Stromateis 002
Most monotheists portray or project their god to be omniscient, omnipotent, unchanging, eternal and what not. Christians are among those who attribute their god of the bible with these concepts. But the bible turns out to be the biggest adversary of their assertions.
Many will have seen one of the various movie adaptations of Exodus and / or heard about the famous plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea (which is one of the many misrepresentations of the original Sea of Reeds, present day Great Bitter Lake), the Ten Commandments given to Moses. But (conveniently?), the movies and retellings of the Exodus stories gloss over the passage right after god appoints Moses as fore speaker (prophet), in which god tries to kill Moses.
Three verses, five sentences, 17 questions
Why did god want to kill Moses, moments after he appointed him to be his press secretary?
Was it because god suddenly realized he was sending out an uncircumcised Hebrew to lead his people of the covenant? Better late than never…
How or why did god not know this already? A momentary lapse of omniscience?
And why did god think the only way to solve this problem was by killing Moses?
If god would have succeeded, would he have appointed someone else to take Moses’ place?
How would Zipporah have known god’s reason for wanting to kill Moses?
How would Zipporah have known that that was what god was about to do?
How would Zipporah have known that cutting off the foreskin of her son and smearing it over Moses’ genitals would have done anything, let alone overcome the omnipotent god?
How can a circumcision change god’s plans? Did god change his mind, or did he already know he wasn’t really going to kill Moses?
If not, then why the intent of killing Moses?
If god wanted to kill Moses for not being circumcised, why did he not set out to kill the son of Moses who was equally uncircumcised?
If Zipporah knew that god wanted to kill Moses because he was not circumcised, then why not circumcise Moses instead of Gershom or along with Gershom?
Did god not know Moses wasn’t really circumcised?
Did Zipporah indeed fool god long enough for the issue never to be mentioned again?
Or did god find out afterwards that he had been fooled, but could not press the matter anymore because that would reveal how easy god can be fooled?
If god knew he had been fooled, but not being circumcised was still a valid reason to kill a human, then why did god not attempt to kill Moses at any later point?
If god was not intent in killing Moses because of him not being circumcised, then why did god want to kill Moses?
More questions may be asked about this very strange interpolation of the Exodus story, Maybe you can think of some and if you do, we sure are interested in what you came up with. The above 17 questions already cast serious doubt about god’s omniscience, omnipotence, immutability and lastly… intelligence.
Patricia Forrester, 19 May 2022
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