I think I’ve avoided really looking at this passage, and I notice that my teaching has focused too much on the signs of two source texts being edited together, and noticed too little how the story works, because like the genocide texts it offends my sense of right. The story looks different when one hears it as an exploration of the theme of sin and righteousness, as I’ll try to here.
The reading is here Genesis 6:5-7:24.
This is the passage that makes sense of Gen 2, and of human life. Our world and our lives are broken and spoiled because of sin. Sin is not breaking rules, it is breaking relationship with the maker by wanting to assume the power ourselves.
The reading of Genesis 3 is here. There is another take on this passage, talking about Bonhoeffer’s paradoxical take on “conscience” in an earlier podcast.
Here’s the first in a series covering the 100 essential Bible readings. The 50 passages from each Testament together give an overview of the whole Bible. I hope to be doing 5 a week for the next 20 weeks (work and life permitting 
Today we begin at the beginning with the first two chapters of Genesis. I also dealt with Genesis 1 in a previous post.
By the way there is a reading of the passage (if you want to hear rather than see it on PodBible here). There is an RSS feed for the E100 series only here.
All, speech requires prior knowledge to be understood. Usually this is largely shared within a culture. So if I say “the cat” I do not usually have to tell you first what a cat is. (Even if in the context of a novel about old-time sailors it might be a whip.) Some courses of study have organised “prerequisites” courses you must take before them. Many books have a preface or prologue that cointains material the author thinks you need to know before tackling the body of the work.
Genesis 1-11 is the prologue to the Bible, The “characters” and themes it introduces will help us understand the whole of the rest.
Often in biblical narrative things “just seem to happen”, rather like they do in our lives But are such “happenings” chance or divine providence at work? We’ll try to decide, using Gen 37:12ff. (read with Gen 39) and Ruth 2 as examples.
Typescene sounds like a typical technical term scholars use make Bible stories dull 
In this podcast I hope to show you it’s exactly the opposite and that by spending 5 minutes learning about typescenes you can discover a livelyness you may have missed, even in a well-loved story like Ruth. (Other passage you should have ready, or look at before listening are: Genesis 24; 29 & Exodus 2:15ff..)
Bonhoeffer has some hugely stimulating ideas in his discussion of the “fall” story in Genesis 3. Probably none are more stimulating, or easy to fail to grasp as his thought about “conscience” – at least difficult for people for whom the idea that conscience is the “voice of God within” is deeply embedded, since Bonhoeffer almost reverses that idea, noticing that it is conscience that drives the first humans away from God!
In this post I’ll start looking at how we respond to the Bible’s silences, often there are questions we want to ask the Bible, which the Bible does not answer. What do we do then? Some of these questions, like the one I start with produce classic biblical puzzlers…
By the way, if the sound quality is not as good as usual, or if you hear building work or children playing in the background, that’s because I recorded this post in the middle of a refugee camp! See another blog for more information.
This podcast takes a second look at Babel, with a focus on the structure of the story, and its themes. It includes “homework” for which you should ideally have a photocopy of Genesis 11:1-9 (preferably in a fairly literal translation like NRSV, RSV, TNIV, NIV, ESV…) and some coloured markers or crayons.
Stephen suggested I do a ‘cast about the Babel story, so here it is… a first ‘cast about Babel. In this one I’ll begin with points of view and language. Since this will have to be a series we’ll follow up from there later!
For more about “point of view” and “frames” you could see my Introduction to Narrative and Narrative Poetics which is not as technical as it may sound!
