GENESIS 11, or, "Say What?"

People build a big tower only to have God knock it down. We trace the lineage of Noah's son Shem down to Abram

I had always understood the Tower of Babel story as a cautionary tale about the dangers of hubris. In my mind, the story always went something like this: Back in the days when there was only one language, man arrogantly thinks he can build a tower higher than Heaven, God becomes angry, destroys the tower and makes it so that everyone speaks different languages.

This turns out to not quite be what the Bible actually says. Indeed, the Bible tells us that there was once only one language. And indeed, people are trying to build a really big tower. But when reading the story for myself, it didn't seem like the people were building the tower out of some desire to be greater than God. In the chapter, the people say to themselves, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

I guess your interpretation hinges on the use of the phrase "the heavens". If "heavens" is meant as capital H "Heaven", then yeah, I can see how the story becomes about man's hubristic desire to become more powerful than God. But if "heavens" is supposed to be read as "sky", then it seems to me that the people in the story just want to build this awesome tower. After all, they do say that they want to build the tower so that they "may make a name" for themselves. To me, this makes the Tower of Babel like the Trump Tower of antiquity - an amazing structure you can put your name on and have a bunch of people gather in.

It never mentions in the chapter that God is upset by the people' arrogance. Instead, God seems to be threatened by the power people have when they unite. In the chapter, God says to himself, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." Here, God seems more fearful of man's power than angry at their arrogance.

The chapter doesn't even mention the destruction of the tower. It is, however, described in the Book of Jubilees, a non-cannonical book of the Bible that is widely considered to be pseudepigraphal.

Also, in the chapter we get to see how Abram, one of the Old Testament's greatest figures, is descended from Shem. It turns out that Shem is Abram's great - great - great - great - great - great - great - grandfather.



Pop Culture References to Gen 11:

Intermission

Wherein I take a break from focusing on specific chapters and talk about whatever I want.

I've been listening to a phenomenal radio program called Radio Lab recently (www.radiolab.org). Like This American Life, in each episode they explore one theme.

In their morality episode they try to explain what morality is and where it comes from. One point they make is that humans like to think that morality is unique to our species, that it makes us special in some way.

This turns out not to be the case though. Chimpanzees display what we would characterize as moral behavior as well. They give the example of a scientist dropping some food into a habitat where a large group of chimps live. Two chimps start fighting over the food and the alpha male intercedes, takes the food, and marches all the chimps into one area where the food will be divided equally among them.

There are many more examples of moral behavior like this in chimps, which of course causes us to suspect that maybe humans aren't that special after all in our ability to tell right from wrong.

Then one of the hosts tries to sort this out, determined to show that human morality is different from chimp morality in some fundamental ways. To do this, he poses a thought experiment, one that a chimp would not be able to answer:

Say you are in a village under attack by an enemy force. You have a small child, only a few months old, and you, your child, and others from the village are hidden in some secret chamber as the enemy is searching for you.

Then the child begins to whimper and you know that it is on the verge of crying, making enough noise to draw the enemy to you and kill all of you. So the horrible dilemma is you can either smother the baby, killing it but saving you and your fellow villagers, or you can allow the baby to cry, killing all of you.

There's no real right answer. When asked this question, about half the people say they'd kill the baby while half say they wouldn't. Indeed, of the two hosts of the show, one takes one side and one takes the other.

The first argues the logic of killing the baby. Sure, it's a terrible choice to have to make, but the baby is going to die in either scenario, so you might as well save yourself and your fellow villagers.

The other host concedes the logic of that choice, but as a father himself, he knows that he would never be able to kill his own child.

What makes this a uniquely human question is that humans, unlike chimps or any other animals, have the capacity to feel guilt and shame. The guilt and shame that would be attached to killing your own child. The scientist whom they are interviewing agrees that both shame and guilt are expressions that primates don't have. So the hosts conclude that guilt and shame are at the center of our unique human morality.

I think this idea dovetails quite nicely with what the Bible has to say about human morality as well. Because if you recall, after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge between good and evil, the emotion that they suddenly able to feel is shame. That is why they cover up their nakedness and hid from God.

Maybe this is just a coincidence. But I think it is very compelling how the Bible is very specific in linking the emotion of shame with the knowledge between good and evil.

GENESIS 10, or, "The Table of Nations"

Another Biblical genealogy lesson, this one tracing the descendants of Noah.

Noah had three sons: Japeth, Shem, and Ham. Those sons had many more sons, and their sons had many more sons, and their sons... Well, you get the idea.

Descendants of Japeth (The Japethites): Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras, Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah, Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim and the Rodanim.

Descendants of Ham (The Hamites): Cush, Mizraim, Put, Canaan, Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, Sabteca, Sheba, Dedan, Nimrod, the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, Pathrusites, Casluhites, and Caphtorites. Not to mention Sidon, the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites.

Descendants of Shem (The Semites): Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, Aram, Uz, Hul, Gether, Meshech, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Joktan, Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah and Jobab.

Some believe that the descendants of the three sons represent and would become three different races. Africans are the sons of Ham, Europeans are the sons of Japeth and Jews and Arabs are the sons of Shem. Interestingly enough "Shem" is where the word "semitic" is derived from.

In another case of the Bible being used to justify racism, Genesis 10 played a supporting role in the Rwanda Genocide. It's a little convoluted, but I'll try to untangle it for you.

First we must understand that the Rwanda Genocide was the 1994 mass extermination of hundred of thousands Tutsis by Hutu militia groups.

"Hamitic" used to be used to describe Africans, and the "curse of Ham" used to justify slavery. So "Hamitic" was a very pejorative term.

But after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, Europeans became increasingly interested in Africa in general. As European countries explored Africa, it was decided that some Africans were superior to other Africans (the "superior" Africans displaying traits similar to white people). These superior Africans were referred to as "Hamitic", now being used as a positive term.

I believe, though I am not positive, that this has to do with the fact that when Noah cursed Ham, he actually cursed Ham's son Canaan. Ham had four sons: Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan. All of Ham's sons are associated with Africa, but only the Canaanites were cursed. Others, such as the Cushites in Sudan were not.

So there's a scramble to colonize Africa in the 1800's and at the Berlin Conference of 1885, Rwanda is given to Germany. Germany decides to rule Rwanda indirectly by appointing an elite class of indigenous inhabitants to act as functionaries. The "Hamitic Theory of Races" (Not all black people are created equal) was used in part to decide that the Tutsis would be appointed as that elite ruling class. This exacerbated tensions between the Tutsis and the Hutus and historians see it as a root cause for the genocide that would occur a century later.

GENESIS 9, or, "Noah gets tanked"

God reiterates his promise not to flood the world again, Noah gets drunk and naked in front of his three sons. Things get awkward.

Okay, there's a lot of ground to cover in this chapter so I'm going to divide things up into four handy categories...

1) God officially endorses capital punishment
"Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man."

2) God gives the first rule of eating kosher
"Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it."
Because of this passage, kosher meat must be thoroughly removed of blood using one of several methods such as soaking and salting, or broiling. This means that you won't catch an orthodox Jew ordering his steak rare.

3) Noah curses Ham (his child, not the meat)
Noah plants a vineyard and one night he gets drunk off his own wine and lays naked in his tent. A similar thing happened to me in college. His son Ham comes in and gets a mental picture that no one wants stuck in their head. He goes outside to tell his two brothers Japeth and Shem what he saw, and the two brothers cover Noah up without looking at his naked body.

As if seeing his drunk father naked wasn't bad enough, Noah then wakes up (probably with a wiked hangover) and curses Ham, saying his son Canaan will be a slave for Shem and Japeth. Kind of a raw deal in my opinion.

Like the "Mark of Cain" the "Curse of Ham" has also been used to justify racism and slavery. Africans were traditionally thought to be descendants of Canaan, and so it makes it okay for white people (descendants of Shem and Japeth of course) to enslave them.

Also, Wikipedia tells us that "Some Biblical scholars see the "curse of Ham" story as an early Hebrew rationalization for Israel's conquest and enslavement of the Canaanites, who were presumed to descend from Canaan."

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Canaan: "[Canaan] is an ancient term for a region approximating to present-day Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Lebanon and Syria."

4) My Thoughts
Did you know that Noah's story ended with him getting drunk, naked, and then cursing his son for no good reason? Neither did I. It's funny how some parts of the Bible have become so ingrained in our cultural consciousness, while others have become mostly forgotten. Shouldn't each chapter in the Bible carry roughly equal weight in the minds of its believers? And if not, how do we determine which parts are more worthy of our attention than others?

High Culture References to Gen 9: Giovanni Bellini's "The Drunkeness of Noah"