In which Michael5000 returns to the task at hand

Gen 9:18 - 11 has a lot of geneology in it. I don't know about you, but I find listings of who begat whom a little weak as sacred text.

There are two ways of looking at the Bible. Well, there are gazillions of ways of looking at the Bible, I suppose, but I think this two-class system is pretty reasonable:

• religiously -- the Bible is a sacred text, a message from God to his creation, or


• historically -- the Bible is the collected writings of a society from a place, time, and context far from our own.

Old Testament geneology is easy to explain historically, as it's just a paternity-obsessed culture's method of establishing a legacy for themselves, as a society and as individuals. But in trying to look at the Bible religiously, it's a little harder to see how the geneologies make the cut. To know that, for instance, Arphaxad was the father of Shelah, and Shelah the father of Eber [10:24] is all fine and good -- I guess -- but how does it help me understand God, or to become a better person? I suppose that, taken in the aggregate, an overall message of "lineage is important" might be drawn, but this seems a little oblique.

I bring this up not only because geneology is so notoriously abundant in Genesis, but because the meatier episodes of today's readings are also easy to interpret historically, but hard to swallow religiously. Take, for instance, the matter of:

Noah's Family Values

The floodwaters having receded, Noah plants a vineyard. Soon, he is making wine, and shortly thereafter he is passed out naked in his tent. (I am not being flip: he became drunk and lay uncovered insdie his tent. [9:21]) Ham, one of his three sons, sees him in this condition and tells his brothers. Here's the full description of the incident: Ham saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. [9:22] The two brothers, good lads both, go inside and cover Dad up.

What happens next is pretty bizarre. Noah wakes up, finds up that Ham saw him naked, and because of this puts a curse on Canaan, Ham's son, condemning him to be a slave to his brothers. With no further commentary offered, we are apparently supposed to think that Noah is righteous in doing this.

The historical interpretation? A slam dunk. The story provides Noah's own blessing of the Israelites' conquest and enslavement of the Canaanites, whom the accompanying geneologies show to be decended from Canaan (Hence the name, yeah?).

The religious interpretation? Troubling for anyone who has ever seen a parent naked. It's awfully hard to see Noah as a representative of Godliness as he condemns his grandson to slavery for his father commiting a gesture of disrespect on the scale of putting his elbows on the dinner table. And, to the extent to which this story has the imprimiteur of God's word, it does not make a strong case for a family-friendly Old Testament God.

The Tower of Babel

Here is another Genesis story, so integral in our culture, that is almost unbelievably compact:

Then they said "come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches
to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered
over the face of the whole earth." But the Lord came down to see the city
and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, If as one people
speaking the same language they have bugun 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." [11:4-7]

Historically, no problem. It's a twofur story, explaining both the mystery of diverse languages and the ruined ziggerats you would bump into occasionally out east.

Religiously, we are generally told that this is a story about human arrogance and divine punishment. The people of the city, as I was taught, challenged God or sought to outdo God by building their cities so high, and so naturally set themselves up for a comeupance.

But here's the surprise -- that tale of hubris punished isn't in the text. What you've actually got in the text is a group of people acting with what most of us would consider commendable ambition to build a city that fostered community and commanded respect. God doesn't set out to punish them, he sets out to thwart them. With everyone speaking the same language, he says, "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." This is what parents and teachers say hopefully of promising children. But for God, this is a bad thing, and must be stopped.

I find the notion that God hates the human ambition to build and create very difficult to swallow. And if the yardstick for excessive amibition is building cities with tall buildings, well -- uh oh.

See you next week. I promise.