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.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
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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