The Skeptics' Overrated Bible on 1 Samuel as analyzed by Sheila Rangslinger

• 1:1-2, 20 Was Samuel an Ephraimite or a Levite I guess SAB doesn't have any conception of being a descendant of both tribes. Genealogies could be set out according to purpose.
• 1:2 "He [Samuel's father] had two wives." Once again, by its silence, the Bible endorses polygamy. Once again, SAB is a provincialist who would prefer that people starve. See entry on polygamy here.
• 1:5 "The Lord had shut up her [Hannah's] womb." Why? The Bible doesn't say. Maybe God had nothing better to do. Maybe she didn't need the pressure of children at the time. Maybe SAB can mind his own business and not presume to have a line of what the greater good is over the course of time.
• 1:11 Hannah vows to give her son to the Lord and, as a sign of his holiness, to never cut his hair. But long hair on men is condemned in 1 Cor.11:14. See here.
• 1:19-20 "And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife; and the Lord remembered her [he probably said something like, "Oh yeah, she's the one whose womb I shut up."]. The word here means to mark and does not imply forgetfulness. And Hannah conceived and "bare a son [Oh boy, another boy!], and called his name Samuel." We're still wondering what SAB has against boys. A family in need of support would prefer one in the ancient world since daughters went to other families and all grandchildren would as well.
• 2:1 After god "opened her womb" Hannah exclaims, "my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies." Sounds kinky to me. SAB also likes going into drugstores and imagining that various items there represent sexual organs.
• 2:6, 25 "The Lord killeth ..." -- every chance he gets. Every time someone earns it. Otherwise, argument by outrage.
• 2:8 In Job (26:7) it is said that the earth sets upon nothing, but this verse says it sets upon pillars. See here.
• 2:10 "The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them." If God doesn't like you, he'll send a thunderstorm your way to break your body into little pieces. Outrage again in place of actual argumentation.
• 2:21 "And the Lord visited Hannah [again], so that she conceived." Did he get her pregnant in the usual way? Gratuitous sexual remark by SAB, who apparently gets his jollies from this sort of thing when the drugstore is not open and there are no pencils on display.
• 2:22 The sons of Eli had sex with women "at the door of the tabernacle." Wow. We learn that the sons of Eli weren't perfect, and I guess SAB gets more jollies.
• 2:31-34 If you're not careful God will cut off your arm, consume your eyes, grieve your heart, and kill your sons and grandfathers. Still outrage and nothing more.
• 5:6, 9, 12 God smites the people of Ashdod with hemorrhoids "in their secret parts." Yes, and what? Does SAB also get jollies reading about hemorrhoids?
• 6:4-5, 11, 17 After striking the Philistines with hemorrhoids "in their secret parts," he demands that they send him five golden hemorrhoids as a "trespass offering." See here.
• 6:5 How many gods are there? See here.
• 6:6 "... as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts." But the Pharaoh didn't harden his heart; God did. (The Pharaoh must have had an especially soft heart because God had to harden it ten times.) See here.
• 6:19 God kills 50,070 men for looking into the ark. "And the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter." Yet God is supposed to be merciful. The textual data suggests only 70. And that would be more argument by outrage. See more here.
• 7:1-2 How long was the ark of the covenant at Abinadab's house? See here.
• 7:7-9 Must sacrifices be made by Levites near the tabernacle? SAB does not recognize this as a pre-emptive memorial offering -- it is not a Levitical sacrifice.
• 8:2 Was Samuel's firstborn son Joel as this verse says or Vahni as is said in 1 Chr.6:28? "Vashni" means weak. It's not a real name but a make-fun-of reference.
• 9:1 Who was the father of Kish? See here.
• 10:11-12 There are two stories (see 1 Sam.19:24) for the origin of the famous proverb: "Is Saul also among the prophets?" Both cannot be true. The second verse begins with a word that means "accordingly" -- it's not a second origin story but a reminder of the first.
• 11:2 "I make a covenant with your, that I may thrust out all your right eyes." Deals like this can only be found in the Bible. Or in Ancient Near Eastern lit that SAB would not know about. Does he watch any violent films, BTW?
• 11:6-7 "And the spirit of God came upon Saul ... and he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coast of Israel [just as the Levite did to his concubine in Jg.19:22-30]". People do the darnedest things when the spirit of God comes upon them! Yes, they produce effective symbols that spur people to action. If SAB feels sorry for the ox, he needs to send a sympathy card to the mother of that hamburger he just ate.
• 11:11 "Saul ... slew the Ammorites unto the heat of the day." Then he probably took a little break. After all, killing is hard work. Life in the ANE and survival was hard work.
• 12:14 Should we fear God? See here. At this stage I've seen this one dozens of times from SAB which means it must be one of his favorites.
• 14:12-14 God delivers the Philistines into Johathan's hand. And his very "first slaughter ... was about twenty men." Not bad for a first slaughter. Not bad indeed. He should have just laid out the welcome mat and let the Philistines kill him and everyone else in Israel.
• 14:20 Under God's influence, the Philistines killed each other. Ditto. God should just let the barbarians do what they need to do. Unless they are Israelites.
• 14:36 But later, Saul and his army kill all of those who had not already been killed. See here -- typical war talk from the ANE.
• 15:2-3 God orders Saul to kill all of the Amalekites: men, women, infants, sucklings, ox, sheep, camels, and asses. Why? Because God remembers what Amalek did hundreds of years ago. What did this have to do with the present situation? Nothing. God just wanted to some more innocent people killed. Yet God is supposed to be merciful. He was. See here and don't forget a correct definition of mercy.
• 15:7-26 Saul killed everyone but Agag (the king) and the best of the animals. But still God was furious with Saul for not killing everything as he had been told to do. He said, "it repenteth me that I have se Saul up to be king." Mere outrage again.
• 15:10-11, 35 These verses say that God repented of making Saul king. But just a few verses later (15:29) it says that God never repents. See here.
• 15:29 Does God repent or lie? See above.
• 15:32-34 To please God, Samuel hacks Agag in pieces "before the Lord" [I bet God enjoyed that! says SAB as he turns on Terminator II] -- after Agag pleads with him saying, "surely the bitterness of death has past." He didn't "plead" with him at all, sorry.
• 16:10-11 This passage says that Jesse had eight sons, but 1 Chr.2:13-15 says he had only seven. See here.
• 16:13 After God rejects Saul for refusing to kill indiscriminately, he sends Samuel to find another king. David is chosen and anointed by Samuel, and "the spirit of the Lord came upon him from that day forward." Still just outrage.
• 16:14-16, 23 "But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul [since he was not murderous enough for God], and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him." but if God is good, then how could he have an evil spirit? "Have"? How does SAB get that?
• 16:21-22 From these verses it is clear that Saul knows David well. Yet later, in the next chapter (17:55-58), Saul can't even recognize David. See here.
• 16:23 David plays his harp and makes Saul's "evil spirit from the Lord" go away. And the problem is what, other than bias against the supernatural?
• 17:4 Goliath was ten feet tall ("six cubits and a span"). The cubit may have been smaller, but anyway, what's the problem? Has SAB heard of giantism? It may also have included the plume of his armor.
• 17:49-51 How did David kill Goliath? With a sling ( verse 50) or a sword (verse 51)? Or did he kill him twice? See above.
• 17:50 Here it says that David killed Goliath, but 2 Sam.21:19 says that Elhanan killed him. (The words "the brother of" were inserted into the text of the King James version to avoid the obvious contradiction, which is shown by the italics used.) See here.
• 17:51, 54 David kills Goliath with his sling, beheads him, and carries the head back to Jerusalem. See here.
• 17:55-58 In this passage Saul can't even recognize David, yet according to 16:21-22 Saul knows David very well indeed. See above.
• 18:1-4 "The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul ... And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments ... and his girdle." Implied -- see here. SAB gets more jollies as he walks through the undies dept. at Wal-Mart.
• 18:6-7 David and Saul have a contest to see who can kill the most people for God, and the women act as cheerleaders saying, "Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." And the problem is, what? Would SAB have barked at Americans who celebrated Nazi casualties?
• 18:10 "The evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied." See above.
• 18:16 "All Israel and Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them." I.e., he marched leading them both ways. What, did SAB just get a jolly from that?
• 18:25-27 David kills 200 Philistines and brings their foreskins to Saul to buy his first wife (Saul's daughter Michal). Saul had only asked for 100 foreskins, but David was feeling generous. Outrage.
• 19:2 "Jonathan ... delighted much in David." See above.
• 19:8 "David went out, and fought with the Philistines, and slew them with a great slaughter." Outrage. Heck, there was a war on!
• 19:9 And the evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul." Poor guy, he just can't keep God's evil spirit off of himself. As if he wanted it off?
• 19:24 Saul gets a bit carried away with his prophesying "and he stripped off his clothes ... and lay down naked all that day and night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?" (But see 1 Sam.10:11-12 for another story explaining the origin of this famous proverb.) See above.
• 20:30 Saul is angered by his son's homosexual affair with David and says, "do not I know that thou has chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confusion of thy mother's nakedness?" See above.
• 20:41 David and Jonathan "kissed one another, and wept with one another" when they parted for the last time. See above. SAB still getting jollies from Ancient (and modern) Near Eastern customs. Did it excite him to watch Yasser Arafat kissing other leaders?
• 21:1 When David fled from Saul and came to Nob the name of the high priest was Ahimelech. But in Mk.2:26, Jesus said his name was Abiathar. Another interesting question is: Was David alone when he came to Nob? See here.
• 21:4-5 The priest tells David that he and his men can eat the "hallowed" bread if "they have kept themselves at least from women." David assures the priest that they have and that "the vessels of the young men are holy." So it'd be OK for them to eat the holy bread. And, what's the problem?
• 21:12 David acts like he's crazy, scribbles on the gates of Gath, and lets spit run down his beard. All this he did in front of Israel's enemies in the hopes that they would take him in and protect him from Saul. Here also, what's the problem? Tactically this was a brilliant ploy since the ancients at this time would not harm the insane.
• 22:18-19 Saul kills 85 priests of Nob and all men, women, children, and animals in the city of Nob. Yep, Saul was rotten. And?
• 22:20 This verse (and 23:6) says Abiathar was the son of Ahimelech. But several other verses say that Abiathar was Ahimelech's father. See above.
• 23:2 "David inquires of the Lord, saying, Shall I go and smite these Philistines? And the Lord said unto David, Go, and smite the Philistines ... So David smote them with a great slaughter." Outrage only.
• 25:22, 34 David vows to will kill "any that pisseth against the wall." It's vernacular for males. Not public urination, as SAB the prude may think.
• 25:38 "And it came to pass about ten days after, that the Lord smote Nabal, that he died." This was convenient for David who then stole his property and his wife, Abigail. See here.
• 25:41-44 So David takes his second wife (Abigail) after God killed he husband (Nabal). He also, at the same time, took another wife (#3), Abinam. In the meantime, Saul gave Michal (his daughter and David's first wife) to another man. Yep. A real soap opera. So they're not perfect, what else is new?
• 27:8-11 "And David smote the land and left neither man nor woman alive." (No wonder God liked David so much!) Among those that David exterminated were the Amalekites. But there couldn't have been any Amalekites to kill since Saul killed them all (1 Sam.15:7-8) just a little while before. See above.
• 28:6 "And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not." But if so, then why does it say in 1 Chr.10:13-14 that "Saul ... inquired not of the Lord?" See here.
• 28:8-19 Saul visits a woman with a "familiar spirit" and she brings Samuel back from the dead. Samuel once again explains that God is angry at Saul for not killing all of the Amelekites. He says God is going to deliver all of Israel into the hands of the Philistines. (Since Saul refused to slaughter innocent people, God will slaughter the Israelites. Fair is fair.) "Innocent people"? You mean the people who were holding the Israelites in what was essentially slavery?
• 28:13 Samuel's witch sees gods coming out of the earth. Really? Well just how many gods are there anyway? How many she thought there were, who knows.
• 30:1 The Amalekites are a tough tribe. Twice they were "utterly destroyed": first by Saul (1 Sam.15:7-8) and then by David (1 Sam.27:9-11). Yet here they are, just a few years later, fighting the Israelites again! See above on war hyperbole.
• 30:5 David just keeps getting more wives. God doesn't seem to mind a bit. Does SAB need a tutorial to know when something isn't right? No wonder he's a moral mess.
• 30:7 Abiathar was Ahimelech's son -- or was he his father? Both. The grandfather and grandson had the same name, as was common for the day.
• 30:17 David spends the day killing more of those pesky Amalekites. They are completely wiped out again. (See 1 Sam.15:7-8, 20 and 27:8-9 for the last two times that they were exterminated.) See above.
• 31:4-6 This verse claims that Saul committed suicide, but 2 Sam.1:8-10 says he was killed by an Amalekite, and 2 Sam.21:12 says that he was killed by the Philistines. See here. That SAB includes this canard tells us he's not top-quality opposition.