Torah/Pentateuch Reading Group Week 1

I'm guessing that Adam being thrown out of the garden because he sinned and the tree of life being guarded by an angel is symbolism for heaven.

Should we start a discord to discuss or do it in-thread?

In case you wanted to know what Gen 1:1-2:3 sounds like in its original language:
youtube.com/watch?v=Q9CYjbiDJ_M

We have a thread, might as well use it.

I'd rather just do it in the thread.

Are the Elves leaving Middle-Earth? That sounds beautiful.

I think we should stick to this. A few people in the older thread also said they didn't want to do Discord. They're too shy, and it would be best not to make them feel left out.

Any recommended sources?

That's from Scott Hahn's commentary.

>all those asspained muzzies in the comments

youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w&

For those who don't know it exists.

Dirty protestants who believe the creation is only a few thousand years old come to that conclusion by counting the years included in the genealogies of the old testament. However the genealogies in the bible cannot be used to date the age of the universe because they were not meant to be exact chronicles of history. In some cases generations were omitted in order to make a symbolic point. In other cases the ages themselves may be symbolic and not literal. The genealogies in scripture were primarily focused on showing how different people were related to one another, not how long ago they lived.

noice I'm in on this
In thread

>Can't compare to holy Quran in anyway! A corrupted book can't be as beautiful as original one

>Allah did not corrupt it, people did, Jewish rabbi made the tórah wrong with their ignorance, church made stories to fill the injeel and change the truth. allah allow those kafir change the book bcz it's a part of his plan, and they are gonna pay for what they did, only quran is authentic book from god today. who denied this has nothing to do with god

>You are a godless scum and I guess you awe an evil christian who worship baal jesus the "son of god" like the enemies of Eliyahu

>paul the apostate is the twister and changer of injeel, also he is the first man who start to invent trinity, messiah mean a prophet who is a king, cause oiling is for the king, who consider a messiah is "god", is same as claim he is a false messiah and a false god, that's why christians has nothing j to do with jesus

>My friend, I've said the paul the apostate is the false prophet warned by jesus, who is the writer of galatians? was there even single angel or messneger apeared when paul was "elected"? how can you trust such a unbelievable man?

>christ said the smallest of heaven is greater than John the Baptist, who is smallest in the heaven? The youngest and last prophet, mohammad is in prophecy of Jesús. jesus never said anything about paul, he only warn the antichrist in his name, mohammad never did anything in the name of Jesús, but in god, you should which is opinion of Jesús and follow his opinion, if you read bible carefully you will find jesus's opinion has no different with mohammad, and Paul was inventing a new religion contra faith of Jesús, who is the wolf in sheep skin?

t. Tianyu Xia

If your entire ideology is built on a conspiracy theory you're in trouble. You should be in trouble anyways. I don't know how Muslims continue to exist in the numbers they do.

What perspective and translation are we doing this from?

Inbreeding at massive rates. Swarms of room temperature IQ mongrols act as the backbone of Allah's """ministry"""

>Are the Elves leaving Middle-Earth?
I was thinking more of the Ainulindalë, the creation of Tolkien's universe in the Silmarillion, since it's creation that it is talking about, the kind of creation Tolkien was ultimately inspired by.

You can find commentaries, maps, historical information and context in any study Bible.

Veeky Forums usually redirects you to the New Oxford Annotated Bible. If you want to go full Joo you have the Jewish Study Bible, which has a fairly sizable commentary for the Torah, larger than your typical Christian study Bible.

There is also an ESV Literary Study Bible which analyzes the texts of the Bible more as literature (the Bible contains different books of different genres and with different characters...) rather than the usual approach.

I'm puzzled that they would go out of their way to shitpost there, rather than simply listen to their favorite reciters of the Qur'an.

YouTube is a big place, there are so few Hebrew Bible readings in cantillation or chant, and so many Qur'an recitations.

Whichever you want.

The cherubim guarding Eden could be seen as an act of mercy. Because man ate from the tree of knowledge and at that point is in a state of separation from God, if man were to eat from the tree of life we would live forever in that state of spiritual separation.

>I was thinking more of the Ainulindalë, the creation of Tolkien's universe in the Silmarillion, since it's creation that it is talking about, the kind of creation Tolkien was ultimately inspired by.

In terms of content, no doubt. But I was thinking about this song from Fellowship.

youtube.com/watch?v=7ZG1aDo20zQ

Could I recommend the "Didache Bible with Commentaries Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church" Ignatius Edition, Its one of the few modern formal equivalence translations that ironically doesn't do the Jesuit thing of gender neutrality, inclusive and selective translations choices.

Damn I never thought of it that way desu

No, the idea of heaven didn't exist in exile-era Judaism (when Genesis as we know it now was put together). I've read that the original meaning of Eden itself was as God's private dominion, rather than a human paradise. Humans were fully obedient to God in his garden, and were expelled for rebelling (or just trying to take on too much responsibility), the story explains earthly suffering and the basics of male-female relationships, the story of Eden is about why the world exists as it does.

Of course, in Christianity you have the idea of the world as in a fallen state, but that a spiritual world will be created after a great cataclysm. This grew out of a more apocalyptic form of judaism that was prevalent in the 1st century AD, and where ideas of a messiah and battles against evil come into play.

You guys might like the introduction the NABRE has (scroll down to 'The Book of Genesis'): biblegateway.com/passage/intro/?search=Genesis

biblegateway.com/passage/intro/?search=Genesis&version=NABRE

Oops, thanks for that

I did ache when I saw the ridiculous pace being set up for this reading group

"Firmament" is a Hebrew term related to a verb that means "hammer out" This suggests the ancient Israelites imagined the firmament as a hammered bowl that is placed over the world like a roof or dome, holding up waters above the earth and separating them from the seas below. This ancient cosmology has a phenomenological basis: to the unaided senses, the sky looks like an enormous vault, and it's blueness may have suggested the idea of an ocean suspended overhead. Modern readers must recognize that the author's world view is one of his cultural assumptions, not one of his inspired assertions; thus, the cosmological presuppositions of the author should not be taken as revealed propositions to be accepted by faith. The Catholic Church, following the wisdom of St. Augustine (On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 2, 9), maintains that the Bible does not contain any properly scientific teaching about the nature of the physical universe.

It's only 4-5 chapters per day of Genesis, and less than that in the later books when you factor in the mostly skippable stuff like the building of the Tabernacle or the entire book of Leviticus.

>Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
>midst of the waters
Does the(?) firmament extend outwards from a point or that the Earth had a larger amount of water that was effectively split into half to create the sky/firmament making "dry land appear"?

I just know that there's way too much going on in these texts to do them justice in that kind of time frame. I suppose the idea of fully plumbing their depths is illusory, but I've seen entire classes devoted to a single book that didn't do them justice

>firmament is hebrew

you could have at least skimmed wikipedia before shitposting...

>The word "firmament" is first recorded in a Middle English narrative based on scripture dated 1250.[4] It later appeared in the King James Bible. The word is anglicised from Latin firmamentum, used in the Vulgate (4th century).[5] This in turn is derived from the Latin root firmus, a cognate with "firm".[5] The word is a Latinization of the Greek stereōma, which appears in the Septuagint (c. 200 BC).[1]

Ancient Jewish cosmology is fascinating.

Ancient near eastern creation myths usually involve a primordial ocean, the idea in Genesis is that God is organizing the world out of a chaotic mass of water. The firmament appears in the waters, it's basically a dome that holds up a layer of the water, with a layers of water below it (pic related). The midst of the waters was separated. Dry land comes later.

Don't be pedantic. I'll fix it just for you.

>The Hebrew term translated as "firmament" is related to a verb that means "hammer out" This suggests the ancient Israelites imagined the firmament as a hammered bowl that is placed over the world like a roof or dome, holding up waters above the earth and separating them from the seas below. This ancient cosmology has a phenomenological basis: to the unaided senses, the sky looks like an enormous vault, and it's blueness may have suggested the idea of an ocean suspended overhead. Modern readers must recognize that the author's world view is one of his cultural assumptions, not one of his inspired assertions; thus, the cosmological presuppositions of the author should not be taken as revealed propositions to be accepted by faith. The Catholic Church, following the wisdom of St. Augustine (On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 2, 9), maintains that the Bible does not contain any properly scientific teaching about the nature of the physical universe.

well, that was a shit start so far

ill gladly laugh when this "reading group" dies, as the war and peace RG did.

Darkness and water are the first materials God interacts with (Gen 1:2).

After introducing light (3-5), God separates water between what is below and above the sky/firmament (7-8), see pic above, then the water below is separated so that dry land appears (9-10).

Nobody really expects any "reading group" threads to go well, proper literary discussion requires several months of preparation for a brief debate or essay usually by people already well versed in their respective fields.

Notice that Satan uses half-truths to seduce and mislead: he claims that the couple will not die (3:4), that their eyes will be opened (3:5), and that they will become like God (3:5). These assurances all seem to come true at one level, since after eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve continue to live for many years (5:5), their eyes are opened (3:7), and they in some sense become like God (3:22). However, in the light of God's intentions, these promised gains turn out to be painful losses.

When Satan first approaches Eve he asks her "Did God say, You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?" The question insinuates that God is an obstacle to human fulfillment. In particular, it raises doubts about the Lord's generosity and goodwill, as though Adam and Eve were deprived of much more than God provided them. This is a complete distortion of the divine allowance in 2:16

As a little aside, Tolkien practically plagiarized this text when he wrote the story of Melkor corrupting the elves and turning them against the Ainur. It's the same story told in a different way.

>Ainur

I mean Valar. I couldn't think of their proper name until after I posted that, then it came to me.

I've participated in a few reading groups/book clubs on Veeky Forums over the years that have all failed eventually but i'm still interested in this for some reason

any thoughts on Original Sin?

If this starts struggling, we should make a discord

He's a meme but Peterson's interpretation of Original Sin is pretty interesting, that it's a sort of reverberation in the collective unconsciousness about when we first became moral creatures and learned the difference between right and wrong and the guilt that we all feel when we've done wrong.

The account of the Fall (Gen 3:1-24) affirms a primeval event using figurative language. It indicates that man, at the beginning of history, rebelled against his Creator and brought sin and misery into the world. As Genesis presents it, the immediate effects of man and woman transgressing the original covenant (2:16-17) includes shame (3:7), strife (3:12), suffering 3:16-19), and separation from the Lord (3:23-24). Its lasting effects, including death (3:19) and a disordered propensity towards evil (6:5), are passed down to the entire human family. (CCC 390, 400).

Couldn't manna be the firmament described as "heaven (inaccessible to man under normal conditions) crystallized?

I don't think so. Manna is described as spreading like flakes on the ground but more importantly manna is believed to be a real thing while the firmament was just a part of the human authors cosmology. You know how people today would say that the sun rises or sets? That's a popular description because the sun isn't actually moving. It's just how it appears to our senses and that's what the firmament was to the authors of Genesis.

meant for

>God is organizing the world out of a chaotic mass of water
do you reckon its hardwired into us, the evolutionary genetic memory of dragging ourselves out of the oceans?

Wait a minute, it's Shavous, which means we are restarting the cycle of the books? Are you Jewish?

The Book of Genesis is a historical and theological introduction to the Bible. It lays the indispensable groundwork for the rest of biblical revelation. For this reason, the book adopts a universal and religious perspective: the world is the stage of the Genesis drama, and God is the main actor behind the scenes of history and human affairs that it records. This broad perspective is most evident in the early chapters, which encompass the divine creation of the cosmos, the formation and the fall of the human race, the epidemic spread of moral and spiritual corruption, the universal flood, and the scattering of people over the earth (chaps. 1-11). But concern for the world at large, though less obvious on the surface, remains at the center of the patriarchal narratives as well, where God's promises for the future continue to propel the story forward (chaps. 12-50).

In many ways, the theology of Genesis comes to expression in its preoccupation with "covenants". This is not strange in itself, since covenants were very much a part of social and political life in the ancient Near East. But unlike their ancient counterparts, several covenants in Genesis involve God, not simply as the witness or enforcer of a human arrangement, but as a full partner in forging covenant bonds with the world and pledging his love and loyalty to the human race. God thus covenants with creation (1:1-2:4), with Adam (2:15-17), with Noah and the world (9:8-17), and with Abraham and his descendants (15:18-21; 17:1-21; 22:16-18, etc.). Two of these covenants, the Adamic and the Abrahamic, occasion events that mark the low point and the high point of the Genesis narrative:

1) The Adamic covenant is the primeval bond that unites the human family with God the Creator in a state of blessing. However, when this relationship is tested, the covenant is broken by the rebellion if the first couple (3:6) and the original blessings are exchanged for the discipline of the divine curses (3:16-19). From that point on, everything goes downhill, as the plot bottoms out under the avalanche of human iniquity that follows, with envy, murder, bigamy, violence, impurity, and pride wreaking havoc throughout the world (4:6-11, 19, 23; 6:11; 9:22; 11:1-9)

2) The Abrahamic covenant is God's solution to the broken Adamic covenant. At first, his covenant with Abraham is simply the pledge of a new homeland (15:18; 17:8) and a future dynasty of kings (17:6, 16). But at the summit of the Genesis story, when Abraham is tested as Adam was God responds to the faith and obedience of the patriarch by swearing a covenant oath to restore his blessing to the world through Abraham's offspring (22:16-18). It is this pledge, according to the NT, that envisions God's worldwide plan of redemption in Jesus Christ (Acts 3:25-26; Gal 3:10-29).

Part 1/2

2/2

The Book of Genesis, then, is protological as well as prophetic. It looks back on the earliest phase of human existence as the beginning phase of salvation history, focusing on the generations that paved the way for the founding of Israel as a covenant people. But it also looks forward to the future realization of the divine plan, when the curses of the Adamic covenant are slowly but eventually reversed by the blessings of the Abrahamic. Insofar as the man's rebellion and estrangement from the Lord are dilemmas that go unresolved within the storyline of Genesis, the book presents itself as the first chapter in this larger story of redemptive history.

Any midrash we should know or look in to?

I'd be interested in this as well. The only Jewish perspective I get on scripture is Ben Shapiro.

Pure coincidence

Fuck off

Ben Shapiro is adorable.

Most Rabbinic stuff is actually really really boring outside a couple of quotes about slaves and goyim, a lot of it is about which parts of the bible you should read at what times and how to wash your hands before doing certain tasks.

That's most Talmudic texts. Midrashic texts are written by rabbis that supposed cover the gaps between timelines (like Lilith is a Midrashic text)

The Zohar reads like a Jewish Frenchman from the 60's.

You'll probably notice that a lot of people throughout the Pentateuch have some very inflated lifespans. There is as yet no positive solution to the mystery of these enormous lifespans. Modern anthropology holds that the humans species is around 40,000 years old, that prehistoric man lived a fairly short life, and that human longevity slowly increased rather than decreased over the millennia. The bible, however, as well as ancient Near Eastern writings (e.g., Sumerian King List) concur in giving the ancients an immensely long life, especially before the flood. Various approaches have been taken to explain this phenomenon in Genesis.

1) Some take the ages at face value and maintain the literal truth of the genealogies; however, this results in putting Adam less than 2,000 years before Abraham and makes the human race only about 6,000 years old.

2) Others have proposed converting the "years" into "months", but this creates a situation in which some of the figures are children at the time they are said to bear children of their own.

3) Still others take the names of the Patriarchs to refer to "clans" rather than individuals, yet this fails to explain why some of the names clearly concern individuals, such as Adam, Cain, Enoch, and Noah.

4) Perhaps the best hypothesis, and one that would help explain both the biblical and Near Eastern data, is that giving primeval figures extremely long lives was a way of conceptualizing the great antiquity of mankind. In other words, this may be simply a literary technique used to assert the remarkable age of the human race itself.

or 5 the books full of bullshit

>4) Perhaps the best hypothesis, and one that would help explain both the biblical and Near Eastern data, is that giving primeval figures extremely long lives was a way of conceptualizing the great antiquity of mankind. In other words, this may be simply a literary technique used to assert the remarkable age of the human race itself.

Not targeted at you - but how could anyone ever think anything other than this.

That's a pretty good summation of its tone.

Well on the face of it, converting the years to months or conflating the Patriarchs with clans could seem like a reasonable solution. It's only when you really look into things that they fall apart. There's no excuse for believing the years recorded are literal though.

This.

In catholic school I was taught that the age of a person in the Old Testament was a way to express how wise they were. This is why Noah and Moses both live fuck off long lives.
but that's kinda weird because Adam lived a longer life for a Pentateuch guy and he was yknow the guy ate the fruit

>1) Some take the ages at face value and maintain the literal truth of the genealogies; however, this results in putting Adam less than 2,000 years before Abraham and makes the human race only about 6,000 years old.

Or at least, 6,000 years since we were ensouled.

I'll save you reading group

The uterus we're all born from beginning with a single cell is quite the wet environment

It's not technically midrash, but the commentary on the Jewish Study Bible can give you a Jewish perspective. For instance, here's a commentary on the serpent and Eve in Gen 2:1-3:

His question
is tricky and does not admit of a
yes-or-no answer. The woman,
who has never heard the com
mandment directly (2.16-17), para
phrases it closely. Why she adds
the prohibition on touching the
fruit is unclear. A talmudic rabbi
sees here an illustration of the dic
tum that "he who adds [to God's
words] subtracts [from them]"
(b. Sanh. 29a). Another rabbinic
source presents a more compli
cated explanation. In relaying the
prohibition to his wife, Adam has
obeyed the rabbinic principle that
one should "make a [protective]
hedge for the Torah" (11 1. 'Avot 1.1).
Tragically, this praiseworthy act
gave the snake his opening. He
"touched the tree with his hands
and his feet, and shook it unti l its
fruits dropped to the ground,"
thus undermining the credibility
of God's entire comm andment in
the woman 's mind (i'lvot. R. Nat.
A,1).

I doubt it goes that far back. One hypothesis that I like is that it comes from the earliest settlements being based around rivers. So you had a cultural idea that freshwater is safety and order, while saltwater (ocean) is undrinkable, tempestuous, and dangerous to travel on, so it represents chaos.

I always thought of Eden as representing the state of grace rather than heaven itself.

First-born animals represent the choice picks of the flock, or those that are most suitable for divine sacrifice. Abel offers his best to God while Cain appears to offer something less, or at least no indication is given that his sacrifice is made from the "firstfruits" of his harvest. When you consider that the external act of worship is a reflection of the interior disposition of the worshiper, it's no surprise that God was happy with Abel's but not with Cain's. It's not how expensive the sacrifice is that was important.

It may seem like just a simple question when God asks Cain "Where is Abel your brother?" but there's a little bit more going on here. I see this as an invitation for confession and repentance. There's a similar instance of this in 3:9 when God asked Adam "Where are you?" and of course they both refuse this mercy.

It articulates human nature. Desire is mimetic. Serpent gives his desire to Eve, Eve gives her desire to Adam. They get caught. Adam blames Eve. Eve blames Serpent.

We do not create the world nor do we create ourselves. Our desires are not our own.

The Old Testament is a work of genius.

The descendants of Cain were technologically advanced and yet morally debased. To their credit, they were pioneers of urbanization (4:17), pastoral culture (4:20), instrumental music (4:21), and metalworking (4:22). To their shame, however, they were the first to engage in murder (4:23), polygamy (4:19), and vindictive violence (4:23-24). The point of presenting the genealogy in this way (4:17-24) is not to say that scientific progress is evil or incompatible with religious obligations. Rather, it shows that advances in material civilization come with the danger of moral and spiritual decline. The more a culture is enamored with human achievements, the more it risks forgetting about God and its responsibilities toward him.

5:1-31 is the genealogy of Adam through the line of Seth. Certain contrasts between Seth's line and Cain's line in 4:17-24 are highlighted, most notably in the second (Cain, Seth) and seventh generation (Lamech, Enoch). In the second generation, Cain founds a city and "names" it after his son, Enoch (Gen 4:17); Seth and his son, Enosh, instead of seeking their own glory, call upon the "name" of the Lord (4:25-26). In the seventh generation, Lamech flaunts his reputation as a murderer and bigamist (4:18-24); Enoch, however, walks with God and is caught up to heaven (5:21-24). Cain thus fathers a wicked family line, and Seth, a righteous family line. This is confirmed by the flood that follows: it destroys the line of Cain, but the line of Seth is preserved through righteous Noah (5:32; 6:9).

>may seem like just a simple question when God asks Cain "Where is Abel your brother?" but there's a little bit more going on here. I see this as an invitation for confession and repentance. There's a similar instance of this in 3:9 when God asked Adam "Where are you?" and of course they both refuse this mercy
Not that it contradicts anything, but I interpret this as a rhetorical question. If you don't have Abel/God next to you, you are separate from him, you have forgotten him, and are in a place where you don't belong.

Family and separation are a big deal to desert-dwelling shepherds.

You guys were right. This New Oxford Annotated Bible is so fucking cool.

Is the commentary really good? I've been spending all my money on Scott Hahn's books. They're very in depth but expensive since he's releasing single books in order to fund further research, with the goal of eventually releasing all of the Old Testament at once.

I'm totally new to this, so it's very helpful to me. I'm not sure what a Biblical scholar might think. But there's alternative translations for certain parts, explanations for why they think the authors might differ, and footnotes that explains the meaning of every segment almost.

I don't know how much it costs because I pirated it [it's on b-ok()org], but it's probably well worth the money.

>I'm not sure what a Biblical scholar might think.

the oxford annotated bible is very popular in academia, although a real serious scholar would be expected to work with the original hebrew/greek.

Post flood is when God first permits man to eat meat, so maybe all the tofu burgers had something to do with their lifespan.

This is such a weird pick and mix of accepting science and rejecting it.

You shouldn't take the fact certain theories are mentioned to mean that they're accepted or endorsed especially when they're refuted in the same sentence. If you'll look carefully you'll see that #4 is the only one that can be reasonably accepted, although another poster did mention something about ensoulment at a certain time in regards to #1 and think there might be something to it. I just don't know enough about that specific theory to expound on it.

historical criticism of religious scripture is such a touchy subject that people who engage in it have to develop a habit of talking with respect about utter crackpot bullshit.

6:1-4 is a critical event in the Genesis narrative where the righteous line of Seth (sons of God) intermarries with the godless line of Cain (daughters of men) and becomes corrupted (except for Noah, 6:8-9). On top of the violence and moral decadence spreading over the earth, this is the final outrage that moves God to pour out his wrath in the waters of the flood. This interpretation appears in rabbinic tradition (Genesis Rabbah 26, 507; b. Sanhedrin 108a) and in the Church Fathers (St. John Chrysostom, homilies on Genesis 22, 8; St Augustine, City of God 15, 23; St Ephraem, Commentary on Genesis 6, 3).

Another interpretation, also represented in Jewish and Christian antiquity, holds that the 'sons of God' are not men but rebel angels called Watchers who took the form of men and had sexual relations with women. (1 Enoch 6-7; Jubilees 5, 1; 7, 21; St Justin Martyr, First Apology 5, 2; St Clement of Alexandria Christ the Teacher 3, 2). See also: Jude 6.

>sons of god
>daughters of men
where does this come from?
i thought Cain meant "smith", the progressive city man killing the pastoral Abel.

According to Genesis 6:4, by the time of Noah there came a group of individuals called the Nephilim, who "were on the earth in those days and also afterward, which the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown."

Critics say this passage is mythological because it describes sexual unions between angels (sons of God) and humans (daughters of men) that resulted in the birth of the mysterious Nephilim. But the text never says the "sons of God" are angels. Indeed, what makes angels different from humans is that they do not have physical bodies, and so they can't sexually reproduce. But if that's true, then who were the sons of God and their offspring, the Nephilim?

One interpretation of the Nephilim, which Christian theologians like St Augustine and some Jewish rabbis in the first few centuries after Christ held, is that they were the righteous descendants of Adam's good son, Seth (or Sethites). The Sethites, who obeyed God's commands, were God's "sons," but they later lost their righteous standing by marrying the worldly and immoral descendants of Cain (or the "Kenites," who Genesis 6:4 calls the "daughters of men"). The Children of these mixed marriages became very powerful and corrupt rulers, the Nephilim.

Another interpretation, which the Jewish historian Josephus as well as early Church Fathers like Justin Martyr favored, holds that the Nephilim were gigantic offspring that came from angels mating with humans. How this occurred would be a mystery, but we can't rule out the possibility that fallen angels could have manipulated matter in order to cause pregnancies in human women. Either way, the Church has not officially defined the nature of the Nephilim, so a Catholic is free to accept the theory that best explains the text and its relation to the other truths of the Faith.

The Bible's other descriptions of giants can be explained by the human authors' use of exaggeration for rhetorical effect, or hyperbole. For example in Numbers 13:33, a group of scouts sent into Canaan reported back to Moses that in comparison to the land's inhabitants, "we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." This doesn't mean that the inhabitants of Canaan were 500 foot tall monsters. It just means they were larger than the Israelites which is quite plausible since ethnic groups can vary in height. Even today men in Scandinavian countries are on average seven to eight inches taller than men in Southeast Asia. If you belonged to a basketball team and the opposing team was, on average, a foot taller than your team, you might say it was difficult playing against such "giants," without meaning that the other team climbed down from a beanstalk.

It's an assumption really. I think the only other possible interpretation is that the sons of God are angels and the daughters or men refer to all humans but that causes some problems, namely when it comes to explaining who the Nephilim are. According to St Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica 1.50.4, and Matthew 22:30 angels should be able to have sex with humans.

Did these mentioned family trees affect the social standing of Jews at all? My Jewish girlfriend told me at some point that Cohen's weren't allowed to marry non-Cohens or something like that. So was what line you descended from super important for Bronze Age Jews?

look up Enoh.

based af user

Compositionally, the account of Noah and the flood may have been compiled from two independent flood stories that were skillfully woven together. Scholars who hold this view base their hypothesis on alleged tensions within the account and typically speak of the flood narrative as a composite of Yahwist (j) and Priestly (p) traditions.

Comparatively, the episode in Genesis has close affinities with other flood stories from ancient Mesopotamia, especially the Gilgamesh Epic.

Chronologically, the deluge lasts for ten and a half months: the floodwaters rise for 40 days (7:4), remain for a total of five months (7:24), and then recede for five and a half months (8:3-13).

Theologically, the flood brings about a new creation, cleansing the old world of the bloodstains of violence (4:10, 23; 6:11). Several parallels with the creation story bring this out: the land is once again engulfed by the deep (1:2; 7:11); the land reemerges dry from the water (1:9;8:13); Noah and his family are blessed and made fruitful to multiply (1:28; 9:1); man's dominion over the animals is reaffirmed (1:26; 9:2); a food supply is given (1:29; 9:3); and God renews his commitment to continue the daily and seasonal cycles (1:14; 8:22). The NT interprets the flood as a foreshadowing of Baptism, which cleanses the believer of sin and confers the grace of salvation in Christ.

I would imagine so based on personal experience. Modern "tribes" are constantly discriminating against each other or jockeying for social position. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume it was even more pronounced in actual tribal societies. At the very least there was certainly some enmity between the tribes when Judah and Israel split.

I have no idea why Cohen's in particular would be described against today but I'm no Jew. They're descended from the priestly class so I'm sure that has something to do with it