1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 and the two flood stories.

Please note, this is a commentary on what is correctly the ancestral scriptures of the Jewish people, one that was appropriated by mostly Greek-speaking people into what morphed into Christianity. Within Judaism, there is not just the books in what Christians refer to as the "Old Testament," but many other writings, including the Talmud, which include fascinating and interesting and nuanced interpretations. Such writings, however, are discarded, and in the case of my former church, explicitly derided, and the only source are the texts themselves, without the attempts to interpret them. Also, Judaism is a tribal religion: it is a covenant between one god, Yahweh, and the Jewish people. The books represent a shared history, and that history need not be entirely true to be of significance and of benefit. As a start, one can read the Wikipedia site, watch Dr. Justin Sledge's Esoterica channel, and here is another interesting summary of the documentary hypothesis. Archeologists such as Israel Finkelstein have argued, in my opinion, successfully, that, for example, the exodus did not occur as described, and instead, presents an alternative history based on archeology; for example, attributing to Omri many of the works that were previously attributed to Solomon. Prof. Finkelstein explains the historical settings under which the people of Canaan became independent during the Bronze Age Collapse and the purposes the scriptures fulfilled. Equally interesting was my acquisition of the first English translation of the Samaritan Torah, an interesting contrast to the English translation of the Masoretic Torah, which appears on the opposite pages, and is also interestingly contrasted with other English translations of the "Old" Testament. Fundamentalist Christians, however, ignore these histories and, in my case, taught that the Earth was only a few thousand years old (well, some individuals in my church taught this), and that dinosaur bones were buried in the earth by Satan, and insist that the only correct interpretation is a verbatim reading of everything that appears in these books. What I find so interesting today is the actual history, and how Judaism and Christianity (and Islam) evolved, so this should be taken as a rebuff not of Judaism, but rather the fundamentalist interpretation of another people's scriptures. If you are wondering what purpose a myth is for a people, they provide a shared story, and as the purpose of the scriptures were to emphasize why devotion to the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem was paramount, they focus on times of trial and difficulty and persecution, and these stories can provide models and exemplars for modern actions and responses to aversity. Abraham and Sarah do not need to exist to have aspects of their lives provide analogies and examples of how to behave under difficult circumstances.

A Rabbi Appelbaum was a next-door neighbor for a few years in St. Catharines, and he first explained to me that Judaism was not a proselytizing religion; a revelation that contrasted sharply with the interpretations of "God" in my Immanuel Baptist Church; however, trying to understand the contrast between the Jewish interpretation of these scriptures and the fundamentalist interpretation has led me down a long path of discovery. This rebuttal is for those people at my old church.

Every book in both Judean and Christian scriptures had a purpose and reflected the political realities at the time of writing as well as the biases and interpretations of the author or authors.

Genesis 1

This will be entertaining.

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

We know that the Sun began to shine around 4.6 billion years ago, and the Earth was formed 4.54±0.05 billion years and yet the age of the universe (the "heavens") is 13.787±0.020 billion years. Interestingly enough, within the error bounds, the Earth might be exactly one third the age of the universe. The Earth was not created at the same time as the heavens, and we know this because our little pile of rock has reasonably abundant quantities of heavier metals and other elements: elements created only in the heat of supernovae and neutron-star--neutron-star collisions. The earliest planets would have been gas giants with no solid cores, as there would have only been hydrogen, helium and perhaps a touch of lithium and even less beryllium. As time passed, more heavier elements were created, until we are where we are today. A planet formed ten billion years into the future will likely have heavier metals in much greater abundance than our Earth today. Chaos here, too, seems to describe a water world: there is yet no land, there is only a single universal ocean, and yet, we know that the earliest earth would, instead, have been a fiery hell. Indeed, less than 100 million years after the Earth was formed, the Earth collided with planet half its diameter, the ejecta from which subsequently created the Moon. At this point, there would have been no water on the surface of the Earth. Regardless, the Earth was not formed at the same time as the Big Bang, and it was formed hundreds of millions of years after our Sun, and if anything, one could say that both our Earth and our Moon were the consequence of a collision between a smaller Earth and a Mars-sized planet.

Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

So far, the only object that exists within the minds of the authors of Genesis is the Earth, and nothing else: no Sun, no Moon, no stars, and yet, the next item to be created is light, and this light was somehow "separated" from the darkness, so now the Earth has both "light" (day) and "dark" (night). We now know light cannot be "separated" from darkness, but rather, darkness is the absence of light, and the intensity of light decreases by one over the distance squared: double the distance, the intensity of light drops by a factor of four. What separates light from dark are opaque bodies. or distance. However, the authors of Genesis believed that "light" was something that was entirely independent of the the Sun. As people were not aware of light scattering, it seemed as if the entire sky gave off light during the day, and the Sun was simply a beacon in that sky. As evening approached, the intensity of that light decreased, and then at night, the light in the sky turned off altogether. Without knowledge gained from science, such imaginative stories would explain what people experience, even if that explanation is wrong. As it was a story about something that had no effect on the present, there was never any imperative to correct that story.

Next, let's create some land:

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

Why is the sky blue, and why does water fall from the sky? Could it be the scattering of light, and could it be evaporation, condensation into clouds and then precipitation? That is what we understand today, but back then, it was believed that Yahweh split the waters into two: the sea waters below, and the fresh waters above, and this dome kept the fresh waters above in place, and it was only with the will of Yahweh that waters would fall from the dome to water the Earth, and prior to Noah, we will see, no rain fell from that sky. If one did not understand the evaporation-condensation-precipitation cycle of rain, it would make more sense that if water is falling from the sky, then there must be water up there to fall down, and there must be some sort of barrier that prevents water from inundating the Earth. The other major observation here is that this is a strong indication that the Earth was believed to be flat, as the flat Earth has a dome over it, and there are two directions: up and down.

But we continue:

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

In reality, during the Hadeon eon, as it was being formed, the Earth was molten, as bodies orbiting the sun collided with the Earth and through accretion, the size of the Earth grew. Even if a crust did form, when the Earth collided with another planetoid half its size, ultimately forming also the Moon, if there had been any crust, that crust would have most certainly been destroyed. As the Earth cleared it's orbit of material, the number of impacts decreased, and soon thereafter, the outer surface was able to cool enough to form a crust. The interior, however, was still kept molten as a result of ongoing radioactive decay.

The temperature, however, was still significantly over the boiling temperature of water, so initially, even when there was a crust, there was not a single lake, or even puddle. The surface of the Earth did not cool to below the boiling temperature of water until approximately 3.8 billion years ago, 700 million years after reaching approximately its current size. Only then could water finally condense and begin to form puddles, then lakes, and then oceans.

Thus, the waters did not gather, but rather, the exact opposite: water began to form puddles, then lakes and only later did the waters join to form oceans: the land was always there, and never was there enough water on this planet to cover all land.

And we continue:

Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Life began in the oceans, and not on land:

The earliest life seems to have begun around 3.5 billion years ago.
The earliest life that began to create sugars from carbon dioxide began 3.4 billion years ago. Those microorganisms used either molecular hydrogen or hydrogen sulfide to acquire the additional hydrogens required to produce those sugars, and these sugars could then be used within the cell for various purposes, including structure. All of these required light from the Sun to produce these sugars.
The earliest life that was able to use water to acquire the necessary hydrogen did not appear until 2.7 billion years ago: the first cyanobacteria.
The first life on land appeared on the shores in the form of algal mats.
The first recognizable plants were bryophytes (mosses, hornworts and liverworts) appearing 510 to 630 million years ago.
The earliest seed-producing plants evolved less than 400 million years ago, and these include conifers and cycads.
The earliest flowering plants did not evolve until 134 million years ago.

However, most of the fruit-bearing trees evolved much later, and only through artificial human selection were most of these plants able to produce fruit we are able to consume:

Crab apples were first gathered by hunter-gather tribes of archaic humans 750,000 years ago in central Asia, humans only began to cultivate them 8000 years ago, and grafting was only developed 2800 years ago in ancient Greece.
It was humans who cross bred two varieties of wild bananas only 1400 years ago to produce the bananas we generally eat today.

God did not create apples and bananas: humans and our closest relatives selected them as sources of food.

But Genesis 1 goes on:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

There is so much that is wrong here:

Day and night exists because the Earth rotates: it is not necessary to separate day from night: there is a single source of light, the Earth is a rotating sphere, and it is opaque.
Seasons exist because of the tilt of the Earth and the fact the Earth orbits the sun. If the Earth was not tilted, there would not be any seasons.
The Moon is not a light: it simply reflects the light of the Sun.
Finally, plants developed photosynthesis specifically because the Sun was producing light, and that light was energy that could be harnessed by the microorganisms.

Some apologists try to claim that there was an incredible amount of moisture in the sky prior to the great flood, and this somehow blocked the Sun, claiming that the Sun and Moon only became visible once the sky cleared. Here is one such site. Again, true-believers does not need evidence for their beliefs, they only need some story that suggests that there might be some explanation, and that perhaps they will only find out the real truth once they arrive in Heaven. Another claim is that because these were only 24-hour days, the plants that were created yesterday could easily survive the 24 hours without sunlight. This, however, contradicts any attempt to explain these seven days as being thousands or even millions of years each. It can only be one or the other, and if the second, then plants will not survive thousands or millions of years without sunlight. But then again, Day 1 makes it clear that the light does not come from the Sun, but rather, light is independent of the Sun.

Yet, Genesis 1 goes on:

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

We know that the first vertebrates appeared in the oceans, but these were fish, the largest of which were sharks. However, together with fish, this passage describes the creation of sea monsters, likely including whales, and birds. All before any animal that walks on the land. Let's look at what actually happened:

The first jawless fish evolved 518 million years ago.
The first fish with skeletons made of cartilage evolved 438 million years ago.
The first fish with bones evolved 425 million years ago.
The first amphibians evolved 370 million years ago. These lived on land, but had to lay their soft eggs in the water.
The first reptiles that laid hard-shelled eggs on land evolved 316 million years ago.
The branch from which mammals evolved, however, split from reptiles no later than 300 million years ago. Mammals themselves (milk-producing mammary glands, a neocortex in the brain, fur, and three middle ear bones) evolved 167 million years ago--long before birds.
From reptiles, the first birds evolved 72 million years ago and began to flourish 66 million years following the meteor that killed off most of their competition.
Primates evolved 65.9 million years ago, soon after the aforementioned extinction event.
Whales and their relatives only evolved 50 million years ago: mammals that returned to the water.

Thus, while fish did evolve prior to land animals, mammals evolved long before birds, and primates (our ancestors) evolved long before the ancestors of whales returned to the seas. Also, most branches evolved long before flowering plants evolved.

Incidentally, while the Masoretic T0rah translates "great sea creatures" as "whales," the Samaritan Torah translates it as "big crocodiles."

So finally, Genesis 1 gets to animals:

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make a man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created a man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Once again, the authors of Genesis refer to a species humans selected artificially: cattle were only domesticated eleven thousand years, but what this does emphasize is the significance of cattle to the earliest Judean tribes. As Israel Finkelstein and other archeologists have demonstrated, the Judeans were nomadic Canaanite herders who migrated into the Judean highlands following the Bronze Age Collapse.

However, more important, arthropods evolved 538.8 million years ago: these animals were walking on the Earth before the first jawless fish evolved: there were "creeping things" on dry land before there were boney fish in the oceans. You cannot be more wrong, but if you are simply making up stories to try to explain the world around you, without scientific investigation and the necessary technology, this is all that they could do.

We will include the first passage of Genesis 2 here:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitude. On the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

Thus, we finally see why this story in Genesis 1 was authored: it was to justify a religious seven-day week, giving a justification for having the Sabbath as being a "day of rest". Thus, Genesis 1 served four purposes:

To explain the world as these people saw it.
To claim that there is a creator god (one of many) and that creator god happens to be the same god the Judeans worship.
To explain the place of humans in this world.
To justify the religious seven-day week and the sanctity of that seventh day.

To be included: a comparison with the Babylonian creation myth...

Genesis 2

Skipping the first passage, we now see a different creation myth, but most importantly, we introduce immediately, and continue to use a specific name for god, Yahweh; a name not mentioned in Genesis 1.

In the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up—for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground—then Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

In Genesis 1, it says Adam was made on the sixth day, and yet now we are discussing "In the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up." This is Day 2 above, as on Day 3, vegetation was created. This suggests that Adam was made on the second day, not the sixth. This strongly suggests that the creation narrative in Genesis 1 was prepended to an already existing creation myth that likely started the book; after all, if you only started with the verses above, there is no need of any of the preceding verses: Genesis 2 is a self-contained creation myth, but one that is just less descriptive.

We also a belief not mentioned previously: at the time of Adam, and all the way up to Noah, there was no rain. The only source of water was from springs. Today, we understand that springs are the consequence of rainwater being absorbed into the ground, and then gravity and hydrostatic pressure occasionally force that water to leave the ground in the form of springs. Without rainwater, springs to not exist, at least, not above sea level. However, around the city of Jericho, there are many springs, and the largest of these produces 1000 gallons of fresh water every minute: enough to irrigate over two thousand acres of agricultural land. The first cities in the Judean highlands formed around such springs, including Jerusalem, which is in the vicinity of the Gihon Spring. Springs were a source of freshwater, while streams and rivers would be contaminated, and often could not be consumed before bacteria were killed, either through boiling or fermentation.

Another aspect of this passage is that it describes how Adam was created, and only him. This should be contrasted with the statement from Genesis 1, which says

So God created a man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1 describes Adam and Even being created together, but Genesis 2 describes only Adam being made. An important concept here is that Adam comes alive when Yahweh God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." It is only with the "breath of life" that Adam became "a living being."

Genesis 2 continues:

And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground Yahweh God made to grow

every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food,
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Thus, Yahweh creates Eden, and once again, the flat-Earth model is emphasizes, as Eden is simply being described "in the east." The climate of this garden must have been magnificent and diverse, for nowhere else on earth can banana trees grow together with coconut trees together with apple trees and orange trees. There are two specific trees that are identified, one of "life" and another of "the knowledge of good and evil."

Next, we have an interesting oddity:

A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

It seems that the authors of Genesis 2 are not very aware of geography, for it seems that there is a single spring that produces four separate rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates being the most identifiable. If the land of Cush refers to what is the Sudan today, then the Gihon may be the Nile, but my own hypothesis is the observation that one of the two branches that forms the Euphrates originates from the highlands surrounding Mount Ararat, and numerous rivers originate in what is today the Armenian plateau, so the other two rivers may be what is today known as the Aras and Rioni rivers. If so, this may suggest Eden was in the Ararat Plain west of Lake Sevan. However, this is all speculation, with the only justification is the general source of the Tigris and Euphrates being generally in the same area as Mount Ararat and the nearby fertile valley around Lake Sevan.

Genesis 2 continues:

Yahweh God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And Yahweh God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

So Adam is now working as a farmer, but he cannot eat of one specific tree. And yet, if you do not know the difference between good and evil, why would you know that it is wrong to disobey Yahweh?

We continue:

Then Yahweh God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”

So out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field, ...

Once again, we get get a significant variation as to what is found in Genesis 1:

all plants were created on the third day,
all animals living in the sea or flying in the air were made on the fifth day,
all animals living on the land were made on the sixth day, and yet
only after all animals living on the land are Adam and Eve created.

In Genesis 2, the order is now:

Adam is created,
then the plants are created,
then all animals living on the land and flying in the air are created (apparently together) with no mention of fish, and
only then is Eve created.

These are two different stories, but if the original text started with Genesis 2, and the story in Genesis 1 was prefixed to that text, it may have been very difficult to change the second to harmonize it with the first. After all, we will see that a two more significant religious justifications come from this narrative in Genesis 2:

... but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that Yahweh God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

What is odd is that all this seems to have happened in "one day:" Adam is created, Adam is lonely, Adam is put into a sleep, and Adam wakes up to see Eve.

This passage supports two religious beliefs: the justification for

why men are superior to women, and
the sanctity of marriage.

Additionally, we will see, that there is no issue with nakedness unless you have knowledge of good and evil. It is thus in Genesis 3 that we see what is called the fall of Adam. Of course, Yahweh is all-knowing, then he would have known that Adam and Eve would eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so why not just not plant that particular tree? This seems to be a deliberate choice on the part of Yahweh, knowing the consequences, and knowing that as a result, the vast majority of humans would be burning in hell forever as a result of this choice.

As for apologetics, the justification for the differences between Genesis 1 and 2 may be because there were no trees or animals or birds in the vicinity of Eden, and yet, Genesis 2 begins with "when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up" does he create Adam.

Again, no apologist attempts to explain all the contradictions, as it is only necessary for the apologist to suggest that this contradiction might not be a contradiction if interpreted this way, and that contradiction may not be a contradiction if interpreted that way, and this placates the true believer, for the true believer is not interested in the truth, but only interested in the belief. The apologist will give the true believer that slight justification to continue to support the belief. In hearing and accepting the apology, the true believer will only become "stronger" in that believer's mind.

Genesis 3

So we begin:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that Yahweh God had made.

This is referring to an animal that Yahweh had created. There is no suggestion that this animal is Lucifer incarnate, or possessed, but it specifically says that the serpent itself was more crafty.

He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ ”

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Note that it is Eve who is targeted, not Adam. But let's consider a "talking" snake. The lungs of a snake are relatively small, and speech is the result of air passing over the vocal cords, and the volume is proportional the amount of air passing over those vocal cords. However, more importantly, most species of snakes do not have vocal cords, and one that does, the bull snake, has a single horizontally oriented vocal cord, in contrast with the two vertically oriented vocal cords of humans. There is no way a snake could engage in speech to the point of articulating what was said above. Why is it that only in the fan fiction of Yahweh do animals talk? In the other cases, that of a talking donkey and talking eagles, at least donkeys and eagles have vocal cords. But we continue:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Not only did Yahweh create this forbidden fruit true, but he also made it enticing. If Yahweh did not want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, could he not have given it the fruit the same smell as the carrion flower? Yahweh seriously seems to have wanted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit. Notice also that Adam did not reach for the fruit himself, but rather, he was given the cursed fruit by Eve? This emphasizes that this was entirely the fault of the woman: all the problems of the world are the fault of Eve.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

If she ate the fruit first, would she not have immediately recognized herself as being naked? Or did she shove the fruit into the hands of Adam while she was still eating the fruit she was eating? Perhaps the fruit had to be digested and absorbed into their bloodstream before it passed onto the brain where it made them realize they were naked. However, none of this happened, because there was no flood, and there was no Adam and Eve.

This simply serves the religious purpose to demonstrate that:

Nakedness is wrong.
All that is wrong in the world is the fault of a woman.

What this suggests is that any sin prior to this was in no way wrong. Why is something that is wrong suddenly not wrong prior to eating a fruit, and why is that same action suddenly actually wrong simply because a single fruit was eaten? This story is no different than that of Pandora's box:

When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora opened a jar left in her care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world. Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind – usually translated as Hope.

Both these stories blame a woman for all the world's problems, and women throughout the ages have had the burden of this imposed on them ever since. This is emphasized by the statement to be made each morning: "Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a woman."

But we continue:

They heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

Did they not already make themselves clothing from fig leaves?

But Yahweh God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

Isn't god supposed to be all knowing? In fact, did he not know before he created Adam and Eve they would eat the fruit, and did he not already know this when he made Eve? If you give a pistol to an angry child, and then that angry child shoots that pistol, who is to blame? Adam responds:

He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.”

Then Yahweh God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”

Yahweh God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

cursed are you among all animals and
among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and
dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers:
1. he will strike your head, and
2. you will strike his heel.”

Let's address these four points:

Once again, if god is all knowing, then when he created the snake, he knew exactly what it would do, so he made it so that it would do exactly what it did. Why is the snake being cursed for doing what it was created to do?
As for the second point, there are many unrelated species that "upon [their] belly [they] shall go":
1. Also, we know the evolution of snakes: we have fossil evidence of snakes from approximately 100 million years ago: these animals survived the asteroid impact that killed all the dinosaurs except those that subsequently evolved into birds. Snakes were around a long time before humans or even primates.
2. Also, completely independent of the evolution of snakes, numerous other species have evolved into a legless state, including many branches of lizards., each of which evolved leglessness independently, and the clade amphisbaenia. Just like sharks and killer whales superficially resemble each other as a result of convergent evolution, numerous reptiles evolved to a state of leglessness in order best survive in their environments.
Snakes don't eat dust.
This author did not like snakes:
1. What if the author didn't like foxes, instead of snakes? Could we not have a talking fox, and then that fox is cursed to be a bright orange? "Yahweh God said to the fox 'Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals, and among all wild creatures; your coat shall be bright orange, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers: he will strike at your head, and you will strike at his heal." Yes, snakes are very different from all other species, and perhaps this difference makes them more awe inspiring, but more deadly is the mosquito.
2. Could we not have a talking mosquito? Mosquitoes today kill an order of magnitude more humans than snakes. If a snake can talk, then so can mosquitos: "Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals, and among all wild animals, the most defenseless and insignificant of flying creatures you will be, and blood you shall heat al the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring had hers: he will swat you, and you will pierce his skin."

However, let us continue:

To the woman he said, “I will make your pangs in childbirth exceedingly great; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

There are many reasons that birth of humans tends to be, on average, more painful for women than it is for other mammals; however, this is a consequence of human evolution, and not some curse of god. However, Genesis 3 prescribes the pain that women go through in birth as a consequence of having eaten the fruit of the the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If you do not know the difference between good and evil, why would eating such a fruit have such consequences?

Thus, this passage does nothing more than support the religious beliefs that

The pain of childbirth is a direct consequence of eating this fruit and that they are the ones explicitly responsible for the "fall of man", and
Yahweh has dictated that man shall rule over women.

We continue:

And to the man he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

There is so much to unravel here.

First, man is explicitly told that his punishment is a consequence of Adam listening to Eve, and not because he ate the fruit.
Also, we have known that plants have always had difficulty on land: cellular life depends on water, and that is where cells first formed. Cellular life requires water to survive, and in arid conditions, life is more difficult. Much of the terrestrial landmasses are not necessarily supportive of abundant life, and yet the ground is not "cursed."
Various species of thistles, including those in the genus Carduus, have existed long before humans evolved, and they are adapt at surviving in arid conditions. They did not suddenly appear a few thousand years ago.
Up until this point, Adam and Eve got all their nutrition from the fruits of Eden. How did they even know what grasses or vegetables or tubers were edible? Imagine if either one of them had accidentally eaten a deathcap mushroom? Did Yahweh God suddenly give them the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of human history?
Must humorous, however, is the concept of bread. How would Adam have even known what bread was? This requires knowledge of
1. grain cultivation and harvesting,
2. fermentation and yeast,
3. kneading and rising, and
4. fire and baking.
Actually, much of dust is silicon dioxide, or sand, and only one part in ten thousand in the human body is silicon. Up to 70% of our body is water, up to 20% is protein, and another 10% is fat.

Let us discuss the making of bread, especially realizing that Adam and Eve do not even know what fire is; after all, they were naked for however long they lived in Eden, and there does not seem to have been any need for keeping warm.

The idea that Adam and Eve even knew that grains were cultivatable is impressive: did the knowledge of good and evil also bring on the knowledge of civilization? The knowledge to first harvest, and then plant and nurture wheat took thousands of years: einkorn wheat is a particular species where the wild version naturally releases its seeds as soon as they are ripe; however, a single mutation in a single gene changes the proteins that hold the seeds to the stalk so that the seeds are not dispersed, but rather, cling to to the stalk. Normally, this would be a detrimental mutation, but humans found this mutation beneficial, for they could more easily harvest that wheat. Humans also found that if they planted the seeds of such mutants, the resulting crop would keep this unnatural characteristics. The wheat we harvest exists only because humans intervene and propagate such mutants. Now, humorously enough, if Eden was indeed at a location near to Armenia, an area that is the source of at least the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, it is nicely coincidental that the earliest evidence for such domestication of wheat occurred only 500 km from Lake Sevan. However, that is beside the point: the seeds of wheat are as large as they are today only because of artificial selection: humans selected those grains that had the largest seeds, and preferred to plant those. The earliest einkorn wheat would have had significantly smaller seeds.
I guess Adam and Eve could have been lucky and had a chance wild fermentation process going on the first time they tried to make bread, but did they get so lucky each time? Did Yahweh God tell them about yeast? We know that the Egyptians did not discover yeast until approximately 1700 to 1500 BCE.
Making bread requires one to understand that one can harvest grains, dry them, crush them, and then add water, and then kneed the resulting mass?
How did Adam and Eve bake bread? Did they suddenly know how to start a fire? Remember, they were naked, so there doesn't seem to have been much point for fire. There was no rain, so there would be no chance for lightning to start a fire, either. Also, how did they know how to build an oven?

When individuals not familiar with survival go into the wild without any support, they do one thing very quickly: they die.

Let's continue:

The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living. And Yahweh God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife and clothed them.

It should be noted that the day starts at sunset in Judaism. The Sabbath begins Friday evening, not Friday night. That was nice that Yahweh killed a few animals and made garments for Adam and Eve. And we continue:

Then Yahweh God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”

Who is Yahweh talking to? Is being like a divine being equivalent to knowing good and evil? The next statement is telling: "they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever." Now that Adam and Eve were mortal, was there again a chance for immortality simply by eating the fruit of the other tree? Why was Yahweh God so afraid of letting these two created beings live forever? Why was Yahweh God so worried that Adam and Eve suddenly knew the difference between good and evil? Was this some sort of existential threat to Yahweh God? Obviously it was, for he kicked them put:

therefore Yahweh God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken. He drove out the humans, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

To stop Adam and Even, Yahweh God needed the cherubim (all of them?) and, in addition to this, a sword that was "flaming" and "turning." How about a barbed wire fence? Let us look at how the cherubim are described in the book of Ezekiel:

The cherubim appeared to have the form of a human hand under their wings... Their entire bodies—backs, hands, and wings—were covered with eyes all around... Each one had four faces: the first face was that of the cherub, the second face was that of a human, the third that of a lion, and the fourth that of an eagle.

All this to stop Adam and Eve, who up to now have not even determined what fire was, let alone metallurgy or even agriculture? Adam and Eve must have been significantly more powerful than is suggested, and if Yahweh was later able to limit the lives of humans to 120 years, if he was so afraid od these two, why not limit their lives, too?

Genesis 4

So we continue, but it is interesting to note that there is also a change in the name of god: prior to this, he was Yahweh God, but from here on, he is only referred to as Yahweh:

Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of Yahweh.” Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground.

There is no reference to their upbringing, and already Abel is a shepherd. Sheep were not originally domesticated: they were domesticated twelve millennia ago from wild mouflon. This animal superficially looks more an antelope, and it would be generations and generations of artificial selection to produce the sheep we are familiar with today. However, it is reasonable to suspect that Able and Cain were now in their late teenaged years, so let us see what comes of these two:

In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions.

Up to this point, there is no mention of Adam or Eve making any offerings what-so-ever to Yahweh. First, Adam was explicitly told that he would till the fields. Did not Adam, in the intervening fifteen or more years, offer anything at all to Yahweh that could serve as an example for his sons?

And Yahweh had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.

So, here we have it: Yahweh is blood-thirsty. However, that is not really the case: priests are blood-thirsty. On any day, a priest would prefer a meal of meat to a meal of fruits and vegetables and bread. Thus, the entire purpose of this story by the authors of Genesis is to emphasize that the Judean people should offer animal sacrifices--sacrifices the priests could eat and enjoy--and not agricultural sacrifices. Not only that, the animals that were brought were the first born, and not the runt of the litter.

So we have the consequence of Yahweh's rejection:

So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. Yahweh said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

First, why is Cain so angry? Is this something to kill over? What were the consequences of Yahweh accepting or rejecting an offering, and was Yahweh present when this happened? How did he make his rejection known? So here comes the bloody conclusion:

Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Really? Somehow Abel is suddenly able to raise a flock of sheep, and Cain is tilling the soil, and each offers the fruits of their labor.

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”

How does Cain even live? Did he suddenly develop stone-working, crafting spears to hunt animals?

Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.”

Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Why didn't he just accept the offering of agricultural gifts? There are only four people on the planet so far, and Yahweh is already playing one off of the other. Also, who are all these people who might kill them? Cain is the third oldest person on the planet after only his parents.

Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch, and he built a city and named it Enoch after his son Enoch.

Who is Cain's wife? At this point, Cain's wife had to be a younger sister, as the only other woman on the planet is his mother, Eve. Additionally, Cain is a "fugitive" and a "wanderer," so he is alone with his wife, and yet he is able to build a city? What purpose is a city for one family with one son? Could he not have built just a single dwelling?

Now we get the descendants of Cain:

To Enoch was born Irad, and

Irad was the father of Mehujael, and

Mehujael the father of Methushael, and

Methushael the father of Lamech.

We now get some details on Lamech:

Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.

Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock.

We now see that this story was written without knowledge that the flood story would subsequently be included. Jabal is explicitly said to be the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock; that is, the nomadic pastoralists from whom the Judean people came. However, whatever descendants Jabal had, they would either die in the flood, or perhaps one of the wives of one of the sons of Noah was a descendant of Jabal.

We however, continue:

His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and pipe.

Once again, we have a descendant of Cain suddenly mastering not one but two musical instruments, and apparently he is the only individual to do so. However, as before, a flood would have killed off all his descendants unless one of them was Noah or his wife, or one of the wives of Noah's sons. Had the story of Noah not been included, this would be a more plausible statement, and likely this story came from a time before the flood-narrative was introduced.

However, it gets better:

Zillah bore Tubal-cain, who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools.

Bronze and iron simultaneously? The reason for the bronze age was that copper itself is a soft metal, and it is only made strong by mixing it with either arsenic or tin; however, bronze itself was exceedingly rare as the sources of copper and the sources of tin or arsenic were seldom in the same vicinity, and thus it was not until empires arose with trading routes crossing the lands that kings and pharaohs were able to purchase and collect these raw materials. Ironworks did not appear until much later, as prior to 2000 BCE, the only sources of iron were meteorites. The issue with iron on Earth was that it was all in the form of iron oxide, or rust, and it is only in the presence of an oxygen starved fire that the resulting carbon monoxide would pass through the rust and acquire the oxygen, creating carbon dioxide and leaving behind iron. This was not an easy process, but it seems that Tubal-cain was both able to acquire sources of copper and arsenic or tin, as well as mastering the process of converting iron ore to iron, is indeed an impressive record: one much more significant than any other ancient individual.

Now, Tubal-cain may have just been using meteoric iron, but the quantities of such iron are relatively sparse, in which case, did he send his friends and families out into the deserts to collect small chunks of black rock? How did he know to collect such rocks?

One last person is mentioned:

The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.

Thus, from Lamech, Adah had Jabal and Jubal, while Zillah had Tubal-cain and Naamah.

Finally, out of the blue, with no explanation or follow up:

Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

I will include the end of Genesis 4 with Genesis 5, for reasons that will become apparent, but right now, we will reiterate the line:

Adam, Cain, Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, Lamech, [Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-cain, Naamah].

Genesis 5

At this point, we stop following the line of Cain:

Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, because Cain killed him.” To Seth also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of the Lord.

We then follow this up with a list of the descendants of Seth:

This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humans, he made them in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and called them humans when they were created.

When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, and he died.

When Seth had lived one hundred five years, he became the father of Enosh.

Seth lived after the birth of Enosh eight hundred seven years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Seth were nine hundred twelve years, and he died.

When Enosh had lived ninety years, he became the father of Kenan.

Enosh lived after the birth of Kenan eight hundred fifteen years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Enosh were nine hundred five years, and he died.

When Kenan had lived seventy years, he became the father of Mahalalel.

Kenan lived after the birth of Mahalalel eight hundred and forty years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Kenan were nine hundred and ten years, and he died.

When Mahalalel had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Jared.

Mahalalel lived after the birth of Jared eight hundred thirty years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Mahalalel were eight hundred ninety-five years, and he died.

When Jared had lived one hundred sixty-two years he became the father of Enoch.

Jared lived after the birth of Enoch eight hundred years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty-two years, and he died.

When Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah.

Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.

When Methuselah had lived one hundred eighty-seven years, he became the father of Lamech.

Methuselah lived after the birth of Lamech seven hundred eighty-two years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty-nine years, and he died.

When Lamech had lived one hundred eighty-two years, he became the father of a son; he named him Noah, saying,

“Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands.”

Lamech lived after the birth of Noah five hundred ninety-five years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy-seven years, and he died.

After Noah was five hundred years old, Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

There are some differences with the Samaritan Torah, for Methuselah only lived eight-seven years (not 187) before he became the father of Lamech, and Lamech only lived fifty-three years (not 182) when he became the father of Noah. These numbers are more in line with others in this passage.

Comparing these two genealogies, we have some similarities and some overlap:

Adam,

Cain, Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, Lamech, [Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-cain, Naamah].

Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jarad, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamah, Noah, [Shem, Ham, Japheth].

Genesis 6

Now we get to the interesting bit:

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose.

So angels or other divine beings come down and take human women to be their wives. Why do angels need spouses, and are they always male? Cannot a female angel come down and have a child with a man? It seems that all divine beings can procreate with humans, producing fantastic offspring, just like in most other ancient mythologies: Zeus's offspring with humans included Hercules, Helen of Troy, Perseus and Minos; while Yahweh himself impregnated Mary a few thousand years later.

Now, despite everyone other than Enoch dying, Yahweh seems to have some issue with how long humans are living:

Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.”

This sounds like an absolute upper limit, but recently, more and more people have become older than 120 years old. Prior to such individuals living to such extreme ages, the church taught that 120 years was an absolute upper limit. Now, however, it seems to be a suggested guideline.

Next, we return to the fantastic offspring of

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

These Nephilim are often described as giants or the fallen, and in the Samaritan Torah, the translation is "giants". Even millennia ago, humans were aware of the fossils of dinosaurs, but they had no context to place these bones, and so having these bones belong to the offspring of angels seems as good an explanation as any. The odd part is that first, all of these should have died in the flood, so what does it mean "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward." Did some of these survive the flood, and if so, what happened to their descendants? Also awkward is the last statement: "These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown." Heroes for whom? Renown to whom?

We continue, but now describe humans:

Yahweh saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.

And Yahweh was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

So Yahweh said, “I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.”

But Noah found favor in the sight of Yahweh.

Adam was still alive when his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson Lamech, the father of Noah, was born. Did Adam not guide their worship of Yahweh? And given that there wasn't much to do, what evil was there?

These are the descendants of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation;

Noah walked with God.

And Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Note that reiterates what was simply stated at the end of the last chapter. If this book was being inspired, then there would be no need of such repetition, but if this book was the amalgamation of numerous stories, each told within their own community, then such overlap is inevitable.

But we return to the state of the Earth:

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God saw that the earth was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.

What exactly was so corrupt and violent? There had not yet been ten generations since Adam, and Adam had been alive for most of that time. Did Yahweh create such awful human beings, ones far worse than have lived ever since? Did Yahweh not know that this would be the case, and if he did, why did he not, for example, stop his angels from having offspring with human women? It seems that most people alive at this time acquired incredible amounts of knowledge--metallurgy, agriculture, music, civil engineering, etc.--in only a few generations, knowledge some civilizations did not acquire over the period of millennia; e.g., metallurgy in North America never progressed to the point that one could even build a simple wheel. And with all these people, there is not one good person other than Noah? Was the source of all this evil (and perhaps knowledge) the fault of the offspring of the divine beings, and if so, is this not more so Yahweh's fault? Were all infants and young children equally corrupt? It's so easy to create a story where one simply posits a state of affairs, and then declares that the state justifies the consequences, but does it make any sense what-so-ever?

And God said to Noah,

“I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them;

now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.

Make yourself an ark of cypress wood;

make rooms in the ark, and

cover it inside and out with pitch.

This is how you are to make it:

the length of the ark three hundred cubits,

its width fifty cubits, and

its height thirty cubits.

Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and

put the door of the ark in its side;

make it with lower, second, and third decks.

First, notice that the only person being rescued is Noah, for he is righteous and blameless. Note, however, that the grandfather of Noah is Methuselah, and he was the longest-living person recorded in all of the Judean scriptures; however, he died the same year as the flood. It seems that not even Methuselah was worth saving.

A cubit is the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, so approximately one-and-a-half feet. Thus, the ark is 150 x 25 x 15 yards or 56250 cubic yards. The largest Roman boat was 95 by 21 meters and HMS Dreadnaught was 160 x 25 meters. The Roman boat was merely a barge, and not the structure that was described. The largest wooden boat ever, the Wyoming, was still smaller than than this ark, and yet "[b]ecause of her extreme length and wood construction, Wyoming tended to flex in heavy seas, which would cause the long planks to twist and buckle, thereby allowing sea water to intrude into the hold. Wyoming had to use pumps to keep her hold relatively free of water." The Wyoming was only built in 1909, the very tail end of the era of wood ships; the culmination of millennia of ship design, metallurgy, construction, and a steam engine. This ship sank in a North Atlantic cyclone, a storm that would have been miniscule in comparison to the waves that would result from a world-wide flood. And we are to believe that with only ten generations, Noah was able to secure sufficient labor and wisdom to construct a ship larger than any other that had been ever constructing since? Who did he hire, and how were they trained? How were they paid, and why would anyone build such a boat?

For my part,

I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth,

to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life;Vancouver, British Columbia

everything that is on the earth shall die.

But I will establish my covenant with you, and

you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.

And of every living thing, of all flesh,

you shall bring two of every kind into the ark,

to keep them alive with you;

they shall be male and female.

Of the birds according to their kinds and

of the animals according to their kinds,

of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind,

two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive.

Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up, and it shall serve as food for you and for them.”

Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

Apologists need to explain how all this happened: if every species in the world that ever existed were packed together on a ship of the given dimensions, there would be scares room for food. Beetles and smaller animals of all kinds would have to struggle to avoid being stepped on, lest their "kind" disappear forever. There would have to be grains for the herbivores, and eucalyptus leaves for the koalas, and lots and lots of bamboo for the pandas, and many species of insects eat only one . Suppose that all these animals made it to a well stocked ark with provisions for the voyage: how did they get there in the first place? How did all the marsupials of Australia make it to the Middle East; a journey of thousands of miles. If startled, a koala can move at up to 20 miles per hour, but this is at an unsustainable sprint. How long did it take the koala to cross the thousands of miles and hundreds of miles of seas to get to Noah, and what did they eat all this time? It is six thousand miles just from Singapore to Armenia (assuming that all these individuals stayed in this general region). At two miles per hour and ten hours a day, it would take a year to make the journey, with not one eucalyptus tree in sight, and that is only after the koalas crossed half of Australia (over 1000 miles) and then crossed 300 miles of the Timur Sea (koalas don't swim too fast, so did the two swim for two weeks straight, no rest, and no food), only to then island hop another 2000 miles along the Indonesian Archipelago before crossing the Singapore Strait, all without drowning or starving or becoming sick or lost. How did Noah even know to acquire eucalyptus, and where did he source it from. Of course, all of this can be answered easily: its a miracle; however, in that case, could Yahweh not have simply given every living human being a heart attack and be done with it?

If you thought koalas were difficult, what about the three-toed sloths of South America? They move only one mile every six hours. Not only that, "The muscles that sloths use to grip and produce a pulling motion are much more prominent than those that produce a pushing motion. This means that they struggle to support their body weight when walking on all four limbs, so travelling on the ground is a dangerous and laborious process." How did they make it all the way to the Middle East? It is 8500 miles just to Alaska, and another 5000 miles to Armenia. Travelling eight hours per day, it would take these gentle giants twenty three years to make it to the ark, and many of those twenty-three years would be spent in freezing cold winters, climates entirely unsuited for such animals. In this case, it would have almost been certainly easier to inflict each and every person Yahweh wanted dead with a brain hemorrhage, and this, at the very least, would have left the infants alive.

Some apologists claim that "kind" is closer to genera than species, and then are happy to leap onto the coat-tails of evolution to explain the diversity of species today, but only since the flood. Prior to the flood, everything was created.

Another interesting point: when Yahweh threatened to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham pleaded with Yahweh to spare the cities if fifty righteous men could be found in those cities, and then he whittles this number down to ten righteous men. I guess if there were only nine righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah, they died in the conflagration. However, no such plea comes from Noah: Noah simply accepts Yahweh's judgement. This is just a first example of the questionable behavior of this so-called prophet.

Genesis 7

So now we have Noah building the ark:

Then the Lord said to Noah,

“Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation.

Take with you

seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and

a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; and

seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female,

to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth.

For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”

And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

So this is seven days before the flood starts, and now the instructions have changed from the last set of instructions, which said:

And of every living thing...you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.

Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate...

Of the birds according to their kinds...two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive.

Take with you...seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth.

Did Yahweh change his mind while Noah was building the ark?

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth.

And Noah with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.

They are now in the ark, and let us look at the animals that were taken in:

Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah.

Once again, we are back to the original instructions:

And of every living thing...you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.

Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate...

Of clean animals ..., two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah

Of the birds according to their kinds...two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive.

Take with you...seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth.

Of...birds..., two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah.

I will not try to argue that "two and two" means that two males and two females of each "kind" were taken. This is likely just a literary device meant to show a continuous stream of pairs of animals were entering into the ark.

And after seven days the waters of the flood came on the earth.

And so the flood begins...

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month,

on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

What precision! But first, why reiterate that Noah was 600 years old: it just said this a few verses back, but there is even humor here:

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life...all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

When I was one years old, that means that I had passed my first birthday; however, in the first year of my life, I was not yet one year old. That, however, is simply more humor.

What is far more interesting is the source of the water:

all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and

the windows of the heavens were opened

Recall the the model of the Earth presented in Genesis 1 where the Earth was first all water:

...a wind from God swept over the face of the waters...and God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome.

Recall also that it had not up until this time rained, "for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain upon the earth...but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground." The sources of water that caused the flood were fountains from the waters below, and windows that were opened in the dome described above.

On the very same day Noah with his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons entered the ark,

Did it not just say a few verses ago that

And Noah with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.

It it is not clear by now, then there is little hope, but one should be able to see that this single flood story is actually the amalgamation of two separate flood myths, each giving their own description, but also with differences. The compilers of the book of Genesis, rather than harmonize the two, simply jumped back and forth, copying but repeating related materials. Thus, we are back to the original story started in the last chapter, where only two of each "kind" (including the clean and the birds) entered the ark:

they and every wild animal of every kind and all domestic animals of every kind and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth and every bird of every kind.

They went into the ark with Noah,

two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life.

And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in.

No special consideration is given for seven of clean animals and of birds.

The flood continued forty days on the earth, and the waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth.

The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters.

The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered;

he waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.

Fifteen cubits is less than 25 yards: this is amazingly precise, for Mount Everest is just under 10 000 yards tall, so the tallest mountain was covered by water only 0.25% more than its height. For the waters to rise this much in only forty days requires:

250 yards of water per day.
10 yards per hour.
Half a foot per minute.

The heaviest rainfall ever recorded was two yards in a 24-hour period, and this was in a cyclone. For this flood to occur, we need 100 times more water to fall than in the heaviest rainfall in a 24-hour period. Let us therefore return to the ark: this is a wooden boat that is larger than any wooden boat ever actually built, and the closest such boat, the Wyoming, needed a pump to keep it dry. In waters that would make a whirlpool look like a calm sea, this wooden ark somehow survived and was not shattered into insignificantly small pieces, and the passengers were not flung around as the swells rocked the ark as water fell at an unprecedented rate.

Now we simply continue gloating over this event:

And all flesh died that moved on the earth,

birds,
domestic animals,
wild animals,
all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and
all human beings;

everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth.

Once again, the authors got it wrong: not all animals have nostrils, and insects do not have lungs. Instead, some absorb oxygen through holes (spiracles) in their shells. Perhaps insects did not join them in the ark.

And we continue:

Only Noah was left and those with him in the ark. And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days.

Was it 40 days, or was it 150 days? Perhaps this is saying that the waters continued to swell 150 days after the rain ended, but in either case, we are now at either 150 or 190 days on the boat.

Genesis 8

Thus, Noah's family is in the ark and everything else is dead, including any plants whose seeds cannot survive in salt water or remain submerged for such a long time.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark.

That was nice of Yahweh to remember. Was there a possibility that he may have forgotten?

And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided;

So the flood waters are now going down.

the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed,

the rain from the heavens was restrained, and

the waters gradually receded from the earth.

Again, the model of the Earth where the waters were cut in two, separated from each other by a dome that holds the waters above up.

At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

You will remember in the previous chapter, it was on the seventeenth day of the second month that they entered the ark, so five months of thirty days each gives 150 days. At this point, the ark is sitting on Mount Ararat. What is the probability that the ark came down on a smooth and flat surface? A ship is supported uniformly, and if a ship is not, such as when it strikes a shoal, it quickly begins to break up. To not break up, the waters would have had to recede in such a way that the ark was perfectly deposited on a relatively flat plane. Had the ark come to rest on a slope, it is unlikely it would have survived. Yahweh must have been very careful in deciding where the ark would land on so high a mountain.

The waters continue to recede:

The waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

Thus, 74 days after the ark came to a rest, it seems that other mountain tops appeared. Little Ararat is 0.75 miles shorter than Mount Ararat. Thus, the top three-quarters of a mile of the slopes of Mount Ararat are now exposed.

At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and

sent out the raven, and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.

Forty days after the first of the tenth month is the eleventh of the eleventh month. It seems that the raven decided to land on the slopes of Mount Ararat.

Then he sent out the dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground,

but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth.

So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him.

This is forty days after other mountain tops appearing? Could the dove not have landed on the land below the ark?

He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark, and

the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf;

so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.

This is now the eighteenth day of the eleventh month. A freshly plucked olive leaf? It has been 197 days since the flood began, and we are to believe that there is an olive tree still growing? However, it was previously clearly stated that the only "all flesh died that moved on the earth, everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died." It seems the authors of Genesis were not aware that plants, too, die when submerged in water for so so long. How quickly do your plants die if you accidentally overwater them? How much worse is having an olive tree submerged in salt water for six-and-a-half months? I don't think the authors of this book really thought through the consequences of such a flood: they made it up.

Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove, and it did not return to him any more.

Thus, after 204 days on the twenty fifth day of the eleventh month, this dove found a place to stay. I suppose its mate found it; otherwise, there would be no more doves.

In the six hundred first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month,

the waters were dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and saw that the face of the ground was drying.

Why did Noah wait another thirty six days? They have now been in the ark for 240 days or eight months.

In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

So after another 56 days (296 days after the flood started), the Earth is dry. Remember that Yahweh told Noah to take sufficient provisions for all the animals. At a minimum, a panda eats 25 pounds of bamboo per day. That's almost eight tons of bamboo: where did Noah get such a supply?

Then God said to Noah,

“Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you.

Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—so that they may abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives.

And every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark by families.

But that's not it: now all these animals have to return to from whence they came. Remember, they could not have all been living around the Middle East, for there are no fossils of modern marsupials. Thus, they had to get to the Middle East, and now they must return from Mount Ararat. The issue now, however, is that there is nothing left:

Almost 300 days of flooding would have wiped most of the soil from the surface of the Earth.
What little soil was left would be saturated with salt, unless by some miracle, the flood waters did not mix with the oceans.
All plant life would be dead.
Most seeds would be dead, too, and those that were not would be scattered throughout the world--especially those that floated.

There would be nothing for the koalas to eat during their entire journey back to Australia, and there would be no eucalyptus trees to eat once they returned. The koala would have had to wait centuries before it could get another meal:

First, rains would have to wash away any residual salts.
Next, the smallest plants would have to begin growing, which would then die and decompose.
This, together with fresh erosion of rock would create sand, and together with the organic matter, we would have soil starting to cover the earth again.
It would be a long time before there would be sufficient soil for a eucalyptus tree to start growing, assuming that a seed from that tree managed to find its way back to Australia.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just give heart attacks to those people Yahweh did not want to live?

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

Okay, so now the first action Noah takes is to kill some of those animals that have been with him on the ark for the last ten months? Really? Every clean animal, and every clean bird? If there were two of each, I guess they may have had offspring over the last 296 days, but really?

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, ...

Dead burning flesh of animals that just spent ten months cooped up in an ark and this is a "pleasing odor"? Of course, if you are a priest and you want to emphasize to your people that they should give offerings of meat, and specifically of clean meat at that (I am certain that Yahweh would never have designated shark as being a clean animal, nor a racoon), then this is an ideal forum for propagating such desires.

the Lord said in his heart,

“I will never again curse the ground because of humans,

for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth;

nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night

shall not cease.”

So Yahweh had to kill everything to realize he never wants to do that again? However, what is listed is something that has always been the case, at least, when there are seasons: seedtime and harvest are a consequence of the tilt of the Earth, cold and heat depend on the angle at which the Sun's rays strike the Earth, summer and winter are also consequences of the tilt of the Earth, and day and night are a consequence of the spin of the Earth; none of this has changed in the last billion years. Unfortunately, the claim that these will not cease is also not true: while day and night will endure, the first three will not. The Earth will still be here when the Sun begins to run out of fuel, and as it runs out of fuel, it will expand, and in that expansion, the average surface temperature will rise above the boiling temperature of water, and there will be no seedtime, and no harvest, and only heat, and no summer or winter, just a barren rock blasted by the radiation of the Sun; however, at least there will, after that point, certainly be no more floods.

Two stories merged into one, copied from Babylon...

Before we start with Genesis 9, let us see what the two different stories looked like if we tease them apart.

The first will be with pairs of all creatures, and an emphasis on 40 days.
The second will be with seven of each clean creature and each bird, and clearly labeled days of the year.

Here is my attempt the first story, with pairs and an emphasis on 40 days:

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up, and it shall serve as food for you and for them.” Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth. And Noah with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah.

The flood continued forty days on the earth, and the waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those with him in the ark.

At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven, and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground, but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark, and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove, and it did not return to him any more.

Here is the second, with exactness of dates and seven of each clean animal and bird. The extra animals and birds were meant for the sacrifice at the end of the voyage.

Then Yahweh said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” And Noah did all that Yahweh had commanded him. And after seven days the waters of the flood came on the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. On the very same day Noah with his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons entered the ark, they and every wild animal of every kind and all domestic animals of every kind and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth and every bird of every kind. They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him, and Yahweh shut him in.

And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

In the six hundred first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and saw that the face of the ground was drying. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, “Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—so that they may abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. And every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark by families.

Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when Yahweh smelled the pleasing odor, Yahweh said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humans, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.”

You will note that this separation also cleanly divides other aspects:

Only the second refers to Yahweh.
The first refers to Noah's age, while the second refers first to the 600th year, and then the 601st year of his life.
Only the second refers to the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven.
The 150 days are tied in with explicit calendar days that are separated by 150 days.
The first mentions forty days and the end of forty days.
Only the first has Noah sending out birds, and only the second has Noah looking out and seeing mountains and then dry land.

The underlined passage is the only suggestion of forty days that appears in the second story with Yahweh.

More fascinating, however, is the relationship between these narratives and a much older story: the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is an ancient Sumerian tale from 2100 BCE---over one thousand years before the Torah was compiled. Unlike the abbreviated version found in the Torah, the purpose of which is to emphasize that rejecting Yahweh leads to punishment and following him and being righteous leads to reward, the Epic of Gilgamesh is a much richer and deeper narrative. You can read an English translation of the flood narrative, as well as others, at arthistoryproject.com.

In Genesis, Yahweh wants to flood the world because the world is evil, and rather than giving heart attacks to those who propagate evil, Yahweh decides to destroy all animal life. In the Epic, the population of humans has grown to such an extent that the gods are frustrated by the noise:
- “The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel.” So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind.
In Genesis, Yahweh chooses Noah because he was righteous (even though no good deed of his is mentioned: his only actions are to get drunk a few years after they flood, and then curses his grandson (and his descendants) to be the slaves of his other sons). In the Epic, one of the gods, Ea, warns Utnapishtim about this flood.
In Genesis, the ark is 300 x 50 or 15000 square cubits. In the Epic, it is 120 x 120 = 14000 square cubits.
Little is said about the construction in Genesis ("Make yourself an ark of gofr wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.") ; while in the Epic, Utnapishtim travels to the Persian Gulf and builds the ship there, describing not only the construction, but also the feeding of those who built it. With respect to the construction, it is said:
- I built six decks below, seven in all, I divided them into nine sections with bulkheads between. I drove in wedges where needed, I saw to the punt poles, and laid in supplies. The carriers brought oil in baskets, I poured pitch into the furnace and asphalt and oil; more oil was consumed in caulking, and more again the master of the boat took into his stores.
In Genesis, it is only Noah and his family who enter the ark. In the Epic, Utnapishtim takes many more: “I loaded into her all that 1 had of gold and of living things, my family, my kin, the beast of the field both wild and tame, and all the craftsmen.”
In Genesis, it says that “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened”, and in the Epic, a similar story is told: “Then the gods of the abyss rose up; Nergal pulled out the dams of the nether waters, Ninurta the war-lord threw down the dykes, ...” Recall that in Genesis 1, Yahweh separated the waters “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”; while in Babylonian creation myths, the Tiamat, the goddess of the primordial and chaotic seas is sliced in half by Marduk, who then fashioned her ribs, eyes and tail into a dome of the heavens, the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and the Milky Way. With this act, Marduk was elevated to the principal deity.
In Genesis, “in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.” In the Epic, this is significantly expanded upon, for Utnapishtim “looked for land in vain, but fourteen leagues distant there appeared a mountain, and there the boat grounded; on the mountain of Nisir the boat held fast, she held fast and did not budge. One day she held, and -a second day on the mountain of Nisir she held fast and did not budge. A third day, and a fourth day she held fast on the mountain and did not budge; a fifth day and a sixth day she held fast on the mountain.”
In Genesis, there is a story of birds sent out by Noah, and a similar story is told in the Epic:
- At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven, and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.
  Then he sent out the dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground, but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him.
  He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark, and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.
  Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove, and it did not return to him any more.
- When the seventh day dawned I loosed a dove and let her go. She flew away, but finding no resting-place she returned.
  Then I loosed a swallow, and she flew away but finding no resting-place she returned.
  I loosed a raven, she saw that the waters had retreated, she ate, she flew around, she cawed, and she did not come back.
In Genesis, Noah offers a sacrifice where he “built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when Yahweh smelled the pleasing odor...” and in the Epic, so does Utnapishtim: “I made a sacrifice and poured out a libation on the mountain top. Seven and again seven cauldrons I set up on their stands, I heaped up wood and cane and cedar and myrtle. When the gods smelled the sweet savour, they gathered like flies over the sacrifice.”
In Genesis, it is the smell of the burnt sacrifices that causes Yahweh say in his heart “I will never again curse the ground because of humans, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.” In Epic, the discussion amongst the gods is much more nuanced, with accusations and recriminations:
- Then, at last, Ishtar also came, she lifted her necklace with the jewels of heaven that once Anu had made to please her. “O you gods here present, by the lapis lazuli round my neck I shall remember these days as I remember the jewels of my throat; these last days I shall not forget. Let all the gods gather round the sacrifice, except Enlil. He shall not approach this offering, for without reflection he brought the flood; he consigned my people to destruction.”
  ‘When Enlil had come, when he saw the boat, he was wrath and swelled with anger at the gods, the host of heaven, “Has any of these mortals escaped? Not one was to have survived the destruction.”
  Then the god of the wells and canals Ninurta opened his mouth and said to the warrior Enlil, “Who is there of the gods that can devise without Ea? It is Ea alone who knows all things.”
  Then Ea opened his mouth and spoke to warrior Enlil, “Wisest of gods, hero Enlil, how could you so senselessly bring down the flood?
  - Lay upon the sinner his sin,
    Lay upon the transgressor his transgression,
    Punish him a little when he breaks loose,
    Do not drive him too hard or he perishes,
    Would that a lion had ravaged mankind
    Rather than the f loud,
    Would that a wolf had ravaged mankind
    Rather than the flood,
    Would that famine had wasted the world
    Rather than the flood,
    Would that pestilence had wasted mankind
    Rather than the flood.

The parallels are much more significant than both simply being flood stories. No doubt, given the significant flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, it is no wonder that such a story came about first in Mesopotamia. However, unlike Yahweh, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods realize there are much more humane ways of dealing with those who are evil.

Flood stories

Genesis 9

Thus, the flood is over:

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them,

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

The fear and dread of you shall rest on

every animal of the earth and
on every bird of the air,
on everything that creeps on the ground and
on all the fish of the sea;

into your hand they are delivered.

There are quite a few animals who don't dread human beings. Chimpanzees, for example. Whales for another.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you,

and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.

This suggests that prior to the flood, everyone was a vegetarian: however, was Abel not a shepherd? There are many animals that are rather toxic to eat; for example,

Asian tiger snake,
Hooded pitohui (a bird),
Hawksbill sea turtles (a reptile),
Cane toad (an amphibian), and
Striated surgeonfish (a fish);

however, to be fair, if prepared correctly, most mammals are not toxic. However, we have a proviso:

Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

This is odd: there are many parts of the body that are required for life; blood is only interesting as it is a liquid that distributes oxygen and nutrients throughout the body and removes carbon dioxide and waste products. Because it is a liquid, however, it is possible to lose blood while still being able to live, although in a sub-optimal state. However, it's no more significant than the brain, the stomach, the liver, etc. It simply seems that blood is the most obvious identifier of life, at least vertebrates. What is sad, however, is that because blood is a liquid that literally permeates all of the body, it is consequently impossible to remove all blood from any meat.

There is a purpose for this law, however: blood is more likely to experience bacterial growth, and therefore errors in storage or preparation of meat with blood is more likely to cause illness. Thus, we have an example of a correlation observed between health and not eating blood results in a religious edict.

Next, we get a statement requiring capital punishment:

For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning:

from every animal I will require it and from human beings,

each one for the blood of another,

I will require a reckoning for human life.

Note that it isn't Yahweh who will deliver the blow, but rather other humans.

Finally, a statement to reproduce and to dominate the world:

And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and have dominion over it.”

Next, a promise from Yahweh:

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,

“As for me, I am establishing my covenant

with you and your descendants after you and
with every living creature that is with you,
the birds, the domestic animals, and
every animal of the earth with you,

as many as came out of the ark.

I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

God said,

“This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:

I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

God said to Noah,

“This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

What a nice story to justify the existence of a rainbow, but no matter how beautiful and perfect rainbows are, and how unnatural they appear, they are simply the result of light refracting through rain droplets, and even mist. The authors of Genesis did, however, correctly link rainbows to rain, and their story is plausible (assuming all else is true, which it isn't). They posited that there was no rain prior to the flood, using the water from springs as the source of water for the entire Earth, not realizing that those springs are ultimately fed by rainwater, as well.

If, however, Yahweh is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present, why does he need a reminder? He already knew when he created Adam that this would be the ultimate consequence. This harkens back to an era prior to Yahweh being the only god, but rather just another god, only the god worshiped by the Judeans. Yahweh was powerful, but he also had human characteristics: anger, pettiness, etc.

Next, we move onto Noah and his sons:

The sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Ham was the father of Canaan.

These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was peopled.

The first point to understand is that the ancient Judeans believed that all people in a tribe were descendants of a single named progenitor. While this is sometimes the case, it certainly is not the rule: all Germans are not descendants of some guy called Jerry or Dutchy, and all French are not descendants of Frank. The name China is a derivative of the Qin Dynasty, an empire that ruled two thousand years ago; however, the Judean scriptures take this to an extreme: specifically, Canaan was the progenitor of all Canaanites, and he was the son of Ham. We will see, however, that almost all Semitic tribes (plus a few others) are descendants of Shem, with one exception: the Semitic Canaanites. Basically, the world was divided into "the good, the bad and the indifferent":

The "good" were any people with whom the Judeans wanted to maintain a positive relationship with; these were the descendants of Shem.
The "bad" were any people with whom the Judeans had ongoing or sporadic conflicts; these were the descendants of Ham.
The "indifferent" were everyone else; the descendants of Japheth.

The Judeans were descendants of nomadic Canaanite pastoral herders, and thus, most closely related to the city-dwelling Canaanites of that region. The city-dwelling Canaanites were situated on the trade routes between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and benefitted greatly from this trade, and the nomadic herders traded their flocks for goods with the city-dwellers for goods and grain. All was good, although, there would always be conflicts between nomads and those who were engaged in agriculture: flocks would occasionally enter and eat the crops of of a Canaanite farmer, and this could, in the worst case, lead to violence. With the Bronze Age Collapse, the surrounding empires were reduced, and the prosperity of the cities along the trade routes also waned. Consequently, the nomadic herders needed to settle and begin growing their own crops, and thus they migrated into the lands that were the only lands that were not densely populated: the Samarian highlands and the Judean mountains. Judea was indeed the land of milk and honey, for it could support little more than the wild bee colonies and the milk the Judeans collected from their cattle. Apart from that, it was probably one of the worst places in the world to try to settle, and this was emphasized when Israel became a state: the nascent Israeli state specifically took all lands other than the Samarian highlands and the Judean mountains (with the exception of Jerusalem). These sub-optimal lands were left to the Palestinians who were absorbed at the time into the Jordanian Kingdom; the Jews took many of the lands that were originally excluded to them.

Thus, Canaan, the progenitor of all Canaanites, must be condemned, and thus we come to this story:

Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent.

This itself is a feat, for there was no soil after the flood: so much water would have washed away any soil that remained. If the waters lowered as quickly as they allegedly did, the rush of water departing the lands would not have made it easy for soil to settle, being instead washed into the oceans. And thus Noah was "a righteous man", one who was "blameless in his generation," one who "walked with God," and a vindictive drunk in his old age. This is a second example of the questionable behavior of this so-called prophet. But then again, it seems that Jesus and his disciples, too, imbibed in a little too much wine.

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.

So, dad is drunk and Ham sees him in that state in his tent. So what? Did you make fun of his father? Regardless, nothing that could have occurred justified what happened next:

Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness.

Okay, so they covered up their dad without looking at him... That was thoughtful. Let's see what the "righteous" and "blameless" man who "walked with God" did:

When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said,

“Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.”

He also said,

“Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem, and let Canaan be his slave.

May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his slave.”

This is one of those "what-the-fuck?" moments that you can only possibly justify if you have been told since birth that Noah was right in what he just did. Noah did not punish Ham for what he did, but picked on one of his sons--apparently his youngest son--and specifically that son who was designated to be the ancestor of all those people that the Judean nomads had the greatest conflict with. And what was so evil about this action that it is not only Canaan who suffers, but all their descendants for all time? And if this is the case, why only one specific son of Ham? We shall see later that Ham had many sons, so why was only Canaan cursed? The authors of Genesis could have, at the very least, come up with a better conflict; one that is in some sense believable and credible? This is a third and most explicit example of the questionable behavior of this so-called prophet.

However, for the sake of entertainment, here is one example of how an apologist tries to justify this hyperbolic response:

But actually, if we contrast Ham’s behavior with that of his brothers, his lack of respect becomes clear. Even if Ham innocently came upon his father when he lay uncovered in his tent, seeing his father naked was highly offensive. Ham should not have brought this shame to the entire family by telling “his two brothers outside”, who hadn’t yet seen anything. That was utterly humiliating for Noah! It seems likely that Ham made fun of his father’s drunkenness and therefore shared it with his brothers.

It was so highly offensive that Noah had to pick on one of Ham's sons and curse that son and all his descendants for all time to be slaves of the other two sons? This is an example of how religion poisons everything: you can justify anything if your parents and your pastor told you some action is good, even if it is, by any standard, evil. Of course, curses don't exist, and neither did Noah, but to uphold this story as an exemplar is dubious at best, yet it is an excellent story if your goal is to subjugate a people who live next to you, and speak the same language as you.

Another apologist tries to suggest why these actions were detestable:

It is not clear whether the offense was

just seeing his father naked,
making fun of him,
engaging in a homosexual rape, or
perhaps sleeping with Noah’s wife. In Leviticus 20:11 to “uncover the nakedness of one’s father” means to sleep with his wife.

One thing we do know for certain – Ham’s action was to be detested.

No, Ham's actions were not detested: the authors of Genesis had to subordinate Canaan and all his descendants for all time to the Judean people, and this is the story they came up with.

The reality is that the Judean authors of Genesis needed to clearly articulate why the Canaanites were justified as being made slaves of the Judeans and sold as slaves to those around them.

Finally, the "righteous" and "blameless" man who unfairly curses the son of one of his children for the wrongs of that child finally dies:

After the flood Noah lived three hundred fifty years. All the days of Noah were nine hundred fifty years, and he died.

This death was not a loss.

Genesis 10

We now see more genealogies:

These are the descendants of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; children were born to them after the flood.

I will alter the verses slightly, to link who is descended from whom; however, you are welcome to consult the scripture directly.

The descendants of Japheth:

Gomer and his descendants:
1. Ashkenaz
2. Riphath
3. Togarmah.
Magog
Madai
Javan [Ionia] and his descendants from these the coastland peoples spread:
1. Elishah
2. Tarshish [a Phoenician colony?]
3. Kittim [Cyprus?]
4. Rodanim [Rhodes]
Tubal
Meshech
Tiras

These are the descendants of Japheth in their lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations.

And now we see an obvious anachronism: the story of the Tower of Babel has not yet occurred.

Next, we continue with Ham:

The descendants of Ham:

Cush and his descendants:
1. Seba
2. Havilah
3. Sabtah
4. Raamah and his descendants:
  1. Sheba [Sabaeans?]
  2. Dedan
5. Sabteca
Egypt who became the father of
1. Ludim
2. Anamim
3. Lehabim
4. Naphtuhim
5. Pathrusim
6. Casluhim, from whom the Philistines come
7. Caphtorim.
Put
Canaan whose descendants afterward...spread abroad. And the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim as far as Lasha:
1. Sidon, his firstborn
2. Heth and the Jebusites
3. the Amorites
4. the Girgashites
5. the Hivites
6. the Arkites
7. the Sinites
8. the Arvadites
9. the Zemarites
10. the Hamathites

Cush became the father of Nimrod;

he was the first on earth to become a mighty warrior.

He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”

The beginning of his kingdom was

Babel
Erech
Akkad
Calneh in the land of Shinar.

From that land he went into Assyria and built

Nineveh
Rehoboth-ir
Calah
Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

These are the descendants of Ham, by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

All nice, but the Philistines (labeled as descendants of Casluhim, son of Egypt) were Greek invaders: people who left Greece during the Bronze Age Collapse and attacked cities throughout the eastern Mediterranean until they were finally defeated by Ramesses III and made to settle along the coast of what is today Gaza. Had there been any divine inspiration in the generation of these artificial family trees, they would have at the very least put the people in the correct relation to others, as opposed to placing them for political purposes.

Finally, Shem:

To Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born.

The descendants of Shem:

Elam
Asshur
Arpachshad who became the father of
1. Shelah who became the father of
  1. Eber to whom were born two sons
    1. Peleg (for in his days the earth was divided)
    2. Joktan who became the father of these whose territory in which they lived extended from Mesha in the direction of Sephar, the hill country of the east:
      1. Almodad
      2. Sheleph
      3. Hazarmaveth
      4. Jerah
      5. Hadoram
      6. Uzal
      7. Diklah
      8. Obal
      9. Abimael
      10. Sheba
      11. Ophir
      12. Havilah
      13. Jobab
Lud
Aram and his descendants:
1. Uz
2. Hul
3. Gether
4. Mash

These are the descendants of Shem, by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

What this, however, really sounds like is that the authors had a long list of tribes they had heard of, and each tribe was designated a progenitor whose name was similar to that of the tribal name. Following this, those tribes that were, at the time, on good terms with Judea had their progenitor listed as a son or descendant of Shem; those on bad terms had their progenitor listed as a son or descendant of Ham, and everyone else was a son or descendant of Japheth. Here is a link to a map from 1854 that attempts to associate many of the descendants with a tribe. It is unfortunate, however, that there are no names that sound remotely East Asian, American, Aboriginal, or even East Indian, etc. It seems that tribes outside of knowledge of the authors of Genesis simply do not exist; alternatively, perhaps it was only a local flood, and the descendants of Noah are only those who lived in the vicinity of the Middle East. Or, more realistically, it's all make-believe.

Thus, we conclude:

These are the families of Noah’s sons, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.

Genesis 11

This chapter tells the story of the Tower of Babel and elaborates on the descendants of Shem.

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

This is, of course, unlikely at best. Languages are shared, and they evolve and change over time. While a group of people may have a common language, as that group splits, so long as the groups remain in contact, it is likely the language will remain similar, that is, unless there are pressures to diverge (such as a desire to differentiate oneself from others). If two groups become separated by geography, however, and lose contact, their languages will diverge over time. One word, or expression, that seems to be almost universal is the query "Huh?" Humans first migrated across the Sinai approximately 80,000 years ago, and while also being a bottleneck for genetic information (anyone not from Africa is horribly inbred when contrasted with those people who remained in the African continent) it appears also to have been a bottleneck for language, as researchers have identified approximately two dozen words that are similar throughout numerous non-African continents:

thou, I, not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm

Languages continued to diverge, at least, until the invention of the printing press and subsequently mass communication, and yet, even today, languages continue to evolve.

But the story continues:

And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

Once again, the authors of Genesis got it wrong: the migration was from the west and north. Prior to the cooling period known as the Younger Dryas, most humans lived not in larger communities, but rather smaller hunter-gatherer tribes. It was only with this cooling period that forced humans to migrate southward forcing them to either the direction of Canaan or Mesopotamia. It is at this time that the agricultural revolution also occurred, with the identification of Einkorn wheat together with its mutation that allowed the seeds to be harvested (described above).

There seems to have been a mystique about the east among these early authors: the Sun rises in the east, and the great Mesopotamian empires are also in the east. While there was also the Egyptian kingdom to the southwest, many of the Mesopotamian empires were more related to the early Judeans, speaking Semitic languages related to proto-Hebrew. While ancient Egyptian comes from the same language family as Hebrew, the Afro-Asiatic family, it is more distant and distinct from the Semitic languages common throughout the Fertile Crescent. We will also see that Abraham is said to have migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan. Thus, it might not be that surprising that the authors got the migration patterns completely wrong, imposing patterns that paralleled their beliefs.

Thus, this community of humans said:

And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.”

And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.

Then they said,

“Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens,

and let us make a name for ourselves;

otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

By this time, however, humans were already scattered across the entire Earth, including the Americas. The inspiration for this story is, no doubt, the great Ziggurats built in Mesopotamia. These were brick pyramidal structures built as far back as 4000 BCE, much earlier than the earliest step pyramid of Djoser built around 2500 BCE in Egypt. In Egypt, however, there were plentiful sources of stone, and when these were used, there was the Nile that could be used to transport limestone and granite to the building locations. In Mesopotamia, however, a lack of stone meant that these Ziggurats were built of bricks, as described above. Sadly, however, the actual height was not that significant: bricks do not provide the support that the stones of the pyramids did, so while they may have risen to heights as high as 70 meters, they were certainly less than the 150 meters of the Pyramid of Khufu. Images of this tower that is claimed to have been built show structures that would have been impossible to have been built: inclines of greater than forty-five degrees, and sometimes vertical.

This structure less than 100 meters high does, however, seem to cause significant stress for Yahweh:

Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.

And Yahweh said,

“Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do;

nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down and confuse their language there,

so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

Yahweh was so threatened by humans and a single completed building? This is the all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere-present god that has existed since before the beginning of time? Also, if Yahweh is everywhere-present, why did he need to "come down and see" what humans were doing? The Yahweh envisioned by the earliest authors of Genesis is not the god envisioned by Christian theologians, and not even the Judean post-Exilic scholars. Who is Yahweh speaking to? Other gods, of course, for the first commandment is not that there is only one god, but that the Judean people will have no other gods before Yahweh. It is only after the Babylonian exile that the idea of monotheism began to enter Judean religious thought.

So Yahweh continues:

So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth,

and they left off building the city.

Therefore it was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth,

and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Again, a nice story to explain the diversity of language and the diversity of people throughout the world, but it is only a story, with no substance, and yet, all of Judaism and Christianity is based on these stories, for out of this diversity will come one individual. Of course, what is most humorous is the play on words: Babylon was one of the greatest cities in Mesopotamia, and a name that translates as the "Gate of the Gods." The name Babilim ends with a word that parallels Elohim, the plural of the name El. Even today, the name Bab (باب) means "gate" in Arabic and is the name of one of the prophets of the Baháʼí Faith. However, b-b-l (בבל) or b-v-l (בָּבֶל) means confusion in Hebrew and related languages, and this was meant to humiliate those empires in the east, just like descendants of Esau were hairy, just like the descendants of Lot (the Moabites and Ammonites) are the product of a incestuous relationships between Lot and his daughters, and just like the descendants of Canaan were all cursed to be slaves.

The story of Babel seems to be inserted, as now we return to genealogies:

These are the descendants of Shem.

When Shem was one hundred years old,
he became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood, and
Shem lived after the birth of Arpachshad five hundred years and had other sons and daughters.
When Arpachshad had lived thirty-five years,
he became the father of Shelah, and
Arpachshad lived after the birth of Shelah four hundred three years and had other sons and daughters.
When Shelah had lived thirty years,
he became the father of Eber, and
Shelah lived after the birth of Eber four hundred three years and had other sons and daughters.
When Eber had lived thirty-four years,
he became the father of Peleg, and
Eber lived after the birth of Peleg four hundred thirty years and had other sons and daughters.
When Peleg had lived thirty years,
he became the father of Reu, and
Peleg lived after the birth of Reu two hundred nine years and had other sons and daughters.
When Reu had lived thirty-two years,
he became the father of Serug, and
Reu lived after the birth of Serug two hundred seven years and had other sons and daughters.
When Serug had lived thirty years,
he became the father of Nahor, and
Serug lived after the birth of Nahor two hundred years and had other sons and daughters.
When Nahor had lived twenty-nine years,
he became the father of Terah, and
Nahor lived after the birth of Terah one hundred nineteen years and had other sons and daughters.
When Terah had lived seventy years,
he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Now these are the descendants of Terah.

Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and
1. Haran was the father of Lot[, Milcha and Iscah].
  Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.
2. Abram and Nahor took wives;
  1. the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and
  2. the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah.
    She was the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah.

Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.

Thus, it seems that Nahor married his niece, and Lot is Abram's nephew. What is important here, however, is that their home was in Ur, in Mesopotamia; however, we now see an anachronism of the authors of Genesis: it is called "Ur of the Chaldeans." Ur was originally a Sumerian city, and Sumerian is not a Semitic culture. Now, Ur was absorbed into the Akkadian empire that existed from approximately 2270 to 2083 BCE, and the Akkadian language is Semitic. With the fall of the Akkadian empire, the Third Dynasty of Ur reasserted itself as a local political power, but this existed only from 2055 to 1940. I'd love to talk about the Third Dynasty, but this is not the place. Following the fall, Ur was ruled by

the first Amorite dynasty of Babylon (including Hammurabi),
the Sealand Dynasty,
the Kassites, and
the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

The Chaldean or Neo-Babylonian Empire was only founded in 626 BCE by Nabopolassar, whose son was Nebuchadnezzar II. The phrase

Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

could not have been written or edited before 626 BCE.

Another important points: the Chaldeans were a Semitic people, but the Sumerians were not. Yet, a Semitic Abraham journeys to Canaan and establishes his lineage there. In reality, the Judeans were the settled descendants of nomadic Canaanite pastoral herders, but this made them close kin to those Canaanites who lived in the cities. It was necessary to distinguish the Judeans from the other inhabitants of that region, and thus, Abraham is made to come from Ur, only it would have been a non-Semitic Sumerian Ur.

Anyway, we continue with the anachronism:

Terah took

his son Abram and
his grandson Lot son of Haran and
his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife,

and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan,

but when they came to Haran, they settled there.

The days of Terah were two hundred five years, and Terah died in Haran.

Any claim that this may have been authored by someone that allegedly lived during the second millennia BCE is consequently absurd. This was written or edited during or after the Babylonian Exile.

But, anyway, we now have Terah, Abram and Lot travelling from Mesopotamia to Canaan, but they seem to stop at a place that has the same name as the son of Terah and the father of Lot: Haran. This is a city that continues to exist today (Harran) in the south east of Turkey between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in a fertile basis.

The problem with this story is manyfold. First, there is no motivation given for Terah going to Canaan. Yahweh did not speak to Terah, and there does not seem to be anything drawing him to leave the city of Ur. If their intention was to go to Canaan, that route does not take you anywhere near Harran:

Starting in Ur, one would travel up the Euphrates river.
After 700 miles, one could then travel west to Aleppo, or perhaps follow some other trade route.
Following this, one could begin travelling south to Canaan.

To get to Harran, however, one would have to stop travelling up the Euphrates 100 miles before one might begin travelling west to Aleppo, and then you would have to travel almost 100 miles due north.

As for age: even before the flood, Yahweh said that he would restrict the age of men to 120 years, and yet:

Shem lived 100 + 500 = 600 years.
Arpachshad lived 35 + 403 = 438 years.
Shelah lived 30 + 403 = 433 years.
Eber lived 34 + 430 = 464 years.
Peleg lived 30 + 209 = 239 years.
Reu lived 32 + 207 = 239 years.
Serug lived 30 + 200 = 230 years.
Nahor lived 29 + 119 = 148 years.
Terah lived 70 + 135 = 205 years.

All of these individuals lived beyond 120 years, and all but Shem were born after the flood. Perhaps the author of Genesis who imposed this limit on human life to 120 years forgot to mention it to his peers. Note also that these sons are born when the father is relatively old, ages approaching those recorded in the pre-flood narratives. All despite, prior to the flood, Yahweh declaring in Genesis 6:

Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.”

Perhaps the author of Genesis 6 forgot to mention this small detail to the author of Genesis 11. You will also note the repetitions, which are highlighted: Arpachshad and his son Shelah both lived exactly 403 years after the birth of their son, and both Peleg and Reu lived 239 years. Additionally, as with the pre-flood stories, Terah was quite old when he had his sons. However, much more interesting is that all of Abraham's ancestors up to and including Noah are still alive when Abraham was born, as shown in this graphic: at Abraham's birth, everyone up to his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather were still alive. Below this graphic is a graphic that shows a 70-year life (significantly greater than the average age at the time) with the assumption that the heir is born when the father is a more reasonable 25 years old. Additionally, at least some of these persons were living in Ur, and yet, there is no record what-so-ever of individuals living 148 years or 230 years. We know, for example, that in Ur,

Utu-hengal reigned for approximately 7 years, c. 2055–2048 BCE
Ur-Nammu reigned for approximately 18 years, c.2048–2030 BCE
Shulgi reigned for approximately 48 years, c. 2030–1982 BCE

None of these reflect individuals living hundreds of years. Did Eber live in Ur at that time, and if someone lived almost half a millennium, or a dozen generations, would no one have noted this? Additionally, it is humorous that the Sumerian King List also includes older kings that are incredibly old, including Kings that lived prior to the Mesopotamian flood narrative, only here we have reigns that lasted thousands of years, totaling a quarter-of-a-million years.

Genesis 12

This chapter starts to tell the story of Abraham:

Now Yahweh said to Abram,

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.

I will make of you a great nation, and

I will bless you and make your name great,

so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and

the one who curses you I will curse, and

in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Note that this tries to emphasize that the Judeans are not from Canaan, or anywhere near Canaan. They are children of Ur who have been directed by Yahweh to migrate to Canaan and to settle there, where he will bless Abraham and his descendants. Interestingly, enough, this promise seems to be directed at Abraham, and yet, many of his descendants do not share these blessings: the descendants of Ishmael and of Esau do not enjoy these blessings.

However, Abraham sets out:

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Abram took

his wife Sarai and
his brother’s son Lot and
all the possessions that they had gathered and
the persons whom they had acquired in Haran,

and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.

Thus, Abraham took his family, his possessions and his slaves.

When they had come to the land of Canaan,

Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem,

to the turpentine tree of Moreh.

At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said,

“To your offspring I will give this land.”

So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

Shechem was in the middle of the Samarian highlands, and was a political center of that region for many years.

Abraham continues south:

From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and

pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and

there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord.

Bethel and Ai are perhaps two miles apart. Ai, however, is an interesting place, as the name itself means "ruins"; certainly not the name of an extant city. However, the city was in ruins during biblical times.

The city began to grow starting around 3200 BCE.
Between 3100 up to 2950 and 2860 BCE, it was a well planned and fortified city with a temple and market but it was then violently destroyed.
The city recovered, but was then violently destroyed again in 2700 BCE.
After being abandoned for approximately half a century, the city began to recover, but was disrupted in 2550 BCE.
Finally, around 2400 BCE, it was once again violently destroyed.

Following this, the site was abandoned for over one thousand years until approximately 1200 BCE. Thus, it seems that the city was already in ruins prior to Abraham's arrival.

For your information, Bethel is approximately 10 miles north of Jerusalem.

And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

The Negev desert is not what one would consider a destination. The city of Beersheba had been in existence long before Abraham would have travelled in this direction, so while it is not mentioned, this may have been where he ended up. However, it seems that as soon as he reaches this destination, there is a famine, so he goes immediately to Egypt:

Now there was a famine in the land.

So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land.

Abraham, however, is worried that the Egyptians may be lured by his beautiful wife, and may kill him to make her a widow, and then marry her:

When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai,

“I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and

when the Egyptians see you, they will say,

‘This is his wife’;

then they will kill me, but they will let you live.

Abraham's solution is for Sarah to declare herself to be Abraham's sister:

Say you are my sister,

so that it may go well with me because of you and that my life may be spared on your account.”

Now, Abraham was 75 years old when he left Harran, and later we will see that Sarah is a decade younger, so Sarah at 65 years old is apparently a women sufficiently "beautiful in appearance" that she being wed to Abraham is a threat to him.

So, what is the sixty-five year-old Sarah expected to do?

When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

When the officials of Pharaoh saw her,

they praised her to Pharaoh.

And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.

So, at the request of Abraham, Sarah is now a wife of the Pharaoh and no doubt Sarah and the Pharaoh are having sexual intercourse. Did no one ask why a 65-year old sister of Abraham is not married? There must have been more lies told than just "She is my sister." And how does Abraham benefit?

And for her sake he dealt well with Abram, and he had

sheep,
oxen,
male donkeys,
male and female slaves,
female donkeys, and
camels.

As others have noted, the last is also an example of a possible anachronism: camels appear to have been domesticated in Arabia prior to the time of Abraham; however, the use of camels as pack animals does not appear to have extended outside of Arabia around the time of Abraham. This is, however, apparently, still subject to investigation, so I'll only comment on this as an observation.

But returning to the story, so Sarah, at Abraham's behest, prostitutes herself to preserve Abraham's life. As a consequence, Abraham becomes additionally rewarded, so Abraham is benefiting monetarily from Sarah's prostitution. And the Pharaoh is none the wiser: he and his entire entourage believes that Sarah is Abraham's sister. Who then is punished?

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.

So Pharaoh called Abram and said,

“What is this you have done to me?

Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?

Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’

so that I took her for my wife?

Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.”

And Pharaoh gave his men orders concerning him, and

they set him on the way with his wife and all that he had.

So, a 75-year-old Abraham lied, prostituted his 65-year-old wife, and benefited financially from that prostitution, and the Pharaoh is the one who is punished? Recall that the primary reason for going to Egypt in the first place was that "there was a famine in the" Negev. Had Abraham had the wealth and means to live comfortably in the Negev, would he not have stayed there? He travelled to Egypt despite his great wealth, and now he is being driven out again. So where does he go? Back to the Negev, the exact place where the famine was.

What is more interesting is Pharaoh's response: The entire point of the subterfuge was that Abraham was worried that he would be killed. Thus, the Pharaoh takes Sarah as a wife, while simultaneously rewarding Abraham who is already--apparently--exceedingly rich, and then the Pharaoh and his house is inflicted with "great" but nebulous and undescribed plagues with no consequences described. The reasonable response would have been to kill Abraham for the deception and consequent curse. There is no reason given for Pharaoh not doing so, no one warns Pharaoh not to kill Abraham, or that Abraham is protected. If Abraham is dead, then the Pharaoh could continue to have Sarah as his wife.

Genesis 13

So they return to Canaan and its surroundings:

So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had and Lot with him, into the Negeb.

Where to now? And despite the famine:

Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.

He journeyed on by stages from the Negeb as far as Bethel,

to the place where his tent had been at the beginning,

between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first,

and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.

So the author simply repeats what was said previously:

From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and

pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and

there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord.

One supposes that there was nothing better to be written down, instead, such as, why is Abraham even still alive? What stopped Pharaoh from killing Abraham for his deception?

However, before we go on, how much time has passed since Abraham left Harran, travelled to Bethel, and then in "stages" to the Negev, then to Egypt, Sarah being taken as a wife of Pharaoh, Pharaoh being struck by plagues, Abraham being evicted from Egypt and and then traveling back to the Negev, and then in "stages" back to Bethel? Fortunately, we are told that Abraham was 75 when he left Harran, and that he lived in Canaan (where he is now) for ten years before Sarah has Abraham have a son with her slave, and Abraham is 86 when the slave's son, Ishmael is born. Consequently, all this has happened in the span of perhaps one year.

Thus, it has been only a year since leaving Harran, and it seems that Lot is quite wealthy, too:

Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents,

and the land could not support both of them living together because
their possessions were so great that they could not live together.

Thus strife arose between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock.

At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land.

Bethel is at the southern edge of the Samarian highlands. Recall that Israel Finkelstein has already suggested that there is strong evidence that the Judeans came from nomadic Canaanite pastoral herders, and associating Abraham with these roots is likely a cultural acknowledgement of that ancestry. Indeed, Abraham and Lot do not settle down in a village or town, but continue to live in tents. However, herders would have preferred not highlands, but rather the river valleys for their herds, and they only began to migrate into the Samarian highlands and Judean mountains as a result of the Bronze Age Collapse. So, true, these nomadic herders did begin to settle in the highlands, but not because Abraham happened to have moved there, but because of economic pressures. However, the story is correct, it is much more difficult for highlands to support livestock and agriculture. Thus, they resolve their conflict by separating:

Then Abram said to Lot,

“Let there be no strife between you and me and between your herders and my herders,

for we are kindred.

Is not the whole land before you?

Separate yourself from me.

If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or

if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.”

Lot looked about him and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward, and they separated from each other.

Abram settled in the land of Canaan,

while Lot settled among the cities of the plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom.

Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

It seems that everyone who is not in the line that would produce Jesus seems to be great sinners. Prior to the flood, everyone other than Noah is evil. Now, everyone in Sodom is wicked and they are great sinners. Yahweh has not promised them anything, nor has he done anything to help them, nor has he sent them any prophet, so why are they so vilified? Of course, like those before the flood, there must be justification for them being destroyed, and the justification is the nebulous claim that they were "wicked" and "great sinners," just like before the flood, the "wickedness of humans was great" and "every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually." It seems that even Noah's grandfather Methuselah was wicked, as he appears to have died in the flood. Despite the wickedness and sin of Sodom, we will see that Lot never-the-less chose to remain in that city, for he will later be captured when the king of Elam when that city is sacked.

However, we continue:

The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him,

“Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are,

northward and southward and eastward and westward,

for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.

I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth,

so that if one can count the dust of the earth,

your offspring also can be counted.

Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”

So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the turpentine trees of Mamre,

which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.

Hebron is close to the heart of the Judean mountains, and the heart of the land of the Judean people. Now this is being said at Bethel, but the claim is interesting: "all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever." This is definitely not the case: there are centuries and millennia during which this land was not in the possession of Abraham or his descendants; however, perhaps Yahweh was speaking figuratively: he has given the land to Abraham and his descendants "forever", but it is the gift that is forever, and not the possession thereof. As for the claim that the descendants of Abraham will be like the dust of the Earth, there fewer than ten billion people alive today, and perhaps 100 billion people have been alive since Abraham. Neither of these are uncountable, and neither of these figures is "like the dust of the earth."

Genesis 14

In this next chapter, Lot is made a prisoner, and Abraham goes to rescue him:

In the days of

King Amraphel of Shinar,
King Arioch of Ellasar,
King Chedorlaomer of Elam, and
King Tidal of Goiim,

these kings made war with

King Bera of Sodom,
King Birsha of Gomorrah,
King Shinab of Admah,
King Shemeber of Zeboiim, and
the king of Bela, that is, Zoar.

All these joined forces in the Valley of Siddim, that is, the Dead Sea.

Twelve years they had served Chedorlaomer,

but in the thirteenth year they rebelled.

In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and subdued

the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim,
the Zuzim in Ham,
the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, and
the Horites in the hill country of Seir as far as El-paran on the edge of the wilderness;

then they turned back and came to En-mishpat, that is, Kadesh, and subdued

all the country of the Amalekites and also
the Amorites who lived in Hazazon-tamar.

Then

the king of Sodom,
the king of Gomorrah,
the king of Admah,
the king of Zeboiim, and
the king of Bela, that is, Zoar,

went out, and they joined battle in the Valley of Siddim with

King Chedorlaomer of Elam,
King Tidal of Goiim,
King Amraphel of Shinar, and
King Arioch of Ellasar,

four kings against five.

Now the Valley of Siddim was full of bitumen pits, and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fled to the hill country. So the enemy took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their provisions and went their way; they also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who lived in Sodom, and his goods and departed.

There are five kings of "cities in the plain," supposedly in the Jordan Rift Valley around the Dead Sea; however, it does not seem that anyone is able to identify any of these cities, and no such corresponding ruins have every been found that would definitely been connected to these cities. This is no different from Atlantis or Solomon. These five cities in the most southerly region north of the Negev desert simply do not appear to have ever existed, and most will be destroyed in a subsequent catastrophic event. For some reason, however, they appear to have been subject to the rule of Cherdorlaomer of Elam, but then they revolt, and Cherdorlaomer gathers three other kings from Mesopotamia (and perhaps the Hittites) to quash this rebellion in the Jordan Rift Valley. They engage in battle at the Dead Sea and all the kings of the Levant flee and Lot, who is living in Sodom, together with his possessions, becomes part of the spoils of war for the Mesopotamian armies.

Now, Elam was a country in what today is western modern-day Persia, including the fertile lands east of the lower Tigris river and the Persian Gulf up to and including the foothills of Zagros Mountains and regions of the Iranian plateau. The language of these people is an isolate: it has no close relatives anywhere in the Middle East, and today it is an extinct language. There were three dynasties in the Old Elamite Period, the time spanning the life of Abraham:

2350–2148 BCE The Awan dynasty traded with Sumerian city states, and seems to have around 2300 BCE even extended its control over Ur ending that city's first dynasty; however, the rise of the Akkadian empire absorbed most of the fertile lowlands between the Tigris and the foothills. With the fall of the Akkadian empire around 2083 BCE, Puzur-Inshushinak reasserted control and even invaded Mesopotamia, however, he was defeated by Ur-Nammu at some point after 2048 BCE after which Elam was conquered by the Gutians, the same tribe who accelerated the downfall of the Akkadian empire.
Up to 1900 BCE The Shimashki Dynasty managed to reassert its independence, but it was continually under attack from both the Sumerians from the West and the Gutians from the North East. The Elamites were able to plunder and occupy Ur for two decades. The dynasty made incursions into Mesopotamia but also was attacked by various Sumerian city states.
Up to 1500 BCE The Sukkalmah dynasty continued to expand control of the Elamites, including gaining suzintry over much of lower Mesopotamia up to the reign of Hammurabi, whose rule began in 1728 BCE and the establishment of the Babylonian empire.

We have a relatively complete list of names of Elamite kings, and none match the name recorded in Genesis. Additionally, the more powerful the king in Mesopotamia, the more attested that individual is in the records of other nations in that region. Still, none of the other Elamite kings are said to have extended their influence into Canaan or the Jordan Rift Valley.

One more humorous aside is the transliteration of the King of Elam from the Samaritan Torah: there it is written as Kaadaar Laamaar. The structure of the name of this alleged king parallels Monty Python's Sillius Soddus or Biggus Dickus.

Let us see what happens when Abraham learns of the capture of Lot:

Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew,

who was living by the turpentine trees of Mamre the Amorite,

brother of Eshcol and of Aner;

these were allies of Abram.

So Abraham has some Amorite allies, which is interesting, as all the Semitic Amorite kingdoms were north of the Sea of Galilee north to the Taurus mountains and down towards the Persian Gulf; however, these three head north in pursuit of this Elamite king and his allies:

When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive,

he led forth his trained men, born in his house,

three hundred eighteen of them, and

went in pursuit as far as Dan.

Not only is Abraham rich, he seems to have had his own personal army of 318 soldiers.

He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and

routed them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus.

318 soldiers engage in a night attack and are suddenly able to route the combined armies of four kings, four kings that destroyed the armies of five kings. It is 50 miles from Dan to Damascus, and we are to believe that three hundred soldiers pursued likely many more that distance?

Then he brought back all the goods and also brought back his nephew Lot with his goods and the women and the people.

And Abraham saves the day and saves Lot, all from a king whose name is not recorded anywhere else and the ruler of a region that appears to have had no interest in Canaan. However, there is a relationship between this king and an aforementioned story in Genesis: the reference to Ur of the Chaldeans. It seems that the same authors who were exposed to the Chaldean suzerainty over Mesopotamia likely also heard stories of a powerful historical kingdom to the east, the kingdom of Elam that existed a millennia before the Judean exile into Babylon. Perhaps one of the authors of Genesis thought that the defeat of an Elamite king would set an excellent example of the power of Abraham.

After [Abraham's] return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him,

the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh, that is, the King’s Valley.

And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of El Elyon.

He blessed him and said,

“Blessed be Abram by El Elyon, maker of heaven and earth, and
blessed be El Elyon, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”

The name Salem is likely Jerusalem. This introduces a new name for Yahweh, the name El Elyon. Previously, we have always seen the god of the Judeans as having the name Yahweh, but now we have the Samarian name of their supreme god, El Elyon. Later, when the northern tribes are subjugated by the neo-Assyrian empire, the fleeing refuges will inundate the Judean mountains and Jerusalem, and the supreme god of each people will be identified as the same god with the names Yahweh and El.

And Abram gave him one-tenth of everything.

This sounds a lot like the tradition of tithing: give one tenth of your belongings to the priests, together with your animal sacrifices.

Then the king of Sodom said to Abram,

“Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself.”

But Abram said to the king of Sodom,

“I have sworn to Yahweh El Elyon, maker of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, so that you might not say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’

I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten and the share of the men who went with me: Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre.

Let them take their share.”

Nothing prior to this suggests any relationship between Abraham and the king of Sodom. It seems that Abraham is already sufficiently rich to have is own well-trained paramilitary army. There is no suggestion as to what the king of Sodom did that was so evil, just like there was no suggestion as to what was done that was so evil by all those other than Noah prior to the flood. Remember that while Noah was found to be righteous, not even his grandfather, Methuselah, the longest living man in the world was found righteous, as he, too, died in the flood.

To be continued...