Genesis 5 and Part of 6

Genesis chapter 5 is about the genealogy of Seth, this is the part of the Bible I personally find least interesting. However I do understand the purpose of the genealogies. I find it a little tough to swallow that people use these to calculate the age of the earth, but as sociopolitical tools they make sense. I won't have much to say on the subject of the genealogies, so don't expect much out of chats that involve those.

So let's get to the first part of Chapter 6. Several things came up for me and so I stopped reading before I finished the chapter. Let's talk about these things.

First, In the first 6 chapters of the Bible, God continually refers to "us." Not God and angels, us, but multiple gods, us. Perhaps this is foreshadowing to the trinity (or perhaps that is read into it because that is what Christians expect). Perhaps it is because we as humans often actually refer to ourselves as "we" when we talk about ourselves. Perhaps it is the "royal" we that is sometimes reserved for those in authority. But I find it an interesting repetitive use. This is something to think about.

Second, the King James translation, says that the "sons of gods" found the earthly women attractive. This is awfully reminiscent of the tribal stories from many different ancient cultures. This translation, doesn't describe the beings as angels of any kind, but as the sons of gods. As the reader, I have already encountered the Cheribum guarding Eden, so if the same word were used, I would think that it would be translated the same way here. I am in no way claiming that ancient Hebrews believed in multiple gods, just pointing out an interesting twist in translation.

Third, and this is the biggest issue for me, is that God looks down on his creation and regrets the creation of man. The all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving being has decided He made a mistake. How is this possible? Didn't God know what was going to happen?

We don't even know what evils made God regret the creation of man. All we have at this point is that man has proliferated, God decided their life spans too long. Several demigod type people were born and these men/women were of renown and had stories told about them (though we don't get any of those stories in the Bible). We are told that God saw the evil in the human and regretted his creation.

I think this is always the part of the biblical account that got me really questioning the fact of the biblical account. We are taught in church that God is perfect, yet, the Bible clearly states clearly that God felt like he made a mistake. And while I haven't finished the chapter, before the end of the story of Noah, God will admit to making another mistake.

I have real trouble reconciling the idea that an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect being with the idea of that being making a mistake.

Before I get a bunch of apologetics on the subject, let me be clear here, this does not change my acceptance of "God" in the least. This story doesn't change for me the perfect nature of God, what it makes clear, is the human element that is part of the writing and translation of the story. Humans need to make sense of things, it is what we do...there are all kinds of psychological studies done on this subject. So as the story is told and retold, some human spin is put on the story to explain it in a way that makes sense to us.

I don't know what was actually happening during the time of Noah and the flood, but I think the very human emotion of feeling like He had made a mistake, was given to God, not necessarily something that God actually thought.

The metaphysics of my thoughts on God are complicated, but ultimately I believe that whatever God is, God is perfect. Perfect doesn't make mistakes, perfect doesn't have regrets. If I accept that the Bible is 100% fact, then from this story, either God is not perfect or I have misunderstood the definition of perfect. I personally prefer the idea that human fallibility might have a hand in the logical inconsistencies in this story.


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