Time to rock this.
WARNING: A lot of this post comes down to "I have no idea what is going on in these passages." I wouldn't call the last two posts insightful, but they were at least taking the verses and building ideas on top of them. In this post, I'm just really confused and bewildered and heated.
Genesis 8I like the imagery of the dove.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. 21 And when the Lord smelt the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
22 As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
shall not cease.’
These people seem to be following some form of God's law, but we don't know what. Why isn't the book telling the reader?
And really, why is it God seems to reveal his law so incrementally over time? It always applies to everyone, right? What if Noah didn't have access to the rules of sacrifice the Israelites did? He'd be sacrificing for nothing. I'd guess God revealed some form of his law to them, but how much and why? I'm just looking at this from the perspective of Christian fundamentalism.
And I'm driving myself crazy. I guess the point I'm making is that if I'm God, I'm using the full powers of my omnipresence. If someone wanted to ask me a question - boom - I would be there. And my word would be completely unopen to interpretation, which wouldn't matter since I could answer any questions anyway. Not sure if you should bang that whore? BAM! I could tell you not to.
What I definitely wouldn't do is make my word so incomprehensible to anyone with even an ounce of skepticism towards it. la;skdjfasoidjvlakjdalskdj
Unfortunately I think I'm sounding more insulting than I want to be. I'm just really really baffled.
It seems The Bible is predicated on the idea humanity is naturally evil, which honestly may be true. It seems we can train ourselves to be good, but otherwise we just want eat and reproduce, whatever the cost. But I'm not really sure, whatever semi-abstract notion of humanity is on my mind, my mind starts seeing the evidence from that perspective.
This passage seems to contradict the idea of the apocalypse. Otherwise, isn't the whole idea of God not wiping out humanity contradicted?
Genesis 9God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
This is something I hear about a lot, and it bothers me.
If you ask a conservative Christian if you should have kids, the answer you get will be yes and this passage will likely be used as support.
But this seems more specifically direct at Noah than anything else. Why does it necessarily mean that YOU should have kids? Or that there's something wrong with you if you don't? Then again, we're all supposedly still suffering the consequences of original sin, so maybe this mandate does still apply to all of us. I feel confused.
I need to break down the rest of this piece by piece.
Verses 2-3 basically say we own the Earth and animals are afraid of us. My dogs don't exactly fear and dread me though, so I don't understand the use of such language in a situation where the opposite is shown to be true in actual Earthly behavior.
Still, I don't understand how you're supposed to be a Christian and an animal rights supporter. This verse seems super explicit on the idea that they don't have any. This doesn't mean we can destroy the Earth either, but we're supposed to run the show.
But isn't this a weirdly human centric thought? This sounds like a writer trying to justify the power of humanity in cosmic terms, the myth thing again.
4 Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.
6 Whoever sheds the blood of a human,
by a human shall that person’s blood be shed;
for in his own image
God made humankind.
I don't understand verse four. We have to kill things before eating them? We can't eat raw steaks?
And from there I just get completely lost. I don't understand any of it. Sorry.
I don't understand why this chapter is so repetitive. ALso, we see the rainbow being explained - more of the Greek myth thing. This isn't necessarily impossible. If you're God you can change the laws of physics however you want. But in the context of world history it's again suspicious.
Just like God not acting omniscient, I might need to stop mentioning these every time they happen. It gets repetitive at some point. I just want to again mention the overall point I guess - these scriptures are following a pattern that's common throughout all religions. In this respect, it's not unique or special, which takes away from it in my eyes.
20 Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. 21 He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23 Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. 24 When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
‘Cursed be Canaan;
lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.’
26 He also said,
‘Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave.
27 May God make space for* Japheth,
and let him live in the tents of Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave.’
I don't think I understand what's happening here. Why is Canaan cursed for his father's crime? What is his father's crime even? Why does Noah have the authority to dole out these curses and blessings?
What's the moral lesson of this story? Why is it in the Bible?
Genesis 10Does anything important happen in this Genealogy? It feels like explaining things that can be done better by archeology. Why is Nimrod a word for idiot when in the Bible he's a mighty warrior? Why does it curiously omit the fact that Noah's sons had to have sex with someone - namely his daughters. The Bible is generally pretty brutal and uncompromising, why not just state the bitter truth?
Genesis 11Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as they migrated from the east
Then I look at the footnotes: "Or migrated eastward."
Another thing I'm going to stop mentioning so much to avoid repetition - Basic facts being wrong or vague.
I don't understand the Tower of Babel story. It seems to be stating that humanity was divided into multiple languages because they were trying to build a tower so high that it would reach into the heavens and their having the same language meant nothing would be impossible for them.
I'm forced to wonder - again - how effective God's punishment here is. We've since mastered space travel. In fact, because the Russians were in competition with us, a people with a different language, they were more motivated to get into space as quickly as they could.
Maybe this is a story about human arrogance and how we needed to be taken down a notch. But the whole thing about humans becoming more powerful and God seemingly primarily motivated by that colors the whole thing against that theory.
The whole thing seems to portray a God that's very insecure about others being even remotely as powerful as him, even though ultimately he holds all the keys. This makes zero sense to me.
Side question, why are people living longer than 120 years long after God said no one would do this?
The overriding questions of this post:Why am I seemingly reading this completely wrong? Everyone else in the universe seems to interpret this text completely differently from me or at least understands its intent.