Genesis Chapters 10 & 11

Chapter 10

Hot diggity-dog! Another begat chapter. I thought they were in books that could easily be avoided. Anyway, this describes how the sons of Noah repopulated the earth, and the geographical regions they did it in. Japeth starts the Gentiles, Ham the Canaanites and Shem's descendants don't have a name. The only funny thing is that Japeth has a son named Gomer.

Chapter 11

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech (v.1) Except for in the last chapter, where it totally wasn't. 10.5: and very one after his tongue 10.20 &31:after their tongues, in their countries.

Anyway, people start moving east and they found a city named Shinar. They decide to build a tower that will reach the sky so they can reach heaven, become omnipotent, and stay together. God comes along and sees the tower being built and decides the problem here is the fact everybody speaks one language. Except they totally don't if the last chapter is true. Goodness, how do biblical literalists reconcile all this? Oh yes, and god is using plural pronouns again, which Jerry ignores, but my uncensored bible tells me is because the Israelites were polytheists.

God's solution? Make everybody speak different languages, and as if that isn't enough, scatter them. I said a couple of entries ago that he's like an angry six year old who loses at Monopoly and throws the board across the room. That still seems pretty apt to me. The people stop building the tower, which it seems like he could have just asked them to do, no? According to Jerry, the profusion of languages upon the face of the earth is a punishment for sin. I remember a line from one of his ilk in the documentary Religulous by Bill Maher, who says, 'If English is good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me.' And I'll leave it at that.

The last two-thirds of the chapter is devoted to yet another genealogy. Now, in 6.3, God limits the human lifespan to 120 years, so riddle me this: how does Shem then live to be 600? And his son 438? It keeps going through the next 10 generations. Also, for those keeping track, we have advanced over 2300 years in these 11 chapters, which if we take the young end of Jerry's estimate of the age of the earth (5700 years), the pyramids have been up for a thousand years and the Trojan war is happening in Greece.

Anyway, the genealogy ends with Abraham and his barren wife Sarah, who go to Canaan.