Intellectual Devotional, Day 14: Noah

Ho Boy, this here is a doozy! Today the ID covers Noah, the storied Biblical figure who purportedly built a giant ark, shoved a bunch of animals onto it, then puttered around the world while the Big Man in The Sky rained cats and dogs on everyone else and flooded the whole dang thing.

First, I'll address some of my own issues with this story, despite knowing it's surely a parable and not supposed to represent actual events.  First of all, let's allow that a ship large enough to hold 2 of each animal in the world can be built.  How's a guy going to feed all of those animals for almost an entire year (290 days (40 days of rain, 150 days sailing while the floods receded, and 100 days stranded on top of Mount Ararat)) ?  Not to mention the number of carnivores there must be in that bunch.

I did find a couple of things interesting in the ID reading, however.  Firstly, apparently the story of Noah contains the first mention of wine in the Bible.

Secondly, apparently there's some mild disagreement between the Christians and the Jews as to the interpretation of this story.  The Christians view Noah as having ultimate faith in God, considering that he built a giant ark based solely .  The Jews, on the other hand, choose to look at the order in which people boarded the ark.  Noah was last to board, the Jewish tradition holds that this is actually depicting Noah's reticence, and thus lack of ultimate faith in God.  It's always interesting to me to see how different groups (whether along religious, cultural, or other lines) can interpret the same story in vastly different ways.  Neat.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 7: The Torah

Continuing our Intellectual Devotional series, I get to make our first post on the Sunday readings in the Religion category. Coming from a very religious background (which I eventually rejected), I feel like I'm fairly well-informed on this topic, at least from a fundamentalist Christian perspective. Depending on how you look at it, religion is either one of my least or one of my most favorite subjects, since my discussions on it often turn into angry rants.

Thankfully, the Devotional approaches the topic from a secular vantage point. While it briefly mentions traditional beliefs regarding its origins, it spends more time discussing actual historical/archaeological facts and theories.

A few new facts for me are the division of the Torah itself versus the Mishna (which I had never heard of before) and the Talmud (of which I was vaguely aware). Like I said, I'm definitely coming from a Christian, rather than Jewish, background.

I'm definitely curious to see whether the authors touch on anything controversial in future Sunday readings.