Thursday, December 22, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
The Other Son: Genesis 16
We've seen great faith in Abraham in chapter 15 but in the very next chapter he's back to serious doubting again.
Up until now, the women in the story have played a background role but in chapter 16 of Genesis Abram's wife Sarai takes a hand. She doubts God and thinks this idea of a son by normal means is ridiculous so she comes up with a plan B. Sarai gives Abram one of her female slaves, an Egyptian named Hagar to sleep with. When Hagar becomes pregnant, it seems the problem is solved.
Except it isn't. In the ancient Middle East, a woman's status depended on her ability to produce a son. Sarai has just promoted Hagar from being her personal slave, to being the mother of the heir. She has created a dangerous rival.
We don't know what relationship these two women had before but, from this point on, it is poisonous. Hagar taunts Sarai mercilessly and Sarai retaliates with such brutality that Hagar flees into the desert to escape. This is Abram at his worst, he has the power in his household, but does nothing to help. Effectively he tells Sarai to do whatever she wants to the other woman and washes his hands of all responsibility.
With no kindness from any human being in her life, the pregnant slave flees into the wilderness. That's where she encounters the angel of God and something remarkable happens. The angel blesses her with the same sort of blessing that Abraham has received. He tells her what to name her son and what kind of man he will be and says that Ishmael's descendants, like Abram's, will be a huge multitude.
It's another story that shows God's compassion for someone who is powerless, despised, and vulnerable. Unfortunately this story also reflects the dark reality of ancient times. Rather than setting Hagar free from slavery, the angel tells her to go back to her abuser and put up with the situation.
So . . . what do we do with this story?
I've heard some people try to justify God's words in this.
"It's okay that God sent her back because God was going to bless Ishmael."
"It's okay that God sent her back because God had a greater plan for her."
"It's okay that God sent her back . . . just because. We aren't supposed to question things like this."
"It's not really an issue because this is not a literal story."
There are a lot more reasons like this that can be offered, but I don't think they serve us very well. If we try too hard to justify this story then we can use it (as many have) to justify terrible things. This passage, along with the New Testament Letter of Philemon were used by preachers in the old South as "proof" that runaway slaves should be returned to their masters. It is still used by some socially conservative churches to justify sending abused wives back to their abusers.
Part of what this chapter does is to remind us that God, and not the Bible, has to be the center of our faith. If we are going to be faithful to the teachings and example of Jesus we cannot accept a story like this uncritically as a moral example. We have come a long way from the culture of slave owners and women used as property and cannot afford to return to it.
Up until now, the women in the story have played a background role but in chapter 16 of Genesis Abram's wife Sarai takes a hand. She doubts God and thinks this idea of a son by normal means is ridiculous so she comes up with a plan B. Sarai gives Abram one of her female slaves, an Egyptian named Hagar to sleep with. When Hagar becomes pregnant, it seems the problem is solved.
Except it isn't. In the ancient Middle East, a woman's status depended on her ability to produce a son. Sarai has just promoted Hagar from being her personal slave, to being the mother of the heir. She has created a dangerous rival.
We don't know what relationship these two women had before but, from this point on, it is poisonous. Hagar taunts Sarai mercilessly and Sarai retaliates with such brutality that Hagar flees into the desert to escape. This is Abram at his worst, he has the power in his household, but does nothing to help. Effectively he tells Sarai to do whatever she wants to the other woman and washes his hands of all responsibility.
With no kindness from any human being in her life, the pregnant slave flees into the wilderness. That's where she encounters the angel of God and something remarkable happens. The angel blesses her with the same sort of blessing that Abraham has received. He tells her what to name her son and what kind of man he will be and says that Ishmael's descendants, like Abram's, will be a huge multitude.
It's another story that shows God's compassion for someone who is powerless, despised, and vulnerable. Unfortunately this story also reflects the dark reality of ancient times. Rather than setting Hagar free from slavery, the angel tells her to go back to her abuser and put up with the situation.
So . . . what do we do with this story?
I've heard some people try to justify God's words in this.
"It's okay that God sent her back because God was going to bless Ishmael."
"It's okay that God sent her back because God had a greater plan for her."
"It's okay that God sent her back . . . just because. We aren't supposed to question things like this."
"It's not really an issue because this is not a literal story."
There are a lot more reasons like this that can be offered, but I don't think they serve us very well. If we try too hard to justify this story then we can use it (as many have) to justify terrible things. This passage, along with the New Testament Letter of Philemon were used by preachers in the old South as "proof" that runaway slaves should be returned to their masters. It is still used by some socially conservative churches to justify sending abused wives back to their abusers.
Part of what this chapter does is to remind us that God, and not the Bible, has to be the center of our faith. If we are going to be faithful to the teachings and example of Jesus we cannot accept a story like this uncritically as a moral example. We have come a long way from the culture of slave owners and women used as property and cannot afford to return to it.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Coming to Faith: Genesis 15
I have to confess, I don't enjoy the story of Abram/Abraham as much as I do most of the other Genesis stories. The story seems choppy to me and the main human characters are hard to like. Tradition makes a great deal of what a great guy Abraham was and the New Testament refers back ot him as a man of profound faith--a real role-model.
I can't see it. There are passages where Abram comes across as wise, kind, brave and faithful, but they're scattered in with a lot of bad behavior. His wife, Sarai, isn't much of a treasure either. Granted, as a woman, she has less choice about her life than her husband, but she is still less than likable. In fact there's nobody in this story it's easy to like.
In Chapter 15 we find Abram doubting God. He has the blessing but he doesn't have a son to leave everything to. In Abram's time, and really through the whole of the Old Testament, there is no real idea of an afterlife. There is heaven, shere God and other celestial beings live, but there's no belief that humans go there when they die. Humans, good, bad, and anything in-between, all go to Sheol. This Hebrew word is sometimes translated "Hell" but it's not a place of judgment, punishment, or reward. It was just conceived of as a place where all people lingered fter death. With no belief in an afterlife, the ancients thought that the only form of immortality open to them was having male heirs.
Theologan Walter Brueggemann in his commentary on Genesis says that this is perhaps the most important chapter in the Abraham story. God promises blessing, Abraham challenges the promise as impossible, God reassures Abram, and Abram believes. In this passage, he suggests, Abram learns to trust enough that he can have hope in a hopeless situation, and this is what faith really is.
This is what make makes Abraham a role model. It's not his courage, because he sometimes acts like a coward; it's not his wisdom, because he sometimes shows awful judgment; it's not his compassion, because he often treats others badly. But Abram has something wonderful in spite of his many flaws. He has faith and this allows him to keep hope, even in hopeless situations. This more than positive thinking because it is seen in his actions. Positive thinking is a good attitude to have, but having hope and basing your decisions on it, even in situations that seem hopeless, is even more important. It is a quality that helps us to be better people, doing the things that are compassionate, just, and true even when it would be much more practical not to. It pushes us beyond out limits as we choose to trust in God's limitless grace.
I can't see it. There are passages where Abram comes across as wise, kind, brave and faithful, but they're scattered in with a lot of bad behavior. His wife, Sarai, isn't much of a treasure either. Granted, as a woman, she has less choice about her life than her husband, but she is still less than likable. In fact there's nobody in this story it's easy to like.
In Chapter 15 we find Abram doubting God. He has the blessing but he doesn't have a son to leave everything to. In Abram's time, and really through the whole of the Old Testament, there is no real idea of an afterlife. There is heaven, shere God and other celestial beings live, but there's no belief that humans go there when they die. Humans, good, bad, and anything in-between, all go to Sheol. This Hebrew word is sometimes translated "Hell" but it's not a place of judgment, punishment, or reward. It was just conceived of as a place where all people lingered fter death. With no belief in an afterlife, the ancients thought that the only form of immortality open to them was having male heirs.
Theologan Walter Brueggemann in his commentary on Genesis says that this is perhaps the most important chapter in the Abraham story. God promises blessing, Abraham challenges the promise as impossible, God reassures Abram, and Abram believes. In this passage, he suggests, Abram learns to trust enough that he can have hope in a hopeless situation, and this is what faith really is.
This is what make makes Abraham a role model. It's not his courage, because he sometimes acts like a coward; it's not his wisdom, because he sometimes shows awful judgment; it's not his compassion, because he often treats others badly. But Abram has something wonderful in spite of his many flaws. He has faith and this allows him to keep hope, even in hopeless situations. This more than positive thinking because it is seen in his actions. Positive thinking is a good attitude to have, but having hope and basing your decisions on it, even in situations that seem hopeless, is even more important. It is a quality that helps us to be better people, doing the things that are compassionate, just, and true even when it would be much more practical not to. It pushes us beyond out limits as we choose to trust in God's limitless grace.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
The Thrilling Adventures of Abram's Nephew, Lot: Genesis 13 and 14
Chapters 13 and 14 of Genesis move away from the central story of Abram and Sarai. The story of Lot is not as well known as the story of Abram and Sarai, and you might call it a less-successful spin-off. It's kind of the biblical equivalent of "Joannie Loves Chachi."
The story starts with Abram returning to the Negeb a rich man with lots of flocks and herds. The problem is, Abram's extended family had gotten so big and wealthy that the land can't support them any longer. There is limit to how big a group of nomadic herdsmen can get before they start to run out of water and grass. It soon becomes clear to Abram and his nephew Lot that they have to part company for the good of everyone involved. As the head of the family, Abram has the right to choose the best land for himself. In an act of generosity he lets Lot make the choice and trusts in God to survive. Lot settles on the plain by the cities of Sodom and Gamorrah and Abram moves to the Oaks of Mamre.
War breaks out and the complicated alliences call for Lot to fight on the side of Sodom and Gomorrah. Things go badly and Lot is taken prisoner, along with treasure and women. With the kings defeated, it's up to Abrtam to save the day. He and his servants defeat the enemies, and rescue Lot, the treasure, and the women. Abram humbly refuses any reward and the mysterious King Melchizedek of Salem shows up to bless Abram with bread and wine, and the story ends on a happy note. Abram, model of faith and courage that he is, has saved the day.
There are a number of questions that this story raises. I'll answer as many of them as well as I'm able.
1. What's Up With Abraham? You may have noticed that Abraham seems like a different person than he did in Chapter 12. There he was a coward and a swindler while here he is a strong and brave, the very model of faithful living. And this won't be the last time it happens; through the rest of his story Abraham switches from wise hero to paranoid con-man with alarming regularity. If this was a literal story we'd have to suspect mental illness.
What's actually going on is that there are several stories about Abraham that have been woven together. Just how many stories and who wrote them is a very difficult question because this section of Genesis is one of the most difficult for scholars to sort out. The result is that it's impossible to say what Abraham was really like. It's tempting for believers to pull out the nice passages and say he was a great guy, and it's tempting for non-believers to pull out the nasty passages and say he was a monster. Doing either of these things says a lot more about us than it does about Abraham.
2. Does God Love Country Folk Better than City Slickers? That's obviously not the case since God loves all people, but this story certainly puts city folk in a bad light. When Abram and Lot split, Abram keeps the life of a nomadic herdsman and settles near the Oaks of Mamre whole Lot throws in with the cities on the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah which are known for their (unspecified) wickedness. This is the first hint of something we'll see a lot in the Old Testament. The worship of god begins among the nomads but keeos drifting into the cities where the rich and powerful try to appropriate it for themseleves. That leass a number of the writers to have a healthy mistrust of cities and the people who live there.
3. what About Melchizedek? There is a mysterious priest/king called Melchizedek who blesses Abram with bread and wine. There are some interesting traditions about this man, but very little that we actually know. first he is the priest of El Elyon or "God Most High." This might be a reference to God but that name was also used for the high god of the Canaanite people. It's not clear whether "Melchizedek is a name or a title, and it's not clear what it literally means. He's said to be the king of
salem and there's a rabbinic tradition that Salem might be another name for Jerusalem, but it's not at all certain that this is correct.
The name Melchizedek shows up in other scriptures, but it's pretty mysterious there too. It appears in Psalm 100 and verse 4 of the Psalm is quoted in Hebrews 5 where Jesus is called a priest of the order of Melchizedek. The idea there is that, while Jesus is not a priest in the usual tradition of Israel (you have to inheirit the role from your father) he is still the kind of priest that Melc hizedek was: one appointed by God.
There are more questions than answers in this section of Genesis, which may be one reason we don't read it as often. :-)
The story starts with Abram returning to the Negeb a rich man with lots of flocks and herds. The problem is, Abram's extended family had gotten so big and wealthy that the land can't support them any longer. There is limit to how big a group of nomadic herdsmen can get before they start to run out of water and grass. It soon becomes clear to Abram and his nephew Lot that they have to part company for the good of everyone involved. As the head of the family, Abram has the right to choose the best land for himself. In an act of generosity he lets Lot make the choice and trusts in God to survive. Lot settles on the plain by the cities of Sodom and Gamorrah and Abram moves to the Oaks of Mamre.
War breaks out and the complicated alliences call for Lot to fight on the side of Sodom and Gomorrah. Things go badly and Lot is taken prisoner, along with treasure and women. With the kings defeated, it's up to Abrtam to save the day. He and his servants defeat the enemies, and rescue Lot, the treasure, and the women. Abram humbly refuses any reward and the mysterious King Melchizedek of Salem shows up to bless Abram with bread and wine, and the story ends on a happy note. Abram, model of faith and courage that he is, has saved the day.
There are a number of questions that this story raises. I'll answer as many of them as well as I'm able.
1. What's Up With Abraham? You may have noticed that Abraham seems like a different person than he did in Chapter 12. There he was a coward and a swindler while here he is a strong and brave, the very model of faithful living. And this won't be the last time it happens; through the rest of his story Abraham switches from wise hero to paranoid con-man with alarming regularity. If this was a literal story we'd have to suspect mental illness.
What's actually going on is that there are several stories about Abraham that have been woven together. Just how many stories and who wrote them is a very difficult question because this section of Genesis is one of the most difficult for scholars to sort out. The result is that it's impossible to say what Abraham was really like. It's tempting for believers to pull out the nice passages and say he was a great guy, and it's tempting for non-believers to pull out the nasty passages and say he was a monster. Doing either of these things says a lot more about us than it does about Abraham.
2. Does God Love Country Folk Better than City Slickers? That's obviously not the case since God loves all people, but this story certainly puts city folk in a bad light. When Abram and Lot split, Abram keeps the life of a nomadic herdsman and settles near the Oaks of Mamre whole Lot throws in with the cities on the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah which are known for their (unspecified) wickedness. This is the first hint of something we'll see a lot in the Old Testament. The worship of god begins among the nomads but keeos drifting into the cities where the rich and powerful try to appropriate it for themseleves. That leass a number of the writers to have a healthy mistrust of cities and the people who live there.
3. what About Melchizedek? There is a mysterious priest/king called Melchizedek who blesses Abram with bread and wine. There are some interesting traditions about this man, but very little that we actually know. first he is the priest of El Elyon or "God Most High." This might be a reference to God but that name was also used for the high god of the Canaanite people. It's not clear whether "Melchizedek is a name or a title, and it's not clear what it literally means. He's said to be the king of
salem and there's a rabbinic tradition that Salem might be another name for Jerusalem, but it's not at all certain that this is correct.
The name Melchizedek shows up in other scriptures, but it's pretty mysterious there too. It appears in Psalm 100 and verse 4 of the Psalm is quoted in Hebrews 5 where Jesus is called a priest of the order of Melchizedek. The idea there is that, while Jesus is not a priest in the usual tradition of Israel (you have to inheirit the role from your father) he is still the kind of priest that Melc hizedek was: one appointed by God.
There are more questions than answers in this section of Genesis, which may be one reason we don't read it as often. :-)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Abram and Sarai: Genesis 12
Chapter 12 of Genesis introduces of to Abram and Sarai, the parents of one of the most dysfunctional families ever.
This story is much more important than the stories that come before it. You can see that in the fact that it is about as long as all the earlier stories in Genesis put together. There's an important shift here. Up until now we've seen God dealing with the whole world. We've also seen, in story after story, from Adam and Eve, ot Cain and Abel, to the World before the Flood, to the Tower of Babel, the world has been rebellious and unresponsive to God's call. It's been a difficult relationship and the old methods haven't worked so now we see God try something different.
The story of Abram is the story of God forming a special relationship with one person, one family, and one people. This isn't with the idea that Abram and Sarai are somehow better or more deserving than other people. The idea seems to be that God has to start somewhere. But that doen't mean that the blessing is only for Abram and his descendants. From the very first the story makes it clear that this blessing, all the people of the world shall be blessed.
Abram is an odd choice for a hero. He isn't particularly strong, brave, wise, or anything of the sort. The one thing that sets Abram apart is his faith. when he is called out of his ancestral home by God, he goes. Abram's trust in God will falter fairly often in during his story and he often misunderstands what God is calling him to do. Still, this deeply flawed man always holds on to this relationship to God and that becomes his one saving grace.
If God is shown to be reliable in this story, Someutes his wife in this chapter is proof of that. Perhaps the only praiseworthy thing about him is his faith.
We are told that Abram is 75 years old in this story. By implication, Sarai would be 65. The age here isn't literal; it goes to underscore the idea that the couple are barren. They comes from a culture where there is no idea of an afterlife. The only kind of immortality they are aware of is the kind where your family and good name continue after you die. A childless couple in this culture is as good as dead and dishonered. Only a son could save them, and the scribes putting this story down want to make sure we know, a son is impossible.
It's no wonder Abraham is willing to grasp at any little bit of hope. When God offers him a son, numberless ancestors, and an honorable name that will last forever, that is literally everything that matters to a man who has nothing.
Abram and his family head out into the unknown based in faith in a promise from a God who he hasn't known accepts for what may be selfish reasons but, by accepting he becomes the first to participate in this new relationship.
While Abram is faithful, he's still not a very good man. When the family heads to Egypt, Abram effectively prostitutes his wife to the King of Egypt. Aram's excuse is that Sarai is so beautiful that Pharaoh would kill him and take her if he didn't do this. There is a hidden agenda, though, as we can see in verse 16.
This sounds like a con game that Abram is running on Pharaoh, and one that he will repeat several times. It also sounds like God is complicit in this operation, and punishes Pharaoh for something that was clearly Abram's fault. That's hard for modern Christian readers to take and rightly so. It reflects a primitive, tribal understanding of God that is not consistent with what Jesus reveals to us about God.
In ancient times, the idea was that God only cared about the chosen people. This is an idea that the Gospels clearly reject in Matthew 3:7-10 any other places. God cares about all people and insists that his followers practice the kind of justice that honors this fact. That's something that the writer of this part of Abram's story didn't seem to understand.
Still, the bottom line of the Abraham story is still true. God is faithful to people, even when the people don't really deserve it.
This story is much more important than the stories that come before it. You can see that in the fact that it is about as long as all the earlier stories in Genesis put together. There's an important shift here. Up until now we've seen God dealing with the whole world. We've also seen, in story after story, from Adam and Eve, ot Cain and Abel, to the World before the Flood, to the Tower of Babel, the world has been rebellious and unresponsive to God's call. It's been a difficult relationship and the old methods haven't worked so now we see God try something different.
The story of Abram is the story of God forming a special relationship with one person, one family, and one people. This isn't with the idea that Abram and Sarai are somehow better or more deserving than other people. The idea seems to be that God has to start somewhere. But that doen't mean that the blessing is only for Abram and his descendants. From the very first the story makes it clear that this blessing, all the people of the world shall be blessed.
Abram is an odd choice for a hero. He isn't particularly strong, brave, wise, or anything of the sort. The one thing that sets Abram apart is his faith. when he is called out of his ancestral home by God, he goes. Abram's trust in God will falter fairly often in during his story and he often misunderstands what God is calling him to do. Still, this deeply flawed man always holds on to this relationship to God and that becomes his one saving grace.
If God is shown to be reliable in this story, Someutes his wife in this chapter is proof of that. Perhaps the only praiseworthy thing about him is his faith.
We are told that Abram is 75 years old in this story. By implication, Sarai would be 65. The age here isn't literal; it goes to underscore the idea that the couple are barren. They comes from a culture where there is no idea of an afterlife. The only kind of immortality they are aware of is the kind where your family and good name continue after you die. A childless couple in this culture is as good as dead and dishonered. Only a son could save them, and the scribes putting this story down want to make sure we know, a son is impossible.
It's no wonder Abraham is willing to grasp at any little bit of hope. When God offers him a son, numberless ancestors, and an honorable name that will last forever, that is literally everything that matters to a man who has nothing.
Abram and his family head out into the unknown based in faith in a promise from a God who he hasn't known accepts for what may be selfish reasons but, by accepting he becomes the first to participate in this new relationship.
While Abram is faithful, he's still not a very good man. When the family heads to Egypt, Abram effectively prostitutes his wife to the King of Egypt. Aram's excuse is that Sarai is so beautiful that Pharaoh would kill him and take her if he didn't do this. There is a hidden agenda, though, as we can see in verse 16.
Because of her, Abram got along very well: he accumulated sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, men and women servants, and camels.
This sounds like a con game that Abram is running on Pharaoh, and one that he will repeat several times. It also sounds like God is complicit in this operation, and punishes Pharaoh for something that was clearly Abram's fault. That's hard for modern Christian readers to take and rightly so. It reflects a primitive, tribal understanding of God that is not consistent with what Jesus reveals to us about God.
In ancient times, the idea was that God only cared about the chosen people. This is an idea that the Gospels clearly reject in Matthew 3:7-10 any other places. God cares about all people and insists that his followers practice the kind of justice that honors this fact. That's something that the writer of this part of Abram's story didn't seem to understand.
Still, the bottom line of the Abraham story is still true. God is faithful to people, even when the people don't really deserve it.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Tower of Babel: Genesis 11
Chapter 11 continues the genealogy of Noah's sons, but not before a quick detour into the story of The Tower of Babel. This is the last of what are called the "pre-history" stories of the Bible. Up until not everything has happened in a long-ago and far-away that can't be identified with any historical time place. That will change as we get into the story of Abraham.
The story is pretty straightforward; all the people of the earth live in one place and speak one language. They decide to build a tower that will reach into heaven and proceed to build it. God sees their effort, doesn't like it, and says: "One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they'll come up with next - they'll stop at nothing!.
God takes away the ability to communicate and scatters them across the face of the earth. This provides a (fictional) explanation for the fact that there are so many different languages in the world. As short as the story is, it raises a number of questions in our minds.
1) What was the Tower?
There have been a number of searches for the tower, especially in the 19th Century when archaeology was in its infancy and most people assumed that this was a literal story. One attractive possibility was that it was inspired by the Etemenanki which was 7 story ziggurat devoted to the god Marduk that stood in the city of Babylon. The Jews would have been seen it during the Babylinian exile when they lived as captives in Babylon.
It's impossible to know if this was the inspiration for the Tower of Babel, but it seems likely that the Tower is supposed to make us think of ziggurats. These were high places or artificial mountains created in the pagan religions of the ancient Near East. The idea was that mountains were sacred places where the earth rose up to touch the heavens. When you built a city, you would construct an artificial mountain, or ziggurat, as a central place of worship. This sounds very much like the reason the people gave for building the Tower of Babel.
2) Why did God object to the Tower?
It's not made clear in the story, though Jewish tradition suggests that it was the pride of the people. Failing to trust God, they decided to reach up to heaven on their own terms and built the Tower. This answer is similar to the story of Adam and Eve where the humans don't trust God and try to gain divin knowledge on their own terms. In both stories, falling out of harmony with God produces a disaster.
There is also a very good chance that this story was written either during the exile in Babylon or soon after. If that is the case then the Tower could represent the powerful enemies of the Jews and the ziggurats where they worshipped their gods. The story serves as a reminder that, no matter how powerful their enemies appear to be, God is in control.
3) Why did God scatter the people and give them different languages?
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has a wonderful insight on this in his commentary on Genesis. The Tower of Babel is a story of people who are great because of their cookie-cutter sameness. The people of Babel all speak the same language and (presumably) eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothes, and belong to the same culture. You can accomplish a great deal in a homogeneous culture but only at the expense of diversity. Brueggemann suggests that God scatters the people to show them a better way. The unity God wants for the human race is diverse people drawn together by common faith and values, not a sterile sameness.
In other words, God doesn't object to the tower, per se, but to the way it's being built. Human beings should aspire to more than being builder-ants. The many languages and the scattering are not a punishment, but an opportunityu to live up to a much greater potential.
The story shifts back to genealogy with verses 10-32. I won't touch on these other than to say that they carry us to the story of Abraham.
The story is pretty straightforward; all the people of the earth live in one place and speak one language. They decide to build a tower that will reach into heaven and proceed to build it. God sees their effort, doesn't like it, and says: "One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they'll come up with next - they'll stop at nothing!.
God takes away the ability to communicate and scatters them across the face of the earth. This provides a (fictional) explanation for the fact that there are so many different languages in the world. As short as the story is, it raises a number of questions in our minds.
1) What was the Tower?
There have been a number of searches for the tower, especially in the 19th Century when archaeology was in its infancy and most people assumed that this was a literal story. One attractive possibility was that it was inspired by the Etemenanki which was 7 story ziggurat devoted to the god Marduk that stood in the city of Babylon. The Jews would have been seen it during the Babylinian exile when they lived as captives in Babylon.
It's impossible to know if this was the inspiration for the Tower of Babel, but it seems likely that the Tower is supposed to make us think of ziggurats. These were high places or artificial mountains created in the pagan religions of the ancient Near East. The idea was that mountains were sacred places where the earth rose up to touch the heavens. When you built a city, you would construct an artificial mountain, or ziggurat, as a central place of worship. This sounds very much like the reason the people gave for building the Tower of Babel.
2) Why did God object to the Tower?
It's not made clear in the story, though Jewish tradition suggests that it was the pride of the people. Failing to trust God, they decided to reach up to heaven on their own terms and built the Tower. This answer is similar to the story of Adam and Eve where the humans don't trust God and try to gain divin knowledge on their own terms. In both stories, falling out of harmony with God produces a disaster.
There is also a very good chance that this story was written either during the exile in Babylon or soon after. If that is the case then the Tower could represent the powerful enemies of the Jews and the ziggurats where they worshipped their gods. The story serves as a reminder that, no matter how powerful their enemies appear to be, God is in control.
3) Why did God scatter the people and give them different languages?
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has a wonderful insight on this in his commentary on Genesis. The Tower of Babel is a story of people who are great because of their cookie-cutter sameness. The people of Babel all speak the same language and (presumably) eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothes, and belong to the same culture. You can accomplish a great deal in a homogeneous culture but only at the expense of diversity. Brueggemann suggests that God scatters the people to show them a better way. The unity God wants for the human race is diverse people drawn together by common faith and values, not a sterile sameness.
In other words, God doesn't object to the tower, per se, but to the way it's being built. Human beings should aspire to more than being builder-ants. The many languages and the scattering are not a punishment, but an opportunityu to live up to a much greater potential.
The story shifts back to genealogy with verses 10-32. I won't touch on these other than to say that they carry us to the story of Abraham.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
More Genealogies: Genesis 10
The genealogies of Genesis 10 bring the story of Noah to a clost. it is likely that the hypothetical priestly source or P wrote this because P loved lists.
Modern people have a lot less to gain from this kind of thing than the ancients, so I'll just touch on it. Basically, this list answers the question 'where did all of these people come from?' It provides a bridge between the story of Noah and the populated world that the Jewish people were familiar with.
This chapter (like the stories that have come before it) is not historical. it's a story that served to remind the Jews that God wasn't just their God but the one who created and ruled over the the whole world. That was important, because in the time this story was written, the kingdom of Judah had beed conquored several times and reduced to the status of a privince in the Persian Empire. The Jewish people feared that they were nothing more than a footnote in another culture's history. This genealogy was meant to remind them that this was not the case.
We really don't learn much anything about the people in this chapter except for their names and where they settled. The only exception to this is Nimrod, who is described as the first man on earth to become a mighty warrior. He is also described as a mighty hunter. Reading this you get the impression that Nimrod may at one time have been the hero of his own story which is now forgotten. There are Jewish traditions that suggest he was the Great King of Babylonia, that he built the Tower of Babel, and that he had at least one meeting with Abraham. However, none of this shows up in the Bible.
FOOTNOTE: If you've been reading this blog, you may have noticed that I refer to the people who wrote it by several different names. Sometimes I say "Hebrews", sometimes "Israelites", and sometimes "Jews." There is a method to this madness that has to do with the history of Israel.
The word "Hebrew" appears to come from the Egyptian word "apiru" or "habiru" which refers to foreigners (often slaves) living in Egypt. Historians believe that the Habiru were a mishmash of different Semitic peoples who were united by the worship of God to become one people when they left Egypt.
When the Hebrew people settled in the Promised Land they named the place "Israel" after their ancestor Jacob, and the people were called the "Israelites." After the death of King Solomon the nation split into two. The northern kingdom kept the name of Israel while the southern kingdom was took the name "Judah" and its people were called "Jews." Eventually, the northern kingdom was conquored and destroyed by the Assyrian Empire leaving only Judah and the Jews to carry on the faith.
When I refer to "Israelites" in this study, I'm referring to writers from the northern kingdom, and when I use "Jews" I am referring to writers from the southern kingdom.
Modern people have a lot less to gain from this kind of thing than the ancients, so I'll just touch on it. Basically, this list answers the question 'where did all of these people come from?' It provides a bridge between the story of Noah and the populated world that the Jewish people were familiar with.
This chapter (like the stories that have come before it) is not historical. it's a story that served to remind the Jews that God wasn't just their God but the one who created and ruled over the the whole world. That was important, because in the time this story was written, the kingdom of Judah had beed conquored several times and reduced to the status of a privince in the Persian Empire. The Jewish people feared that they were nothing more than a footnote in another culture's history. This genealogy was meant to remind them that this was not the case.
We really don't learn much anything about the people in this chapter except for their names and where they settled. The only exception to this is Nimrod, who is described as the first man on earth to become a mighty warrior. He is also described as a mighty hunter. Reading this you get the impression that Nimrod may at one time have been the hero of his own story which is now forgotten. There are Jewish traditions that suggest he was the Great King of Babylonia, that he built the Tower of Babel, and that he had at least one meeting with Abraham. However, none of this shows up in the Bible.
FOOTNOTE: If you've been reading this blog, you may have noticed that I refer to the people who wrote it by several different names. Sometimes I say "Hebrews", sometimes "Israelites", and sometimes "Jews." There is a method to this madness that has to do with the history of Israel.
The word "Hebrew" appears to come from the Egyptian word "apiru" or "habiru" which refers to foreigners (often slaves) living in Egypt. Historians believe that the Habiru were a mishmash of different Semitic peoples who were united by the worship of God to become one people when they left Egypt.
When the Hebrew people settled in the Promised Land they named the place "Israel" after their ancestor Jacob, and the people were called the "Israelites." After the death of King Solomon the nation split into two. The northern kingdom kept the name of Israel while the southern kingdom was took the name "Judah" and its people were called "Jews." Eventually, the northern kingdom was conquored and destroyed by the Assyrian Empire leaving only Judah and the Jews to carry on the faith.
When I refer to "Israelites" in this study, I'm referring to writers from the northern kingdom, and when I use "Jews" I am referring to writers from the southern kingdom.
Noah's Strange Drunken Interlude: Genesis 9:18-29
The story of Noah ends with an odd and disturbing episode which you can read in parallel versions here.
Early on we were told that Noah was a good and virtuous man but what we see in this strange story makes us wonder. Noah plants a vineyard and uses the grapes to make wine. Unfortunately, he overindulges, gets drunk, and passes out naked in his tent. Noah's son Ham happens to see his father in this state and tells his brothers. That might seem like bad manners to us but it's deadly serious to Noah.
That's something that's always puzzled me about the story. Seeing someone naked (especially a parent) sounds very embarassing, but it's hardly a crime. Why was Noah so upset that he insisted on punishment?
It probably has to do with the fact that the ancient Middle-East was dominated by a culture of honor. We think of honor as a man keeping his word and doing the right thing, but that's not what the word originally meant. In these cultures your standing in the community came from what people thought of you. If they saw you as someone who was smart, strong, and ruthless--someone they didn't want to mess with--you had a lot of honor. If you did something that made you appear weak or unreliable to the community, you lost honor.
Things get brutal in this kind of culture. If someone does something that harms your reputation, you have to take revenge to get your honor back. If someone insults you, you may have to fight a duel with them. If your daughter disobeys you and marries a man you don't approve of, or dresses inappropriately, or becomes the victim of rape, or otherwise embarasses the family, then an honor killing is called for. Honor is all about what people think of you, not the sort of person you actially are. In other words, the problem wasn't that Noah couldn't control his drinking, it was that there was a witness who knew how badly he had embarassed himself.
Noah's other sons, Shem and Japeth, do what loyal sons are supposed to do in the culture of honor: they covered things up, literally. They walked in backward so they could pretend that they had no knowledge of their father's embarassment, and covered him with a sheet so that nobody else could see him like that. They preserved his reputation, which in this kind of culture, is preferrable to telling the embarassing truth.
Under the rules of the culture, Noah had good reason to be angry with Ham, but that's not who he punishes. Instead, Noah proclaims that his Ham's son, Canaan, has lost his status as a member of the family. He and his descendants are to be the slaves of Shem and Japeth and their descendants.
It's not at all clear why Noah doesn't punish Ham directly. Other than that, though, the punishment fits the code of honor. Ham dishonered his father, now Noah dishonors Canaan by making his descendants slaves. It is disproportionate revenge, but that's what the code of honor calls for. It's a harsh thing to do, but that's not the point. In this culture, love is not the priority, reputation is. If you had to kill every single one of your children to restore your family's honorable name, you would would do it and the culture would praise you for it. (We can still see this dynamic in cultures that practice honor killings).
If I haven't made it clear yet; I believe that culture of honor is a terrible thing. Just because Noah lived this way is no reason to assume it is a good set of values, or that we are supposed to imitate him. As we move through the Bible one of the things you'll see is how God leads the people away from this unjust and brutal way of life into a culture of justice and compassion. For Christians the example for living needs to be the humility of Jesus, not the honor-obsessed brutality of Noah.
There's one more thing to say about this story and that is a note on how it has been misused in history. Before the Civil War, preachers in the South used to use this story to justify slavery. Canaan, they claimed, was black and became the ancestor of the peoples of Africa while white people were the descendents of Shem and Japeth. They pointed to Noah's curse on Canaan as "proof" that God meant for black Africans to be the slaves of white people.
i doubt that I need to go into all the reasons that this is a case of badly messed-up thinking, but I will, just to be complete.
1) The curse was from Noah, not from God. The action of a prideful man seeking to restore his reputation is not the same as God's will.
2) There is nothing in scripture that claims either that Canaan was black or that Africans are descended from him. In fact, the historical Canaanites were ethnically pretty much identical to the Jews, the only differences were religious and cultural.
3) The most important point: The story of Noah is not a historical story! As I've several times, this is a made-up story, like a parable. It's meant to teach us about God and humanity but it's not meant to be taken literally.
Early on we were told that Noah was a good and virtuous man but what we see in this strange story makes us wonder. Noah plants a vineyard and uses the grapes to make wine. Unfortunately, he overindulges, gets drunk, and passes out naked in his tent. Noah's son Ham happens to see his father in this state and tells his brothers. That might seem like bad manners to us but it's deadly serious to Noah.
That's something that's always puzzled me about the story. Seeing someone naked (especially a parent) sounds very embarassing, but it's hardly a crime. Why was Noah so upset that he insisted on punishment?
It probably has to do with the fact that the ancient Middle-East was dominated by a culture of honor. We think of honor as a man keeping his word and doing the right thing, but that's not what the word originally meant. In these cultures your standing in the community came from what people thought of you. If they saw you as someone who was smart, strong, and ruthless--someone they didn't want to mess with--you had a lot of honor. If you did something that made you appear weak or unreliable to the community, you lost honor.
Things get brutal in this kind of culture. If someone does something that harms your reputation, you have to take revenge to get your honor back. If someone insults you, you may have to fight a duel with them. If your daughter disobeys you and marries a man you don't approve of, or dresses inappropriately, or becomes the victim of rape, or otherwise embarasses the family, then an honor killing is called for. Honor is all about what people think of you, not the sort of person you actially are. In other words, the problem wasn't that Noah couldn't control his drinking, it was that there was a witness who knew how badly he had embarassed himself.
Noah's other sons, Shem and Japeth, do what loyal sons are supposed to do in the culture of honor: they covered things up, literally. They walked in backward so they could pretend that they had no knowledge of their father's embarassment, and covered him with a sheet so that nobody else could see him like that. They preserved his reputation, which in this kind of culture, is preferrable to telling the embarassing truth.
Under the rules of the culture, Noah had good reason to be angry with Ham, but that's not who he punishes. Instead, Noah proclaims that his Ham's son, Canaan, has lost his status as a member of the family. He and his descendants are to be the slaves of Shem and Japeth and their descendants.
It's not at all clear why Noah doesn't punish Ham directly. Other than that, though, the punishment fits the code of honor. Ham dishonered his father, now Noah dishonors Canaan by making his descendants slaves. It is disproportionate revenge, but that's what the code of honor calls for. It's a harsh thing to do, but that's not the point. In this culture, love is not the priority, reputation is. If you had to kill every single one of your children to restore your family's honorable name, you would would do it and the culture would praise you for it. (We can still see this dynamic in cultures that practice honor killings).
If I haven't made it clear yet; I believe that culture of honor is a terrible thing. Just because Noah lived this way is no reason to assume it is a good set of values, or that we are supposed to imitate him. As we move through the Bible one of the things you'll see is how God leads the people away from this unjust and brutal way of life into a culture of justice and compassion. For Christians the example for living needs to be the humility of Jesus, not the honor-obsessed brutality of Noah.
There's one more thing to say about this story and that is a note on how it has been misused in history. Before the Civil War, preachers in the South used to use this story to justify slavery. Canaan, they claimed, was black and became the ancestor of the peoples of Africa while white people were the descendents of Shem and Japeth. They pointed to Noah's curse on Canaan as "proof" that God meant for black Africans to be the slaves of white people.
i doubt that I need to go into all the reasons that this is a case of badly messed-up thinking, but I will, just to be complete.
1) The curse was from Noah, not from God. The action of a prideful man seeking to restore his reputation is not the same as God's will.
2) There is nothing in scripture that claims either that Canaan was black or that Africans are descended from him. In fact, the historical Canaanites were ethnically pretty much identical to the Jews, the only differences were religious and cultural.
3) The most important point: The story of Noah is not a historical story! As I've several times, this is a made-up story, like a parable. It's meant to teach us about God and humanity but it's not meant to be taken literally.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Details of the Flood Story: Genesis 6-9
Noah and the Ark is a rich and vivid tale. having gone through the story as a whole, I'd like to take a look at a few of the details.
There are quite a few significant numbers here. Noah is given 7 days warning before the flood. The rain falls for 40 days and nights, and Noah is 600 years old. Numbers have a great deal of symbolism in the scriptures, and knowing that symbolism can help us understand the story in more depth.
The number 7 showed up in the story of creation, and every time it reappears it reminds us of that story. Seven in Hebrew is "sheh'bah" which comes from the a root word meaning "fullness" or "completion." It shows up many times in the Bible and is also the root of our word "sabbath." Whenever we see this, it signifies that something has reached completion. When it shows up in this story it makes us see this is more than a story of a flood; it is the story of God creating over again.
The number 40 is symbolic of a very long time. It shows up in many stories where a person or group of people are preparing for some new beginning. The people of Israel wandered for 40 years before crossing into the Promised Land, Moses stayed on Mt. Sinai for 40 days before receiving the 10 Commandments, Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness before beginning his ministry. Like the number 7, the 40 days and nights here reminds us that is the story of a new beginning.
The number 600 is not very common in the Bible, but it is 50 x 12 and multiples of 12 have their own symbolism. The number 12 is found in nature as the number of months in a year. It is a number of wholeness. In the Old Testament it represents the people of Israel, in the New Testament, the followers of Jesus.
This story is the first to use the term "covenent" in the Bible. This is an idea that we will see again throughout the scriptures. Here it is not an agreement between God and a chosen people but between God and all of creation.
God offers a rainbow as the sign of the covenant. This is a beautiful symbol cherished by people of faith to this day but it had even more meaning when it was written.
The composite bow was an important weapon in ancient times. Craftsmen would layer different materials like wood, horn, and sinew (animal tendons) to make a bow that was much stronger and more flexible than one made only of wood. If you look at a cross-section of the bow you see that the materials forned layers, like the bands of color in a rainbow.
In the imagination of the ancient Hebrews, the rainbow was God's weapon, a composite bow of miraculous size and beauty. By placing it in the clouds, God was symbolically laying down his arms and proclaiming peace with the world.
There are quite a few significant numbers here. Noah is given 7 days warning before the flood. The rain falls for 40 days and nights, and Noah is 600 years old. Numbers have a great deal of symbolism in the scriptures, and knowing that symbolism can help us understand the story in more depth.
The number 7 showed up in the story of creation, and every time it reappears it reminds us of that story. Seven in Hebrew is "sheh'bah" which comes from the a root word meaning "fullness" or "completion." It shows up many times in the Bible and is also the root of our word "sabbath." Whenever we see this, it signifies that something has reached completion. When it shows up in this story it makes us see this is more than a story of a flood; it is the story of God creating over again.
The number 40 is symbolic of a very long time. It shows up in many stories where a person or group of people are preparing for some new beginning. The people of Israel wandered for 40 years before crossing into the Promised Land, Moses stayed on Mt. Sinai for 40 days before receiving the 10 Commandments, Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness before beginning his ministry. Like the number 7, the 40 days and nights here reminds us that is the story of a new beginning.
The number 600 is not very common in the Bible, but it is 50 x 12 and multiples of 12 have their own symbolism. The number 12 is found in nature as the number of months in a year. It is a number of wholeness. In the Old Testament it represents the people of Israel, in the New Testament, the followers of Jesus.
This story is the first to use the term "covenent" in the Bible. This is an idea that we will see again throughout the scriptures. Here it is not an agreement between God and a chosen people but between God and all of creation.
God offers a rainbow as the sign of the covenant. This is a beautiful symbol cherished by people of faith to this day but it had even more meaning when it was written.
The composite bow was an important weapon in ancient times. Craftsmen would layer different materials like wood, horn, and sinew (animal tendons) to make a bow that was much stronger and more flexible than one made only of wood. If you look at a cross-section of the bow you see that the materials forned layers, like the bands of color in a rainbow.
In the imagination of the ancient Hebrews, the rainbow was God's weapon, a composite bow of miraculous size and beauty. By placing it in the clouds, God was symbolically laying down his arms and proclaiming peace with the world.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Special Note: Anthropomorphism and Literalism
Big words, but don't worry, the ideas behind them aren't that bad.
In the last blogs we have looked at the overall meaning of the story of Noah. It's one that we love to tell to children because it reflects a childlike understanding of who God is. It shows God as someone who makes mistakes, gets angry, and throws tantrums, but who is ultimately loving and kind to people, animals, and the world.
When you apply human characteristics to God this is called anthropomorphism. When we talk about Adam hearing God's footsteps in the Garden of Eden or God talking to Moses face to face that doesn't mean that God literally has feet or a face just like a human being. The Bible is using a storytelling technique to give us an image of God that we can understand. When the story of Noah talks about God making mistakes and losing his temper, it's the same thing. What we see in the story are made-up details to help us begin to understand God rather than a literal and accurate picture of all that God is.
As children grow up they begin to understand that God is not really like that. For one thing, God isn't someone we can see in the sense that we can see a human being. For another, God isn't limited to being in just one place the way human beings are. God is an invisible presence who is with us no matter where we go. God appears to the people of the Bible in many forms from a burning bush, to a man who comes to Abraham's tent to the small, quiet voice that called to Elijah.
God isn't a bush, of course, or a human being, or a quiet voice. These things are all symbols that God uses to reveal his presence. If we started worshipping the symbols, that would be worshipping something that isn't really God. That's something that the Second Commandment forbids, calling it idolatry.
This is the problem with taking the Bible literally: we end up mistaking the anthropomorphized (or humanized) version of God in the stories for the real thing. That can stunt our spiritual growth, and trap us in a very limited and childish view of God.
That's a shame whan it happens, because it blinds us to the deeper understanding of God we find in so many other places in scripture, and especially in the words of Jesus. It can even encourage us to be harsh, judgmental, and unloving ourselves.
The story of Noah, like many Bible stories, is wonderful and--if we understand it-- can provide a beautiful starting point for learning about God. But if misunderstood, if taken literally, it can stand in the way of our growing in the understanding of God.
To paraphrase a saying I've often seen in the United Church of Christ; we should take the Bible very seriously, but not literally.
In the last blogs we have looked at the overall meaning of the story of Noah. It's one that we love to tell to children because it reflects a childlike understanding of who God is. It shows God as someone who makes mistakes, gets angry, and throws tantrums, but who is ultimately loving and kind to people, animals, and the world.
When you apply human characteristics to God this is called anthropomorphism. When we talk about Adam hearing God's footsteps in the Garden of Eden or God talking to Moses face to face that doesn't mean that God literally has feet or a face just like a human being. The Bible is using a storytelling technique to give us an image of God that we can understand. When the story of Noah talks about God making mistakes and losing his temper, it's the same thing. What we see in the story are made-up details to help us begin to understand God rather than a literal and accurate picture of all that God is.
As children grow up they begin to understand that God is not really like that. For one thing, God isn't someone we can see in the sense that we can see a human being. For another, God isn't limited to being in just one place the way human beings are. God is an invisible presence who is with us no matter where we go. God appears to the people of the Bible in many forms from a burning bush, to a man who comes to Abraham's tent to the small, quiet voice that called to Elijah.
God isn't a bush, of course, or a human being, or a quiet voice. These things are all symbols that God uses to reveal his presence. If we started worshipping the symbols, that would be worshipping something that isn't really God. That's something that the Second Commandment forbids, calling it idolatry.
This is the problem with taking the Bible literally: we end up mistaking the anthropomorphized (or humanized) version of God in the stories for the real thing. That can stunt our spiritual growth, and trap us in a very limited and childish view of God.
That's a shame whan it happens, because it blinds us to the deeper understanding of God we find in so many other places in scripture, and especially in the words of Jesus. It can even encourage us to be harsh, judgmental, and unloving ourselves.
The story of Noah, like many Bible stories, is wonderful and--if we understand it-- can provide a beautiful starting point for learning about God. But if misunderstood, if taken literally, it can stand in the way of our growing in the understanding of God.
To paraphrase a saying I've often seen in the United Church of Christ; we should take the Bible very seriously, but not literally.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Noah and the Flood: Genesis 6:5-9:17
Read the story here in parallel versions of Genesis 6:5-22, Genesis 7, Genesis 8, and Genesis 9:1-17.
This is one of those stories that everyone knows, even if they don't know anything else about the Bible. Most of us read this as children, or saw a movie or cartoon version of it. These are so many meorable images, from the ark, to the pairs of animals coming on board, to the rainbow that they make this one of the best loved stories of the Bible.
We are still in the part of the Bible where stories are all story and no history, though there has been a lot of effort to find some historical evidence of this particular story. Partly, that's because there are so many legends of a great flood. The Greeks told the story of Deucalion and the flood, the Sumerians and Babylonians told the story of Ut-Napishtim who also built an ark, and there are many other stories from around the world about a great flood.
Geologists tell us that there have been a number of global floods but none of them happened at a time when there were people on the earth. The possible exception is a hypothetical flood created by the draining of the gigantic Lake Agassiz in North America in about 8400 BC. But, if the Genesis flood was historical, it was more likely limited to the Mediterranean region. There are a several interesting possibilities, notably, the hypothetical Black Sea flooding in 5600 BC or the tsunami created by the erruption of Thera in about 1630-1600 BC. The discussion on the flood is ongoing, as are the efforts of people to find Noah's Ark but this has not met with success. If any part of the story is historical, we can't prove it. Fortunately, the meaning of the story doesn't depend on whether it's historical or not.
The story begins with the Lord looking out over the world and despairing. Human beings have not turned out well and the Yahweh sees a need to wipe the slate clean and start over.
This is a frightening image. Knowing what we do about human nature, it's hard to believe that every single human being, except for Noah and his family, were so terrible that they deserved to be killed. That's at odds with our experience, and with many other stories in the Bible, that show that there is bad in the best of us and good in the worst. Killing everyone and starting over is a monstrous overreaction.
If you think that this doesn't sit well with the story of a just, loving, and infallible God, you're right. The people who first told this story didn't have any of those assumptions about God. They lived in the midst of a bunch of cultures whose religions taught of angry, unjust gods who considered humans as slaves or pawns. In fact, before they were called Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews, the people of the Old Testament were a part of these cultures and worshipped the same gods. Their expectations of a deity were pretty unsophisticated compared to ours.
Let's set aside our preconceptions about God for a moment and look at just what we see in the story. First, when the Lord sees that people are evil, he isn't wrathful as much as heart-broken, and regrets having created them. The word used in Genesis 6:6 is that the Lord "repents" of having made humans.
If we jump all the way to the end of the story, we see the Lord change his mind again. It seems that wiping out the human race with a flood wasn't such a good idea after all. When the Lord realizes this, he makes a pledge; a covenant with all the world, never to do this again.
When we look at the flood story, we can get a clear idea of what the people who first heard it believed about God.
1) They believed that God cared about the people he made and wanted them to live up to their potential. When this didn't happen, it caused God grief.
2) They believed that God sometimes made mistakes and sometimes changed his mind.
3) They believed that God was capable of making rash and foolish decisions, like wiping out the human race with a flood.
4) They believed that God was honest in admitting his mistakes faithful in learning from them.
If you take it literally, this is a story about God learning what it means to be God. He still has a number of flaws, but, like any first time parent, he's learning, growing, and getting better in the process.
It's a charming story that tells us more about the people who wrote it than it does about God. They were still getting rid of the baggage of the Near Eastern religions they had come from and getting used to the idea of the true God. We will see this a lot as we go through the Old Testament; some stories will have wonderfully insightful understandings of God, while others will slip back into the old understanding of a petty and angry God. In the story of Noah we get a clear picture of people taking a giant step forward in their understanding of God.
I've skimmed this story to pull out the meaning but don't worry; in the next blog, I'll go through and highlight the interesting details.
This is one of those stories that everyone knows, even if they don't know anything else about the Bible. Most of us read this as children, or saw a movie or cartoon version of it. These are so many meorable images, from the ark, to the pairs of animals coming on board, to the rainbow that they make this one of the best loved stories of the Bible.
We are still in the part of the Bible where stories are all story and no history, though there has been a lot of effort to find some historical evidence of this particular story. Partly, that's because there are so many legends of a great flood. The Greeks told the story of Deucalion and the flood, the Sumerians and Babylonians told the story of Ut-Napishtim who also built an ark, and there are many other stories from around the world about a great flood.
Geologists tell us that there have been a number of global floods but none of them happened at a time when there were people on the earth. The possible exception is a hypothetical flood created by the draining of the gigantic Lake Agassiz in North America in about 8400 BC. But, if the Genesis flood was historical, it was more likely limited to the Mediterranean region. There are a several interesting possibilities, notably, the hypothetical Black Sea flooding in 5600 BC or the tsunami created by the erruption of Thera in about 1630-1600 BC. The discussion on the flood is ongoing, as are the efforts of people to find Noah's Ark but this has not met with success. If any part of the story is historical, we can't prove it. Fortunately, the meaning of the story doesn't depend on whether it's historical or not.
The story begins with the Lord looking out over the world and despairing. Human beings have not turned out well and the Yahweh sees a need to wipe the slate clean and start over.
This is a frightening image. Knowing what we do about human nature, it's hard to believe that every single human being, except for Noah and his family, were so terrible that they deserved to be killed. That's at odds with our experience, and with many other stories in the Bible, that show that there is bad in the best of us and good in the worst. Killing everyone and starting over is a monstrous overreaction.
If you think that this doesn't sit well with the story of a just, loving, and infallible God, you're right. The people who first told this story didn't have any of those assumptions about God. They lived in the midst of a bunch of cultures whose religions taught of angry, unjust gods who considered humans as slaves or pawns. In fact, before they were called Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews, the people of the Old Testament were a part of these cultures and worshipped the same gods. Their expectations of a deity were pretty unsophisticated compared to ours.
Let's set aside our preconceptions about God for a moment and look at just what we see in the story. First, when the Lord sees that people are evil, he isn't wrathful as much as heart-broken, and regrets having created them. The word used in Genesis 6:6 is that the Lord "repents" of having made humans.
If we jump all the way to the end of the story, we see the Lord change his mind again. It seems that wiping out the human race with a flood wasn't such a good idea after all. When the Lord realizes this, he makes a pledge; a covenant with all the world, never to do this again.
When we look at the flood story, we can get a clear idea of what the people who first heard it believed about God.
1) They believed that God cared about the people he made and wanted them to live up to their potential. When this didn't happen, it caused God grief.
2) They believed that God sometimes made mistakes and sometimes changed his mind.
3) They believed that God was capable of making rash and foolish decisions, like wiping out the human race with a flood.
4) They believed that God was honest in admitting his mistakes faithful in learning from them.
If you take it literally, this is a story about God learning what it means to be God. He still has a number of flaws, but, like any first time parent, he's learning, growing, and getting better in the process.
It's a charming story that tells us more about the people who wrote it than it does about God. They were still getting rid of the baggage of the Near Eastern religions they had come from and getting used to the idea of the true God. We will see this a lot as we go through the Old Testament; some stories will have wonderfully insightful understandings of God, while others will slip back into the old understanding of a petty and angry God. In the story of Noah we get a clear picture of people taking a giant step forward in their understanding of God.
I've skimmed this story to pull out the meaning but don't worry; in the next blog, I'll go through and highlight the interesting details.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Giants and Demigods: Genesis 6:1-4a
Read the story in parallel versions here.
The beginning of chapter 6 brings us out of the genealogy and takes a quick detour into the land of the giants before moving on to the story of Noah.
Verse 2 reads: the sons of God noticed that the daughters of men were beautiful. They looked them over and picked out wives for themselves. A little later, verse 4 contiuues the idea with: This was back in the days (and also later) when there were giants in the land. The giants came from the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men. These were the mighty men of ancient lore, the famous ones.
The phrase "sons of God" is usually interpreted to mean angels, or at least some sort of heavenly beings. In this brief and mysterious passage we see the heavenly beings becoming attracted to human women and having children by them. The larger than life children of these unions are called "giants" in some translations and as the Nephilim--which literally means "the fallen ones"--in others.
This idea of divine beings (usually male) mating with humans (usually female) and having children with them is not limited to the Bible; in fact it is a widespread idea in different cultures across the world. The best known examples are probably what come to us from Greek mythology where the gods of Olympus seem to have had no self control at all. Stories of the gods (especially Zeus) impregnating human women are everywhere.
The Greek word for children like this is demigods which means "half-gods." They are human in many ways but are usually much stronger (like Heracles), much bigger (like Orion), much more beautiful (like Helen of Troy) or much cleverer (like Theseus) than normal humans. As half-gods, these characters could do all sorts of things that mere humans couldn't. They slew terrible monsters, crossed into the realm of the dead and returned, and dealt with the gods more-or-less as equals.
The ancient people of Israel would not have been familiar with the Greek legends, but they knew the stories of other peoples of the ancient Near East. During the time when they were living as captives in the Babylonian Empire they would have heard the story of a demigod called Gilgamesh. The pharaohs of Egypt claimed to be sons of the god Horus and thus to be demigods. For that matter, most of the great kings of the region, whether Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Persian, Philistine, etc. claimed to be descended from the gods and thus considered themselves better than ordinary mortals.
It's interesting that, as important as these larger than life heroes were in other cultures, they don't rate much more than a footnote in the Bible. It's true that Samson had super-strength but that was a blessing given by God rather than a result of having a divine parent. And the miracles that people like Moses and Elijah did were also by the grace of God. Even Jesus, who is called Son of God by Christians, is very different from a demigod (there will be more on this when we get to the New Testament).
The overwhelming number of heroes in the Bible are ordinary people. They aren't necessarily smarter or stronger, or more beautiful than anyone else around them. They make mistakes, they feel fear, and some of them are really awful people. The heroes of the Bible don't succeed because they are better than mere mortals, but by the grace of God. The Bible isn't an epic about great heroes; it's the story of a God who loves ordinary people, and who helps them succeed in spite of their weakness and mistakes. Even the kings in the Bible aren't seen as semi-divine figures to be obeyed, but as flawed humans who are given the responsibility to serve the people.
I think this short section is kind of a nod to the other religions. I suspect that when the Babylonians would taunt the Jews with the the idea that their ancient heroes were giants and their Great King was a demigod, the Jews could point to this story and say: "Yeah, we know all about that sort; we call then the Nephilim. They just aren't very important."
I think that's also what's behind the reference to God limiting human age (to a still-impressive 120 years) in verse 2. It's a signal that this isn't going to be a book about demigod heroes and near-immortals from long ago and far away. The Bible is a book about ordinary people written for ordinary people who want to form a relationship with our extraordinary God.
The beginning of chapter 6 brings us out of the genealogy and takes a quick detour into the land of the giants before moving on to the story of Noah.
Verse 2 reads: the sons of God noticed that the daughters of men were beautiful. They looked them over and picked out wives for themselves. A little later, verse 4 contiuues the idea with: This was back in the days (and also later) when there were giants in the land. The giants came from the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men. These were the mighty men of ancient lore, the famous ones.
The phrase "sons of God" is usually interpreted to mean angels, or at least some sort of heavenly beings. In this brief and mysterious passage we see the heavenly beings becoming attracted to human women and having children by them. The larger than life children of these unions are called "giants" in some translations and as the Nephilim--which literally means "the fallen ones"--in others.
This idea of divine beings (usually male) mating with humans (usually female) and having children with them is not limited to the Bible; in fact it is a widespread idea in different cultures across the world. The best known examples are probably what come to us from Greek mythology where the gods of Olympus seem to have had no self control at all. Stories of the gods (especially Zeus) impregnating human women are everywhere.
The Greek word for children like this is demigods which means "half-gods." They are human in many ways but are usually much stronger (like Heracles), much bigger (like Orion), much more beautiful (like Helen of Troy) or much cleverer (like Theseus) than normal humans. As half-gods, these characters could do all sorts of things that mere humans couldn't. They slew terrible monsters, crossed into the realm of the dead and returned, and dealt with the gods more-or-less as equals.
The ancient people of Israel would not have been familiar with the Greek legends, but they knew the stories of other peoples of the ancient Near East. During the time when they were living as captives in the Babylonian Empire they would have heard the story of a demigod called Gilgamesh. The pharaohs of Egypt claimed to be sons of the god Horus and thus to be demigods. For that matter, most of the great kings of the region, whether Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Persian, Philistine, etc. claimed to be descended from the gods and thus considered themselves better than ordinary mortals.
It's interesting that, as important as these larger than life heroes were in other cultures, they don't rate much more than a footnote in the Bible. It's true that Samson had super-strength but that was a blessing given by God rather than a result of having a divine parent. And the miracles that people like Moses and Elijah did were also by the grace of God. Even Jesus, who is called Son of God by Christians, is very different from a demigod (there will be more on this when we get to the New Testament).
The overwhelming number of heroes in the Bible are ordinary people. They aren't necessarily smarter or stronger, or more beautiful than anyone else around them. They make mistakes, they feel fear, and some of them are really awful people. The heroes of the Bible don't succeed because they are better than mere mortals, but by the grace of God. The Bible isn't an epic about great heroes; it's the story of a God who loves ordinary people, and who helps them succeed in spite of their weakness and mistakes. Even the kings in the Bible aren't seen as semi-divine figures to be obeyed, but as flawed humans who are given the responsibility to serve the people.
I think this short section is kind of a nod to the other religions. I suspect that when the Babylonians would taunt the Jews with the the idea that their ancient heroes were giants and their Great King was a demigod, the Jews could point to this story and say: "Yeah, we know all about that sort; we call then the Nephilim. They just aren't very important."
I think that's also what's behind the reference to God limiting human age (to a still-impressive 120 years) in verse 2. It's a signal that this isn't going to be a book about demigod heroes and near-immortals from long ago and far away. The Bible is a book about ordinary people written for ordinary people who want to form a relationship with our extraordinary God.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Fun With Genealogy: Genesis 5:1-32
When I say "fun" in this post, I'm being a little sarcastic. There are a lot of sections of the Bible filled with this sort of detail. In addition to who begat whom, there are lists of how many cubits long something should be, or how many omers it should hold, or how many shekels it should weigh. There are lists of what kind of structures you should build and what the building materials should be, and what the rituals of worship are, and what the priests should wear when conducting them.
There is a theory of who wrote the first five books of the Bible called the documentary hypothesis which suggests that these sections come from what scholars call P or the priestly source.
While these details were important for the priestly writers of ancient times, they are really tedious for modern readers and I'm going to skim over them in this study so we can focus on the major stories.
There are several points I'd like to pause and take a look at. The first is verses 1-2 which say . . .
This reaffirms the idea we saw in Genesis 1, that all humans, male and female, are equally made in the image of God. It also reminds us that the blessings of God aren't just for one group of people, but for the whole human race.
Another interesting feature of this section is the amazing lifespans that the genealogy lists.
Looking as this list, it's natural to ask whether these men really lived so long. Biblical literalists says that they did, and come up with elaborate theories to explain how this is possible. A few have said that there must have been a mistranslation somewhere and that the word "years" should really read "months." This gives more realistic ages, but creates other problems, such as making Mahalalel only 5 years old when he became a father.
A more likely explanation can be found by looking at the ages listed for the kings of other ancient Near eastern people. The Persian epic poem Shahnameh lists kings who reigned for as long as 1000 years and the Sumerian King's List talks about men who ruled for as long as 72,000 years. Saying that a great ruler or ancestor lived for an impossibly long time was simply a way of showing respect in the ancient world. It seems to have been a custom that the writers of the Bible also followed.
There is a theory of who wrote the first five books of the Bible called the documentary hypothesis which suggests that these sections come from what scholars call P or the priestly source.
While these details were important for the priestly writers of ancient times, they are really tedious for modern readers and I'm going to skim over them in this study so we can focus on the major stories.
There are several points I'd like to pause and take a look at. The first is verses 1-2 which say . . .
This is the family tree of the human race: When God created the human race, he made it godlike, with a nature akin to God. He created both male and female and blessed them, the whole human race.
This reaffirms the idea we saw in Genesis 1, that all humans, male and female, are equally made in the image of God. It also reminds us that the blessings of God aren't just for one group of people, but for the whole human race.
Another interesting feature of this section is the amazing lifespans that the genealogy lists.
Adam - 930 years
Seth - 912 years
Enosh - 905 years
Kenan - 910 years
Mahalalel - 895 years
Jared - 962 years
Enoch - 365 years (then vanished into thin air)
Methuselah - 969 years
Lamech - 777 years
Looking as this list, it's natural to ask whether these men really lived so long. Biblical literalists says that they did, and come up with elaborate theories to explain how this is possible. A few have said that there must have been a mistranslation somewhere and that the word "years" should really read "months." This gives more realistic ages, but creates other problems, such as making Mahalalel only 5 years old when he became a father.
A more likely explanation can be found by looking at the ages listed for the kings of other ancient Near eastern people. The Persian epic poem Shahnameh lists kings who reigned for as long as 1000 years and the Sumerian King's List talks about men who ruled for as long as 72,000 years. Saying that a great ruler or ancestor lived for an impossibly long time was simply a way of showing respect in the ancient world. It seems to have been a custom that the writers of the Bible also followed.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Cain and Abel: Genesis 4:1-26
You can read the story in parallel versions here.
I've said several times that these early Genesis stories aren't meant to be taken literally. This chapter is no exception; in fact, it's where we find the strongest evidence that it is more like a parable. If we take the story we've seen in chapters 2-3 literally, then Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel would be the only four people on earth. Yet, when Cain is driven away he worries about the other people of the earth killing him, he finds a woman to marry, and builds a city for his son. None of this makes sense unless the world is already filled with people. That would be a terrible problem if this were a literal story but, since it isn't, we can proceed without letting that kind of question distract us.
Cain and Abel are brothers, one herds animals and the other farms plants. Both brothers offer a sacrifice, they best they have to offer. God prefers Abel's offering (an animal sacrifice) over Cain's (an offering of produce) and problems ensue. Cain gets jealous, jealousy leads to an argument, and the argument leads to murder.
It is easy to identify with Cain's feelings as he discovers that life can be unfair. Most of us have been there, and many have reacted the way he does, by getting angry and sulking. It happens with we get passed over for promotion, or the person we're interested in falls for someone else, or when someone else seems to receive a shower of blessings that should really go to us. Most of us don't resort to murder, like Cain, but we do know what he's feeling.
There's a test of character here. All of us experience unfairness and jealousy; what matters is how we deal with it. God's words to Cain suggest one way to cope. They are expressed especially well in The Message version . . .
This saying sounds simple at first, but the first part is controversial. Is God implying that Cain didn't do well and that's why his sacrifice wasn't rejected? There are some modern conservative Protestant commentators claim that Abel's blood-sacrifice was superior because it anticipated the atoning death of Christ on the cross. The problem with that is that it is a case of eisegesis, or of shoehorning our own ideas in and changing the meaning of the story. It's fine to believe in a doctrine, but we should be more concerned with what the text actually says than what we want it to say.
There is also an old Jewish midrash that says there must have been something wrong with Cain's sacrifice to explain God's rejection. While this is possible, there isn't much evidence to support it in the story. The only thing that is clear is that Cain is too worried about God's approval, and too quick to do something terrible when he doesn't get it. We can see the truth of God's second statement all too clearly. Cain is caught in the web of sin/jealosy. If he doesn't master his worst impulses, they are going to master him.
The same thing is happening here as in the story of the forbidden fruit. There is a chance for the brothers to live in harmony. God's preference of Abel would still sting, but if the brothers had a loving and trusting relationship, they could get past that. Instead, Cain kills his brother then tried to evade his guilt. When God asks him where Abel is, he knows the answer but tries to hide his guilt.
The deception is useless. Cain may not live in harmony with creation, but God does, and Cain's blood is screaming to be noticed. Like Adam and Eve before him, Cain discovers that there is no hiding from God.
Like the punishment of Adam and Eve, Cain's sentence reflects what he has done. He has rejected harmony with his family so now he becomes a man without family, wandering the earth. He has rejected harmony with creation by polluting the ground with his brother's blood, so now he will have to fight against the earth to farm. He has rejected harmony with God, and now he is banished from God's presence.
This exile is hard, but is is more merciful than we would expect. Usually murder calls for an execution, but God shows mercy by giving a lighter sentence. More than that, God places a mark on Cain. There has been a lot of speculation on what kind of mark this might have been, but the story doesn't say. We are only told that the mark is a form of God's protection and that it will keep the people he meets from killing him. Cain has turned away from God, but God has not entirely turned away from Cain.
I've said several times that these early Genesis stories aren't meant to be taken literally. This chapter is no exception; in fact, it's where we find the strongest evidence that it is more like a parable. If we take the story we've seen in chapters 2-3 literally, then Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel would be the only four people on earth. Yet, when Cain is driven away he worries about the other people of the earth killing him, he finds a woman to marry, and builds a city for his son. None of this makes sense unless the world is already filled with people. That would be a terrible problem if this were a literal story but, since it isn't, we can proceed without letting that kind of question distract us.
Cain and Abel are brothers, one herds animals and the other farms plants. Both brothers offer a sacrifice, they best they have to offer. God prefers Abel's offering (an animal sacrifice) over Cain's (an offering of produce) and problems ensue. Cain gets jealous, jealousy leads to an argument, and the argument leads to murder.
It is easy to identify with Cain's feelings as he discovers that life can be unfair. Most of us have been there, and many have reacted the way he does, by getting angry and sulking. It happens with we get passed over for promotion, or the person we're interested in falls for someone else, or when someone else seems to receive a shower of blessings that should really go to us. Most of us don't resort to murder, like Cain, but we do know what he's feeling.
There's a test of character here. All of us experience unfairness and jealousy; what matters is how we deal with it. God's words to Cain suggest one way to cope. They are expressed especially well in The Message version . . .
"Why this tantrum? Why the sulking? If you do well, won't you be accepted? And if you don't do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it's out to get you, you've got to master it."
This saying sounds simple at first, but the first part is controversial. Is God implying that Cain didn't do well and that's why his sacrifice wasn't rejected? There are some modern conservative Protestant commentators claim that Abel's blood-sacrifice was superior because it anticipated the atoning death of Christ on the cross. The problem with that is that it is a case of eisegesis, or of shoehorning our own ideas in and changing the meaning of the story. It's fine to believe in a doctrine, but we should be more concerned with what the text actually says than what we want it to say.
There is also an old Jewish midrash that says there must have been something wrong with Cain's sacrifice to explain God's rejection. While this is possible, there isn't much evidence to support it in the story. The only thing that is clear is that Cain is too worried about God's approval, and too quick to do something terrible when he doesn't get it. We can see the truth of God's second statement all too clearly. Cain is caught in the web of sin/jealosy. If he doesn't master his worst impulses, they are going to master him.
The same thing is happening here as in the story of the forbidden fruit. There is a chance for the brothers to live in harmony. God's preference of Abel would still sting, but if the brothers had a loving and trusting relationship, they could get past that. Instead, Cain kills his brother then tried to evade his guilt. When God asks him where Abel is, he knows the answer but tries to hide his guilt.
The deception is useless. Cain may not live in harmony with creation, but God does, and Cain's blood is screaming to be noticed. Like Adam and Eve before him, Cain discovers that there is no hiding from God.
Like the punishment of Adam and Eve, Cain's sentence reflects what he has done. He has rejected harmony with his family so now he becomes a man without family, wandering the earth. He has rejected harmony with creation by polluting the ground with his brother's blood, so now he will have to fight against the earth to farm. He has rejected harmony with God, and now he is banished from God's presence.
This exile is hard, but is is more merciful than we would expect. Usually murder calls for an execution, but God shows mercy by giving a lighter sentence. More than that, God places a mark on Cain. There has been a lot of speculation on what kind of mark this might have been, but the story doesn't say. We are only told that the mark is a form of God's protection and that it will keep the people he meets from killing him. Cain has turned away from God, but God has not entirely turned away from Cain.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Trouble in Eden: Genesis 3:1-24
You can read the story here in the New Revised Standard Version or in The Message version.
This is one of the best known of all Bible stories, and it has thousands of years of tradition piled on top of it. We have heard so many interpretations that they have a powerful impact on how we read the story. We end out seeing a lot of things that aren't really there.
Take a look through the story and you may notice that there is no mention of an apple, or of Satan. We're used to thinking of the story as the fall from grace and the explanation of original sin though neither of these phrases never appear here (or anywhere in the Bible). By stripping away these traditions we will try to get to the heart of the story.
In the first verse we meet a mysterious new character. The serpent, we are told, is more clever than any other wild animal that God has created.
Christians have often interpreted the serpent as Satan in the form of a snake. That's not unreasonable; the serpent is certainly a malicious tempter in the story, and that sounds like Satan. But it's a good idea to separate our assumptions from what the Bible actually says. Scripture never says that the serpent is the Devil, and Genesis 3:1 says it is a clever wild animal. It's strange that we have a talking snake, but (as we've seen in the first two chapters) this isn't meant to be understood as a literal story. It's like a parable, a made up story designed to teach us something important about God and human beings. If we try to make it into a historical story, we're likely to miss the point.
The man and the woman have everything they need, but people who have everything are the easiest to tempt. The serpent asks a misleading question: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
The woman gives the right answer, but she adds a little touch of her own. God had said that the humans would die if they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The woman repeats this but adds that they will die if they even touch the fruit, and shows how easy it is to add our own words to God's words.
The woman is tempted and eats, then gives the fruit to her husband who also eats. For what it's worth: the fruit is never identified; early Jewish authorities suggested it was grapes, or perhaps grapes pressed to make wine, or a fig, or even wheat. In Christian art the fruit is usually an apple, probably because the Latin word for "apple" (malum) sounds so much like the Latin word for "evil" (mālum).
There is an irony about the fruit; the serpent says that when they eat it, they will be like God, but that's a gift that God has already given them. Back in chapter 1 God created the humans ". . . in the image and likeness of God". The humans weren't content to trust in God's promises and chose to get what they wanted (or what they thought they wanted) through dishonest means.
This is something we see all the time in human relationships. Often people do not trust the ones they love to care for them so they try to get what they want through lying, through bullying, through manipulation, or any number of other dishonest means. This kind of behavior is the opposite of trusting or being trustworthy and it is poison for a relationship.
Now that they have eaten the fruit and gained knowledge, the man and the woman start acting guilty. In chapter 2 we saw that the humans were ". . . both naked, and were not ashamed but now they feel guilty about their nudity. They make clothes to hide their bodies and then they hide from God in the garden. All this hiding is a direct contrast to the openness and honesty that we saw before.
There's an irony about trust, in marriages where one partner has had an affair the guilty partner is likely to become suspicious of the innocent one. When we break a promise or start keeping a guilty secret we often project our mistrust onto people who haven't done anything. As far as they know, the relationship is still one of love and trust, but we know better and it affects the relationship.
God gathers the guilty parties and judges them. While the story describes God's pronouncements as "curses", they aren't really arbitrary punishments. What we see is more on the order of God describing the consequences of their actions. The serpent acted cruelly toward the humans and his curse is that his kind will always be the enemy of theirs.
The humans' curse is more ironic. They have rejected God's way of harmony in favor of manipulation to get what they want. It affects every area of their life, starting with their relationship with each other.
It's hard to imagine that there could ever be childbirth that wasn't painful, but I think the more significant part of this curse comes right after that. Where man and woman were once living in harmony the new pattern is one of inequality. The woman will have to struggle to please her husband, and the man will lord it over her. That's a pretty accurate picture of the relations between men and woman through the rest of the Bible. It gets better over time but it is never the harmonious relationship that God wanted.
In the man's fate we see that there is no longer going to be harmony with the earth. Where nature had been a garden that freely gave everything the humans needed; now agriculture is going to be hard, as man has to fight for everything he gets from the earth.
We traditionally read this passage as an angry God hurling down punishments on the people; punishments that seem disproportionately harsh for the theft of a piece of fruit. The idea of original sin, especially the version taught by Martin Luther and John Calvin, says that all humans share in the guilt of that fruit theft. This idea claims that all of us will be sent to Hell for eternity. The only way to satisfy God's anger was for there to be a blood sacrifice to atone for human guilt, so God sent Jesus to die on the cross so he would be that sacrifice. While this is a popular view, especially among Evangelical Christians, I have three issues with it:
1) It treats this story as a literal, historical event.
2) It paints a portrait of God as a bloodthirsty monster willing to punish everyone for the crime of one person, and whose anger is only satisfied by the bloody murder of his only child.
3) It really doesn't fit with the story in Genesis, which never mentions either original sin or hell.
When you strip away the doctrines, and read this as a parable, what you see is a God who is more sad than angry. We were made to live in harmony with God, with each other, and with the earth. Because we insist on trying to manipulate and have our own way, there is no harmony and everyone suffers. It's not so much a punishment as it is God saying, "If you insist on living like this, here are the consequences."
That would be a sad note to end on, but there's a moment of grace in the story. In chapter 2, God told the humans that stealing fruit from the tree was a capital crime. They day they broke that rule was supposed to be the day they died.
The culture of the ancient Middle East was a culture of honor in which carrying out your promises, especially in matters of punishment and revenge was very important. If you someone broke your rules, you were expected to punish then swiftly and severely. Failure to do so was looked upon as shameful and a sign of weakness.
Maybe that's why the Church has added the idea of hell and damnation to this story. God's actual punishments are so mild that we think they makes God look like a wimp. This isn't the only story where this will happen. Over and over in the scriptures God threatens harsh punishments, then backs off and saves the people. In the struggle between doing the honorable thing and doing the loving and merciful thing, God chooses mercy. That's not what the people of ancient times wanted, and it's not what many modern Christians want, but we will see it happen again and again.
God's love is scandalous. God is willing to show us mercy, even when that means God will be humiliated in the process. When it comes to honor vs. mercy, God's mercy wins nearly every time in the Bible.
This is one of the best known of all Bible stories, and it has thousands of years of tradition piled on top of it. We have heard so many interpretations that they have a powerful impact on how we read the story. We end out seeing a lot of things that aren't really there.
Take a look through the story and you may notice that there is no mention of an apple, or of Satan. We're used to thinking of the story as the fall from grace and the explanation of original sin though neither of these phrases never appear here (or anywhere in the Bible). By stripping away these traditions we will try to get to the heart of the story.
In the first verse we meet a mysterious new character. The serpent, we are told, is more clever than any other wild animal that God has created.
Christians have often interpreted the serpent as Satan in the form of a snake. That's not unreasonable; the serpent is certainly a malicious tempter in the story, and that sounds like Satan. But it's a good idea to separate our assumptions from what the Bible actually says. Scripture never says that the serpent is the Devil, and Genesis 3:1 says it is a clever wild animal. It's strange that we have a talking snake, but (as we've seen in the first two chapters) this isn't meant to be understood as a literal story. It's like a parable, a made up story designed to teach us something important about God and human beings. If we try to make it into a historical story, we're likely to miss the point.
The man and the woman have everything they need, but people who have everything are the easiest to tempt. The serpent asks a misleading question: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
The woman gives the right answer, but she adds a little touch of her own. God had said that the humans would die if they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The woman repeats this but adds that they will die if they even touch the fruit, and shows how easy it is to add our own words to God's words.
The woman is tempted and eats, then gives the fruit to her husband who also eats. For what it's worth: the fruit is never identified; early Jewish authorities suggested it was grapes, or perhaps grapes pressed to make wine, or a fig, or even wheat. In Christian art the fruit is usually an apple, probably because the Latin word for "apple" (malum) sounds so much like the Latin word for "evil" (mālum).
There is an irony about the fruit; the serpent says that when they eat it, they will be like God, but that's a gift that God has already given them. Back in chapter 1 God created the humans ". . . in the image and likeness of God". The humans weren't content to trust in God's promises and chose to get what they wanted (or what they thought they wanted) through dishonest means.
This is something we see all the time in human relationships. Often people do not trust the ones they love to care for them so they try to get what they want through lying, through bullying, through manipulation, or any number of other dishonest means. This kind of behavior is the opposite of trusting or being trustworthy and it is poison for a relationship.
Now that they have eaten the fruit and gained knowledge, the man and the woman start acting guilty. In chapter 2 we saw that the humans were ". . . both naked, and were not ashamed but now they feel guilty about their nudity. They make clothes to hide their bodies and then they hide from God in the garden. All this hiding is a direct contrast to the openness and honesty that we saw before.
There's an irony about trust, in marriages where one partner has had an affair the guilty partner is likely to become suspicious of the innocent one. When we break a promise or start keeping a guilty secret we often project our mistrust onto people who haven't done anything. As far as they know, the relationship is still one of love and trust, but we know better and it affects the relationship.
God gathers the guilty parties and judges them. While the story describes God's pronouncements as "curses", they aren't really arbitrary punishments. What we see is more on the order of God describing the consequences of their actions. The serpent acted cruelly toward the humans and his curse is that his kind will always be the enemy of theirs.
The humans' curse is more ironic. They have rejected God's way of harmony in favor of manipulation to get what they want. It affects every area of their life, starting with their relationship with each other.
He told the Woman: "I'll multiply your pains in childbirth; you'll give birth to your babies in pain. You'll want to please your husband, but he'll lord it over you." Genesis 3:16
It's hard to imagine that there could ever be childbirth that wasn't painful, but I think the more significant part of this curse comes right after that. Where man and woman were once living in harmony the new pattern is one of inequality. The woman will have to struggle to please her husband, and the man will lord it over her. That's a pretty accurate picture of the relations between men and woman through the rest of the Bible. It gets better over time but it is never the harmonious relationship that God wanted.
In the man's fate we see that there is no longer going to be harmony with the earth. Where nature had been a garden that freely gave everything the humans needed; now agriculture is going to be hard, as man has to fight for everything he gets from the earth.
We traditionally read this passage as an angry God hurling down punishments on the people; punishments that seem disproportionately harsh for the theft of a piece of fruit. The idea of original sin, especially the version taught by Martin Luther and John Calvin, says that all humans share in the guilt of that fruit theft. This idea claims that all of us will be sent to Hell for eternity. The only way to satisfy God's anger was for there to be a blood sacrifice to atone for human guilt, so God sent Jesus to die on the cross so he would be that sacrifice. While this is a popular view, especially among Evangelical Christians, I have three issues with it:
1) It treats this story as a literal, historical event.
2) It paints a portrait of God as a bloodthirsty monster willing to punish everyone for the crime of one person, and whose anger is only satisfied by the bloody murder of his only child.
3) It really doesn't fit with the story in Genesis, which never mentions either original sin or hell.
When you strip away the doctrines, and read this as a parable, what you see is a God who is more sad than angry. We were made to live in harmony with God, with each other, and with the earth. Because we insist on trying to manipulate and have our own way, there is no harmony and everyone suffers. It's not so much a punishment as it is God saying, "If you insist on living like this, here are the consequences."
That would be a sad note to end on, but there's a moment of grace in the story. In chapter 2, God told the humans that stealing fruit from the tree was a capital crime. They day they broke that rule was supposed to be the day they died.
The culture of the ancient Middle East was a culture of honor in which carrying out your promises, especially in matters of punishment and revenge was very important. If you someone broke your rules, you were expected to punish then swiftly and severely. Failure to do so was looked upon as shameful and a sign of weakness.
Maybe that's why the Church has added the idea of hell and damnation to this story. God's actual punishments are so mild that we think they makes God look like a wimp. This isn't the only story where this will happen. Over and over in the scriptures God threatens harsh punishments, then backs off and saves the people. In the struggle between doing the honorable thing and doing the loving and merciful thing, God chooses mercy. That's not what the people of ancient times wanted, and it's not what many modern Christians want, but we will see it happen again and again.
God's love is scandalous. God is willing to show us mercy, even when that means God will be humiliated in the process. When it comes to honor vs. mercy, God's mercy wins nearly every time in the Bible.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Adam and Eve: Genesis 2:5-24
Read the scripture here in the New Revised Standard version of the Bible or here in the Message version.
The second chapter in Genesis runs together with the first almost seamlessly, yet they are different stories by different writers. You can see that in the name that the writers are using for God. In the first chapter of Genesis the world is created by "God" but in Genesis 2:5 the name suddenly changes to "the Lord God" in the NRSV or GOD in The Message.
The difference between God and GOD (or the Lord God) doesn't seem like a big deal in English but in Hebrew these are two different names. "God" is Elohim while the "Lord God" or "GOD" is a translation of Yahweh. The different names were used in different times and places in the history of Israel.
Things happen in a different order in the two stories. In Genesis 1 first God creates plants, then animals, then people, both male and female. In Genesis 2, first the Lord God creates a man, then plants, then animals and finally a woman. If the Genesis story was meant to be taken literally, these contradictions would be a real problem. Fortunately, this isn't a literal story. Like Genesis 1, it is a parable meant teach us something about the nature of God and people.
What we learn about the Lord God is that he cares for the people he creates. We tend to focus on the forbidden fruit and the punishment, but the Lord provides a lot more. The man is given work to do (tilling the earth), permission (you can eat any of the fruit), and one rule (don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge). The Garden of Eden is a good place. The man is at harmony with God and creation and life is full of blessings.
The greatest blessing in the story is to come. God doesn't want the man to be alone and creates the ideal helper and partner for him. The Lord God causes the man to fall asleep, takes out one of his ribs, and uses it to make a woman. The man is delighted with his new companion and we get a beautiful poetic response that you often hear read at weddings.
It's a beautiful story but it's one that comes with some baggage, mostly because of all the interpretations people have added over the years. Some see here support for their idea that men are superior to woman and others for the idea that gay marriage is against God's purposes.
Let's take these one at a time:
The idea that this story shows that men are superior to women actually comes up in the Bible in 1 Timothy 2:13-15. Paul (though it might not actually be Paul) points to the fact that man was created first and that only the woman was deceived by the serpent.
We'll deal with this more in depth when I blog about the Pastoral Epistles. For now I'll just say three things: First, we should renenber that women appear to be fully equal in the Genesis 1 story. Second, neither of these stories is meant to be understood as literal. They are parables, and it's important not to read extra meaning into a parable. Finally, while Paul (or Deutero-Paul) may see this as proof that women are inferior, that's clearly not the point the author is trying to make. The story is a celebration of woman as the perfect companion to man, and a picture of how wonderful life can be when woman and man live in harmony.
The idea that this story condemns homosexuality, and especially gay marriage is a very modern interpretation. It seems to date back to the 1970's and can be summarized by the slogan, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." More recently, Conservative Christian pundits have refined this and claim that the story of Adam and Eve shows us that the God's plan is one man + one woman = one marriage.
While this story clearly celebrates the idea of man and woman living in harmony, that's really all it says. It doesn't say that gay marriage is wrong, that polygamous marriages are wrong, or that celibacy is wrong. Celebrating one kind of relationship does not imply that different kinds of relationships or approaches are automatically wrong.
I almost wish that the story of Adam and Eve did offer a biblical model of marriage, not because of gay marriage, but because of polygamy. Gay marriage is a loving and equal union between two adults where there is as much protection from abuse as there is in heterosexual marriage. Polygamy is a system in which woman are considered inferior. Men are the absolute rulers of their households and women are treated like property. Physical, emotional and sexual abuse are serious problems in these cultures and women don't have any place they can go for justice.
What is perhaps even worse is that many polygamous cultures allow forcing young girls into marriage and early sexual activity, which can cause profound physical and emotional damage.
I wish that the story of Adam and Eve was had been written as a condemnation of polygamy, but it wasn't. We can see that in the fact that polygamy and concubinage are common in the Bible. Abraham had one wife (Sarah) and one concubine (Hagar). Jacob had two wives (Rachel and Leah) and also had children by their handmaidens (Bilhah and Zilpah). According to 1 Chronicles 3, King David had 7 wives and an unstated number of concubines. Solomon takes the prize with 700 wives and 300 concubines.
The sad truth is that there's no place in the Bible where anyone points to the story of Adam and Eve and uses it to say that polygamy is wrong. Like slavery, polygamy is one of those moral evils that were accepted by ancient peoples. It would be nice to pretend that the story of Adam and Eve condemned this practice but it would be dishonest. It is just as dishonest to pretend that it condemns gay unions.
The truth is that a loving and faithful monogamous marriage is a modern idea. It's a wonderful institution, and mainly a Christian idea, but it's not biblical. That's not to say that that modern married couples can't draw inspiration from the beautiful verses in Genesis 2. For that matter, the idea of living in harmony with God, with each other, and with the created world is something that everyone, married or single, straight or gay, can learn from.
The second chapter in Genesis runs together with the first almost seamlessly, yet they are different stories by different writers. You can see that in the name that the writers are using for God. In the first chapter of Genesis the world is created by "God" but in Genesis 2:5 the name suddenly changes to "the Lord God" in the NRSV or GOD in The Message.
The difference between God and GOD (or the Lord God) doesn't seem like a big deal in English but in Hebrew these are two different names. "God" is Elohim while the "Lord God" or "GOD" is a translation of Yahweh. The different names were used in different times and places in the history of Israel.
Things happen in a different order in the two stories. In Genesis 1 first God creates plants, then animals, then people, both male and female. In Genesis 2, first the Lord God creates a man, then plants, then animals and finally a woman. If the Genesis story was meant to be taken literally, these contradictions would be a real problem. Fortunately, this isn't a literal story. Like Genesis 1, it is a parable meant teach us something about the nature of God and people.
What we learn about the Lord God is that he cares for the people he creates. We tend to focus on the forbidden fruit and the punishment, but the Lord provides a lot more. The man is given work to do (tilling the earth), permission (you can eat any of the fruit), and one rule (don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge). The Garden of Eden is a good place. The man is at harmony with God and creation and life is full of blessings.
The greatest blessing in the story is to come. God doesn't want the man to be alone and creates the ideal helper and partner for him. The Lord God causes the man to fall asleep, takes out one of his ribs, and uses it to make a woman. The man is delighted with his new companion and we get a beautiful poetic response that you often hear read at weddings.
23-25 The Man said,
"Finally! Bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh!
Name her Woman
for she was made from Man."
Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh.
It's a beautiful story but it's one that comes with some baggage, mostly because of all the interpretations people have added over the years. Some see here support for their idea that men are superior to woman and others for the idea that gay marriage is against God's purposes.
Let's take these one at a time:
The idea that this story shows that men are superior to women actually comes up in the Bible in 1 Timothy 2:13-15. Paul (though it might not actually be Paul) points to the fact that man was created first and that only the woman was deceived by the serpent.
We'll deal with this more in depth when I blog about the Pastoral Epistles. For now I'll just say three things: First, we should renenber that women appear to be fully equal in the Genesis 1 story. Second, neither of these stories is meant to be understood as literal. They are parables, and it's important not to read extra meaning into a parable. Finally, while Paul (or Deutero-Paul) may see this as proof that women are inferior, that's clearly not the point the author is trying to make. The story is a celebration of woman as the perfect companion to man, and a picture of how wonderful life can be when woman and man live in harmony.
The idea that this story condemns homosexuality, and especially gay marriage is a very modern interpretation. It seems to date back to the 1970's and can be summarized by the slogan, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." More recently, Conservative Christian pundits have refined this and claim that the story of Adam and Eve shows us that the God's plan is one man + one woman = one marriage.
While this story clearly celebrates the idea of man and woman living in harmony, that's really all it says. It doesn't say that gay marriage is wrong, that polygamous marriages are wrong, or that celibacy is wrong. Celebrating one kind of relationship does not imply that different kinds of relationships or approaches are automatically wrong.
I almost wish that the story of Adam and Eve did offer a biblical model of marriage, not because of gay marriage, but because of polygamy. Gay marriage is a loving and equal union between two adults where there is as much protection from abuse as there is in heterosexual marriage. Polygamy is a system in which woman are considered inferior. Men are the absolute rulers of their households and women are treated like property. Physical, emotional and sexual abuse are serious problems in these cultures and women don't have any place they can go for justice.
What is perhaps even worse is that many polygamous cultures allow forcing young girls into marriage and early sexual activity, which can cause profound physical and emotional damage.
I wish that the story of Adam and Eve was had been written as a condemnation of polygamy, but it wasn't. We can see that in the fact that polygamy and concubinage are common in the Bible. Abraham had one wife (Sarah) and one concubine (Hagar). Jacob had two wives (Rachel and Leah) and also had children by their handmaidens (Bilhah and Zilpah). According to 1 Chronicles 3, King David had 7 wives and an unstated number of concubines. Solomon takes the prize with 700 wives and 300 concubines.
The sad truth is that there's no place in the Bible where anyone points to the story of Adam and Eve and uses it to say that polygamy is wrong. Like slavery, polygamy is one of those moral evils that were accepted by ancient peoples. It would be nice to pretend that the story of Adam and Eve condemned this practice but it would be dishonest. It is just as dishonest to pretend that it condemns gay unions.
The truth is that a loving and faithful monogamous marriage is a modern idea. It's a wonderful institution, and mainly a Christian idea, but it's not biblical. That's not to say that that modern married couples can't draw inspiration from the beautiful verses in Genesis 2. For that matter, the idea of living in harmony with God, with each other, and with the created world is something that everyone, married or single, straight or gay, can learn from.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Creation: Genesis 1:1-2:4
The first chapter in the Bible tells the story of God creating the world. (Read it here in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible or here in The Message version.
This passage has been at the heart of a great deal of controversy. Churchmen in the time of Galileo pointed to the verse where God creates the earth first as evidence that the Earth was the center of the universe. They pointed to the creation of the sun, moon, and stars and said this was clear proof that all these heavenly bodies went around the earth. When Galileo pointed out that his observations demonstrated that the earth must circle the sun, they called him a heretic and forced him to recant his ideas.
When Charles Darwin came up with his famous theory of natural selection (the basis for modern evolutionary biology) many Christians protested. There was no such thing as evolotion, they said. Genesis 1 made it clear that God created all of the animals in one day's time, and in their present forms.
Around the same time, an Irish bishop named James Ussher sat down with the genealogies of the Bible and used them to calculate that the world was less than 6000years old. Bishop Ussher was very precise in his calculations and said that the world had been created on Sunday, Oct. 23, 4004 BC.
Most Christians have long since realized that the earth goes around the sun and that the earth and the universe are billions of years old. The idea that evolution is false is holding on, thanks to the efforts of Scientific Creationists and the Intelligent Design movement, but this too will probably go the way of the dodo before the end of the century.
The problem with these ideas is that they are trying to make the Genesis 1 story mean something that it was never intended to mean. Genesis is not meant to be a text on physical science, geology, or biology. It is not trying to push any scientific theories at all. It is a beautiful and poetic story of God creating the world, but it is about the who of creation, not the how.
The message of Genesis 1 is right there in the first 5 words.
"In the beginning, God created . . ."
This stands in contrast to the creation stories of so many other people who lived in the Middle-East with the Israelites. In their stories, creation was an accident, the collatoral damage of a battle between the gods and the chaos monsters who lived before the earth was formed.
A good example of these other creation myths is the Enûma Eliš from the Babylonian Empire. In this story there is a terrible sea-monster named Tiamat who terrorizes the gods. A young god named Marduk fights Tiamat and kills her, then he rips her body in two and uses half to make the heavens and half to make the earth.
There are a number of other gods who had followed Tiamat in the story. Once she is killed, these gods become Marduk's slaves. Eventually, Marduk decides to have pity on the gods and sets all of them free except for Tiamat's husband Kingu. Marduk kills Kingu and uses his blood to create a new race of slaves to serve the gods. These slaves are the first human beings.
The biblical story is different in many ways, and each of them teaches something about the character of God.
- There is no power struggle in Genesis. Where Marduk or similar deities are seen as very human in their plotting and fighting, God is shown in above such things.
- There is no war in the Genesis story, in fact there is no other being who could fight God. The creation happens without any violence.
- In the Enûma Eliš, creation is an accidental byproduct of a power struggle. In Genesis, God deliberately creates the world, and pronounces it good at each step.
- In the Enûma Eliš, humans are created through murder and are destined to be slaves. In Genesis, God creates human beings "in the image and likeness of God."
Genesis is a huge leap forward in understanding what God is like. It shows a wonderful alternative to the chaotic world of violence and enslavement to uncaring gods.
In Genesis, God is both more powerful and much more loving than the Babylonian gods. God creates, apparantly for the pure joy of creating and the world is bright and good. The world is created with loving care, especially human beings, who are seen as God's beloved children.
Another detail of this story of Creation that always strikes me comes in verse 26-27.
Creation in this passage is totally non-sexist! Male and female are both made in the image and likeness of God.
There is a series of questions I often hear from young students when I point this out. It goes something like this. . .
I'm not sure how well I explain it. I'm not even sure how well I understand it. As I said, God is so big that questions like this are impossible answer. But we have it right there in scripture that male and female seem as equal as equal can be.
The last thing I'd like to mention about this passage is the seventh day. When you ask a Christian how many days Creation took in the Genesis story, they're likely to say, "It took six days, and then God rested for a day." When you ask a Jew the same question you're likely to get (IMO) a wiser answer: "Creation took seven days. The day of rest was part of the Creation."
We (by which I mostly mean modern American Christians) don't really appreciate the significence of a day of rest. For us the need for rest can feel like weakness. We have that great Puritan work ethic that tells us to push on until the job is done. Many studies, and personal experience, have taught me that this is nonsense. When I don't take time to rest and relax, I hurt myself. When I push through working an insane number of hours, I become less productive, not more.
Rest isn't a nice break from the things we do in life; it's an essential part of them. That's something we'll see again later when the 10 Commandments refer back to the story of Creation and the Day of rest.
So, what has this story taught us?
Well, it's let us know that God is the Creator, which implies that creativity is one of God's important traits. It's taught us that all of creation is good for it has been crafted in loving detail. It's taught us we are good also; that we have been created in God's image with (implicitly) the trait of creativity and the capacity to love. It's taught us that all humans are made in God's image and that sexism and other prejudice is a denial of this truth. Finally, it's taught us that rest is an important part of our lives.
It hasn't taught us anything about the scientific facts of how God created anything, but what it has taught us is so much more important if we want to find meaning in our lives and to build loving relationships with God and each other. And that's a good thing.
This passage has been at the heart of a great deal of controversy. Churchmen in the time of Galileo pointed to the verse where God creates the earth first as evidence that the Earth was the center of the universe. They pointed to the creation of the sun, moon, and stars and said this was clear proof that all these heavenly bodies went around the earth. When Galileo pointed out that his observations demonstrated that the earth must circle the sun, they called him a heretic and forced him to recant his ideas.
When Charles Darwin came up with his famous theory of natural selection (the basis for modern evolutionary biology) many Christians protested. There was no such thing as evolotion, they said. Genesis 1 made it clear that God created all of the animals in one day's time, and in their present forms.
Around the same time, an Irish bishop named James Ussher sat down with the genealogies of the Bible and used them to calculate that the world was less than 6000years old. Bishop Ussher was very precise in his calculations and said that the world had been created on Sunday, Oct. 23, 4004 BC.
Most Christians have long since realized that the earth goes around the sun and that the earth and the universe are billions of years old. The idea that evolution is false is holding on, thanks to the efforts of Scientific Creationists and the Intelligent Design movement, but this too will probably go the way of the dodo before the end of the century.
The problem with these ideas is that they are trying to make the Genesis 1 story mean something that it was never intended to mean. Genesis is not meant to be a text on physical science, geology, or biology. It is not trying to push any scientific theories at all. It is a beautiful and poetic story of God creating the world, but it is about the who of creation, not the how.
The message of Genesis 1 is right there in the first 5 words.
"In the beginning, God created . . ."
This stands in contrast to the creation stories of so many other people who lived in the Middle-East with the Israelites. In their stories, creation was an accident, the collatoral damage of a battle between the gods and the chaos monsters who lived before the earth was formed.
A good example of these other creation myths is the Enûma Eliš from the Babylonian Empire. In this story there is a terrible sea-monster named Tiamat who terrorizes the gods. A young god named Marduk fights Tiamat and kills her, then he rips her body in two and uses half to make the heavens and half to make the earth.
There are a number of other gods who had followed Tiamat in the story. Once she is killed, these gods become Marduk's slaves. Eventually, Marduk decides to have pity on the gods and sets all of them free except for Tiamat's husband Kingu. Marduk kills Kingu and uses his blood to create a new race of slaves to serve the gods. These slaves are the first human beings.
The biblical story is different in many ways, and each of them teaches something about the character of God.
- There is no power struggle in Genesis. Where Marduk or similar deities are seen as very human in their plotting and fighting, God is shown in above such things.
- There is no war in the Genesis story, in fact there is no other being who could fight God. The creation happens without any violence.
- In the Enûma Eliš, creation is an accidental byproduct of a power struggle. In Genesis, God deliberately creates the world, and pronounces it good at each step.
- In the Enûma Eliš, humans are created through murder and are destined to be slaves. In Genesis, God creates human beings "in the image and likeness of God."
Genesis is a huge leap forward in understanding what God is like. It shows a wonderful alternative to the chaotic world of violence and enslavement to uncaring gods.
In Genesis, God is both more powerful and much more loving than the Babylonian gods. God creates, apparantly for the pure joy of creating and the world is bright and good. The world is created with loving care, especially human beings, who are seen as God's beloved children.
Another detail of this story of Creation that always strikes me comes in verse 26-27.
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Creation in this passage is totally non-sexist! Male and female are both made in the image and likeness of God.
There is a series of questions I often hear from young students when I point this out. It goes something like this. . .
Student: Wait a minute. Isn't God a man?
Me: Nope, God is God.
Student: But when you see a picture of God it's always a man.
Me: Yeah, but that's not what God really looks like. That's just the artist's idea.
Student: In the movies they always have a guy playing God.
Me: You need to see "Dogma" . . . um, when you're older.
Student: Jesus was a man.
Me: That's true, but there's more to God than Jesus.
Student: So, are you saying that God is like . . . half man and half woman?
Me: Nope. That's still a human picture. God is to big for us to get a really accurate idea of. When we make a picture of God, that's just our imagination coming up with something we can handle. The picture isn't really God.
Student: But you said that men and women both looked like God.
Me: Right! When you see another human being you're looking at someone who resembles God. It doesn't matter whether that person is young or old, man or woman, fat or thin, what color their skin is, or anything like that. We are all made in God's image.
Student: Okay . . . but is God a man or a woman?
Me: . . .
I'm not sure how well I explain it. I'm not even sure how well I understand it. As I said, God is so big that questions like this are impossible answer. But we have it right there in scripture that male and female seem as equal as equal can be.
The last thing I'd like to mention about this passage is the seventh day. When you ask a Christian how many days Creation took in the Genesis story, they're likely to say, "It took six days, and then God rested for a day." When you ask a Jew the same question you're likely to get (IMO) a wiser answer: "Creation took seven days. The day of rest was part of the Creation."
We (by which I mostly mean modern American Christians) don't really appreciate the significence of a day of rest. For us the need for rest can feel like weakness. We have that great Puritan work ethic that tells us to push on until the job is done. Many studies, and personal experience, have taught me that this is nonsense. When I don't take time to rest and relax, I hurt myself. When I push through working an insane number of hours, I become less productive, not more.
Rest isn't a nice break from the things we do in life; it's an essential part of them. That's something we'll see again later when the 10 Commandments refer back to the story of Creation and the Day of rest.
So, what has this story taught us?
Well, it's let us know that God is the Creator, which implies that creativity is one of God's important traits. It's taught us that all of creation is good for it has been crafted in loving detail. It's taught us we are good also; that we have been created in God's image with (implicitly) the trait of creativity and the capacity to love. It's taught us that all humans are made in God's image and that sexism and other prejudice is a denial of this truth. Finally, it's taught us that rest is an important part of our lives.
It hasn't taught us anything about the scientific facts of how God created anything, but what it has taught us is so much more important if we want to find meaning in our lives and to build loving relationships with God and each other. And that's a good thing.
Genesis (Overview)
The book of Genesis is the first book of the Christian Bible and the Hebrew Torah. There is an old tradition that Moses wrote this book, but historians and Bible scholars believe it happened many centuries later.
Genesis is sometimes called the pre-history of the Bible because it's not until the story of Abraham that we find anything that matches up to history. These are the "long ago and far away" stories that the Jewish people told before they were the Jewish people. They reflect the first stirrings of the culture and religion we recognize now. They were preserved by word of mouth for centuries before they were finally written down in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.
Genesis is sometimes called the pre-history of the Bible because it's not until the story of Abraham that we find anything that matches up to history. These are the "long ago and far away" stories that the Jewish people told before they were the Jewish people. They reflect the first stirrings of the culture and religion we recognize now. They were preserved by word of mouth for centuries before they were finally written down in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.
Welcome!
My name is Matthew Baugh. I'm currently the pastor of the First Congregational Church in Lockport, IL. which is a member of the United Church of Christ. I am a graduate of Eden Theological Seminary where I received by Masters of Divinity. That means I had three years of work after college (four actually because I took a 1 year internship) to get this degree which prepared me to be a pastor/theologan (that was the phrase by advisor at seminary really liked, and it's a good description.)
What that means is that I'm pretty smart, have a load of schooling, and know where to go to get good, reliable answers. This does not mean that I am automatically smarter, or more faithful than anyone reading this blog. It certainly doesn't mean that I am always right. In fact, if you think I've missed out on some important facts, or have drawn some conclusions that are not logical, or that I'm just plain wrong, please let me know. I appreciate independent thinkers, that's an indespensible quality for studying the Bible.
If you're used to the approach to the Bible you're likely to see on Christian TV, or hear on Christian radio, my reflections may sound strange. The airwaves are mostly occupied by Evangelical Christians, Fundamentalists and the Christian Right.
While I mean no disrespect to these folks, I come from a differnet branch of the Christian family tree. We are variously called Mainline Protestants,
Progressive Christians, or even (if you want to use the dreaded "L word") Liberal Christians.
That gets me to to my ground rules for writing this blog. These should help explain where I am coming from.
1) I believe that the Bible is true, but that it is not literally true. That word is something modern people have added in to try to defend the scriptures from an increasingly skeptical world. Unfortunately, when we try to read the Bible as literal, we often miss the point it is trying to make. The Bible is true because it it was written by honest and faithful people, not because it was written by people who were history's greatest fact-checkers. It is meant to draw people into a relationship with God, not to provide us with all the factual answers we could ever want.
2) I do not believe that the Bible is inerrant. The Bible is an inspired and inspiring collection of books, but it was still written by human beings. The writers were limited by the times they lived in and so is a lot of what they have to say about the earth and the solar system, the universe in general, biology, medicine, history, and many other topics. If you want to know whether the sun goes around the earth or if it's the earth that goes around the sun, the Bible is not the place to look. However, there are some very important things about God, humanity, justice, mercy, the meaning of life, etc. that the Bible gets better than any book of science or history ever could.
3) I do not believe that the Bible is free from contradiction. The people who wrote the scriptures had profound faith, and many were brilliant, but none of them were perfect. They sometimes told different versions of the same story. Their writing reflects their different ideas about the nature of God. Despite this, there are some powerful themes that shine through that have touched people's lives for millennia and continue to do so.
4) I do believe that the Bible should be read critically to be properly understood. This may seem irreverent, but it's not. In fact, critical reading is actually a part of exegesis, which is the word for the technique of reading the Bible without accidentally adding things that aren't really there. Asking questions is very important if you're serious about Bible study, and no question should be off limits.
4) A lot of what we think is in the Bible isn't really there. Christianity is 2000 years old so there are all millennia of doctrine and sermons that have been layered on on top of the scripture. What we will be doing in this blog is trying to strip away all the extra baggage so that we can understand the scriptures better.
5) There are some popular theological questions that this blog is not going to address. For example, I am not going to go into trying to prove the existence of God. That doesn't mean that I think there's anything wrong with the question, it's just that would be very off topic here. Besides, I have another blog for stuff like that.
With all that in place, let's go!
What that means is that I'm pretty smart, have a load of schooling, and know where to go to get good, reliable answers. This does not mean that I am automatically smarter, or more faithful than anyone reading this blog. It certainly doesn't mean that I am always right. In fact, if you think I've missed out on some important facts, or have drawn some conclusions that are not logical, or that I'm just plain wrong, please let me know. I appreciate independent thinkers, that's an indespensible quality for studying the Bible.
If you're used to the approach to the Bible you're likely to see on Christian TV, or hear on Christian radio, my reflections may sound strange. The airwaves are mostly occupied by Evangelical Christians, Fundamentalists and the Christian Right.
While I mean no disrespect to these folks, I come from a differnet branch of the Christian family tree. We are variously called Mainline Protestants,
Progressive Christians, or even (if you want to use the dreaded "L word") Liberal Christians.
That gets me to to my ground rules for writing this blog. These should help explain where I am coming from.
1) I believe that the Bible is true, but that it is not literally true. That word is something modern people have added in to try to defend the scriptures from an increasingly skeptical world. Unfortunately, when we try to read the Bible as literal, we often miss the point it is trying to make. The Bible is true because it it was written by honest and faithful people, not because it was written by people who were history's greatest fact-checkers. It is meant to draw people into a relationship with God, not to provide us with all the factual answers we could ever want.
2) I do not believe that the Bible is inerrant. The Bible is an inspired and inspiring collection of books, but it was still written by human beings. The writers were limited by the times they lived in and so is a lot of what they have to say about the earth and the solar system, the universe in general, biology, medicine, history, and many other topics. If you want to know whether the sun goes around the earth or if it's the earth that goes around the sun, the Bible is not the place to look. However, there are some very important things about God, humanity, justice, mercy, the meaning of life, etc. that the Bible gets better than any book of science or history ever could.
3) I do not believe that the Bible is free from contradiction. The people who wrote the scriptures had profound faith, and many were brilliant, but none of them were perfect. They sometimes told different versions of the same story. Their writing reflects their different ideas about the nature of God. Despite this, there are some powerful themes that shine through that have touched people's lives for millennia and continue to do so.
4) I do believe that the Bible should be read critically to be properly understood. This may seem irreverent, but it's not. In fact, critical reading is actually a part of exegesis, which is the word for the technique of reading the Bible without accidentally adding things that aren't really there. Asking questions is very important if you're serious about Bible study, and no question should be off limits.
4) A lot of what we think is in the Bible isn't really there. Christianity is 2000 years old so there are all millennia of doctrine and sermons that have been layered on on top of the scripture. What we will be doing in this blog is trying to strip away all the extra baggage so that we can understand the scriptures better.
5) There are some popular theological questions that this blog is not going to address. For example, I am not going to go into trying to prove the existence of God. That doesn't mean that I think there's anything wrong with the question, it's just that would be very off topic here. Besides, I have another blog for stuff like that.
With all that in place, let's go!
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