GENESIS 13: SEEING THE LAND.

Abram and Lot ascend from Egypt, returning to the southern part of the Land of Israel, the Negev. Strife breaks out between their respective households, and Abram proposes that they separate. "The language in which he addresses Lot is clear, firm, and polite." (Alter)

Lot takes what he sees to be the better territory ( Read more... )

GENESIS 12: GO FORTH.

The third section in the traditional annual cycle of Torah readings begins here, with G-d's summons to Avram. The early history of mankind is behind us, and from this point on, the text focuses on the story of the tribe that will become the Hebrew, or Israelite, nation. I've noted earlier that the early history of mankind, ( Read more... )

GENESIS 11: FROM NOAH TO ABRAM

The early history of man closes with a list of the generations after Noah (or more precisely, the descendants of Shem) through the sons of Terach. The three sons of Terach are Avram (also spelled Abram), Nachor, and Haran. Like the three sons of Noah, they all appear to be born in the same year, when Terach is 70 ( Read more... )

GENESIS 11: THE CITY OF BABEL

So far, the story of mankind told in Genesis is a story of displacements: the exile from Eden, Cain's banishment, the Flood. Now - narrated in just nine verses - we find the dispersion of mankind from Babel.

We know the story as "the Tower of Babel", just as we know the story of Noah as "the Flood" (even though the ( Read more... )

GENESIS - BIBLIOGRAPHY
I've been posting a series of pieces on the Book of Genesis. Here are some of the books I've referred to most often.

- Adin Steinsaltz. The Steinsaltz Humash. Koren, 2018. Hebrew and English.
https://korenpub.com/products/the-steinsaltz-humash-2nd-editionhardcoverlarge

- Robert Alter. Genesis: translation and commentary. ( Read more... )

GENESIS 10: THE TABLE OF NATIONS.

Chapter 10 of Genesis lists the descendants of Noah - the nations of the Earth. It is not a tribal but a universal narrative, something unknown in other literatures of the ancient Near East. Notice that for the first time in Genesis, the development is lateral as well as vertical; that is, all of the sons in each ( Read more... )

As we've seen, the Hebrew word used for the cataclysm of Noah's time does not actually mean "flood" but rather "confusion". In fact, the event is a systematic undoing of the original work of creation. Grumet on 7:23: "Notice what is being erased and the order in which it is happening: human, animal, crawling creatures, and birds."

It's also ( Read more... )

Mankind has descended into violence and barbarism, and the Creator decides it's time for a reboot.

Chapter 6 opens with a description of the lawless violence that has engulfed the world. There's also a reference to the "Nephilim", whose exact identity remains a mystery.

One thing that's striking about the Flood narrative is the amount of detail, in ( Read more... )

In the beginning verses of the Bible, we see the Creator fashioning the world, and man in it, bringing forth first chaos, then order, then complexity ( Read more... )

Posting mostly for my own reference. Factorizations of the ages of the antediluvian generations, and their ages at first fatherhood as a reduced fraction. Created in Matlab. ("rats" is the command for a rational expression.)

( Read more... )