Genesis 1-13

(ed. note: This is my response to trying to read Santa Biblia concurrently with a 1901 American Revision Committee bible. I have to take brief notes so I can refer to prior events as I run along. Please don't be offended by this, because I'm pretty much writing this thing from its core for an audience of one. I'll work on that down the road, when it becomes more highly practical. Feel free to add comments for discussion, if you feel I've missed the point of anything. I need all the help I can get.)

Genesis 1: A pretty busy work week, and the implicit end to polytheism. Adam is created in the gods’ image, makes days, seas, animals of both sexes, plants, etc.

Genesis 2: Jehovah plants a garden in Eden at the confluence of the Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates Rivers. Just don’t eat the fruit of this one tree. Here, I’ll even make you a woman…No shame.

Genesis 3: The serpent gets the woman alone, and tells her what she wants to hear. Now, she knows too much, and she shares this wisdom with man. Jehovah curses the serpent, curses the woman to have painful childbirth as the result of her disobedience, in addition to making her subservient to man. Adam simply has the ground cursed for his own sake. Thorns, thistles…no more god-given garden.

Genesis 4: Cain, then Abel are born to Eve. Abel=sheep; Cain=crops. Jehovah liked the offering of Abel, but found no favor in Cain’s. So Cain killed Abel, then lied to god about it. God promises vengeance sevenfold on the killer of Abel. There is a confusing passage here where Lamech, seventh generational descendant of Cain, deserves seventy and sevenfold punishment than that of Cain. Lamech’s own words. No real explanation what he thought he did to deserve that, so Eve gave birth to Seth to replace Abel.

Genesis 5: Generations of Adam. At the end of the chapter, it is found that Adam is a son of Lamech.

Genesis 6: God is tired of old people, and limits their age to 120 years. Upon further inspection, he finds no favor in the experiment with mankind at all, and decides to destroy what he’s created. Except Noah. Explicit ark-building and animal-fetching instructions are provided direct to Noah. Noah built.

Genesis 7: Noah is told to board the ark, and does so. The guy was grandfathered in on the age thing, as he was 600 at the time of the journey. It rained a lot, and it was pretty wet for a hundred fifty days.

Genesis 8: No more rain, but water everywhere. Noah releases a raven, I guess to flap its wings and dry things up. He releases a dove weekly to see if it can land anywhere. Eventually, the dove doesn’t return and the ark is grounded. Noah builds an altar, taking of every clean animal and bird, and apparently burnt up half the earth’s inventory of animal life. (Not maybe the case here—I think there was a clause for clean animals and birds to number seven in the explicit instruction manual given Noah by Jehovah.) God feels a bit of regret, and pledges to never again wipe out every single living thing when he is angry.

Genesis 9: God blesses Noah and his sons, warning about the consequences of eating raw meat and killing people. He establishes a covenant with a rainbow, promising to never again wipe out every single living thing when he is angry. Noah gets drunk and naked, and his son Ham sees this. Ham tells brothers Shem and Japheth what he’s seen, and the later two backed into drunken Noah’s chamber, throwing a garment over his naked ass. Noah wakes, knows the entire situation is Ham’s fault, and curses Caanan, blessing simultaneously Shem and Japheth with dominance over the Caananites.

Genesis 10: Generations of Noah.

Genesis 11: God didn’t issue a building permit for the tower at Babel. He was uncomfortable with the thing reaching to the heavens, so he cursed people to speak different tongues. He thought this would promote confusion and misunderstanding, and this was well-calculated. Descendants of Shem and Terah. Terah takes Abram and Lot, and Sarai (Abram’s barren wife) to Canaan to dwell there. Terah dies in Haran, Canaan.

Genesis 12: Jehovah speaks to Abram, telling him to get moving, and he’ll get a big blessing, and be great. Delivered into Canaan, drought ensues. Now Abram is on the move to Egypt, thinking there might be a better life there…except Sarai is good-looking, so Abram wants her to claim to be a sister to him. (He’s paranoid he’s going to get killed over his barren wife) So she was taken to Pharaoh, and Abram was treated well. Until Jehovah plagued Pharaoh’s house for taking in Sarai, Abram’s wife. This whole misunderstanding could have been handled differently, I think.

Genesis 13: Pharaoh just wants to be rid of plague, so he exiles Abram’s and Lot’s house. He and Lot divide the land upon return. Abram, despite some bad judgment, still finds favor with the Lord, and Lot is now hanging out in cities in the plain such as Sodom. Abram is promised everything he can see by Jehovah.