scholars are wrong, and their material culture and history are Satanic lies, and they should abandon them immediately, and adopt this Israelite mythology as the _real_ truth before Jesus sends them down here for me and my demons to deal with?'

'I think it's time to be scrupulously honest, Mendacious Majesty,' Hitch answered.

'I think so too, Hitch. OK, Snikwad, let's have a quick run backwards through to the 10th Millennium BCE, just to check that human error hasn't put the Bible out by maybe a few years.'

Snikwad clicked as Hitch read.

'OK, in the 6th we have the Mehrgarh culture in what is now Pakistan; brick buildings were constructed at Çatalhöyük in Turkey; temples were built in Sumer; agriculture began in the Americas ... and much more.'

Snikwad clicked again.

'In the 7th we find the Peiligang culture in China; the Papuan people of New Guinea engaging in agriculture; the Xinglongwa and the Cishan cultures also in China; the first signs of habitation in the Svarthola cave in Norway ... and much more.'

Snikwad clicked again.

'In the 8th there were hunter gatherers in Ireland; Japanese potters decorate cooking vessels; the Howick house is built in England; and, significantly, between 12000 and 5000 BCE there was severe inland flooding in several regions of the world and rising sea levels ... and much more.'

Snikwad clicked yet again.

'In the 9th, pigs were domesticated in China; goats were domesticated in Turkey; wolves were domesticated as dogs; the people of the biblical Jericho made clay bricks and dried them in the sun; people of the Andes grew chillies and beans; Gὃbekli Tepe, a carved-stone hilltop sanctuary is built in south-eastern Turkey ... and much more.

Snikwad made one final click.

'The 10th saw the first cave drawings of the Mesolithic period with war and religious scenes; the world's population of humans is estimated at between 1 and 10 million, scattered over all continents except Antarctica and Zealandia; the first stone structures at the biblical Jericho are built; the Jōmon people of Japan use pottery, and fish, hunt and gather acorns, nuts and edible seeds at 10,000 known sites; linguistic groups, including the biblical Sumerian and Semitic peoples, appear to have shared cultural commonalities; the Folsom people flourish throughout the South-Western United States about 12,000 years before Joseph Smith Jr. discovered the altar Adam never built ... and much more besides,' Hitch concluded.

Snikwad gave him a round of applause, his tiny paws making only a minute sound.

'Bravo Hitch,' Satan praised. 'Now that we've got our feet firmly on the historical ground and our heads out of the clouds of biblical literalism, let us see what your Yahwist reformers have done about allegorising the next myth.'

Hitch paraphrased the first verse of Chapter 4: ' _Adam knew Eve his wife_ in the biblical sense, _and she conceived and bore a son_ – in greatly multiplied sorrow I should think – _and said, "I have gotten a man from Yahweh."._ '

'No she didn't,' contradicted Satan.

'That's what it says here in Hebrew, Advertency ... and it says "Lord" in English, and "Kurios" in Greek.'

'No one had ever heard of Yahweh 6,000 years ago – not the Anatolians, not the Papuans, not the Zulus, and no one at all that we know of in the entire Middle East. How could she say that?'

'Ah, yes indeed. The Yahwist re-writers write that Yahweh doesn't actually reveal his name until he speaks through some burning shrubbery about 3,000 years AFTER this sorrowful event. And the mythological Eve, as we know, didn't speak Hebrew ... nobody spoke Hebrew in 4004 BCE. So how in God's name did Eve know the Hebrew Yahweh's Hebrew name?'

'Because the followers of Yahweh wrote Yahweh – and Eve – into the old Elohim and Shaddai stories at a much later time.'

'A most plausible explanation, Perfidious Erudition.'

'And if modern translators choose to use the conveniently obscure term "Lord", instead of the name Yahweh, maybe we won't notice the contradictions and inconsistencies in the Word of God.'

'Yes, the vague terms "Lord" and "God" can be most helpfully obfuscatory,' agreed Hitch. 'When you use the name Yahweh, you begin to recognise that you are dealing with a deity that's as mythological as anyone else's. Now, could it also be the case that the mythological Yahweh played some part in Eve's pregnancy, I wonder? After all, Yahweh played a very significant part in the pregnancy of Jesus' mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary ... as deities are commonly wont to do.'

'Perhaps indeed ... the writers do seem to imply it here,' mused Satan. 'And even if it's not implied, we have seen that one can read into these stories just whatever one _wants_ to be there. And, once you've "discovered" this true and hidden meaning from "God", in no time at all your biased reading can become a firmly held doctrinal belief that no one dares to challenge. OK, and what was the name of the planet's very first human – but possibly god-man – born of woman?'

'His name was Cain: which sounds like the Hebrew word for "acquired", and may mean something to do with metalworking. Eve then bore another son, and this time she didn't say anything ... which is ominous. The second son was named Abel, and Abel may mean something like "temporary" ... which is even more ominous.'

' _And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground,_ ' read Hitch.

'Let me see,' mused Satan pensively. 'Our second-generation humans would have been fully-erect Homo sapiens who looked like their beautifully-groomed, skin-clad, European super-model parents. They've skipped the whole bothersome business of evolving through thousands and thousands of years of subsistence hunter-gatherer society, and gone straight for pastoralism, agriculture and blacksmithing. Doesn't work on the surface, Hitch. But, however, I think we may see that temporary Abel grew up to be a Shepherd priest, and acquired metalworker Cain grew up to be a Gardner priest ...?'

'Absolutely as I see it, my Most Illustrious Deceiver,' glowed Hitch, appreciative that his master was catching on. 'Extending that idea, we may see that Abel represents a simple Shepherd culture, and Cain represents a more evolved Gardener culture.'

'And the two cultures are not literally the products of the first successful human conjugations?'

'Not for the priests who wrote and re-wrote these apologues. The way I see it: the story of Cain and Abel that we have here, refers to a number of similar religio-political incidents in several different Circles of Time, over a period of four thousand years, or even more.'

'Read on my furry friend.'

Snikwad hauled on the edge of the next page and laid it open before them.

'In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruit of the ground as an offering to Yahweh. Abel also brought some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat as an offering. _And Yahweh had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect._ '

'Humans make food offerings to Divinity concepts to thank their particular deity for providing the food in the first place, and to encourage their gods to stay calm and not exterminate them with fire and brimstone and floods and such,' said Satan. 'But like Santa with his milk and cookies, it's not "God" who actually consumes the offerings: the offerings provide a living for the servants of God and comfort for the needy. But what's the matter with Cain's offering, Hitch? Doesn't Yahweh like carrots and spinach and other fresh produce? Is he perhaps more a barbequed rack-of-lamb, or T-bone sort of deity ...?'

'No one knows why the writers have portrayed Yahweh as playing favourites. It's a bit of an embarrassment to some folks really. Some have suggested that Yahweh prefers blood sacrifices to calm him down: after all he did send his own son Jesus down to Earth to become a human sacrifice to himself. Others have suggested that Cain made a careless, thoughtless offering: but the writers don't actually say that here ... so you have to _want_ it to be there. And anyhow, because of Yahweh's curse on Adam, Cain would probably have only been able to grow thorns and thistles and herbs of the field ... hardly a dainty dish to set before a deity.'

'Cain can't have been happy with the lack of respect from his patron deity?'

'No, Cain was very wroth and his countenance fell, so Yahweh asked him: _"Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen?"_ Cain doesn't answer, but the writers have the deity give him a mini-sermon on the ever-popular topic of sin anyway.'

'Humans don't usually pay attention to such things.'

'Cain didn't either. And Cain went and spoke with his brother, and may or may not have said: "Let us go out to the field". Some Bibles don't have that bit in them. However, when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and slew him.'

'So allegorically, a sophisticated Gardner culture has destroyed a simple Shepherd culture, in a _The Farmer and the Cowman Should be Friends_ sort of way?' Satan enquired with a musical lilt in his rasping voice.

'In my estimation that is precisely what the re-writers are telling us here, Mendacious Crepuscularity!'

Snikwad danced a little line dance along the altar.

'But Hitch, it makes a _much_ better story if Cain literally harpoons Abel with a pitchfork.'

'On the surface it's a wonderfully bloodthirsty event. Underneath, I suggest, we have another reference to the Yahwist reformation. If I'm right, the Yahwists are saying that Jesus' Elohist ancestors destroyed an earlier Israelite culture in another Circle of Time.'

'OK, but what happens next in the bloodthirsty surface version of the story ...?'

Snikwad rubbed his paws together in anticipation.

'Because Yahweh is omniscient, he knew about the murder and zoomed back down from the ceiling of Heaven in a flurry of feathers to interrogate Cain by asking the rhetorical question, _"Where is Abel thy brother?"_

'Cain replied with the immortal words: _"I know not: am I my brother's keeper?"_ – which was a very impolite and presumptuous way for a mere human to speak to the One Supreme Creator and Ruler of the Universe,' Hitch continued. 'And Yahweh roared back: _"What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground."_

'Blood crying out from the ground is a stylistic device. Surely even fundamentalists don't take this bit literally do they?'

'I don't think so.'

'So who decides which bits are to be taken literally, and which bits are only figures of speech?'

'A very good question indeed, Perditious One. As we've mentioned, things will often maintain their face value until believers are forced to admit there's an elephant standing in the pulpit shaking its head.'

'Figuratively speaking.'

'Figuratively speaking, Iniquitous Malfeasance. Yahweh then goes on to curse Cain from the Earth and banish him. The Elohim in the previous allegory – and in an earlier Circle of Time – had already banished the Adam Family from the fertile temple Library, and obliged them to toil to write only Thorns and Thistles and Herbs. The Cain culture, on the other hand, would write absolutely nothing of any religious value at all. The Cain character in the surface story is condemned to be a fugitive and a vagabond in the Earth.'

'Cain gets the "Mark of Cain" put on him doesn't he?' asked Satan, remembering a well-known detail he had heard.

'Yes indeed, Sire.'

'And some people believe this means that Yahweh zapped him and turned him black.'

'They do.'

'And they would be some of the people who paint pictures of the created-in-the-image-of-God Adam and Eve as middle-class white folks.

'They possibly would.'

'What do _you_ make of the Mark of Cain, Hitch?'

'Criminals can be branded or tattooed, or have hands and feet and other body parts chopped off: all of which makes them easy to spot. In some cultures – including the early Israelite culture – people will cut themselves and rub in ashes and keep picking the scabs off the sores to raise prominent distinguishing cicatrices. Certain cultures too are distinguished by their circumcised genitalia ...'

'Don't you start on human genitals again!' shrieked Satan, sending Snikwad diving for cover.

'Iniquitous Deceiver, I only mean to point out that when the Yahwists evicted Jesus' ancestors from the temple in Jerusalem, they may have been distinguished by scars on the palms of their hands, or by their less visible circumcisions. Foreskins are very important currency in the Bibles.'

'Yes, yes ... I want you to talk about something else now.'

'The Mark of Cain, whatever it was, was to warn the rest of the human population not to kill Cain.'

'The rest of the population would have been his mum and dad.'

'In the surface story, yes. Under that we may see the rest of humanity as referring to other Jewish religiopolitical parties in a much later Circle of Time. The Yahwists banished the corrupt Elohists and the descendants of King David – played here by the mythological character Cain – but they didn't want them to fall prey to revenge, I suggest. The Yahwist writers have their deity say that if anyone were to kill Cain, then: _"Vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold"._ '

'What does that mean in plain English?'

'There was a quaint old Law of God which had it that if you committed a crime like murder, members of your family could be executed as punishment for your crime. If you killed Cain – or one of the evicted Elohists – seven of your family members would be put to the sword.'

'And fundamentalists want to throw out secular laws and reintroduce this stuff ...?'

'They often do. But in the Bibles the new Yahweh deity rescinds this unjust old "Law of God" in another, newer, biblical book called Deuteronomy: because it was enough to drive men to revolution and reformation.'

'Cain not only murdered his own brother, he also married his own sister, didn't he?'

'That's not something they like to dwell on in Bible class. But if there was no one else ... and if the Laws weren't actually going to be inscribed in stone by the finger of Yahweh for maybe another 3,000 years or so ... I mean, what else was a guy who's a marked man and a vagabond to do, other than bend the rules a bit ...?'

'Yes,' chuckled Satan. 'And we have quite a few permanent residents down here who thought God wouldn't mind if _they_ bent the rules just a bit either, because, you know, God understands their special circumstances. I've got a whole cauldron of boiling oil down here, filled with shopkeepers who opened their stores on the Sabbath, and born-again Christians who patronised them.'

'Our biblical Cain and Abel story looks to have its genesis in the very ancient Sumerian tale of the quarrelling brothers Emesh and Entin,' said Hitch. 'Like Adam, the Sumerian brothers were created by God. God was Enlil in this case and not Yahweh. The oldest available copy of the Enlil story is from more than 2,000 years before Jesus. The oldest available copy of the Yahweh story is from about 150 years before Jesus. Similarly: Lahar, the Sumerian god of livestock, quarrelled with his sister Ashnan the goddess of crops. And in Egyptian theology, Seth kills his brother Osiris.'

'The theme here is an ancient one that was adapted by the newer Jewish-Israelite culture to preserve its political history in allegorised myth,' said Satan.

'Indeed, Precious Iniquity. Now, in this version, the evil brother departs to found his own City to the east of the Library of Eden.'

'Aha ... a City will be a religious evolution on a humble Garden.'

'As I see it, Splendid Mendaciousness.'

'But I thought the wrathful old Yahweh deity cursed Cain to be an illiterate hobo?'

'I suspect that in earlier versions of this allegory we had splits, or schisms, in Sumerian, Phoenician, Israelite and other cultures: just as we continue to have breakaway Christian denominations. I suspect this story references a number of ancient schisms in a number of Circles of Time, where splinter groups go off to form Cities of their own. Now, it says here that when Cain departed, he knew his unnamed sister-wife in the biblical manner, and they had a son called Enoch. Cain, would you believe, named the city he built ... Enoch.'

'With a population of 3?'

'Indeed that doesn't work on a surface level. Second-generation humanoids didn't build literal cities – even if the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith Jnr. did declare that the city of Enoch had been built on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. But if we look at genuine history, we find that the followers of the Enoch culture were a major force in early Israelite society.'

'So the Enoch culture was a biblical splinter group that grew, just as Christianity was a biblical splinter group that was to grow at a later time?'

'To me it's plausible ... or even accondable,' said Hitch, leaning over to read from the KJV. ' _And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat_ ...'

Satan slammed his great tail onto the altar with a resounding crash. 'There are some very good reasons why people don't read the Bibles, Hitch ...!'

'Yes, Excellent Darkness, but there's just one more teensy name in the list of begats, and it's, Lamech, and then we come to some really interesting prehistorical history because in just 7 easy generations from Adam, we have reached the Iron Age.'

'How so?'

'One of Lamech's sons, Tubal-Cain, forged tools out of bronze and iron.'

'Can we count the begats and figure out where we are in proper time?'

'Not in this genealogy – we don't have numbers.'

'When do the godless ones say the Iron Age began?'

Snikwad tapped the screen with a stainless steel fork he had been using to eat his lunch.

'Broadly speaking: in Anatolia in about 1200 BCE.'

'Which means biblical humans had been around for 2,800 years. And if I divide that by the 7 generations of humans we have here, I have people rearing their families at around the age of 400.'

'That's no age at all, Perditious Lord. Biblical people lived to be nearly 1,000 years-of-age if they kept their sinning to a respectable minimum.'

'The godless scientists say early humans were lucky to reach 45.'

'Erroneous nonsense, Mendacious Father. The real truth is right here in front of us,' Hitch smiled. 'But our patriarch Lamech got himself into a spot of serious bother.'

'What happened?'

'He seems to have been in a fight and killed a young man who had injured him in some way. He assembled his wives, Ad-Ah and Zill-Ah, and told them that while Cain would be avenged 7 times, he, Lamech, would be avenged 77 times. It's all rather unclear, but the brawl must have been of global importance for Yahweh to have inspired Moses to write about it in the Bibles.'

'Global importance ...?'

'Well, important for everyone on the circular floor of our biblical dome anyway. There appears to have been some great disaster, because this is the last we hear of the cruel sons of Cain: they just disappear from the Bibles. Or do they ...?' Hitch added mysteriously.

Snikwad leaned in closer and Satan waved his hobgoblin to continue.

'Women aren't often named in Bible stories, unless they are to have the honour of being the mother or wife of a great man, or they are to be involved in some form of sex crime. But that was not always the case, I suggest. Before the male-only Yahwist reformation and the imposition of the single male deity, I think certain women were once worshipped as gods in early Israelite society.'

'I can hear Their Holy Eminences rending their robes.'

'In the Israelites' home town of Ur in Sumer, the richly adorned burial site of Queen Puabi was discovered in the 20th Century CE, and it was far grander than that of any male. And we do find tiny hints throughout the Bibles of the once-high status of women, even though the Yahwists re-wrote the biblical stories to denigrate women and to slander Jesus' ancestors.'

'You said the Yahwists were highly sophisticated ....'

'In many ways they were. But like their later counterparts in the Christian Protestant Reformation, they could also be vicious and bitchy bigots. Not only that, we've already seen what certain of the early, celibate, aficionados of the naked male form, Christian Fathers thought of women.'

'What's this got to do with Lamech and his impending disaster?'

Snikwad folded his arms and adopted an inquiring expression.

'Not only are Lamech's 3 sons named, so too are his wives Ad-Ah and Zill-Ah, and his daughter Naam-Ah – which may mean "pleasant" or "sweet". Naam-Ah, or Naamah, was not involved in any sex crime that we know of, but she does appear at what I see as the turning of a Circle of Time. I suggest that she doesn't disappear from the Bibles. I think we find her again at the end of another list of who-begat-whoms in the next chapter. The writers of the next list did not see fit to name any woman after Eve, but the chapter does list a number of men who are just too suspiciously similar in name to men in Cain's list. The male hero at the end of this second list is called, Noah – which may mean "rest". However, I suspect that the Noah in the next list is really daughter Naamah from this first list. The men who re-wrote the myths could not possibly tolerate the idea of a female hero who was the only good person of her time, and who walked with the Elohim: so they made her a man.'

'But Noah _is_ a man's name.'

'Not necessarily, Malfeasance: we find a biblical woman called No-Ah – which may mean something like "wanderer" ... especially if you want to conveniently distinguish it from the restful male Noah. And we also find Noah written as "Noe". In Hebrew it only takes a tiny tweak to turn the female No-Ah into the male Noah, or into Naamah, or into Noe, or whichever way round you wish. Female names in Hebrew often end in "Ah" – far more often than male names. We've had Ad-Ah and Zill-Ah and Naam-Ah, and we'll find many more. The only other female name so far is Eve, and we suspect she was written in later. To me it's perfectly reasonable to offer that the No-Ah of the next list is – or once was – female, and is the same fictional, or semi-fictional, character as our Naam-Ah here. It is also most important to note that our Lamech right here is father to 3 males and 1 female.'

'So are you saying this Naam-Ah/No-Ah woman was to lead her people from one Circle of Time into the next?'

'Exactly. At each turning of the Circles there was a new No-Ah.'

'Certain Christians see Jesus as the New Noah.'

'And indeed there was much competition amongst would-be Noah's at the turning of the Circle in Jesus' time.'

'I think we should go and meet Mother No-Ah,' said Satan.

'There's more sin to go through first, Iniquitous Perdition.'

'That's what I'm here for.'

'I wonder if Mr Snikwad has found love mentioned anywhere ...?'

Satan looked at Snikwad.

The sprite kept his arms folded and shook his head.

'Well, ever since miserable young Yahweh appeared on the scene, we've only had threats and cursings and evictions and flaming swords and multiplied sorrow and thorns and thistles and absolutely no love at all from "God". How could things possibly get any worse for humanity?'

'Ooh, they certainly could Reprobate Calignosity: and there will be much wailing and great moaning and gnashing of ....'

'Well I DON'T WANT TO HEAR about it anymore, Hitch,' thundered Satan in exasperation. 'I'm all Bibled out, for God's sake. Enough already. Snikwad, it's party time. Bring me flesh and bring me wine. Bring me wenches hither.'

Snikwad cheered his loudest silent cheer and scampered gleefully out of the throne room.

'And crank up that band of yours,' Satan shouted after him. 'There's nothing like the prospect of some serious sinning to liven up the nighttime ... is there Hitch?'

'Indeed, Crapulent Transgressor,' replied Hitch without conviction. He possessed neither the faculty nor the inclination for a night of drunken fornication, and was always disinclined to sit and pretend to applaud those who did.

'Oh stop sulking, Hitch: you don't have to stay and watch.'

Demons swarmed into the Sacred Grotto bearing long trestle tables and bench seats. The now-black screen; the great altar; Lucifer's Ladder, and the entire cavern were soon festooned with bladderwort, monkshood, oleander and the heart-shaped anthurium brought down from the surface of the world above. Satan ascended Lucifer's Ladder to the Bone Throne, where he sprawled out in all his magnificence for everyone to see.

'Food ... bring on the food,' he commanded.

Steaming platters and tureens of aromatic dishes cooked on the hellfires outside were hustled in by the dwergers of the catering corps. Fearsome barghests rolled in spits on which full carcases still rotated above the smouldering charcoal. Tiny pigwidgeons flitted through bearing all manner of exotic sweetmeats in woven baskets.

Hitch was in Heaven. He waddled from table to table, positively quivering from snout to tail with anticipation. When he had laden his trencher with the choicest portions of every imaginable delicacy, he bowed to Satan and took himself to his private chambers and slammed the door shut and secured it with all five padbolts.

'Wine ... I will have wine,' the Lord of the Underworld bellowed above this rising cacophony below.

Heavy amphorae of the finest wines the Earth outside could produce appeared on the shoulders of vintner hellions. They swung down their burdens and carefully poured the precious liquids into ewers held by serving trolls. One of the female trolls made sure her fangs were free of extraneous decaying matter, and ascended the stairs to where Satan sat with his goblet outstretched. He swallowed his first drink at a single draught, and the second followed soon after. The trolless received a meaningful slap on her rump as she emptied her ewer into his goblet and returned to have it filled once more.

'Music ... bring on the music,' he roared.

A dancing Snikwad – now entirely bereft of vellum and modesty, save for his golden fez – led the pep band and hell choir into the throne room, where they meandered amongst the crowded tables in a conga line, emitting the most hellish sounds imaginable. When they got to the lyric: "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored", they began to ascend Lucifer's Ladder to where they took up their final position on the platform on the left hand of Satan.

In a conspicuous display of bacchanalian egalitarianism, the Prince of Darkness permitted Snikwad to come forward and drink from his cup.

At this gesture, the band let loose with a fanfare while the massed congregation below roared in appreciation.

'Hosanna, Sinners!' saluted Satan, leaping to his feet.

'Hosanna! ... Hosanna! ... Hosanna! ...' responded the thrice-blessed assembly: careless that at that moment no one was actually torturing the non-Christians and backsliders in the pits and chambers outside. But they were quite certain that no one – from Hindus to homosexuals – could ever escape the eternal bonds of Hell ... so what did it matter if they cut loose once in a while?

'Let the dancing commence,' directed Satan, holding his goblet aloft.

Androgynous, wraithlike incubi and succubi rose gracefully from the benches to the excruciating strains of the band above. Sensuously and seductively they swayed and caressed first themselves and then each other, and gradually they moved amongst the guests and around Satan and over the steps of Lucifer's Ladder and the Bone Throne until the entire cavern was roused to the headiest heights.

None was more roused than Snikwad.

Bloated and alone, Hitch reclined in his study contemplating the Third Revelation.

Finis

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Further SBG Revelations

A seriously humorous review.

Satan's Guide to the Bible is new; it's unique: nothing remotely like it exists.

Satan and his minions, Hitch and Snikwad, begin at the Beginning and embark on a journey that takes them through fantastical tales that include: _Light of the Elohim; Yahweh's Re-Creation Day;_ _Eve and the Talking Serpent; Mother No-Ah's Ark; Father Noah's Hangover; The Wicked Sodomites Go Blind; The Scandal in the Cave; Tamar Turns a Trick; Holocaust of the Hivites; Joseph's Magic Wine Goblet_ and all the sex, drugs, money, murder and mayhem that somehow never quite make it into the weekly sermon.

On the way they discover that the Jewish deity Yahweh is as mythological as the Greek Zeus, the Norse Thor, the Hindu Brahma and everyone else's concept of what God may possibly be. Not only is the biblical Yahweh not God with a capital "G", the genocidal old man in the sky is an interloper and very much a newcomer to the business of being an imaginary, lowercase "g" ethnic god. Certain senior priests and pastors and rabbis know this perfectly well – they just keep it to themselves.

Under the fictional fables of angels and virgins and talking donkeys, however, lie what appear to be layer upon layer of ingeniously allegorised human history – genuine history from long before the time of the new Yahweh. The males-only priests of the male Yahweh look to have used well-known myths as cover stories for their Yahwist Reformation: when they evicted Jesus' corrupt, human-sacrificing, blood-drinking, god-king ancestors from the temple in Jerusalem; blamed women for the corruption, and rewrote many of the biblical writings as political slander ... and gave them a curiously anti-Semitic overtone.

The growing ebook series features the Reformation Hypothesis, the Circles of Time, the Bastard Kings of Israel and other exclusive new propositions.

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Revelation 3 is where Satan, Hitch and Snikwad plunge into the Great Flood mythologies and discover that this planet we call home has been flooded more times by more versions of God than you can poke a magic crosier at. Human sin, of course, was usually to blame. Fornication is a favourite.

In the strictly biblical view of history, the Diabolical Trio discover – back when our Earth was flat and we lived in a reverse goldfish bowl with the water on the outside and Heaven was just a few angelic wing-beats away – giant Nephilim roamed free and the Sons of God (but maybe not Jesus) were led unto temptation and fornication by human females, and they made heroic biblical super-babies together. Semi-sinless Homo sapiens males lived to be nearly 1,000 years of age (women are not mentioned) and everyone in Jewish and non-Jewish cultures from all four corners of the world only ever thought evil thoughts, so as to deliberately offend the jealous new Jewish deity Yahweh and his predecessors the Elohim.

Like many other imaginary deities before them, both the ancient Phoenician/Canaanite Elohim and the genocidal new Yahweh (but possibly not Jesus) became so wrathful with all the fornicating they decided to give humanity a divinely inspired parenting lesson by opening the windows of the goldfish bowl and drowning all the Aztec and Chinese and Zulu kiddies – who had never actually heard of these neurotic Middle East versions of "God" – under four and a half kilometres of mythological biblical water ... during the non-mythological Sixth Dynasty of Egypt.

Mitochondrial DNA will, of course, confirm the biblical truth that all the Aztec, Chinese and Zulu people alive today are descendants of the antediluvian, ark-building Middle Eastern Mother No-Ah, who survived this particular Great Flood when she was pre-warned (possibly by Jesus) of the impending allegory.

The boys from the Sacred Grotto find that second-generation biblical Homo sapiens skipped the whole bothersome business of evolving through Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer society, and went straight for pastoralism, horticulture and the world's very first fratricidal murder in _My Brother's Keeper_. The tales of _Mother No-Ah's Ark_ and _Father Noah's Hangover_ give them special insights into why rainbows appear in the sky; blood transfusions are maybe a bad idea; capital punishment is officially ordained by Yahweh (but perhaps not Jesus); humans could once again live to be nearly 1,000 if they reduce their sinning to an acceptable minimum; dinosaurs and bird lice (but maybe not viruses) co-existed on the Ark, and the practice of good, God-fearing Christians keeping black people as slaves was once a biblically correct thing to do.

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