Rainbows and wine

Genesis Chapter 9

Mmmm steak – now we are allowed to eat more than vegetables, rabbit food and lentils!

At this stage God seems to impose the death penalty for people who kill. 

While I agree that life is sacred and is given as a gift by the almighty who will demand an accounting for every life taken. I’m also of the opinion that we cannot give life back once somebody is properly dead therefore we should be careful if we intend to do the same in the name of justice – blood is still spilled and an accounting is still required, only now from executioner as well as murderer. 

The other thing in this chapter is a startling fact about the rainbow – the rainbow is created when light is refracted by particles in the atmosphere (like rain) If you move around the particles refracting the light change, and the rainbow is different.

This means that every person sees a rainbow that is unique to him or her – it is a reminder to God, yes but just as much a reminder to YOU personally that God has not forgotten even you. I think that it pretty amazing!

The rest of the chapter is a bit odd – Noah plants a vineyard and makes some wine. So far so good, but he has then the first example of binge drinking. Indeed, Noah is the first recorded drunk in the Good book.

He ends up unconscious and stark naked when his son, Ham, spots him and tells his brothers that old dad has been on the old vino. At which point Shem and Japheth go and cover him up.

I guess that Noah has a hangover when he finally comes round, but I do wonder why he curses his grandson, Canaan. What’s all that about?

Waiting for dry weather?

Genesis Chapter 8

It appears to take some time for floods to recede here - 5 months for the floods to recede enough for the ark to come to rest, and another 11 weeks for the land to become visible

6 weeks later Noah tries a homing raven. It appears that homing ravens are not such a bright move.... Noah also sent out a dove which had the sense to come back.

A week later Noah tries again and gets an olive branch and then again another week later where the dove failed to come back.

All in all, Noah was on the ark for pretty much a year. I do not want to even imagine the aroma inside the ark at this stage.....

Once things are back, Noah and co come out of the ark and Noah builds an alter to God and we find out why seven pairs of all the clean animals were on the ark!.

Notice that God promises to never again curse the earth because of humans. Having said that we appear to be doing a pretty good job of harming the earth without any help from God.

Also another famous routine was "Three ha'pence a foot" by Stanley Holloway based on Noah's ark.

Worth a look if you don't already know it.

For younger readers ha'pence is half a penny and a foot is a bit under 30 cm (as well as the thing on the end of your leg!)

By the way, Noah's wife is not named - though it almost certainly is not Joan (of Arc.)

Did the flood cover all the land?

Genesis Chapter 7

There is loads of debate about such remote ideas as “Did Noah’s flood cover all the earth so the tallest mountains were under water” if so where did the water go, “Did the bible take this story from ancient Babylonian myths”?

Or why did the dinosaurs not get on the ark?

My response is – hey guys it is a story in the bible, not expected to be historically accurate by today’s standards. For example the expression in the Bible translated as the whole earth could be translated “all the land”

Surely if the water covered the whole earth to cover even the highest mountains it had to go somewhere and there is not enough volume in the earth or the atmosphere to take all the water, so perhaps the flood did not cover literally (from our modern viewpoint) the whole earth, however there have been major flooding events in the history of the planet, for example the flood that turned Britain into an island. 

Perhaps Noah is one of the last? 

For me the dinosaur question is actually rather unimportant if you believe the days of creation are not 24 hour time periods but rather epochs - the fossil record shows life back to 200 million years ago and beyond, the dinosaurs possibly belonged to an earlier "day" and were naturally extinct before the Bible was written. the Bible concentrates on mankind, so dinosaurs would not have moved the plot along very much.

There may be similarities between Noah's ark and the Babylonian myth, and I honestly don't much care if neither or both tales are true. For me the message is that God did not forget Noah and family on the ark 

Of more interest to me is that God told Noah to bring 7 pairs of every clean animal into the ark, but we don’t actually find out what are clean and unclean in the Bible until Moses who does not appear until the next book!

And the animals came in 2 by 2

Genesis Chapter 6

Noah’s ark

What did God tell Noah when Noah suggested building the ark out of bricks?

“No, Noah, go for wood” (Gopher wood- get it?)

Sorry very sad joke.

According to the Bible account Noah’s ark was pretty big. 

I ran a few rough calculations and according to the footnotes in the bible Noah’s ark was 135 m long by 23 m wide by 14 m high

This is a volume of 42,470 m³

If the floors and sides are on average 1.5 m thick and the wood density of 800 kg/m³ we get a weight for the ark of 20,212 Tonnes.

Each floor has an area of 3105 m² (or ¾ of an acre) so with 3 levels we get 2.25 acres

If the inside and outside are coated with tar, again let us assume a thickness of about 10 

cm on average we would need 150 m³ of pitch or tar.

There was a film called Evan Almighty back in 2007, the ark that Evan builds is quite a lot smaller than Noah’s original

I really do not know the veracity of the story of Noah's ark, the sheer maths would make building the ark a very big project. 

I've seen TV programmes that suggest that ancient Babylon have a similar tale in their folklore, but a bit more of that tomorrow.

Long lives, well lived?

Genesis Chapter 5 

I'm not really sure what is the point of this chapter which takes us from Cain and Abel through to Noah, but What a bunch of old codgers!

Perhaps if we lived that long these days we would take slightly better care of the planet we may be around to see the consequences of our environmental actions.

Imagine being the age of Methuselah (969 years) in 2013 would mean a birth in 1044, so would have been 22 years old at the battle of Hastings.

Whether people used to live for nearly 1000 years is literally true I honestly do not know, 

some people use this chapter as part of the calculation of the age of the earth - apparently according to Bishop James Usher the earth was created in 4004 b.c. from a literal reading of the book of Genesis that a creation day lasted 24 hours and a biblical year lasted 365.25 days. Treating Genesis as a historical epic according to modern scientific standards tends to leave me feeling like a bit of an idiot

Also notice that Methuselah is the oldest person in the Bible aged 969 years and that he still died before his dad, Enoch, who got carried away by God.

We now get the introduction of Noah

The Mark of Cain

Genesis Chapter 4

There are a few interesting things in this chapter. 

Why did Cain kill Abel? according to the Bible it was the act of a jealous brother after God accepts Abel's offerings but no Cain's. I'm not entirely sure why this should be - some would say Cain bought fruit but Abel bought the best firstborn lambs, and that Abel's offering was higher value or more special somehow. Personally I don't know

Once Cain has killed Abel and is banished by God he says “whoever finds me will kill me”. 

People ask “Who did Seth and Cain marry?” and the comment Cain makes here is telling – The bible is not telling the whole story here, there are obviously other humans around. God gives Cain a mark that others recognise as divine protection.

We also see the starting of entertainment with Jubal and Tubal-Cain starting the love of metallurgy with the apparent discovery of Bronze.

We also see the start of religion “at that time men began to call on the name of the Lord”

Is this "Where God went wrong"?

Genesis Chapter 3

Sometimes God is less than subtle – In their book “Good Omens”, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman they have a conversation between Azripahale (The Angel with the shining sword) talking to Crowley (the serpent) “You’ve got to admit is a bit of pantomime though, I mean pointing out the Tree and saying “Don’t touch” in big letters, not very subtle is it? I mean why not put it on top of a high mountain or a long way off, makes you wonder what he is planning”

Without going into Hebrew, did you notice the serpent left out God’s title “Did God really say” rather than Lord God – it is sometimes the little things that set the ball rolling.

I have heard a theory that Adam and Eve were the first to become farmers and eke a living by something that is not hunter gathering – I don’t honestly know the validity of this but I believe farming originated in the middle east fertile crescent. And that there were other humans (or possibly hominids) around at the time.

For those who are wondering - the title of this post is taken from Douglas Adams book "The hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy" Were a character called Oolon Colluphid writes a "Trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, "Where God went wrong", "More of God's greatest mistakes", and "Well that wraps it up for God"

Just for the record I do not believe that God went wrong in the garden of Eden it was mankind - however you want to argue it, according to this chapter mankind's relationship with God and nature have been broken, and we still feel the effects to this day.

However the rest of the Bible shows what mankind and God have done to restore the relationship.

God`s greatest creation?

Genesis chapter 2

The chapter starts with God taking a well earned rest before the story seems to re-focus on the creation of man.

There is a famous cartoon of a gorilla with a bible in one hand and a copy of Darwin’s origin of species in the other and the caption “Am I my brother’s keeper, or my keepers brother?”

This may come as a shock to some readers, but I don’t, and the church as a whole (mostly), has no major objection to the theory of evolution – just a godless version of the theory where history has shown that once God and morality are taken out, and the “survival of the fittest” tagline has led to eugenics and many of the worst excesses of the 20^th century where word additions like “sub” and “non” were used as excuses for murder and genocide.

Surely if we are to take God’s instruction to care for the planet at all seriously surely the answer to the cartoon would be “Both”

As a Bachelor, I find the end of this chapter slightly irritating – surely I am complete with God?

In the beginning was the introduction

Greetings - and welcome to my unremarkable guide to the Bible.
The Bible is a really quite remarkable book, it has been the top selling book since, well, forever. It was the first book published using movable type. It has been translated into more languages and dialects than any other book. People have been imprisoned for even owning a copy, executed for translating it.
The Bible is packed with famous stories and has been enjoyed, despised, banned, burned and smuggled, copied and printed, but I find in the western world very rarely read.

Just to clarify a couple of points  -

1                     I am an engineer by profession and not a priest or theologian

2                     I am a practicing Christian – though I am happy to admit that I need lots more practice as I often fail miserably.

3                     I find the bible boring, exciting, obvious, surprising, and outrageous and conformist – sometimes I find these all at once!

4                     I don’t have all (or indeed any) answers, and if it does not make sense to me hopefully I’ll be honest enough to say. Though I will pass my opinions.

The following are my thoughts on reading the Christian bible from Genesis chapter 1 to Revelation chapter 22. I plan to read this at the rate of about 1 chapter per day and keep this “diary” of my thoughts.

Hopefully some of the thoughts will make you go “hmm”, others will make you go “D’oh” and some you may have to decide that I am talking blatant rubbish and ignore. This is fine by me.

I don’t plan to go through a verse by verse commentary – there are hundreds of these, but rather give what strikes me in the chapter.

So without further ado – here we go “in the beginning”

Genesis Chapter 1

Whole books have been written on the subject of science and religion particularly where this chapter of the Bible is concerned. I don’t think I can avoid giving my view on this topic and keep both by Christian and Engineering/scientific credentials, so here goes.

In the BBC adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel “The lost world” one change the scriptwriters did was to introduce a religious nutter (played by Peter Falk) who argues with Professor Summerlee (Played by Edward Fox) about the Bible and Science (A deliberate ploy on the part of the writers) Summerlee says “You cannot use the Bible as a science textbook” To which he replies “No indeed, it is the word of God”

My thought on this is that to treat Genesis 1 as scientific history or absolutely accurate in modern scientific terms in the New International version of the bible is to miss the point – there are a couple of points on which this chapter and Science can agree

In the beginning – according to science the universe is about 13.77 Billion years old. So time and space begin at the moment of the big bang.

A repeating theme in every day (nearly) is God saw it and it was good.

Also note the first commandment in the entire Bible is not a “Don’t do that, stop that, it’s disgusting” but be fruitful and multiply.

More of mankind later – the first appearance has happened but no action – yet.