Genesis 13 and 14

One theory of where the mythical Sodom and
Gomorrah may have been located. 

Genesis 13

Take into consideration these three verses:

He (Pharoah) treated Abram well, for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys , menservants and maidservants, and camels.  Gen 12:16

Then Pharoah gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had. Gen 12:20

Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold. Gen 13:2

Abram lies to the Pharoah, and is rewarded with great riches. Why is this not seen in a negative light? He does somewhat redeem himself by allowing Lot first choice of land when they decide to split and go their separate ways. Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled near Sodom. This is the first time we hear about Sodom:

Genesis 13:13, NIV Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.

Note that it does not say why they were wicked or how they were sinning. I will be coming back to this point in a few chapters. And once again, the land of Canaan is promised to Abram and his descendants.

Apparently, in Christian circles, Abram’s return to where he had first built an alter symbolizes his return to God after his misdeeds in Egypt. God did not speak to Abram while he was in Egypt, only carried out serious plagues on his behalf. It’s an interesting interpretation. Once Lot departed the land of Canaan, God became chit chatty again.

Genesis 14

This chapter starts off with a war between a large number of kings. The cities of the Jordan Plain revolted against the Elamite empire and its Mesopotamian allies.  I had never heard of any of these kings or kingdoms, and immediately went into my inner archaeologist research mode.

Coalition 1

King Amraphel of Shinar – many biblical scholars believe this to be none other than Hammurabi, King of Babylon, who lived from 1792-1750 BCE. Shinar is associated with Babylonia. There is no conclusive evidence in the archaeological or historical record that identifies Amraphel as Hammurabi.

King Arioch of Ellasar – currently, Arioch is held to be the same as Eri-aku, king of Larsa. The only information I could find about Eri-aku was based on biblical archaeology findings, and the information was quite sparse. According to the historical record, Larsa was a real city, and an important one, located in Sumer. King Rim-Sin (not Eri-Aku, unless they are the same person) was a contemporary of Hammurabi, and was defeated by him in 1764 BCE.

King Chedorlaomer of Elam – The name Chedorlaomer (nor any of its derivations) appear in the historical record. Elam was an ancient civilization centered in the southwest of modern day Iran and a small part of southern Iraq; situated to the east of Mesopotamia. The history of Elam is divided into three periods, spanning more than two millennia from 3200 BCE to 539 BCE.

King Tidal of Goiim – Does not appear in the historical record. Apparently, biblical scholars also have no idea who he was.

Coalition 2

King Bera of Sodom – there is no mention of this monarch outside of this one biblical passage, and the city of Sodom has never been found.

King Birsha of Gomorrah – ditto for Gomorrah.

King Shinab of Admah – No one has any idea who or where this is. I’m starting to see a trend here.

King Shemeber of Zeboiim – Not a trace of evidence.

King Zoar of Bela – I think you can guess the answer to this one.

Coalition 2 had been subject to King Chedorlaomer for twelve years, by the thirteenth year they were fed up and rebelled. There may be a tiny morsel of truth to this legend, since Elam is a real kingdom with loads of archaeological and historical evidence to back up its existence.

Now, in the second paragraph, things get a little crazy. Chedorlaomer and his coalition go out and defeat loads of people, but not one of them is part of the original rebellious group. Nor are they all human.

Defeated by Chedorlaomer:

Rephaites – Giants.

Zuzites – a group of people that lived in Ham, possibly giants.

Emites – Giants.

Horites – inhabitants of Mount Seir, a mountain that has not been identified in the archaeological record. Not giants.

On their way home, they conquered the whole territory of the Amalekites, and the Amorites living in Hazazon Tamar. If you will recall, the Amorites were a child of the cursed Canaan.

After the kings get tired of fighting each other, we find out that Lot was captured in the kerfuffle. He rounds up his servants (slaves?) and attacks King Chedorlaomer, recovering all the lost possessions. The King of Sodom is grateful, offering Abram the recovered goods, but Abram refuses to take even one thread or throng of a sandal.

Randomly, a mystical King Melchizedek appears in the middle of this chapter, to bless Abram. He happens to be a priest of God and King of Salem…a place that will later be called Jerusalem and become home to Israel’s kings. Christians often believe there is a connection between the bread and wine given to Abram by Melchizedek, and the Eucharist in the New Testament.

The Call of Abram

Genesis 12

Abram was called to serve God, a phrase and idea that is often seen in Christianity today. Genesis 12 is the beginning of Abram’s epic story, which starts when God commands Abram to leave his family (apparently it is okay if Sarai, Lot, and all of Abram’s slaves tag along). In return he will have eternal fame, and give rise to a great nation.

Genesis 12:5-7, JPS, When they arrived in the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, at the terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanites were then in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will assign this land to your offspring.”

Why is this land so important, that it is being promised to Abram, despite the fact that a whole other group of people already live there? As you might know, Canaan becomes the Promised Land, which in turn becomes the Land of Israel. But only after all those pesky Canaanites are kicked out, from the perspective of the Bible. The author of Genesis 12 just created a completely justifiable excuse for the way the ancient Israelites treated the Canaanites! Oh the stories people tell themselves to feel better about treating others horribly. EXCEPT, archaeological evidence actually shows that the most plausible theory is that the ancient Israelites started out as a sub-culture within Canaan, they did not attack it from the outside. Which means, the story of Abraham, Moses, the Exodus, and 40 years in the desert is just an enduring folktale.

The rest of this chapter feels a bit like going down a rabbit hole. Abram enters Egypt, but tells his wife to play the part of his sister. We find out in a later chapter that Sarai IS his half-sister, so this is only a half-lie. Sarai is so attractive at age 65 the Pharoah is enamored and marries her, giving Abram sheep, cattle, donkeys, servants, and camels for her sake. So far, in my eye, the Pharoah has done nothing wrong, yet God unleashes “mighty plagues” on account of Sarai. Possibly she was mistreated, or was forced to marry the Pharoah against her will. In that case, I could understand a backlash. When the Pharoah finds out why he is being attacked by plagues, he does not kill Sarai or Abram; he banishes them from Egypt. However, Abram manages to leave sheepishly with all of his gifts from the Pharoah in his possession.  

There is a saying amongst Jews that Judaism encompasses three main ideas: God, Torah, and the Land of Israel. Jewish belief dictates that a model nation can not occur anywhere else; Israel is the only place where the Jewish people can achieve their directive from God, as given to Abram. The Jewish people did not choose this fate, they were chosen by God.

Terebinth.

New words:

Negev/Negeb (Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev) – a desert region of modern day southern Israel.

Haran (Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Haran) – generally identified as Harran, an Assyrian name for the ancient city Hurrian, whose ruins lie in present-day Turkey.

Terebinth of Moreh – meaning debated. Possibly a grove of trees near Shechem. Terebinth refers to a species of pistachio tree common in the Levant.

Shechem (Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, at the terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanites were then in the land.) – A Canaanite settlement first mentioned in Egyptian texts. This city will plan an important part in the history of Israel. Located in the modern day West Bank.

Bethel (From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel) – ancient city possibly located in modern day West Bank. 

The Tower of Babel...and more Genealogy

Construction of the Tower of Babel, painted by Lucas van Valckenborch, 1594.

Genesis 11

The Tower of Babel, in Genesis 11, has been used by religious conservatives, both Jewish and Christian, to explain the myriad number of languages that have existed on Earth. I believed in this story, up until I started taking anthropology classes in college and began to learn about how languages evolve from each other over extended periods of time. Linguistic evidence does not support the idea that humanity was ever united by a single language, or that the world’s languages suddenly appeared at the same time.

Genesis 11:1-8, NIV “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

In the Old Testament, Babel is synonymous with Babylon…and Babylon is part of the Babylonian empire that would wreak havoc on Israel and the Israelites in the 6^th century BCE. Considering the way Israelites were treated by the Babylonians, it is not surprising that the city becomes the centerpiece of a story about greed and having too much ambition.

Another problematic part of this story is the use of the word “us”. Let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. In my opinion, this is another snippet that shows that ancient Israelites, before they formalized monotheistic Judaism, believed in multiple gods.

Genesis 11 concludes with more detailed genealogy, ending with Abram, his wife Sarai, Abram’s brother Nahor, and his wife Milcah. A little bit of incest going on in this family tree, since Milcah is actually married to her uncle; her father is Abram and Nahor’s brother Haran. Terah, Abram’s father, took him, Sarai, and Lot and left Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. However, they decided to settle in Haran, for a reason not specified.

The writers of Genesis refer to Abram’s birthplace as “Ur of the Chaldees”, but the Chaldeans did not appear in Mesopotamia until early in the first millennium BCE. This is long after the estimates of when Abram lived (if he was a real person), which place him in the historical record between 2000 and 1500 BCE.

Table of Nations

Genesis 9:22-29 and Genesis 10

Genesis 9:22-25, NIV “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father’s nakedness.

When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said,

“Cursed by Canaan!

The lowest of slaves

Will he be to his brothers.”

What happened in the tent?

Ambiguity at its finest. A straightforward reading shows Ham witnessing his father naked, walking out, and gossiping about it to his two brothers. So why the severe reaction from Noah? There is no shortage of theories about what is really going on here.

·      Ham castrated Noah

·      Ham sodomized Noah

·      Ham actually slept with Noah’s wife, and Ham’s son Canaan was born out of that interlude.

·      Ham did not avert his eyes fast enough.

·      Ham is a major gossip, and Noah grew tired of it.

Whatever the reason may be, the end result is the Curse of Ham given by patriarch Noah. The story’s original objective was to justify the way ancient Israelites treated Canaanites. In more modern times, the Curse of Ham has also been interpreted as an explanation for black skin, and justification for the African slave trade.

I am beginning to see how easy it is to twist the Bible’s words to one’s own advantage.

The 1st century Jewish-Roman historian, Flavius Josephus was one of the first people who tried to
assign known ethnicities to the names listed in Genesis 10. The map above is his work. 

Genesis 10

Noah's Descendants, According to Genesis 10. 

Genesis 10 reads like a mythological account of the creation of many of the first civilizations, all claimed to be founded by the descendants of the sons of Noah. There are many ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia that make an appearance in this geneology.

According to the Bible, Nimrod (son of Cush, who was the son of Canaan, who was the son of Ham-the disgraced son of Noah) founded the cities of Babylon, Erech (also known as Uruk), Akkad, and Calneh. He then continued on to Assyria.

Many of the cities mentioned are found in the archaeological record. The world’s first cities were built in Mesopotamia; the land between the Tigris and Euphrates in what is now Iraq.

	Biblical Record	Archaeological and Historical Record
Uruk (Erech)	Founded by Nimrod, the mighty warrior	The first city built by the Sumerians, a group of people that arrived in Sumer around 5000 BCE. Uruk was built by the Euphrates River around 3100 BCE. This occurred at the same time as the unification of two separate kingdoms in northern Africa that formed the start of the Egyptian civilization.
Akkad	Mentioned once in Genesis 10:10, another city founded by Nimrod.	The existence of Akkad is only known from textual sources, its location has yet to be identified. It is mentioned more than 160 times in Akkadian cuneiform sources. Akkad was the capital of the Akkadian empire. In 2350 BCE, King Sargon from Akkad conquers the area of Sumer, including Uruk.
Babylon	Gen 10:10 Founded by Nimrod. However, in Gen. 10:16, the Amorites are claimed to be descended from Canaan (who would have been an uncle to Nimrod).	Babylon was founded by the Amorites, a people from Syria who moved into Mesopotamia around 1900 BCE, and Babylon became the chief city of the Amorites.
Hittites	Sons of Canaan. They make a reappearance later in the Bible.	The Hitittes flourished in central Anatolia (modern day Turkey) between 1600 and 1200 BCE. The center of their kingdom was Hattusas.
Nineveh	City built by Nimrod after he went to the land of Assyria.	City built around 883-859 BCE by the Assyrians.

  

Noah's Covenant with God

Genesis 9: 1-21

Genesis 9 gives us our first glimpse of life in the post-Flood world. It starts with a repeat of the very first commandment (law) in the Bible, “be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” I can begin to see why families that follow the Bible literally have so many children!

Another change in the post-Flood world: vegetarianism is out, being an omnivore or carnivore is in. God declares that everything that lives and moves will be food for you. However, this seems contradictory to later laws in Deuteronomy that do put restrictions on what to eat, and are used to define kosher laws in Judaism. These dietary restrictions are not present in Genesis 9.

Genesis 9:3-4, NIV “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.”

For Jehovah Witness’, Genesis 9:4 is cited as the reason why blood transfusions are forbidden. I truly don’t see the connection. A person is not feeding on blood when they have a transfusion, and there is no murder committed. The blood is given freely, by a living donor.

Capital Punishment

Genesis 9:6, JPS “Whoever sheds the blood of man, By man shall his blood be shed; For in His image Did God make man.”

Translation: Kill, and be killed. Cain sure got off easy. And let the history of stoning begin and capital punishment begin. For people who believe that the death penalty is commanded by God, and it is the responsibility of humankind to carry it out, this is where that idea comes from. And I have to say, it is stated loud and clear in this chapter. But, since I don’t believe in a literal reading of the Bible, and do not believe it was divinely inspired, this is just another cultural tradition that wormed its way in to the book. I wish I could say capital punishment is ancient history, but alas it is not. At least not in the United States.

Ancient Israelites were tribal in nature. When a person was murdered (or killed accidentally), it was up to a family member to avenge the killing—what today we call a blood feud. The next of kin of the deceased person would be expected to find and kill the person responsible.

It is interesting to take a look at where different religious groups fall on the death penalty spectrum. Among the most active in opposing the death penalty: Amish, Quakers, and Unitarians. Those most active in supporting: Christian Reconstructionist.

Abolitionists: Roman Catholic Church, American Baptists, Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA), Eastern Orthodox, liberal Judaism, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Reformed Church of America, United Church of Christ.

Retentionist (support death penalty): Southern Baptist, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Islam, conservative Judaism.

Mixed or no official stance: Pentecostal Assemblies of God, Athiest, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness.

Jewish Interpretation of the Rainbow

Source: The Jewish Week, Turning Bows and Arrows into Rainbows

In the JPS Torah, the word “bow” is used instead of “rainbow”, to describe the symbol of the covenant between Noah and God. I was curious about that, and did a little research. Nahmanides, a 13^th century Rabbinic scholar, suggested that the bow of the rainbow is directed away from the earth, as was the ancient Israelite custom of warriors to turn their bows the other way to signify peace with their enemies. The bow, once a symbol for wrath and destruction, is transformed into a rainbow, representing divine hope for a better future.

The Greeks were the first to attribute a rainbow to the sun’s rays striking the moist air after a rainfall, an entirely natural phenomenon. Nahmanides agreed that the Rainbow was not created after the Flood, but argued that God choose this already existing phenomenon as the symbol of his covenant.

Genesis, 9:20-21 “Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.”

Can I just say that I LOVE that the first thing Noah planted was a vineyard. Not wheat, or leafy greens, or carrots. Nope, first on his to-do list was make wine. Pronto. And then drink it. In excess. I guess spending a year stuffed in an ark with your immediate family and a gazillion animals would do that to a man.

The Flood, Part 2

Genesis 7 and 8

The Flood story, like the Creation Story, provides wonderful evidence that Genesis has multiple narratives, and multiple authors. The Flood story has been stitched together in a way that contains many inconsistencies, which becomes apparent when Genesis 7 is read directly after Genesis 6.

I won’t go into the Documentary Hypothesis again, or which author supposedly wrote which part. You can find that information elsewhere. But objectively, Genesis 7 contains numerous contradictions. They are there, easy to see. It is the reasons given for these contradictions that are subjective and tied to one’s belief.

·      Contradiction 1: In Genesis 6:19-20, Noah is instructed to bring into the ark “two of all living creatures…two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature”. In Genesis 7:2-3, God commands Noah to “take with you seven of every kind of clean animal…two of every kind of unclean animal…and also seven of every kind of bird”. But, in Genesis 7:8, we’re right back to two of every kind again.

·      Contradiction 2: In Genesis 7:10, Noah entered the ark seven days before the rains began. But in the very next paragraph, Genesis 7:13, it states that Noah entered the ark on the very day that rain began to fall for forty days.

For those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, the first contradiction is explained by the reasoning that the extra animals were brought on board the Ark as food for everyone else, not to be “kept alive”. Fair enough. I buy that more than the anti-evolution arguments given to explain the creation narratives. In regards to the second contradiction, that is explained in that Noah entered seven days prior to the start of the flood, but the last of the animals didn’t enter until seven days later, the same day the rains started. That’s a bit of a stretch, and doesn’t hold up when reading essentially any translation of the passage.

Poor Noah. I think the blogger from A Skeptics Journey Through the Bible describes it best:

“Poor Noah has one week to gather up animals from all over the globe and to bring them back to the Ark. The author of Genesis conveniently leaves out the story of how a 600-year-old man from the Middle East was able to travel on foot across continents and oceans, rainforests, arctic permafrost, and deserts, gather up all of the wild animals in their natural habitats and bring them back to the ark.”

The Flood supposedly lasted for 40 days, the waters continued to cover the earth for 150 days, and then began to slowly recede until the seventh month of the 17^th day, when Noah’s Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (considered to be Mount Judi and surrounding region in the southern Anaotolia region of Turkey). While there is some evidence of mass flooding that possibly occurred in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago, there is zero scientific evidence for a flood that has covered the entire earth at the same time.