Those people also think the bible was written by god.

To be fair most Christians have never read the Bible and don't even know what's in there.

The crazier part is that Abraham almost certainly didn't exist, so people made up a guy who starts hearing voices, tries to kill his kid, and then starts cutting off the tip of their dicks.

The more interesting part of the patriarch period in the Bible is how it is poorly masking the matriarchal tradition underneath though, from Abraham's wife's name change (from 'chief' to 'princess') and being the first gebirah ("great lady") to the way her son Isaac's blessing on his sons is the only place the male form of gebirah is found in the Bible, in a blessing that the recipient's "mother's sons" bow down to them (pretty odd for a patriarchal blessing).

But the more fun prophet story is the one of the guy who can suddenly talk to God after discovering a burning bush and subsequently creates a double layered tent in which he continues to talk to God and everyone knows that's happening because a cloud of smoke appears. Not only is the anointing oneself and going into a tent how the Scythians hotboxed cannabis in Herodotus, but as of its discovery in 2020 an 8th century BCE Judahite temple's holiest of holies is the earliest archeological evidence of cannabis use in a solely religious context.

That second guy I can at least get a bit behind. He certainly seemed to know how to party.

Another dude climbed a mountain and reappeared a month later with a rock and yelled at people having a good time around a golden statue of an animal, pointing at how his rock is better.

That’s not exactly what happened. Circumcision was already a custom, but the rest is spot on.

Genesis 22 is a great story.

It might speak to an older rites of passage for boys to become men among pre-Iseralites of Cannan.

"Here I am." ... is also an astounding way to respond back to a god. And 22 is neat because it uses both ELOHIM and YHWH but the change is mid story. It links to perhaps two stories pushed into one.

Really don't be such a party pooper. The Jewish take on this so I'm told is that their god requires obedience and a sense of duty. The Xian one sees it as an fact of blind faith in their Lord. Islam even has dibs on this story. So I took time to find why it is meaningful. And learn to address that meaning instead of the story.

All these religious nutties are more interesting when you can offer them more about their texts than they can.

Abe's got a sick kukri there.