One of the faults in reform-adjacent Christianity is this insistence on a works-less faith. We have a whole system for what “good works” even means, taking Isaiah’s “righteousness is like filthy rags” and rendering good acts of nonbelievers as meaningless.

This is broken.

1/

Someone recently commented that God's prohibition on eating meat w/ blood in it pointed to the pre-flood world being filled with people who literally ate other humans alive.

Maybe! The world was described as completely, totally wicked, and this certainly enters the imagination.

If you’ve been paying very close attention to the boat building project, you’ll see something odd in Genesis 8.

Noah removes a “covering” that was never mentioned before. It’s meant to be understood like a giant sheet. It must have been massive.

1/

This does nothing for me theologically, but it's interesting to see it graphed out. If we read Genesis 5 literally, Adam lived to see Noah's father born.

In Genesis 3, everybody notices that Eve adds “nor touch it” to the command not to eat the fruit, but nobody seems to notice that she doesn’t identify the specific tree.

There were TWO trees in the middle of the garden.

#theology #christianity #torah #genesis #serpent #fruit #knowledge #good #evil #biblestudy

To the ancient Hebrew mind, Genesis 1:21 does not describe peaceful waters filled with whales and fish.

It is filled with sea monsters, dragons, serpents, and wriggling swarming things.

The sea is understood as a place of terror.

#theology #genesis #torah #bible #biblestudy #faith #christianity #dragons #monsters