Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 28:10-22

In this installment Jacob uses a magic rock to have an encounter with the deity, he has a curious response to Yahweh's promises while setting up a worship center in the wrong place, and we attempt to peel back the curtain a bit and show what source-critical scholars have been aware of for a while now.

Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 27:1-28:9

In this installment, which we could begin calling "The Old and the Restless", Jacob continues his trickery with the help of his shifty Aramean mother; Isaac makes a careless blunder when casting a spell; Esau gets a really raw deal again because, well, Yahweh just hates him; and then all four main characters act like none of it ever happened. 

Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 26

Just picking up a Bible and reading chapters like this one might make a reader come away yawning. Isaac goes to the territory of the Philistines to escape a famine, lies about his wife being his sister, gets rich in the process, develops a rivalry with the locals, gets into a dispute over some wells and settles things with a treaty. When taking other passages into account, however, there are a lot of interesting discrepancies. 

Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 25

In this installment Abraham dies (or does he?) but not before knocking up a concubine to the tune of six more sons, Rebekah needs divine intervention to get pregnant and immediately regrets that decision, and Yahweh hates a guy before he's even born.

Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 24

In this chapter we see a bit of Love Ancient Hebrew Style, featuring all the typical trappings of an Ancient Near Eastern romantic comedy. And what shall we call this comedy? Romancing the Stoning? The 40-Year Old Virgin? Failure to Launch? One Funeral and a Wedding? When Isaac Met Rebekah? Sleepless in Beer Lahai Roi? Sweet Home Aramea? Purchase Actually? How to Buy a Bride in One Day? I'll let the reader decide.

Genesis 24:1-9

Isaac is 40 and still unmarried and living in his dead mother’s tent (v. 67). Abraham, who is now 140, decides it's time to find a bride so the young lad...er...I mean middle-aged man can settle down. Note that even though Isaac is 40, he's being treated like a youth. Abraham calls his chief servant and tells him not to let Isaac leave the land, as though a servant would have that kind of say over Isaac, a grown-ass 40-year-old man man who will one day own him once old Abe kicks the bucket. In normal cases a servant would only be able to exercise this kind of authority over an heir that was not yet of age.

Is it possible that the writer of this portion (typically identified as part of the Yahwist or "J source" by those who adhere to the Documentary Hypothesis) had in mind a much younger Isaac who was only then approaching marrying age? After all, the only way we know Isaac's age is by using material found in chapter 23 along with 25:20, both of which are typically passages attributed to the Priestly or "P source".  Incidentally, the P source also puts Esau at 40 when he gets married. Recall that we ran into a similar age-inappropriate problem in chapter 21 with a teenaged Ishmael being treated like a toddler.

Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 22

In this installment we look at the sacrifice of Isaac. I've been fairly reserved thus far in this series, making light of a few things here and there, pointing out anachronisms and discrepancies and joking at the silliness generated by conservative views of Genesis as an inerrant, divinely inspired book. Fair warning for this passage: the gloves are coming off and I won't be pulling punches or tempering things. I think this chapter strikes at the very core of exactly how the traditional expressions of the Abrahamic faiths are able to make otherwise good people do terrible things in the names of their gods.

Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 20 & 21

In this installment we get to experience a bit of déjà vu when Abraham once again becomes worried about his super-hot nineteen-year-old ninety-year-old wife, we find another big fat anachronism, we see once again how possession (of a woman) is nine-tenths of the law unless Elohim threatens to smite you, and we get to see just how much of a physically underdeveloped little man-child Ishmael must've been at seventeen.

Genesis 20:1-17

Abraham lives as a temporary resident in Gerar, a Philistine city that current archeology tells us wouldn’t be inhabited until 1200 BC at the earliest and not as anything more than a small village until about 800 BC, putting it hundreds of years after the time when the Patriarchs lived or when Moses supposedly wrote this account (Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, pp. 37-38). While there, not-so-honest Abe has his ninety-year-old sister/wife once again trick the locals into thinking that they aren’t married. Exactly as happened in chapter 12 during the first of the three "Dude, she's just my sister" patriarchal narratives, the ruler sees the nubile nonagenarian and takes her as a wife. In chapter 12 it’s Yahweh that threatens Egypt. Here in Gerar it’s Elohim. Later in 26:6-11 when Isaac pulls the same thing one more time on Abimelech, no specific deity will be named directly.