Day 3 - Genesis 8-11

I like this project already.

So Genesis 8-9 sees the dwindling of the flood and its aftermath, and brings us up to the death of Noah at the ripe old age of damn-near-a-thousand.

Two things occurred to me when reading through these chapters this time, and I have a feeling it'll be a recurring theme for me (not that I'll necessarily subject you to it every time I notice it. No fear.):

The first is that it absolutely astounds me that anyone can get anything at all out of the Bible by approaching it from the aforementioned literalist interpretation. I just don't get it. The language, imagery and symbolism is so rich, and the story so beautifully laid out that I just feel like it'd be highway robbery to boil it down to mere documentation.

Day 1 and 2 (Genesis 1-3, 4-7)

So as you've no doubt noticed, I'm doubling up today, since I started reading yesterday and only started writing today. I'll mash my thoughts together for this one, but they'll roughly occur in chronological order. This'll also hopefully be the last time I include an editorial-ish opening to the post itself. Most of the time I hope to just leap right in.


Like now...

Genesis 1-3, 4-7

It's funny how hard it actually is to really read something that you're so familiar with as the opening chapters of Genesis. It's almost like you just automatically shift into 'skim' mode because your brain just assumes that you can fill in the blanks on your own, which you can - in a way.

In another more accurate way, this is a great method of getting nothing out of the experience other than what your brain provides by dipping into the murky waters of prevailing cultural interpretation of what's said, rather than what's actually there.