Passover: A Critical Examination

Passover: A Critical Examination

By John D. Stone

Passover is something we have all heard mentioned throughout our lives, but what exactly is it? What happened? To whom? By whom? When? We know the Passover story which is written in the bible, but did these events really happen ― is there historical proof? Was it real or just another of the bible's fictitious tales?

In light of all the stories, observances, rituals etc., it is time for a critical examination of Passover, one that is not filtered by religious bias. It is time to answer these questions.

What is the Passover which the Jews celebrate; where is it found in the bible?

Exodus 12:14

"And this day shall be for you as a memorial, and you shall celebrate it as a festival for the Lord; throughout your generations, you shall celebrate it as an everlasting statute."  (Jewish Bible: Judacia Press)

 "And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever." (Christian Bible: King James Version, 1611)

What does the Passover celebrate?

In Judaism, Passover glorifies the Hebrew God's ― the Invisible Man in the Sky/Space God ― wanton MURDER of babies, children, women, men and animals too:

Beast: animal: creature: a living organism characterized by voluntary movement. Therefore according to the passover Jewish biblical tale ― the Invisible Man in the Sky also deliberately MURDERED innocent dogs, cats, mice, cows, camels, sheep, goats; anything that moved!

Where is this found in the bible?

Exodus 12:12

" I will pass through the land of Egypt on this night, and I will smite every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and upon all the gods of Egypt will I wreak judgments I, the Lord." (Judacia Press)

"For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD." (King James Version)

"Firstborn," what does this mean?¹

Theologians maintain it is a metaphor to designate the first male child in a family. Oh really, well what does that really mean, consequently? For example, a firstborn male grows up, has a family with his firstborn male child, who also has his firstborn male child. Thus we have three generations of firstborn living ― grandfather, son, grandson ― a common occurrence. Therefore, when the Invisible Man in the Sky killed every firstborn, he would have killed them all, one from each generation; grandfather, son, grandson. Three strikes and they are out!

How do we know that firstborn does not really mean FIRST born which would include girls/women too? Seems like the creator of the universe forgot to tell us what (s)he/it really meant. Unfortunately, the bible does not gives us any details of the bloody aftermath to clarify this ambiguous noun.

The preeminent Jewish biblical commentator Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (1040-1105 CE) wrote that their god's killing of "firstborn" was not even limited to only Egypt:

"Even other firstborn who are in Egypt [will die]. Now how do we know that even the firstborn of the Egyptians who are in other places [will die]? Therefore, Scripture states: 'To Him Who smote the Egyptians with their firstborn' (Ps. 136:10). — [from Mechilta]"

How many people were in Egypt at this time ― the population against which the Invisible Man in the Sky would have waged his bloody cruel slaughter? Would the Space God have killed just a few or what?

"... the population of the whole Nile Delta in the second half of the second millennium BCE has been estimated at c. 1.2 million persons, living from c. 13,000 square km of cultivable land (see K. W. Butzer, Early Hydraulic Civilization of Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1976]: 83, 93-96).

Therefore, if one studies the real-world implications of this Hebrew bible tale, the human death toll, assuming an average family of five, could easily total 240,000 with only first born "males." Blood would have run ankle deep in the streets and fields; all happening in a matter of hours ― "this night."  

" ... there was a great outcry in Egypt, for there was no house in which no one was dead." (Exodus 12:30 Judaica Press)

When the rotting carcasses of beasts are added into this Hebrew tale's death concoction, death's stench and disease would have created unsanitary conditions beyond our wildest imagination.  Hundreds of thousands more would have died from these unlivable conditions and resulting diseases.

To put this tale in some perspective, consider that the first atomic bomb ― "Little Boy" ― which was dropped from the Enola Gay on the Japanese city of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945 at 0815 local time) killed far less than the Invisible Man in the Sky did that one night in Egypt. Official Japanese figures at the time put the death toll at 118,661 civilians. Later estimates suggest the final toll was about 140,000, of Hiroshima's population, including military personnel and those who died later from radiation.

The Death-Toll Scoreboard:

•    God ― Invisible Man in the Sky ― 240,000 +

Man ― Atomic Bomb ― 140,000

Since this Passover slaughter house story is the Hebrew's own tale and their god, of course they come out on top:

"...the Lord ... will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you." (Exodus 12:23)

The destroyer? Just 10 verses earlier in the bible, it was written "I, the Lord" who "will smite every firstborn." What! Did the Space God put these hits out on contract? Was it too much for (s)he/it? Was (s)he/it too busy checking for turds² to be bothered with all the MURDERS? WTF!

Was this Passover story real or just another of the bible's fictitious tales?

The Passover tale is an invention of the Hebrew Bible, specifically the book of Exodus, which the Hebrews claimed was given to their Moses character in 1312 BCE (Gregorian calendar). The Jewish religion later went even further in this delusion ― extra-biblical ― to assign a specific day to the Space God's slaughter:

"At the stroke of midnight of Nissan 15 of the year 2448 from creation ... 210 years after Jacob settled in Egypt ... God visited the last of the ten plagues on the Egyptians, killing all their firstborn."³

What was the bottom line? After all the murders what happened?

According to the Jewish extra-biblical story line, it was:

"Pharaoh's resistance to free them was broken, and he virtually chased his former slaves out of the land. Several million souls ― 600,000 adult males, plus the woman and children, and a large "mixed multitude" of non-Hebrews who joined them ― left Egypt on that day, and began the 50-day trek to Sinai and their birth as God's chosen people."⁴

Did you catch that sleight of hand? There were only c1.2 million people in all of Egypt, but the biblical tales says there were several million Hebrew slaves plus a multitude of non-Hebrews who left Egypt? As Homer Simpson would say, "Dohhh!" To add insult to injury the Hebrews "took from the Egyptians silver objects, golden objects, and garments." ⁵ This is simply pillage and plunder, something forbidden to civilized people. Attila the Hun employed the same tactics as the Hebrews in this tale; maybe this is where he learned his trade.

But the Space God was not through fucking with the Egyptians; he had a thirst for much more blood. The bible story unfolds thusly in Exodus 14:1-28:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ... I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, and I will be glorified through Pharaoh and through his entire force... [Pharaoh] harnessed his chariot, and ... took six hundred select chariots and all the chariots of Egypt, with officers over them all...   

... Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, ... chased after the children of Israel ... and overtook them encamped by the sea... Pharaoh drew near,

The Lord said to Moses... you raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and split it, and the children of Israel shall come in the midst of the sea on dry land...

The Egyptians pursued and came after them all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen, into the midst of the sea... So Moses stretched out his ... the sea returned to its strength, as the Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord stirred the Egyptians into the sea.   

And the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, the entire force of Pharaoh coming after them into the sea; not even one of them survived.

Let's do some math:

1,200,000  total human population of Egypt

Minus:

   240,000 firstborn killed (minimum)

2,000,000 million Hebrew slaves escaped

undefined multitude of non-Hebrews

Remaining human beings in Egypt:

(–1,040,000)??? Again, as Homer Simpson would say, "Dohhh!"

What happened with the plagues prior to the MURDERS?

Compared to the bloody mass murder climax address above, the prior plagues were nothing to speak of; frogs, lice, dust, locust, famine and darkness (Exodus 9-10)

However, the Invisible Man in the Sky/Space God did manage to get in some animal cruelty acts and a few MURDERS too:

Boils and blisters "upon man and upon beast" (Exodus 9:10)

Hail, but this hail kills ― "...any man or beast that is found in the field and not brought into the house the hail shall fall on them, and they will die." (Exodus 9:19)

What did the Hebrew people learn after being enslaved in Egypt?

According to the bible story, the Hebrews were in slavery for 430 years.⁵ One would think that after four centuries as slaves they would abhor slavery, but NOOOOOOOOO! The Invisible Man in the Sky included detailed slavery instructions in the Hebrew laws written by Moses (Torah, the first five book in the Hebrew bible). There were detailed rules for Hebrew slave management and even more shitty laws for non-Hebrew (gentile) slaves. Everything a Hebrew wanted to know about getting a gentile slave was right there in his bible ― "his" because women had no property rights.

Leviticus 25 (Judacia Press)

44. Your male slave or female slave whom you may have from the nations that are around you, from them you may acquire a male slave or a female slave.

45. And also from the children of the residents that live among you, from them you may acquire [slaves] and from their family that is with you whom they begot in your land, and they shall become your inheritance.

46. You shall hold onto them as an inheritance for your children after you, as acquired property, and may thus have them serve you forever. But as for your brethren, the children of Israel, a man shall not work his brother with rigor.

How could the Hebrew people learn to be civilized when they chose to follow idiotic writings by psychotic primitive men who attributed their own blood thirst to a Space God ― Invisible Man in the Sky; such as in Deuteronomy 20: 10-17

"When you approach a city to wage war against it ... your God, will deliver it into your hands, and you shall strike all its males with the edge of the sword.  

... the women, the children, and the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoils you shall take for yourself...

... of these peoples' cities, which the Lord, your God, gives you as an inheritance, you shall not allow any soul to live...you shall utterly destroy them."(Judacia Press)

Thankfully, this wanton blood thirst and slavery was eventually stopped by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great who made new laws controlling the Jews. Constantine forbade them to own Christian" slaves.⁶

Come on now, one more time, did these events really happen? The Jews swear it was real ― they "believe."

The primitive Hebrews were sold a bill of goods with the Exodus story, just like with the six-day creation of the universe; a walking talking snake; human turned to salt; food falling from the sky; sticks turning into snakes; giant fish walking on dry land; donkeys talking; rabbits having a cud; and a man flying up in the sky in a horse drawn chariot. It is all fiction, tall tales, damnable lies!

The Passover horror story is sold as some sort of national glory:

"The Jew is commanded to 'Remember the day that you went out of Egypt every day of your life' (Deuteronomy 16:3). According to the Maharal, the purpose of the Exodus was not merely the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery, but the creation of a new type of person, the Free Man; because of the Exodus, even if subsequently conquered and oppressed, the Jew remains inherently free." ⁷

You now know this "new type of person " was, according to the Hebrews' own holy scriptures from their Invisible Man in the Sky, a blood thirsty murderer who pillaged and plundered; a thief of women and children from the nations and a slave owner.

Even today the Jewish rabbis attempt to sell this Exodus horror to "believers" along the lines of; "Hey it is such a tall tale, it has to be real. Orthodox Rabbi Tzvi Freeman's sales pitch is thus:

"I'll challenge anyone to find any people in the world anywhere at any time ― Inuits or Indonesians, Norse mythology or Navaho legends, Greeks or Germans ― that has a story anything similar to this. People tell plenty of wondrous fanciful legends. There are nations descended from gods, from angels, from fish and from eagles. Even from apes(!). There are people that got to where they are with the help of bears or dragons, magical boats or great volcanoes. But tell me another people who tell their children, "We were slaves to a terrible tyrant in a powerful land, and our God, Master of the Entire Universe, took us out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm...

Perhaps that's the greatest proof that it really must have happened ― because nobody could have made up such a story." ⁸

This sales pitch is even better than the Mormon's claim that their Space God was once a man⁹ who lived near the planet "Kolob." ¹⁰

John Tiffany, an ex-minister, writes:

Researchers are weighing the accuracy of the reigns of King Solomon and King David against archaeological and scientific data just recently discovered. These scholars are coming up with some very interesting conclusions.

Many Christian religious scholars, such as noted author Thomas L. Thompson, think the history of Palestine and its peoples is very different from Old Testament narratives, regardless of political claims. A history of the region during the Iron I and Iron II periods leaves little room for any historicity in the accounts of the books of Samuel and Kings, critics say ...

Unknown to almost all laymen, a huge number of scholars have quietly come together agreeing on a historical fact that will overturn the entirety of “court history” when all the facts they have gathered become widely known.

They agree that the various tales of “ancient Israel” are largely fictional. Based upon the known facts of geography, history, archaeology and even biblical scholarship, many of them argue there was no such entity as “ancient Israel”—that it never existed.¹¹

Bill Maher put things into proper perspective:

"Why is monotheistic faith better than polytheistic? I mean, either you believe ― if you believe in, like, a magic person who can do magic things, why is it different ― so different if it's Superman or the Fantastic Four?

The problem is that the people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them."

Don't remain a religiholic! Think! Think critically and independently! See these biblical tall tales for what they really are ― damnable fiction, not what some theologian or rabbi wants you to "believe."

_________________________

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." —Steven Weinberg (1933-), quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999.

Footnotes:

1.  Regarding Torah portion of the Hebrew bible; “A verse never leaves its literal meaning.” Rabbi Menachem Schneerson said: “I am here only to explain the simple meaning of the text.” Accordingly, there can be nothing in Rashi — neither a Midrash nor an interpretation, etc. — which is superfluous to the most basic meaning of the text itself, as it should be understood by a “five-year-old studying the Torah.” (See Kelalei Rashi, Kefar Chabad 1991, p. 15 ff)

2.  Deuteronomy 23: 14: "And you shall keep a stake ... and it shall be, when you sit down outside [to relieve yourself], you shall dig with it, and you shall return and cover your excrement. 15. For the Lord, your God, goes along in the midst of your camp...your camp shall be holy, so that He should not see anything unseemly among you and would turn away from you. (Judacia Press)

3.   Chabad, Today in Jewish History, The Exodus, [ http://www.chabad.org/calendar/view/day_cdo/aid/149897/jewish/Nissan-15.htm ] Retrieved, 7 April 2009.

4.  Ibid

5.  "It came to pass at the end of four hundred and thirty years... that all the legions of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt." (Exodus 12:41)

6.  T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 252; Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1981

7.  Orthodox Rabbi Yanki Tauber, Is Judaism a Theocracy [ http://www.chabad.org/magazine/article_cdo/aid/42003/jewish/Is-Judaism-a-Theocracy.htm ] Retrieved April 7, 2009.

8.  Orthodox Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, The Wildest Story Ever Told [http://www.chabad.org/magazine/article_cdo/aid/42005/jewish/The-Wildest-Story-Ever-Told.htm ] Retrieved April 7, 2009.

9.  On April 7, 1844 Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, gave a sermon known as King Follet Discourse. Smith said "God himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves, that is the great secret. If the veil was rent to-day, and the great God, who holds this world in its orbit, and upholds all things by his power; if you were to see him today, you would see him in all the person, image and very form as a man." This discourse was first published in the "Times and Seasons" (5:612-617). Later it would be included in numerous other publications, including the Mormon Church's "Journal of Discourses" (6:1-11) and the "Millennial Star" (23:245-280).

10.    Mormon Book of Abraham, Chapter 3:1-3 "...I, Abraham... saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God... the Lord said unto me...the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God..."

11.  John Tiffany, Fables of Ancient Israel Now Being Dissected; [ http://www.exminister.org/AncientIsrael_Dissected.html ]

 Copyright © 2009 John D. Stone. All rights reserved.