God Preferred Inbred Relationships

I'm a former Christian and reading the Bible led me to disbelief. It's been a long time since I've done that, so I've decided to get into it again now that I'm older. I'm adding some Bible study to my Agnostic Guide for this blog. It's starting to feel like a waste of time, but I'll use it to throw out a general observation here and there.

Here's an odd thing that really jumped out at me during my recent review: God preferred inbred relationships in the Old Testament for many key characters as his chosen people.

Warring Children of Abraham

The children of Abraham squabble and fight like the worst of siblings. They're closely related as a people if the religious texts can be believed. The picture above is a good one for showing the messed up family tree branching out from Abraham. Jews and Jesus are believed to descend from Isaac whereas Muhammad was descended from his older brother Ishmael. Ishmael's mother was Isaac's mother's handmaid, so that's an interesting relationship dynamic between the descendents.