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And heaven don't tear you apart
Jan. 15th, 2018 01:25 pm
A few quick notes on what's come down the pipe today from Bible Gateway, namely, Genesis 8-11:
1. (a) Years ago I formed the hypothesis (but apparently never mentioned here, I'm surprised to find) that the reason God resolves not to try to kill off the bad humans anymore after Noah makes burnt offerings of each of the clean animals right after he gets off the ark is that the smell of burning flesh makes him realize that even the best humans like Noah are pretty much psychopaths. I'm disappointed to find that that doesn't hold up in light of more literal translations of the adjective the KJV has as "sweet", describing the smell of the burnt offerings--the NRSV and NIV have "pleasant", and Strong's indicates the sense of the root is "comforting". So apparently God really does enjoy the smell of burning flesh, and (apparently) decides to be more forgiving of humans because of it. (b) Noah's sacrifice, as with Cain's and Abel's, is performed spontaneously, without any instruction from God, and is the first specifically burnt offering in the bible. The sacrifices of Cain and Abel, as far as you can tell from the story itself, may as well as anything else have been brought and laid fresh at the very feet of God, who, after all, at that point, is portrayed as a guy walking around. And it strikes me that maybe God likes the meat better because that's God food, as opposed to vegetables, which are people food (with meat becoming permissible people food only after the flood).
2. The sense I got of the Tower of Babel in Sunday School, which is where I extremely vaguely remember first hearing of it, was that God's problem with it was that it was supposed to go all the way up to heaven, which is where God lives, and no one is allowed to go there except on God's say-so. What God actually says is his problem with it is that it's evidence that if people are allowed to continue to share a common language and understand each other, there's nothing they can't do. To this point in Genesis there has been nothing (although there will be soon, after Abraham and his crew show up) indicating that God lives in heaven; he does "come down" to see the city and tower, but the text doesn't say from where. Heaven didn't exist, or at least wasn't separate from Earth, before the creation in Genesis 1, so it's not God's original and eternal home or something. "Heaven" is just sky; it's what birds fly around in and rain comes out of. So making a tower that rises into "heaven" is just ... making a tower. Now: the people say they are doing it to "make a name" for themselves, which obviously can be read as idolizing themselves (and this is the kind of reading that gets so much taken for granted in Sunday School and whatnot that it's hard to get over). But, first, "make a name for yourself" in the sense of establishing prestige for yourself is a figure of speech in colloquial English; I have no idea whether the same figure of speech existed for the Genesis author. (Maybe it did, but God knows how long it would take to cut through all the noise generated by Sunday School Christians to find out.) Second, they say that they want to make a name for themselves because "otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth." The point of making a tower that rises above the landscape so that they can orient themselves and find their way home by it, and of making a name for themselves so that they know who they all are, is to remain united and not become lost and strangers to each other. In response, God does to them exactly what they were building the city and the tower to prevent--he scatters them across the face of the earth and makes them unable to understand each other.
(I wonder how many other people, when they imagine the Tower of Babel, picture it leaning.)
Currently at Havelock: -12.1.
1. (a) Years ago I formed the hypothesis (but apparently never mentioned here, I'm surprised to find) that the reason God resolves not to try to kill off the bad humans anymore after Noah makes burnt offerings of each of the clean animals right after he gets off the ark is that the smell of burning flesh makes him realize that even the best humans like Noah are pretty much psychopaths. I'm disappointed to find that that doesn't hold up in light of more literal translations of the adjective the KJV has as "sweet", describing the smell of the burnt offerings--the NRSV and NIV have "pleasant", and Strong's indicates the sense of the root is "comforting". So apparently God really does enjoy the smell of burning flesh, and (apparently) decides to be more forgiving of humans because of it. (b) Noah's sacrifice, as with Cain's and Abel's, is performed spontaneously, without any instruction from God, and is the first specifically burnt offering in the bible. The sacrifices of Cain and Abel, as far as you can tell from the story itself, may as well as anything else have been brought and laid fresh at the very feet of God, who, after all, at that point, is portrayed as a guy walking around. And it strikes me that maybe God likes the meat better because that's God food, as opposed to vegetables, which are people food (with meat becoming permissible people food only after the flood).
2. The sense I got of the Tower of Babel in Sunday School, which is where I extremely vaguely remember first hearing of it, was that God's problem with it was that it was supposed to go all the way up to heaven, which is where God lives, and no one is allowed to go there except on God's say-so. What God actually says is his problem with it is that it's evidence that if people are allowed to continue to share a common language and understand each other, there's nothing they can't do. To this point in Genesis there has been nothing (although there will be soon, after Abraham and his crew show up) indicating that God lives in heaven; he does "come down" to see the city and tower, but the text doesn't say from where. Heaven didn't exist, or at least wasn't separate from Earth, before the creation in Genesis 1, so it's not God's original and eternal home or something. "Heaven" is just sky; it's what birds fly around in and rain comes out of. So making a tower that rises into "heaven" is just ... making a tower. Now: the people say they are doing it to "make a name" for themselves, which obviously can be read as idolizing themselves (and this is the kind of reading that gets so much taken for granted in Sunday School and whatnot that it's hard to get over). But, first, "make a name for yourself" in the sense of establishing prestige for yourself is a figure of speech in colloquial English; I have no idea whether the same figure of speech existed for the Genesis author. (Maybe it did, but God knows how long it would take to cut through all the noise generated by Sunday School Christians to find out.) Second, they say that they want to make a name for themselves because "otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth." The point of making a tower that rises above the landscape so that they can orient themselves and find their way home by it, and of making a name for themselves so that they know who they all are, is to remain united and not become lost and strangers to each other. In response, God does to them exactly what they were building the city and the tower to prevent--he scatters them across the face of the earth and makes them unable to understand each other.
(I wonder how many other people, when they imagine the Tower of Babel, picture it leaning.)
Currently at Havelock: -12.1.
