GMH liveblogs the book of Genesis (currently up to Genesis 17)

glennmagusharvey

I don't know even why this might be a good idea, but here goes.  I wonder how far I'll get before I stop doing this.

Note: I've edited the name of this thread to "GMH liveblogs the book of Genesis", so as to limit the scope of this a bit.  When I get to subsequent books I can just link to previous books' liveblogs in the first post or something.

Edition used: New International Version (NIV).  Interestingly, this does not capitalize pronouns referring to God, so I will similarly not do so.

You can follow along by looking up everything on a site like BibleGateway.com.  Links will be provided to The IRC Bible where relevant/available.

Genesis 1

Okay, so looks like we have the following order:
1. light and day/night
2. sky
3. dry ground and vegetation
4. sun/moon/stars
5. birds and fish
6. livestock, land animals, and man
7. the ganja break

And he saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

I guess the heavens and the earth were made on day zero or something, since that's not specified, and technically day wasn't defined until he created light.

----

Genesis 2

Oh wait, day seven is actually here.  Whatever.

verses 4-7: Okay, here's a problem.  It seems that before he created vegetation, God created man.  But didn't Genesis 1 just say that he made vegetation on day 3 and man on day 6?  Maybe he just made the template for vegetation and didn't yet run them through the magical machine of making things or something.  Maybe all those first seven days were template design.  Hmm.

verse 9: Oh, apparently there's a tree of life AND a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and these are different.

verses 10-14: The Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.  The last two actually exist in real life, and in fact a very fertile region of theirs, in southeastern Iraq, was the subject of a 60 Minutes article that pondered whether it was in fact the inspiration for the Garden of Eden.

verse 21: So I observe that male humans still have a full set of ribs.  I guess that proves the Medic right when he said "don't worry, ribs grow back".  And that he was lying when he said to his bird "no they don't".

verse 24: wtf unexpected cultural ethics lesson?  That came out of nowhere.

----

Genesis 3 (that link is for Genesis 2 and 3)

> lmao
The serpent was the first troll.  Now you know what the oldest hobby in the world is.

verse 7: "omfg we're nekkid"

> enmity...between your offspring and hers
Wait, what?  Aren't those offspring the same?  Unless there's some serious lack of basic biology knowledge here...and the footnote goes even weirder.  It suggests "seed" as an alternative translation for "offspring"...which might have really unfortunate implications about violent sex.

> he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel
...wait, who's "he"?  Okay, I'm going to bet that this just doesn't even make sense, unless it actually means familial strife.

> Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
Unfortunate Implications much?

> The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
SKIN PAJAMAS

> [man] must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever
Dangit Eve and Adam, you should have eaten from that tree FIRST.

----

Genesis 4

> but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor
> then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry?  Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?  But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."
Wait, now God is getting in on the trolling action too?

> "Where is your brother Abel?"
> "lol i dunno"
A bad answer to give an omnipotent deity.

> Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other named Zillah
So he could go from A to Z.

> Adah gave birth to Jabal; ... his brother's name was Jubal
In one generation, naming creativity has gone drastically down.

> Jubal...was the father of all who play the harp and flute
So I guess this guy is the first musician?

> Tubal-Cain
What kind of name is this.

Also, the IRC Bible makes a good observation: Where did Cain's wife come from?  Assuming he's not his daughter, he would have had to be...his sister.  Waitaminute...

glennmagusharvey

Genesis 5

This chapter consists of a running joke.  Or a math word problem.

I mean, look at this:

When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.  After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.  Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.

When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh.  And after he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters.  Altogether, Seth lived 912 years, and then he died.

When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan.  And after he became the father of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and daughters.  Altogether, Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died.

This goes on another six more times.

There's also the fact that these people had...very long lifespans.  Either they were really old when they had their most important children, and women back then liked really old men, or they were elves.  I'm betting they were elves.

Also:
> Enoch
> Lamech
I thought Enoch was Cain's son.  And Lamech was six generations down from Cain.  But now it seems that Enoch was six generations after Adam...and Lamech was another two generations after Enoch.

Was the inbreeding really THAT bad?  Or were those names just, like, really popular?

Counterclock

i laughed twice, I'l give more thoughts when I can

MoeDantes

There's a part I always found confusing, where some guy is wandering through the desert and he gets into a fight with an angel.

I've never read the whole Bible cover-to-cover, but I have read the book of Genesis. I've been thinking of making a second attempt and this topic has almost inspired me.

glennmagusharvey

Come to think of it, fridge logic tells me that that means Adam and Eve originally had...no skin at all.

I'll read (and write up my comments on) Genesis 6 later today.

Counterclock

From what I heard, didn't snakes in general get the punishment for something that's suppose to be the devil in disguise?

Did god fail his research, or were snakes just really assholes from the beginning?

glennmagusharvey

Protip: God favors badgers.  He also got sick of playing Snake on his cell phone.

glennmagusharvey

Since I didn't update last night, here's a three-chapter update.

Genesis 6 to 8: The Flood, or, Wherein God Does the Omnipotent Deity Analogue of Ragequitting (But Holds Back a Little)

> sons of God...daughters of men
> sons of God...daughters of men

Relatively obvious sexism is relatively obvious?

> Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of
creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.
> Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its
mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

Wait, what?  Now the footnote says that "seven" is probably more properly translated as "seven pairs", which makes a bit more sense, but it's like, "wait, take some more of these animals, I like them more", or something.

Also, apparently God wrote up an auto-sex-pairing script for the animals as well.  But what about those that divide asexually?

And what about fish, who don't get drowned by flood?  And what about plants?  Though God did tell Noah to gather up fruits, which presumably contain seeds.

> Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out;

Okay, so only all animals died...but did the plants too?  Maybe not since they don't have nostrils and nor do various other creepy crawlies...

Okay, I'll be honest here.  If I take this as a sort of legendary story, which this basically is, I shouldn't really be questioning these things, but then again, I would anyway if I were liveblogging some other mythos text.

Then Noah sends out some birds.

I just realized that little kids' Bible study resources NEVER tell us about the raven, or the dove's first trip, or the dove's last (and third) trip.

> Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean
animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.

Oh I guess that was what the extra "clean" animals were for.

Counterclock

It's been said before, but I'll repeat it in this thread because.

Question.

Did God flood the world with Salt-Water or fresh?

glennmagusharvey

It came as rain, so presumably fresh.

That might actually kill a bunch of sea creatures too, come to think of it.  Whether this matches what happened in the actual flood that inspired this and a whole bunch of other flood legends, I don't know.

Oh, I forgot this:
> Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives
> Noah and his sons...together with his wife and the wives of his three sons
More sexism?

And what about his daughters and their husbands?

glennmagusharvey

...then again, that's God, so if he made the floodgates of Heaven pour forth saltwater...hey, he could do that.

Counterclock

Well, I ask because either way, Noah probably wasn't able to house either fresh-water or salt-water creatures, so presumably, one of them is gonna take the bullet.

Also.

>Bible

>Sexism.

It's been grounded down for a long time now that Sexism is rooted deep within the bible.

It's why quite a bit of rational people don't like it's messages.

captainbrass

Pfffttt, Genesis is easy. Let's see you liveblog Numbers (as in Book of, not the crime show with the mathematician) and make that entertaining, GMH.

One good source of laughs I remember from the Bible is Proverbs, partly because a lot of the proverbs are the most Captain Obvious- type stuff you can imagine, partly because it contains an amusing description of being drunk/hungover. Remember, drugs are bad, kids, m'kay... 

glennmagusharvey

Given that the Bible has a pretty insane amount of content, this is gonna take a while anyway.  I'll be happy if I don't run out of gas on this project before the end of just Genesis (which is like fifty-something chapters, though the chapters are kinda short).

Genesis 9 to 11 coming soon.

glennmagusharvey

Genesis 9

> Everything that lives and moves will be food for you.
Contradiction with Leviticus in 3...2...1...wait, it'll take me a while to finish even Genesis.

Contradiction with Genesis in 3...2...1...
> But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.
Okay, what exactly is "lifeblood"?  Is it just blood?  Would be hard to wring out all the blood from meat though...unless God's okay with, say, 95% draining of blood or something.  On the other hand, if "lifeblood" means that it's still alive, maybe this just means that we ought not to eat things that are still alive.  That makes more sense.

And it looks like a good thing that God is setting up a justice system here.  For, like, the first time.

> Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood
Bolded is the excuse that fundamentalists will use if patches of humanity survive a post-apocalyptic flooded world.

The Sons of Noah

So now we have this little story.  Let me summarize it:
1. Noah passes out drunk, naked, for some reason.
2. Ham finds Noah passed out and naked.  Ham notifies his brothers Shem and Japheth.
3. Shem and Japheth grab a cloth, walk in backwards, and cover their father with the cloth.
4. Noah wakes up, and goes ABSOLUTELY FREAKING BONKERS BECAUSE HAM YOU ASSHOLE YOU LOOKED AT ME NAKED, NOW I AM GOING TO CURSE YOU AND YOUR DESCENDANTS AND YOUR VILLAGE'S CITIZENS TO BE SLAVES TO YOUR OTHER BROTHERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS AND THEIR VILLAGES' CITIZENS BECAUSE YOU LOOKED AT ME NAKED.

Noah, it's your own fault for not wearing clothes.

> And after the flood Noah lived 350 years.  Altogether, Noah lived 950 yars, and then he died.
I see we're back to this running word problem again.

----

Genesis 10

Hellooooo, genalogy record.

> Ashkenaz
I guess this is where the term "Ashkenazi Jew" comes from.

> Cush, Put
Seriously, who comes up with these names?

> Havilah
I remember seeing this name before.  It's...the land that the river Pishon, one of the four rivers of the Garden of Eden, runs through the entirety of (Gen 2:11).

> sons of Cush...Sheba...
No, Sheba's a girl.

> Nimrod
Curiously, while its traditional meaning is "hunter", this is an informal English term for "idiot".  I wonder if the latter came from association with the Tower of Babel.

> Shem
> Semites
...well, I didn't expect that one, but I guess this is where "Semite" and "anti-Semitism" come from.  That said, if Semites are descendants of Shem, then why would "anti-Semitism" target Ashkenazi Jews?

> Joktan was the father of...Havilah
Wait, he's Cush's son.  FIRST DOCUMENTED INSTANCE OF PATERNITY DISPUTE???

----

Genesis 11

In which the Lord decides that people are too uppity...
> "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."
...and consequently trolls them.

Now, one might ask, where the heck did they get all that great civil engineering know-how in the first place?  Wild mass guessing: Maybe God actually didn't screw with their languages...but instead screwed with their ability to understand the language of nature: mathematics.  I mean, Noah was a great engineer himself, even if he did get tips from God directly.  So WMG says that people actually had developed civil engineering quite advanced...and then God set it back by a few thousand years.

A few thousand years later, Douglas Adams crafted an ear-diving fish to commemorate these events.

> Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad.  And afte he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

Ohhh no, not again.

At least they stopped saying "and then he died" at the end of each such paragraph.  Whoever was writing this probably decided that that was getting tacky.  But we still have to deal with more running jokes word problems.

That said, I noticed something about this.  Their lifespans are gradually getting shorter.  You had people living seven hundred years, eight hundred years, even nine hundred years before ths.  Noah died at age 950 and Methuselah famously died at age 969.  But now...
100+500 = 600
35+403 = 438
30+403 = 433
34+430 = 464
30+209 = 242
32+207 = 239
30+200 = 230
29+119 = 148

And they're also having their most notable descendants sooner.  Interesting.  Whatever it was, there was something way back in the day that let humans live like elves.  Flame bait WMG: They're evolving from elves to humans.  I wonder what gave humans advantages that elves didn't.  I wonder what genes grant humans those extra skill points at every level, and that extra feat at first level...

Okay, now we have a different problem.

> Teran became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
> the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah; she was the daughter of Haran

Nahor married his niece.

> to go to Canaan.
> when they came to Haran, they settled there
Okay, so here's a problem with naming geography after people.  It gets confusing after a while, and you get silly things like this.  Did they just settle on the spot where they Terah found his son Haran again?  And it gets sillier:
> Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.
I'm pretty sure this is not supposed to mean cannibalism.

...wait, did I just see
> and he died

OHHH, MAN!

FrodoGoofballCoTV

Joktan was the father of...Havilah
Wait, he's Cush's son. FIRST DOCUMENTED INSTANCE OF PATERNITY DISPUTE???
or there were two people with the same name?

Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.
Maybe he founded a town and named it after his son?  (You'd think they'd mention that.)

 

glennmagusharvey

I know it means a town named after his son, most likely founded by his son.  I was just joking.  As I also was with the paternity dispute thing.  You'll note that I ponder whether these names are just really darn popular, in an earlier post.

The Havilah thing, though, might very well be the same person/place, as it's quite clear that this account was written many, many years after all this stuff happened.

Bee

Come to think of it, fridge logic tells me that that means Adam and Eve originally had...no skin at all.

It might have meant animal-skin clothes.  That was my first thought back when I did the cover-to-cover thing.

glennmagusharvey

^ Good point; I hadn't thought of that but that makes the most sense.

Genesis 12

So God tells Abram "Yo dude, I'm'a rig the RNG so it'll love you."  Abram goes as far as the "great tree of Moreh at Shechem", where God tells Abram that the Canaanites are gonna get screwed over 'round these parts in the future.  Abram continues going some way or another and ends up in Egypt, where Abram lies by saying that his wife is his sister, and gets lots of livestock, servants, and a four-star hotel room as a result.  Then, for no stated reason, God "inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai."  For thinking she was hot, I guess?

Funny how nowadays you'd say the opposite thing to keep suitors away.  You'd tell your peers that your sister was your girlfriend if you didn't want them thinking of her as potential date/mate material.

Genesis 13

> Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.
I bet you some of those servants were just gold farmers.

> From the Negev he went from place to place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier
So he just wandered around the area, eventually hitting and then leaving Egypt.

So basically, Abram's and Lot's herdsmen started arguing, so they decided to go their separate ways.  Lot thought Jordan looked like a really fertile place so he went that way.

> (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)
Thanks for spoiling that. -_-

> Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.
You already spoiled it, dude; no need to further foreshadow it.  Or are you just trying to rub it in?

> the great trees of Mamre at Hebron
I wonder whether "Hebron" is where "Hebrew" comes from.  That said, Wikipedia suggests it's not.

Genesis 14

War politics happens.  Some kingdoms rebel against another that's ruling them.  This is followed by complicated events which involved some fighting, and some more fighting.  Apparently, Lot got carried away.  Literally, that is, when Sodom and Gomorrah were conquered and looted.

> Abram the Hebrew
...hmm, maybe, just maybe.

So Abram got 318 of his men and then went out to save Lot, going as far as Dan.  He saved Lot, and his stuff, and the women, and the other people, possibly not in that order.  Dan later lost the vice presidency to Al, after his running-mate George raised taxes after promising no new taxes.

Then apparently people heard that his fast-clicking skills were really good and his 318 men were actually micromanaged to victory, so they allied with him.  Unfortunately for Kedorlaomer, he was on the wrong side of the deal and didn't even get to build a town center before he was defeated.  Speculation abounds that his hard-to-spell name was part of the problem, as other kings didn't want to type it into chat.  (He was probably called "Ked" by his allies.)

> Salem * footnote: "That is, Jerusalem"
Hunh, I never knew that that name came from "Jerusalem".

> Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
I hope that didn't involve dividing things like this:

Especially not the livestock.

And for some reason, Abram really doesn't want to owe anything to the king of Sodom.  I guess this is probably because of the so far informed trait that Sodom is full of bad people.

Genesis 15

I will be very beneficial to you.
But I have no children; how will I ensure my legacy if one of my servants will inherit what I have?
No, you'll have a son, and tons of descendants.
...okay.

You're gonna own this land one day.
How the heck will that happen?
Bring me an offering consisting of these things: 3yo heifer, 3yo goat, 3yo ram, dove, young pigeon.
...okay.
* Abram brings offering items
* Abram cuts livestock but not birds, for some reason, in a move that probably had great cultural significance back then but whose meaning is completely lost on us, but which was important enough that this was pointed out
* Abram drives away vultures
* Abram falls asleep
* Abram dreams of foreshadowing of Exodus
* God somehow says a few more things to Abram, without specification as to how

Maybe God miraculously consumed the offering, because I don't think leaving those carcasses around is a great idea.

Overall, kinda a boring chapter, unless you're using it as evidence that Abram's descendants have some sort of land ownership right.

Genesis 16

Sarai basically tells Abram to go do his maidservant Hagar since she (Sarai) is infertile.  He does, and Hagar becomes pregnant, and becomes unhappy with being used as a substitute baby-making machine for Sarai, or something.  Then an angel tells Hagar to stop being unhappy by guaranteeing that her genetic material will be spread far and wide, and not in a dirty way either.  The angel also prophecies that Hagar's son will be a total ass and troublemaker.  Okay, maybe that's what convinced her to stay.

> That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi ["well of the Living One who sees me"]; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
For a moment, the Bible becomes a tourism guidebook.  I'm sure for some people it is one, in fact.

> Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
...well I guess it's already happened a ton of times before.

Genesis 17

God first promises Abram a large number of free civilian and military units.  Then he gives Abram and his wife class changes; one of the perks is that their new names look more like names used in the modern era, though it is not specified whether they have to buy new equipment for their new classes.  Finally, God gives the newly-minted Abraham a deluxe DVD box set of Canaan, even though Abraham's never seen the series.

However, cool things like that come with a price tag: circumcision of every male in the clan who is at least eight days old.  Why he didn't instead demand regular offerings, cultural devotion, or something that would make more sense is left unexplained.

Apparently, the class change Sarai underwent also made her fertile, and now God stops trolling Abraham and returns the brick joke by telling Abraham that the 90-year-old level 1 Sarah will bear a child named Isaac.

And everyone of note except Sarah got circumcised.  Because everyone of note except Sarah is male and part of Abraham's clan.