The Bible Project Day 2 - part 2

This blog is a chronological project. This is day two of 365 days of material.

If this is your first time reading please click here to start at the beginning

After a 10 month hiatus I am finally back to this project. I went through another rough patch with my mental and emotional health, but I finally feel like I have come back to the surface after being underwater. Let's get back to Genesis. I am picking back up in Genesis chapter 5. 

Chapter 5 is all genealogy. Genealogy passages are difficult to get through for me, and this was no exception, but something I know now that I didn't know before is the purpose they serve. The point of the Bible, contrary to a commonly held misbelief, is not to be a rule book for how to live. The overarching narrative of the bible is to tell the story of how Jesus fulfills the covenant promise that God made to Abraham. This covenant was that God would bless all the nations through Abraham's family. These genealogies from chapter 5 (and all the others that I know are coming) are laying the foundation to be able to trace the genealogy of Jesus to Abraham's family line. That itself is actually kind of cool to me, but yikes, these are still really boring to read in and of themselves. Something that did catch my eye was that Noah (of Noah's ark fame) was born to a man named Lamech. It made me wonder if this is the same Lamech who the video for day one's material points out for being violent and the first polygamist. A quick google search tells me this is not the case. Two different Lamechs. It was also really bizarre to consider the life spans of the people written about in the book of Genesis as they were absurdly long.

Chapter 6 begins really weirdly, Verses 1-4 is a perfect example of the type of passage that has always given me a lot of trouble. In these types of passages, I read the words on the page and just feel like I must not actually speak English or something. The sentence structure is just plain awkward. Additionally, these types of passages use words and phrases that are just not common knowledge any more. In this particular passage, there is zero context to give me any sort of idea who or what these "sons of God" or "Nephilim" are. Historically, reading these types passages makes me feel like I am just missing some key piece of information that would make it easier to understand what the passage is talking about and why its important enough to be here. In the past, this kind of confusion would frustrate me and I would just give up and walk away. However, I really do not want to do that this time. I might take 10 month hiatuses every now and then ;-) but I am determined to see this project to the end. I am so thankful to have these bible project videos to watch as I read, because these two phrases were specifically mentioned in back in day one's video.

Coincidentally enough, about 3 months ago, I actually heard a fascinating lecture that included information on the sons of God and the Nephilim, and it was one of the most interesting lectures I have ever heard. The lecture was about how in our present day time and culture we have mostly lost any appreciation for or belief in the reality of the spiritual realm. This heavily influences the way we read and interpret scriptures because they were written to an audience that understood certain concepts and phrases and references. The speaker gave some historical context and then traced a theme through out the old and new testament in light of the information he presented. It was so cool to really see and understand the connections he made. He heavily recommended a book that he used as reference material and we did purchase it from Amazon. Joey has read some of it but I haven't yet.

Immediately following those weird first four verses is a pretty widely known story that carries through to the end of chapter 7. I think most people regardless of religious background have probably heard the story of Noah taking all the animals two by two into the ark until the flood waters receded. I have seen many a poster in children's class rooms of the ark with all the animals. There is even a fisher-price Noah's ark toy. Overall, the imagery used is usually pretty light-hearted. It wasn't until recently that I realized how bizarre that actually is. I never really thought much of this story until I had a child of my own and I started reading him the Jesus Storybook Bible at night before bed. When we got to this story, I was just overcome by thinking about what it would have been like to have drowned in the flood, and that thought has sorted of haunted me ever since. I am really hoping maybe there will be a future video that will help me digest this story more. 

Within the story of Noah, we have again what appears to be a contradiction. In Chapter 6, God tells Noah to bring two of every animal with him, but then in chapter 7 he tells Noah to bring the animals by seven pairs. I googled, and this is a popular question. There were a LOT of results. Apparently, one pair was to help that species repopulate the earth, and the extra animals were for sacrificing after the flood had ended. I came across a statement that basically said because it doesn't say "take ONLY one pair" in one place and "take seven pairs" in another, its not really a contradiction. Technically I can agree that is true, but I think anyone would have to agree, that it is still odd. 

Another note about the way this particular scripture is written - Chapter 7 is incredibly repetitive. I kept feeling my eyes kind of glazing over as I read it. I kept waiting to come to some new information and when it was just a slightly different rehashing of the same information I thought, I must have read this wrong, and go back and do it again. No, it basically repeats the exact same details with slightly different sentences. I have heard that when something is repeated its usually for emphasis because its important. But I really don't understand why these particular details in this particular passage would be that important?

Something that does stick out to me about this story that I have never really pondered before is the fact that God didn't entirely wipe out everything. He chose to take a representative population of each animal (and one family of humans) to repopulate rather than starting from scratch. I feel like it wasn't probably wasn't because he was just feeling lazy and didn't want to go through the hassle of making everything a second time. I think his choice for repopulating over recreating has a point to prove so to speak. The world didn't go badly because he did a bad job creating everything. He didn't say, "Whooops! Gotta go back to the drawing board and tweak a thing or two". When things went bad it was because humans made bad choices, not because creation had fundamental design flaws.