jchandle writes

  Two Separate Flood Stories  Okay, if you haven’t read my previous posts, you need to know that much of Genesis is a weaving together of at least two sources: A later source well-represented by Genesis 1 and written by one or more post-exilic Aaronic Priests (P) and an earlier source to whom God is known as Yahweh (J). A good example of the J source is Genesis 2. I know this stuff can be boring or complicated sometimes, but once you get the hang of this stuff, it really opens up new understanding in the Bible.  Starting In Genesis 6, things get more tightly woven. The ancient editor (often known as the Redactor or R)  who joined these two sources together, decided to weave the two stories of Noah and the global flood together into one story, likely to avoid having two flood narratives back to back in the text. This explains why you have two separate motivations for the flood (Genesis 6:5-7 vs. 6:11-12), two separate and conflicting instructions for how many of each ...

This was kind of a hard week to glean insight from the Bible-portion of Come Follow Me. I found myself reading all of Genesis 5 the first morning, then identifying the name meanings of all the people in it, then trying to find meaning in all the numbers (and learning that the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint disagree on those numbers) then kind of flailing.  I eventually found it quite useful to take the advice of the movie James and the Giant Peach and “Try looking at it another way.” So without any more intro, here are 5 ways to look at Genesis 5. Priestly Genealogy Compare the structure of Genesis 5 to the Structure of Genesis 1. Both describe successive periods of earthly history. Both repeat elements in the description of each period described (“Thus all the days of <Patriarch> were <# of Years>; and he died” Vs. “And there was evening and there was morning, the <numbered> day.”). Compare Genesis 2:4, which is possibly the end of the Priestly Creation story ...