So we pick up the story at Noah and the flood. I'm gonna make this brief. There are some things I kinda WANT to discuss here, but I'll try to save some of the stuff that will turn into quite lengthy exposition until after we have a few more related examples.
Chapter 6 [continued]
9-13
So the earth was corrupt and filled with violence. Now how'd THAT happen? Maybe it had something to do with the aforementioned "sons of God" and all that interspecies sex that was going on. No matter. God is gonna fix everything. By killing everything. This is the solution that a perfect, omnipotent being came up with. Even the all the little babies were wicked and corrupt, I suppose. I can't see this as a good solution to the world gone bad and being filled with violence. Especially given the amount of God-commanded, endorsed, and/or ignored violence that will later take place.
6.14 – 8.19
These verses describe Noah's instructions for building the ark and what to put in it. And y'know, I'd just gloss over this without saying anything other than, "this is obviously a myth," but there are quite a few young earth creationists out there who want this story to be the basis of what is taught in schools. There is a website called Answers In Genesis that is based on the text of The Bible (especially up to this point). This website is popular among people who don't accept the theory of evolution. It's so popular that I'm probably familiar with 90% of the arguments on the site because they are trotted out in debates about evolution all the time. So I'll spare you all the reasons why we know that this story is a myth. What I will give you is the REAL story: [borrowed from an earlier facebook note of mine]
There was a particularly catastrophic flood that occurred on the Euphrates, about 125 miles SE of present day Baghdad. Archaeological evidence shows that somewhere around 2900 BCE, there was a huge storm and the river rose an additional 22 feet. It overflowed the levees and of course, killed A LOT of people. One survivor of this natural disaster was a Sumerian king named Ziasudra. He resourcefully commandeered a commercial barge, loaded it with merchandise, and rode the flood downstream into the Persian Gulf where he finally ran aground. Thankful to be alive, he offered a sacrifice in a hilltop temple. And there you have it – big flood, boat full of stuff, happy landing on a hilltop. And we have geological and archaeological evidence to prove this. It should be no surprise that 6 other cultures in the area had stories LIKE the Noah story. They all experienced this flood. But it was NOT a worldwide flood. Gen 7.19 states, in no uncertain terms, that this flood was supposedly worldwide. It was not. It is a myth based on a REALLY BIG flood, but that is all.
By the way, Noah had 7 days to build this thing. That's a tall order for a 600 year old man. Heeeey, didn't God limit mankind's lifespan to 120 years in 6.3?
Chapter 8
20-22
So Noah had to take some extra "clean" animals…well, according to the non-priestly source which comprises this part of the text. The priestly source doesn't make the distinction, because the laws about what animals are clean and unclean aren't stated until around Leviticus. So in that tradition only one pair of animals is taken. So when he performs this sacrifice in 8.20, he causes some extinctions. Well at least the author(s) of the non-priestly source (J, as it is called by scholars) of the story kinda thought about that, and wrote in the part about God commanding him to take extra animals. But the anachronism gives it away.
21 – And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
The pleasing odor of burning flesh. Let this be duly noted that God loves the smell of burning flesh. Nearly identical language was used in the Gilgamesh epic: "the gods smelled the pleasant fragrance" and regretted their decision to kill all of humanity. I'm still not sure how the pleasing odor of burnt sacrifices made him swear never to kill everything on the planet ever again. Just chalk it up to the unfamiliarity of the Bronze Age mindset, and their portrayal of the deity they created.
Well, I guess this half-heartedly explains why God liked Abel's offerings and not Cain's. [But not really…let's see what happens in a few verses.] At any rate, was it Cain's fault that he was a "tiller of the ground"? I live in Iowa, where a fair percentage of the population are "tillers of the ground". So all you farmers out there, don't send up a burnt offering of corn! God hates that shit!
Chapter 9
1-7
Be fruitful and multiply! And finally, God allows us to eat meat. Yeah, remember 1.29-30? He said that he gave humans and animals plants and fruits to eat. We were strictly vegetarians. But now he specifically says that we can eat meat. We imagine that this is a partial concession to the "violence" observed prior to the flood. But you cannot eat their blood. This is of course why an animal must have the blood drained from its body before it is declared Kosher.
We also have an injunction against killing humans. At this point it actually applies to Jew and Gentile alike. And you can tell by the way I said that that this might change in the future. We shall see…
8-17
Here is the first covenant mentioned in The Bible. This covenant is God's promise to never kill all people and animals, or curse the ground of the entire earth…ever again. God sets his weapon, the bow, in the sky facing away from the earth as a sign of his promise to not murder everything again. Yes, YHVH has a weapon. Refer to Ps 7.12-13 and Hab 3.9-11. Most gods do, after all. Thor has a hammer, Zeus has lightning bolts, others have swords, spears, bows, tridents, etc. The god of the Hebrews uses a bow. That's actually kinda cool! I always imagined that if I ever got into hunting, I'd be a bow hunter.
20-27
So Noah had his priorities in line. One of the first things he did was a plant a vineyard so he could get drunk. I mean here you are in a world completely devoid of people except you and your family. Fuck, man. Would that not be hell? I'd hit the bottle as soon as I could get some grapes to grow, too! So he passes out in his tent, butt ass nekkid. One of his sons, Ham, saw his drunk ass and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth. They grabbed some kind of garment, put it over their shoulders and walked in backwards to cover Noah. Talk about homophobia. After Noah woke up, he got pissed at Ham and cursed the fuck out all his descendents! WTF? Ham probably walked in by mistake! And he gets all of his descendents cursed for it? Another thing; it mentions that Noah curses all of Canaan, declaring that they shall be slaves to the descendents of his brothers. Shem and his descendants are blessed to the highest degree of blessitude, and for some reason Japheth gets a minor blessing. *shrug* Whatevs. I guess he should be glad he didn't get completely shat on like Ham.
Ok, let's be real here. Obviously a later redactor came in and added the whole 'Canaan curse' bit, setting the stage for and justifying the later conquest of Canaan.
"See, it says so right here…all of YOU people are to be our slaves."
"What do you mean, 'you people'?"
Hilarity ensues.
Chapter 10
Here, the narrative lays out a sort of "table of nations" based on kinship. They basically list all the different peoples they know of which of Noah's sons they are descended from. Seeing as Shem is the (inexplicably) blessed one, I'll give you one guess as to which of Noah's sons the Hebrew people are descended from. Shem is a father of all Semitic peoples, and his great-grandson, Eber is a father of the Hebrew people. You may have noticed the similarity between "Eber" and "Hebrew".
Chapter 11
The tower of Babel story is from the non-priestly tradition, apparently reinforcing the idea of a definite inviolable boundary between the human and divine realms. Once again, God actually seems to fear something that the humans might do. I originally saw this merely has the Hebrew people's explanation for why people speak different languages. I mean without something like the modern study of linguistics it must have been a complete mystery why people spoke different languages. But that's not all this story says.
In this improved translation, you can see that the humans are (inexplicably) fearful of being scattered, and want to "make a name for themselves" by building a great city with a tower that reaches to the heavens. Let's just scratch our heads at this weird desire for them to make a name for themselves by building a tower with its top in the heavens and move on. The point here is that violates the diving commandment to disperse throughout the earth. So God acts (apparently with his "heavenly court" as he speaks in first person plural here) to stop the people by confusing their speech and scattering them. So it's also an explanation of why people live in separate nations as well as speak distinct languages.
Strangely enough this story appears after chapter 10 had talked about how the descendants of Noah's sons had their own languages and lands.
After that story, we get to everybody's favorite part of Genesis: 'the begats'. Raise your hand if you stopped reading The Bible here. *raises hand* I know this is where I stopped the first time I tried to read The Bible. But after we get through all of 'the begats', we get to Abraham.
And I'll definitely stop here, because I have a lot to say about Abraham and his god. So we'll pick up the story at the patriarch of the Israelites.
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