In Which a Pagan Reads HolyBooks

Genesis 10, 11

2010-02-20T21:37:00.000-06:00

I'm back! And I've got a program that'll help keep me on path. I hope.

Genesis 10 is mostly another genealogy explaining were all the peoples of the world came from out of the bottleneck that is the flood.

At the beginning of Genesis 11 there's the story of the Tower of Babel almost forgotten sandwiched between genealogies. People spoke the same language and decided to build a tower. Why? We don't know. This pissed off God who then went down and "confounded" their languages. Why? We don't know.

After this is the genealogy of Shem's kids, leading down to Abra(ha)m. By the time he's born, the earth is 2196 years old. Whee!

Okay, regarding the Tower of Babel. There's a particular subsection of mythology that's explanatory. There's a specific word for these myths but both Google and Wikipedia are failing me and I can't remember it, so I'll just go on from here, 'kay? Anyhow, you remember these myths from school. "Why Ravens Are Black" and "How Coyote Placed The Stars" and anything from the Just So Stories are these types of myths. And this is pretty clearly one of those. Why are there all these different languages when we all came from one people? Well, God got pissed off because some of 'em made a tower.

I'll admit, I'm not coming to this seeing everything written as something that actually happened but I will admit, I've never gotten why it pissed off God to build a tower and pissed him off enough that he'd make communication impossible, you know?

Anyhow, posts should be getting more daily now that I've got this thing to remind me. We'll see if I actually keep up with it. Also, Firefox has been doing something strange with the spellchecker, so forgive me if my spelling is worse than usual. My inability to see mistakes as I'm writing usually extends to several read throughs and I was never the best speller to begin with, so if there is a marked drop in readability, it's Firefox's fault.

2009-12-12T01:41:00.002-06:00

Been a while because my life and school sort of exploded. Plan on updating more frequently now that I'm on winter break, however.

Also seem to have fixed whatever problem there was with leaving comments by changing the method of commenting. Since it seems only Keely is reading this, I hope you don't mind much. :-)

Genesis 9

2009-10-06T17:08:00.003-05:00

So, it wasn't until chapter 9 that wild animals were afraid of man. "Dread fear of you shall come upon all the animals of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon all the creatures that move about on the ground and all the fishes of the sea; into your power they are delivered." (verse 2) I guess this also says that it was at this point that people started eating meat. That makes this carnivore sad. Over a thousand and a half years without meat? Blech.

There it is. "Every creature that is alive shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants." (verse 3) According to the footnotes, all creatures were vegetarians before the flood. Again I say, yuck.

And God sets his bow in the sky as a promise to never flood the world again.

Towards the end of the chapter, there's the one bit of the flood that never makes it's way into the kids' books. Noah gets out of the ark and plants a vineyard. He then makes wine and gets roaring drunk and passes out nude in his tent. Ham, one of Noah's sons, "saw his father's nakedness" (verse 22) and goes out and tells his brothers about it. Shem and Japheth (his other sons) take a robe and walk backwards to cover their dad without seeing him. Noah wakes up and then curses Canaan, Ham's son. (?!)

Noah lived 350 years after the flood. (So the earth is now 1906 years old.)

Question I've never had answered: Why curse Canaan?

2009-09-17T22:56:00.003-05:00

For some reason, I can't comment on my own posts. I'm assuming there's a glitch somewhere in blogger.

Keely, could you email that doc to me? Sounds interesting.

Genisis 7 & 8

2009-09-12T14:06:00.004-05:00

The first five verses in chapter seven point to another author than the last chapter. Instead of two-by-two, God tells Noah to gather up seven of every clean animal and two of every unclean. (From what I understand, the clean/unclean thing wasn't stated until Moses came down off the mountain, so this seems kind of anachronistic.)

We also find out that Noah is six hundred when the flood happens.

It rained for forty days and forty nights and the earth stayed flooded for a while after. Everything that didn't live in water died. "The Lord wiped out every living thing on earth; man and cattle, the creeping things and the birds of the air; all were wiped out from the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ark were left." (verse 23)

Chapter eight starts by saying that the world was flooded for a hundred and fifty days (!) "And then God remembered Noah..." and started the drain. (I've always wondered where the water came from and where it went during this.) Seven months later, the ark gets caught on the mountains of Ararat, but it takes another three months for the tops of the mountains to show up above the water.

The next six verses are how Noah figured out land was coming back. First he sends a raven, which doesn't do much, then a dove several times. Eventually, the dove comes back with an olive leaf. (It's been almost a year since the land has seen sunlight. How the hell was there an olive tree? It should be dead.) He sends out the dove again and when the dove doesn't come back he figures that things are returning back to normal.

In the second month of the 601st year of Noah's life, the earth was dry. God tells Noah to let everything off the ark and that they should all start multiplying to refill the earth. Noah sets up an altar of thanks and sacrifices one of every clean animal and bird and God seeing this decided never to do something like this again.

2009-09-10T11:37:00.001-05:00

Have not been updating as homework has been roundly kicking my butt.

Expect a real update by the end of the month, though.

Genesis 5 and 6

2009-08-14T14:36:00.002-05:00

Genesis 5 is a genealogy complete with ages. It's from this that Young Earth Creationists get their age of the Earth.

Adam was 130 when Seth was born who was 105 when Enosh was born who was 90 when Kenan was born who was... You get the idea. This leads down to Noah who was 500 when his three sons were born. (Does this mean that Shem, Ham, and Japheth were triplets?)

I sat down and worked out how old the earth was when they were born. It was 1,556 years old.

Chapter 6 starts with an explanation of the Nephilim. If you're following along with a KJV, it starts with the "There were giants in those days." thing. We're not quite sure what the Nephilim are and they don't show up in Canon again. If you've managed to track down the Book of Enoch (who showed up last chapter as "The whole lifetime of Enoch was three hundred and sixty-five years. Then Enoch walked with God, and he was no longer here, for God took him." No, this isn't Cain's son.) the Nephilim show up as what caused Lucifer's Fall from Grace. The "sons of God", whatever that means, came down to Earth, boffed a bunch of women and, the result of this is the Nephilim. Enoch says that they were thrown out of Heaven for this, but it's not Canon so it doesn't count, I guess.

Anyway, there's a whole bunch of wickedness on the Earth and God doesn't like it. In fact, he doesn't like it so darn much he decides to drown the planet and try again. I guess God runs Windows. ERROR! Reboot!

God looks down, sees Noah and decides to let him live. So he tells Noah to make "an ark of gopherwood" (What's gopherwood? We don't know. This is the only time it shows up.) and gives him the dimensions. The ark, by the way, looks like a rectangular box. It does not look like a ship. Noah's allowed to take himself, his wife, his sons, and their wives onto the ark and he's told that a male and female of all animals is to come aboard and he's also to get all the food he needs.

Thus does Chapter 6 end.

Young Earth Creationists have done whole feasibility studies on the ark. Unfortunately, I don't happen to own any of them so I'm not going to get into the evolutionary debate here.

Genesis 4

2009-08-13T23:06:00.003-05:00

Yeah, it's been a month because I was busy getting back into school. Accountancy here I come!

I was going to start this off with a UFC joke but that's probably been done to death.

Genesis 4 is all about Cain and Able. If you got this story from playing Vampire: The Masquerade you will be a touch surprised reading this chapter.

Cain's a farmer and Able's a shepherd. They both make sacrifices to God. God likes Able's more then Cain's. This pisses Cain off. We are given no reason as to why God like's Able's sacrifice more than Cain's. God talks to Cain about it but really isn't helpful. "If you do well, you can hold up your head; but if not, sin is a demon lurking the door; his urge is toward you, yet you can be his master." Thanks, God! That totally explains why Cain's sacrifice didn't count!

Cain kills Able. Again, we don't know why but it's implied that it's because of the sacrifices. God shows up again and we get the "Am I my brother's keeper?" quote. God curses Cain (Think, for a sec. There are four people on earth. Cain killed one. He's the worst mass murderer ever.) and Cain's response is that this curse is horrible 'cause anyone who sees him can kill him. God says no, I'll put a mark on you so that "Cain shall be avenged sevenfold."

Cain takes a wife (presumably from his unnamed sisters) and goes off to found the first city in the land of Nod, Enoch, named after his son.

...The first murderer goes off to found the first city. So, way way back, cites were places of sin and vice and yuck. And we wonder where we get the ideals that rural life is better than city life and rural morals are somehow different from city morals. It goes back to this.

Anyhow, there's a brief genealogy of Cain's kids including some of my favorites. Jabal, the ancestor of all who dwell in tents and keep cattle; Jubal, the ancestor of all who play the lyre and the pipe; Tubalcain, the ancestor of all who forge instruments of bronze and iron (My greatgrandfather was a blacksmith. Does that mean I'm a descendant of Cain?).

Interestingly, back in the middle ages vampires and monsters and spooky things were thought to bear the Mark of Cain. I'm getting this specifically from my Heaney translation of Beowulf. "Grendel was the name of this grim demon
haunting the marches, marauding round the heath
and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time
in misery among the banished monsters,
Cain's clan, whom the Creator had outlawed
and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel
the Eternal Lord had exacted a price;
Cain got no good from committing that murder
because the Almighty made him anathema,
and out of the curse of his exile there sprang
ogres and elves and evil phantoms
and the giants too who strove with God
time and again until He gave them their reward."
I could hunt down my copy of Beowulf that has the original Anglo-Saxon but I get the feeling that would only interest someone like me.

...Don't ask my how those that bear the Marks of Cain survived the flood. I've never gotten that answered.

Adam and Eve get it on again and Seth, our parent is born and has a kid, Enosh.

Anyhow. This chapter ends with "At that time, men began to invoke the Lord by name." This will become important next chapter.

Genesis 3

2009-07-14T01:03:00.003-05:00

And now we get to God's first asshole move. Now, tradition states (and I say tradition because I have found it nowhere in the Bible) that the garden of Eden was a deathless state. Nothing died of old age or wounds or what have you. Carnivores didn't even carn.

Into this world steps God and he places a tree in about the middle. He then tells Adam and Eve, and I quote, "You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die."

Think about this for a moment.

There is no death in the Garden of Eden. So this is kind of like me walking up to my wife and saying, "Do not touch my bagel, or you will uggle." She had no fucking clue what 'uggle' means. She can infer that it's something bad by my phrasing, but I'm far from specific.

Yeah, yeah, I know. "That's not the point, Zach! They were supposed to obey God and not touch the damn tree!" But look at it this way. Your parents ever threaten to beat you black and blue and then not deliver? Like, instead of not being able to sit down for a week, all you got was a stern talking to? Didn't you begin to start not completely trust your parents when they said something?

So, God's put this tree there and told Adam and Eve that if they screw with it something less-than-good-but-unspecific will happen and leaves them there. And everything's going smoothly until the snake shows up and says that A&E aren't going to die if they eat the fruit, they will instead be "like unto gods" knowing the difference between good and evil.

I have heard arguments that the snake was correct 'cause A&E didn't die as soon as they ate the fruit. In fact, it took a long damn time. And their eyes were opened because the first thing they did was realize they were naked and clothe themselves in fig leaves.

And God got pissed off and chucked them out of the Garden and put an angel at the door to stop them from going back in.

All in all, asshole move. Just a little.

Genesis 1-2

2009-07-06T23:02:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid, I had a book called In the Beginning. It was full of creation stories from all different cultures in all over the world. It was pretty cool, Newberry Award Winner and everything. It had in it, near the back "First Man, First Woman: Yahweh the Creator".

It was not the most interesting creation in the book. Honestly? I think the most interesting one was where the universe hatched out of a hen's egg 'cause even that young I knew about the big bang (my parents, though deeply Catholic, were gung ho with the science) and I thought it was a fairly close analogy.

This book sparked my interest in mythologies, so it could be considered the parent of this blog. Thank you, Virgina Hamilton!

Anyhow, it also sparked my interest in the bible and all it's goodies and I was soon known at CCE as "that annoying kid with the questions." And boy did I have them.

There are two stories regarding the creation of the world in Genesis and they do not quite match.

I am not one of those atheist apologists who thinks this a major crime, but I did bring it up to my priest because I lived in the south and was told that the Bible was written by the Hand of God and I wondered how God could get things wrong.

My priest told me to read my footnotes.

My footnotes told me that the old testament is composed of books by various different authors named J, E, D, and P. This was complete news to me but it does explain how Genesis 1 and 2 don't quite match.

Anyway, Genesis starts off with the creations of the word, substance from nothingness. God makes light, darkness, the sun, the moon, the stars, all plants and animals. And then we get to Adam. Adam needs a companion and the animals just ain't cutting it. (I guess Adam wasn't meant to be a loaner.) So God puts Adam to sleep, removes a rib and makes Eve.

End chapter, although it's interesting to not that the last verse in Chapter 2 is "The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame."

So modesty comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and is not godly? H'm.

The Bible I'm Using

2009-06-28T01:36:00.003-05:00

So I'm starting with the Bible and I thought I'd explain why I'm using this particular translation.

I am using the St. Joseph edition of this. Why? Well, I was raised Catholic so it's the version I grew up on. Also, since it's a Catholic bible, it's got a good portion of the Apocrypha. But mostly?

Footnotes.

It's one of the most annotated bibles I own and I collect bibles in all forms, so that says a lot.

For some of the more interesting verses I will probably pop on over to some of my other bibles and for the poetry I will almost definitely use the King James because there's nothing like seventeenth century wording to make poetry sound wonderful. And, honestly, Psalms sounds prettier in thees and thous. Ah, if only I knew Latin.

A Breif Explanation

2009-06-27T15:27:00.000-05:00

Religion has always fascinated me and I figure one of the easiest ways to understand a religion is to read the works it considers holy.

I will be starting with the Bible because, like it as not, I live in America and Christianity is the predominate religion here. Eventually, I'll move on to the Qur'an and then to the Bhagavad Gita and the Buddhist holy books and anything else I can get my hands on.

I hope to update this blog twice a week or more as my schedule allows.