Jews vs Arabs – The fight begins

This one is Truly Educational

After Abram (Abraham) sold his wife Sarai to Pharaoh and got kicked out of Egypt he moved back to the land God gave him for his posterity: modern day Israel. For 10 years his wife Sarai (Pharaoh gave her back when he make Abram leave Egypt) tried to get pregnant but it just wasn’t working out.

If you remember, part of the sale price for Sarai was a bunch of Egyptian slaves. Sarai was using one of these slaves as a personal maid and because she felt bad about not being able to get pregnant she gave her slave Hagar to Abraham so they could make babies. Hagar got pregnant pretty easy and this made Sarai MAD. Sarai beat the shit out of Hagar for getting pregnant and Hagar ran away.

Well, this didn’t work for God who wanted his chosen guy to have lots of babies so he sent an angel to sort things out. The angel found Hagar off by herself and told her she had to go back and just let Sarai keep beating her up as long as necessary so she could give Abram the kid. The angel also told her she had to name the kid Ishmael. Hagar was really used to doing what she was told so went back to Sarai and Abram. She eventually had the kid and like a good girl named him Ishmael (It’s important here to remember that God promised the “Holy Land” to Abraham’s posterity).

The next major event is that God comes down and tell Abram that he has to change his name to Abraham and Sarai has to change her name to Sarah. God tells Abraham that his descendents will be the covenant people of God and God will always like them best. Furthermore, from then on all the males have to have their foreskins removed when they are eight days old as their part of the covenant. A long as they keep cutting off their foreskins God will be good to them. If they don’t chop off the foreskin, God won’t like them anymore. God also mentioned that Sarah was going to have a son.

They have this huge circumcision party where all the family and the slaves do their part for God.

This is pretty unbelievable but after the party Abraham moves his people to a new location and Abraham pulls the “Sarah is my sister” trick again and Abimelech the local king marries her. This is just a little odd because by this time Sarah is 90 years old. In any case, after the wedding God has a little chat with Abimelech explaining the situation. Abimelech does some quick talking and gets God to agree to not kill all his people if he gives back Sarah and pays off Abraham. Once again Abraham makes out like a bandit with tons more animals and slaves and God doesn’t kill Abimelech’s people.

Then Sarah actually does have a son and they name him Isaac. Well, now that Sarah has her own son she doesn’t want Hagar’s kid hanging around anymore so she tells Abraham to get rid of her. Abraham isn’t too keen on the idea of getting rid of his son but God tells him it’s ok so he gaves Hagar a bottle of water, a loaf and bread, and sends her off into the desert with her son.

The reason this is SUCH a problem is that God promised Canaan (Israel, Gaza, West Bank) to Abraham’s descendents. Because Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away he then had two separate groups of descendents. The Jews are convinced they own the region through Sarah and Isaac. The Arabs are convinced they own the region through Hagar and Ishmael. Because the deed to the land comes from God both groups are unwilling to change their position and are going to just keep on killing each other. Yay. Nice move God.

Secret to bliblical success: 1. get married 2. sell wife 3. have God kill people 4. get wife back 5. repeat steps 2-4

Note:  The more traditional viewpoint of Islam is that they are supposed to share because they are all Abraham's decendants. The more traditional viewpoint of Judeaism is that the Arabs get none of it because Abraham sent away Ishmael. Over time the view of the Islamic world has been shifting toward a more radical solution: genocide.

What's interesting to me is that both groups can't even consider the idea that the biblical account of Abraham's family may not be entirely accurate. In fact, I'm pretty sure the Arabs had no idea they were decended from Ishmael until after Muhammad, about 1400 years ago. Also, there is absolutely zero evidence outside of the biblical and Quranic accounts that any of the Abrahamic tradition is true.

Ref: Genesis 16-17 and Genesis 20-21

Abraham in Egypt – How to sell your wife and come out ahead

Because you didn’t hear this in Sunday School

Abraham’s birth name was Abram so for this story we’ll call him Abram. It turns out that after God confounds the languages at the Tower of Babel he sits on the sidelines for a few hundred years. Then out of the blue he comes to Abram and tells him it’s time to move. So Abram (who was 75 at the time) takes his wife Sarai, his son-in-law Lot (the guy who later got drunk and made babies with his daughters), and the rest of his household and they walk to Caanan. Caanan is an area that includes the modern nation of Israel, part of Lebanon, part of Jordan, part of Egypt, and Gaza.

God tells Abram he can have Caanan for his posterity. Screw the people who were already living there (modern Palestine anyone?).

Sadly, Caanan was in a bad spot at the time: no rain. To get away from the famine Abram and his posse walk down to Egypt. When they get to the edge of Egypt Abram tell his wife that she’s such a hottie he’s afraid the Egyptians will kill him so they can have her for themselves; so they need to lie and say she’s his sister. Well, Abram was right. The Egyptians did think Mrs. Abram was super hot so they ran and told Pharaoh about this new hottie. Pharaoh liked the new hottie so he paid Abram a ton of animals and servants (slaves) so he could marry her.

Apparently God doesn’t approve of polyandry (someone should have told Joseph Smith) because after Pharaoh marries Abram’s wife bad stuff happens. God starts to kill people in Pharaoh’s household using disease. Pharaoh is a smart guy so ALL BY HIMSELF he figures out that if God is killing his family and servants Abram must have lied, and his new wife MUST also be married to Abram.

Pharaoh takes the new wife back to Abram, lectures him for lying to him, and tells him to take all his crap and get out of town. So Abram takes back his wife and heads out of Egypt a much richer man than when he arrived.

Note: Sarai was in her 60s at the time of this story.

Ref: Genesis 12