The following entry represents my notes and observations as I read ‘Zondervan’s NASB Study Bible’. The text of the entry is my best attempt to summarize a large volume of text for easier reference in the future. As I go, I will compare and contrast the text of the NASB with ‘The Jewish Study Bible’ by Oxford University Press. If a passage is not specified as referring to either the Jewish or Christian version of the Bible then it can be assumed that it applies to both works. Passages specific to one or the other will be marked with either [NASB] or [JSB] as appropriate. Any person who differs with any detail of interpretation is invited to comment and include specifics and I’ll be happy to reexamine the passage(s) at issue.
Chapter 6
Of the chapters outlined so far, Chapter 6 seems to be the most in dispute insofar as determination of a definitive meaning and intent.
Men began to increase on the earth and “divine beings” [JSB] or angels [NASB] or righteous sons of Seth [NAVB] took women for their wives. The NASB seems most strongly behind the theory that the descendants of Cain and the descendants of Seth commingled and blurred the boundaries between the two family lines. It is not, however, definitive in this opinion in that it also allows the possibility that angels married human women.
Whoever these “divine beings” are, God is not pleased with what he sees and declares either that man has 120 years to clean up his act before God cleans house [NASB] or that man’s lifespan will be limited to 120 years from this point forward [NASB & JSB]. It is now that the Nephilim, (Giants [JSB] or mighty men who were really sinners [NASB]) make an appearance on the scene and take human wives.
Man was in fact so wicked that God declares he regrets even creating him in the first place and that he will blot out all the men and poor sinless animals from the entire planet… except for Noah. Noah, whose name spelled backwards is Hebrew for ‘favor’, was “righteous and blameless”. He beget three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. God instructs Noah to build an ark of gopher wood with three decks, many rooms inside and seal it on the outside with tar. It should also have a roof, one window and be 450 ft long, 75 ft wide and 45 ft deep. That’s a little more than half the length of the Titanic, almost as wide, one third the depth and very, very dark inside.
God goes on to say that for his part in this little arrangement, he’ll make it rain until everything floods. The NASB argues with itself briefly on whether this is actually a world-wide flood or merely a local flood that was enough to wipe out only the Middle East. The JSB looks at this from a more literary standpoint and points out merely that the whole tale is simply an adaptation of a well-known Mesopotamian story of the same general theme. Whichever the case, Noah is to take his wife, his sons and their wives and pile them all onto the ark with enough food to eat and one additional minor detail: two of each animal that crawls on the Earth or flies in the air (one male, one female) will make its way to the ark and Noah’s to cram them all inside along with enough food to feed them for an undesignated period of time. All this, Noah does.
Chapter 7
His work done, God commands Noah into the ark: “you alone I have found righteous before me in this generation.” God apparently modifies his previous edict by instructing Noah to place 7 pairs of each of the “clean” animals in the ark rather than 1 pair as specified in Chapter 6. JSB cites this as an error and further proof of the mosaic authorship theory for the Torah. NASB explains, however, that Noah must take the extra animals in order to make a ritual sacrifice after the flood is over. Whatever the case, that’s a lot of sacrificing. God gives Noah 7 days warning of the impending start of the rain to get his affairs in order.
Noah collects the animals and gets into the ark while daily life outside for the rest of the population remains relatively unchanged. That is, until the rain starts. 40 days and 40 nights the Lord promised the rains would continue and true to his word the flood buries even the highest mountain under 30 feet of water. All the animals left on the earth have perished though the NASB incorrectly points out that sea life would have been unaffected. This is clearly incorrect, however, since the influx of rainwater would no doubt have changed the salinity of the oceans considerably beyond the tolerances of most ocean life. These too would have perished in the flood. Only Noah and the animals remained alive.
The chapter closes with he words, “and when the waters had swelled on the earth one hundred and fifty days” which the JSB points out is in contradiction with the 40 days figure cited earlier in the chapter. Clearly, this is not the case though since it rained for 40 days but apparently took 110 days for the water to drain away to wherever world-wide floods could find to drain away to
Chapter 8
After the rain, God suddenly remembered Noah and his animals and passes a wind across the Earth to counteract all that water. The water steadily decreases and five months after all this started, the ark comes to rest in a mountain range in the area of Ararat. Contrary to popular belief, there is no Mount Ararat, the name refers to the ancient country Uratu now occupied by Turkey, Iraq, Armenia and Iran. Three months after it comes to rest in the mountains, the tops of the mountains became visible.
After 40 days, Noah opened the window and sent forth the raven. It “flew here and there until the water was dried up from the earth.” Considering that’s months away, it’s a pretty impressive feat of endurance. He then sends out a dove but it returned as it found no place to land. Noah waited another seven days and sent out the dove again; this time it returned with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. This is surprising given that no olive tree could survive several months under water. Further, the common olive (Olea europaea) can take several months to germinate even in the most optimal circumstances. Add to this the fact that the olive is not a mountain-dwelling plant so the waters must have receded at an incredible pace for there to be an olive leaf available even if it plucked a new sapling tree from the ground.
Noah waited another seven days and sent the dove again. This time it did not return. Deciding after very nearly a year in the ark that it was safe to come out, Noah removes the covering of the ark and at exactly a year from the time they entered the ark the earth is declared dry again. God speaks to Noah and tells him to get out of the ark and bring all the animals forth to repopulate the earth. This is, of course, impossible. Two individuals from a species cannot repopulate the earth for very specific genetic reasons.
After bringing out the animals, Noah builds an altar to the Lord. Then he takes some the extra “clean” animals that the lord commanded him to save in chapter seven, slit their throats and burned their corpses on the altar as an offering to God. It’s funny, I never heard about any of that in Sunday school or those made-for-TV-movies about Genesis. If a person did this today, they would be thrown in jail or burned as a witch. This is exactly the sort of behavior that modern society ascribes to devil-worshipers. God “smelled the soothing aroma” and promised to never again curse the ground because of the acts of man. He goes on to say that “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
Frankly, I’m appalled at this chapter. Noah murders animals and burns their corpses and God looks on in apparent glee. Further, he goes on to say directly that man, who he created, is evil from his first days on earth. Any entity that looks at a baby and sees evil yet rejoices in the smell of burning corpses is frankly sick. Luckily, for the people who subscribe to this doctrine, all this has been revised and expunged from popular perception of the Bible.
Chapter 9
For serving God, Noah and his sons are blessed and charged with the responsibility of repopulating the whole earth. He reiterates that man shall have dominion over the birds and the beasts and that man is now allowed to eat them (recall that in chapter 1 man was to be a vegetarian) as long as the blood is no longer present. The JSB points at that this is the origin of the Jewish practice of kashering, salting meat so as to absorb blood before consumption. I would point out that this is the first of many examples of commandments which simply echo what would have been common sense at the time. Cooking also removes the blood from meat and reduces the risk of disease. Contemporary people would have been aware of this from experience and so inject this allegory into their religious texts as a reminder. It also improves the believability of your mythology greatly if you can point to specific instances in which individuals failed to follow the commandments and paid some price for having done so. Finally, God specifically stipulates that “whoever sheds the blood of man shall, by man shall his blood be shed” and so we get our second post-diluvian commandment.
God then goes on to establish the Noahic covenant. He promises never again to destroy the earth via flood and as evidence of his goodwill in this matter we will have the rainbow to look upon when it rains. This is commonly referred to as the “Covenant of the Rainbow” for that reason.
As you may recall the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham and Japheth. Ham had a son Canaan. Noah was a farmer like his father and he was the first man to plant a vineyard. Noah drank of the wine, became drunk, retired to his tent and then became naked. Ham found him in this state and went to tell his brothers of this and they responded by covering their father in a garment in such a way as to not see his nakedness themselves. When Noah awoke from his intoxicated state, he lashed out at Ham by cursing his son, Canaan, and his descendants to slavery in the houses of the other two brothers.
The two Bibles disagree on exactly WHY Canaan was punished in such a way for what seems like a trivial act. The JSB maintains that the original Hebrew in this area could actually mean many things including the possibility that Ham actually raped his father or castrated him. The JSB considers it more likely though that the passage should be taken literally and that Ham is punished only for his impropriety and gossip about the incident to his brothers. The NASB has less to say on the subject but does point out that the punishment of the son is contrary to other biblical restrictions but is most likely a pre-emptive chastisement in that it anticipates the future misdeeds of Canaan’s descendants. Whatever the case, condemning your grandson to slavery is a harsh punishment for a simple error arising primarily because Noah got drunk.
After all the damning and condemning is sorted out, we are told that Noah lives another 350 years after the flood to an age of 950.
Chapter 10
Chapter 10 treats us to the full family tree of Shem, Ham and Japheth.
In the interests of sanity, I will not repeat them all here as they are easily enough found in the text and of little interest by themselves.
Chapter 6
Of the chapters outlined so far, Chapter 6 seems to be the most in dispute insofar as determination of a definitive meaning and intent.
Men began to increase on the earth and “divine beings” [JSB] or angels [NASB] or righteous sons of Seth [NAVB] took women for their wives. The NASB seems most strongly behind the theory that the descendants of Cain and the descendants of Seth commingled and blurred the boundaries between the two family lines. It is not, however, definitive in this opinion in that it also allows the possibility that angels married human women.
Whoever these “divine beings” are, God is not pleased with what he sees and declares either that man has 120 years to clean up his act before God cleans house [NASB] or that man’s lifespan will be limited to 120 years from this point forward [NASB & JSB]. It is now that the Nephilim, (Giants [JSB] or mighty men who were really sinners [NASB]) make an appearance on the scene and take human wives.
Man was in fact so wicked that God declares he regrets even creating him in the first place and that he will blot out all the men and poor sinless animals from the entire planet… except for Noah. Noah, whose name spelled backwards is Hebrew for ‘favor’, was “righteous and blameless”. He beget three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. God instructs Noah to build an ark of gopher wood with three decks, many rooms inside and seal it on the outside with tar. It should also have a roof, one window and be 450 ft long, 75 ft wide and 45 ft deep. That’s a little more than half the length of the Titanic, almost as wide, one third the depth and very, very dark inside.
God goes on to say that for his part in this little arrangement, he’ll make it rain until everything floods. The NASB argues with itself briefly on whether this is actually a world-wide flood or merely a local flood that was enough to wipe out only the Middle East. The JSB looks at this from a more literary standpoint and points out merely that the whole tale is simply an adaptation of a well-known Mesopotamian story of the same general theme. Whichever the case, Noah is to take his wife, his sons and their wives and pile them all onto the ark with enough food to eat and one additional minor detail: two of each animal that crawls on the Earth or flies in the air (one male, one female) will make its way to the ark and Noah’s to cram them all inside along with enough food to feed them for an undesignated period of time. All this, Noah does.
Chapter 7
His work done, God commands Noah into the ark: “you alone I have found righteous before me in this generation.” God apparently modifies his previous edict by instructing Noah to place 7 pairs of each of the “clean” animals in the ark rather than 1 pair as specified in Chapter 6. JSB cites this as an error and further proof of the mosaic authorship theory for the Torah. NASB explains, however, that Noah must take the extra animals in order to make a ritual sacrifice after the flood is over. Whatever the case, that’s a lot of sacrificing. God gives Noah 7 days warning of the impending start of the rain to get his affairs in order.
Noah collects the animals and gets into the ark while daily life outside for the rest of the population remains relatively unchanged. That is, until the rain starts. 40 days and 40 nights the Lord promised the rains would continue and true to his word the flood buries even the highest mountain under 30 feet of water. All the animals left on the earth have perished though the NASB incorrectly points out that sea life would have been unaffected. This is clearly incorrect, however, since the influx of rainwater would no doubt have changed the salinity of the oceans considerably beyond the tolerances of most ocean life. These too would have perished in the flood. Only Noah and the animals remained alive.
The chapter closes with he words, “and when the waters had swelled on the earth one hundred and fifty days” which the JSB points out is in contradiction with the 40 days figure cited earlier in the chapter. Clearly, this is not the case though since it rained for 40 days but apparently took 110 days for the water to drain away to wherever world-wide floods could find to drain away to
Chapter 8
After the rain, God suddenly remembered Noah and his animals and passes a wind across the Earth to counteract all that water. The water steadily decreases and five months after all this started, the ark comes to rest in a mountain range in the area of Ararat. Contrary to popular belief, there is no Mount Ararat, the name refers to the ancient country Uratu now occupied by Turkey, Iraq, Armenia and Iran. Three months after it comes to rest in the mountains, the tops of the mountains became visible.
After 40 days, Noah opened the window and sent forth the raven. It “flew here and there until the water was dried up from the earth.” Considering that’s months away, it’s a pretty impressive feat of endurance. He then sends out a dove but it returned as it found no place to land. Noah waited another seven days and sent out the dove again; this time it returned with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. This is surprising given that no olive tree could survive several months under water. Further, the common olive (Olea europaea) can take several months to germinate even in the most optimal circumstances. Add to this the fact that the olive is not a mountain-dwelling plant so the waters must have receded at an incredible pace for there to be an olive leaf available even if it plucked a new sapling tree from the ground.
Noah waited another seven days and sent the dove again. This time it did not return. Deciding after very nearly a year in the ark that it was safe to come out, Noah removes the covering of the ark and at exactly a year from the time they entered the ark the earth is declared dry again. God speaks to Noah and tells him to get out of the ark and bring all the animals forth to repopulate the earth. This is, of course, impossible. Two individuals from a species cannot repopulate the earth for very specific genetic reasons.
After bringing out the animals, Noah builds an altar to the Lord. Then he takes some the extra “clean” animals that the lord commanded him to save in chapter seven, slit their throats and burned their corpses on the altar as an offering to God. It’s funny, I never heard about any of that in Sunday school or those made-for-TV-movies about Genesis. If a person did this today, they would be thrown in jail or burned as a witch. This is exactly the sort of behavior that modern society ascribes to devil-worshipers. God “smelled the soothing aroma” and promised to never again curse the ground because of the acts of man. He goes on to say that “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
Frankly, I’m appalled at this chapter. Noah murders animals and burns their corpses and God looks on in apparent glee. Further, he goes on to say directly that man, who he created, is evil from his first days on earth. Any entity that looks at a baby and sees evil yet rejoices in the smell of burning corpses is frankly sick. Luckily, for the people who subscribe to this doctrine, all this has been revised and expunged from popular perception of the Bible.
Chapter 9
For serving God, Noah and his sons are blessed and charged with the responsibility of repopulating the whole earth. He reiterates that man shall have dominion over the birds and the beasts and that man is now allowed to eat them (recall that in chapter 1 man was to be a vegetarian) as long as the blood is no longer present. The JSB points at that this is the origin of the Jewish practice of kashering, salting meat so as to absorb blood before consumption. I would point out that this is the first of many examples of commandments which simply echo what would have been common sense at the time. Cooking also removes the blood from meat and reduces the risk of disease. Contemporary people would have been aware of this from experience and so inject this allegory into their religious texts as a reminder. It also improves the believability of your mythology greatly if you can point to specific instances in which individuals failed to follow the commandments and paid some price for having done so. Finally, God specifically stipulates that “whoever sheds the blood of man shall, by man shall his blood be shed” and so we get our second post-diluvian commandment.
God then goes on to establish the Noahic covenant. He promises never again to destroy the earth via flood and as evidence of his goodwill in this matter we will have the rainbow to look upon when it rains. This is commonly referred to as the “Covenant of the Rainbow” for that reason.
As you may recall the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham and Japheth. Ham had a son Canaan. Noah was a farmer like his father and he was the first man to plant a vineyard. Noah drank of the wine, became drunk, retired to his tent and then became naked. Ham found him in this state and went to tell his brothers of this and they responded by covering their father in a garment in such a way as to not see his nakedness themselves. When Noah awoke from his intoxicated state, he lashed out at Ham by cursing his son, Canaan, and his descendants to slavery in the houses of the other two brothers.
The two Bibles disagree on exactly WHY Canaan was punished in such a way for what seems like a trivial act. The JSB maintains that the original Hebrew in this area could actually mean many things including the possibility that Ham actually raped his father or castrated him. The JSB considers it more likely though that the passage should be taken literally and that Ham is punished only for his impropriety and gossip about the incident to his brothers. The NASB has less to say on the subject but does point out that the punishment of the son is contrary to other biblical restrictions but is most likely a pre-emptive chastisement in that it anticipates the future misdeeds of Canaan’s descendants. Whatever the case, condemning your grandson to slavery is a harsh punishment for a simple error arising primarily because Noah got drunk.
After all the damning and condemning is sorted out, we are told that Noah lives another 350 years after the flood to an age of 950.
Chapter 10
Chapter 10 treats us to the full family tree of Shem, Ham and Japheth.
In the interests of sanity, I will not repeat them all here as they are easily enough found in the text and of little interest by themselves.
2 comments:
And you are into the realm of the meaningful, too. This is fascinating stuff---to be reread and digested. Thanks for contacting me.
Great read Rob. I am at present reading Genesis and it is such a important account of creation.
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