Here is part of William Harwood's translation of the beginning of the Bible. Those who wish to read more of his historical research and speculation are invited to read Yahweh and Jesus, Mythology's Last Gods, from Prometheus Books.
As I am worried about being a trifle too long I am breaking this up into three parts: preface; Genesis "J" and Genesis "P".
This is from the translator's preface:
There has long been a need for a translation of the Judaeo- Christian bible that did not deliberately mistranslate certain words and sentences for the purpose of concealing that the biblical authors' beliefs were quite different from those of modern Jews, Christians and Muslims. The most blatant fraud has occurred in the universal rendering of the Hebrew allahiym or ha-allahiym as the proper name, "God". Allahiym is neither a proper name nor singular nor unisexual. Al, sometimes transcribed as el, means "a god". The suffix ah is a feminine singular inflection, so that allah means "goddess". The suffix -iym is a masculine plural inflecion, while the prefix ha- is plural, "the gods and goddesses" or in the common gender, "the gods". The practice of bible makers of mistranslating a word that means "the gods" as "God" stems from the doublethink that, because the translators consider themselves monotheists, the bible authors must have done likewise. They did not. The Jews did not become pseudo-monotheists, giving all gods but Yahweh such lesser designations as "angel" and "devil", until long after the completion of the Hexateuch.
The bible authors used allahiym and ha-allahiym interchangeably. Since ha-allahiym is clearnly not a proper name, I have therefore used the translation, "the gods", even where the Hebrew lacks the definite article. The term, "Yahweh your gods", may seem strange to modern readers, but the biblical authors' message to their readers was, "Yahweh is your gods--all the gods you'll ever need." That was not an implication that other gods did not exist, since every Hexateuch author wrote at least one passage indicating his unequivocal belief in the reality of the other gods. Rather, it meant that others' gods had no more jurisdiction over Jews or Yisraelites than the monarch of England has over Americans or Russians. Jews were forbidden from granting any god but Yahweh worship, a word that incorporated such courtesies as bowing, kneeling, saluting, using formal titles such as "your Lordship", standing to attention, and all of the other ritual demanded by modern- day potentates whose predecessors set the pattern on which the "worship" of gods was modelled. Since King David's subjects were forbidden by their jealous ruler from according other kings the worship that was David's entitlement alone, so were Yahweh's subjects forbidden from worshipping other gods with Yahweh's territorial borders. As Yahweh's second biographer, E, made clear in his version of Yahweh's ten commandments, Yahweh demanded exclusive worship only "where I gaze". A Jew visiting Babylon was not expected to be so foolish as to anger the Babylonian gods by refusing them due worship in their home territory.
[from William Harwood "The Judaeo-Christian Bible Fully Translated", tranlator's preface] Map of the universe, according to the Judaeo/Christian bible
[this will only look good if you set your text reader to a fixed font]
water above the
/\ Yahweh's tent / / skies
/ \ housing his throne
/ \ on the stars / /
/ \ / / kherubs/angels/********\****** / / 7th sky on which
stars *********\***** / / Yahweh walked 7 arch- _____0____________________________________ angels/ |___0____________________________________|Seven seraphs/|______0_________________________________|skies/ planets |_____0__________________________________|heavens
|____0___________________________________|
|___0____________________________________|
|_0____________________ _______________|
| / \ |
| sluice gates |
| for rain | Outer | | Darkness| |
| |
| Mountain peak |
| from which |
| Jesus and Satan |
| could see to the |
| edge of |
| the world/\ |
edge | __---------------------/ \ |
of | __-- /------------------/ \__ |
the |-- ^ ^ /_________ / .....\ --__| -->| sea _________) land X.| __|Jerusalem
world|--__ \ .....__---|
| --__ \-------------------/ _.-- |
\__ ----------------------- __/
--__ water under the land __--
--________________________--
horizon = lower portion of dome of the skies that
rested on earth's rim and held up the seven
heavens
The main problem that I see here is that it is quite obvious that the authors of the Bible did perceive the earth in this way. This is the conclusion of the Flat Earth Society, and constitutes a problem for all christians who insist on the inspiration of the bible and its inerrancy.
In the light of modern knowledge, it is just as believable and just as acceptable to think that the universe looks like the above, as to think it is 6,000 years old.
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The above is copyrighted, and is looking for a publisher. William Harwood has translated the entire bible, Old and New Testaments, in the same manner. Further snippets could be made available. I have the "Hexateuch" (Pentateuch plus Joshua) and the Gospels.
-- To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and cannot exist--all this is but the beginning of wisdom.--Robert G. Ingersoll / Greg Erwin, VP, Humanist Association of Canada