April 13, 2018 - Day 5 - Genesis 5
Genesis 5:
I'm starting to look at the Jewish study Bible as I go through this, as well as a few other sources.
This is Adam's family line. Buckle up; the intensity is going through the roof on this chapter!
We are told by the author (which some believe to be Moses, how do we know?) that when God created mankind (remember the Hebrew word for mankind is 'Adam'), they were made in the likeness of God. We are not told what this means. I think it means that "God" "created" existence, and we are therefore inherently creative. This makes the most sense to me. Any idea of God being a big dude with a white beard is just too weird for me.
Next we have the author rambling about lineage and exaggerated ages. THIS GUY IS A MILLION YEARS OLD BRO. LOL.
During antiquity, it was actually quite common to embellish longevity and monarchical reigns; so this isn't unique to the Bible. The Sumerian King List is an ancient stone tablet which lists the kings of Sumer (ancient southern Iraq), lengths of reign and locations. If you're interested, you should read more about it. For the sake of brevity, I'll give you a few examples:
En-men-lu-ana of Bad-tibira ruled for 43,000 years.
Alulim was the first king of Eridu and ruled for 28,000 years.
There are also tons of short reigns. Jushur only ruled for 1200 years.
Something tells me that you don't believe En-men-lu-ana ruled for 43,000 years.
Did Adam live to be 930 years old? My money is on a hard no. Now I've heard people say that because he was the first person (was he?) that his biology was different or something. This is a non-falsiable claim. Prove to me that God didn't create the world yesterday and just implanted us with memories. Again, a non-falsiable nonsense claim. I'll be avoiding non-falsiable claims in this commentary.
Almost everyone in this chapter lives many hundreds of years and then it says they died. Interestingly, Enoch only lived 365 years and it says "God took him away."
I started to read a bit about Enoch and started to fall down the rabbit hole. Enoch appears in some apocryphal texts (Book of Enoch and Book of Giants). Oddly, the Book of Enoch was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, though was not part of the Biblical canon. Feel free to educate me here.
So what it this chapter telling us? Well, I think being told we are inherently creative is pretty beautiful. Look at all we have designed and implemented in just the last 50 years. Aside from that, I got nothing.
I'm starting to look at the Jewish study Bible as I go through this, as well as a few other sources.
This is Adam's family line. Buckle up; the intensity is going through the roof on this chapter!
We are told by the author (which some believe to be Moses, how do we know?) that when God created mankind (remember the Hebrew word for mankind is 'Adam'), they were made in the likeness of God. We are not told what this means. I think it means that "God" "created" existence, and we are therefore inherently creative. This makes the most sense to me. Any idea of God being a big dude with a white beard is just too weird for me.
Next we have the author rambling about lineage and exaggerated ages. THIS GUY IS A MILLION YEARS OLD BRO. LOL.
During antiquity, it was actually quite common to embellish longevity and monarchical reigns; so this isn't unique to the Bible. The Sumerian King List is an ancient stone tablet which lists the kings of Sumer (ancient southern Iraq), lengths of reign and locations. If you're interested, you should read more about it. For the sake of brevity, I'll give you a few examples:
En-men-lu-ana of Bad-tibira ruled for 43,000 years.
Alulim was the first king of Eridu and ruled for 28,000 years.
There are also tons of short reigns. Jushur only ruled for 1200 years.
Something tells me that you don't believe En-men-lu-ana ruled for 43,000 years.
Did Adam live to be 930 years old? My money is on a hard no. Now I've heard people say that because he was the first person (was he?) that his biology was different or something. This is a non-falsiable claim. Prove to me that God didn't create the world yesterday and just implanted us with memories. Again, a non-falsiable nonsense claim. I'll be avoiding non-falsiable claims in this commentary.
Almost everyone in this chapter lives many hundreds of years and then it says they died. Interestingly, Enoch only lived 365 years and it says "God took him away."
I started to read a bit about Enoch and started to fall down the rabbit hole. Enoch appears in some apocryphal texts (Book of Enoch and Book of Giants). Oddly, the Book of Enoch was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, though was not part of the Biblical canon. Feel free to educate me here.
So what it this chapter telling us? Well, I think being told we are inherently creative is pretty beautiful. Look at all we have designed and implemented in just the last 50 years. Aside from that, I got nothing.
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