Short Stories, Essays and Comments

By Tim Conley

Our society is based upon the logic that citizens can say whatever is on their minds - with the proviso that they bring no harm or slander against another person.

In the spirit of the above I have put together a compilation of short stories, essays and comments on politics, religion and other hot button topics that light up our western society.

Some of the comments on religion are controversial and might cause some folks to question whether I am in my right mind when I take a stand on the topic in question. That may be good - we should all be challenged to think about those tenets we hold dear and close to our hearts. In light of this - I hope you are challenged to consider what you believe in as you read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Conley
• Release date: Jul 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476490182

Tim Conley

Hi, my name is Tim Conley. I live in Philadelphia, MS with my beautiful wife, Carmela. My son,James (JD) is in the Air Force and has a son Joshua who is 21/2 with another boy on the way. Carmela's son - Enrik just graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in Teaching.I have been writing for over twenty years and have published 67 books so far - two recently with Amazon/Kindle. I'm currently working on a fantasy anthology of 28 books called The Rhumgold Sagas.I have always been interested in publishing via eBook format but just haven't found the venue until now. I'm really looking forward to participating in the eBook experience. There are 22 e-books available now and 16 more that are being prepared for release in 2020. Read, explore and enjoy!

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SHORT STORIES, ESSAYS AND COMMENTS

by: Tim Conley

Copyright © 2012

Property of Dragon’s Breath Publishing

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SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Tim Conley on Smashwords

ISBN: 978-1-4764-9018-2

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tinytim2

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to my wife and best friend, Carmela, who has stuck with my writing and has provided encouragement for me to complete all the projects I've spent the past fifteen years working on.

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Comments on Society

A Question of ‘P’ in the Bible?

by: Tim Conley

Copyright © 1993 by Tim Conley

Precedence. That is the keyword in my argument against the jigsaw puzzle of substantiating evidence found in the biblical arena in support of a Garden of Eden, a mass exodus from Egypt of in excess of 500,000 men, a wandering of individuals through a wilderness, the building of a nation at the expense of other nations and who decided to include the events, personages and background information (often sketchy at best) in what has been passed down to today as God’s inspired revelation to man. Who were the men who really wrote or compiled the Bible?

In the realm of law, precedence is everything. Roe versus Wade has received much attention during our time because the decision made about abortion by the Supreme Court will have long-term effects on the lives of millions of women; whose decisions concerning the right to decide may or may not be theirs to make. The Supreme Court of law for our land has decided the precedence.

How does precedence fit into biblical studies? To simply put a question that Bible investigators have spent centuries delving into would be presumptuous on my part, and, while I wish for the time and space to do a lengthy analysis on the subject, I must narrow this essay down to something of a usable nature.

Strictly speaking, for this essay, precedence means that the Bible has been put forth by its compilers, early church fathers and by fundamentalists of our day as THE INSPIRED WORD OF GOD. Every word, every sentence, paragraph, chapter and book were considered by the compilers and early church fathers as being inspired and indeed are considered by many fundamentalists in our religious community in the same way and therefore to be: God-sent. Where the burden of precedence will come to bear is in the truthfulness of the foregoing traditional, fundamentalist argument.

Whoever wrote the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Joshua) presented by Ezra after the return from Babylonian captivity set the stage for the case of precedence which I’m going to argue - in that some scholars now suspect that we know why certain passages were included, deleted or ignored in the final version of the book. In the case of the Torah, we actually have several different versions to compare. Which story is correct when the versions disagree?

Can we believe, for example, when the versions disagree? Can we believe, for example, that everything concerning the exodus from Egypt and the validity of the biblical record of it are true according to the norms of modern science? And believing it – can anyone establish the basis behind the claim for the infallibility of the word of God?

Allow me to go for the jugular right away. Questions concerning the text of the Five Books have arisen that need to be addressed. Namely, the basic question is, who really wrote the first five books of the Bible?

Maxwell Miller and John H. Hayes in A History of Ancient Israel and Judah say, the ancients possessed a repertoire of folk traditions (songs, sayings, stories and such) which tell how they, their institutions, and customary ways of doing things came into being.

Can the Bible’s claim of infallibility be substantiated? And, if contradictions exist between the text of the Bible and known history, and the texts themselves exist – then has a precedence been set for disbelieving or at least being suspicious about which items were combined to express their self-understanding as a people? (Miller 62). Miller and Hayes go on to say that the process of compilation apparently occurred in several stages and possibly over a long period of time, ending in a final edition with one person selected to have been the sole author of the five books, but if he alone wrote them, there is a problem. The books known as the Pentateuch or Torah are also known as the Five Books of Moses (Friedman, 17). Moses is held by Jewish and Christian tradition as being the sole author of all five.

Miller observed contradictions in the text. The text would report events in a particular order, and later it would say that those same events happened at different times or in different orders. It [text concerning the Flood] would say that there was two of something, and elsewhere it would say that there were fourteen of that same thing. It would say that the Moabites did something that it later it would say that it was the Midianites who did it. It would describe Moses as going to a Tabernacle in a chapter before Moses builds the Tabernacle. Miller also noted that the Five Books of Moses included things attributed to Moses he probably didn’t do.

It is more probable that the Jewish people of the post-Babylon era needed a historic shot in the arm to let them know who they were. Threading all the folk-heroes and legends into the scheme of laws and instructions, and giving it the stamp of approval of God and Moses provided Ezra and his fellow-workers a free hand in providing the people with historical figures who may not have known or were not likely to have said anything near to what was said or done, like giving an account of Moses’ death. (Friedman, 17-18)

The crux of the entire consideration revolves around the following statement. In evaluating the Five Books take into account the interests and intentions of the ancient editors who compiled them and the supply of information from which they drew to form the books in question.

Friedman states the measure is not what they recorded but that which they drew from to form the books in question, that compilers were not concerned primarily with objective reporting, but used the events to further their own agendas. Post-exile Israelites used events to further their own agendas during the period of the return from Babylonian captivity.

With the above in mind, let us consider the interests and intentions of those ancient editors for a moment. What were they trying to do and why would they take folk traditions and attribute them to some great man in their past?

And if they made Moses bigger than life, did they also embellish when they wrote about Joshua, King Saul, David or Solomon? And how accurate is the claim that Samson killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass? Did they work their own agenda into the fabric of their laws and religion as we have similarly worked ours into Paul Bunyan and the thundering hammers of the Steel Driving Man?

And take a specific item of their worship that may or may not be believed – that the Tabernacle was a fiction, made up by someone living