Is the Book of Genesis Weird?: Is Weird the Way Our Society Was Made?

By Lev Roemmerbet

It’s easy to select and interpret some of the tales of the Book of Genesis that narrate contradictory stories of the same event, which means that one of the stories or the two of them are false. In Is the Book of Genesis Weird?, author Lev Roemmerbet analyzes and slightly rejects some contradictions and lies presented in the book of Genesis as if they were true.

Written to help you to develop abilities to evaluate and reason, he addresses a host of questions about Genesis:

Aren’t the myths of the book of Genesis adapted from the Egyptian and from the Mesopotamian myths?
Where did God come from, and where was he before he created the heavens and the earth?
Did God create man or did man
create God?
What is Eden?
Did the Lord extradite Adam so he (the Lord) could freely create Cain and Abel?
Did Abram impregnate Hagar (his second and simultaneous wife) hermaphroditically?
Was Seth the first hermaphrodite son that God created with Eve, as Isaac was the “son-on-the-knees” that the Lord created with Sarah?

Is the Book of Genesis Weird? helps you discover some of the irreconcilable contradictions, immoralities, and lies within the Book of Genesis. It encourages you to not be afraid to acquire valuable knowledge and not to become Bible literate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665721318

Lev Roemmerbet

Lev Roemmerbet has devoted part of his academic life to research the Biblical world. His studies, his life in Europe, and his searching trips to Israel and vicinity, have made Roemmerbet a person who knows the subject he writes about. He is a restless Bible researcher and lives with his wife in Munich, Germany.

Book preview

CHAPTER

1

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We should bring our attention to the creator of the heavens and the earth, and –in doing that-try to answer some of my silly questions. God (Elohim or Jehowah), the omnipotent and one of the many deities who knew everything in this myth, had to ask for help to create man, something difficult to do. Later God created man without the help of the Gods he had invited, and then he created hermaphroditism or self-reproduction. Unfortunately I have not been able to find any intelligent answer to the questions: how was the universe before the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian Gods created it in Genesis? In which physical state was the universe if it did not exist? Where were the Gods before the beginning? Who created the creators?

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-The physical earth was created. Genesis says that God created two great main bodies: the heavens and the earth, but it does not say where he was before he created them, and where he came from. Where did God live before he began his creation? He was neither in the heavens, nor in the earth and nor in another planet, because these places had not been created in this story yet. From which place did God do his creation, and when and how did he arrive to that place? If God did his creation from a place, then he created that place before creating the heavens and the earth; right?

-Was God tall, short, white, black, brown, or yellow? Was he slim, overweight or obese? Genesis 1:1 also assigned masculine gender to God, which means that the authors of this creation-story were all male.

-The geometry of the earth. The Spirit of God. Is it possible that a physical object like the earth be formless, as Genesis 1:2 says? [Neither the air nor the smoke has form, but once each is inside of a physical object (in a bottle?) for example, they take the form of that object]. Does the deep have a face? If the earth was formless, how could it have deepness and a face?

-Since the character Spirit of God appears in this story, it may be good to ask, Why did the character God have a Spirit? What does the Spirit of God look like? Was it fair that while God was busy creating everything, his Spirit was having fun hovering over some waters? What is or what was the Spirit of God; who created it and why; is its duty to hover? Did God have more than one Spirit? If so, which one of them was hovering over the waters? (1)

-The creation of light [Light means here day-light without sun]. Couldn’t God have created things without saying what he wanted to create; I mean, by thinking or by mentally ordering them to be made? I think he could make them, otherwise, how were the heavens, the earth, the waters, God himself, and his Spirit created without any command (1:1)?

-In 1:3 God spoke for the first time; in which language did he speak: in Akkadian, Hebrew, Piayu, or in Motilon? Did the writers of Genesis learn from the Egyptian myths that the God Amen used to speak, and that the God Ptah commanded what he wished to exist? (By the way, these two Gods could each self-reproduce) (2)

-What kind of light did God create (1:3) before creating the day; couldn’t he have created the day and the light simultaneously? If God had created the light, why did he mix it with the darkness and then separate them? Can the light and the darkness be together, or be one object that can be separated? Can the light be divided from the darkness (1:4)? Does darkness have light in itself, or isn’t darkness the absence of light? Did God separate the light from the darkness that was on the face of the deep in 1:2?

-If God separated the light from the darkness, who created the darkness; it was there right after God created the heavens and the earth (1:1-2). Why was only the light good to the eyes of God; what was wrong with the darkness? By God seeing the light means that the writers of Genesis gave him the capability of seeing, besides the ability of talking which they had already given him.

-Darkness and the names of the light. The first day of creation. Did God wait until the very end of the night to create the light, which he named day? If God had to make the light during the night, then the night (darkness) was before the day, because God created the evening first (1:5).

-Did God create the light (1:3) about five o’clock in the morning [in summer time] in order to create the day? If the evening was before the morning, then God created the night first, because evening (darkness) in this myth is before day (light).

-The creation of the firmament, and the division of the waters. Who heard God saying what he wanted to make? Nobody, because at that time of this myth there were only two inhabitants: God and his Spirit. What is a Spirit? Is it a God companion that God takes wherever he goes, and let it plays with water?

-Are the waters of 1:6 the same ones that God had created already? On which of the waters is the Spirit of God still hovering, on the waters above the firmament, or over those under the firmament (1:1 vs. 1:6)? It doesn’t matter, as long as the Spirit is still hovering.

-How can a firmament be in the midst of the waters, if that firmament-in this myth-is where the heavens are? Why didn’t the writers of Genesis create the firmament first, and then place the heavens in it? (Weren’t the heavens created on the first day; and didn’t the waters exist before God began doing his creation (1:1) and his Spirit was having fun playing with water (1:2))?

-We shouldn’t confuse the heavens with the sky. The heavens were created on the fist day (1:1), while the sky was created on the second day (1:6-8). Are the heavens hidden far beyond the sky? What’s the distance-in miles or in kilometers-between the earth and the nearest heaven?

-The making of the firmament again, and the division of the waters, again. Now Heaven is the firmament. The second day of creation. Did God make the firmament twice because the one he made in 1:6 was defective and then he decided to make a new and better one in 1:7?

Isn’t the sky, firmament or heavens the space above the earth that is mainly empty to our naked eyes? If the heavens were created on the first day, why did Genesis assign them a name again now on the second day (1:8)?

-Did the authors of Genesis write, and it was so, because there was the possibility that God’s commands would not be properly understood and applied? (Some specialized in mind management make people believe that things happen as deities want).

1:9-10.-The waters were gathered together. The earth is the dry land, and the waters were called Seas. Was the whole earth covered with water, and was the Spirit of God hovering over the face of that big ocean, in the beginning?

-Were the waters above the heavens also gathered in one place, like those under the heavens?

-Where did the Spirit of God go when God ordered the dry ground to appear? Is it now hovering over the face of the waters that God ordered to gather in one place above the firmament? What place? Where is or was that place?

-Who created the lakes and the rivers? Should we change the name of some water bodies to Amazon Sea, Magdalena Sea, Maracaibo Sea, Michigan Sea, Niles Sea, Orinoco Sea, etc.?

-It was good that God separated the dry land from the waters; but why did not appear good to him the creation of the heavens and the earth, the day-light and its separation from the darkness, and the creation of the sky? God did not see that these things he had just created were good. Weren’t they? Apparently not, because only the dry ground and the seas were seen as good by God.

-The earth brought forth vegetation and the fruit tree whose seed is in itself. In this verse God created herbs, grass, and especially a tree which fruits contained their seeds in it. A cashew fruit (Anacardium occidentale) has its seed outside it. The banana (family: Musaceae), and the plantain plants: (Plantaginacea, Musa paradisiaca) do not have seed in itself either. Then, who created these plants and many others that give fruits without seeds in itself?

-How can the vegetation of the earth in 1:1 grow, give fruits, and survive without the help of sunlight? How could God have created vegetation before creating the sun? The book of Genesis should not try to confuse us making us to believe that God has senior moments.

-Didn’t God command the sea to produce vegetation, because didn’t he know that the sea produces edible plants? [and none edible too].

-Vegetation was created again. The third day of creation. Isn’t 1:12 exact as 1:11? Did the writers of Genesis repeat verse eleven because they had forgotten they had already written it, and decided to do it? Was it possible that another member of the team who wrote this chapter was careless and added a text without knowing that it was already included in the myth?

-Which was the tree that yields fruits, and why was it created only one tree that yields fruits? Since Genesis had not created the sun yet, should we suppose that God was planning to grow mushrooms?

-The light was created again, but this time it was placed in the firmament. If God created the light on the first day, and he liked it (1:4), why did God have to create it again? In 1:4-5 God separated the light from the darkness, and he even gave them their respective names. What kind of light did God create in 1:3 and again now in 1:14? If the lights that God created the second time were placed in the firmament, where did he place the light that he created on the first day, and that he saw that it was good? Why did God have to separate the day from the night again? Didn’t he separate it in 1:4-5?

The book of Genesis doesn‘t only underestimate human beings intelligence, but it also makes God appears as a guy that is not paying attention about what he is doing. Stop creating those perceptions!

-One of the great lights will rule the day, and the other will rule the night. Was God afraid to mention the word sun as the ruler light?

-Why did God make the light two times: one on the first day (1:3) and again now on the fourth day? Why did he create something that he had already created, I ask one more time? God also separated the light from the darkness three times: one on the first day (1:4), and twice on the fourth day (1:16; 18). Was this repetition included in this story to make God look as a careless deity?

-Why did God create vegetation (on the third day, 1:11), if he had not created the sun yet? It was in 1:16 when God created the sun; that might prompt the reader to ask, Why did God give his approval to that vegetation without sunlight?

-If God created the light before creating the sun, what kind of light did he create on the first day of his creation?

-The light was divided from the darkness and set on the firmament on the fourth day. How did God make the two great lights that he set in the firmament in 1:17? What is the name of the place where God made the two great lights, and the stars? Where was the lights’ factory located, and how did God transport those lights to be placed in the firmament?

-Why had God created the light on the fourth day? How could the planet Earth have evenings and mornings the first three days of creation if there were not sun and moon until the fourth day?

-God created the sea-animals, and the birds that fly, and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. The fifth day was created. Why did God repeat in 1:21 what he said in 1:20? Was this creation written by more than two persons? You bet!

-God made the "sea creatures" and the birds that fly, but not the mammals that fly (bats, etc)

-Whom did God command to multiply in 1:22: the birds (1:20), or the great "sea creatures"? (the whales?) (1:21)? Did God give his commands to these animals in Fishglish and in Birdglish? Admirable!

-God invited other divinities to make man. When God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness," the reader may ask: in the image of God and of Who else; according to the likeness of God and of Who else? Who are or were Us in this myth? Whom did God ask for help to make man, and why? Did God ask the birds, the sea animals, and the creeping thing that creeps for help? They were the only living creatures, besides vegetation, that God had created before asking for help to make man.

-Did the Gods of 1:26 make women in their Gods image and likeness? Of course not! Are women better human beings because women were not created but made (2:22)?

-Why are there many Gods in this article of Genesis, if a God has said that there is only one God? (3)

-God created man in his own image; also male and female he created them. In 1:27 man was not created in the likeness of God, only in his image. By picturing God having human form, did God mean that he and man have the same physical look, and the same organs: head, legs, etc.; in other words, both God and man have the same anatomical parts? Is stupidity one of the many man-made characteristics given to man when he was created?

-Since there were many Gods trying to make man, in the image of which of those Gods was man created? If each God of 1:26 ask their respective Spirit for help to make man; to which God belongs the Spirit that helped God to make man? Is that Spirit still hovering over the face of the waters (1:2)?

-God also created the male and female. In the same batch where God created man, God created the male and female (1:27). This peculiar characteristic (homosexuality?) was well known in the Egyptian and in the Mesopotamian myths, from which the Hebrew scholars partially copied when writing Genesis. In 1:27 God made man and also made the male and female, and to avoid confusion and misunderstanding, and to guarantee the reproduction of the animal species, the Lord-another deity-specifically ordered that Noah’s animals be chosen "male and his female" (7:1-2). (Later the writers of another book included in the Bible said that God repented of what he had made, and that homosexuality is an abomination (4)).

-Why in order to create a man, God didn’t use commands like those he used to create the lights, etc., for example, Let there be a man…and it was so…and God saw that man is moron?

-In 1:26 God said, "Let Us make man…and in 1:27 "God created man…" Doesn’t it mean that God asked for help to make man, but then he (God) decided that he alone will create man? Did God want to make something perfect in order to gain credit for his wonderful achievement, but he was disappointed when he saw the strange piece of flesh he created in his image? What did the writers of the book of Genesis expect to get when they created God in the image of man?

-Before God had created both the "man, and the male and female" he gave them dominion over all that moves (1:26), and now in 1:28 God was interested that his created "man and the male and female each increases in number and, especially that both subdue the earth. The stupid side of man," and of "the male and female could obey this command and then, methodically and incessantly, destroy the earth. Are not men and the male and female" subduing the earth by constantly killing human beings, animals, and plants?

-Doesn’t the command, "be fruitful, subdue the earth," make human beings enemies of nature? Why did the character God create the earth and then command man and the male and female to destroy it? Isn’t this God’s command one of the most obeyed, and also, doesn’t it make God a destruction instigator, and an enemy of the Planet Earth?

-Why before the Gods made man have they already given him dominion over everything (1:26)? If God would have specifically commanded man to rule over pathogens bacterium and over viruses, man would have probably destroyed them, as man is successfully destroying human beings, animals, and plants. Aren’t bacterium and viruses ruling over man, and aren’t those human beings-created in God’s image and likeness-destroying mankind? Could we expect that in a short time this part of the creation-tale will have the added sentence: And God was happy because it was good? If God goes on commanding man to subdue the earth, he will be successful soon, but then who will worship him?

The writers of Genesis, instead of commanding man to destroy nature, they should have commanded human beings to live harmoniously with each other and with nature, of course.

-God made human beings vegetarians. Why is it repeated here what God made on the third day of this creation; and why is it now-on the sixth day-when God is giving man the vegetation created on the third day? Where did God hide the things he created on the third day; did he use them as decoration in his cave or as landscape in his heavens?

-Did God usually eat from the plants he created? Does the command giving plants for food mean that God created human beings vegetarians, as the God of this creation supposedly was?

- The sixth day of creation. Was God so excited after creating "man and the male and female that the evaluation of that sixth day production was very good" (1:31)?

-What else does God need to create, to make or to form? How could God alone cope with so much work? Did he need help to finish his creation? Let’s find it out.

CHAPTER

2

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In this chapter the writers agree that God did work on the seventh day. It is supposed that God worked in the evening of the sixth day, because although he had created " a man and the male and female," he may have later realized that he needed more help and time to make a better creation… After resting many evenings and mornings, and before potting all animals, the Lord God-another deity-potted a man out of mud and brought him to Eden, the first settlement in the whole "heavens and the earth." Finally, the Lord God made a woman, not by a command or out of mud, but out of a man’s rib. Let’s take a look to chapter two of the book of Genesis.

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Genesis 2:1-3--God worked on the seventh day. *-If God had finished his creation (2:1), what was the work he ended on the seventh day before he rested (2:2)? Did God end his work in the morning and rest until evening on the seventh day?

*-Do you think that God had to rest in order to-later-end his creation job, to modify it, or to give it a final touch? To create "man and the male and female" should have taken God a long time, although there was nothing else to create, because Genesis says in 2:1 that God had finished his creation.

* Why did God only bless and sanctify the day he rested, and not each of the six days of his creation? Didn’t the working days deserve to be blessed? Was God really tired? Does God get tired once in a while, or did he rest then because he didn’t have anything else to create?

Why did God have to take a day off? When he created the earth and everything that is on it, he only pronounced a couple of words, and it was so. Is that what you call work? Giving a couple of orders per day during seven or eight days is not work. Actually there is no reason for the character God to rest, though he accomplished a lot in a short time. Why is God pictured as a lazy deity who gets tired by pronouncing a few short sentences in one week? Was God tired of doing nothing?

*-If God became tired after pronouncing few phrases in six days, and creating only a couple inhabitants in the whole heavens and the earth, imagine how much will God need to rest after the man procreates? (How could this man procreate without a woman; hermaphro-ditically?

*-Following the order in which the Genesis story was written, it seems that God created both, "the man and the male and female" on the seventh day and rested on the eighth day. Then, did God bless the seventh or the eighth day?

*-If the seventh day was made holy because God rested on half of it, are the other days of the week unholy or cursed, because on those days God worked? (He only pronounced few sentences in seven days).

* Is the observance of the seventh day another addition to this myth? (1). Were the days of the week numbered (first day, second day, etc.) since the early beginning of this creation, or are they additions?

*-Why did you end every created day with the phrase, And there was evening, and there was morning the…day, but at the end of the seventh day (2:1-3) there was neither evening and nor morning?

* If God only worked from evenings to mornings, what did he use to do in the afternoons?

-Genesis assigns to God the ability to violate physical laws, and some people may believe that Genesis narrates true stories. This could help create superstition, a dangerous psychological disease that can cause unconceivable negative social and economic consequences. The book of Genesis makes fun of basic rational principles, and of human beings intelligence (Unpardonable!), which invites to retaliate by making fun of some Genesis contents.

-Was God the creator of the heavens and the earth? Genesis says in 2:4 that it was another guy, the Lord God (Jehovah?). Who was the creator, God (1:1), the Lord God (2:4) or neither of them? The writers of Genesis are trying to confuse the reader by bringing a new character to the myth without introducing it. Was the Lord God one of the deities invited by God to make man in his image in 1:26?

* Where were the plants and the herbs, or their seeds, before they were on the earth and grew?

* Did God create "man and the male and female" (1:26-27) before creating the plants (2:5)? If on the third day (1:10-13) God created the fruit tree, how is it that in 2:5 there were not plants on the earth? If on the sixth day God made and blessed human beings (1:26-28), Genesis should not say now that there was no man to work the land. Did God complain to the Lord God for delaying the rain?

* How could a man multiply without a woman? I ask again. Were "the man and the male and female" that God created in 1:27 barren? There is no doubt that those who wrote the book of Genesis knew about the Egyptian culture, where some Gods procreated without the participation of any partner.

* Isn’t the word history (2:4) an exaggerated claim for this legend?

SECOND CREATION

-Who could believe that God has finished his creation if God and the Lord God had forgotten to "form man," until Chapter 2 and articles 6-7 of this myth? To solve this big problem, the Lord God took dust and mixed it with the mist he had just produced, and formed a man. Then, the Lord God blew into this mud-man’s nostrils to activate the App of his respiratory system and made him a living being.

* Couldn’t the mist that watered the earth produce the type of vegetation you said did not exist because of lack of rain (2:5)? Was this mist intense and steady enough to water the earth, but not big enough to help vegetation grow? How could the vegetation created on the third day (1:11-12) grow, but this one created later in 2:5, could not? Did God create vegetation before creating "man" (1:11; 1:26), or after (2:4-9)?

* Why didn’t the Lord God cause to rain to nourish the vegetation that God created on the third day (1:11)?. Did this vegetation grow droughponicaly, because it was created to survive without the help of water? Did the Lord God form man with the dust of the ground?

What dust, wasn’t the whole face of the ground watered? Did this creation tale need a deity specialized in producing rain [a Rainer Lord God], because it had not rained yet in this tale, although the writers of Genesis had already created herb, trees, etc?

* What happened with "the man and the male and female" that God created in 1:27 on the sixth day, and commanded them to multiply? Were these people killed before they could be fruitful? If so, which deity killed them? Were these first people victim of depression? Their loneliness should have been indescribable. Why were they replaced by someone formed of mud? Did "the man and the male and female" have to be created (not engendered) because another tale of this compendium says: "Man who is born of a woman is of few days and full of troubles"? (2)

*-Is God a liar? Why did he say that there was nobody to work the land (2:6) if God himself had created a man and a "male and female in 1:27?. If these people of 1:27 did not know anything about horticulture, God could had taken care of the situation just by saying, Let the man and the male and female’ know how to till the ground!" And problem solved. Were those first created people mentally disabled? It can’t be because they were created in the image of God.

* Why did "the man and the male and female" have to till the ground if they had all the edible vegetation of the earth: herbs, and the fruit tree (only one tree) that yielded fruits?

* Why didn’t Genesis explain why in the second creation-tale the Lord God formed man long before finding him a helper? (2:7 v.s. 2:22)? How could the Lord God expect this mud-man live healthy without a woman to love? Impossible!

*-How come that God didn’t breathe the breath of life into the nostrils of the man, and of " the male and female" he created in 1:27, but the Lord God-another deity-breathed it into the mud-man nostrils of the second creation? Were "the man and the male and female forced to disappear, because God forgot to breathe the breath of life" in these guys’ nostrils, or because God repented after he realized that what he had created was not what he had in mind?

-Since man was created twice, (by God in 1:27, and by the Lord God in 2:7), why weren’t animals also created two times? God did it. In 1:21, on the fifth day, God created everything that moves, and in 1:24-25, on the sixth day, God created the living creatures. Were God and the Lord God entitled to a discount or to a bonus, because they-indistinctively-created man twice (1:27 and 2:7)? God won the first price in productivity, because he, without the help of the Lord God, also made the animals twice (1:21; 1:24-25).

-The Lord God’s Garden. What is Eden? This place has not been described. Eden is the first place, after the garden, mentioned in this creation-myth, so I suppose is the back yard of the place where the Lord God lives.

*-Did the Lord God really need to plant a garden; wasn’t it enough to say, Let there be a garden in Eden, and it was so? It is hard to believe that the God that created the heavens and the earth was not able to create a simple garden. Did Genesis say that the Lord God planted a garden, instead that he created it, because everything was already created (2:2)?

*-Did the Lord God (L G) make things the same way God made his creation? Did the Lord God also apply quality control to know that everything he made was good? Was good the mud-man born already adult in 2:7?

*-Where did the Lord God form man and then put him in the garden? To put him in the garden from which place? I suppose that this place was far from Eden; otherwise, man could have easily walked or jumped from branch to branch (tarzanning) until reaching the Lord God’s planted garden. If the Lord God had formed man in the garden, the L. G. had not had to put man in it, because he was already there. What was happening in the Lord God’s brain that he did not form the mud-man directly in the garden?

—The Lord God made trees pleasant to the eyes, and with nutritive fruits; plus the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. Does it mean that the trees made before article 2:9 were neither pleasant to the sight and nor good for food? Were these differences due to that the fruit tree in 1:11 was created by God, while those in Eden were made by the Lord God?

*-Was important to mention the exact places where the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were planted? If Genesis wants to be precise, it should say where Eden was.

*-Has Genesis assigned to its characters God and the Lord God specific tasks in this tale? Some of the deities decided to make a man in 1:26, (Let Us make a man); God created a "man and the male and female"; the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground (2:7), and that same deity planted a garden in Eden (2:8) and was in charge of producing the rain.

-The five rivers of Eden. The authors of Genesis played with five rivers to try to let us know where Eden was, but they didn’t mention the names of the main river and its four riverheads that watered the garden. [Authors can develop any fiction-story in any particular area, but once the place of the story is chosen (Cabimas, Paris, etc), the geography of that place should be respected. Since Genesis is not meeting this prerequisite here, it could be understood that its authors are making fun to the reader].

-How can the above mentioned river go out of Eden to water the garden (2:10) if the garden is in Eden, not out of it? Did the river go out of Eden and then make a U turn and come back to Eden to water the garden? This text creates confusion and doubts in your story, even that everybody knows that the book of Genesis is a fiction book.

-If the four rivers (Pishon, Gihon, Hilddekel and the Euphrates) were born from a river (a source without name) in Eden, then the missing rivers should have been born close to the places where the Tigris (Hiddekel) and the Euphrates are born. But it is not so. Where are the five rivers? I have found only the Tigris and the Euphrates. Where did the rivers Pishon and Gihon go? Did they go all the way to the west, under-cross the Red Sea to Africa, then flow-up south and go around the whole land of Cush (Ethiopia)? Just imagine the Seine River under-crossing the English Channel to go from France to water the British Island? Where are, or where were those three ghosts rivers located: the one that went out of Eden, plus Pishon, and Gihon?

-The gold from Havilah. Who lived in Havilah? At the time of your story only some Gods, a man, a male and female (1:27), and a mud-man (2:7), were the few inhabitants of the heavens and the earth. How could any region named Havilah exist if the Lord God had created only one place, Eden? Who created Havilah and what for? Wasn’t Havilah the son of Cush (10:7)? Isn’t