So, this is the year I read the Bible cover to cover. I’ve read it piecemeal in the past, mostly in my church going days. I’ll be following the online reading guide listed here.
I got to thinking; if I’m going to actually read the bible, I might as well blog about it as well. Please note, my interpretation of the Bible will be entirely skeptical. I stopped being a believer nearly 15 years ago. Since then I’ve been calling myself an agnostic. It wasn’t until recently I’ve been labeling myself as an atheist.
It’s not my intention to mock or deride. I’m simply reading this from my own particular point of view and writing about it. Honestly, I don’t even know where this is going to take me.
The first post is going to be rather skimpy. I read through the first seven chapters of Genesis quickly and didn’t have much time to reflect. Hence, I’m only writing about the phrases that stuck out
Genesis 1 through Genesis 7
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
Ah, the seven days of creation. Light, firmament, dry land, light-bearers, fish and birds, animals and humans, rest, all in order. A place for everything and everything in its place. OK, so far so good. In fact, Yahweh seems to be loosely following a script set down by a myriad of cultures.
Genesis 2-6: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
I find it slightly humorous that some Christians get really worked up about the concept of evolution; particularly the part where man AND ape are descended from a common ancestor (not directly from apes as many creationists suggest), while the bible suggests our origins are no more divine than common dust. True, true, we have the breath of the divine in us (or so the bible says), but dust none-the-less.
Genesis 2-21,22,23: And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
No wonder so many feminists are pissed.
Genesis 5-32: And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham and Japheth.
OK, aside from the impossibility of living to be 500 years old, he had all three children in one year? I mean, the in-vitro gestation time for homo sapiens is roughly 9 months, right?
Genesis 6-15: And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
I’ll admit my ignorance when it comes to Old Testament measuring systems, so I had to look this one up. According to Dictionary.com, a cubit is “an ancient linear unit based on the length of the forearm, from elbow to the tip of the middle finger, usually from 17 to 21 in. (43 to 53 cm).”
So, according to my calculations, Noah’s Ark was somewhere between 425 to 525 feet long. If we’re fair and split the difference, we end up with a ship of 475 feet in length, 80 feet in width and 48 feet high.
No doubt these are impressive figures. In fact, imagine a structure about as long as one and half football fields and you have it’s length. It’s width would be almost exactly half the width of a football field. And as for its height, well, just imagine a 5 story building. At those dimensions, the Ark was a bit smaller than the typical World War II aircraft carrier.
Without even going into how something that size could be structurally sound constructed out of nothing but gopher wood and pitch, the mind absolutely forbids the notion that two of every living thing on the face of the earth could fit within. And don’t forget, to many creationists, this means dinosaurs were most definitely included in the bargain.
That’s it for now. I have no idea if anyone will be reading this as I go along or not. If there is some interest in it, I may create a separate email account to discuss what I’ve written.
