A whole lot of begatting is going on in Genesis Chapter 10 with the descendants of Noah. Joktan begat Almomad and Sheleph, and on and on. Chapter 11 is more of the same. We meet Abram and Sarai whom we follow for a few chapters. They are married but childless.
10/10/11 EDIT: Today I realized I missed something significant in Ch. 11: the Tower of Babel, which is a pretty enduring image from the bible, so I'm breaking some blog rule and editing an old post. You know, I have wrestled with getting into too much detail in these posts because I don't want them to go on ad nauseam, but then when I try to be concise I miss something. Also, this book is effing boring at times.
OK, so... everyone on earth speaks the same language, which is really handy for building a tower to heaven. Makes it easier to assign roles and such. When God gets wind of this, he makes it so that people no longer speak one common language. And wa-la, foils their plans to build a tower to heaven. Why not just tell them it isn't possible to build a tower that tall because heaven doesn't exist?
In Chapter 12, God tells Abram it's time to leave his father's land. He will be greatly blessed and have a great nation. Well all right then. Let's do this thing. With that, Abram and Sarai hit the road. When they reach Canaan, they build an altar and God promises Abram his descendants will inherit this land.
Abram and Sarai head to Egypt where there is a horrible famine. Things get seriously fucked up at this point. Abram tells Sarai that she is so beautiful the Egyptians will kill him if they think that she is his wife, so he will pass her off as his sister. What? Pharaoh is smitten and starts getting it on with Sarai. Because Abram is her "brother" he is taken care of by Pharoah's folks. He is provided with servants (again, slavery presented as a ho-hum no big deal) and animals including she asses and camels. All is well until God gets involved. He is pretty pissed at Pharaoh for sleeping with Abram's wife and plagues him and his house with some sort of horrible illness. Now, if this is somehow the appropriate penalty, why not punish Abram for lying about Sarai instead of afflicting Pharaoh for what he didn't know?
Pharaoh confronts Abram about his lies and shoos them out of Egypt.
Seriously, what in the hell kind of story is this?
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Genesis 9
God establishes a covenant with Noah and sons. He will not flood the earth again, and a rainbow will serve as a reminder to God of that promise. I guess he can be forgetful.
Noah plants a vineyard, drinks wine and gets plastered. He then passes out naked in a tent. Hey, we've all been there; don't judge. Did Noah understand that wine could make him drunk or what that even meant? Anyway, Noah's son Ham walks into the tent and sees his naked, passed-out dad. He tells his brothers Shem and Japheth, who cover their naked father. They walk into the tent backwards so they don't see Noah's junk.
When Noah awakes, he magically knows that Ham has seen him naked and ratted him out to his brothers. This ticks off Noah and he curses Ham's son Canaan to be a slave of Shem and Japheth.
Let me get this straight. Noah, the only one whose family is worth saving according to God, is a drunkard (not that there's anything wrong with that). And the problem is not that he passes out naked and drunk, the problem is that someone saw him. And that guy's son is on the hook for it. Slavery is mentioned like it's no big whoop.
The chapter ends with Noah's death at 950 years.
In a few short chapters, we've seen several familiar Sunday School stories - creation, the serpent and the apple, the fall from grace, Noah's ark. Can't you just picture a children's coloring book about Noah's ark ending with the rainbow and God's promise? In the very same chapter, we get drunkenness, nakedness, slavery and impossibly old people.
When adults gather for a bible study, are totally fucked up stories like this one ever included? I listened to a Christian podcast about Genesis Chapter 9, just to hear how crazy shit like this is presented. Thirty of the 40 minutes were spent on God's covenant to us. He promised to never drown us all again. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't he just the best? Noah's drunken revelry is evidence that man is still sinful after this brand new start following the flood. Where does it say getting drunk is a sin? Is it "wicked" (which so far has not been specifically described)? We just know that whatever "wicked" is, it is VERY bad. But best of all, the podcast glossed over the whole slavery thing. Oh, Canaan's going to be a "servant", no biggie... What?
Noah plants a vineyard, drinks wine and gets plastered. He then passes out naked in a tent. Hey, we've all been there; don't judge. Did Noah understand that wine could make him drunk or what that even meant? Anyway, Noah's son Ham walks into the tent and sees his naked, passed-out dad. He tells his brothers Shem and Japheth, who cover their naked father. They walk into the tent backwards so they don't see Noah's junk.
When Noah awakes, he magically knows that Ham has seen him naked and ratted him out to his brothers. This ticks off Noah and he curses Ham's son Canaan to be a slave of Shem and Japheth.
Let me get this straight. Noah, the only one whose family is worth saving according to God, is a drunkard (not that there's anything wrong with that). And the problem is not that he passes out naked and drunk, the problem is that someone saw him. And that guy's son is on the hook for it. Slavery is mentioned like it's no big whoop.
The chapter ends with Noah's death at 950 years.
In a few short chapters, we've seen several familiar Sunday School stories - creation, the serpent and the apple, the fall from grace, Noah's ark. Can't you just picture a children's coloring book about Noah's ark ending with the rainbow and God's promise? In the very same chapter, we get drunkenness, nakedness, slavery and impossibly old people.
When adults gather for a bible study, are totally fucked up stories like this one ever included? I listened to a Christian podcast about Genesis Chapter 9, just to hear how crazy shit like this is presented. Thirty of the 40 minutes were spent on God's covenant to us. He promised to never drown us all again. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't he just the best? Noah's drunken revelry is evidence that man is still sinful after this brand new start following the flood. Where does it say getting drunk is a sin? Is it "wicked" (which so far has not been specifically described)? We just know that whatever "wicked" is, it is VERY bad. But best of all, the podcast glossed over the whole slavery thing. Oh, Canaan's going to be a "servant", no biggie... What?
Monday, September 26, 2011
Genesis 5-8
Chapter 5 outlines the descendants of Adam. Seth is the first named here although we know from Chapter 4 several came before him. In Chapter 5 daughters are mentioned for the first time, but the most noteworthy part of this chapter is everyone's age. When Adam was 130 years old, Seth was born. Adam lives another 800 years. What does that even mean? My first thought was a "year" is somehow not 365 days (this brought back memories of reading Inherit the Wind in high school and how much I liked the idea that each of the first seven days could be longer than 24 hours. It helped me try to wedge all my skepticism into this story I was supposed to believe without question). All these folks lived hundreds of years. The chapter ends with our dear friend Noah who was 500 years old when he sired 3 sons. Right.
In Chapter 6, God sees how wicked most of his creation is. I would like to know what behavior qualified as so despicable that God decided to kill off everyone from the face of the earth except Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. Every toddler and every kitten are so terrible that they should be drowned, really? And yet Noah was "perfect in his generations and Noah walked with God."
God tells Noah to build an ark. This is a story everyone knows. Bring two of every creature onto the ark. Thus did Noah.
Chapter 7 adds a little more detail to this whole "two by two" business. Noah is to bring seven of the "clean beasts" and two of the unclean ones. Which is which? Why not put the unclean beasts on their own ark? Roughly how many creatures were there on board? Why bring two of *everything* including roaches and bed bugs?
OK, so it rains for 40 days and 40 nights. After that stops, the rain "prevailed upon the earth" for 150 days. Think about the food and bathroom situation after six months. Seriously. It's a wooden boat built by a 500 year old man. They didn't have a flush toilet or a litter box. Where does everyone poop? What about e coli, whooping cough and scurvy? The common cold? Legionnaires? Diarrhea? Where the hell did they store all the food? And not one of the creatures on board dies of natural causes in all that time trapped on the ark? What about natural predators - are the lions in first class and the zebras in coach? How do you keep the one from slaughtering the other?
In Chapter 8 things finally dry out. Noah sends out a dove who returns with an olive branch (is this where the whole "extending an olive branch" thing got started?). Noah is 601 when his party departs the ark. It's time to be fruitful and multiply, boys and girls.
Noah builds an altar and apparently sacrifices the clean beasts and clean fowl. I guess the Lord likes this because he decides he won't wipe out all of humankind again. Thanks, God!
In Chapter 6, God sees how wicked most of his creation is. I would like to know what behavior qualified as so despicable that God decided to kill off everyone from the face of the earth except Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. Every toddler and every kitten are so terrible that they should be drowned, really? And yet Noah was "perfect in his generations and Noah walked with God."
God tells Noah to build an ark. This is a story everyone knows. Bring two of every creature onto the ark. Thus did Noah.
Chapter 7 adds a little more detail to this whole "two by two" business. Noah is to bring seven of the "clean beasts" and two of the unclean ones. Which is which? Why not put the unclean beasts on their own ark? Roughly how many creatures were there on board? Why bring two of *everything* including roaches and bed bugs?
OK, so it rains for 40 days and 40 nights. After that stops, the rain "prevailed upon the earth" for 150 days. Think about the food and bathroom situation after six months. Seriously. It's a wooden boat built by a 500 year old man. They didn't have a flush toilet or a litter box. Where does everyone poop? What about e coli, whooping cough and scurvy? The common cold? Legionnaires? Diarrhea? Where the hell did they store all the food? And not one of the creatures on board dies of natural causes in all that time trapped on the ark? What about natural predators - are the lions in first class and the zebras in coach? How do you keep the one from slaughtering the other?
In Chapter 8 things finally dry out. Noah sends out a dove who returns with an olive branch (is this where the whole "extending an olive branch" thing got started?). Noah is 601 when his party departs the ark. It's time to be fruitful and multiply, boys and girls.
Noah builds an altar and apparently sacrifices the clean beasts and clean fowl. I guess the Lord likes this because he decides he won't wipe out all of humankind again. Thanks, God!
Genesis 4
One more singleton chapter and then I'll group a few together for the great flood.
In Chapter 4, Adam and Eve have a family - two bouncing baby boys, Cain and Abel. They grow up and bring offerings to the Lord. Abel's is suitable (animals) but Cain's is not (I guess plants since he was a farmer). I don't know why the offering wasn't acceptable to God but I guess it really pissed Cain off because the next thing you know, Cain killed Abel.
Cain and God work something out where God "set a mark upon Cain" so anyone seeking vengeance will be punished sevenfold.
The rest of this chapter gives quite a list of names of the descendants of Cain, staring with Enoch and ending with Enos. Everyone listed is male but one has to assume females are showing up too because Eve can't be the mother of all these descendants. So who else was having kids early on when Adam and Eve got going? If no one, then someone was having kids with a sibling, at least initially. I suppose the authors had to leave out some names and surely unrelated, fertile females were showing up elsewhere.
We end this chapter with the arrival of Seth's son Enos.
In Chapter 4, Adam and Eve have a family - two bouncing baby boys, Cain and Abel. They grow up and bring offerings to the Lord. Abel's is suitable (animals) but Cain's is not (I guess plants since he was a farmer). I don't know why the offering wasn't acceptable to God but I guess it really pissed Cain off because the next thing you know, Cain killed Abel.
Cain and God work something out where God "set a mark upon Cain" so anyone seeking vengeance will be punished sevenfold.
The rest of this chapter gives quite a list of names of the descendants of Cain, staring with Enoch and ending with Enos. Everyone listed is male but one has to assume females are showing up too because Eve can't be the mother of all these descendants. So who else was having kids early on when Adam and Eve got going? If no one, then someone was having kids with a sibling, at least initially. I suppose the authors had to leave out some names and surely unrelated, fertile females were showing up elsewhere.
We end this chapter with the arrival of Seth's son Enos.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Genesis 3
At some point I need to pick up the pace but these chapters are so jam packed, I can only fit one chapter per post so far.
In Chapter 3, the serpent encourages the woman to go ahead and eat from the tree of knowledge. She doesn't take much convincing. She shares with Adam, and Boom! Now they know they're naked. Fruit can do that to you. So they get to sewing aprons out of fig leaves.
God shows up to learn his new creations have disobeyed the one simple rule he gave them. Adam points the finger at Eve. She made me do it!
And now for some consequences. The serpent's punishment is to slither on its belly and eat dust. OK then. The serpent and the woman will no longer coexist peacefully; they and their descendants will now have enmity between them. If Eve's descendant is Jesus and the serpent is Satan, you could read this as the forever battle of good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate. But I digress. Back to the punishments.
For her role in this whole mess, the woman's sorrow will be multiplied and the husband will rule over her. Childbirth will be painful. For every woman. Forever. Pretty extreme sentence.
Adam too is cursed. He shall feel sorrow, toil for his food, and "unto dust shalt thou return" (hey! I recognize that phrase from Ash Wednesday Mass). God provides some clothing, so that's something positive I guess. But otherwise he is a total a-hole about this situation. He created them and told them just the one time about the tree of knowledge, and their goof-up changes everything for all humans for all eternity? Geez. Then he sends them out of Eden to fend for themselves.
P.S. We see Eve's name for the first time in this chapter.
This brings back memories of Paradise Lost, which I was supposed to read in college. I totally get how this can be read as an allegory and it's a beautiful little story in that regard. Loss of innocence, fall from grace, and so on. I do not understand, however, how anyone can read this chapter literally... a talking snake, folks.
In Chapter 3, the serpent encourages the woman to go ahead and eat from the tree of knowledge. She doesn't take much convincing. She shares with Adam, and Boom! Now they know they're naked. Fruit can do that to you. So they get to sewing aprons out of fig leaves.
God shows up to learn his new creations have disobeyed the one simple rule he gave them. Adam points the finger at Eve. She made me do it!
And now for some consequences. The serpent's punishment is to slither on its belly and eat dust. OK then. The serpent and the woman will no longer coexist peacefully; they and their descendants will now have enmity between them. If Eve's descendant is Jesus and the serpent is Satan, you could read this as the forever battle of good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate. But I digress. Back to the punishments.
For her role in this whole mess, the woman's sorrow will be multiplied and the husband will rule over her. Childbirth will be painful. For every woman. Forever. Pretty extreme sentence.
Adam too is cursed. He shall feel sorrow, toil for his food, and "unto dust shalt thou return" (hey! I recognize that phrase from Ash Wednesday Mass). God provides some clothing, so that's something positive I guess. But otherwise he is a total a-hole about this situation. He created them and told them just the one time about the tree of knowledge, and their goof-up changes everything for all humans for all eternity? Geez. Then he sends them out of Eden to fend for themselves.
P.S. We see Eve's name for the first time in this chapter.
This brings back memories of Paradise Lost, which I was supposed to read in college. I totally get how this can be read as an allegory and it's a beautiful little story in that regard. Loss of innocence, fall from grace, and so on. I do not understand, however, how anyone can read this chapter literally... a talking snake, folks.
Genesis 2
On day 7, we rest.
God then plants a garden in Eden and puts the man there (the female we heard about in Chapter 1 is nowhere to be found). Eden is of course home to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That's an odd role for a tree to have, isn't it?
Eden is also home to a river that has four tributaries. We learn where each goeth, including Ethopia, Assyria, Havilah. Very good.
God informs the man he can eat whatever he wants from the garden except from the tree of knowledge. Do that and you're toast. That makes as much sense as anything I guess.
We see Adam's name for the first time in the verse where God has Adam name all the animals. What language does Adam speak? And at this point how would he have any clue what he's doing or even what he's being asked?
I was wondering in Chapter 1 about this rib business but I didn't have to wait long. God fashions a "help meet" for the man from his rib. Get this, while Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs. Now if you created the earth and everything on it, why not just go ahead and create a woman too? Why the rib thing? Also, how in the hell do you take a rib and make a person from it? As luck would have it, God can do this and stitch Adam right back up so he's magically healed when he awakes.
A man leaves his father and mother (which don't exist at this point in the story, mind you) and "shall cleave unto his wife" and they shall be one flesh.
Adam and his wife are naked but not ashamed. How would they have any notion of clothes at this point?
God then plants a garden in Eden and puts the man there (the female we heard about in Chapter 1 is nowhere to be found). Eden is of course home to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That's an odd role for a tree to have, isn't it?
Eden is also home to a river that has four tributaries. We learn where each goeth, including Ethopia, Assyria, Havilah. Very good.
God informs the man he can eat whatever he wants from the garden except from the tree of knowledge. Do that and you're toast. That makes as much sense as anything I guess.
We see Adam's name for the first time in the verse where God has Adam name all the animals. What language does Adam speak? And at this point how would he have any clue what he's doing or even what he's being asked?
I was wondering in Chapter 1 about this rib business but I didn't have to wait long. God fashions a "help meet" for the man from his rib. Get this, while Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs. Now if you created the earth and everything on it, why not just go ahead and create a woman too? Why the rib thing? Also, how in the hell do you take a rib and make a person from it? As luck would have it, God can do this and stitch Adam right back up so he's magically healed when he awakes.
A man leaves his father and mother (which don't exist at this point in the story, mind you) and "shall cleave unto his wife" and they shall be one flesh.
Adam and his wife are naked but not ashamed. How would they have any notion of clothes at this point?
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Genesis 1
Wow, Genesis Chapter 1 gets right down to business in line one. In the span of a few short days, God creates heaven and earth, day and night, land and seas, sun and moon, plants and, uh, more plants. All that and we're just now getting to the fourth day. Then he creates fish and fowl and every living creature that moveth. And God saw that it was good. Very good, I'd say.
Day five brings the cattle and "every thing that creepeth" which includes man. God creates man "in his own image." I thought the female was fashioned out of the male's rib, but that's not happening here in Genesis Chapter 1. That version must appear later on? Here, we have "male and female created he them" and God instructs them to be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, subdue it, have dominion over fish, fowl and every living thing. Just eat the plants though. Adam and Eve were the original vegetarians.
Chapter 1 ends with day six. Pretty speedy work there, God
Day five brings the cattle and "every thing that creepeth" which includes man. God creates man "in his own image." I thought the female was fashioned out of the male's rib, but that's not happening here in Genesis Chapter 1. That version must appear later on? Here, we have "male and female created he them" and God instructs them to be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, subdue it, have dominion over fish, fowl and every living thing. Just eat the plants though. Adam and Eve were the original vegetarians.
Chapter 1 ends with day six. Pretty speedy work there, God
Why are we here?
Oh, I don't mean why are we here on Earth. I mean, why are we on blogspot, reading the good book?
I have not read the entire bible before and given its prominence in American life and politics, it seems like an important book to read. I want to work through the bible cover to cover. This journal is intended simply as a collection of my thoughts as I move from chapter to chapter, book to book.
I plan to use this site - http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ - to read the bible from beginning to end.
Disclaimer: I was raised Catholic but am now in no way religious.
So what all does the good book say? Let's find out. Gather 'round, won't you?
I have not read the entire bible before and given its prominence in American life and politics, it seems like an important book to read. I want to work through the bible cover to cover. This journal is intended simply as a collection of my thoughts as I move from chapter to chapter, book to book.
I plan to use this site - http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ - to read the bible from beginning to end.
Disclaimer: I was raised Catholic but am now in no way religious.
So what all does the good book say? Let's find out. Gather 'round, won't you?
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