David's Inspired Census

2 Samuel 24:1-2 And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, 'Go, number Israel and Judah.'

1 Chronicles 21:1 "And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel."

The two verses quoted above both tell the same story of David's census. David was later chastised by God for this numbering of the people.  These verses are describing the same event.

But notice the big difference!

In the first version, the census is incited by "the Lord". In the second, it is Satan who commits this dreadful crime of suggesting a census. (Horror of horrors! Does this mean that Civil Servants are all possessed? Possibly, but that's beside the point.)

The point is simply that we are unable to regard the Bible as factual, or historical. It is therefore not "God-breathed" as Paul thought. It was produced by a series of scribes over the centuries. There are hundreds of contradictions like this one.

Why is Satan given the credit in the second passage? Well, Chronicles was written late in the Old Testament chronology. By the time this was penned, the Jews had been exposed to other nations' myths during their exile. The Zoroastrian religion talks about hell and a personal devil, a Satan. So the myth spread between peoples. Simple as that. The later scribes didn't want to give god the credit for this bad deed, so they gave it to Satan. *See Panel below.

We see this trend later on, too, as the New Testament church added to the myths surrounding Jesus and took out bits they didn't think suited the story. Quite a natural process, if you think about it.

It goes like this:

1.    We believe that Jesus is good and pure and wonderful.
2.    Here is a story about Jesus kicking a dog.
3.    Surely Jesus wouldn't have done that? I mean, he's good and pure and wonderful, isn't he?
4.    So that story must be wrong.
5.    Let's delete it!

Of course, my example is made up, and I'd like to think he never really kicked a dog - at least not on a Sabbath.

By comparing the gospels, we can see lots of examples of this. Matthew, for instance, thought that the number of miracles of healing should mirror the number of plagues of Egypt.  He got himself convinced of this - after all, he'd already written that Jesus was brought out of Egypt just to fit with the Moses story.  (No other writer mentions this.)

So surely there must have been 10 miracles of healing to echo the 10 plagues of Egypt? Trouble is, there weren't ten.  Not ten healings, not ten myths of healings, not even ten rumours of healings. He just makes up extra miracles.  Luke, who didn't have this obsession with Egypt, didn't bother.  You can analyse the text and see where the extra bits have been added, and many scholars agree on that - I'll discuss it in my essay on "Matthew vs. Luke".

(A minor detail, Christians might say!  After all, even one miracle is pretty amazing.  Well, of course, we have no reason to believe that any of these things occurred 2000 years ago in the Middle East.  Christians certainly wouldn't believe their own daughter if she told them she was pregnant but still a virgin.  Yet they swallow Iron Age myths whole.)

*Zoroastrianism's highest significance lies in the influence it has exercised on the development of at least three other great religions. First, it made contributions to Judaism, for between 538 BC (when the Persians under Cyrus captured Babylonia and set free the Jews exiled in that land) and 330 BC (when the Persian Empire was destroyed by Alexander) the Jews were directly under the suzerainty of the Zoroastrians. And it was from the suzerains that the Jews first learnt to believe in an Ahriman, a personal devil, whom they called in Hebrew, Satan. Possibly from them, too, the Jews first learnt to believe in a heaven and hell, and in a judgment Day for each individual (Lewis Browne, This Believing World, New York: MacMillan Company, 1926, pp. 216, 217). Influence on the Bible Of all the other nine extra-Biblical living religions, Zoroastrianism is the only one from which a definite religious belief has been borrowed and included in the Bible. Consistently throughout the Old Testament down to and including the Isaiah of the Exile, the ultimate source of everything, including evil, is represented as the God Jehovah. But a distinct change took place after the Exile. A comparison of two parallel accounts of [the census] of King David will show that a post-exilic document (1 Chronicles 21:1) substitutes "Satan" for "Jehovah" in the pre-exilic account (2 Samuel 24:1). Thus Satan is not an original feature of the Bible, but was introduced from Zoroastrianism. Perhaps certain other innovations besides the idea of a Satan were adopted from Zoroastrianism by the Hebrews after they had come into direct contact with that religion in the Babylonian Exile: for example, the ideas of an elaborate angelology and demonology, of a great Saviour or Deliverer to come, of a final resurrection and divine judgment, and a definitely picturable future life. Certainly Jesus' word "Paradise" (Greek, paradeisos, Luke 23:43) was, at least etymologically, derived form Persian origin (Avestan, pairidaeza) (Robert E. Hume, The World's Living Religions, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, rev. ed., 1959, p. 200).

Geoff Mather 2007

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