You know, I thought that verse was bad enough, and then I saw both of those things. Totally unintentionally, in both cases, I assure you, and on two separate occasions.
But damn. Don’t play the dozens with Yahweh, what.
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Do you have a better translation of 1 Samuel 18:25?
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I’m pretty sure this translation has more context.
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He needed a wallet he could rub to have it turn into a suitcase.
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Ooh, ooh, TV pitch. Kinda like Drunk History, but Bad Bible Translations.
Yeah!? Yeeaahh!!??
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22 Humorous 
and Insightful 
Quotes on Religion
“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?” –Mark Twain
“Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” –Mark Twain
“If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people”-- Gregory House
“Surely the ass who invented the first religion ought to be the first ass damned” – Mark Twain
“The family that prays together…is brainwashing their children.”-- Albert Einstein
“Fear paints pictures of ghosts and hangs them in the gallery of ignorance.”-- Robert Green Ingersoll
“The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy.”–Mark Twain
“Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.”–Sigmund Freud
“Religion is a group of scam artists that sell the calming idea that your body is a temple of God, while your mind belongs to them.” – Jose Carrillo
“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”-- Socrates.
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” –Mark Twain
“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”–Sigmund Freud
“The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.” – Abu Ala Al-Maari
“Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and sword.”–Mark Twain
“Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.” – Gene Roddenberry
“When you understand why you don’t believe in other people’s gods, you will understand why I don’t believe in yours.”-- Albert Einstein
“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can change this.” – Albert Einstein
"Religion is “so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.” – H. L. Mencken
“If we are to believe the Bible, god created a flood that nearly wiped out all of mankind, taking genocide to epic proportions. Why then is god worshiped and Hitler, who committed genocide on a smaller scale, labeled evil for similar acts?” – Scott Williams
“A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.” – James K. Feibleman
“A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”-- Samuel Clemens
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” –Mark Twain
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Honestly, I’m a little nonplussed. I don’t think anyone here is a fundamentalist of any description, but we’re probably all very familiar with fundamentalism and disagree with it. I don’t think anyone thinks that Judaism or Christianity was completely original either. There’s influence from Egyptian religion, but also from other belief systems in the region. This is well established. It’s not that I’m uninterested in Egyptian religions, but I’d much rather learn about them without seeing them presented as a challenge to more recent religions - I highly doubt Egyptian religions were original either. As for the similarities, I’d be more interested in learning about the evidence of connections between different belief systems and how they influenced each other rather than bare similarities of form in narratives - that’s just as likely to have been coincidence (and some of the similarities aren’t all that close anyway). it’s a bit difficult to know how to take bare quotes - I mean, they can be true in many cases, but they seem more like slogans intended to make us reject a belief system that many of us don’t believe anyway. If I still believed, I’d be able to find arguments to say why this didn’t apply to me, and I know enough intelligent theists not to look down on them or reduce their belief to slogans.
Religion just seems like an artefact of psychology and sociology to me - we won’t eliminate it, and there are things that I care much more about than the religion that someone follows or how devout they are.
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Since Atum obviously wanked the universe into existence and you can’t prove he didn’t, clearly African/Kemetic religion is original. And if it is just made up? Well, wanking the world into being is pretty original in that sense too.
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Atum as in: “The Great He-She”
Atum who can be considered a LGBTQ supreme creator solar god! 
Atum a supreme creator solar god with simultaneous or synchronous reproductive organs!
From the Creation Myth of the Heliopolis Ennead
In the beginning, there was only Nu (or Nun), the dark, primordial, chaotic, churning, bubbling waters; nothing else existed. As the waters receded, and a small pyramid-shaped hill (Benben) rose up, then more followed. Standing on the first Benben was Atum, the first of the African-Kemetic/Anu gods.
Atum (Atem or Tem) is a mythical pre-dynastic (before 3100 BCE— i.e. before the Kemetic ‘Egyptian’ dynasties) creator sun god. He was also associated with the creator sun god Ra. Atum (Atem or Tem) has several myths; he was first worshiped as a supreme creator earth and solar god, then in later African-Kemetic/Anu dynasties exclusively as a supreme creator solar god. Atum had believers in Heliopolis, Egypt, and throughout Africa.
In one myth, Atum coughed (or sneezed) up his son Shu, the African-Kemetic/Anu god of the air, and spat (or vomited) out his daughter Tefnut, the African-Kemetic/Anu goddess of moisture. The coughing and sneezing represent air (Shu). The spitting and vomiting represent moisture (Tefnut).
In another myth, Atum created Shu and Tefnut by masturbating or having sex 
with his own shadow, which he gave a female name (Iusaaset). 
Atum is an idiosyncratic, freakish, queer and interesting supreme creator god. Atum created himself. On the first day, as Atum stood on the Benben, this was viewed in later dynasties as Atum bringing light (the sun) to the world. In another myth, Atum created Shu and Tefnut by masturbating or having sex with his own shadow, which he gave a female name (Iusaaset).
This can happened because Atum is both male and female. Atum is the ideal vehicle for the creation of the other gods and goddesses; he is functionally and physiologically bisexual. Atum has the gender of both men and women. “He” can impregnate “Herself.”
The African-Kemetic/Anu epithet for Atum was “The Great He-She.” He is the Supreme Being, creator of the universe and the master of the elements and forces of the universe. He produced the first nine gods, called the “Heliopolis Ennead” of Africa-Kemet/Anu (“Ennead” means the cardinal number that is the sum of eight and one): Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Seth (Set or Setan) and Heru (Horus). The Heliopolis Ennead are referred to as “The Black Anu”
Excerpts of Hymn to Atum
Papyrus Bremner-Rhind
At the moment of creation, Atum spoke; I alone am the creator. When I came into being all life began to develop. When the almighty speaks, all else comes to life. There were no heavens and no earth, there was no dry land and there were no reptiles in the land.
When I first began to create; when I alone was planning and designing many creatures, I had not sneezed Shu the wind; I had not spat Tefnut the rain; there was not a single living creature; I planned many living creatures; all were in my heart, and their children and their grandchildren.
Then I copulated with my own fist; I masturbated with my own hand; I ejaculated into my own mouth. I sneezed to create Shu the wind; I spat to create Tefnut the rain … in the beginning I was alone; then there were three more; I dawned over the land of Egypt; Shu the wind and Tefnut the rain played on the sea.
Excerpts of Hymn to Atum
Papyrus Bremner-Rhind
With tears from my eye; I wept and human beings appeared. I created the reptiles and their companions; Shu and Tefnut gave birth to Geb the earth and Nut the sky; Geb and Nut gave birth to Osiris and Isis, Seth and Nephthys; Osiris and Isis gave birth to Horus; one was born right after another; these nine gave birth to all the multitude of the land.
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Many words, signifying little. You must be a really dedicated adherent of African-Kemetic religion to be able to tell us almost as much as the Wikipedia article on the same.
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That is a beautiful thing!
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Sometimes, the internet knows just what you need. 
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The oldest printed book is a copy of the Diamond Sutra from China, actually.
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Link it link it link it!
Seriously, I love that sort of thing. Link me what convinced you!
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The Diamond Sutra’s the oldest printed book:
There’s many pieces of older literature, though, like the Sumerian tablets you mentioned.
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I did some brief googling and it seems to be the oldest surviving printed book. Don’t know that it’s proven that there were none before. (Probably can’t be definitively proven.) And the Sumerian texts would have been older but not printed books.
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