Genesis 38-50, Exodus 1-6

I increasingly feel like I'm writing these posts for the sake of it. I wanted to work through parts of the Bible that made me question the reliability of the text, but of course there are lots of chapters that, whilst interesting, don't pose any of these issues for me. Therefore, I've decided to limit my writing to just those times when I feel like I have something to say (you may disagree!) and in between then I'll just do a weekly round up of the chapters I've read.

This reading takes me up to the 18th January: Genesis 38-40, Genesis 41-42, Genesis 43-45, Genesis 46-47, Genesis 48-50, Exodus 1-3, Exodus 4-6.

The story of Joseph is awesome - it's got betrayal, emotion, family reunions, and the impressive example of Joseph retaining his faith in God depite being thrown in prison for a crime he didn't commit (like the A-Team). Of course, he eventually triumphs and is raised to a position of great honour.

I don't know about you, but when I was a kid the musical of 'Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat' was a big hit. I am not now a fan of any type of Andrew Lloyd Webber based entertainment. I would rather you removed my fingernails with tweezers. But when I was in primary school the musical of Joseph was where it was at. I had the soundtrack (on cassette, naturally, CDs and iPods still being a twinkle in techno-barons' eyes) and me and several of my precocious, some may say obnoxious, school chums had memorised the words to all the songs. To this day I am still unable to read the chapters about Joseph without singing "Jacob was the founder of a whole new nation, thanks to the number of children he had. He was also known as Israel, but most of the time, his sons and his wives used to call him dad . . . . " Brilliant lyrics, I think you'll agree. I also still picture Joseph as either Jason Donovan or Phillip Schofield with mullet hair. These chapters are therefore fun for me!

As we move into the early chapters of Exodus (Moses played by Charlton Heston, of course) I anticipate that I'll butt up against a few more problems as I try to investigate whether there's any historical evidence for the exodus from Egypt. But that's a struggle for another day.

Genesis 27 - 37

I am now so behind on blogging the Bible that it’s necessary to jump straight in and cover ten chapters in a couple of paragraphs. I can only blame my tardiness on a combination of sickness, a family event in Scotland, and an unwise purchasing of a Netflix subscription.

There is no time for seduction here, people.

No asking ‘how are you, and what have you been up to’?

No trying to link the stories to the events of my own week or attempts at fancy-pants writing.

So, as the Bishop said to the actress, shall we begin?

For this blog post I’ve read Genesis 27-29, Genesis 30-31, Genesis 32-34, and Genesis 35-37 (and if you want to understand what I’ll be talking about, you should too). I’m going to write the following in bullet points as there isn’t really a unifying theme.

• In these chapters, as in several before, we see people making the same mistakes again and again. On first reading this struck me as unrealistic and an indication the writers were simply repeating a theme, or stating the same story twice with slightly different variations. After considering it a while, however, I started to see it as fairly true to life. We do repeat the same mistakes again and again, and no matter how many times we get burned, often seem caught in negative patterns of behaviour. This can be doubly true in families, where the sins of the father are often repeated in the next generation: “Man hands on misery to man” and all that.

• I have no idea why God favours Jacob over Esau. Both seem kind of awful. However, this is illustrative yet again of how God’s covenant is not about the merits of the individual but the grace of God. His covenant continues from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, and they are under God’s protection as a result (IT’S A POINTER TO JESUS, PEOPLE!)

• Interestingly, the place where Jacob has his dream and states as a holy place of God was actually Palestine (which, spoiler, later on features as an important place of God! That Jacob knew what he was talking about).

• Whilst God protects Jacob, He certainly doesn’t shield him from all hardship or the consequences of his actions. It is a cosmic act of karma that Jacob, who cheated his brother of his father’s blessing, is now cheated by his father in law (Here sing “You reap what you sow” in a deep Lou Reed voice).

• Can I just state that I feel bad for Leah throughout these chapters? She suffers numerous indignations from the menfolk in her life as a result of not being “the pretty one”. It also sounds ridiculous that Jacob wouldn’t have known who he was sleeping with on his wedding night, but I can only assume the combination of no electric lighting and Leah wearing a veil fooled him.

• Next we read about both Leah and Rachel giving their slaves to Jacob to sleep with out of sibling rivalry, in a dysfunctional nuclear arms race to bear him the most children. This is where I lose patience with these people!  This whole chapter is basically like an episode of the Jeremy Kyle show.

• What DOES move me is Esau’s greeting of Jacob after twenty years, which is impressively forgiving. The fact that as I read this part of the story I am yelling at the page “punch him in the nose!” suggests I may have trouble forgiving easily, and this may be something I need to pray about. However, both parties have clearly matured since last they met, as Jacob at least recognises he did his brother wrong, and prepares goods to send to him as a means of apology (although I suspect fear of getting pulverised by his big, hairy brother was definitely a motivating factor)

• The rape of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, is a horrible chapter, made especially weird when the perpetrator seeks her hand in marriage afterwards. This makes slightly more sense after reading that rape was apparently a Hivite custom and the usual procedure for obtaining a wife in Hivite culture, but I would suggest that flowers and dinner may be a better option.

• Finally, the tension between Joseph’s brothers is understandable when you take into account the favouritism shown to Joseph by Jacob (Joseph is the first natural son by his favourite wife, Rachel) and the competition between all the various wives and brothers of this family. Seriously, these guys are a really good advert for monogamy in marriage if you want to avoid warring factions, jealousy, and avoiding one of your children being thrown into a bear pit then sold into slavery.

I Miss Rollerskates and Why Praying Is Like Killing Mosquitoes.

When I was eight or nine I used to roller skate home after school. The journey covered field, road and quite a lot of bumpy pathway, so there were really only a couple of stretches of smooth pavement where I could actually skate as opposed to shuffle, but I loved being in skates so much that the driveway at home wasn't enough, the roller disco on Saturdays wasn't enough - I’d put up with the difficult bits on the way home just to get to wear them a bit more.

Oh happy days

 I was reminded of this in church yesterday, listening to a preach on the sense of wonder we have as children which can often get lost as we grow up. Children have an amazing ability to get excited about things. Their energy for something they love is astounding.

  

I love drawing and going to art galleries - it’s one of those activities that make me feel connected to the world and part of who God made me to be. But now I'm a grown up, I make a lot of excuses for not doing them.

On Saturday I spent the afternoon drawing for the first time in ages, but HELL if it wasn't difficult to make myself do so. I had my drawing materials laid out on the table. I had a new stash of coffee ready for multiple break times. I had a knitting project on a chair on one side of the room for when my attention span wandered and I wanted a change of activity, a book on another chair for if I got bored of the knitting, and some red wine ready to 'take the edge off' if it all got too much.

 It turned out I didn't need all that extra stuff  - once I got going five hours flew by in one of the most enjoyable afternoons I've had in ages, one in which I felt restored to myself in a way I hadn't felt for a while. But why on EARTH was it so difficult?

Why do I waste so much of my time, and find it so hard to do the things I actually really want to do?  Is it just me? 

SPOILER: It's not just me.

Paul has the same problem in Romans 7:

 "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . . .  For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it".

I know. There are a lot of 'dos' in there. Try saying that paragraph ten times quickly.

The eagle-eyed among you may be thinking "Yes, but Paul was talking about sin. You are talking about doodling". 

To which I would say: They can be the same thing, my friend. Paul IS talking about sinning, that's true. But 'sinning' isn't limited to modern understandings of the word, like committing adultery, or getting drunk, or overdoing the chocolate Magnum ice creams. Sinning is every time we turn away from what God wants for us, to something no doubt inferior.

It's turning away from the homeless person in need of a sandwich, and missing out on the joy of giving.

It's being a workaholic because you get your value from status and how much you earn, instead of your character and relationship with God.

It's spending your evening watching crapola on TV instead of making something beautiful, because the truth is you're uncomfortable sat with your own thoughts without any distractions, and you're scared you're not good enough, and also you're a teensy bit lazy.

I love the argument given in church yesterday that children, with their sense of wonder and endless enthusiasm, are the ones who see the world correctly. Their condition is the correct one, and we should learn from their attitude. But how? 

(Incidentally, I've just remembered one of my favourite memories of the ease of childhood: we were on holiday somewhere hot, I was sharing a room with my sister right before our bedtime, and our dad was killing all the mosquitoes in the room for us before lights out. Every time we saw one we'd shout from the comfort of our beds "Dad! There's one!" and he would not stop until he killed them all for us. The BLISS of someone killing your mosquitoes for you).

I have a funny feeling that prayer helps, the only problem being that prayer is another one of those activities that I love and improves my life immeasurably, but I find hard to make myself do. 

I actually don't have a pithy answer here, apart from the advice to take baby steps, start small, build up from there, and if you're struggling to pray for yourself, ask people to pray for you. Get someone to kill your mosquitoes for you! 

The amazing thing about the church is that there's always someone to give you a hand.

And here's one I prepared earlier

*I had a couple of sick days last week, and since then fell behind on my Bible reading. I’ve now just about caught up and will be writing up my thoughts in a weekly round-up in the next few days.

 Images from surfdome.com and nationalgallery.co.uk

Genesis 25-26

Today in Genesis 25-26 we read the account of Esau giving away his birth-right to his brother, Jacob, for a bowl of bean stew. I don’t know about you, but I can identify with Esau. We often feel hungry for things in the moment, whether it’s food, sex, drink, drugs, money, power or any other gratifier. At the time it feels like we have to have them. But like Esau, we may be sacrificing our inheritance as part of God’s kingdom, for something so very inferior. This passage emphasises the need for us to keep our eye on the long term goal (Jesus!), and not give it away for instant gratification.

That was short but sweet. I'm off to enjoy the terrible hair in 'American Hustle' now.

Genesis 22-24

With Genesis 22-24 we’re on day 7 of Bible in a Year. This is apparently the point in January when people start abandoning their New Year’s Resolutions, and I have to admit I’m already struggling to keep this up. As such, the following is a bit rambling so please excuse lazy writing!

These chapters tell the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. This story often causes outrage and even expletives as readers question: ‘What kind of father would be willing to kill his own son’? and ‘what kind of God would ask someone to do that’?

I understand. I think most readers feel that way upon first reading this account, but the more you understand that God’s nature is good, the more this actually makes sense.

We have already heard how God made an amazing promise to gift Abraham with a longed-for son. We have also heard about how came through on His promise, despite Abraham often messing up and making mistakes.

By asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God is testing whether Abraham valued God Himself more than he valued the gifts God could give him. This is an excellent model for us all as believers.  God encourages us to come to Him with our prayer requests, and He can and does give us good things. However, God Himself is the best gift of all and we should value that relationship above all the ‘presents’ we may receive. An earthly father may often give his children gifts, but doesn’t want to be valued just for what the child can ‘get out of him’ - with God, relationship with Him truly is the best gift, and his wanting that for us is not out of a selfish desire for attention on His part, but out of wanting the best for us.

Now to take Abraham’s part: Abraham has been through a lot with God by this point, and had seen through His giving them a son in old age that nothing was impossible for God to do. His faith was so impressively strong by now that Abraham knew even if he sacrificed Abraham, God could bring him back from the dead. He was so confident in God’s goodness and power that in conversation with Isaac, he referred to both of them walking home again later that day. When you know that God is good, you trust Him through the most difficult of trials.

That’s about all for today. Blerg.

Genesis 19-21

Today is apparently the day of the year when the most people start looking for a new job or file for divorce. Sadly, suicide attempts also seem to be common at this time of year, as anyone who’s taken the underground lately will be able to attest.

On that note, today’s reading contains some of the darkest and most disturbing passages found in the Bible. Like coping with January itself, our best course is to just hunker down and get through it as best we can. Here we go: In Genesis 19-21 we read about attempted gang rape, the destruction of two cities, incest, and some really terrible parenting skills. Happy Monday everybody.

Tenuous link - Bez, from the Happy Mondays!

 We join up with Lot again in Sodom and Gomorrah. Whilst scripture tells us that he despaired over the actions of the people of his city, he has still clearly compromised his own morals to some degree. Rather than remaining in his camp outside the city as originally instructed, he has moved inside the city walls. He has also become a fairly powerful magistrate and materially wealthy (not that success or wealth are inherently bad, but the attitude we hold towards them can be, as we’ll see further on).

When discussing the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, people tend to focus on the ‘sodomy’ act which gained its name from the infamous city. However, we find out in other parts of scripture that the sins which doomed the city were actually behavioural sins such as neglect of the poor, selfishness, love of money, and apathy. I think it’s important to point out that, far from God destroying these cities because ‘God hates gays’ (to be clear that was a sarcastic comment, I don’t think God hates anyone), God destroyed these cities because of a much bigger picture of sinful behaviour.

When considering the men’s attempted gang rape of the angels (or messengers of God) staying with Lot, I have read suggestions that this act wasn’t actually about homosexuality so much as about completely humiliating your victim or enemy (I’m not sure that makes it any better, it’s just some further information to explain possible character motivation). In flimsy defence of Lot offering his own daughters to the mob instead of the angels, it is argued that in the culture of that time and place a guest’s welfare was more important than your own, and that for a guest to be abused in such a way would be a shameful thing to happen in your care. Not to mention that these would be holy men/angels of God being violated here. However, I cannot find it in myself to defend Lot in any way. Lot isn’t offering up himself in his guests’ place to defend their honour, he is offering up his own children, the people for whom he is meant to protect. There is no getting away from this being the nauseating act of someone who won’t be winning any parenting awards anytime soon.

At first it is difficult to even apply the mantra “descriptive, not prescriptive” here, as Lot is described as a “righteous man” in scripture. The question arises as to what kind of God would consider Lot a righteous man, and why we would ever follow a God who thought like that. However, Lot’s righteousness is based on the covenant God made to protect him, not based on Lot’s actions and goodness, or lack thereof. This is yet another echoing of the righteousness that is credited to us when we enter into covenant with Jesus – we are saved based on Jesus’ goodness, not our own. God is faithful to Abraham’s family not because Lot is good, but because God’s own nature is faithful, He cannot break His promises, and nothing we do can separate us from His love.

Despite the depravity the city had sunk into and its impending destruction, Lot and his family obviously find it difficult to leave. It is implied they struggle to leave their material wealth behind even in the face of death, demonstrating how much their values had become corrupted. Despite God’s instructions not to look back, Lot’s wife does so and is turned into a pillar of salt. Whilst this might sound like a harsh punishment, the implication here is that she not only glanced back but tried to go back for material possessions. In doing so she was not only disobeying God’s instructions, but clearly demonstrating just how far her love of money had taken root.

Lot’s wife having been left to a salty death, we follow Lot and his two daughters living in a cave in the mountains. Lot has obviously developed a serious drinking problem, and his daughters are anxious that as there are no men around for them to marry they will not be able to have children. Sealing their position as possibly the most dysfunctional family in the Bible, the daughters get their father drunk and sleep with him, bearing children as a result.

They really are an advert for not raising your family in Sodom and Gomorrah, aren’t they? Clearly the sinful nature of the city had influenced the family, in the same way that we’re all influenced by our environment, much as we try to resist it. I also do not accept that Lot wasn’t partly responsible for what happened. Whilst he may have been too drunk to remember the events the next morning, I firmly believe that alcohol, whilst making us do things we wouldn’t normally do when sober, usually only makes us act on whatever’s already in our hearts.

The only possible defence I can suggest for the daughters here is that not only was being without children a terrible stigma for women in this time and place, but also the continuing lineage of a family was considered more important than the individual.

In a note of hope out of all this depravity, the children that Lot’s daughters bear go on to play prominent parts in furthering God’s Kingdom, illustrating for us that God can redeem us from the murkiest of beginnings. 

Image from badaxemi.com. Bez from mirror.co.uk

After all that horrible death and immorality, here's a picture of a kitten.

Genesis 16-18

In the spirit of this being a rest day, today's text is fairly straight forward so this will be brief (nope, sorry, I tried to keep it short but failed). In Genesis 16-19 we see Abram and Sarai take matters into their own hands when the son God promised them doesn't materialise as fast as they'd like, we see God fulfilling His promise to them despite their actions, and we see Abraham (name now changed) pleading with God to spare the people of Sodom and Gomorragh if He can find ten righteous people there out of the many sinners.

There isn't anything in these chapters that causes me any serious questions. However, there are some bits that give me pause for thought as they seem rather bizarre.

I'm not going to even go into the morality of Sarai offering her husband one of her slave girls for him to sleep with so that they can have the son they longed for. Aside from Sarai being so devious, and aside from Abram accepting her suggestion without much protestation: "Um, ok, if you insist!", there's also no mention of how Hagai herself felt about being forced into what is essentially sexual slavery. So I'm just going to take a deep breath and mutter 'descriptive, not prescriptive' to myself like a loon and move on.

I will say that I can empathise with their getting impatient for God to deliver on His promises. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that God waited so long as a test of their faith and to display, through their becoming parents in extreme old age, that nothing is impossible for God. It sets a model for us as Christians to persevere in trusting God for His promises, and not to discount those promises even when it seems like the time for them has long since past. I get it on a faith level.

However, my heart goes out to Abram and Sarai when it comes to what they actually wanted for their lives. Maybe they didn't want to suffer for so long just so God could make a point with their lives! Maybe Abram wanted to do the ancient world equivalent of teaching his son to ride a bike or catch a ball whilst he was still young enough to do so without making an "OOF" sound every time he bent his knees. We have to accept the sometimes difficult lesson that faith is something God values in us, and for us, more than our getting what we want. This is where trusting in God's good character becomes crucial, but most difficult.

The next part of the text might make any normal person ask "Say what now?", when God requests of Abraham that all males be circumcised.  I can't argue that this isn't a strange request, but some basic research does throw some light on the issue. Removing the foreskin is apparently symbolic of the covenant between God and Abraham regarding Abraham becoming the father of nations. In a similar fashion to tithing, in recognition that children are a blessing from God circumcision is a sacrificial offering of part of the body responsible for procreation. I do smile at the thought of Abraham having to have that particular conversation with all the men in his camp: "You want me to cut off what?"

These chapters end with Abraham receiving three visitors of some kind of divine origin. The identity of the visitors is a hotly debated topic that I'm not going to go into here - partly because, whilst interesting, it doesn't throw doubts on the reliability of the Bible, and partly because there isn't the space. Anyone interested in the subject can find more information here.

Genesis 12-15

Today is an easy day. In Genesis 12-15 we start the adventures of Abram, and there isn't anything here that throws up issues (for me) about the reliability of the Bible.

Interestingly, we see Abram being a complete coward and a liar, but God supporting him anyway.  

"As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "I know what a beautiful woman you are.  When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live.  Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you."

Abram even takes his charade so far as to allow his wife to become part of Pharaoh's harem! That is some terrible husbanding right there, I think we can all agree.

It's important to mention here that the Bible is, to use a common phrase, descriptive and not prescriptive. It is relaying to us the story of how a human being behaved, not saying 'this is a good way to act'. It also models for us the way that God repeatedly uses the weakest, most flawed human beings to carry out His plans. He is not a God that always favours the bravest, the smartest, or most beautiful - we see right from the start that God does not select his favourites based on worldly values. In using such flawed people, it makes it clear to us that we can all be used by God to serve a greater purpose, regardless of our flaws or our past.

Minor quibbles today: I feel like God was a bit harsh on Pharaoh here. I know this is foreshadowing the way God defends his people against Pharaoh later on in scripture, but I'm not sure why He punished Pharaoh for taking Sarai as his concubine when Pharaoh didn't even know she was married.

Also, I feel really shallow for saying this, but upon first reading, I found it a bit unrealistic that everyone would find Sarai so beautiful at at least 65 years of age. Before anyone lynches me, I'm not saying that women can't be beautiful at 65, or later, there are lots of stunning women out there. But I did find it slightly strange that Pharoah, who had nubile young girls coming out of his ears, would look at a woman in her mid to late sixties and say "WOOF, that's the foxy lady for me". And they didn't even wear make up back then! I'm sure the ladies in the audience will agree that make up is a very important tool in fooling the men-folk into thinking we're a lot more desirable than we really are (it's ok, I don't expect you to back me up in public). Study guides inform me that some of her allure would have been due to her status as the most important female of the group, but I'm just raising it as a quibble in the spirit of complete honesty. Yes I am horrible. Maybe she was just a stone cold fox, who knows?

As amends, here is a picture of Susan Sarandon looking hot in her sixties. I can see why Pharaoh might be tempted. BOOBS!

Genesis 8-11

How are you coping with going back to work in the New Year? Mine wasn't the greatest start - I did that thing when you sleep comfortably assured that you've set your alarm clock, and then when you wake up the type of daylight tells you something has gone really wrong with your plan.

I went straight from zero coffee over the Christmas break ("maybe I don't actually need coffee, maybe I'll just drink green tea") to mainlining two large cups my first morning back. And I'm having post-Christmas withdrawal symptoms - sat at my desk at 10.30 I wondered what felt wrong, and realised it was in fact that there wasn't any snack foods or beverages laid out within arms reach . . . Also, I asked my colleagues the following question: "Why is it perfectly acceptable to drink sparkling wine for breakfast over Christmas, but not regular wine?" to which they replied "Who thinks it's ok to drink sparkling wine for breakfast?" I was stumped. This isn't just my family, right? Other people do this too, don't they? Hello?

Anyway, today I read Genesis 8-11 which covers Noah's Ark Part 2, a lot of fathering, and the Tower of Babel. I don't have any problems with the second part of the story of Noah's Ark - hurrah! This part of the story relays Noah finding dry land after the waters have receded, and God making His promise never again to wipe out all people. It sets a precedent for God making covenents with His people - here with Noah, later with the Israelites, and finally with all people through Jesus. Far from the Old Testament conveying a completely different God to that of the New Testament, He's actually shown to be very consistent in character.

I also think this chapter displays how events in life can have both physical and spiritual meanings. God states that whenever rainbows appear with the rain clouds, it is a sign of His promise to mankind. Now, we know that a rainbow is caused by refracted light - that doesn't mean that it can't exist on a spiritual level too. It may be caused by refracted light, but that is just the means by which it is created; The meaning is to be a sign of God's promise to his people. The scientific cause and the spiritual cause do not have to be mutually exclusive.

The Tower of Babel

 So, first battle of the day is the story of the Tower of Babel. Like the Ark, there's a 'tower' myth in many different cultures - it's mentioned in Sumerian texts, the Qu'ran, and Herodotus, to name just a few. Despite it's position in Genesis 11, the story is not in chronological order, and this event, if it was real, could have occurred much earlier in history. It describes a time before humans had scattered over the earth, and we all spoke one language.

We actually know very little about how language occurred - whether it is innate in humans or requires social interaction to develop, if it evolved out of pre-linguistic systems that other primates use, or appeared fairly suddenly during the course of human evolution. Thanks to a quick search on Wikipedia, I know the current consensus is that humans have been in their modern evolved form for around 50,000 years, which of course places a big question mark over the timeline given in Genesis.

As with the creation story, where 'days' can also mean 'ages', and we take it as describing a much longer time period than a literal reading would suggest, my personal opinion so far is that some of the events in Genesis, if they were real, occurred over a much longer period than the 5,000 years generally suggested by much of the church (To be fair to the text, no date is assigned to the story of the Tower of Babel).

Thus we get to the crux of my problem - if the texts are not completely factual, how do we make claims that scripture is infallible? As with my earlier example of the rainbow, do we need to accept two levels of truth - the factual events of the story (not necessarily true) and the spiritual level of the story (reliably and infallibly true)? How can we make those judgements?

Another kind of Rainbow

Genesis 4-7

Today has been an odd day, and I've hardly had any sleep due to developing reverse sleep patterns over the Christmas break, so I'm going to try and keep this one brief. Which is difficult, as Genesis 4-7 covers the story of Cain and Abel and Noah's Ark Part 1, so we're dealing with sibling rivalry, murder, polygamy, and mass genocide here.

Let’s jump right in: My first thought upon reading the story of Cain and Abel was to wonder why God was so hard on Cain. Why did God reject Cain's offering? I know that post-Christmas we can all relate to getting a gift we're not that thrilled with, but it's the thought that counts, right? Turns out God thinks so too. My handy study guide informs me that God's reaction was nothing to do with the quality of the gift, but the heart of the giver. God rejected Cain's offering not because the offering itself was inadequate, but because of the sin in his heart.

And maybe God had a fair point there, because in just the next paragraph Cain murders his brother. Holy fratricide! Tellingly, when God questions Cain about the murder he committed, he shows anguish at his punishment but no actual remorse or confession of guilt.

Fun fact: Cain is sent to the 'Land of Nod', and apparently Nod means 'wandering' (i.e. he is sentenced to wander the earth, like the Incredible Hulk) and it has nothing to do with being sent to the Land of Sleepy Time.

The first problem I encounter with the Bible today is the crazy long life spans that people live in this chapter. Noah becomes a father at 130 and lives to 930? I don't care how much organic food they ate, that is just cray-cray. Obviously these kind of long life spans aren't supported by any scientific evidence, so unless there's some 900 year old skeletons lying around somewhere undiscovered, this is problematic for the reliability of the Bible. Exaggerating the age of important figures seems to be something they did in ancient times, as a Sumerian list of kings from the same era lists one individual as being 72,000 years old at time of death. If anyone has any good information sources on making sense of this issue, I’d love to hear it!

The next major wall I hit is the story of Noah's Ark. 

I think this is an amazing faith story that sets a great model for us as Christians. God instructs Noah to do something that made no sense to him at the time, at first without even explaining why, and Noah trusting in God and ignoring the sceptical voices of people around him is ultimately what saves Noah and those he loves.

Obviously I struggle with the historicity of it. The common quibble is that so many animals couldn’t co-exist on a boat, and the concept of it does sound fairly comical, but it’s not a deal breaker. I don’t see why they couldn't build partitions on the boat - modern zoos do it all the time. The issue that I struggle with is that if it was a world-wide flood there's just not enough water on the earth to cause it.

Here’s where my trusty study notes come to my aide again by explaining that when it states the "whole world", the context could also refer to the ‘known world’ - the parts of the world where humans lived at that time, but not in fact the whole earth, which is in fact possible. This makes much more sense to me, especially as the existence of a flood myth in all cultures seems to suggest there was some kind of large scale flood event in early human history.

So – another day sat on the fence as to the infallibility of the Bible. It’s a bit uncomfortable out here but I’m getting used to it.

Genesis 1-3

 Happy New Year!

Just FYI after January 14th I get bored of saying that. There should be some kind of social etiquette that states you can't wish people happy new year after mid-January.

Ok so I've been procrastinating over starting this Bible in a year thing all day, which has led to me having one of the most procrastinatingly productive New Year's Days of my life . . . .

So far today I've cleaned the house, taken out the recycling, booked flights to somewhere hot for spring, started a new knitting project, painted my nails and pondered some important life questions such as:

 Why are toothpaste adverts so bad? Why do they keep using those fake science experiments where 'members of the public' are totally wowed by the toothpaste's awesome cleaning power and gum protection? We are not duped.

Anyway. 

Today I read chapters 1-3 of Genesis. How do I do a linky thing so that you can read the chapters without me having to copy the whole text? Genesis 1-3
AHA! That was easy.

I'm already on record as saying I struggle with these particular chapters. I've read some articles people have pointed me to at BioLogos and I'm using the HCSB Study Bible (keep accidentally saying HSBC Bible - thou shalt not exceed thy credit limit etc) to read through the notes that accompany the text, but I'm still not altogether settled when it comes to this part of scripture.

The main gist of all the arguments regarding this part of Genesis is that the language is symbolic. It's not written in a totally historical style, but it's not poetry either - it's something in between. So when it talks about God forming man out of the dust of the ground, or woman out of man's rib, then we can take it with a certain amount of artistic license (the problem being we don't know how much). Obviously, there are some Christians who do take this story literally, but I can only speak for myself here.

Even giving the chapters this large scale benefit of the doubt, I still can't understand why some of the orders of creation are wrong. For example, God creating lights in the sky to mark day and night (i.e. the sun and moon) after vegetation was created, when clearly the sun and moon were present before plant life arrived on the earth. These kind of errors cast doubt on it being God who dictated those words. To me, it sounds like a fallible person ignorant of scientific discoveries about the universe that hadn't yet been made at time of writing.

In addition, I always had a problem with the Christian view that death and the brokenness of the world, such as natural disasters, only came into being after the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve sinning by eating the infamous apple, metaphorical or otherwise). Clearly, if evolution is true (which I believe it is) death and survival of the fittest have always been present in nature, and not just since The Fall.

However, reading through the chapters today I realise that some of my problems with this chapter come from church stories I've heard, rather than scripture itself. The Bible doesn't actually describe Eden as a perfect paradisical world without death, pain, sadness or earthquakes. It describes a limited geographical place of 'pleasantness' (the word Eden meaning pleasantness in Hebrew). A place where man walked in fellowship with God in innocence. When it talks about God saying "you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die", it indicates more of a spiritual death than a mere physical one. 

Humans choosing to turn away from God wasn't just about death of the body, but about shattering the harmonious relationship that existed between man and his environment, relationships with others and with God. 

Maybe rather than the world changing after The Fall, it was actually just man's place in it.

These arguments aren't entirely new to me, but sometimes they seem more convincing than at others.  A bit like faith in general really. When I first decided to carry out this project I thought I'd read my Bible verses in the morning, do a bit of research, and by evening I'd have a thoroughly worked out response. I could totally solve The Bible, y'all! Of course, now I'm realising that it's going to be rambling, messy, difficult and imperfect. If thousands of scholars haven't solved the riddle of the Bible yet, I'm unlikely to do so armed only with a half-arsed attitude and a Wikipedia page. But I hope that I can find peace for myself in the process, and draw closer to God on the way. If that happens in 2014 that would be a good result*

*Although if the word 'selfie' was retired from use in 2014 I'd consider that a good result too.