Day 1, Genesis 1-15

Good morning! I am reporting fresh and early to my first day of bible blogging, although I can't guarantee that this timeliness will be the norm. To my great chagrin, my computer spent about three hours updating itself this morning, giving me a nice window of time to do my first session with the good ol' testament.

The first fifteen chapters of Genesis contain, notably, the creation myth, Adam and Eve's encounter with the serpent and expulsion from the Garden of Eden,  Cain's murder of his brother Abel, the story of Noah's ark, the Tower of Babel, and Abram's journey to Canaan. Genesis 15 ends with God promising the childless Abram that his descendants will equal the number of stars in the sky. God forewarns of the Hebrew enslavement in Egypt, and makes a covenant with Abram.

It was a little surprising to me how much happens in just a few short chapters of the bible, and also how much of the text I was mostly unfamiliar with. The story of the Garden of Eden is well known to everyone, but after the expulsion I was surprised by the bombardment of names, recognizable to me only because I do like six crossword puzzles a day... Sons after sons after sons, most of whom I have never heard of. I was delighted to see a man named Kenan appear, and happily await the arrival of Kel at some point.

These biblical characters, perhaps due to their magnitude of offspring, are not entirely creative in naming their children. Both an Enoch and an Enosh appeared during these first fifteen chapters of Genesis. Come on, guys. Throw a Buster in there once in awhile!

Interestingly, the first two chapters of Genesis are somewhat contradictory, offering two separate accounts of the creation myth; these are later merged. The first chapter depicts God emerging from nothingness, using language to mold the chaos into recognizable form. "Let there be light, let there be water, let there be land, etc." In this version he creates all people -- men and women -- at once, but in the second chapter he creates only Adam, and later makes Eve from his rib. In my younger and more irreverent days I was morbidly delighted by the fact that supposedly all people originated from Adam and Eve -- meaning that Cain and his brothers, in order to produce offspring, would need to have sex with their mother or possibly sisters -- but this is not the case. After the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, some elements of the original creation myth return and the presence of other people on earth is alluded to.

It is interesting to me how the bible differentiates little from any other book of mythology, seeking to explain seemingly unexplainable reality: man has to toil for his food as punishment for the first sin, enmity exists between humans and snakes because of the encounter in the Garden of Eden, women experience painful childbirth because it was Eve who tempted Adam with the fruit of knowledge.

I would also like to share a confusion of mine that has been clarified. I'm sure that if you have any familiarity with the bible at all, you have at some point been bewildered by the fact that Adam and his kin supposedly live to anywhere from 700 to 900 years of age. Actually, the bible writers depict their characters living progressively shorter lives, to demonstrate the effects of sin on mankind. How interesting!

I will wrap up this entry by talking about the flood. One question occurred to me while reading: what happened to the fish? Don't they count as creatures too? Obviously they would be unaffected by rain unless it was fatally acidic or something. I guess the fish were exempt from God's destruction of the world, which makes sense in a way, since I don't think fish are particularly sinful creatures.

The story of Noah also contains a passage that has been used as recently as the 19th century to justify white enslavement of blacks in America. The absurdity of the passage has provided me with one of my first genuine WHAT THE FUCK?!!! moments, both because of the content itself and the way it has been put to use in recent history.

Basically, Noah plants a vineyard and gets drunk. He passes out naked in a cave, where his son Ham sees him. Ham goes out to tell his brothers, who walk into the cave backwards and drop a blanket over their father to avoid seeing his naked form. Ham, "blackened" by the sin of seeing his unclothed father, is punished: "Cursed be Canaan!" says Noah, "The lowest of slaves / will he be to his brothers" (Genesis 9:25).

Apparently there are further interpretations of this event, which I will have to read at some point, because as it stands alone it is pretty weird and retarded.

Although I said I would finish with the flood, and leave the story of Abram for tomorrow, I would like to share one more "what the fuck" moment before I end this. In chapter 12 of Genesis, Abram and his wife Sarai travel into Egypt. Abram, fearing that he will be killed if the beautiful Sarai is known to be his wife, tells the Egyptians that she is his sister. She shacks up with the Pharaoh, who is subsequently punished by God with horrific disease. The Pharoah confronts Abram in Genesis 12:18-19: "What have you done to me?...Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!" I will rephrase this in more simple terms: "GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY, ASSHOLE FREAK!!!"

What a weird book this is! I am excited for the readings to come.