Mysteries of the Bible: From Genesis to Revelation, the Unexplained Explained

By Anthony North

Creation. Old Testament. Ark of the Covenant. Angels & Demons. Miracles. Jesus Christ. Revelation. In this ground-breaking study, Anthony North looks anew at the Christian Bible, showing how the supposed impossible is not as mysterious as we think.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony North
• Release date: Mar 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463436684

Anthony North

Thinker & Storyteller****7,453 Words to Save the UK and I,Writer are now FREE. Scroll down to find them.*****1955 (Yorkshire, England) – I am born (Damn! Already been done). ‘Twas the best of times ... (Oh well).I was actually born in the year of Einstein's death, close to Scrooge's Counting House. It doesn't mean anything but it sounds good. As for my education, I left school at 15 and have had no formal education since. Hence, I'm self-taught.****From a family of newsagents, at 18 I did a Dick Whittington and went off to London, only to return to pretend to be Charlie and work in a chocolate factory.When I was ten I was asked what I wanted to be. I said soldier, writer and Dad. I never thought of it for years – having too much fun, such as a time as lead guitarist in a local rock band – but I served nine years in the RAF, got married and had seven kids. I realized my words had been precognitive when, at age 27, I came down with M.E. – a condition I’ve suffered ever since – and turned my attention to writing.Indeed, as I realized that no expert could tell me what was wrong with me, I began my quest to find out why. Little did I realize it would last decades and take me through the entire history of knowledge, leaving me with the certainty that our knowledge systems are inadequate.****My non-fiction is based on P-ology, a thought process I devised to work with patterns of knowledge, and designed to be a bedfellow to specialization. A form of Rational Holism, it seeks out areas the specialist may have missed. I work from encyclopaedias and introductory volumes in order to gain a grasp of many subjects and am not an expert in anything, but those patterns keep forming. Hence, I do not deal in truth, but ideas, and cover everything from politics to the paranormal.When reading my work I ask only: do I make sense? Of course, an expert would say: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I agree. And an expert has so little knowledge of everything.I also write novels and Flash Fiction in all genres.

Book preview

Mysteries of the Bible:

From Genesis to Revelation, the Unexplained Explained

By Anthony North

Copyright: Anthony North 2020

Cover image copyright: Yvonne North, 2020

Smashwords Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission

Other books by Anthony North

Beginning in 2019 I’m publishing 14 volumes of my fiction, inc 7 novels in most genres, & 21 works of non-fiction covering cults, politics, conspiracies, religion, disasters, science, philosophy, warfare, crime, psychology, new age, green issues & all areas of the unexplained, inc ufology, lost worlds and the paranormal. Hopefully appearing at the rate of one a month, check out the latest launch at my bookstore at http://anthonynorth.com or buy direct from Smashwords for all devices at: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/anthonynorth

In addition to the above, you may like my ‘I’ Series – 8 volumes of flash fiction (horror, sci fi, romance, adventure, crime), 4 volumes of poetry & 5 volumes of short essays from politics to the unexplained. Available from same links as above. Also check out my bookstore for news of my books out in paperback.

CONTENTS

Chapter One - God-Bother

Chapter Two - Re-Shaping the Earth

Chapter Three - Thinking the Thinkable

Chapter Four - Moses

Chapter Five - The Creation Account

Chapter Six - Adam & Eve Narrative

Chapter Seven - Understanding Genesis

Chapter Eight - The Flood

Chapter Nine - Biblical Miracles

Chapter Ten - Ark of the Covenant

Chapter Eleven - Angels & Demons

Chapter Twelve - The Nature of Jesus

Chapter Thirteen - Judaic Tradition

Chapter Fourteen - From Jesus To Christ

Chapter Fifteen - Trinity & Beyond

Chapter Sixteen - Revelation

Bibliography

About the Author

Connect With Anthony

Chapter One - GOD-BOTHER

It's like being a God, writing a book. You take its component parts, mix them up, re-arrange in a specific order, and indulge in an act of creation. You remember the time fondly. You know: on the first day I did this …

God, I need a rest.

A book is more than anything else a collection of words, but words themselves are a mystery. Look at a single word and all you have is a collection of letters which, in the right order, spell the word. This is their only function. But put words together and something magical occurs. It grasps a meaning beyond the sum of its parts. It conveys a message that can never be found in any of the single words. The message exists nowhere else but in the pattern of the sentence, the paragraph, the chapter, the book. It is omnipotent; above any understanding by science; above the individual; above life. And people read the words in a book and reject or believe. And if they believe, they take their meaning into the world, and we have a reality. But a reality changed by the power of the word.

Is this the power of God?

The ultimate God of the west is the One God of the Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Christianity is dominant in the west, and is seen, by the believer, as an ultimate truth. Its main teaching is that every human being has an immortal soul created by, and for the use of, an eternal God. This eternal and only God has three distinct identities, understood in terms of the Trinity: God the Father and Creator of all things; God the Son, incarnate in Christ as the Revelation to humanity of God's nature and power over death; and God the Holy Spirit, through which the human soul activates and carries out God's purpose.

Man also has Free Will, so he has a choice as to whether he follows God's purpose. If he does, and leads a good and virtuous life, he will be rewarded with an eternity in Heaven. Should he choose not to follow a good life, and instead becomes bad, upon death he will be judged, and God will decide whether his eternal residence should be Hell.

To follow a good and virtuous life, the Christian indulges in prayer, where the soul learns the meaning of God's message. However, with the exception of a definite Hell, the basis of Christianity has been set out for us in sixty six books of archaic writings, collectively known as the Bible. And to the true believer in Christianity, the Bible holds an absolute, literal truth.

In today's western society Mammon has begun to replace God as the ultimate force, and beliefs in Christianity are on the wane. Science is now seen as the ultimate in our search for knowledge. Such a search has eaten deeply into the validity of a religion so immersed in mythology as Christianity. Increasingly, we are becoming a secular society. But whereas this may be advancement in terms of releasing ourselves from the stultifying effects of a religiously controlled society, few can argue that many of the adverse effects upon our culture are due to a lack of meaning and morality that was once - perhaps overly - the bedfellow of our Christian system.

Christianity itself may hold a great deal of blame for the lowering of morality and lack of meaning in modern society. For so long the Church failed to move with the times, the overall identity of our society moving far ahead of Christianity's ability to change, leaving a meaningless void in our cultural psyche. The fundamentalist doggedly maintains his stance that the Bible DOES portray a literal truth, rather than accepting the possibility of Christianity - even the Bible itself - being a cultural interpretation of nature, devised, essentially, for the people of their times.

This book begins with a study of the first of the books of the Bible. Genesis - the portrayal of God's work as Creator. I ask if Genesis can still be upheld when the above cultural interpretation is taken into account? I argue that my research into the Creation Account and Adam and Eve Narrative of Genesis suggest that it can.

As in most areas of life, ideas concerning these two chapters of Genesis fall into two distinct, and intransigent, schools of thought. On the one hand we have the believer, upholding the literal truth; and on the other we have the sceptic, passing the buck by relegating the chapters to an amalgam of existent myths of the time. The occasional person who has attempted to study the two chapters logically tends to fall back on the 'translation' syndrome, showing how a particular sentence could mean this or that in the original Aramaic or Hebrew. My approach to the two chapters is totally different to the above; albeit, accepting the idea that the account could be an amalgam; but not an amalgam of pure myth. Rather, could the Creation Account and Adam and Eve Narrative be almost exact scientific theses?

The word 'genesis' comes from the Greek and means 'origin.' The Genesis accounts tell us that God created the Universe and everything in it in Six Days and rested on the Seventh. The crowning glory of Creation was Adam and Eve, who lived in the Garden of Eden, eating any fruit but from the 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil.' But denying God's will, they ate, became aware of their nakedness, and were shamed. Discovering temptation and sex, God banished them from the Garden and condemned them to a life of strife and work.

Up until the 19th century most scholars agreed that the accounts were written by the prophet, Moses, along with the rest of the first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Pentateuch, or the Torah to the Jew. The Creation Account finds parallels with earlier myths coming from Canaanite and Babylonian cultures, suggesting much of the Biblical account could have been borrowed. But the Biblical accounts reject the earlier idea of God battling primordial matter in order to create. Indeed, neither account tackles the problem of what was here before Creation. Even if there was nothing, this is not said.

The accounts clearly indulge in 'meta-narrative', meaning a way of describing reality through story-like plots. In the modern world this is seen as a problem. Essentially myth-making, it is an easy device to persuade and impose a view of reality which serves the writer, his claims to know the 'truth' seen as ideological and dangerous.

The Creation Account and Adam and Eve Narrative are thought to have another purpose other than mere creation of the universe and man. Man is created 'in God's image', giving a clear indication as to how we should be - for instance, God-like in our dealings