"Because she was afraid, Sarah dissembled, saying, 'I didn't laugh.'" --Gen. 18:15
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 17: Abram and Sarai change their names (and circumcise the family)
Chapter 18: Abraham argues with God
Chapter 19: Lot and his daughters
Chapter 20: Abraham again gives away his wife
Wow, I just discovered the most important word I'll ever know. Gen. 18:15. One of the themes of the bible, and one of the themes of my life, and one of the themes of humanity is that no one can take responsibility for their actions or their feelings. People constantly lie about their feelings and motives, in small ways and large. Everything from "I don't care where we eat" or "I'm not mad" to blaming other people for anger or resentment. It is the thing that makes it so hard for us to get along with each other. It's been going on at least since the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve denied responsibility for eating from the apple. (I must say, that for all of God's faults, that is one thing that he has not done so far, is lie about his feelings.) So anyway, here God shows up at Abraham's tent as three men (God was showing up in human form all the time already in the old testament--it's really not a big deal when he came down as Jesus.) One of the men tells Abraham that Sarah will have a baby by next year. She's listening behind the tent, and laughs when she hears it. God asked Abraham, why did Sarah laugh? I can do anything--I'm God.
Here's the word, and this is the truest thing that the bible has said to this point: "Because she was afraid, Sarah dissembled, saying 'I didn't laugh.' But God said, 'yes you did.'"
I have never heard that word before. It means: "to conceal one's true feelings, motives, or beliefs." There it is! I'm so excited to finally have a shorthand to point out when someone does this. I always say "you're lying." I know that is too strong. I know they aren't doing it to deceive, they are doing it, just as Sarah does here, to protect themselves. Of course to accuse someone of lying always puts them even more on the defensive--my relationships often devolve quickly--and the conversation turns into the argument of whether they are "lying" rather than why they are hiding their feelings. Anger at being falsely accused is always easier to defend against than talking about your real feelings, and I hand it to them on a plate. Not that my accusation is wrong, but it's not the best way to say it. I've struggled for years to find a way to try to get people to be more honest with their feelings without making them more defensive. I think I have finally found it: the word "dissemble." I am not joking when I say I will be using that word 20 times a day for the rest of my life.
This passage is also surprisingly insightful, isn't it? In just a few words there, "Because she was afraid, she dissembled," it captured the point of an entire lifetime of writings by Freud. I'm very impressed. If the rest of the bible turns out to be as sensitive to human behavior as this passage is, I will be impressed indeed.
I've been listening to Bjork a lot lately. Her song "Human Behavior" talks about the same thing. Here it is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOepheinkCM. She says, "there's definitely definitely definitely no logic to human behavior. They're terribly terribly terribly moody, then all of a sudden turn happy." But Bjork is wrong about this; it is logical. That is the thing we must always keep in mind, no matter how infuriatingly a person behaves, how random and irrational it seems on the surface, it is not illogical--they have a reason, it is just not the reason they are presenting to you. They can't present it to you, because that reason is exactly the thing they are trying to hide.
Unfortunately this chapter is also the beginning of one of the best stories in the whole bible, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. I will have to save them for another time, but not too long, because I love this story.
--bibletoenail
Future topics:
Abraham's argument with God --Gen. ch. 18
My fundraising drive
Lot giving his virgin daughters to the mob --Gen. ch. 19
Again Abraham gives his wife away to other men to have sex with --Gen. ch. 20
Mens rea--Abimalech didn't know Sarah was married, and God takes credit --Gen. ch. 20
Textual notes:
- Gen. 17:4 --God makes another unenforceable covenant. Maybe that's what Christians and Jews alike get wrong in their belief. These covenants are not enforceable because they are empty promises. No one ever bothered to actually sue God about his breach of promise, so it's just gone unnoticed until this very second.
- Gen. 17:5 --This was always one of my favorite moments in the bible when I was young. God randomly changes Abram's name to Abraham. There's no explanation for it. I have found out since then that the names in the bible have meaning, so the change from Abram to Abraham means something (in fact, there's a foot note about it here that we'll get to).
- Gen. 17:10 --Whoops, I was wrong, this covenant is a contract. You cut off the end of your penises, and I will give you Canaan.
- Gen. 17:15 --He also changes Sarai's name to Sarah. Ah, Sarah.
- Gen. 17:17 --Abraham laughs at God when he tells him he will have a baby. He is 99 years old, and Sarah is 90. "Isaac" means something like, "he laughed."
- Gen. 17:25 --Ah! Ishmael was 13 when he was circumcised. I wonder if there is a connection there with Bar Mitzvahs being when a boy turns 13? But boys are supposed to be 8 days old when they are circumcised.
- Gen. 17:5 n. 2 --"Abram" and "Abraham" both mean "the father is exalted." "Sarai" and "Sarah" both mean "princess."
- Gen. 18:20 n. 6 --This is interesting. In this story, the reason for God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah is that the men in the cities would prefer to have sex with God than with Lot's hot teenage daughter. (By the way, another thing just occurred to me. The conventional wisdom regarding this story is that it deals with homosexuality because the men of the cities wanted to have sex with the visitors. But as we just discovered, they are not men. They are God and his messengers. God should be flattered, and can he really blame the men of S & G, dressing the way he does? It's almost like he's asking for it.)
Anyway, in other places in the bible the destruction of S & G are attributed to other problems. In Isa. 1:9-10, 3:9, it was lack of social justice. In Ezk. 16:46-51 it was a disregard for the poor, and in Jer. 23:14, it was general immorality.
- Gen. 19:8 --It seems like this would be a good way to keep your daughters in line if you have them. You know how parents say things like behave or the bogeyman will get you, or whatever? This seems like an effective threat: "Behave, or I'll throw you outside to get gang-raped by all the men of the city like Lot did!"
- Gen. 19:13 --"For the outcry reaching the Lord against those in the city is so great." I'm not sure I understand this. According to the story, everyone in the city is evil. So who is there to complain about it? It does say the outcry is against those in the city, so it must be outsiders, visitors with sore bottoms who are complaining? This passage seems to imply two things. One, God is nothing like omniscient--he only realizes something bad is going on when someone complains to him about it. Which leads to two, we can do anything we want as long as we keep it from him. We can have a whole city full of the most lascivious, sinful behavior imaginable. As long as we act respectable when someone comes to visit, no one will know! Are you listening, San Francisco? Just don't wear your ass-less chaps in the tourist areas, and we'll be fine! San Francisco needs gates like Sodom had, so we could just shut out all the outsiders when we wanted to.
- Gen. 19:14: --This story is so great. Step by step it is being set up for the climax. The sons-in-law don't believe Lot, and stay behind. Mom gets turned into a pillar of salt. Well, daughters, it's just you and me.
- Gen. 19:20 --I really like how these people are constantly arguing with God. That's something fundamentalist Christians wouldn't abide at all. (I'll try to talk later about Nietzsche's "Anti-Christ.")
- Gen. 19:30-38 --If God really did write this book, he is more perverted than even I have ever been. This story is so fantastically perverted. It never ends! The older daughter is so proud of herself she names the baby "from my father"! And what about the enormous left turn the story made! It started with the men of Sodom wanting to have sex with God, and ended with Lot having sex with his daughters.
Quotables:
"Bring them out to us that we may have intimacies with them." --Gen. 19:5
"I have two daughters who have never had intercourse with men. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please." --Gen. 19:8
"[Lot] lived with his two daughters in a cave." --Gen. 19:30
"Come, let us ply our father with wine and then lie with him, that we may have offspring by our father." --Gen. 19:32
"Last night it was I who lay with my father. Tonight you [sister] go in and lie with him, that we may both have offspring by our father." --Gen. 19:34
"Thus both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father." --Gen. 19:36
"The older [daughter] gave birth to a son whom she named Moab, saying, 'From my father.'" --Gen. 19:37
"The younger [dauther] gave birth to a son, and she named him Ammon, saying, "The son of my kin." --Gen. 19:38
"For God had tightly closed every womb." --Gen. 20:18
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
For Bob Dylan
Post Script to the Tower of Babel:
I was thinking more today about the Tower of Babel story. God gets mad at humans for trying to build a tower to the sky. But back then the highest tower they could possibly have made would be a few stories, maybe five or ten. Today we make towers that are almost 2000 feet tall--hundreds of stories. Why isn't God worried about this now? Christians have no good answer for why God is no longer involved in our lives. He constantly involved hands-on in the first several thousand years, now he never shows up. And yet some Christians do believe he answers prayers.
The argument against religion usually goes along the lines of "you have no proof," "if I saw even one shred of actual evidence of God's existence I would believe." But I think there's a much more fundamental problem with believing in God. It is simply impossible that "God" exists in the way the bible describes him. Even if I were open to believing in some god, this notion of God is nonsensical. So the question would be then, is there some other story of God that is more believable?
Christian fundamentalists always use the circular argument that their belief is the right one because it is the only one that promises certain things, such as salvation through grace. But by that logic Hinduism is the real religion because it's the only one with gods with 8 arms. Judaism is the real religion because it's the only one that starts with a "J". Native American beliefs are the true belief, because they are the only one that posit an explanation for the strange shape of Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Why, the bible doesn't even MENTION Devil's Tower! It can't possibly be the real one!
***
"Where are you going; where have you been?" --Gen. 16:8
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 13: Abram and Lot split; Lot moves to Sodom; God gives the rest to Abram
Chapter 14: A war between kings; Abram wins
Chapter 15: Abram talks to God; God makes promises
Chapter 16: Birth of Ishmael
I just found an interesting webpage. http://agards-bible-timeline.com/q10_bible-facts.html
. It is facts about the bible. That page says the entire bible can be read aloud in 70 hours. Well, I find that impossible to believe. That means it could be read in the same amount of time--one hour a day for two months and you'd be done. I'll think more about it, but I don't think it's possible. Many more strange, interesting, and useless facts are on that page.
In chapter 15 Abram asks God, how do I know I shall possess these lands you say? God says bring me a cow, a goat, a ram, and a pigeon. Abram brought them and split them in two. This is another passage that bears serious, honest thought. What on earth is the purpose of sacrificing an animal for God's sake? And why would he ask for it? I mean if you take this story seriously, that God created the world, now he's watching us and interacting with us. God's behavior makes no sense--what benefit could it possibly do for God to have the sacrificed animals? The note says for an explanation of this strange ritual, see Jeremiah 34:18-19.
***
I like this story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar the slave-girl. A common theme during Genesis is that those people who oppose God's chosen people are almost always in the right. Here Hagar is completely blameless; Sarai is awful. First, the rules are great: Sarai can't have children, so she tells her husband to have sex with her servant Hagar instead. Abram of course does, and Hagar becomes pregnant. Then Sarai is jealous of Hagar and abuses her until Hagar runs away. The result is a very poetic line in the bible, when God sees Hagar crying he asks, "Where are you going, where have you been?" That's the name of a great story by Joyce Carol Oates, which you can read here. God tells her to go back to Sarai and submit to the abuse. He promises Hagar that her descendants will be too numerous to count, and he tells her to name the son, "Ishmael." "Ishmael" means "God has heard" in Hebrew. (Ishmael, of course, is the narrator of Moby-Dick.)
Well, that's really all there is to say about these pages.
--bibletoenail
Textual Notes:
- Gen. 13:10--Interesting, some biblical foreshadowing.
- Gen. 14:23--An interesting notion. Abram would not take anything from the King of Sodom, because if he had, the king could have said, "I made Abram rich."
- Gen. 15:18--Another covenant. God gives Abram all the land in sight.
- Gen. 15:6 n. 1--The note says that Abram put his faith in God that God would uphold his promise, and that in the New Testament this becomes a model for the faith of Christians (Romans 4:1-25, Gal. 3:6-9).
- Gen. 15:18 n. 5--Interesting. The note says the language here literally means to "cut a covenant"--the expression deriving from the ceremony of cutting the animals in two. Here again, then, the sacrificed animals perhaps serves in some way as a seal to bind the promises.
- Gen. 16:1-6 n. 1--Note that according to rules of the time, Abram having sex with Hagar was not technically adultery. But how can we reconcile that with the status of the ten commandments as something like a biblical bill of rights--the ten commandments supposedly are the origin of all our morality. How could a simple tradition like this be okay when it is so blatantly at cross purposes with one of the commandments? Or is it that the commandments themselves are deficient in some way? Or is it very much like our own bill of rights--these rules are not absolutes, but are subject to interpretation and application from one circumstance to the next. I think that is fine as a practical matter, but when we're talking about God's Law it seems highly troublesome. But in this story God obviously doesn't have a problem with it. How can that be? This is the God that has been so angry at us for being "evil" for all these years.
- Gen. 16:7 n. 2--Interesting. It is God's messenger who happens upon Hagar, not God himself. The note says that this is a manifestation of God in human form. That echoes what Jesus is as well. Then in Gen. 16:13, the messenger is identified as God himself.
Quotables:
"Have intercourse with my maid." --Gen. 16:2
"Where are you going; where have you been?" --Gen. 16:8
I was thinking more today about the Tower of Babel story. God gets mad at humans for trying to build a tower to the sky. But back then the highest tower they could possibly have made would be a few stories, maybe five or ten. Today we make towers that are almost 2000 feet tall--hundreds of stories. Why isn't God worried about this now? Christians have no good answer for why God is no longer involved in our lives. He constantly involved hands-on in the first several thousand years, now he never shows up. And yet some Christians do believe he answers prayers.
The argument against religion usually goes along the lines of "you have no proof," "if I saw even one shred of actual evidence of God's existence I would believe." But I think there's a much more fundamental problem with believing in God. It is simply impossible that "God" exists in the way the bible describes him. Even if I were open to believing in some god, this notion of God is nonsensical. So the question would be then, is there some other story of God that is more believable?
Christian fundamentalists always use the circular argument that their belief is the right one because it is the only one that promises certain things, such as salvation through grace. But by that logic Hinduism is the real religion because it's the only one with gods with 8 arms. Judaism is the real religion because it's the only one that starts with a "J". Native American beliefs are the true belief, because they are the only one that posit an explanation for the strange shape of Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Why, the bible doesn't even MENTION Devil's Tower! It can't possibly be the real one!
***
"Where are you going; where have you been?" --Gen. 16:8
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 13: Abram and Lot split; Lot moves to Sodom; God gives the rest to Abram
Chapter 14: A war between kings; Abram wins
Chapter 15: Abram talks to God; God makes promises
Chapter 16: Birth of Ishmael
I just found an interesting webpage. http://agards-bible-timeline.com/q10_bible-facts.html
. It is facts about the bible. That page says the entire bible can be read aloud in 70 hours. Well, I find that impossible to believe. That means it could be read in the same amount of time--one hour a day for two months and you'd be done. I'll think more about it, but I don't think it's possible. Many more strange, interesting, and useless facts are on that page.
In chapter 15 Abram asks God, how do I know I shall possess these lands you say? God says bring me a cow, a goat, a ram, and a pigeon. Abram brought them and split them in two. This is another passage that bears serious, honest thought. What on earth is the purpose of sacrificing an animal for God's sake? And why would he ask for it? I mean if you take this story seriously, that God created the world, now he's watching us and interacting with us. God's behavior makes no sense--what benefit could it possibly do for God to have the sacrificed animals? The note says for an explanation of this strange ritual, see Jeremiah 34:18-19.
***
I like this story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar the slave-girl. A common theme during Genesis is that those people who oppose God's chosen people are almost always in the right. Here Hagar is completely blameless; Sarai is awful. First, the rules are great: Sarai can't have children, so she tells her husband to have sex with her servant Hagar instead. Abram of course does, and Hagar becomes pregnant. Then Sarai is jealous of Hagar and abuses her until Hagar runs away. The result is a very poetic line in the bible, when God sees Hagar crying he asks, "Where are you going, where have you been?" That's the name of a great story by Joyce Carol Oates, which you can read here. God tells her to go back to Sarai and submit to the abuse. He promises Hagar that her descendants will be too numerous to count, and he tells her to name the son, "Ishmael." "Ishmael" means "God has heard" in Hebrew. (Ishmael, of course, is the narrator of Moby-Dick.)
Well, that's really all there is to say about these pages.
--bibletoenail
Textual Notes:
- Gen. 13:10--Interesting, some biblical foreshadowing.
- Gen. 14:23--An interesting notion. Abram would not take anything from the King of Sodom, because if he had, the king could have said, "I made Abram rich."
- Gen. 15:18--Another covenant. God gives Abram all the land in sight.
- Gen. 15:6 n. 1--The note says that Abram put his faith in God that God would uphold his promise, and that in the New Testament this becomes a model for the faith of Christians (Romans 4:1-25, Gal. 3:6-9).
- Gen. 15:18 n. 5--Interesting. The note says the language here literally means to "cut a covenant"--the expression deriving from the ceremony of cutting the animals in two. Here again, then, the sacrificed animals perhaps serves in some way as a seal to bind the promises.
- Gen. 16:1-6 n. 1--Note that according to rules of the time, Abram having sex with Hagar was not technically adultery. But how can we reconcile that with the status of the ten commandments as something like a biblical bill of rights--the ten commandments supposedly are the origin of all our morality. How could a simple tradition like this be okay when it is so blatantly at cross purposes with one of the commandments? Or is it that the commandments themselves are deficient in some way? Or is it very much like our own bill of rights--these rules are not absolutes, but are subject to interpretation and application from one circumstance to the next. I think that is fine as a practical matter, but when we're talking about God's Law it seems highly troublesome. But in this story God obviously doesn't have a problem with it. How can that be? This is the God that has been so angry at us for being "evil" for all these years.
- Gen. 16:7 n. 2--Interesting. It is God's messenger who happens upon Hagar, not God himself. The note says that this is a manifestation of God in human form. That echoes what Jesus is as well. Then in Gen. 16:13, the messenger is identified as God himself.
Quotables:
"Have intercourse with my maid." --Gen. 16:2
"Where are you going; where have you been?" --Gen. 16:8
Saturday, December 29, 2007
The Origin of Translation
"If [human beings] have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do." --Gen. 11:6
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 9: Noah gets drunk and naked
Chapter 10: Genealogy of Noah's children (Moe, Larry, Shemp)
Chapter 11: The Tower of Babel, Genealogy Shem to Abram
Chapter 12: Abram pimps his wife
The Tower of Babel--As I mentioned before, Derrida makes a great deal out of this story. One of Derrida's Great Themes is translation--the impossibility of "true meaning," etc. I haven't actually read anything by him where he talks about Babel--I think I read this in "Jacques Derrida" by Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington. (He had a field day with what it means to write a book named Jacques Derrida!) I'll look into it when I get back to school. But it's an interesting moment. This is the second "birth" of language in the bible. The first is in the garden of eden when God tells Adam to name everything, or according to Gen. ch. 1, language pre-dates God himself--that's a fascinating idea. Derrida places the birth of language here at the tower of babel, because it is here that meaning is separated from words. And now explicitly--it's possible for two people to say the same thing in two different languages, and not understand each other. Meaning, signifiers, signified, all of it is exploded in this vengeful moment of God's.
Which brings me to the aspect of this story that has always captured me. It's once again, here for the second time, the emotional immaturity of God. How amazing and cool are people?! For no reason but to show that we can do it, people decide to build a tower all the way to heaven. What an astounding project to undertake! As I said last time, any normal parent would be thrilled and proud to bursting to see such ambition in her children. God is completely, almost pathologically, narcissistic. If they are building the tower they are not paying attention to him, and that's the worst thing. If poor all-powerful God can't have the adulation of these little toys he created, they can all just die. Well, hooray for people, and down with God. This story shows how great humans are. We once again came that close to overtaking God and only by cheating and completely rewriting the rules could he stay in power. We people are the best. People #1! People #1!
And this is the guy that Christians claim is all-loving. What a load of crap!
Note on the NAB translation. I've read this story too many times. Always I thought what God got mad about was that they were trying to build a tower all the way to heaven--that is, all the way to God. They were trying to equal God in effect, and needed to be put down. In this version, they were doing something much more mundane--just building a tower to "reach the sky." The change completely changes the meaning of story. In translations where they want to reach heaven, God is perhaps rightfully preventing their precocious attempt to equal God. But in this translation, they are only trying to do something great. It makes God look much more vengeful and petty. Isn't it interesting that translation--the choice of that one word, heaven or sky--can have such an impact, in this story that is the origin of the need for translation!
One more interesting thing to imagine about this story. God made all the people of the earth suddenly, randomly speak different languages. Millions of people, hundreds of languages. Imagine what that scene would have been like. Suddenly everyone around you is incomprehensible. You would push your way through the crowd calling, "hello? hello?" Nothing but gibberish, until you stumble across someone you understand! The two of you can understand each other, and you start through the crowd again, "hello? hello?" until you find a third, and so on. In the mean time you encounter large groups of people who all seem to understand each other, but you can't understand anything they say. I think it is an interesting scene to contemplate how they sorted themselves out.
--bibletoenail
Future Topics:
What an a-hole Abraham, the father of Israel, is. That is a common theme of Genesis--the hero of every story is a scumbag or liar or a-hole. The Israelites (and Christians) are descended from a line of real low-lifes. God, of course, loves them, and unjustly punishes those who cross them time after time. Abram and Sarai go to Egypt. Abram tells Sarai to say she is his sister, so the Egyptians can have sex with her without killing Abram first! It happens right here. Abram makes Sarai lie, the Pharaoh innocently has sex with Sarai (Gen. 12:19), and God punishes Pharoah rather than Abram! God is insanely unjust in this book.
Textual Notes:
- Gen. 9:3 n. 1--The note says that before the flood man and all creatures were vegetarian. After the flood they become carnivorous.
- Gen. 9:13-17--The rainbow as the seal of God's covenant never again to flood the world. Physics question. Rainbows are a physical phenomenon--the refraction of light through the droplets of water in the sky. A rainbow is an absolutely unavoidable occurrence in the right circumstances. My question is, what precisely did God do to "set [his] bow in the clouds"? (Gen. 9:13) This passage obviously implies that before this covenant rainbows did not exist. So what exactly changed? God did not just place the rainbow in the sky--they are an inevitable physical occurrence. That means that before the flood, the physics of the world were somehow different. But how? Refraction is a result of some very very deep, fundamental qualities of the physics of the world, relating to quantum physics, electrons, energy and matter, photons, and I don't know what else. A physics professor would say the universe is impossible rainbows. So what did God do? But understand what this passage means. The world now, with rainbows works in an elegant, inevitable way. That means that before rainbows it had to work in some way that did not make obvious sense. Some bizarre, impossible, illogical physical laws had to be in effect if rainbows did not exist. But the question is this: why did God design the universe in this bizarro, illogical way, only to correct it later? I think this is another small detail that if any advocate of God allowed themselves to take seriously would knock down the entire house of cards. The question isn't could God make the world that defies today's physical rules--sure he could, he's God. The question is: why would he? It makes no sense. (As a simple folk explanation, of course, this is a nice story of the reason for rainbows. But remember, the bible is true.)
- Gen. 9:17--Interesting. More contract law, which is on my brain. In the old days, a contract was sealed literally with a seal--it was the seal that indicated that the contract was to be binding. That became too cumbersome, and eventually gave way to consideration as the substitute for a binding "seal." In this verse God says that rainbows will be the seal of his covenant never again to flood the world. This is an interesting example of a seal binding a contract--in this case, although the contract is not enforceable because it is an empty promise without consideration on the other side, because there was the seal, I think a court might find that this promise actually is binding.
- Gen. 9:24--I just realized something huge. I have read this flood story probably a dozen times in my life. I have completely misread it until this time. Noah gets drunk, and is lying naked in a stupor in his tent. Ham finds him, sees him naked, and goes out and tells his brothers about it. They then walk backward into the tent and cover Noah, without seeing him. Noah wakes up and gets angry at what happened. My whole like I have connected this story to the garden of eden. I thought Noah was made at the two brothers for covering him. I thought the point of the story was that Noah was a man of god, and hence he is not ashamed of his nakedness the way other humans are, and so was angry that his sons were ashamed of his nakedness. That makes sense, right?
I got this story COMPLETELY wrong. When Noah wakes up, he is not angry at his sons for covering him; he is angry at Ham for having seen him naked!!! It is Ham that he curses, the descendants of Ham, the Canaanites. In typical random old testament fashion, Noah makes a completely bizarre decision.
- Gen. 10:1-32--The second genealogy. This one is the descendants of the children of Noah. Note 1 here is really interesting. It says this chapter is a remarkably good classification of the various peoples known to the ancient Israelites. There are several interesting names mentioned here. First is Gomer--Gomer Pyle is an old old Jewish name--who knew? Nimrod is one of the greatest names of all time. Peleg always reminds me of Moby-Dick--is sounds like "peg leg," and "queequeg." Also interesting, Ashkenaz is a son of Gomer, so that's where the Ashkenazi Jews get their name. (Something funny. I asked a Jewish friend of mine one time if he didn't think it was ironic that the word "nazi" is in "Ashkenazi"--he said it had never occurred to him! The note says that the descendants of Japheth (Ashkenaz is son of Gomer, son of Japheth) are the peoples of the Indo-European languages north and west of Mesopotamia: Europe? That's interesting, because that's where the Ashkenazi Jews are from now. The Sephardic Jews are from the Mediterranean--Spain and Portugal. Sephar is the "eastern hill country"--that's where the descendants of Shem lived. The note says that the descendants of Shem are "the Semitic-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia [remember, that's Iraq], Syria, and Arabia." So the "Sephardic" Jews are the Jews of the middle east. (For completeness, Ham's descendant Canaan, the one cursed by Noah, are the African people. Racist moment number one in the bible.)
All this is very interesting. The two main branches of modern Judaism--Ashenazi and Sephardic, are mentioned here. But I know that the "real" "Israelites" are pruned down far from this bushy tree. I can't remember now from which branch comes Abraham, but he obviously can't come from both branches. I don't know what any of this means, I just think it's interesting when I come across something like this chapter that puts in context something I've never understood, like the division between Sephardic and Ashkenazi--it goes way back!
- Gen. 11:10-32--These are the descendants of Shem, down through Abram and Lot. Shem is Noah's oldest son, so he should be the one to continue the line. So apparently, then, Abram is Sephardic. Abram is Lot's uncle. Keep that in mind. There is so much shenanigans in the bible, and it's important to keep straight the relationships to really appreciate how lascivious God's Chosen People were.
- Gen. 11:29,30--Abram marries Sarai, who is barren. Also important to the story going forward.
- Gen. 11:1-9 n. 1--The note once again explains the artificial origins of this story. It's based on traditions about the temple towers of Babylonia (he was born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia!) (and he's got a condo made of stone-a). The purpose is to illustrate man's increasing wickedness (how great is it that only a few years after God "punishes" us by killing everyone, we are already wicked again? I love people in this book. The note readily admits that a secondary point of this story is to present "an imaginative origin" of the diversity of languages.
- Gen. 11:16 n. 7--Another interesting origin. Mentioned in this lineage is "Eber," the eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews.
- Gen. 11:28 n. 8--Ah, another one of the kinds of things that makes the truth of the bible so problematic. It mentions "Ur of the Chaldeans." The note says that "Chaldean" is an anachronism--Chaldeans were not known to history until approximately a thousand years after Abraham's time.
- Gen. 11:32 n. 10--How do you get a degree in religion? By making observations like that in this note: Terah was 70 when his son Abram was born. And Abram was 75 when he left Haran. Terah lived in Haran for 60 years after Abram left. The text here says Terah lived to 205 (Gen. 11:32). According to the Samaritan text, however, Terah died when he was 145. 70 + 75 = 145, which means Abram left Haran after his father's death, and that is the time followed in Acts 7:4. That's worth an entire dissertation, isn't it? Can't you just see it? Look, ma, we're figuring out the bible!
- Gen. 12:16 n. 5--Another odd anachronism. The text says that Abram had camels, but, the note says, camels were probably not domesticated until several centuries later.
Quotables:
"If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed." --Gen. 9:6
"When he drank some of the wine, he became drunk and lay naked inside his tent." --Gen. 9:21
"If [human beings] have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do." --Gen. 11:6
"I know well how beautiful a woman you are." --Gen. 12:11
"How could you do this to me! Why didn't you tell me she was your wife?" --Gen. 12:18
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 9: Noah gets drunk and naked
Chapter 10: Genealogy of Noah's children (Moe, Larry, Shemp)
Chapter 11: The Tower of Babel, Genealogy Shem to Abram
Chapter 12: Abram pimps his wife
The Tower of Babel--As I mentioned before, Derrida makes a great deal out of this story. One of Derrida's Great Themes is translation--the impossibility of "true meaning," etc. I haven't actually read anything by him where he talks about Babel--I think I read this in "Jacques Derrida" by Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington. (He had a field day with what it means to write a book named Jacques Derrida!) I'll look into it when I get back to school. But it's an interesting moment. This is the second "birth" of language in the bible. The first is in the garden of eden when God tells Adam to name everything, or according to Gen. ch. 1, language pre-dates God himself--that's a fascinating idea. Derrida places the birth of language here at the tower of babel, because it is here that meaning is separated from words. And now explicitly--it's possible for two people to say the same thing in two different languages, and not understand each other. Meaning, signifiers, signified, all of it is exploded in this vengeful moment of God's.
Which brings me to the aspect of this story that has always captured me. It's once again, here for the second time, the emotional immaturity of God. How amazing and cool are people?! For no reason but to show that we can do it, people decide to build a tower all the way to heaven. What an astounding project to undertake! As I said last time, any normal parent would be thrilled and proud to bursting to see such ambition in her children. God is completely, almost pathologically, narcissistic. If they are building the tower they are not paying attention to him, and that's the worst thing. If poor all-powerful God can't have the adulation of these little toys he created, they can all just die. Well, hooray for people, and down with God. This story shows how great humans are. We once again came that close to overtaking God and only by cheating and completely rewriting the rules could he stay in power. We people are the best. People #1! People #1!
And this is the guy that Christians claim is all-loving. What a load of crap!
Note on the NAB translation. I've read this story too many times. Always I thought what God got mad about was that they were trying to build a tower all the way to heaven--that is, all the way to God. They were trying to equal God in effect, and needed to be put down. In this version, they were doing something much more mundane--just building a tower to "reach the sky." The change completely changes the meaning of story. In translations where they want to reach heaven, God is perhaps rightfully preventing their precocious attempt to equal God. But in this translation, they are only trying to do something great. It makes God look much more vengeful and petty. Isn't it interesting that translation--the choice of that one word, heaven or sky--can have such an impact, in this story that is the origin of the need for translation!
One more interesting thing to imagine about this story. God made all the people of the earth suddenly, randomly speak different languages. Millions of people, hundreds of languages. Imagine what that scene would have been like. Suddenly everyone around you is incomprehensible. You would push your way through the crowd calling, "hello? hello?" Nothing but gibberish, until you stumble across someone you understand! The two of you can understand each other, and you start through the crowd again, "hello? hello?" until you find a third, and so on. In the mean time you encounter large groups of people who all seem to understand each other, but you can't understand anything they say. I think it is an interesting scene to contemplate how they sorted themselves out.
--bibletoenail
Future Topics:
What an a-hole Abraham, the father of Israel, is. That is a common theme of Genesis--the hero of every story is a scumbag or liar or a-hole. The Israelites (and Christians) are descended from a line of real low-lifes. God, of course, loves them, and unjustly punishes those who cross them time after time. Abram and Sarai go to Egypt. Abram tells Sarai to say she is his sister, so the Egyptians can have sex with her without killing Abram first! It happens right here. Abram makes Sarai lie, the Pharaoh innocently has sex with Sarai (Gen. 12:19), and God punishes Pharoah rather than Abram! God is insanely unjust in this book.
Textual Notes:
- Gen. 9:3 n. 1--The note says that before the flood man and all creatures were vegetarian. After the flood they become carnivorous.
- Gen. 9:13-17--The rainbow as the seal of God's covenant never again to flood the world. Physics question. Rainbows are a physical phenomenon--the refraction of light through the droplets of water in the sky. A rainbow is an absolutely unavoidable occurrence in the right circumstances. My question is, what precisely did God do to "set [his] bow in the clouds"? (Gen. 9:13) This passage obviously implies that before this covenant rainbows did not exist. So what exactly changed? God did not just place the rainbow in the sky--they are an inevitable physical occurrence. That means that before the flood, the physics of the world were somehow different. But how? Refraction is a result of some very very deep, fundamental qualities of the physics of the world, relating to quantum physics, electrons, energy and matter, photons, and I don't know what else. A physics professor would say the universe is impossible rainbows. So what did God do? But understand what this passage means. The world now, with rainbows works in an elegant, inevitable way. That means that before rainbows it had to work in some way that did not make obvious sense. Some bizarre, impossible, illogical physical laws had to be in effect if rainbows did not exist. But the question is this: why did God design the universe in this bizarro, illogical way, only to correct it later? I think this is another small detail that if any advocate of God allowed themselves to take seriously would knock down the entire house of cards. The question isn't could God make the world that defies today's physical rules--sure he could, he's God. The question is: why would he? It makes no sense. (As a simple folk explanation, of course, this is a nice story of the reason for rainbows. But remember, the bible is true.)
- Gen. 9:17--Interesting. More contract law, which is on my brain. In the old days, a contract was sealed literally with a seal--it was the seal that indicated that the contract was to be binding. That became too cumbersome, and eventually gave way to consideration as the substitute for a binding "seal." In this verse God says that rainbows will be the seal of his covenant never again to flood the world. This is an interesting example of a seal binding a contract--in this case, although the contract is not enforceable because it is an empty promise without consideration on the other side, because there was the seal, I think a court might find that this promise actually is binding.
- Gen. 9:24--I just realized something huge. I have read this flood story probably a dozen times in my life. I have completely misread it until this time. Noah gets drunk, and is lying naked in a stupor in his tent. Ham finds him, sees him naked, and goes out and tells his brothers about it. They then walk backward into the tent and cover Noah, without seeing him. Noah wakes up and gets angry at what happened. My whole like I have connected this story to the garden of eden. I thought Noah was made at the two brothers for covering him. I thought the point of the story was that Noah was a man of god, and hence he is not ashamed of his nakedness the way other humans are, and so was angry that his sons were ashamed of his nakedness. That makes sense, right?
I got this story COMPLETELY wrong. When Noah wakes up, he is not angry at his sons for covering him; he is angry at Ham for having seen him naked!!! It is Ham that he curses, the descendants of Ham, the Canaanites. In typical random old testament fashion, Noah makes a completely bizarre decision.
- Gen. 10:1-32--The second genealogy. This one is the descendants of the children of Noah. Note 1 here is really interesting. It says this chapter is a remarkably good classification of the various peoples known to the ancient Israelites. There are several interesting names mentioned here. First is Gomer--Gomer Pyle is an old old Jewish name--who knew? Nimrod is one of the greatest names of all time. Peleg always reminds me of Moby-Dick--is sounds like "peg leg," and "queequeg." Also interesting, Ashkenaz is a son of Gomer, so that's where the Ashkenazi Jews get their name. (Something funny. I asked a Jewish friend of mine one time if he didn't think it was ironic that the word "nazi" is in "Ashkenazi"--he said it had never occurred to him! The note says that the descendants of Japheth (Ashkenaz is son of Gomer, son of Japheth) are the peoples of the Indo-European languages north and west of Mesopotamia: Europe? That's interesting, because that's where the Ashkenazi Jews are from now. The Sephardic Jews are from the Mediterranean--Spain and Portugal. Sephar is the "eastern hill country"--that's where the descendants of Shem lived. The note says that the descendants of Shem are "the Semitic-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia [remember, that's Iraq], Syria, and Arabia." So the "Sephardic" Jews are the Jews of the middle east. (For completeness, Ham's descendant Canaan, the one cursed by Noah, are the African people. Racist moment number one in the bible.)
All this is very interesting. The two main branches of modern Judaism--Ashenazi and Sephardic, are mentioned here. But I know that the "real" "Israelites" are pruned down far from this bushy tree. I can't remember now from which branch comes Abraham, but he obviously can't come from both branches. I don't know what any of this means, I just think it's interesting when I come across something like this chapter that puts in context something I've never understood, like the division between Sephardic and Ashkenazi--it goes way back!
- Gen. 11:10-32--These are the descendants of Shem, down through Abram and Lot. Shem is Noah's oldest son, so he should be the one to continue the line. So apparently, then, Abram is Sephardic. Abram is Lot's uncle. Keep that in mind. There is so much shenanigans in the bible, and it's important to keep straight the relationships to really appreciate how lascivious God's Chosen People were.
- Gen. 11:29,30--Abram marries Sarai, who is barren. Also important to the story going forward.
- Gen. 11:1-9 n. 1--The note once again explains the artificial origins of this story. It's based on traditions about the temple towers of Babylonia (he was born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia!) (and he's got a condo made of stone-a). The purpose is to illustrate man's increasing wickedness (how great is it that only a few years after God "punishes" us by killing everyone, we are already wicked again? I love people in this book. The note readily admits that a secondary point of this story is to present "an imaginative origin" of the diversity of languages.
- Gen. 11:16 n. 7--Another interesting origin. Mentioned in this lineage is "Eber," the eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews.
- Gen. 11:28 n. 8--Ah, another one of the kinds of things that makes the truth of the bible so problematic. It mentions "Ur of the Chaldeans." The note says that "Chaldean" is an anachronism--Chaldeans were not known to history until approximately a thousand years after Abraham's time.
- Gen. 11:32 n. 10--How do you get a degree in religion? By making observations like that in this note: Terah was 70 when his son Abram was born. And Abram was 75 when he left Haran. Terah lived in Haran for 60 years after Abram left. The text here says Terah lived to 205 (Gen. 11:32). According to the Samaritan text, however, Terah died when he was 145. 70 + 75 = 145, which means Abram left Haran after his father's death, and that is the time followed in Acts 7:4. That's worth an entire dissertation, isn't it? Can't you just see it? Look, ma, we're figuring out the bible!
- Gen. 12:16 n. 5--Another odd anachronism. The text says that Abram had camels, but, the note says, camels were probably not domesticated until several centuries later.
Quotables:
"If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed." --Gen. 9:6
"When he drank some of the wine, he became drunk and lay naked inside his tent." --Gen. 9:21
"If [human beings] have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do." --Gen. 11:6
"I know well how beautiful a woman you are." --Gen. 12:11
"How could you do this to me! Why didn't you tell me she was your wife?" --Gen. 12:18
Friday, December 28, 2007
Giants!
"Here there be giants!" --Gen. 6:4
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 5: Genealogy Adam to Noah
Chapter 6: God hires Noah
Chapter 7: The Flood
Chapter 8: Noah lands, and kills half the animals he just saved
In chapter 5 Noah is born. This is the first of the boring genealogy chapters. One interesting thing is that for some reason Enoch does not die, he is taken alive by God. Now, the note says "[the passage] clearly implies that [Enoch] was taken alive to God's abode" (Gen. 5:24 n. 2). Although it does clearly say he did not die but was removed from earth by God, it actually implies nothing about going to "God's abode." This is, I think, another example of the Catholics reading into, even reshaping, the meaning of the old testament. I've heard before, I don't know where, that in the old testament there is no conception of heaven (nor Satan for that matter). When you died, you were dead, like in real life. Let's keep an eye out for that as we read. Anyway, this claim that the verse implies heaven is a fabrication.
One of the most fascinating things to me about reading a fairly scholarly edition of the bible is the notes on the origins of the various parts of the bible. (Remember what these books are. They are ancient documents dug up and pieced together. --Pieced together twice, first by the original compilers of the bible, then again in the last few hundred years by archaeologists looking for source materials. Archaeology is a fascinating field, very similar to cosmology and astronomy. The task in both is to take the most meager of evidence and construct entire narratives about what happened thousands (or billions) of years ago.)
The note on this chapter says that it is a "relatively late 'Priestly document.'" The purpose of the chapter is to bridge the genealogy from Adam to Abraham. "Priestly" means it was added to the book much later, when the original writers (editors) were compiling and shaping the book to fit the lessons they wanted to teach. The truly amazing thing to me about notes such as this is that they explicitly admit, in black and white, right there in the text of the bible, that the thing was written and compiled by humans in order to fit a certain agenda.
The note points out how many of the names in this genealogy are similar to ones in chapter 4, but in a different order. It also mentions how this genealogy parallels "Babylonian tradition." What is that evidence of? Is it evidence of the "historical truth" of the bible? Or is it evidence of the contrived and man-made nature of the bible? It cuts both ways, doesn't it!
I love Noah's three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth. It's impossible not to imagine Moe, Larry, and Shemp.
***
Chapter 6 is sort of the beginning of the transition in Genesis from ancient myths to a different kind of story that is more about human relations. This chapter is amazing for so many reasons. First, of course, the giants of Gen. 6:1-4. Uh, what? Where to begin?! The "sons of heaven"--who are THEY?! Other gods? Gods brothers and sisters? His friends? His children?! (What happened to "only begotten son"?) It's also the first of the hard-core raunchy stories of Genesis. The "sons of heaven" come down to earth and see how hot the "daughters of man" are, and "take them for wives"--whether forcibly or not is unclear. They impregnate the women (more cross-race or cross-species sex), and the offspring are these giants. What happened to these giants?
I want to be clear--I don't mind these stories, I think they are fun and what make the bible entertaining. What baffles me is how Christians maintain that all the bible is true. They have to go to such elaborate lengths to convince themselves that every word is true. Some won't even allow for the metaphoric nature of these stories. They spend a lot of time arguing how the creation story is possible--they don't even mention this one, which is at least as silly.
The point of course is that the old testament is just a collection of ancient myths. No different from Native American myths, or Greek myths, or any others. They are entertaining stories that have lessons and help to explain the unexplainable. The idea that even today people still believe these stories is truly, truly mind-boggling, isn't it? The stories are fun, same as Aesop's Fables or Dr. Suess stories, but there are entire radio networks, entire television stations, entire careers, entire industries, billions of dollars a year, devoted to the truth of these stories. How do we even begin to approach the question of how that is possible? It's a question, obviously, I will be contemplating often as I read this book.
Three more aspects of this flood story fascinate me. First, morality. Second, God's personality. And third, the mundane impossibility of it all.
I had never noticed this issue of the origin of morality before, but it keeps cropping up. In this chapter God gets so disgusted with man's wickedness, and "no desire that his [man's] heart conceived was ever anything but evil" (Gen. 6:5).
Man's wickedness? In his heart nothing but evil? What does that mean? This story simply makes no sense. God made us. He made the world. As I said yesterday, what is the nature of this "evil"? There are only two possibilities. Either one, this concept of good and evil is something outside of God--something that exists separate from him. It's not his definition of good and evil, it's the definition of good and evil. Is that what is meant? There are two problems with that. First, obviously, if this notion of good and evil exists outside of God, then God can't be all-knowing, all-powerful, and so on. It's not that God is the universe, he simply exists inside the universe, same as us. That fits very well with the Garden of Eden story, and explains why he was so fearful of us eating from the tree of life--he's not infinitely better than us, he's only one step up the food chain from us. Second, what on earth is this notion of good and evil? It existed before creation, before man and woman. Yet what "evil" is that God is talking about here, the thing that disgusts him so much, is entirely human in nature: murder, sex, theft, lying. How could the universe have had a moral precept regarding sex outside of marriage before God created man and woman? That is a very troubling thing to contemplate. Who was God talking to in chapter one? One would imagine the concepts of good and evil that God is dealing with in his life are entirely different from ours. Is there really a moral tenet regarding coveting thy neighbor's wife where God lives?! Does God live in the suburbs, or an apartment building? Do you think he rents or owns? Does he get mad at his neighbor for not trimming the tree? Is his neighbor's wife really that hot? Does she sunbath in a skimpy bikini during the summer? Who can blame God, the way she parades around like that half naked? It's almost like she's asking for it.
It is very hard to reconcile the notion that morality pre-existed creation, with our belief in God as all-powerful, all-knowing. The other possibility for the nature of this evil that was rampant before the flood, then, is that God created a system of morality to go along with the rest of creation. We needed rules, so he decided on some: no killing, no sex outside of marriage, no theft, etc. There are, again, some problems with this. First, it means that our particular system of morality is arbitrary. God could easily have come up with different rules, why not? He could have said it was sinful not to have sex with at least three strangers a week, sinful not to kill those you dislike. Why not? Is that idea strange, blasphemous? If your reaction to this suggestion is that the rules have to be as they are, they couldn't be the alternatives I just described, then we are right back where we started--the morality is inevitable, and therefore pre-dates creation and God.
It's possible, alternatively, that the morals spring from creation as God created it. The alternatives I described might be possible in some world, but not this one that God did in fact create. Okay, maybe.
But that leads me to the second thing I wanted to begin to explore: God's personality. This is one of the most baffling things to me about the entire story. Gen. 6:6: "[When God saw how evil people were,] he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved." He regretted it? That makes no sense to me. It defies explanation. God created us. We aren't equals. What on earth emotional attachment could he possibly have to us? Imagine you make a model train set in your basement, or a doll house. The train jumps the track and crashes through the model depot. Are you going to REGRET MAKING THE THING?! What kind of emotional disturbance or psychosis would you have to have to attach that much importance on this little game of yours?
In addition is the obvious point that he made us. How can he get angry for doing what we've been programmed to do? Even if he programmed us with free will, that's still how he created us. How could any creator--of a train set or the world--grieve when his creation does something he built into the thing in the first place? As a programmer I would be delighted to witness my program thinking on its own. What does it say about God that he does not like it when we think on our own? What kind of desperate, self-centered, emotionally stunted parent would be angry with their children for becoming their own person?
God's personality, obviously, is something that crops up time and again in the bible. We'll have plenty more opportunity to talk about it.
Finally, quickly, is the mundane impossibility of it all. Noah took two of EVERY creature onto this ark? The story can't possibly be true. How did Noah build the thing? With God's help you say. Perhaps, but that's not what the bible says. It says that God told him to do it, not that he and Noah would do it together. Gen. 6:14-16. And it was Noah's job to gather the creatures--the elephants, the penguins, the apes living in the jungles of Thailand, the mosquitoes, the mice, the North American bison, and the South American parrots. That was Noah's job.
(This by the way, is contract #2 in the bible. It is a more formal contract. God tells Noah what to do, then says, "I, on my part, will . . ."--that is called "consideration" in contract law. An exchange of promises. Then he makes covenant #1: he promises not to kill them along with the rest of the world. This covenant is not a contract, because there is no consideration on Noah's part. It is an empty promise, and hence is unenforceable. You think God didn't know that?!)
Well, these first chapters really do introduce all the themes that will be running throughout the bible. A lot needs to be said here. Hopefully once we settle into the real characters of the story, Abraham and his children, less will need to be written every day. I won't be able to keep this up!
I want to make one last comment. Again, all of my discussion isn't to criticize the stories themselves. They are great, fun, interesting stories. That would be like criticizing a Grimm Fairytale because mirrors can't really talk, or a kiss wouldn't really cure a poison-induced paralysis. That's not the point of the stories. The problem, again, is that people actually believe these stories are true. I love the stories, but they are so obviously not true, impossibly, internally illogically not true, that the amount of energy expended attempting to prove the opposite is truly shocking. It's interesting to listen to callers to some of the bible call-in shows on the radio, when the caller knows it doesn't make sense, but knows it's supposed to make sense. The expert will spend 30 minutes explaining in great, flawless bible logic how inevitable it all is, then tell the caller that ultimately you just have to have faith in it.
--bibletoenail
Textual Notes:
- Gen. 6:5-8:22 n.5--fascinating. The story here is a patchwork of two sources--the "Yahwist" source, and the "Priestly document." Consequently there are many repetitions and inconsistencies in the story, such as the number of animals taken into the ark. Again, this is just proof of the editorial intent behind the text. Most fascinating, however, is that this note says that both of these sources can be traced ultimately back to the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic! Wow. And again, it's just beyond question what this bible actually is.
- Gen. 6:15 n. 7--Wow, there really was an ancient story of the flood. Not just in general, but in the particulars! This note says the Babylonian ark was an exact cube--120 cubits in length, width, and height. Well, I must say that ark is way cooler than Noah's big boat.
- Gen. 6:19--God tells Noah to bring on board two of every kind--one male and one female. How could Noah tell the male mosquito from the female? Can you? By the way, what happened to all the plant life?
- Gen. 7:1-3--more unexplained morality--"clean" versus "unclean" animals.
- Gen. 7:11--Another of my favorite passages. See, the authors of the book thought that there was water above the sky, above the "dome" that was made in Gen. 1. So to make it rain, God opened windows in the dome and the water fell down. I love that.
- Gen. 8:1--A strange comment--"and then God remembered Noah [after 150 days]"--what is God doing during that time? What is he busy with when he forgets about us?
- Gen. 8:4--150 days adrift at sea, and Noah lands just down the street from where he took off? Hm. . .
- Gen. 8:6--Since I was a little kid, I have never understood why Noah waited 40 days after landing to open the door in his boat. It always reminds me of the astronauts in the space shuttle, who sit there on the tarmac for like 15 minutes after landing. I always wonder, why don't they get out?
- Gen. 8:20--Uh, Noah just went through all that, with TWO of every kind of animal, and the first thing he does after landing is kill half of them for a sacrifice to God! (Presumably they had babies on board, but still.)
- Gen. 8:21--When he smells the sweet odor of all that burning flesh, he says to himself, "Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the desires of man's heart are evil from the start." No shit, Sherlock. Since I figured this out two chapters ago, I have to once again question the omnipotence of God. He is so abusive--explodes in anger, kills everyone, literally, then regrets it.
- Gen. 8:22--Now wait a minute, he promises right here (an empty promise without consideration, to be sure), that he will never again kill everyone. But the entire Christian faith is based on the anticipation to exactly that day, when God DOES kill everyone again!
- Gen. 8:21 n. 3--Interesting. When God says man is evil from the start, the note says it's unclear whether that means since the beginning of the human race, or from the early years of each individual.
Quotables:
"Then Enoch walked with God, and he was no longer here, for God took him." --Gen. 5:24
"The sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose." --Gen. 6:1
"The sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man." --Gen. 6:4
"[God] regretted that he had made man." --Gen. 6:6
"You alone in this age have I found to be truly just." --Gen. 7:1
"The floodgates of the sky were opened." --Gen. 7:11
"The desires of man's heart are evil from the start." --Gen. 8:21
Old Testament
Book 1: Genesis
Chapter 5: Genealogy Adam to Noah
Chapter 6: God hires Noah
Chapter 7: The Flood
Chapter 8: Noah lands, and kills half the animals he just saved
In chapter 5 Noah is born. This is the first of the boring genealogy chapters. One interesting thing is that for some reason Enoch does not die, he is taken alive by God. Now, the note says "[the passage] clearly implies that [Enoch] was taken alive to God's abode" (Gen. 5:24 n. 2). Although it does clearly say he did not die but was removed from earth by God, it actually implies nothing about going to "God's abode." This is, I think, another example of the Catholics reading into, even reshaping, the meaning of the old testament. I've heard before, I don't know where, that in the old testament there is no conception of heaven (nor Satan for that matter). When you died, you were dead, like in real life. Let's keep an eye out for that as we read. Anyway, this claim that the verse implies heaven is a fabrication.
One of the most fascinating things to me about reading a fairly scholarly edition of the bible is the notes on the origins of the various parts of the bible. (Remember what these books are. They are ancient documents dug up and pieced together. --Pieced together twice, first by the original compilers of the bible, then again in the last few hundred years by archaeologists looking for source materials. Archaeology is a fascinating field, very similar to cosmology and astronomy. The task in both is to take the most meager of evidence and construct entire narratives about what happened thousands (or billions) of years ago.)
The note on this chapter says that it is a "relatively late 'Priestly document.'" The purpose of the chapter is to bridge the genealogy from Adam to Abraham. "Priestly" means it was added to the book much later, when the original writers (editors) were compiling and shaping the book to fit the lessons they wanted to teach. The truly amazing thing to me about notes such as this is that they explicitly admit, in black and white, right there in the text of the bible, that the thing was written and compiled by humans in order to fit a certain agenda.
The note points out how many of the names in this genealogy are similar to ones in chapter 4, but in a different order. It also mentions how this genealogy parallels "Babylonian tradition." What is that evidence of? Is it evidence of the "historical truth" of the bible? Or is it evidence of the contrived and man-made nature of the bible? It cuts both ways, doesn't it!
I love Noah's three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth. It's impossible not to imagine Moe, Larry, and Shemp.
***
Chapter 6 is sort of the beginning of the transition in Genesis from ancient myths to a different kind of story that is more about human relations. This chapter is amazing for so many reasons. First, of course, the giants of Gen. 6:1-4. Uh, what? Where to begin?! The "sons of heaven"--who are THEY?! Other gods? Gods brothers and sisters? His friends? His children?! (What happened to "only begotten son"?) It's also the first of the hard-core raunchy stories of Genesis. The "sons of heaven" come down to earth and see how hot the "daughters of man" are, and "take them for wives"--whether forcibly or not is unclear. They impregnate the women (more cross-race or cross-species sex), and the offspring are these giants. What happened to these giants?
I want to be clear--I don't mind these stories, I think they are fun and what make the bible entertaining. What baffles me is how Christians maintain that all the bible is true. They have to go to such elaborate lengths to convince themselves that every word is true. Some won't even allow for the metaphoric nature of these stories. They spend a lot of time arguing how the creation story is possible--they don't even mention this one, which is at least as silly.
The point of course is that the old testament is just a collection of ancient myths. No different from Native American myths, or Greek myths, or any others. They are entertaining stories that have lessons and help to explain the unexplainable. The idea that even today people still believe these stories is truly, truly mind-boggling, isn't it? The stories are fun, same as Aesop's Fables or Dr. Suess stories, but there are entire radio networks, entire television stations, entire careers, entire industries, billions of dollars a year, devoted to the truth of these stories. How do we even begin to approach the question of how that is possible? It's a question, obviously, I will be contemplating often as I read this book.
Three more aspects of this flood story fascinate me. First, morality. Second, God's personality. And third, the mundane impossibility of it all.
I had never noticed this issue of the origin of morality before, but it keeps cropping up. In this chapter God gets so disgusted with man's wickedness, and "no desire that his [man's] heart conceived was ever anything but evil" (Gen. 6:5).
Man's wickedness? In his heart nothing but evil? What does that mean? This story simply makes no sense. God made us. He made the world. As I said yesterday, what is the nature of this "evil"? There are only two possibilities. Either one, this concept of good and evil is something outside of God--something that exists separate from him. It's not his definition of good and evil, it's the definition of good and evil. Is that what is meant? There are two problems with that. First, obviously, if this notion of good and evil exists outside of God, then God can't be all-knowing, all-powerful, and so on. It's not that God is the universe, he simply exists inside the universe, same as us. That fits very well with the Garden of Eden story, and explains why he was so fearful of us eating from the tree of life--he's not infinitely better than us, he's only one step up the food chain from us. Second, what on earth is this notion of good and evil? It existed before creation, before man and woman. Yet what "evil" is that God is talking about here, the thing that disgusts him so much, is entirely human in nature: murder, sex, theft, lying. How could the universe have had a moral precept regarding sex outside of marriage before God created man and woman? That is a very troubling thing to contemplate. Who was God talking to in chapter one? One would imagine the concepts of good and evil that God is dealing with in his life are entirely different from ours. Is there really a moral tenet regarding coveting thy neighbor's wife where God lives?! Does God live in the suburbs, or an apartment building? Do you think he rents or owns? Does he get mad at his neighbor for not trimming the tree? Is his neighbor's wife really that hot? Does she sunbath in a skimpy bikini during the summer? Who can blame God, the way she parades around like that half naked? It's almost like she's asking for it.
It is very hard to reconcile the notion that morality pre-existed creation, with our belief in God as all-powerful, all-knowing. The other possibility for the nature of this evil that was rampant before the flood, then, is that God created a system of morality to go along with the rest of creation. We needed rules, so he decided on some: no killing, no sex outside of marriage, no theft, etc. There are, again, some problems with this. First, it means that our particular system of morality is arbitrary. God could easily have come up with different rules, why not? He could have said it was sinful not to have sex with at least three strangers a week, sinful not to kill those you dislike. Why not? Is that idea strange, blasphemous? If your reaction to this suggestion is that the rules have to be as they are, they couldn't be the alternatives I just described, then we are right back where we started--the morality is inevitable, and therefore pre-dates creation and God.
It's possible, alternatively, that the morals spring from creation as God created it. The alternatives I described might be possible in some world, but not this one that God did in fact create. Okay, maybe.
But that leads me to the second thing I wanted to begin to explore: God's personality. This is one of the most baffling things to me about the entire story. Gen. 6:6: "[When God saw how evil people were,] he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved." He regretted it? That makes no sense to me. It defies explanation. God created us. We aren't equals. What on earth emotional attachment could he possibly have to us? Imagine you make a model train set in your basement, or a doll house. The train jumps the track and crashes through the model depot. Are you going to REGRET MAKING THE THING?! What kind of emotional disturbance or psychosis would you have to have to attach that much importance on this little game of yours?
In addition is the obvious point that he made us. How can he get angry for doing what we've been programmed to do? Even if he programmed us with free will, that's still how he created us. How could any creator--of a train set or the world--grieve when his creation does something he built into the thing in the first place? As a programmer I would be delighted to witness my program thinking on its own. What does it say about God that he does not like it when we think on our own? What kind of desperate, self-centered, emotionally stunted parent would be angry with their children for becoming their own person?
God's personality, obviously, is something that crops up time and again in the bible. We'll have plenty more opportunity to talk about it.
Finally, quickly, is the mundane impossibility of it all. Noah took two of EVERY creature onto this ark? The story can't possibly be true. How did Noah build the thing? With God's help you say. Perhaps, but that's not what the bible says. It says that God told him to do it, not that he and Noah would do it together. Gen. 6:14-16. And it was Noah's job to gather the creatures--the elephants, the penguins, the apes living in the jungles of Thailand, the mosquitoes, the mice, the North American bison, and the South American parrots. That was Noah's job.
(This by the way, is contract #2 in the bible. It is a more formal contract. God tells Noah what to do, then says, "I, on my part, will . . ."--that is called "consideration" in contract law. An exchange of promises. Then he makes covenant #1: he promises not to kill them along with the rest of the world. This covenant is not a contract, because there is no consideration on Noah's part. It is an empty promise, and hence is unenforceable. You think God didn't know that?!)
Well, these first chapters really do introduce all the themes that will be running throughout the bible. A lot needs to be said here. Hopefully once we settle into the real characters of the story, Abraham and his children, less will need to be written every day. I won't be able to keep this up!
I want to make one last comment. Again, all of my discussion isn't to criticize the stories themselves. They are great, fun, interesting stories. That would be like criticizing a Grimm Fairytale because mirrors can't really talk, or a kiss wouldn't really cure a poison-induced paralysis. That's not the point of the stories. The problem, again, is that people actually believe these stories are true. I love the stories, but they are so obviously not true, impossibly, internally illogically not true, that the amount of energy expended attempting to prove the opposite is truly shocking. It's interesting to listen to callers to some of the bible call-in shows on the radio, when the caller knows it doesn't make sense, but knows it's supposed to make sense. The expert will spend 30 minutes explaining in great, flawless bible logic how inevitable it all is, then tell the caller that ultimately you just have to have faith in it.
--bibletoenail
Textual Notes:
- Gen. 6:5-8:22 n.5--fascinating. The story here is a patchwork of two sources--the "Yahwist" source, and the "Priestly document." Consequently there are many repetitions and inconsistencies in the story, such as the number of animals taken into the ark. Again, this is just proof of the editorial intent behind the text. Most fascinating, however, is that this note says that both of these sources can be traced ultimately back to the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic! Wow. And again, it's just beyond question what this bible actually is.
- Gen. 6:15 n. 7--Wow, there really was an ancient story of the flood. Not just in general, but in the particulars! This note says the Babylonian ark was an exact cube--120 cubits in length, width, and height. Well, I must say that ark is way cooler than Noah's big boat.
- Gen. 6:19--God tells Noah to bring on board two of every kind--one male and one female. How could Noah tell the male mosquito from the female? Can you? By the way, what happened to all the plant life?
- Gen. 7:1-3--more unexplained morality--"clean" versus "unclean" animals.
- Gen. 7:11--Another of my favorite passages. See, the authors of the book thought that there was water above the sky, above the "dome" that was made in Gen. 1. So to make it rain, God opened windows in the dome and the water fell down. I love that.
- Gen. 8:1--A strange comment--"and then God remembered Noah [after 150 days]"--what is God doing during that time? What is he busy with when he forgets about us?
- Gen. 8:4--150 days adrift at sea, and Noah lands just down the street from where he took off? Hm. . .
- Gen. 8:6--Since I was a little kid, I have never understood why Noah waited 40 days after landing to open the door in his boat. It always reminds me of the astronauts in the space shuttle, who sit there on the tarmac for like 15 minutes after landing. I always wonder, why don't they get out?
- Gen. 8:20--Uh, Noah just went through all that, with TWO of every kind of animal, and the first thing he does after landing is kill half of them for a sacrifice to God! (Presumably they had babies on board, but still.)
- Gen. 8:21--When he smells the sweet odor of all that burning flesh, he says to himself, "Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the desires of man's heart are evil from the start." No shit, Sherlock. Since I figured this out two chapters ago, I have to once again question the omnipotence of God. He is so abusive--explodes in anger, kills everyone, literally, then regrets it.
- Gen. 8:22--Now wait a minute, he promises right here (an empty promise without consideration, to be sure), that he will never again kill everyone. But the entire Christian faith is based on the anticipation to exactly that day, when God DOES kill everyone again!
- Gen. 8:21 n. 3--Interesting. When God says man is evil from the start, the note says it's unclear whether that means since the beginning of the human race, or from the early years of each individual.
Quotables:
"Then Enoch walked with God, and he was no longer here, for God took him." --Gen. 5:24
"The sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose." --Gen. 6:1
"The sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man." --Gen. 6:4
"[God] regretted that he had made man." --Gen. 6:6
"You alone in this age have I found to be truly just." --Gen. 7:1
"The floodgates of the sky were opened." --Gen. 7:11
"The desires of man's heart are evil from the start." --Gen. 8:21
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Who is God talking to?
"She gave me fruit, . . . so I ate it." --Gen. 3:12.
"Do I dare to eat a peach?"--T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off!"--Sir Toby Belch in William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night," Act I, Scene 3
As I said, my NEB is at home, so I'm going to read the New American Bible version online for now, from http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/ (just because it's the first one I found). "nccbuscc"--that's a mouthful. The "National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference."
So anyway,
We all know this story. God creates the heavens and the earth and the vaulted sky with the waters above it for rain. (More on that during the flood.) He created vegetation, birds, animals, and finally us--in his own image. An interesting note about that in the NAB--by "in his image," the note says, it means that we have dominion over the animals the way God has dominion over us. It is not, the note says, that God looks like us.
One question occurred to me this time that had never struck me before. It's a linguistic thing. God created all this stuff, right? Before these six days, none of this stuff existed. Yet, for instance, to bring vegetation into existence, he says "Let the earth bring forth vegetation" (Gen. 1:11). But before he said that, supposedly, vegetation did not exist. What was this word "vegetation" that God used? What was the signified for the word "vegetation" before vegetation existed?
Another obvious question, one that I'm sure everyone has thought of, is, who is God talking to? Of whom is he requesting this light and vegetation? If God requests these things from someone else, who? Who is the one with the real power, if it's not God?
I'm sure any Christian would scoff at that question: he's talking to himself, or it's a poetic trope--he's not literally asking the one in charge to let there be light. I will grant that--I think the problem is much deeper. What is language before God created the world? With no one to talk to, which must have been the case--before creation by definition God was alone--where did language come from? Why is he talking to himself at all? Not only were there no signifieds, so that whatever language did exist would have been meaningless, but there is no communication--no reason for language in the first place. I think that's a much deeper question than who is God requesting the light from. The fact that God is speaking at all implies there is something deeply untrue about the story as it is told.
Language should have been the last thing God created, after humans even, in order to talk to his new friends us, it is more than unnecessary, it is logically impossible before humans. (Derrida makes a lot of the story of Babel--I might talk about that later. He places the creation of "language" at that moment, I believe--with all people understanding each other, there is no disconnect between signified and signifier--in the "paradise" pre-Babel. That's of course a highly metaphoric reading of that story.)
Well, I haven't even gotten to chapter 2 yet, when the bible retells the story it just told. Here's what I think I'm going to do. I know that the entire book is not as interesting as the first couple chapters. I will pick a topic out of each day's reading. If there's something I don't get to, I will come back to it during one of the slow days. I'll keep a list.
Future Topics:
- The obvious contradiction between chapter 1 and chapter 2. Completely different versions of "creation."
- On the seventh day God rested? (Gen. 2:2) Does that imply he's not infinite? Can be worn out? Surely if he can get tired, he can be killed? Like the final Boss in a Nintendo game? And by the way, God seems kind of lame--all he did was say "Let there be vegetation"--that wore him out?!
- The tree of life and the tree of knowledge? (Gen. 2:9). That too implies some existence before Existence. This tree of life seems to have already existed when God created the world.
- Gen. 2:17--God's first random commandment, don't eat from the tree of knowledge or you'll die. But more evidence of existence outside of God--he doesn't say "I'll kill you," he says "you'll surely die."
- Gen. 2:18--More interesting linguistic questions. God already made the birds and animals using the words for them in chapter 1, yet here he wants the man to name them--the origin of language.
- Gen 2:20--the first biblical bestiality?! God gave the man all the birds and cattle and so on, but none were suitable partners for the man. Uh, what?
- Gen 2:25--"The man and woman were both naked, and yet felt no shame." More implication. The implication here is that they should be ashamed, if only they knew. Why? What is the source of that shame? What are these rules that exist outside the creation of humans? Whence comes those rules?
- I have to talk about the story of the Garden of Eden and the serpent and the apple. This is the first hint of the insanity of God. I will write more later. As I told you I just finished my first semester of law school, so I have contracts on my brain. This is the first example of God breaching a contract he had made with man as well. Is lying conducive with an omnipotent God? Much more to talk about, especially that once again God is talking to someone else. And the implication that Adam was one bite away from Godship: the two things, apparently, that make a god are knowledge of good and evil, and everlasting life. If Adam and Eve had planned a little better, they could have made us all gods in one swell foop.
- Wow, note 3 (on Gen. 3:15) is amazing! Here is where purposeful translation presents itself. This note says that this passage (about the serpent striking at the heel) can be seen as the first hint of Jesus Christ! The notes in the NEB are much more Jewish in the old testament--about the promises and the delays, the theme that repeats itself throughout the first books. This Catholic version is hammering home Jesus right away.
- Gen. ch. 4 is Cain and Abel--the first sibling rivalry of the bible. Interestingly, also the first siblings! There are no non-rivalrous siblings so far! Also, siblings are always different--Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau.
- Gen. ch. 3 is the first blaming and avoiding responsibility for your actions in the bible, when God catches Adam and Eve eating the apple. Gen. ch. 4 is the first lying and aggressive defensiveness--"Am I my brother's keeper?"
- Another interesting question--where does "morality" come from: Did Cain know it was wrong to kill Abel? If yes, why? How? If not, then where does morality come from? The Judeo-Christian conception of man is much more cynical and pessimistic than the atheist's.
- It's impossible for me to read the bible without remembering my little droog Alex in prison with his eyes rolling up into his head as he read about all the sex. In this one chapter we've had two sex scenes plus a menage a trois!
- The other obvious observation is the genetics one: if all humanity were descended from one male and female, there would be serious problems with our gene pool.
Textual Notes:
- Gen 2:4 n.1--Story of Adam much older than 1:1-2:4. What does that mean? Almost verse by verse from the very beginning this book could not really be what it purports to be. Two stories thrown together from different (pre-Hebrew) folk traditions.
- Gen 2:7 n.2--God portrayed as a potter. "Adam" is a play on words in Hebrew--meaning "man" and "ground."
- Gen. 2:7--This time God made man out of clay, like the original 1933 version of King Kong.
- Gen. 2:14--Wow, the Tigris and Euphrates goes out of the Garden of Eden--we're in Iraq!
- Gen. 2:24--First great random folk explanation of something that needs no explanation: the reason man leaves mom and dad and clings to wife is that she was made of his rib.
- Gen. 2:24 n.6--Says that the writer emphasizes the fact that God willed them to have sex.
- Gen. 4:1--the first sex in the bible.
- Gen. 4:15--Another of the obvious problems with the story--"others" will kill Cain? Who the hell are they?!
- Gen. 4:15--the first holy tattoo.
- Gen. 4:17--Cain's wife?! Huh? (Second sex of the bible--two sex scenes in one chapter!)
- Gen. 4:19--The first biblical menage a trois: Lamech takes two wives.
- Gen. 4:20--Something else weird--quaint--about the bible. How families pick a custom and stick to it--Jabal's family are the ones who live in tents. That's who they are, that's what they do: live in tents.
Quotables:
"The man and his wife were both naked." Gen. 2:25.
"He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." Gen. 3:15.
"You are dirt, and to dirt you shall return." Gen. 3:19.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" Gen. 4:9.
Four chapters down, 1185 to go!
Next time: Giants! And Noah?
--bibletoenail
"Do I dare to eat a peach?"--T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off!"--Sir Toby Belch in William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night," Act I, Scene 3
As I said, my NEB is at home, so I'm going to read the New American Bible version online for now, from http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/ (just because it's the first one I found). "nccbuscc"--that's a mouthful. The "National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference."
So anyway,
Old Testament
Book One: Genesis
The Creation of the World
Chapter 1: Creation (first pass)
Chapter 2: Creation (second pass)
The Beginnings of History
Chapter 2 (cont’d):
Adam and Eve
Chapter 3: The Garden of Eden
Chapter 4: Cain and Abel
Chapter 4: Cain and Abel
We all know this story. God creates the heavens and the earth and the vaulted sky with the waters above it for rain. (More on that during the flood.) He created vegetation, birds, animals, and finally us--in his own image. An interesting note about that in the NAB--by "in his image," the note says, it means that we have dominion over the animals the way God has dominion over us. It is not, the note says, that God looks like us.
One question occurred to me this time that had never struck me before. It's a linguistic thing. God created all this stuff, right? Before these six days, none of this stuff existed. Yet, for instance, to bring vegetation into existence, he says "Let the earth bring forth vegetation" (Gen. 1:11). But before he said that, supposedly, vegetation did not exist. What was this word "vegetation" that God used? What was the signified for the word "vegetation" before vegetation existed?
Another obvious question, one that I'm sure everyone has thought of, is, who is God talking to? Of whom is he requesting this light and vegetation? If God requests these things from someone else, who? Who is the one with the real power, if it's not God?
I'm sure any Christian would scoff at that question: he's talking to himself, or it's a poetic trope--he's not literally asking the one in charge to let there be light. I will grant that--I think the problem is much deeper. What is language before God created the world? With no one to talk to, which must have been the case--before creation by definition God was alone--where did language come from? Why is he talking to himself at all? Not only were there no signifieds, so that whatever language did exist would have been meaningless, but there is no communication--no reason for language in the first place. I think that's a much deeper question than who is God requesting the light from. The fact that God is speaking at all implies there is something deeply untrue about the story as it is told.
Language should have been the last thing God created, after humans even, in order to talk to his new friends us, it is more than unnecessary, it is logically impossible before humans. (Derrida makes a lot of the story of Babel--I might talk about that later. He places the creation of "language" at that moment, I believe--with all people understanding each other, there is no disconnect between signified and signifier--in the "paradise" pre-Babel. That's of course a highly metaphoric reading of that story.)
Well, I haven't even gotten to chapter 2 yet, when the bible retells the story it just told. Here's what I think I'm going to do. I know that the entire book is not as interesting as the first couple chapters. I will pick a topic out of each day's reading. If there's something I don't get to, I will come back to it during one of the slow days. I'll keep a list.
Future Topics:
- The obvious contradiction between chapter 1 and chapter 2. Completely different versions of "creation."
- On the seventh day God rested? (Gen. 2:2) Does that imply he's not infinite? Can be worn out? Surely if he can get tired, he can be killed? Like the final Boss in a Nintendo game? And by the way, God seems kind of lame--all he did was say "Let there be vegetation"--that wore him out?!
- The tree of life and the tree of knowledge? (Gen. 2:9). That too implies some existence before Existence. This tree of life seems to have already existed when God created the world.
- Gen. 2:17--God's first random commandment, don't eat from the tree of knowledge or you'll die. But more evidence of existence outside of God--he doesn't say "I'll kill you," he says "you'll surely die."
- Gen. 2:18--More interesting linguistic questions. God already made the birds and animals using the words for them in chapter 1, yet here he wants the man to name them--the origin of language.
- Gen 2:20--the first biblical bestiality?! God gave the man all the birds and cattle and so on, but none were suitable partners for the man. Uh, what?
- Gen 2:25--"The man and woman were both naked, and yet felt no shame." More implication. The implication here is that they should be ashamed, if only they knew. Why? What is the source of that shame? What are these rules that exist outside the creation of humans? Whence comes those rules?
- I have to talk about the story of the Garden of Eden and the serpent and the apple. This is the first hint of the insanity of God. I will write more later. As I told you I just finished my first semester of law school, so I have contracts on my brain. This is the first example of God breaching a contract he had made with man as well. Is lying conducive with an omnipotent God? Much more to talk about, especially that once again God is talking to someone else. And the implication that Adam was one bite away from Godship: the two things, apparently, that make a god are knowledge of good and evil, and everlasting life. If Adam and Eve had planned a little better, they could have made us all gods in one swell foop.
- Wow, note 3 (on Gen. 3:15) is amazing! Here is where purposeful translation presents itself. This note says that this passage (about the serpent striking at the heel) can be seen as the first hint of Jesus Christ! The notes in the NEB are much more Jewish in the old testament--about the promises and the delays, the theme that repeats itself throughout the first books. This Catholic version is hammering home Jesus right away.
- Gen. ch. 4 is Cain and Abel--the first sibling rivalry of the bible. Interestingly, also the first siblings! There are no non-rivalrous siblings so far! Also, siblings are always different--Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau.
- Gen. ch. 3 is the first blaming and avoiding responsibility for your actions in the bible, when God catches Adam and Eve eating the apple. Gen. ch. 4 is the first lying and aggressive defensiveness--"Am I my brother's keeper?"
- Another interesting question--where does "morality" come from: Did Cain know it was wrong to kill Abel? If yes, why? How? If not, then where does morality come from? The Judeo-Christian conception of man is much more cynical and pessimistic than the atheist's.
- It's impossible for me to read the bible without remembering my little droog Alex in prison with his eyes rolling up into his head as he read about all the sex. In this one chapter we've had two sex scenes plus a menage a trois!
- The other obvious observation is the genetics one: if all humanity were descended from one male and female, there would be serious problems with our gene pool.
Textual Notes:
- Gen 2:4 n.1--Story of Adam much older than 1:1-2:4. What does that mean? Almost verse by verse from the very beginning this book could not really be what it purports to be. Two stories thrown together from different (pre-Hebrew) folk traditions.
- Gen 2:7 n.2--God portrayed as a potter. "Adam" is a play on words in Hebrew--meaning "man" and "ground."
- Gen. 2:7--This time God made man out of clay, like the original 1933 version of King Kong.
- Gen. 2:14--Wow, the Tigris and Euphrates goes out of the Garden of Eden--we're in Iraq!
- Gen. 2:24--First great random folk explanation of something that needs no explanation: the reason man leaves mom and dad and clings to wife is that she was made of his rib.
- Gen. 2:24 n.6--Says that the writer emphasizes the fact that God willed them to have sex.
- Gen. 4:1--the first sex in the bible.
- Gen. 4:15--Another of the obvious problems with the story--"others" will kill Cain? Who the hell are they?!
- Gen. 4:15--the first holy tattoo.
- Gen. 4:17--Cain's wife?! Huh? (Second sex of the bible--two sex scenes in one chapter!)
- Gen. 4:19--The first biblical menage a trois: Lamech takes two wives.
- Gen. 4:20--Something else weird--quaint--about the bible. How families pick a custom and stick to it--Jabal's family are the ones who live in tents. That's who they are, that's what they do: live in tents.
Quotables:
"The man and his wife were both naked." Gen. 2:25.
"He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." Gen. 3:15.
"You are dirt, and to dirt you shall return." Gen. 3:19.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" Gen. 4:9.
Four chapters down, 1185 to go!
Next time: Giants! And Noah?
--bibletoenail
The Bible in a Year
Hi--
I just started law school this year. I calculated I read 2600 pages in law books during the fall semester.
I'm home now for Christmas. For some reason, whenever I am home I listen to the Christian radio station. At no other time would it even cross my mind, but here I listen to nothing else. I heard an ad on there for a calendar that gives you daily bible assignments. If you follow the calendar, you can finish the whole bible in one year. I thought, heck, I can do that; the bible's only about 2500 pages long. So that's what I'm going to do.
I've started it about 10 times before, but I never get past Genesis. I think the furthest I have gone is Leviticus. I'm going to give myself a bit of a head start, but I'm going to start again at the beginning.
First thing to do is figure out my daily assignments. Hang on while I find out how many chapters there are total in the bible. I know there are 50 in Genesis. . . .
That was easy! http://www.deafmissions.com/tally/bkchptrvrs.html 929 in the old testament, 260 in the new. 1189 total. So, 1189 / 366 (I picked a good year--one extra day!) = only 3.25 chapters a day. That's nothing. We'll make it 4 per day to give me some leeway.
For you bible aficionados, I will be reading the Oxford Study Edition of the much maligned New English Bible. However, my bible is at school right now, so for the next few days I'll read from whatever I can find online.
So, let's get on with it! As an added bonus, I will provide a daily bible quote from that day's reading.
We all know what happens in the first four chapters, don't we? Creation, then creation again, then I think Abel and Cain. I don't think we get much further than that. But remember, tomorrow, Giants!
--bibletoenail
I just started law school this year. I calculated I read 2600 pages in law books during the fall semester.
I'm home now for Christmas. For some reason, whenever I am home I listen to the Christian radio station. At no other time would it even cross my mind, but here I listen to nothing else. I heard an ad on there for a calendar that gives you daily bible assignments. If you follow the calendar, you can finish the whole bible in one year. I thought, heck, I can do that; the bible's only about 2500 pages long. So that's what I'm going to do.
I've started it about 10 times before, but I never get past Genesis. I think the furthest I have gone is Leviticus. I'm going to give myself a bit of a head start, but I'm going to start again at the beginning.
First thing to do is figure out my daily assignments. Hang on while I find out how many chapters there are total in the bible. I know there are 50 in Genesis. . . .
That was easy! http://www.deafmissions.com/tally/bkchptrvrs.html 929 in the old testament, 260 in the new. 1189 total. So, 1189 / 366 (I picked a good year--one extra day!) = only 3.25 chapters a day. That's nothing. We'll make it 4 per day to give me some leeway.
For you bible aficionados, I will be reading the Oxford Study Edition of the much maligned New English Bible. However, my bible is at school right now, so for the next few days I'll read from whatever I can find online.
So, let's get on with it! As an added bonus, I will provide a daily bible quote from that day's reading.
We all know what happens in the first four chapters, don't we? Creation, then creation again, then I think Abel and Cain. I don't think we get much further than that. But remember, tomorrow, Giants!
--bibletoenail
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