[quote]pookie wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:
Well? Give up? Remember, your answer must be in the form of a question.
[i]The name Methuselah comes from two roots: muth, a root that means “death”; and from shalach, which means “to bring,” or “to send forth.” Thus, the name Methuselah signifies, “his death shall bring.”
And, indeed, in the year that Methuselah died, the flood came. Methuselah was 187 when he had Lamech, and lived 782 years more. Lamech had Noah when he was 182. The Flood came in Noah’s 600th year. 187 + 182 + 600 = 969, Methuselah’s age when he died.
Methuselah’s life was, in effect, a symbol of God’s mercy in forestalling the coming judgment of the flood. It is therefore fitting that his lifetime is the oldest in the Bible, symbolizing the extreme extensiveness of God’s mercy.[/i]
Is this getting closer?
[/quote]
A winner!!! Pookie achieves status as the TN Biblical Scholar!
(And I thought I had originated this thought!)
I will offer my impoverished explanation, and Scholar Pookie may just hate this.
The text of the Noah story is rife with puns and palindromes based on his name, N"h, which is derived from “to console” or “to comfort.” Perhaps the story should be read from what (I consider) the first such pun, the name of his great-grandfather Enoch, who after the birth of his son Methuseleh, “walked with God,” but who, unlike any of the other antediluvian personages, did not “die.” At the end of his life, he “was not.” This is a unique distinction among the righteous, perhaps shared only by Elijah, in that Samuel story of the two she-bears which Pookie hates so much.
Well, then, God resolves to do away with all the evil humans; but it is Enoch’s progeny who are righteous and are spared. After all, it is Noah, “unblemished in his generations,” who gets the nod, however qualified the endorsement.
Unlike Pookie, the Bronze Age listener of this tale would not have held the character God as malicious for wiping out humanity. They would not have doubted God’s mercy. But where is mercy and consolation in this act? Well, Methuseleh, Noah’s grandfather, dies precisely in the 600th year of Noah’s life, the Year of The Flood. It is no accident that the Redactors of Genesis asserts this: all of Noah’s antecedents, presumed righteous, are gone, and God does not plan to wipe out humanity until the last righteous man, Methuseleh, has died…save Noah. God does not allow the righteous to die in the Flood.
(Now, hidden in the text are the other acts of mercy; God could have provided a box, but he commands Noah to build an ark, during the building of which evil men could have repented. The cosmic spigots are not opened all at once; it “rained,” and men could have accepted the decree and repented.)
Where is the consolation? The puns end with the “pleasant smell” of Noah’s sacrifice, whereupon God offers the Noahic covenant: follow these rules and you are blessed.
It is the first of the 4 Old Testament covenants, but it is the only one that is made with all Mankind. By this Noahic covenant, not only will humanity be forever saved, but every person–regardless of tribe, station, or race–who follows The Rules can be saved, and can once again “walk with God,” as did Enoch, and as did Adam in Eden.
And that is why the Flood story, Friend Push, is not a text recording the biologic evolution of the species, but a revelation of the spiritual evolution of the human species.
