It starts off pedestrian. Once you get 1/3 of the way, it starts to get hilarious.
"Is it to be wondered at that some people have doubted the statement that God told Moses how to make some ointment, hair oil, and perfume, and then made it a crime punishable with death to make any like them ? Think of a God killing a man for imitating his ointment" [Ex. xxx, 23.]
The Bible was inspired by so many sources it's not funny. That region of the world was home to more than a handful of cultures and civilizations, so the scope of influence on the earliest Martu (the nomads from whom Abraham's clan should have descended) was great. It started out with the ruins of Sumeria, got influenced by the heretic pharaoh of Egypt, and they got stuck in Babylon for a couple of generations too. THEN the author tribes went out and actually conquered something, but that hasn't stopped about six to ten other cultures tromping through there in the meanwhile, often because Isreal happened to be in the way. By the time the damn book was actually written in its most complete form, it was just about the start of the dark ages.
Needless to say, there's a lot of nasty history bearing down on the origins of those stories.
Note: I'm semi-retired from the board, so if you need something, please be patient.
