Session Eleven – Generations: Adam to Noah – Held on Sunday, December 11, 2011

Review of Session Ten 

Annette started us off by asking the meaning of Gen: 4: 20 – 22.  http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/4.  Like so many questions that Genesis raises for us, the question itself has assumptions.  These three verses state that all who “dwell in tents” and “keep livestock” have a common ancestor; all those who “play the lyre and reed pipe” or “play the harp and flute” [which instruments depends on your version’s translation of the bible] have a common ancestor; and all those who “forge instruments of bronze and iron” have a common ancestor.

It is much easier for me to express what these verses don’t mean.  The author is not trying to tell us, to take one example, that everyone who dwells in tents had a single person who was their ancestor.  Once I make this statement, though, a host of questions come flooding out based on what our assumptions are.  Some in our group and many around the globe, and this is to state it quite simply, believe that the bible is the word of God, God doesn’t lie, and therefore the bible is true.

One of my favorite phrases goes something like this, may I push you on that.  So here goes … If you think the statement in the last sentence in the previous paragraph is true, does that mean that in this one verse, Gen: 4:20, the true meaning of the bible is that all those who dwell in tents have a single person, named Jabal, as their common ancestor?  Or does it mean something else.  Please note that these are two questions that I have raised.  They may be meaningful questions to you or they may not.  If the questions are meaningful, select the one that you agree with and express your reason for holding that opinion.  If they are not meaningful, express why they are not. Either you will participate or you won’t.  If you do participate, you will attempt to do the best according to your ability to makes sense based on the world in which you live. In doing this you will experience what it means, in part, to rise to the level of our times.

Generations: Adam to Noah.

Below is a modified version of a handout given to the study group which basically summarizes Genesis 5, http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/5

There are a few observations to make: first there are ten generations from Adam to Noah.  Is that historical fact, just coincidental or is it a literary form? Note that Enoch is reported not as dying but as God taking him which may mean the same think as dying but why does the author change his words when it comes to Enoch.  Third, note that Lamech [who is now a descendant of Seth and not of Cain] lives for a total of 777 years.  Again does the 777 mean years or symbolic of some other meaning?

We had quite a discussion on the meaning of these ages.  As expressed earlier some members of our group believe that the ages are factual, that is historically true ages.  To take one example, Adam had a child when he was 130 years old, lived another 800 years and died when he was 930 years old.  Others think that the ages are symbolic but wondered what they could mean.  Some wondered if the notion of a year meant the same thing at the time of the author as it does today.

It seems clear to me that we have no experience of anyone living these kinds of years.  Because that is true, we have to make sense of the numbers or dismiss them as none sense. To find their meaning, though, requires that these numbers are placed in a larger context of the stories told in Genesis.  In that context we will find that the ages of individuals gradually lowers to become life spans that we are in the range of our experience.  This age trajectory has a meaning, it’s telling us something.  From one point of view we could say that it points backwards to a more perfect time, ultimately to a perfect time, the Garden of Eden.  Or it could be an effort to account for the personal, social, and political realities that are part of the Israelites past and present life.

Ultimately the bible is a story of salvation, of God’s interjection of his meaning into our world, and for Christians, of God’s interjection of His Spirit and His Son into human history.  It is an invitation to shape our understanding of the meaning of our lives in their totality and to live in the world that that understanding creates.  This is why it is so important to come to grips with what the bible is telling us.

Any comments, questions, observations, opinions are welcomed