Why Do They Call It the Good Book?

The other day I raved about Hemant Mehta's "Friendly Atheist" YouTube series "Everything Wrong with ...." I repeat my recommendation here, but I want to add a note. The series is highly entertaining, but don't let that overshadow the deeper message: the Hebrew Bible is full of deeply immoral tales. I don't know why even some secularists concede that it is one of the great works of literature. It is clearly ungreat at every level, but especially at the moral level. God just wasn't into justice as you and I understand it. You will have to look awfully hard to find even one sound moral lesson in Genesis, which is as far as Mehta has gone. (He tells me he plans to keep going, a plan I heartily applaud.) If someone can tell me how the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Lot, and rest teach something worthwhile, I'd like to hear it. Leave me comments.

By the way, Mehta refers to the God of Genesis as "the Christian God," but no one should forget that the Christians, who arrived way later, inherited that God from the Hebrews (who were Canaanites despite what the Scriptures say). Christianity is an offshoot of Judeaism, which eventually became Judaism after the Hasmoneans (Maccabees) conquered non-Judean peoples and required them to convert (which included men giving up their foreskins) if they wished to remain on their own land. At that point, the hitherto tight link between the religion and territory was broken forever. These are Jewish stories, which I was taught at Hebrew school in my early years.