the biblical god of the Old Testament is commonly described by some as a god of wrath especially when in comparison to how God is portrayed in the New Testament where some have described him as a god of love to Believers and atheists alike there can be something of a discrepancy between the god of the Old Testament and the god of the New Testament where one is more resembling of a forgiving father type figure and the other is more about [Music] Not For the First Time have I seen the Old Testament God described as a god with a dark side he is after all responsible for floods plagues famines and sometimes just outright genocide however according to traditional Believers it's not so much the case that the Old Testament God is trigger happy but that this more violent side is just another part of God who like us is multifaceted Steven fry refers to God as mean-minded monstrous and even as a maniac Blasphemous words indeed but ones that do reflect the opinion those might have on a deity that destroys cities spreads famine and diseases and at one point drowns the entire world however if we were to consult with the traditional believer they might say that these actions are Justified and that these acts are not random vindictiveness but rather punishments owe to those who have done wrong on that note in today's episode we'll be analyzing each and every time God snuff someone out of existence and hopefully we'll have a more informed sense of what God's final kill count looks like by the end of Genesis what may surprise some readers is that the Old Testament God is pretty peaceful for the first six chapters of Genesis even after being betrayed by Adam and Eve and later scorned by their son Cain it isn't until chapter 6 of Genesis does God start to get annoyed by the Disobedience and disrespect shown to him by humankind where we are told the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only Evil all the time the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth and his heart was deeply troubled it's with this notion that God decides that Humanity needs a reboot and so decides to flood the Earth it's interesting how in some respects God goes from 0 to 100 having killed no one to having killed well the entirety of the Earth with the exception of Noah and his family who were spared for their piety we are told every living thing that moved on the land perished Birds livestock wild animals all the creatures that swam over the Earth and all mankind now we can't possibly know how many people were on Earth during the times of Noah so some speculation is required when coming up with a number to represent God's kill count here we know from the chapters of Peter in the New Testament that there were only eight people aboard the ark who survived the flood but the Bible never determines how many people perished some commentators believe that the Earth's population was relatively low when you consider that back then the world was extremely corrupt and violent with frequent murders and Wars hence the need for the flood some Believers of the ethiopic variation might even cite The Book of Enoch here declaring that the Nephilim had wiped out much of mankind anyway and so the number of humans vanquished in the flood was surprisingly small other commentators have focused on the fact that people in Genesis were cited as living longer some in the case of methusa living close to A Thousand Years so if people were living longer it would be indicative that the world was perhaps even overpopulated arguably even more populated than it is now if we use the genealogy of chapter 5 of Genesis we can determine the dates of certain occurrences and events by adding up the lifespans between Fathers and Sons by using this method we can determine that from the time of Adam to Noah 1,56 years had passed in chapter 7 of Genesis we are told that the flood came about in the 600th year of Noah's life leading many commentators to believe that the flood must have therefore occurred 1,656 years after the creation of Adam using the same method Scholars have suggested that Adam and Eve were created in the year 404 BC so by taking away the 1,56 years in which Noah was born and taking away the 600 years it took for Noah to witness the flood we arrive at the year 2348 BC so how many people were alive in 2,3 48 BC for them to then be drowned in the flood we're not going to factor in the concept that people in the biblical account were living into their 500s and 600s because this would probably make the number of people living on the earth at that time in the year 2348 BC even larger instead we'll consult with Studies by the historical database Hyde and the British poly and demographer Colin mcki which estimate that the world population was between 27 and 72 million if we were to play it safe and go somewhere in the middle this would put us at 49 million people again with this number we aren't factoring in the biblical idea that people were living well into their hundreds let's take away the eight people who survived the flood which was Noah and his family which gives us the final number of 48,900 million people once more this is just an estimation because we cannot possibly know the exact number of people living during this time period And when we factor in the biblical Trope of people living into their late hundreds the total population becomes even blurrier still one cannot argue that the biblical god of the Old Testament doesn't mess around when it comes to making a statement at the very least he does show some remorse for this absolute Massacre by telling Noah and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done still this doesn't mean to say he won't kill at all in the Years After the flood God is pretty quiet for a few chapters and focuses more on establishing his Covenant with Abraham it isn't until God confines in Abraham that he's thinking about destroying Sodom and Gomorrah do we once again get a glimpse of this more dangerous and violent version of the biblical god of the actual events we are told in chapter 19 of Genesis then the Lord Reed down burning sulfur on Sodom and goor Mora from the Lord out of the heavens thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain destroying all those living in the cities and also the vegetation in the Land once more the Bible doesn't specify how many people were living in Sodom and gomorra and thus we don't know exactly how many people were essentially nuked during this episode if we consult the genealogy once more we see that 292 years passed between the time of Noah to the time of Abraham's birth now we know it was during the 99th year of Abraham's life that he established the Covenant of God before being told about God's plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah this means that only 391 years passed from the time of the flood up until that very moment meaning that there couldn't have been as many people living in the areas of Sodom and gomorah as there may have been in the pre flood era as we see previously in chapter 14 of Genesis Abraham joins the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah in a war against the kings of the land with just 318 trained men in his household this has led some Scholars to believe that considering Abraham received the Gratitude of the king of Sodom after the battle that Abraham's men were pivotal in their Victory thus suggesting that these numbers may have also been reflective of the armies of Sodom and Gomorrah we know from Biblical descriptions that Sodom had a Gateway it was big enough to have walls and it was big enough to engage in such a conflict with other surrounding cities for this reason some have put the numbers of residents at Sodom and Gomorrah as somewhere between 600 to 1200 respectively for the sake of this video we'll assume that both cities seeing as they needed Abraham's servants to win the war were on the low side with a population of 600 each now when Abraham hears of God's plan to destroy Sodom and gomorah he tries to vouch for the cities by making a deal with god with this God promises not to destroy the cities If Abraham can find 10 righteous men it would seem apparent that Abraham was unsuccessful in his mission because before long God annihilates the two cities to the point that in the morning the only thing left of the area was smoke so we add the 600 deaths at Sodom and the 600 deaths at gomorah bringing us to a total of 1,00 however there is one more during the evacuation of Sodom and Gomorrah lot is told by the Angels who alert him to God's intentions that when they start running they should not look back at what is about to transpire Lot's wife however does indeed look back and for this she is turned into a pillar of salt the Bible doesn't exactly describe her as dying but I guess being turned into a pillar of salt was an example of God's punishment and thus The Taking of her life with that in mind this brings the kill count of God's time above Sodom and Gomorrah to 1,21 a few Generations after Abraham we are told of the story of Judah who married a Canaanite woman named shua and had several children by her according to judah's grandfather Isaac the son of Abraham marrying a Canaanite woman was forbidden there was an assumption here that because the Canaanite women were not God-fearing they made for poor wives who were more than likely to not only sin themselves but lure their husbands into their wicked ways too of course it's likely that by the time of Judah that this Unwritten rule was probably forgotten about and that considering judah's character even if he was aware of it likely wasn't that concerned about it after marrying shua he has three sons Er Onan and Sheila the Bible tells us Judah got a wife for ER his firstborn and her name was Tamar but ER judah's firstborn was wicked in the Lord's sight so the Lord put him to to death we aren't told anything as to why God killed ER aside from the fact that he was wicked we aren't even given a method in which God used to kill ER all we know is that one minute ER was there the next the Lord put him to death this left Tamar widowed so Judah had 's brother Anan marry Tamar next and instructed him to continue raising Tamar's children so as to fulfill his role as her brother-in-law he's also instructed to impregnate Tamar to produce more children but because he doesn't want to do this Onan always pulled out during sex this the Bible tells us was very Wicked and that when he had done it one too many times God killed him too we are told what he did was wicked in the Lord's sight so the Lord put him to death also in this chapter God smites just two men for displeasing him showing us it was not beyond the Old Testament God to pick out people individually and decide their fate as as he did with Lot's wife towards the end of Genesis we see Jacob's son Joseph who something of an interpreter of dreams come into the service of the pharaoh of Egypt here he interprets two of the pharaoh's dreams as being messages from God that pretty soon God is going to send 7even years of famine upon Egypt the abundance in the land will not be remembered because the famine that follows it will be so severe the reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter had has been firmly decided by God and God will do it soon because Pharaoh took the dream seriously and employed Joseph to St preparing for the famine Egypt is able to mitigate much of the devastation it would have otherwise endured by storing copious amounts of grain the rest of the world however is not so lucky and we are told at this point in time people from all over the globe were coming to Egypt in order to buy resources because according to the Bible the famine wasn't just in Egypt it was everywhere the Bible doesn't give a reason as to why God sends a famine down to the Earth during this time the wickedness of man is not brought into question during these chapters and God himself is seen to be suspiciously quiet some argue that the reason for the global famine was to promote the importance of Joseph and that God sent down this terrible Calamity in order to not only validate the claims made by Joseph but to also catapult him into the upper echelon of Egyptian societ Society in a way you might say that the reason for such a devastating plague was all for the benefit of one man unfortunately we cannot possibly begin to even guess as to how many people around the world at that time died because of the famine some have made efforts to associate this famine with something like the 4.2 kiloyear event which was a long-term Global drought believed to have happened in the year 2200 BC going by some theories this event may have caused the collapse of the old Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the collapse of the Indus Valley civilizations if you are to believe that these circumstances were the same during Joseph's time that entire civilizations collapsed we could easily put the number of deaths around somewhere in the high millions of course even coming up with an estimate is quite difficult considering that there just simply isn't enough information or data for us to really go on here coming up with a convincing number for the death of the inhabitants of a pre flood world was probably the hardest part of this video because realistically it cannot be done the number definitely does vary quite significantly depending on who you are and because the Bible never confirms the death toll we can never really know I also chose to go go with an average of the numbers I found most commonly suggested so this should by no means be treated as a fact in other circles the pre flood world is simply mythology and so there can be no real historical effort to obtain a precise number here the same can be said when ascertaining the death toll at Sodom and gomorah considering that whilst recent excavations may suggest that there were such cities they cannot exactly be verified nor attributed to the cities discussed in the Bible as always guys if you've enjoyed today's episode then don't forget to give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe for more content just like this until next time
