Noah revisited
For those of you who don't know ~ on the other side of my life ~ I am writing a High School Bible curriculum. Right now I am writing about Noah and the Flood. This story shakes me. Picture clothes on a clothes line (yes, Virginia, there was a time before washers and dryers...) blowing in a strong wind, whipping back and forth, tumbling and twirling, flipping up, snapping down; each garment swirling in and around the ones on each side. The clothes are safe -- anchored with a clothes pin to a taut line. That is what my emotions feel like as I read and ponder and pray my way through the story. It happens every time I read it.
First of all the story is a work of art! Until I began researching Genesis a few years ago, digging under the surface, or I should say under the hardened crust of my modern literary-view based understanding, I just saw the stories. They were too often shellacked in my thinking by the old Sunday School rewrites and paraphrases that were my first introductions to them. Even before I began the first verse of Genesis 6 in my mind's eye there was a cartoon caricature of Noah on the ramp of a boat, beatifically smiling down at duos of camels and elephants and snakes and bears as they ascended the ramp on the way into the boat. Then I read the story -- the whole thing in a gulp. Then I began to read about the story and do some research. The first surprise for me was that the story is told in a literary form called a chiasm or a palistrophe. Chiasms or palistrophes are a structured literary form, come to find out, extremely common in early cultures -- especially cultures strong in oral tradition. Chi in Greek is the letter X. A Chiasm is shaped like the left side of an X. This sounds confusing until you see it. Here is the structure of the Flood Story:
B Shem, Ham, and Japheth (10b)
C Ark to be built (14-16)
D Flood announced (17)
E Covenant with Noah (18-20)
F Food in the ark (21)
G Command to enter the ark (7:1-3)
H 7 days waiting for flood (4-5)
I 7 days waiting for flood (7-10)
J Entry to ark (11-15)
K YHWH shuts Noah in (16)
L 40 days flood (17a)
M Waters increase (17b-18)
N Mountains covered (19-20)
O 150 days water prevail (21-24)
P GOD REMEMBERS NOAH (8:1)
O’ 150 days waters abate (3)
N’ Mountain tops visible (4-5)
M’ Waters abate (5)
L’ 40 days (end of) (6a)
K’ Noah opens window of ark (6b)
J’ Raven and dove leave ark (7-9)
I’ 7 days waiting for waters to subside (10-11)
H’ 7 days waiting for waters to subside (12-13)
G’ Command to leave ark (15-17 [22])
F’ Food outside ark (9:1-4)
E’ Covenant with all flesh (8-10)
D’ No flood in the future (11-17)
C’ Ark (18a)
B’ Shem, Ham and Japheth (18b)
A’ Noah (19)
Do you see how the story is shaped to point to a central and controlling idea : God remembered Noah? In a world where sin had gone viral in an penultimate way, God did not just see mankind. He saw men, and therefore could see one man: Noah. God is able to see each of us, and not write us off with the whole rotten group. Remembered is a powerful word for a Hebrew mind. In the modern context to remember is usually to call data to mind. I remember what is on my shopping list -- I remember the date of your birthday. But in a Hebrew way of thinking, to remember is to know and to act, to act in some one's behalf on purpose, in love. In other words, if I remember your birthday and just call the date to mind I have NOT remembered. I only remember when I DO something. It was not like God got busy elsewhere and suddenly said, "OH Shoot! I left the water running on earth. uh oh!" God remembered Noah means that God got involved, had relationship with him, saved him, drained the flood and brought him back to dry land and a new life. God's love for Noah was more important then God's grief. It is powerful.
Each idea leading to it has an opposite parallel in an idea leading from it. [note the A and A` etc. beside each line] The structure is beautiful, artistic. It is written so that the message of the story is central -- and for those familiar with chiasms -- easily found. Awesome, huh?! We miss this because the Bible we read is written in paragraphs, and divided into chapters. We also, to be honest, do not always read Bible stories in whole chunks. (When, reader, was the last time you read the entire story of, say, Abraham in one sitting?) We read one verse at a time looking for 'proof texts' to make a point, or we might read a group of verses, or a chapter a day. Also we are taught a style of writing where we put our thesis ~ main point/controlling idea ~ at the beginning and prove it logically, building point on point. We can't see a structure like a chiasm in a restructured, retranslated, reprinted modern Bible. But once we are shown -- wow! It becomes a whole new story!!!
Then actually reading the details made my estimation of Noah rise through the roof! Ask any 100 people how long Noah was on the ark and they will likely say, "40 days and 40 night". Right? (And you can do almost anything for about a month) Well, that answer is WRONG! It rained for that long. But, Noah and his family were on the ark with all the animals for a year. A YEAR! Wow!! And...how many animals? All the coloring pages show 2 of each animal. OK, for 4 year olds, that is a good way to tell the story. But in actuality there were seven pairs (male and female) of each clean animal, and two pairs of each unclean animal. I mean, I do get it ~ Clearly God wanted to ensure a broad gene pool, and over balance the proportion of clean to unclean animals. But put yourself in Noah and the family's shoes. A YEAR on a BOAT with all those animals.
Then another point I missed for such a long time -- perhaps because it had such a shell of "cuteness" from the Sunday School coloring pages -- was the pathos. :
pathos: "quality that arouses pity or sorrow," 1668, from Gk. pathos "suffering, feeling, emotion," lit. "what befalls one," related to paskhein "to suffer," and penthos "grief, sorrow;" from PIE base *kwenth- "to suffer, endure" (cf. O.Ir. cessaim , Lith. kenciu "suffer"). {Dictionary.com}
Here is the verse that snaps my emotion around every time:
Gen 6:5-6
The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
NIV
WOW! Flip a few pages back in your Bible -- Genesis 1 and 2. See God creating a universe and a world. See Him planting a garden. See God lovingly forming man in His image with His own hands, then breathing life into him. See God standing, surveying all He had created and pronouncing it "very good". If you do a rough math problem based in Genesis 5's genealogy, you find it has been about 1600 years and now God heart is FILLED WITH PAIN because He is so grieved that He made man on the earth. God who IS Love, Itself has a heart full of pain. It is almost too much for me. And it amazes me and fills me with wonder that grief is God's reaction to a world filled to the brim with evil when He is good, and He had pronounced His creation "very good" ~ grief and not rage! How do the gods of any other culture (mythology) react to being crossed in anyway. And never mind them, how would you react? Yet God did not torture men, or explode earth and stomp off -- OK, not that we'd be able to consider this, and not that we'd know, of course, cuz we would be space dust. But my point is : God's reaction to sin is grief. It breaks his heart. So -- poetically speaking -- imagine God weeping inconsolably. Of course there was a world wide flood.
* http://www.examiner.com/methodist-in-national/bible-interpretation-101-what-is-a-chiasm
First of all the story is a work of art! Until I began researching Genesis a few years ago, digging under the surface, or I should say under the hardened crust of my modern literary-view based understanding, I just saw the stories. They were too often shellacked in my thinking by the old Sunday School rewrites and paraphrases that were my first introductions to them. Even before I began the first verse of Genesis 6 in my mind's eye there was a cartoon caricature of Noah on the ramp of a boat, beatifically smiling down at duos of camels and elephants and snakes and bears as they ascended the ramp on the way into the boat. Then I read the story -- the whole thing in a gulp. Then I began to read about the story and do some research. The first surprise for me was that the story is told in a literary form called a chiasm or a palistrophe. Chiasms or palistrophes are a structured literary form, come to find out, extremely common in early cultures -- especially cultures strong in oral tradition. Chi in Greek is the letter X. A Chiasm is shaped like the left side of an X. This sounds confusing until you see it. Here is the structure of the Flood Story:
The Structure of the Flood Story *
A Noah (6:10a)B Shem, Ham, and Japheth (10b)
C Ark to be built (14-16)
D Flood announced (17)
E Covenant with Noah (18-20)
F Food in the ark (21)
G Command to enter the ark (7:1-3)
H 7 days waiting for flood (4-5)
I 7 days waiting for flood (7-10)
J Entry to ark (11-15)
K YHWH shuts Noah in (16)
L 40 days flood (17a)
M Waters increase (17b-18)
N Mountains covered (19-20)
O 150 days water prevail (21-24)
P GOD REMEMBERS NOAH (8:1)
O’ 150 days waters abate (3)
N’ Mountain tops visible (4-5)
M’ Waters abate (5)
L’ 40 days (end of) (6a)
K’ Noah opens window of ark (6b)
J’ Raven and dove leave ark (7-9)
I’ 7 days waiting for waters to subside (10-11)
H’ 7 days waiting for waters to subside (12-13)
G’ Command to leave ark (15-17 [22])
F’ Food outside ark (9:1-4)
E’ Covenant with all flesh (8-10)
D’ No flood in the future (11-17)
C’ Ark (18a)
B’ Shem, Ham and Japheth (18b)
A’ Noah (19)
Do you see how the story is shaped to point to a central and controlling idea : God remembered Noah? In a world where sin had gone viral in an penultimate way, God did not just see mankind. He saw men, and therefore could see one man: Noah. God is able to see each of us, and not write us off with the whole rotten group. Remembered is a powerful word for a Hebrew mind. In the modern context to remember is usually to call data to mind. I remember what is on my shopping list -- I remember the date of your birthday. But in a Hebrew way of thinking, to remember is to know and to act, to act in some one's behalf on purpose, in love. In other words, if I remember your birthday and just call the date to mind I have NOT remembered. I only remember when I DO something. It was not like God got busy elsewhere and suddenly said, "OH Shoot! I left the water running on earth. uh oh!" God remembered Noah means that God got involved, had relationship with him, saved him, drained the flood and brought him back to dry land and a new life. God's love for Noah was more important then God's grief. It is powerful.
Each idea leading to it has an opposite parallel in an idea leading from it. [note the A and A` etc. beside each line] The structure is beautiful, artistic. It is written so that the message of the story is central -- and for those familiar with chiasms -- easily found. Awesome, huh?! We miss this because the Bible we read is written in paragraphs, and divided into chapters. We also, to be honest, do not always read Bible stories in whole chunks. (When, reader, was the last time you read the entire story of, say, Abraham in one sitting?) We read one verse at a time looking for 'proof texts' to make a point, or we might read a group of verses, or a chapter a day. Also we are taught a style of writing where we put our thesis ~ main point/controlling idea ~ at the beginning and prove it logically, building point on point. We can't see a structure like a chiasm in a restructured, retranslated, reprinted modern Bible. But once we are shown -- wow! It becomes a whole new story!!!
Then actually reading the details made my estimation of Noah rise through the roof! Ask any 100 people how long Noah was on the ark and they will likely say, "40 days and 40 night". Right? (And you can do almost anything for about a month) Well, that answer is WRONG! It rained for that long. But, Noah and his family were on the ark with all the animals for a year. A YEAR! Wow!! And...how many animals? All the coloring pages show 2 of each animal. OK, for 4 year olds, that is a good way to tell the story. But in actuality there were seven pairs (male and female) of each clean animal, and two pairs of each unclean animal. I mean, I do get it ~ Clearly God wanted to ensure a broad gene pool, and over balance the proportion of clean to unclean animals. But put yourself in Noah and the family's shoes. A YEAR on a BOAT with all those animals.
Then another point I missed for such a long time -- perhaps because it had such a shell of "cuteness" from the Sunday School coloring pages -- was the pathos. :
pathos: "quality that arouses pity or sorrow," 1668, from Gk. pathos "suffering, feeling, emotion," lit. "what befalls one," related to paskhein "to suffer," and penthos "grief, sorrow;" from PIE base *kwenth- "to suffer, endure" (cf. O.Ir. cessaim , Lith. kenciu "suffer"). {Dictionary.com}
Here is the verse that snaps my emotion around every time:
Gen 6:5-6
The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
NIV
WOW! Flip a few pages back in your Bible -- Genesis 1 and 2. See God creating a universe and a world. See Him planting a garden. See God lovingly forming man in His image with His own hands, then breathing life into him. See God standing, surveying all He had created and pronouncing it "very good". If you do a rough math problem based in Genesis 5's genealogy, you find it has been about 1600 years and now God heart is FILLED WITH PAIN because He is so grieved that He made man on the earth. God who IS Love, Itself has a heart full of pain. It is almost too much for me. And it amazes me and fills me with wonder that grief is God's reaction to a world filled to the brim with evil when He is good, and He had pronounced His creation "very good" ~ grief and not rage! How do the gods of any other culture (mythology) react to being crossed in anyway. And never mind them, how would you react? Yet God did not torture men, or explode earth and stomp off -- OK, not that we'd be able to consider this, and not that we'd know, of course, cuz we would be space dust. But my point is : God's reaction to sin is grief. It breaks his heart. So -- poetically speaking -- imagine God weeping inconsolably. Of course there was a world wide flood.
* http://www.examiner.com/methodist-in-national/bible-interpretation-101-what-is-a-chiasm
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