Genesis Chapters 5 and 6

Family Trees

Chapter 5 begins with a list of sons born to fathers and traces several generations. It starts over with Adam, listing his new son Seth as the father of the next son. It is so similar to the list that began in chapter 4 that it must be the same, and though there are a few differences, it ends with the same person, Lamech. And then his son, Noah who has his own story in chapter 6.
For each man listed, the years he lived are also mentioned and they are very specific numbers. They lived hundreds of years, all of them. One man, Enoch, is said to not have died, but that he was just taken by God. Once again, Lamech gets a few lines when he is mentioned. This time he is commenting on the relief from labor that his son Noah will give them, it seems.
All the men listed are also said to have had other sons and daughters in their lifetime, so the assumption is that the son listed to him is the first son born to him. Or maybe its just the only particular lineage, the line from Adam to Noah, that the story tellers were interested in pointing out, it is not clear. None of the daughters names are mentioned and only in Noah's case does it mention more than one son's name. He had three.

Corrrupt Earth

Chapter 6 has an interesting introduction to it. The first few verses describe in mysterious terms, some sort of cross breeding between "sons of God" and "daughters of men." There is also a mention of "Nephilim." The footnote in my translation notes that these are giants. The wording is unclear whether these Nephilim are related to the children being born from the union of sons of God and daughters of men. It is also unclear whether this is related to the corruption that it says God begins to notice. It is clear when it says that God favored Noah.
Noah is the only man walking with God. It says that the earth was full of violence and that no one else was righteous. It says that God saw this and was grieved. So grieved that it says God was sorry he had ever made any of it and decides to wipe it all out, saving only Noah and his family and a boat load of animals.
God found favor with Noah, having been walking together with him, and gives him plans for an ark he will need to build in order to be saved from the flood. It says that God had decided to flood the earth as a way of killing all life. God gives the dimensions of the boat and instructions on which animals to take and how many. It says that God would be sending most of the animals to the ark, two of each, so they could stay alive. The chapter ends with Noah beginning the task.

What I Think

I think the generation tracing is an interesting way to catapult the story forward several hundred years at least. I decided not to do any math this year, so I may never know how many hundreds of years are between Adam and Noah. But it is a lot. I also think that its interesting how specific the numbers are. On one hand, there is obvious attention to detail. On the other hand, there are obvious discrepancies in the list as compared to the previous chapter. The storytellers do not bother with explaining that. Its possible that their understanding of things allowed for what seems like differences in who had who. Especially in light of the meaning of Adam's name. It seems clear that their understanding of reality and how the world works allows for things stranger than whether Seth or Cain fathered the sons who eventually led to Lamech, leading to Noah. I think they saw the story for what it was saying, not what it was not saying.
I also think its really interesting, for a story that many people today claim is myth, how many numbers are in the story. The authors use these to make the lineage connection as well as to note the timeframe of the flood, I think. Their disregard for the list started in 4 makes me think there is something they are motivated to point out. Maybe the audience understood at the time. And maybe it has something to do with the importance of ancestry in their culture at the time. Its like the authors knew, even in their lack of a scientific worldview, numbers just add that distinct scent of truth to a story. Numbers don't lie.
The audience at the time must have also known more about the "sons of God" and the "Nephilim." Since they don't end up being a part of the story, they aren't explained. I think they're just setting the scene of Noah's story for the audience.
In fact, I think that the mystery of the first view verses of 6 may hold the key to gaining audience sympathy for what God decides to do. Maybe the setting described held more darkness for the israelites than it does for me. A quick description of the wars of the past century alone have more the ring of "corruption" and "filled with violence" to me. But it is described as impossible to salvage. Too savage to salvage.
The solution that the authors attribute to God is absolutely fantastic. Once again, this is about what it says, not what it leaves out. They do not make any attempt to justify this massive extermination other than "God was sorry He had made it." There is no discussion of God's internal conflict whether to destroy the thing he loved, there is no mention the God loved any of it at all. Maybe the authors had fathers who wouldn't think twice saying to his child, "I'm sorry you were born, you disappoint me." Or maybe one of their fathers had a cat that had too many kittens and he was sorry he let it be around the tom cat so he took the kittens to the creek in a plastic bag. Something about the casual way they talk about "blotting out all flesh" as if God is popping a zit, it really kind of gives you a sinking fear. This is a God, who once flooded it all and killed everything alive. This is the story of the flood. Maybe they told it casually to make it more scary. Maybe they wanted the audience to fear God because of that story.
I found myself wondering about the story as if I were writing it. I wondered why save Noah? Why not flood it all and start all the way over, make some new people and not put a snake in the garden this time. But that isn't where the people telling the story found themselves. It was still a cursed world, wasn't it? You can't just retell the story to create a different present reality, can you?
I need to make a note: I refer to it as a story and the storytellers as authors, as a rule. For this blog, those will serve as sufficient, though they are not. The history of the people who wrote Genesis is not what this blog is about, though I will make inferences where it seems reasonable. However, since as much of the point of this is the physical product of the handwritten copy, I am saving any effort I could be spending on researching to use it on writing.

Speaking of the writing part

Chapters 5 and 6 took about two hours each. I found myself rushing it at parts and not focusing on my letter form. I think the key is what surface my pad of paper is on and how much elbow room I have. The look of the letters, their size consistency and space between the words depend a lot on whether I am comfortable in my writing pose. My right elbow at rest, hand extended and wrist resting on the paper or table and using fluid movements makes the best lettering. That and frequent breaks.

To Be Continued

Genesis Chapter Four

A Month Later ...

I finished the fourth chapter of Genesis Wednesday Jan. 11th, 2012. After nearly a month of working on everything but this project, I expected my work to be less than perfect. However, I found that I was able to finish the chapter in about two hours, which is exactly how long each of the last three chapters took me to write out. Since I am copying line for line, consistency of letter size and word spacing is crucial. I found this to come with much less effort than my last venture. It is encouraging to realize that I am already better at this than I was on the first page.

The Story

In Chapter four, Adam and Eve begin having children. "Manchildren" to be specific. They seem to be going on with their lives all right, even in the freshly cursed world. But then one of their sons kills the other one. The reasons that Cain killed Abel: jealousy that God favored Abel's offering and not Cain's. Abel was a herder, so he gave some "fat portions" of what he had. Cain grew food from the ground and gave from what he had. He finds out that God prefers the meat.

Then, God gives Cain an interestingly similar punishment to the one Adam and Eve received: banishment. Part of the "curse" God puts on Cain is a promise of protection in the form of a promise to avenge sevenfold anyone who dares to kill him. Then he is cursed to be a "vagrant and wanderer." But then he settles and marries and starts a family and builds a city.

The story takes a plot break to mention some genealogy and then focuses a small bit on Lamech, who had two wives, Adah and Zillah. Lamech tells his wives in a cryptic speech that if Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech should be avenged "seventy-sevenfold" because he killed a man AND a boy. Leading into chapter five we learn that Adam and Eve are still making babies: Seth replaces Abel for Eve and she gets a line expressing gratitude to God for it.

What I think

God's use of favoritism becomes more and more apparent. I use the word favoritism in the most anthropomorphic way possible. God chooses humans over all other creation, then he chooses man over woman and then he chooses Abel over Cain. When God sees that favoring Abel "and Abel's offering" has upset Cain, God says a few sentences, but never really addresses the issue. The vague warning of sin crouching at the door is not enough to keep Cain from killing. But as it seems, there were still no rules other than the one that had already been broken. So, its hard to know to what "sin" God was referring here.

God's favoritism here seems absolutely random and pretty confusing until the perspective from which it was written is taken into account. The authors were men who were banking on God's preference of animal sacrifice. That really is all they had to offer, because they were desert nomads at this point. It begins to become clear that these are stories for the Israelites in the desert. They were lessons. They were meant to instruct. For example, "animal product is an acceptable sacrifice, but grain is not" and "thank God for manchildren."

Another very obvious result of the authors' world view is the status of womankind. So far woman is credited for A) downfall of humanity, B) bearing "manchildren." Though it mentions that daughters are being born, they are a necessary byproduct that happens while trying for a boy. As God had ordered earlier, men "rule" women.

Reading chapter four is similar to watching a new parent fail at raising a child. It elicits the same uneasy feeling I had as a kid at my best friend's house. As a child, he was a hellion by any measure and I would watch as his timid mother consistently failed to effectively discipline him. Cain's "curse" is "too much to bear" and he complains to God that someone will kill him, so God immediately ammends the punishment. I find myself losing respect for God's way of dealing with humans, in the same way I am disappointed in flimsy parenting.

Cultural Notes

A hugely significant event, the end of hunting and gathering, takes place in chapter four. People begin systematically growing crops and raising livestock. It is not a coincidence that this happened after God gave the earth to man to "rule." It is also not a coincidence that this is when the trouble starts. Humankind really did take a fall because of this. As is clear in chapter four, the human species began to multiply exponentially with the advent of these new food producing styles.
The story is also put into historical context by mention of the birth of Tubal-cain, the "father of bronze." So, we are at least in the bronze age at this point.
The mention of polygamy again highlights woman's position in the culture. Women are clearly property at the time of the writing.
Music and musical instruments are also mentioned as well as tents and nomadic living.

The Art

As wrote in the first paragraph, I found the writing to come a bit easier than I expected. As I found previously, writing in short bursts and taking breaks to read over the story works the best. I sat on the floor and wrote on a low table, so my feet fell asleep and I became really uncomfortable if I stayed down there for too long. However, the lettering did not suffer. I was really happy with the look of the columns and the spacing of the words. I also included an example of the art I have been trying with my new ultra fine tip pen.