As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show from the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous, and cruel. Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact, He was a tribal god, an idol, made by man; and, as the idol of a savage and ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster. First then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. I shall begin by quoting from _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams: The theology of the Jahwist is very childish and elementary, though it is not all on the same level. He thinks of God very much as in human form, holding intercourse with men almost as one of themselves. His document begins with Genesis ii. 4, and its first portion continues, without break, to the end of chapter iv. This portion contains the story of Eden. Here Jahweh _moulds_ dust into human form, and _breathes_ into it; _plants_ a garden, and puts the man in it. Jahweh comes to the man in his sleep, and takes part of his body to make a woman, and so skilfully, apparently, that the man never wakes under the operation. Jahweh _walks_ in the garden like a man in the cool of the day. He even _makes coats_ for Adam and Eve. Further on the Jahwist has a flood story, in which Jahweh _repents_ that he had made man, and decides to drown him, saving only one family. When all is over, and Noah sacrifices on his new altar, Jahweh _smells_ a sweet savour, just as a hungry man smells welcome food. When men build the Tower of Babel, Jahweh _comes down_ to see it--he cannot see it from where he is. In Genesis xviii. the Jahwist tells a story of three men coming to Abraham's tent. Abraham gives them water to wash their feet, and bread to eat, and Sarah makes cakes for them, and "they did eat"; altogether, they seemed to have had a nice time. As the story goes on, he leaves you to infer that one of these was Jahweh himself. It is J. who describes the story of Jacob _wrestling_ with some mysterious person, who, by inference, is Jahweh. He tells a very strange story in Exodus iv. 24, that when Moses was returning into Egypt, at Jahweh's own request, Jahweh met him at a lodging-place, and sought to kill him. In Exodus xiv. 15 it is said Jahweh took the wheels off the chariots of the Egyptians. If we wanted to believe that such statements were true at all, we should resort to the device of saying they were figurative. But J. meant them literally. The Jahwist would have no difficulty in thinking of God in this way. The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah belongs to this