Things that Aren't in the Bible: Genesis Primordial Stories Edition

It is interesting to watch the analytics of a blog. In particular, it is fascinating to see which blogs get hits weeks, months, or years after they are posted. My all-time lead blog for later hits is “We Are All God’s Pandas,” which as far as I can figure is because if you search Panda God on Google, my blog is one of the top hits. But fast on that blog’s tail are “Wait, Are We Cannibals?!?! Or Vampires?!?!?!” which deals with the weird way we talk about communion, and my first edition of Things that Aren’t in the Bible, where I covered things that people think are in there about Saul/Paul.  In honor of that latter blog, and also because I was treated to a fascinating, if somewhat disturbing, lesson about the Ark in Kentucky recently, here is the next edition, which deals with the stories in Genesis that happen before Abram/Abraham arrives on the scene (don’t worry, he and Sarai/Sarah and all the children that follow are due their own edition soon too).  Also, Adam and Eve will also get their own version, because you cannot believe how many things aren’t in Genesis 2-3 that people swear are there.

So here goes.  In Genesis 1-11, here are some things that AREN’T in the Bible:

·        Just One Creation Story – I was almost 30 years old when this one hit me. Granted, I didn’t grow up in the church, but if there are any stories that regularly float around in our general culture, the biblical creation stories are two of them.  That’s right. Two of them. One of them recounts the creation of the world in 6 days, and one of them tells the story of God creating humanity and spending time with that human in the garden. (I am convinced part of the reason we think this is one story is because the ending of the first one shows up at the beginning of chapter 2 and then the other one starts right up, but remember chapters weren’t even added to the Bible until the Middle Ages). Now many people think that Genesis 2-3 is just the unfolding of the last day of the first story.  That’s a lovely thought, except the two stories have different orders of creation!  Just for one detail, note that Genesis 1:11-12 says that on the third day God created plants and on the sixth day God created humans, but Genesis 2:5-7 notes that BEFORE God created plants, God formed a human. So here we are with not one, but two very different stories of creation (one poetic and one narrative, one that brings order to chaos and one that ultimately unleashes chaos from order, etc.), and that doesn’t even count creation stories that are hinted at in the Psalms and in Job, for instance.  That’s a whole ‘nother can of worms, or can of leviathans as the case may be. I realize this detail may come as quite a shock to some, but it only nips at the heels of faith that relies on biblical literalism.  Someone who insists that these stories – or in that case, this story - shares literal facts is going to have a problem straight out of the biblical gate.  Someone who recognizes these stories share truths instead is all good.  What are the truths? That God the Creator brings order out of chaos, and even when we are given ideal conditions for being in relationship with God, we are gonna screw it up. Lucky for us, God continues to try to guide us back to life.  Those for me are pretty compelling truths to lean on.  Far more compelling than trying to argue the earth was created literally in 6 days.   

·        Cain is Marked as Evil – I have blogged about this before, but people tend to say that someone has the mark of Cain if they have done something incredibly despicable, probably something like murder. It has the connotation of being a very bad thing to have the mark of Cain. Except it is arguably exactly the opposite. After Cain has killed his own brother, and God is casting him to be a wanderer, then Cain gets all panicky that someone might kill him. How does God react to a whiny murderer?  God tells Cain that no one will kill him because “the Lord put a sign on Cain so that no one who found him would assault him.” (Genesis 4:15b)  That’s right. The mark of Cain is not branding Cain as a murderer. The mark of Cain is put there to keep him safe. If that isn’t a sign of God’s abundant love and grace, I don’t know what is.

·        Noah’s neighbors made fun of him – The story of Noah’s Ark should probably also get its own blog. In the first place, they weren’t on that boat for 40 days and 40 nights, but a lot longer than that. And they didn’t just bring 2 of every animal. Some extras were required so they could sacrifice them as soon as they hit dry ground. But another fun detail that I hear all the time is that while Noah was building the ark, his neighbors made fun of him.  Nope. Not one word of such a thing in the Bible. That is totally a figment of our collective imaginations. I think it reveals far more about us than we like, if I am perfectly honest. Would those be the kind of neighbors we would be if God asked someone to build a big boat around us?  Hmmm….

·        God smashed the Tower of Babel – I had a near awful misstep one Sunday morning. Preaching a series on culture shock and why diversity among us is a good thing that God wants, even if it comes with challenges in actually living together, I had scheduled to preach on the Tower of Babel. I had my sermon all ready when I suddenly sat bolt upright from a deep sleep and said, “Oh my God, it is September 11.  It is September 11, and I have chosen to preach on the Tower of Babel?!?!?  I am insane.” Bulletins were printed and liturgists lined up; there was no backing out of this error.  The best I could do was find a helpful way to address it.  So I went to the passage to see what I could do about preaching on a passage where God knocked down the people’s tower when I noticed as I read along that I had made the assumption that the tower was destroyed. I suppose I made that assumption because I couldn’t imagine God could scatter the people any other way than smashing their tower.  But no, that was not a necessary step for God. We don’t know how God got the people to scatter – maybe God picked them up like a momma cat grabs kittens and just moved them around. How ever God did it, God did not have to resort to the violent and sudden destruction of their tower to do it. Again God chooses a peaceful approach, and I filled it in with a smash and grab. What is wrong with me?!?! Or maybe I should say, “What is wrong with us!?!?!” because I am betting many of you made that leap too. You see, this is why we need God – to keep us envisioning a diverse world with as little violence in it as possible.  And speaking of our penchant to justify violence….

How about a shocking story, actually, that IS in the Bible (but that still gets horribly misinterpreted):

·        Noah does get drunk and pass out, and there are disastrous effects – When the movie about Noah starring Russell Crowe came out several years ago, I remember many people leveling complaints about the filmmakers taking liberties with the story.  First, of course they took liberties with the story – you can’t make a 2+ hour movie out of 4 chapters in the Bible without taking some liberties.  Also, PS: Any pastor worth their salt who is trying to make the Bible come alive for their people on Sunday morning is going to expand God’s story. It’s called preaching.  Anyway, back to the movie. People griped about the liberties that were taken, but the one that made me laugh was complaining that Noah got drunk.  Noah would never get drunk!  Uhhhh, but yeah, Noah did.  Got so drunk he passed out.  Then while he was passed out, his son Ham “saw his father naked.” Lots of debate about what that means. Then Shem and Japheth walked backwards with a blanket (so they wouldn’t see their father naked) and covered their father.  When Noah woke up, he learned what happened, and blessed Shem and cursed Canaan – Ham’s son! – for some bizarre reason. (See Genesis 9:18-27 for this crazy story)  Now, what was likely going on here is an explanation for why there is a division among these people, and likely this is also justification for the tensions between the Israelites and the Canaanites that actually is still around in one shape or another still today.  That is tragic in and of itself. But this story takes one more insidious turn. It gets used to justify the slave trade to the Americas.  If you go into chapter 10, we learn that Ham’s sons are Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. The Canaanites were up in the Middle East. Cush, Egypt, and Put, however, are all located on the African continent most likely (Egypt of course, and also Ethiopia and Eritrea).  So white European slave traders, needing all the justifications for enslaving a continent that they could get, expanded the curse to include the rest of Ham’s sons, and the rest is profoundly tragic history.

As you have come to the end of this blog post, I hope that you, my friends, see yet again how fast and loose we can get with our biblical interpretations and assumptions. Sometimes, as I mention, that helps the text become real for us in very meaningful ways.  Sometimes, though, it allows us too often to bring the worst of ourselves out in the name of God. So, my recommendation to all of us is twofold. Don’t read the Bible alone. Read it with people who think differently and see differently than you so that those biases get exposed. And then second, use this blog’s tagline as a mantra: take the Bible seriously. But not literally.

Careful reading, my friends!

Image by Luca Bravo at Unsplash.