This was read a week or so before beginning the blog.
CHAPTER 6
This gets off to a slightly weird start with talk of
“Nephilim” who are apparently giants and how these were men of renown the Lord
doesn’t seem to think much of them. My
hunch is that the Hebrew evolve out of cultures that had belief of “there were
giants in them days” and so put some here, but ultimately the Bible doesn’t
have much use for them.
Anyhow, the real story gets going with 6:6-7 “the LORD
regretted making human beings on the earth, and his heart grieved. So the LORD said: I will wipe out from the
earth the human beings I have created, and not only the human beings, but also
the animals and the crawling things, and the birds of the air, for I regret
that I made them.”
YIKES! We’re never
given much info on what problems God has, but hokey smokes is he upset! Now, I have some idea what’s going on. The Flood story predates the Bible and is
Gilgamesh (and is believed to predate Gilgamesh). Some scholars even think the Red Sea flooded into what had been
the initial southern part of ancient Sumeria, burying it to this day under
water. Still, this isn’t God at his
most cuddly.
Noah makes his arc.
Apparently, a cubit is about 18 inches.
It’s 440 feet long and 73 feet wide, and 44 feet tall. Bigger than a football field, but smaller
than a stadium. Noah is allowed in
because he’s a good man, and his sons come with. Oh, and their wives.
Those girls sure did a good job marrying. We’re not given any indication of what they are like, they just
come along because of who their husbands are. This is a Biblical theme – the
head of the household covers the entire household. Noah is good? OK, that
covers his entire family, his wife, his kids, their wives. Mind you, his kids are 100 years old, but
they’re covered anyway.
Noah is told to bring two of each animal – plus food for all
to eat. Please note, we’ll learn later
on that they’ll spend over a year on the arc.
That’s a lot of food!
CHAPTER 7
Now we get one of those Biblical quirks. Remember how Noah is supposed to bring 2 of
each animal. Now it’s 7 pairs of some
animals. And then immediately after
this, we’re told it’s just a pair of all animals again.
This Bible is nice enough to include some notes up front
(very) briefly summarizing biblical scholarship – the Torah has four authors
combined together and the story of the Flood actually is two versions smushed
together as one: P (priestly) & J (Yahwist). The book “Who Wrote the Bible” actually presents the story with
different fonts for the two sources and the flood story reads a lot cleaner
when separated into two stories.
The Bible is very precise when the Flood began: 17th
day of the 2nd month of the 600th year of Noah’s life. OK
then. 40 days and the highest mountain
is covered. By my rough math, to cover
Everest w/ water, that’s about a foot of rain every two minutes for 40 days. Even if it’s just the biggest mountain in
the region, it’s a foot of rain every 4-5 minutes.
7:22 “Everything on dry land with the breath of life in its
nostrils died.” Nice imagery.
CHAPTER 8
150 days after the flood, the Arc comes to rest on the
mountains of Ararat. A few months later, the tops of the mountains appear.
Then we get the raven and dove. The Bible’s notes are nice enough to say that Utnapishtim
(Gilgamesh’s Noah) released a dove, swallow, and raven in his story, Similar
birds. Here it’s raven, dove (bringing
back olive leaf), and then dove again.
I assume we’re getting the P & J stories causing confusion. A little bit ago the tops of the mountains
were appearing, and now after that Noah wants signs of land. Like I said, this reads cleaner if you pull
the two versions of the story apart.
In the 14th month after the flood, the earth is
finally dry. The LORD vows never to do
this again. Noah, immediately after
getting off the arc, sacrifices an animal.
This must come from the version where he’s got 7 pairs of some
animals. But that is a funny image –
guy has all the world’s living animals on his arc, so the first thing he does
after leaving is kill an animal. Umm….
Really?
CHAPTER 9
9:1 “Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth.” Oh, there it is. Immediately after that we’re told that now animals will fear
humans. Sure – we kill animals
immediately after getting off the arc.
But we shouldn’t eat meat that still has blood in it. Sounds like a good plan.
God says no more flood, and to prove it, he’ll give us a
sign – the rainbow. That’s his pact that he’ll never flood us again. Basically, this is trying to explain what
the rainbow is, and I must admit, while it’s nice to have science explain
things like the rainbow, we do lose some magic and wonder from the world. Imagine how cool and impressive things like
the rainbow and the moon were back before you had a nice, proven literal
definition of what they were.
The last part of the chapter is a bit ugly. Noah gets drunk, passes out naked and his
son Ham sees him. Ham tells the other
brothers and they cover up Noah without looking at him. So Noah curses Ham and says his descendents
should be slaves. Really? A bit harsh? Yeah, all that’s going on here is an attempt to justify the
enslavement of some people by others.
But Ham’s crime doesn’t seem really all that bad.
CHAPTER 10
Ham, father of the enslaved, is father of Africans. So that explains one justification of
African slavery. Plus he also is the
ancestor of most people of the Near East.
Japheth is father of the seafaring people. Like Greeks and Medes. Shem is father of the Hebrew and some other
Semitic types.
CHAPTER 11
The Tower of Babel.
This is another one of those stories that show a Mesopotamian background
for the Hebrew. Babel, the Bible notes
tell me, is the Hebrew form of Babylon.
Yeah, that makes sense. And the
word for “to be confused” is “Balal” which is similar, leading to putting the
two together. But people built a
ziggurat, the biggest towers ever, and God disperses them.
Just as we saw in Eden, there is a bit of rivalry between
humans and God, and God appears a bit fearful of people’s capabilities. 11:7-8:
“the LORD said: If now, while they are one people and all have the same
language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out
of their reach. Come let us go down and
there confuse their language so that no one will understand the speech of
another.”
Historical note: I’m sure there were all sorts of languages
spoken in the big cities with ziggurats, and this must have been disorientating
to those coming there for the first time.
Time for more begottings!
With year zero being the creation:
1656 Flood
1657 Flood ends
1658 Arapachshad is born to Shem (the Bible says when Shem
is 100 years old, and also says 2 years after the Flood – but Shem would be 102
2 years after the Flood. Eh, I’ll assume it’s two years after the flood. At any rate, Arapachshad is Generation 12)
1693 Shelah born (Generation 13)
1723 Eber born (Generation 14)
1757 Peleg born (Generation 15)
1787 Reu born (Generation 16)
1819 Serug (Generation 17)
1849 Nahor (Generation 18)
1878 Terah born (Generation 19)
1948 Abram, Nahor, and Haran born (Generation 20)
1966 Peleg dies at age 239 (generation 15)
1997 Nahor dies at age 148 (Generation 18)
2006 Noah dies at age 950 (Generation 10)
2026 Reu dies at age 239 (Generation 16)
2049 Serug dies at age 230 (Generation 17)
2056 Shem dies at age 600 (Generation 11)
2083 Terah dies at age 205 (Generation 19)
2096 Arapachshid dies at age 438 (Generation 12)
2126 Shelah dies at age 433 (Generation 13)
2187 Eber dies at age 464 (Generation 14)
OK, apparently the Hebrew get their name from Eber, the last
of the really, really, really long-livers. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Eber
should end up outliving Abram. The
Bible does a nice job getting everyone dying before the Flood, but here there
are some interesting overlaps. I mean –
Noah is still around when Abram is born!
Abram is 58 when Noah dies! You
don’t typically picture those two in the same room, but in theory it could’ve
happened. That just seems wrong, though. Noah seems purely mythic while Abram seems like at least based on someone real. It fells like putting a caveman in the same room as a T-Rex.
Haran dies, but he’s Lot’s dad.
Click here for the next six chapters.
Apparently, the seven pairs of some animals were to provide food for Noah and the fam. After all, they were on that ark for about five months.
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