The Foundational Falsehoods Of Aron Ra 168823697X, 9781688236974

Table of contents :
FOREWORD
Foundational Falsehood 1 : The Bible Cannot Be Taken at Face Value
Foundational Falsehood 2 : Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
Foundational Falsehood 3 : Absurd Theories Convince
Foundational Falsehood 4 : Inconsistency is Okay for Me , Not for You
SOME MORE BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL ERRORS OF RA
ARON IS AN ATHEIST PREACHER , NOT EDUCATOR
SUGGESTED READING
AFTERWORD

Citation preview

THE FOUNDATIONAL FALSEHOODS OF ARON RA: How an Educator has Misinformed Thousands   By Christopher Hansen   Foreword By:

Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy   Afterword By: Ben, the Amateur Exegete                                            

  Copyright © 2019, Christopher M. Hansen



 



FOREWORD   There is no lack of false information on the internet. A noticeable problem arises when someone gets quite popular and begins peddling false information to hundreds of thousands of followers. This is the issue with Aron Ra, an atheist activist who has over 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. Aron’s fame began mainly from debunking Creationist arguments and he has done exceptionally well in this area. If he would have remained in this domain there would be very little disagreement from Christopher or myself. However, in an attempt to critique Christianity, Aron stepped outside of this niche and began to take a crack at biblical history and hermeneutics. This is where the errors began to pile up, and for the most part, his audience has simply lapped it all up without question. This cannot simply go on unaddressed.  Christopher has gone through some of Aron’s work and has found many embarrassing assertions that are obviously incorrect. It is clear from reading Christopher’s critique that Aron is very unfamiliar with the relevant scholarship and peddles argument that are totally baseless, flat out wrong, or poorly researched. Aron cut his teeth on debunking pseudoscience, flawed, and biased arguments from young earth creationists, and then when it comes to biblical history, he puts out pseudo-intellectual, flawed, and biased arguments that fool many of his followers. Aron has become the one thing he swore to destroy. Luckily, Christopher brings a refreshing scholarly look at Aron’s work and demonstrates why Aron’s arguments lack intellectual depth.

  Michael Jones September 2, 2019





Foundational Falsehood 1: The Bible Cannot Be Taken at Face Value   Aron Ra, despite claiming to have surpassed his religious past has not been able to escape a very notable fact: he still reads the Bible as though he were a conservative Christian. He does not understand the context, the history, or the implications of the text. There is a very simple reason for this. He does not research his history in any significant way. There are a few chief examples of this. Throughout his book The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism, Aron cites numerous sources which are either specious or most certainly not academic. Websites like BibleTrash.com,[1] or JewFaqs.org[2] tend to be where he gets much information, and this lack of awareness and use of academic materials leaves a negative mark upon his understanding of the texts and upon his book as a whole (which does not have any proper citation method anywhere). He makes numerous errors as a result of his lack of understanding of the Bible, of its languages, and of what it says. For example, he repeats the oft made claim that the Bible says that bats are birds, based on Deuteronomy 14:11-18.[3] It is his continued literalist reading that has led him to this conclusion, not any legitimate look at the text in detail and in context. The problem is that the term used in both Deuteronomy 14:11-18 and Leviticus 11:13-19 (both are parallel on this issue) use the Hebrew term h‘wp[4] to refer to the specific creatures, which is commonly translated bird. However, it is actually less precise than this, it actually merely indicates a “flying-creature,” it is not necessarily specific to birds. This is why the term is used in Deuteronomy 14:19 to refer specifically to insects. Deuteronomy 14:11 is slightly different in that it uses the term ṣpwr to refer to “bird.” However, this refers to the animals which are clean to eat. What follows is an adversarial conjunctive waw. This means that the list that comes next are things which are unclean, but not necessarily birds. This is why v. 19 begins then with “creeping things” which fly, using ‘wp. Thus, if Aron Ra had taken the time to look at the Hebrew in detail, he would not have

made this erroneous claim, since it does not lend itself to any kind of idea that the Israelites thought of bats as birds. They thought of them as “flying creatures,” but it is not at all stated they are the same as birds, except that they are all ‘wp, “flying creatures.” Another error of Aron’s is the belief that the Israelites thought that snakes and donkeys could talk.[5] In both of these instances (Genesis 3 and Numbers 22) neither of these are thought of as common. Balaam’s donkey talking is presented as a specific miracle, not something that is ordinary. Donkey’s do not talk normally for Israelites. Genesis 3 is more complicated, but Michael Heiser has demonstrated that there is a very real possibility this is not any normal nachash (snake) but in fact a divine being in the legend.[6] However, this error is made simply because Aron reads the Bible like a fundamentalist Christian would (actually he reads it in a worse way in this regard, since a fundamentalist Christian would recognize that they did not think bats were birds and that nachash is not a simple snake in Genesis 3, though they would errantly conflate it with Satan, based on Pauline writings). He takes a sweeping glance at the passages in question and then attempts to argue that they mean X, even though he has no idea what the nuance is behind all of the passages in question. Other such errors occur throughout his book, such as Aron claiming that the Bible condones cannibalism.[7] Needless to say, Aron was just reaching for anything to speak ill of the Hebrew scriptures, despite the fact that cannibalism is seen as an immense negative horror. Leviticus 26:29, one of the verses he cites, is not advocating cannibalism, but is speaking of a punishment that will incur, and that the people will cannibalize each other as a result. This is an act of abhorrence, pure disgust. Not one that is advocated. Incest is another one that Aron claims is promoted,[8] yet this is simply not true. One should instantly be able to laugh audibly at Aron for using 2 Samuel 13:1-15 as one of his examples, since the rape of Tamar by her brother Amnon is seen as so disgusting that Amnon is tracked down by Absalom and slain as a result (which Aron would have known if he had read 2 Samuel 13:16-39, instead of cherry picking what best fit his agenda).

Once again, this is simply because Aron cherry picks and reads the Bible as if he were a fundamentalist Christian. He does not have any grasp on the ancient languages, the nuance and symbolism in the passages, nor even an understanding of the time period he discusses. Instead, he grabs from the Bible what passages seem to best fit his anti-Christian agenda (an agenda that involves belittling, verbally abusing, and emotionally shaming those who believe, as if he were an atheist version of a fire and brimstone preacher) and without a second thought nor an attempt to grasp the deeper meanings of the passages, he throws them onto a page and then publishes it in book form, where he will mislead and misinform his atheist followers, emotionally and mentally abuse his Christian and religious readers, and then alienate those of us who actually know the context and the passages more intimately than he does. This, is thus, the first Foundational Falsehood of Aron Ra: he takes the Bible at face value. As a result, he and his followers who rely on him to provide accurate information all suffer.



Foundational Falsehood 2: Correlation Does Not Equal Causation   A fallacy committed by most people in the atheist camp, especially those going after the Bible (especially Mythicists), is what is known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc or “With this, therefore because of this.” This is seen especially with Aron and his use of parallels; I describe it as a severe case of parallelomania.[9] Aron states in his book:   The scholarly consensus is that the Bible was written by many human authors from different generations, different nations, and even different religions, some of them pagan. These include the Sumerian King List, the creation myth of the Enûma Eliš, the Epic of Atrahasis, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Persian Avestas of Zoroaster, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the religion of Amen-Ra, the astrology of Helel bin Shahar, and the collective legends of many different neighboring religions just within the Iraqi floodplain alone.[10]

  Aron provides absolutely no citation for any of this, as one would expect from someone who does not research his material. While scholars have long noted the parallels between the Enûma Eliš, the Epic of Atrahasis, the Epic of Gilgamesh, etc, they do not argue that the Bible is somehow a conglomeration of these myths, in any way, and probably are not even directly reliant on them either. David Tsumura has noted numerous differences[11] which prevent us from making too much of these parallels between Enûma Eliš and Genesis 1, for example, which atheists attempt to argue is the result of copying, as is the case with Aron.[12] Other claims of these are simply faulty. The Avestas’ antiquity is unknown, so Aron’s argument makes little sense. The Avestas we have derived from what is called a “master copy,” from the Sasanian Empire (which started in the third century CE). This alone means we cannot objectively link them to the Bible, as it the works we in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament were finished by the end of the first century CE or beginning of the second century CE.[13] Other figures and elements Aron brings up seem rather strange. Helel bin Shahar is found in Isaiah 14:12-15, which refers to the “Morning star.” This could possibly refer to the

deity Attar but debate emanates across scholarship over this entire passage.[14] The astrological themes have to do with helel bin shahar being identified as the planet Venus, which is commonly associated with the god Attar (see footnote 5). However, we have no idea of where this passage or mythos would have arisen geographically, and easily could have simply been a long-standing part of Israelite mythos, as it had a continuity with its Canaanite neighbors and ancestors. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is even more questionable, since there is no de facto “Book of the Dead.” Each one was customized for whomever wished to produce one, and one could find numerous different versions and variants of these funerary texts.[15] It is also doubtful how influential these texts were on the Israelites. Other texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis, like the Enûma Eliš, have had long noted parallels, but there is one issue which needs discussion. While the flood narratives of Genesis (there are two, a doublet, if one reads carefully[16]) are most certainly from a tradition of flood myths, going back to a Mesopotamian root,[17] it is not clear if they used the accounts that we have from the Akkadian sources as their own, or whether it was a transmitted tradition. There are definitely some indications of going back to this Mesopotamian origin, such as some linguistic evidence brought about by the Hebrew terms for “ark”, “pitch/resin,” and a number of others, all with very close cognates in Akkadian. Irving Finkel, as a result of the information we have, argues that the flood narrative originated in Mesopotamia and that Noah’s flood has a close lineage back to this Mesopotamian origin,[18] an assessment that I entirely agree with. To state, though, that the Bible was written by Mesopotamians (which is what is implied in Aron’s statements) is simply false, however. Not even this flood myth was written by Mesopotamians. It was written in Hebrew, with some Akkadian affinities, and is the result of a tradition of flood myths which originated in Mesopotamia. This is not the same as people from other nations writing the Bible, however. The issue of the Sumerian King-List can be dismissed rather easily. None of the figures on the King-List appear in the Bible, the ages are completely different between the antediluvian lords, and there is no

evidence of a reliance on the Sumerian language in the Bible’s records of its own pre-flood figures.[19]   Aron’s parallelomania goes beyond this, however. He attempts to parallel the sacrifice of Geshtu-E (whose blood is mixed with clay to make humans) and the salvific sacrifice of Jesus, on the basis of being “washed in […] blood.”[20] This is simply mad, since the parallel shares no thematic or symbolic similarity, except that blood is used. Jesus’ sacrifice is meant to bring about a salvation from sin, the “washing in blood” is symbolic of accepting his sacrifice. Whereas the death of Geshtu-E is permanent, and his blood is mixed into man in a literal sense to bring them to life. Furthermore, Aron claims that the creation is done so that the gods could rest (he says: “Sound familiar?”). Yet this is not said nor a part of any of these creation stories (either in Atrahasis or the Enûma Eliš). In fact, in the Enûma Eliš creation is not finished until Marduk separates the gods above and below in Tablet Six and then they spend a year erecting a temple to Marduk. Aron then says, “Some of the themes that you thought were originally to Jesus are more than a millennium older than that.” Here Aron has revealed his purpose. He clearly does not care for accurate history. He cares for use of the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. He wants to show that these parallels go back to ancient myths (as he loves doing with Noah’s ark, YHWH, and others, as noted before) so that he can say that the Bible is simply a load of myths from “other nations” and groups (“some of them pagan”), in an attempt to break and damage believers in Christianity. This is, thus, the second Foundational Falsehood of Aron Ra: he somehow thinks that simply because they correlate, they must be related.



Foundational Falsehood 3: Absurd Theories Convince   Aron Ra has a propensity to promote and rally behind strange, unorthodox, and simply inadequate theories about history, ones which most historians would regard as entirely untenable. Perhaps because many of these are simply because it fits his personal agenda to bring down Christianity. Others, however, seem to be nothing but absurd leftovers of his own upbringing, or mere hearsay. A classic example of this is the Book of Job. He claims in his book that it is possibly as old as 1500 BCE and that it is the oldest book in the Bible, and that it is not “adapted from previous polytheism.”[21] Here I am going to get into quite a bit of depth to dispel this rumor once and for all. The reality is that we do not know when the Book of Job was written, but there are indicators as to a rough timeframe. The first issue is the language. While the Prologue and the Epilogue are in standard Late Biblical Hebrew[22] (typical around the Babylonian Exile), the Dialogue portion is an entirely different beast. The Dialogue features innumerable Aramaisms and is the most lexically and grammatically diverse book in the Hebrew Bible, featuring hundreds of peculiarities not found anywhere else (or some rarely ever elsewhere). Tur-Sinai noted a large number of these in his own commentary.[23] These peculiarities led him to suppose that it was written in Aramaic around the Babylonian Exile, the sixth century BCE. However, other scholars have adopted various other options. A. Guillaume and F. H. Foster argued that the Book of Job was written in Arabic, given the southern affinities the book shares, and the ability of Arabic (as our most well attested Semitic language) to clarify the readings.[24] These suppositions came under scrutiny of other scholars.[25] Since the discovery of Ras Shamra, scholars have been using Ugaritic to try and better understand the text, which has aided to a large extent. Despite this, Hartley has argued that it may be a type of Hebrew-Aramaic creole.[26] Pfeiffer attempted torturously argue that the Book of Job was Edomitic,[27] which is not seriously considered anymore, since hardly anything is known of Edomite, and

what is seems to be a mere dialect of Hebrew, which would not explain the lexical variety at all. Then there are also those who simply find it to be the result of a scribe wishing the work to look foreign, an artificial variety.[28] In short, though, we cannot use the lexical variety to date the book of Job. Then there is the orthography of Job (how the words are spelled). They seem to feature several conservative spellings, such as the lack of use of matres lectionis (consonants used as vowels). [29] The problem is that this could be simply a scribe attempting to emulate older writing styles, not an indicator of an old work.[30] As such the orthography does not necessarily help us date it either. Then there is the problem of composition. Because of the language differences between the Prologue-Epilogue and the Dialogue, there is debate as to whether or not they were independent of each other. Some scholars see the PrologueEpilogue as an older section deriving from an ancient folktale or volksbuch.[31] Others have seen the Dialogue as the older portion.[32] The internal evidence also does not precisely help with dating either, despite the wishes of scholars like Guillaume. Despite this, its reliance on some other books of the Bible, such as Proto-Isaiah and possibly Genesis, lend credence to the idea that it is NOT the first book of the Bible, and because it relies on Proto-Isaiah, it cannot be before the eighth century BCE.   Another highly absurd theory is this: he supposes that the name baalzebub developed as a result of the Ugaritic religion and the “emerging religion of Moses,” coming into conflict, so that the “New Testament chose to demonize Ba’al Zebul, the ‘Lord on High,’ by distorting his name to Beelzebub, the ‘Lord of the Flies.’”[33] The madness of this roundabout thinking should be easily apparent. Firstly, he apparently does not realize that the New Testament doesn’t have baalzebub but actually has baal zebul (such as Mark 3:22, Βεελζεβοὺλ notice the ending lambda). Perhaps he meant Old Testament, but even then, the problem is that Ugarit did not exist during the time of the Old Testament being written, nor was it even remembered in texts. It was destroyed and forgotten during the Bronze Age Collapse (twelfth century BCE). Finally, Baalzebub is

outright stated to be a Philistine deity in the Hebrew Bible (2 Kings 1:1-18). Aron’s hypothesis relies on some strange anachronisms, misreading the texts of the Bible, and wild speculation. Then there is mythicism, a thesis which has been regarded as debunked for generations, being the center of focus for hundreds of book and article responses in the early 1900s. Today the number of PhD Historians who are vocal mythicists can be counted on two hands, and the number that hold academic positions on one hand. It is now widely recognized as a fringe theory by academics, at least those academics who bother to recognize its mere existence. Aron has a mythicist hypothesis that Jesus was a composite figure. He wrote his thesis in a blog article entitled “Jesus Never Existed,” on Patheos[34] and it is just as bad as one would expect it to be from someone who gets his information from BibleTrash.com. His article begins by what I can only assume is Aron Ra confirming that he has never read Bart Ehrman’s book on the existence of Jesus. The reason I say this is because he claims that Ehrman, “essentially argued that ‘everyone knows that Jesus existed,’ but that’s not true.” This is not at all what Ehrman argued. His book laboriously works its way through various problems, such as the various extra-biblical sources for Jesus,[35] the internal evidence in the New Testament,[36] and also takes aim at a number of mythicist arguments (the best being against Carrier’s misuse of Daniel and also the appeals to Dying-and-Rising gods[37]). His sources are also just a bunch of random articles, most entirely unqualified. In one article he links, it calls noted atheist speaker David Fitzgerald a historian (even though Fitzgerald has fewer qualifications than the average Creationist working at Answers in Genesis).[38] Aron notes that he has interviewed numerous different figures and mythicists, whom he claims all have expertise in the scriptures. The reality is that of all the figures he mentions (“Frank Zindler, D.M. Murdock, David Fitzgerald, Robert Price, and Richard Carrier) only one of them is a Bible scholar, that being Robert Price (a wonderfully kind and fun personality, unlike the other cohorts of Aron’s). The only other one with relevant credibility is Richard Carrier. The others are entirely unqualified in every respect, and their books show it, that being said so do Carrier’s. So, in short, Aron apparently has no idea

what expertise is, nor has any idea what a historian/scholar is (apparently Frank Zindler, a biologist, is a historian simply for publishing a book on Jesus in a press that he is the head editor for). Aron claims in the article that Josephus only mentions Jesus once. This is incorrect, he mentions him twice (the second account is regarded as authentic by almost every historian in the field, as well), in the Testamonium Flavianum and in Book 20 of Antiquities of the Jews. He is then impressed with the uncredentialed Michael Paulkovich’s list of 100 some-odd figures that he claims should have written about Jesus but did not. This is entirely bogus, however, since 99% of them had nothing to do with Jewish affairs, so had absolutely no reason to write a single thing. This included, in it, a figure whose only noted work was on gynecology and another who had a letter about a stolen pig, as Tim O’Neill of History for Atheists has noted in his own article against Aron.[39] The idea that Jesus was invented by reinterpreting a Jewish angel (a theme that mythicists have been promoting for over a century now) is faulty and based on some terribly ignorant readings of Philo of Alexandria. Aron Ra specifically cites Richard Carrier on the matter, but he is obviously ignorant of the fact that more qualified experts on the subject have shut this thesis down numerous times.[40] The short and sweet of the matter is that Carrier has misinterpreted both Philo and a passage in the book of Zechariah. Carrier reads specifically only part of Zechariah 6:11-12 and then Philo of Alexandria, On the Confusion of Tongues 62-63. In On the Confusion of Tongues, Philo is having a bit of a pesher-like moment, where he takes numerous phrases from the Hebrew Bible, removes them from their original context, and then construes them into indicating a special principle of his divine logos, which in Philo’s conception is an intermediate manifestation of God’s mind. It is the form of forms and idea of ideas (following Platonist logic). The problem comes when he specifically takes Zechariah 6:12 out of context, where it says, “Here is a man called the branch.” Carrier goes ballistic with this.[41] He argues that “the branch” (Greek: anatole¸ the word that Philo is most concerned with[42]) in Zechariah 6:12 is Joshua, the high priest mentioned previously in

6:11. The problem is that Carrier has a problem with reading ahead. It becomes clear that this figure is not the high priest Joshua when one reads 6:13, which describes this mysterious “branch” as building the temple and then sitting on the throne of Israel. Well, this cannot be Joshua at all. The priest is not king. Furthermore, at the end of verse 13 this prophesied “branch,” after taking the throne, will be “garbed in majesty” and “there will be a priest at his throne,”, and finally “there will be a peace between the two.”[43] Both the Hebrew and Greek distinguish between “the branch” and Joshua the Priest, thus, Zechariah is most certainly not talking about a “branch” whose name is Joshua. Furthermore, nowhere in On the Confusion of Tongues does Philo use any other part of Zechariah, nor does he ever name his logos Joshua. Carrier’s arguments simply come down to pure conjecture. The only other argument is to pull from entirely different works (such as On Dreams) where Philo calls his logos a High Priest. Yet, once again, he never names it, nor does he ever use Zechariah in those passages. It also misses the entire point. The High Priest is a mediator figure between the divine and man. The logos of Philo does the same. His logos is not literally a priest. Carrier simply misreads and misinterprets whatever he can to make his point.[44] And even if Philo did call it Joshua, its relevance to the New Testament writings is highly questionable (at best).[45] This goes to show that Aron has a number of faults when it comes to being gullible. Despite the fact that he drags on and on in his book about how gullible believers are, Aron seems to believe any crackpot thesis that will go against Christianity. From the New Testament canon being formed at Nicea,[46] to the idea that the first Christians were Gnostics[47] (clearly Aron has no conception of who the Gnostics were or what they believed), Aron’s mad opinions have shown one thing: that he finds absurd theories convincing, the third Foundational Falsehood of Aron Ra.



Foundational Falsehood 4: Inconsistency is Okay for Me, Not for You   Aron Ra, when it comes to history and philosophy, has absolutely no trouble being one of the most inconsistent and irrational people you could ever dream of meeting (and I am including Richard Dawkins and the 45th President of the United States in that list as well). He seems to have a philosophy of, “It is okay for me to be inconsistent, but not for you,” (given how often he criticizes Young Earth Creationists for this failing). Let us observe a few examples of this mentality of his in action.   So, Aron has very… let’s say, intriguing ideas of how Israelite religion formed. None of them are new or even remotely evidence based, but basically either his own conjecture or things he probably heard down the grapevine through equally ignorant atheist pals that he elevates to a pedestal.[48] In short, he does not do any research (as we’ve seen) and then feels as though he is qualified to speak on how Yahwism arose. Specifically, on what kind of deity YHWH was. Aron has entirely erratic views on this. He thinks YHWH is a Canaanite god[49] but then also thinks he is Egyptian based on Amen-Re.[50] He also thinks that YHWH was either a desert wind god,[51] or a “Jewish Volcano God” named “Jehovah”[52] (apparently Aron has not gotten the 200 some-odd year old memo that the name Jehovah is a mistranslation). The problem here is that all of this is both inconsistent (and also not based on any critical research either) and somewhat incompatible. For instance, there are no Ancient Near Eastern volcano gods. The closest one could come to would be fire associated deities such as Ishat or Moloch (though neither are associated with volcanoes as far as I am aware). Then there is the problem that Judaism is a post-Babylonian Exile development,[53] so if YHWH was a Jewish Volcano god, that would really not tell us anything about his origins. Then there is the problem of a Canaanite versus Egyptian origin. Which is it? Was YHWH a Canaanite god[54] according to Aron or developed from an Egyptian one? This

inconsistency leaves us unable to discern what Aron’s position is at all on the matter, since these ideas are simply contradictory, and are not helpful in any discussion of history. Another such instance of Aron’s complete inconsistency is his ever badgering of Creationists to use terms such as “theory” and “evolution” correctly and in an academic fashion (many of us will be able to recall hearing in one church or from a friend “Evolution is just a theory” or recounting Kent Hovind’s numerous types of “Evolution”), meanwhile steadfastly refusing[55] to accept the academic definition of the word “Atheism.”[56] Aron is the king of “Do as I say, not as I do” mentality, evidently. Needless to say, I find it difficult to see why anyone would take him seriously when he is quite clearly a hypocrite of the highest order. If one expects their opponents to abide by any set of rules, such as definitions, they should do the same. This is the fourth Foundational Falsehood of Aron Ra: he clearly thinks it is okay to be hypocritical.



SOME MORE BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL ERRORS OF RA   In addition to all of the errors mentioned above, and the problems associated with them, this chapter (the longest of the book by far) will catalog the plethora of historical errors and Biblical misreadings that Aron has made, errors which make all of the mentioned Falsehoods of his all the more clear.   1. Aron persists both in and outside of his book with the common misreading of YHWH as Jehovah.[57] The best reading of YHWH was established in the 18th century, based partially on Greek vocalizations and also the best estimation of what the Hebrew vowels would have been, this being Yahweh. 2. Aron misreads the Hebrew (by fiat of Richard Carrier) in Exodus 21:22-23.[58] Here Richard Carrier (with Aron following in his footsteps) misreads the Hebrew ’ason as being “evil.” This is despite the fact that the more typical word is ra‘. The word indicates in this passage an injury being invoked, not “evil.”[59] In short, Aron and Richard Carrier both seem to have no understanding of the Hebrew. The Greek Septuagint preserves this reading as well.[60] 3. Genesis 1, despite what Aron thinks, does not necessarily indicate multiple men and women were made.[61] The term used is ha-’adam (“the man”) in verse 27, which is in the masculine-singular form. The other terms used are ’oto (“him,” singular). It then oddly transitions to plural with ’otam “them,” after noting how God made them zakar (“male”) and uneqebah (“and female”). In short, the Hebrew does not necessarily follow into a plural plethora of people being made, but perhaps simply two people, one male and one female.[62] 4. He notes several books that are mentioned in the Bible and then he claims that they were “removed.”[63] Obviously, Aron either doesn’t know about how Biblical canon formed, or merely wishes to grasp at straws. The passages he cites are

simply providing sources for information, not saying that these were part of the canon. 5. He misreads several passages as condoning human sacrifice.[64] Leviticus 27:28-29 does not actually refer to human sacrifice but to the eternal devotion of a person or dedication of them to YHWH. Judges 11 does not condone human sacrifice, but it is a result of the poor and horrid vow of Jephthah. Numbers 3:11-13 and 31:31-40 also do not speak of human sacrifice but of humans that become dedicated and reserved for YHWH. This same trend continues for the remaining verses that Aron cites throughout, and it becomes clear that Aron never actually read the passages himself. 6. The Bible does not condone murder in any of the passages that Aron cites.[65] Murder, being the unlawful killing of someone, is never condoned. A case in point of this is, Aron cited Exodus 2:12 where Moses kills the Egyptian slaver. However, this is never once seen as positive, even amongst Moses’ fellow Israelites (which Aron would have known had he read literally two verses after). 7. He misreads the Talmud as promoting child molestation, yet all the passages he cites actually are dealing with hypothetical scenarios of what to do if such a horrid event took place.[66] They do not condone the actions. 8. He thinks that the Israelites thought of whales and fish as the same, citing Jonah 1:17 and comparing it to Matthew 12:40).[67] Yet the Greek of Matthew 12:40 uses the term ketous which does not actually denote a whale, but a large sea creature of some kind. It is the King James Version that translates it as whale, which is what Aron evidently used, thus giving him the errant reading. 9. Aron gets the strange idea that somehow YHWH is referred to with the Arabic ’allah in the Bible.[68]   These are just some of his misreadings which occur so frequently that an extensive list of them would probably be an entire full-length

book in their own right. Here are numerous other historical errors that Aron has made in addition to the misreadings.   1. Aron apparently thinks that the concept of angels did not exist prior to Zoroastrianism.[69] This is simply idiotic and nonsensical, because there is a long tradition of these minor messenger deities going all the way back to Ugarit.[70] In short, Aron’s position is simply asinine. 2. He argues that there were four sources for the Pentateuch (Documentary Hypothesis) and that this is the consensus of modern scholarship,[71] even though the Documentary Hypothesis has actually lost this consensus since the 1990’s.[72] 3. I’m unsure where Aron got his position about how Mesopotamian legends were altered by Phoenicians 3000 years ago, in “’an editorial revisioning.’”[73] This claim he makes seems odd. Either he thinks the Israelites were Phoenicians or that they gained their myths from the Phoenicians, or perhaps Aron simply just has no idea who the Phoenicians were and is throwing out ethnic terms he has heard. 4. He has a strange and absurd idea that Moses was a compilation of Sargon of Akkad, Hammurabi, the Egyptian priest Djadjamankh, etc.[74] I know of no scholar in the 21st century that makes these arguments. His citation on Sargon comes from two entirely unqualified pseudo-intellectuals Lloyd and Elizabeth Graham. Most of the “parallels” that Aron points to are either generalized themes or too vague to make anything of. It is more that, like Sargon, there was a motif used of a ruler rising from common or poor origins. There is no evidence that Moses’ figure was based on Sargon of Akkad. 5. Aron uses Richard Carrier’s nonsense to argue that Inanna was a dying-rising god connected with a crucifixion.[75] I’ve previously dealt with this nonsense from Godless Engineer, but the reality is that Inanna (and the later variant of the Descent myth with Ishtar) never mentions a crucifixion of

any kind.[76] Flaws result from problems such as Carrier using an outdated translation, not having any expertise in Ancient Near Eastern scholarship, and also simply suffering from a chronic case of parallelomania.[77] 6. Aron thinks that there is not polytheism (or remnants of it) in the book of Job.[78] Evidently, he has never read Job 1:6 and 38:7, where the “sons of God” and “the Satan” come before YHWH. It has been long noted that these are deities that are subordinate to YHWH in these passages.[79] 7. He thinks that the Ebionites and Docetists combined to become Orthodoxy in Christianity[80]… I’ll let that nonsense sink in a minute. Evidently, Aron has never read Bart Ehrman’s work on heresies.[81] 8. Aron thinks the New Testament was canonized in the fourth century at Nicea.[82] I shouldn’t need to even say why this is wrong at this point.   The errors that Aron makes are so prolific that, like his misreadings of the Bible, could fill an entire book on their own. I am merely giving you more of a taste here, since I am attempting to keep this short and accessible (and not the rambling and incoherent mess that is his book). The work of Aron is, purely and simply, some of the worst that is out there from the atheist community.



ARON IS AN ATHEIST PREACHER, NOT EDUCATOR   The point of this brief work has been to demonstrate a few basic things about Aron Ra: that he is not an educator, that he actively misleads people, and that he clearly does not seem to care about the fact that he is doing so. All of these have become more and more evident, and I have only begun to scratch the surface of all the historical and philosophical inconsistencies and horrors that Aron promotes. It cannot be stressed enough that Aron is a dangerous individual as a result of all the terrible history and philosophy he promotes. In addition to all these simply faulty positions he takes and misleads people with, he promotes an active disdain and hate of religion, which targets and shames individuals. The tactics that Aron takes are those of fire and brimstone preachers, of people attempting to guilt-trip people into being atheists. He does this by throwing his illiterate philosophical positions out, stating that the idea of a God is simply impossible and that those who believe it believe in a “magical sky fairy” and the like. He is not trying to educate people, he is not trying to be an honest interlocutor, nor does he seem interested in being an honest interlocutor either. He is interested in being exactly the same kind of person that he fights against; a verbally violent, mentally manipulative, and emotionally damaging authority figure, shaming people into his personal beliefs. And the Atheist community has bought into his work and his person hook, line, and sinker. They have shown themselves gullible, just as those they criticize. My final statement for this short little essay on Aron is to say, the atheist community should be wary and either require Aron to change, or disown him, because he will only forever damage and make the atheist community a joke to academics, to Christians, and to everyone else. Aron has made the atheist community no longer a safe space for learning and questioning, but a place just as dangerous as a fundamentalist Church.



SUGGESTED READING   For more mainstream scholarship on the Bible:   Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God, Second Edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002)   John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)   Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, translated by Thomas Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998)   Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973)   Simon B. Parker (ed), Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997)   Raymond Westbrook, Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Law (Paris: 1988)   Jan Joosten and Ronald Hendel, How Old is the Hebrew Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018)   Heath Dewrell, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017)   Anthony Tomasino, Judaism Before Jesus (Downers Grove: Inversity Press Academic, 2003)   For more conservative approaches see:   Patrick D. Miller, The Religion of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000)

  Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015) Richard Hess, Israelite Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007)   William J. Webb, Corporal Punishment in the Bible (Downers Grove: Invarsity Press Academic, 2011)



AFTERWORD   Despite what you may have heard, the Bible is a complicated book. One of the primary reasons for thinking this is that the Bible isn’t a book at all; it’s an anthology. Within its pages we find erotic poetry, political propaganda, contemplative philosophy, urgent epistles, apocalyptic visions, and much more. And this anthology didn’t just fall from the sky into our laps, bound in calfskin leather with a ribbon marker in the middle. Rather, its various authors wrote in varying circumstances and sometimes with contrary views on particular subjects. Add to all of this that the biblical texts were written in languages most of us cannot speak (let alone read or write) and in a cultural context few of us can even begin to fathom, where gods battled sea serpents, prophets raised the dead, and blood flowed often from the veins of animals upon altars and men upon battlefields. To read this anthology requires some appreciation for all of this and a willingness to engage with it in good faith. But for so many readers, both are in short supply. As an atheist on social media, I frequently encounter Christians who look at the creation narrative of Genesis 1 and see it as some historical account of God’s creation of the cosmos. They correctly infer that the days of Genesis are twenty-four hour days but from there they extrapolate a “scientific” scheme that contradicts what we know about the formation of the universe from actual scientific discoveries. They engage with the Bible in good faith, but they often lack the background knowledge to appreciate how these ancient texts function and what they are telling their ancient readers. But as Mr. Hansen has demonstrated in this essay, this is not limited to what we would consider “fundamentalist” Christianity; it is a disease plaguing atheism as well. Aron Ra’s rather flat-footed reading of biblical texts may garner him a following among the godless, but for those of us who do not believe in any deities and seek to understand both what the Bible is saying and how it is saying it, his approach leaves much to be desired. He not only lacks an appreciation for the texts’ linguistic, historical, and cultural background, he refuses to engage with it in good faith as well.

  Aron Ra’s approach to the Bible is the same as so many among my atheist brothers and sisters: if the Bible is wrong on some issue, then it should be cast aside on every issue. Consequently, they read it only to find fault with it, not to understand it. This all-or-nothing mentality is the thinking of a fundamentalist, not of one who can appreciate color and nuance. Does the Bible contain troubling material? Of course. But as Richard Elliot Friedman so aptly stated, “One does not need to deny what is troubling in order to pay respect to what is heartening.”[83] If Aron Ra wants to be taken seriously, perhaps he should make every effort to dig into biblical scholarship and bring out the rich color of the biblical texts. This approach doesn’t entail he blindly agree with all the Bible says.   Far from it, it will properly arm him to disagree with it where it is wrong.   Ben, the Amateur Exegete August 30, 2019 www.amateurexegete.com



APPENDIX A: GODLESS ENGINEER ON INANNA[84]   “The Not So Parallel Goddess”   Well, today I’m going to do a basic treatment of Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld for one specific reason: because Godless Engineer has made a ton of mistakes and clearly does not understand the myths that he discusses. Instead of relying on someone wholly and entirely unqualified to talk on the matters (as GE does with Richard Carrier), I will be relying on the works from noted scholars like Lapinkivi, Jacobsen, and Mettinger.   The Descent and the Pertinent Passages   Inanna’s descent comes to us from primarily from two sets of texts. The first is Sumerian, the older, and tells the story of the great goddess Inanna, who in her hubris, wishes to take control over the netherworld. Inanna wears these great clothes and items of power and then demands entrance into the underworld. Ereshkigal the ruler of the underworld then orders her servants to remove one of the items at each of the seven gates to the underworld. Inanna is then stripped of those items and led to the underworld, where, in her pride, she attempts to usurp the throne of the underworld from Ereshkigal. In doing so, however, a great punishment is enacted by the Annuna gods (the judges in the underworld) and she is condemned. As a result, she is killed and then she is transformed into a slab of meat, which is then hung on a hook (as a butcher hangs meat out). After three days and three nights, mourning rituals begin, and to cut the story short, she is eventually resurrected after receiving the grass (or pasture) and water of life, she is partially revived, and then for her to truly return a substitute must be offered. As a result, Dumuzi is eventually chosen.

  The Akkadian version is somewhat different. Like the Sumerian, Ishtar (while largely equivalent to Inanna, there are

important differences in iconography and depiction in texts) goes to the underworld and at each gate is stripped of an article of powerful clothing. At the last gate, she is entirely exposed and in anger she lashes out at Ereshkigal. As a result, Ereshkigal cries to her servant to imprison her and then release 60 diseases upon Ishtar. Ishtar is then apparently transformed into a waterskin (lines 98-99) and then eventually she is revived also with the water of life. Afterwards, the text implies the bilocation of Tammuz would occur.

Godless Engineer and The Descent   Godless Engineer makes innumerable mistakes when discussing the Descent of Inanna. First of all, she is not abandoning her throne, but attempting to increase her dominion in the Sumerian account. Jacobsen’s translation specifically states, “the goddess had / from the upper heaven / her heart set / on the netherworld.”[85] GE’s position of her abandoning her throne is not quite accurate. As a sign of her trying to retain power, she clothes herself in seven items of her offices, a sign of her power. She also does not make a prophecy about her death but makes provisions in case it occurs. There is a difference. A Prophecy is that which is a matter of fact, that which  WILL  happen. Inanna does not state that it will happen but makes sure to contemplate what would happen IF it happened. She also is not crucified. Jacobsen’s translation reads, “Killed she was, and turned / into a slab of tainted meat, / and the slab of tainted meat / a man hung from a peg.”[86] This is not a crucifixion but more closely describes the fate of the animals during the butchering season (chopped and hung from a hook), as Jacobsen’s introduction to this notes.[87] As Mettinger notes, it is also not three days and nights until she is resurrected, but until mourning rituals begin.[88]  GE, like Carrier, has simply misread and misunderstood the texts entirely. The Akkadian variant (i.e. the one closest to Jesus’ lifetime) also is even less like Jesus. Here, Ishtar is not even hung on a hook, but is imprisoned and seemingly transformed into a water skin, after being infected with the 60 diseases. Here she is revived by a man who drinks from the waterskin, coming in contact with her body thus

(lines 98-99). Lapinkivi further notes that this is paralleled in a different myth where Ishtar turns an old woman, Bilulu, into a waterskin as well.[89]  The Akkadian variant makes no mention of Ishtar creating a provision in case of her failure, either. Thus, the closest account to Jesus does is lacking this.   The Queen of Heaven, Inanna/Ishtar, and the Old Testament   There are a lot of problems that pop up as a result of the passages that mention the mysterious “Queen of Heaven.” Here, GE attempts to identify this figure (found in Jeremiah 44:15-26 and Jeremiah 7:18) as being Ishtar/Inanna. The identification is conjectural, however. Unbeknownst to GE, the title “Queen of Heaven” is applied to numerous goddesses of the ANE, including: Anat, Asherah, Qudshu, Shapshu, and Ishtar/Inanna. In short, this singular title could be any of them, and the identification cannot be supported by the epithet alone. William G. Dever identifies her with Astarte (the West Semitic variant of Ishtar),[90] and what is notable is that West Semitic Astarte has absolutely no myth associated with a descent into the underworld. Tilde Binger identifies this figure in Jeremiah as Asherah.[91] The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible  identifies all the figures listed above as possible suspects (Anat, Asherah, Astarte, Ishtar, Qudshu, and Shapshu).[92]  It is also even possible that this was a syncretistic deity of many goddesses, and so shouldn’t be identified with any one deity.[93]  So, GE’s identification is weak. His only actual connection to be made is with Tammuz in Ezekiel 8:14. However, this makes no mention of the descent of Ishtar/Inanna, nor even of any return or bilocation of Tammuz. It simply notes the common mourning rite that took place. So, it doesn’t really support GE’s position at all, at best only in the loosest senses.   Jesus and Inanna   So, as we can see, all of the parallels GE was spouting before can be rather summed up in terms of parallelomania.[94] Inanna’s descent

into the underworld was not a forsaking of her power, but an attempt to expand it in her hubris, an attempt to control the underworld. She did not make a prophecy about her death, but a provision in case it occurred (provision against hypothetical, not statement of fact). She is not crucified, but is killed, transformed into a slab of meat, and then hung on a butcher’s hook. She also is not resurrected after three days, instead it is mourning rites that are performed after three days. The time of revival is not specified. Furthermore, Inanna being stripped of her clothes does not parallel the tortures of Jesus. Inanna’s stripping of clothes has to do with her power being removed resulting in ultimate doom for her, which has dire consequences afterward, Tammuz would be forced into the underworld upon her return as a substitute. Jesus’ torture and death, however, is the exact opposite, since that brings him directly to be translated and therefore come into heavenly glory entirely. They are literally polar opposites in every literary thematic fashion. Lastly, despite what GE says, Jesus would never and is not ever an agricultural god. He is not associated with vegetation cycles or fertility or with vegetation weather patterning or flooding. He is not an agricultural god in any sense, and never would be, regardless.   Conclusion   The arguments from Godless Engineer simply do not appear to hold up when one looks closely at the myths that he discusses, or the Biblical passages. Instead, many of them are thematically opposed to what Godless Engineer (and by fiat Richard Carrier) have claimed and attempted to argue, in parallel with Jesus.



CONTRIBUTOR CONTACTS   Ben, The Amateur Exegete  

YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCNz8TXY3QeAO9SSoF4ZR_c g Blog: www.amateurexegete.com   Inspiring Philosophy   YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/InspiringPhilosophy Website: www.inspiringphilosophy.org

Facebook:

www.facebook.com/inspiringphilosophy Patreon: www.patreon.com/inspiringphilosophy [1]

Aron Ra, The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism, First Edition (Durham: Pitchstone

Publishing, 2016), p. 53 [2]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 54

[3]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 76

[4]

This is two items: h- and ‘wp. h- is the definitive article, equivalent to English “the,” and

then ‘wp is the noun, “flying creature.” [5]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 76

[6]

Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015), pp. 87-88

[7]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 76

[8]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 76

[9]

See the definitive work: Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,”  Journal of Biblical

Literature 81.1 (1962), pp. 1-13

[10]

Aron Ra, The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism, First Edition (Durham:

Pitchstone Publishing, 2016), pp. 68-69 [11]

David Tsumura, Creation and Destruction (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), pp. 72-74

[12]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 69

[13]

For discussion on the ages see: Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten, How Old is the

Hebrew Bible, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018) and Lee Martin McDonald and James Sanders, The Canon Debate (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2001). [14]

See: Ulf Oldenburg, “Above the Stars of El,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche

Wissenschaft 82.2 (1970), pp. 187-208 and Michael Heiser, “The Mythological Provenance of ISA. XIV 12-15: A Reconsideration of the Ugaritic Material,” Vetus Testamentum 51.3 (2001), pp. 354-369. On the converse and more skeptical side see: Mark S. Smith, Review of Hugh R Page Jr., “The Myth of Cosmic Rebellion: A Study of its Reflexes in Ugaritic and Biblical Literature,” Review of Biblical Literature (1998), which notes several flaws and errors with the ideas presented. [15]

Jan Assman’s Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, translated by David Lorton (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 2005) is highly suggested on this matter. [16]

Richard E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco,

1997), p. 51 [17]

Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and

Cuneiform Texts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 70f. [18]

Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah (New York: Nan Talese, 2014). See the whole of

chapter fourteen for dialogue on this. [19]

Richard Hess, “The Genealogies of Genesis 1-11 and Comparative Literature,” Biblica

70.2 (1989), pp. 241-254 [20] [21]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 69 Aron Ra, The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism, First Edition (Durham:

Pitchstone Publishing, 2016), p. 73 [22]

Avi Hurvitz, “The Date of the Prose-Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered,” The

Harvard Theological Review 67.1 (1974), pp. 17-34 [23]

N. H. Tur-Sinai, The Book of Job, Revised Edition (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1967),

pp. VIII-LI. [24]

Alfred Guillaume, “The First Book to Come Out of Arabia”, Islamic Studies 3.2, (1964),

pp. 151-166, “The Arabic Background of the Book of Job”, in F. F. Bruce, ed, Promise and Fulfilment: Essays Presented to Professor S. H. Hooke in Celebration of His Ninetieth Birthday (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1963), pp. 106-27, and Studies in the Book of Job: with a new Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1968), pp. 1-14; F. H. Foster, “Is the Book of Job a

Translation of an Arabic Original,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 49.1 (1932), pp. 21-45. [25]

Marvin H. Pope, Job: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, AB 15, Third Edition (Garden

City: Doubleday & Co., 1986), p. XLIX [26]

John E. Hartley, The Book of Job”, NICOT, First Edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

1988), p. 6. Similar to this was: W. A. Irwin, “Job” in Matthew Black; H. H. Rowley, eds, PCB, (Sunbury-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson and Sons LTD, 1962), p. 391 who posited that it was written in a special dialect of Hebrew. [27]

Robert Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament, Revised Edition, (New York: Harper &

Brothers Publishers, 1948), pp. 678-683 and “Edomitic Wisdom”, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 44 (1926), pp. 13-25 [28]

C. L. Seow, Job 1-21: Interpretation and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013),

p. 24 [29]

David N. Freedman, “Orthographic Peculiarities in the Book of Job” Eretz-Israel 9

(1969), pp. 35-44 [30]

C. L. Seow, “Orthography, Textual Criticism, and the Poetry of Job,” Journal of Biblical

Literature 130.1 (2011), pp. 63-85 [31]

Nahum Sarna, “Epic Substratum in the Prose of Job,” Journal of Biblical Literature 76.1

(1957), pp. 13-25 [32]

Tur-Sinai, 1967, pp. XXX-XL

[33]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 74

[34]

The

tortured

arguments

and

article

can

be

found

here:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/03/jesus-never-existed/ (accessed 8/23/2019). [35]

Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (San

Francisco: HarperOne, 2012), pp. 35-68 [36]

Ehrman, 2012, pp. 69-93, 105-141

[37]

Ehrman, 2012, pp. 168-170 and 221-230

[38]

The article in question can be found here: https://metro.co.uk/2015/04/03/jesus-christ-

never-existed-at-all-historian-claims-5134042/ (accessed 8/23/2019) [39]

Which can be found here: historyforatheists.com/2019/02/amalgam-jesus/ (accessed:

8/23/2019). [40]

Larry Hurtado for instance. larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/gee-dr-carrier-

youre-really-upset/. [41]

Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014),

pp. 200-205, hereafter known as OHJ.

[42]

Previously he uses other passages from Genesis and other books which in the

Septuagint have the word anatole present. [43] [44]

Translations are all mine. He does this with Plutarch, Life of Romulus (despite what Carrier claims in OHJ,

Romulus does not die and rise and is not born of a virgin, and no account attests to either of these); Herodotus, Histories (there is no dying-rising Zalmoxis, it is Carrier’s pure conjecture); Paul’s epistle Romans (there is no “cosmic sperm bank,”); as well as misreading numerous secondary sources such as: Mark S. Smith’s monographs on the Ugaritic Baal Cycle (which actually show the Dying-Rising god archetype to be methodologically faulty), Mircea Eliade’s Zalmoxis the Vanishing God (which never attests to a dying-rising Zalmoxis, but to Zalmoxis undergoing a katabsis), as well as Tryggve Mettinger, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis (and by fiat Raphael Patai), etc. All of them are actually contra his initial positions in various ways. He simply did not read them closely. [45]

David Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993) is

one of the best monographs on this subject. See pages 63-86. [46]

Aron Ra, 2016, p.

[47]

Aron Ra, 2016, p.

[48]

Carrier and mythicist fans such as Dan Barker, David Fitzgerald, and Raphael Lataster.

[49]

Aron’s video “How Mythology Disproves Noah’s Ark,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=DrDTaHjg2IQ&t=7s which attempts and fails to disprove Noah’s ark with mythology, since Aron is ignorant of the mythology he talks about. The video came out in July of 2017. [50]

Aron’s video “Debate: Hovind vs Ra – Why Hovind Failed,” www.youtube.com/watch?

v=pnnVXBkune0&feature=youtu.be&t=445&fbclid=IwAR0aC3g_KdIVdLQDA0d49aHmXzVVrYJCV2J18M61F0j2Fqxqxp_zLWhF8 roughly around the 7 minutes and 25 second mark, originally published in January of 2019. [51]

His

article,

“Irreducible

Irrationalism,”

can

be

found

www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/07/04/irreducible-irrationalism/

here: originally

written in July of 2017. [52]

From

March

2018,

Aron’s

video

“Everything

from

Nothing”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blzlS5HVfY&list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMKnaxEzgOPup9WKlNPZwiJN&index=5 [53]

A good introduction to that subject is: Anthony Tomasino, Judaism Before Jesus

(Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press Academic, 2003) [54]

It should be noted here that YHWH is not found among any Canaanite pantheons. The

earliest unambiguous mention of him was from the Mesha Stele, circa the ninth century BCE.

[55]

One

such

horrid

occasion

of

his

adamant

refusal

can

be

found

here:

www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2019/06/21/is-an-agnostic-also-atheist/ [56]

Robert Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd Edition (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 59 [57]

Aron Ra, The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism, First Edition (Durham:

Pitchstone Publishing, 2016), p. 53 [58]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 61

[59]

The Hebrew reading of mine was confirmed by my dear friend Brak, who is a PhD

student of Second Temple Judaism. [60]

See: Lancelot Brenton, The Septuagint With Apocrypha (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1986),

p. 98 [61]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 68

[62]

For discourse on Genesis 1, see Mark S. Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1

(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010). [63]

Aron Ra, 2016, pp. 75-76

[64]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 76

[65]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 77

[66]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 77

[67]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 76

[68]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 106

[69]

His

article,

“Irreducible

Irrationalism,”

can

be

found

here:

www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/07/04/irreducible-irrationalism/ [70]

Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism (New York: Oxford University Press,

2001), p. 46 [71]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 70

[72]

Thomas Dozeman and Konrad Schmid, A Farewell to the Yahwist? (Atlanta: Society of

Biblical Literature, 2006) [73]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 70. Note that Aron is quoting some other source here, but never

identifies it. The man does not seem to know how to keep his quotes in check or sourced. One could easily argue that much of Aron’s book could qualify as plagiarism as a result. [74]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 71-72

[75]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 73

[76]

Christopher Hansen, “Inanna: The Not So Parallel Goddess,” a guest post on

Amateurexegete.com.

https://amateurexegete.com/2019/08/21/inanna-the-not-so-parallel-

goddess-guest-post-by-chris-h/ [77]

Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81.1 (1962), pp. 1-13

[78]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 73

[79]

Even highly Christian scholars such Peter Enns note this, see The Bible Tells Me So

(New York: HarperOne, 2014), p. 150-151 [80]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 74

[81]

Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)

[82]

Aron Ra, 2016, p. 75

[83]

Richard Elliot Friedman, The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters (New York:

HarperOne, 2017), p. 214. [84] Thanks to Ben, the Amateur Exegete, for allowing me to reproduce this here. Please see the original post here: https://amateurexegete.com/2019/08/21/inanna-the-not-soparallel-goddess-guest-post-by-chris-h/ [85]

Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once… (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987),

p. 206 [86]

Jacobsen, 1987, p. 215

[87]

Jacobsen, 1987, p. 205

[88]

Tryggve Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2001),

p. 189 [89]

Pirjo Lapinkivi, Istar’s Descent and Resurrection (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), p.

83-84 [90]

William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 233

[91]

Tilde Binger,  Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel, and the Old Testament  (Sheffield:

Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), p. 116n19. This is also held by M. Dijkstra in  Only One God (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), p. 114. [92]

S.V. “Queen of Heaven,” in Karel van der Toorn, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the

Bible, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 678-680 [93]

Vriezen, “Archaeological Traces of Cult in Israel,” in Bob Becking, et al,  Only One

God (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), p. 69 [94]

Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81.1 (1962), pp. 1-13