My Notes:
CH.1: In the beginning God created. Verse 26: Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness..." This to me says that the triune God has always been. That Jesus was there in the beginning too, one with God. Verses 29-30: Then God said, " I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food." This will come up again later in the post, wait for it.
CH.2: Adam and Eve. They way God intended things to be. Perfection.
CH.3: The Fall. Just wanted to point out here that woman was tempted by the devil and man was tempted by mere woman, and yet we get all the blame. Also, man was right there with the woman and he was cool with it. Both woman and man are at fault.
CH.4: Cain and Abel. The first murder. Also, a popular question - Who was Cain's wife? I'm going to have to assume that since people lived for so long then, and Adam lived for 930 years (5:4) we can deduce that he had several daughters as well and that Cain's wife would have been either a sister or a niece. This sounds gross but, Adam and Eve had to populate the whole world, what do you expect? Plus, it's not like incestuous relations caused birth defects and such at the time because there weren't any genetic imperfections yet (which takes time), nor was it considered wrong.
CH.5: Basically this is a lineage chapter to get us to Noah.
CH. 6: God's not too happy. Up until now people were living crazy long lives. Now in 6:3 we see how the Lord's spirit "will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years". Basically at this point God is upset with man and understands that man is corrupt. He also gets to the point that He wishes he never created us to begin with because of our wickedness, so He proceeds to flood the earth. He did show mercy and favor to Noah however, who was a good man who walked with God.
I also found it cool in this chapter that it talks about Nephilim which I looked up, and found out that word means "giants". Also, it talks about "sons of God" which could be angels? Rob disagrees with me on this, but we are both unsure what "sons of God" could mean since it talks about how before the flood these giants and "sons of God" were on the earth as well, and taking regular women and basically producing the "heroes of old, men of renown" with them, which I found very interesting. Maybe this is were some of the stories of Hercules and such really originate from? Who knows.
CH.7: The Flood. Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives get on the ark, along with the animals. The flood comes, the flood goes. God makes peace with His creation after this (which is also somewhat symbolized with the olive branch/dove scene). In verses 21-22 God promises "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease."
CH. 9: Furthermore God makes a covenant that never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth. The rainbow is the sign of this covenant, and is a reminder today. Also, another interesting thing in Ch. 9 is in verse 3 where it says, "Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything." This links back to what I quoted in Ch. 1 (and told you to wait for). It leads me to believe that before the flood, people were vegetarians but, after the flood, God said it was okay to eat meat. This is one reason I feel justified in eating my chicken sandwich. Yum.
CH. 10: Nimrod. This chapter seems to give us more lineage information. Also, I see the name Nimrod introduced. This made me reflect on the way that word is used today (negatively). It makes me wonder where that usage originated because here it talks about Nimrod being a mighty warrior and hunter. Just found that interesting.
CH. 11: The tower of Babel. Okay, basically I'm confused here. Right from the start in Ch. 11 it says "Now the whole world had one language and a common speech". This leads to the tower of Babel incident and the people (who all spoke the same language) got too ambitious and tried to compete with God it seems rather than serve Him. But, in Ch. 10 it talked about how people HAD different clans and languages. So, confused. Rob seems to think that Ch. 10 family history stuff is basically telling us about what is to come for these family lines and as such it isn't technically chronological in the sense I was taking it (that they already had different languages before Babel). So, I'm not sure here. I guess that makes sense though. It was setting up the family lineage and then proceeded to tell the stories about them, I get that I guess. One other big question I have is HEY, Ch. 6 just told us man was only going to live as long as 120 anymore, remember? But, in Ch. 11 we see people living to 400 again and stuff. THIS I have no answer for, and welcome comments and help. Maybe this is a gradual process (the age thing). Hopefully my notes aren't too scatterbrained. Let me know how I'm doing so I can tweak things for next time. Have a good night.
EDIT: Additional notes 8/7/12:
Some more commentary on the long life spans - After reading in Halley's Bible Handbook I noticed that the ages really began to get shorter after the Flood. Also, here is a quote from the book, "sin had only begun to have its malign influence on the human race". This seems to be implying that earlier in the overall story of the Bible, people lived longer because they were yet to be as removed from perfection. Like, sin began to cause a slow decay in humankind and the further removed we became, the shorter our lifespans until they somewhat leveled out. I found this interesting and had never looked at it that way before, but it is one idea.
I don't know if you view these books literally or metaphorically in your personal beliefs, but let me offer what I was exposed to growing up. In my Catholic upbringing, the early books of the Bible - up until you reach Exodus - are viewed as metaphors rather than literal tales of absolute truth. So, you know, Adam and Eve and the garden didn't necessarily ACTUALLY exist, but the tale is something that aligns roughly to how human existence began, and something that can serve as useful instructions to us in the modern day. I.e., perhaps man was created and then fell from God's graces through his actions, but this happened in a way that didn't involve a tree and a snake and an apple, for example.
ReplyDeleteThis is also used to help write off time age discrepencies and such - God's "7 days" of creation may not have been what we consider 7 days, but rather, eons - which would seem like 7 days to God. Why do they sometimes contradict, though, as in the issues of man living to "120 years" and then "400 years"? The number "40" is used frequently throughout the Bible - it's a number with meaning, much like 7 or 6. And in the "metaphorical" perspective, " 40" means "a period of long trial/hardship." Adding another 0 doesn't literally mean 400 years, but is simply a way of saying "A lengthy life of trials and hardships." In this view, it's basically like saying that his life FELT like it was 400 years.
If you want to take a more literal approach, I could argue that there were simply different yardsticks of age measurement that were used in different eras, and this was naturally understood/assumed to the early readership.