The Culling of the Virgins

A year or so ago I wrote a short essay on the Biblical chapter, Numbers 31. That is where God tells Moses to take vengeance upon the Midianites. I hoped to use the essay in a book or perhaps publish it on a website.

After completing the essay, I emailed it to my oldest son, Rusty, for his criticism. (Rusty is a materialist, that is he believes nothing exists except the material world.) I was stunned by his reply:

“No, no, no, Dad, far too graphic. That is shocking; You just cannot write stuff like that.”

So, I took his advice and deleted the essay.

Then today began thinking about all the shocking stuff in the Bible, the genocide, the drowning of all the world’s people, including toddlers, babies, and animals in a flood, the eternal burning of unbelievers in hell fire… Then I thought of a line I had read many years ago:

          Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.

          Thomas Paine:   The Age of Reason

Dammit, I thought. That chapter is one of the most shocking things I have ever read. If it is okay for that story to be published in the Bible, just why can’t I just try to explain how it all must have gone down or had to go down? If a person can just read about something happening without thinking about the details of how it had to happen, then that person is not being honest with him/herself. they can just imagine that nothing really nasty happened, but not all that bad. They just say to themselves, “nothing else to report here, so let’s move on.” A lie by omission.

No, hell no, I will publish this essay. Sure it is horribly shocking. But what the Bible said happened was shocking. This is presented as the holy work of God; therefore, it is only fair that if they say it happened, then it is only fair that we can try to describe the events as they surely must have happened.

I decided to rewrite the essay. But make no mistake, this essay is not intended to be an appeal to reason. It is intended only to shock.

Numbers 31 explains God’s vengeance against the Midianites because, as explained in Numbers chapter 25, his chosen people, the children of Israel, committed whoredom with the daughters of Moab and caught a social disease that killed 24 thousand of them. One wonders, with such a deadly disease infecting the Moabite Tribe, how were any of them left alive? Nevertheless…

Here in Numbers 25, it gets confusing. It was the daughters of Moab who did all the whoring with the sons of Israel that caused the plague. But somehow, God blames it on the Midianites. He tells Moses to “Vex the Midianites and smite them.”

Moving on to Numbers 31:

      1: And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying.

      2: Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites.

So, Moses did just that. He sent his army out to destroy the Midianites.

      7: And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.

      8: And they slew the kings of Midan,…

      9: And the children of Israel took all the women of Midan captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.

Then Moses’ army returned to camp with their booty.

      15: And Moses said unto them, have you saved all the women alive?

      16: Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through their counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.

      17: Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that has known a man by lying with him.

      18: But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Okay, here is where it gets graphic. If you are easily sickened by the graphic horror of how things had to happen according to the Bible, then you should stop reading right here. But if that is the case, then you should not read the Bible at all, especially the Old Testament, because it is filled with many other supposed events such as this.

We are told, in verse 40, that there were sixteen thousand persons left after all the male children, male babies, mothers, and non-virgin girls had been killed, so the total before the slaughter must have been at least 40 thousand. That meant that about 24 thousand Midianites must be put to the sword by Moses’s army on orders from God.

First, they would probably have grabbed all the boy babies and rammed a sword through their tiny bodies or perhaps just lopped off their heads. Then they would have thrown their bodies into a pile. At the same time, they dispatched the babies; they would have likely put their mothers to the sword also. If they had babies, they could not have been virgins. Then grabbed all the boy toddlers and children, dispatched them in a like manner, and threw them on the pile of babies and mothers.

But then there would be all those young girls and young women without children left. Just how will they figure out who among them are virgins and who is not? Well, there is only one way to tell who is a virgin and who is not.

That would require perhaps a hundred groups of four men each. One to hold her hands down, another to hold her legs and spread them apart, another to place a sword in her solar plexus. A fourth man would open her vagina, and insert his thumb or finger to check for a hymen. If he found one, he would give a “thumbs up” to the man with the sword, and the terrified girl would be led off. But if a hymen were not there, then he would give a “thumbs down” to the man with the sword. He would then thrust it through her body. Other men designated as “draggers” would then drag her body to the body pile and throw it on top of the dead bodies of the women, kiddies, and babies.

We are not told how they disposed of these thousands of bodies, but since they were in the middle of the Sinai Desert, they would have likely just moved on and left them there.

But the booty now had to be divided up. The booty consisted of 675,000 sheep, 72,000 beeves, 61,000 asses, and 16,000 young virgin girls.

Of course, the Lord had to have a share of it all. The Lord’s share was given to Eleazar, the priest. How Eleazar got them to the Lord, we can only guess. But no matter how it was delivered, the Lord’s share was 675 sheep, 72 beeves, 61 asses, and 32 virgins.

And so ends this horrible little story of the slaying of the Midianites and the culling of the virgins. But not to worry, it is all fiction; it never really happened. Moses, like Adam, Noah, and Abraham, is a fictional character that never existed. It was all a legend written down by ancient scribes hundreds of years after it was supposed to have happened.

This was a legend, like Noah’s Flood story and the Adam and Eve story, a legend handed down by word of mouth for hundreds of years. The author of this story really believed it. He really believed he was recording the history of his people. In his mind, his god was the god of the tribes of Israel only and demanded that all the other gods were inferior to his. His god always won. His god hated all other gods and demanded that all worshippers of other gods should be killed.

This book, called the Holy Bible, is the foundation of all Abrahamic Religions. The Abrahamic religions number approximately 2.3 billion people. Of course, not all of those 2.3 billion people believe this is the literal truth of how the world and the human race came into being. But a large majority of them believe every word of it. That is what is truly amazing. How did this happen? How and why did it so many people come to believe such a truly absurd story?

Permission is granted to copy and publish all or any part of this essay, provided the context is not changed, and the source link is also listed.

I have a book out if anyone is interested. 

A Worldview Based on Evidence

I will be posting a new essay about twice a month. If you would like to be notified by email when a new essay is posted, please email me at Darwinian200@gmail.com . 

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