Author: nbrandt

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah was much more violent and disturbing than my preconceived exposure to this story. In class we talked about a few strange sentences that are in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah: these were that Lot would give up his daughters to save his guests, several men of Sodom came to Lot’s house with the intent of gang-rape, and that Abraham appeared to be more merciful than God. Abraham pleas with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if he could find at least 10 righteous men. The Lord told Abraham the purpose of his journey to Sodom and Gomorrah was, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous.” To me, this implies that others have witnessed the crimes that we read about later in Genesis 19, which also means that there are righteous men within or around Sodom and Gomorrah crying out to spiritual authority. This story is something that I didn’t expect to find in the Bible, nor did I expect there to be a similar story in Judges 19. The second half of Judges 19 reads much like Genesis 19.

Something that came up in our class discussion today was the dynamic relationship between Hagar and Sarai, Abraham’s servant (or slave) and his wife. Sarai didn’t give birth to Isaac until Abraham was said to be 100 years old in Genesis 17:17-19: long after Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Since Hagar had a child long before Sarai, Sarai worried that Hagar would gain favor with Abraham. In Genesis 16-20, we don’t see much evidence that Abraham’s wife was treated any different than his servant, Hagar. Sarai demanded to Abraham that he send Hagar and Ishmael way, to which Abraham only did because the Lord told him to do so. When God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham plans to do so, but we have no account of him speaking or telling Sarai about this encounter with God, implying that her two-cents is of now concern on major issues. The role of women in the Genesis stories seems to be of little concern for people like Abraham. I wonder if the treatment women will be consistent in the rest of the Bible as it is in Genesis.

In our class discussion today, it was interesting to interpret Genesis 1 through 3 by replacing the forbidden fruit with a big red button that says, “Don’t Push.” I think that was an excellent way to place the creation stories in Genesis in a modern context. Adam and Eve were explicitly told not to touch the fruit, but they chose to do so anyway. Those who raised their admitting they would press the big red button (me included) show the same decision to question authority as Adam and Eve.

The video of Dexter Callender’s explanation on Genesis 6 through 11 and Gilgamesh was somewhat enlightening that there were two different accounts of a great flood. Both perspectives read very similarly in respect to each story sending out birds to scout the earth for dry land. Doves and ravens were sent out in both accounts which is an odd coincidence itself, but was interesting to me was that Dexter Callender proposed that Noah was granted eternal life by God to complete the Ark and harbor all living creatures during the flood. It never had occurred to me to question why Noah lived to be 950, but it’s a nice explanation to how Noah lived to such an old age in this fable.

Something that stuck with me from our class meeting today was that the story of Enuma Elish and Genesis in the Bible. Both stories have a similar pattern to how Earth was created but have a different explanation to how the universe was created. In Genesis, God solely creates the universe as we know it, but in the Enuma Elish story the world is created by the battling gods.

In the video with Christine Hayes (Lecture 4, Doublets and Contradictions, Seams and Sources) she talked about the ideological similarities between the Genesis stories and the tale of Gilgamesh. What was interesting to me was that Christine’s interpretation of the Genesis stories; she proposed the idea that the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge granted Adam and Eve (and the rest of the human race) self-awareness and death. Her interpretation was that God did not want a human who was self-aware and immortal, causing God to close off the Tree of Life from the world. In the story of Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s death causes Gilgamesh to fear his own mortality, and thus he journeys to find immortality. Christine explains in the video that Gilgamesh does find the fruit of immortality, but a snake steals the fruit from him. She elaborates on the importance of snakes in the culture of ancient Arabic cultures that snakes were a symbol of beauty because they shed their skin (seeming to be eternally young). The two stories are connected in that humans are mortal and that our mortality is inescapable.

Something that came up during our discussion on assumptions about the Bible was that it had never occurred to me that the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate was never explicitly stated to be an apple, nor was the serpent explicitly stated to be Satan. If you google “Adam and Eve” and search by image, the artwork depicting Adam and Eve had them eating a fruit that resembles an apple. And depending on which piece of art you look at; the serpent is either a regular snake or a four-legged reptile with a human head. The interpretations that show the reptile with a human head, the head has horns, which is a defining attribute to the devil. I was always told that the serpent was the devil, and the fruit Adam and Eve ate was an apple, but this is not the case (even though my parents went through a lot of trouble to make the Bible a pivotal part of my life, I’ve not read much of it, nor was my religiously based upbringing centered around actually reading the Bible). Now that I think about it, most of what I understand the Bible to be has been what other people have said (pastor, priest, parent, etc.).

A quote from Back Door Introduction to the Bible was, “So J. K. Rowling doesn’t feel it necessary to say, “Hey folks, this is fiction” at the start of every Harry Potter novel. She assumes her readers know that.” It put things into perspective for me that the Bible is a compilation of works from people of different backgrounds and from different times. Passages in the Bible are not necessarily in the order they were written, nor do the authors of each passage clearly state what they are writing is either fact or fiction. So, assuming the Bible is one genre may cause some confusion when interpreting the text for one’s self. The story of Adam and Eve speaking to a talking serpent and eating the forbidden fruit reads more like one of Aesop’s fables than a historical document. The compilation of authors in the Bible assume the reader knows the difference between a fable and reality

I found it interesting in Valiant or Virtuous? that English translations of the Bible like to use different words when describing men and women opposed to Hebrew and Greek versions of the Bible. Whether or not this is a result of differing societal gender roles imposed by each translation’s respective culture would require extensive research best suited for a project outside of this blog. Greek and Hebrew versions of the Bible use the same adjective to describe              valiant men and women (chayil in Hebrew and andreia in Greek), but the adjectives change in English translations when describing women. Changing valiant to ‘distinguished’ or ‘excellent’ when describing women.

Hello everybody! My name is Noah Brandt and I am a junior here at Butler. I’m a Music Industry Studies and Statistics dual major. I’m taking this class to fulfill the TI requirement of Butler’s Core Curriculum, but the Bible does have relevancy to some of my family. I was hoping that this class would be mainly about applying biblical texts to the modern world.

To me, the Bible is a compilation of stories and anecdotes from Jesus and his disciples. These stories outline a moral and spiritual code for people to live by in order to create a peaceful and accountable society.

I don’t know much about the Bible. I was mainly told what was in the Bible when I was little (in a church preschool) rather than reading the passages myself. Outside of the few times I went to a Christian after-school program, the Bible never had a personal connection with me. I believe that most of what is written in the Bible are compilations of writings from different authors who followed Jesus. The Bible that we know today is assembled from different translations and interpretations of these authors.

When I Googled, “What is in the Bible,” I got a lot of Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, blog posts, and religiously affiliated websites. With all of these different sources about one book, I can understand how it can be difficult to find reliable sources about a given topic in the Bible.