Collateral Bloggage

My reading this morning took me to Matthew 21. Certainly, there are a number of things that I could muse about, but since it featured one of my favorite parables, I thought I’d go with that. The parable is known as The Parable of the Tenants. Here’s the introduction to it:
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I love Peter. Yes, I love my nephew Peter, and my friend Pete. But Simon Peter, brother of Andrew, son of Jonah…love that guy.

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I remarked to a coworker, during a conversation about supposed “climate change”, that one of the really nice things about the theory is that *any* given indicator can be seen as a clear sign of Climate Change. Unusually hot? Climate Change. Abnormally mild? Climate Change. Freakin’ Cold? I could go on, but I’m running out of adjectives to put in front of hot/cold/mild/wet/dry.

Where am I going with this? Click to find out!!!

In reading the New Testament references to Abraham (or Abram), one might get the impression that he was impeccable and unflappable. After all, didn’t he willingly take his beloved son to the mountain to sacrifice him at God’s request? That’s some kind of faith!

Let me say right now that I am very impressed with this. Seriously…sacrifice your son? Blows me away.

But let’s dispense right now with the idea that Abram was somehow a Superman of faith. Just look at what happened in the following references:

1. Genesis 12:10 - he fled to Egypt due to famine

2. Genesis 12:12 - he lied about Sarai to protect his own life
3. Genesis 16:4 - went to Hagar’s bed at Sarai’s urging
4. Genesis 20:2 - lied *again* (to Abimilech this time) about Sarai to protect his own life

In three of these examples, it seems like the issue at hand was simple fear. Fearing hunger, fearing death. If he was such a Superman, wouldn’t he have trusted God a little more? At this point, of course, I’m getting whacked with the Hypocrite Stick, because it’s not like I trust everything to God, either. But I’m not trying to put myself forward as a paragon of Faith, either.

The Hagar thing, though, is the most troubling thing to me. Fear is understandable, but the Hagar thing involved Abram (and Sarai) trying to *help* along God’s promise. “Well, God said I’d have kids, and I’m not havin’ kids, so he must have meant for me to conceive them on Hagar.”

Again, let me emphasize that Abram had it where it counted…offerring his son. Still floored by that. My point here is, although he’s held up as an example of faith, he was just like the rest of us. I like that.

One other thing from this morning’s reading is this:

There are those who use this verse to justify blind support of Israel. I’m not sure I get it, though. There’s basically two ways to interpret the application of this blessing:

1. It applied to Abram…and only him.

2. It applies to Abram and his offspring.

The second interpretation seems to be the one most held these days. Again, I don’t get it. Anybody familiar with Abram’s offspring? Okay, Isaac. Good guy. So does the promise apply to him? Maybe. But if so, Ishmael’s got to sneak in for some blessing, too. And today’s Israel isn’t exactly descended from Ishmael…right?

Ahh, but you point out Genesis 21:12: “through Isaac your descendants shall be named.” So the promise actually only applies to Isaac. Okay. So then, we’re left with Isaac’s descendants. Remember them? Jacob, the sneaky one, who would later be named Israel. But what about the other? Esau…Edom. Not exactly a recipient of blessing, since the Edomites are gone, gone, gone today.

Add to all this the fact that 10 of the 12 tribes were scattered by the Assyrians and essentially never returned, and the fact that Israel today is *not* populated with folks who can trace their ancestry to Jacob, and I don’t think the Abrahamic blessing applies to Israel today.

Of course, I *do* tend to support Israel, at least when they’re in the right. I favor the “Abraham-only” application of his blessing, and also the extension of it to his “seed”, who is Christ.

Of course, I could have made this all much shorter by just putting a reference in here from Paul:

Reading Genesis is fun!

You might notice a slight change from my plans here. Yes, I had planned to blog yesterday about the “[man]’s days will be 120 years thing”. Didn’t happen. Never had the chance to do it. So today I’m going to do cliff notes of my planned Wed/Thurs blogging.

Because I’ve got more interesting stuff to blog about later today (or tomorrow). Blasting through Genesis 3-5 chapters a day leaves me with much backblog.

So, again, the two issues remain:

1. What does the 120 years thing mean?
2. What are the Nephilim, and what relationship do they bear to the Sons of God/daughters of men pairings.

Answer to #1. There’s two theories. First, that God shortened lifespans to 120 years from the previous 900+ spans in earlier chapters. Second, that God announced that he’d give man 120 years to rethink his behavior, then smite them. I favor the latter. Why?

Trouble is, there’s no good scripture in support of either theory. Yes, Moses lived 120 years. But after the flood, there were still several generations living 200+ years. And after Moses, it seems like lifespans were more in the 40-70 year range. In fact, we seem to have a scripture that somewhat contradicts the 120 year limit:

So if God intended to limit us to 120, he seems to have overshot a bit. I don’t think he’s in the business of overshooting.

Anyhow, I favor the “patience of God” theme, where he waited a long time for man to repent, then sent the flood. No good scriptural reason, but there’s no contradicting scripture from what I can tell.

Moving on to #2. Bottom line, there’s no apparent connection between the verses for the Sons of God/daughters of men and the Nephilim. Look at the context again:

I’ll focus on the whole Nephilim thing first. First, if you don’t know, there’s another mention of these critters in Numbers, when the Israelite spies reported on what they had seen in the Promised Land.

Some believe that the “Sons of God” must have been angels (fallen ones) who bred with human women, producing giants. Hence the Nephilim. Or, alternatively, they think demons possessed men and bred with human women. Not sure how this could impart any kind of altered DNA, but we’ll just leave that off as very, very, very silly.

If the Nephilim were a unique antediluvian (had to use that word) race, they certainly weren’t on the ark. Which means they couldn’t have survived to Flood. Which means they couldn’t have still been around for Caleb and Joshua to see. So, we’re left with two possibilities. One, they weren’t human at all. Some say Nephilim just refers to somehing large…say, dinosaurs? If they were indeed animals, they would have survived on the ark, to be seen later.

Second, we would have to accept that the Nephilim were just giants of any stripe, not produced by any unique pairing of natural and supernatural parents, but just by normal DNA mixing. This, to me, makes sense.

The ultimate defeat of the “angels mating with women” thing comes in the words of Christ, when he appears to the disciples after the Resurrection (they thought he was a ghost).

There you have it. Spirits (angels included) do not have bodies. Now, I do believe that God can grant them physicality when it suits his purpose, but I don’t believe fallen angels or Satan (I don’t necessarily believe he’s a fallen angel) have that prerogative.

Wow…that added up quickly. But it’s done now, and I can move on to more interesting stuff. Next up, “Abram, Man of Faith, and Everyman.” Plus, a look at the Abrahamic promise of blessing.

Don’t be alarmed, I’m blogging twice in the same day. Actually, this is just a preview blog. I’m doing a series. Stay tuned.

By the way, I’d be interested to know if anybody actually reads this. Leave a comment if you do. I’d just like to know.

Anyhow, on to the preview. Genesis 6 is packed with interesting stuff, even if you only read the first four verses. Here they are:

In this I find three things to discuss:

1. Who were the Sons of God, and what were they doing looking at the Daughters of Men?

2. What’s this about 120 years?
3. Who were those giants exactly?

I’d like to take #2 first. I remember being taught that God took the opportunity to shorten men’s lifespans at this point. Now I’m not so sure. First of all, if He shortened us here, why did people still live longer in the next few generations (Terah, in chapter 11, lived 205 years). Second, why did people live so much *shorter* lives in the rest of the OT? Seems like lifespans were 40-70 in much of the rest of the story.

And I’ll be getting back to that tomorrow. Thursday, I’ll write about #1 and #3, since they’re related (at least, some think so).

For today, I would like to point out an interesting fact I learned about Methuselah. If you look closely at the geneologies, you’ll see he fathered Lamech at age 187, then lived 782 years and died. You might also know, or at least be interested in knowing, that Methuselah means “When he dies, it shall be sent.” Ooooh.

Moving on. Lamech fathered Noah at age 182. That makes old Methuselah 369 years old when Noah is born. And how old is Noah when the rains come? You guessed it…600. Making Methuselah 969 years old, otherwise known as “dead” when the flood came.

For those who think the God of the OT was cruel, notice that after a man was born with a prophetic name predicting the Flood, God extended his life beyond all others in the Bible. He gave people all that time to change their ways.

That’s all for today, but I’ll hit the 120 years thing tomorrow. First I gotta look at some commentaries.

Comment…I must know if you are there!

The 2007 Bible Read-Through has begun, and I’m always amazed at the different stuff that sticks out when I read Genesis. Of all the OT books, it’s probably the one I’ve read most (since any abortive read-throughs usually made it at least to Exodus).

So yesterday while reading the Creation/Fall narrative, I was again struck by something God said about the Fallen couple.

So, what’s so interesting? Read on.