January 15, 2010
Last year as I read through the Scriptures there were a few things that bothered me, or at least things that I did not understand.
As I begin "Read Through the Bible" in 2010, I am going to try to share with you my questions and some of the answers that I have come up with. I welcome your comments and questions too.
Okay - one of the first things that bugged me last year and again this year is how so many of the Old Testament characters lived to be so old. Adam lived 930 years and many of his descendants lived incredibly long lives as well (Gen 5:1-32). Is this true?
In Fr. Lawrence Boadt's book Reading the Old Testament, he writes: "What has always interested readers is the long lifespan that has been credited to the patriarchs. This was not intended as proof that humans lived to such ripe old ages in the first days of the world, but a device to show just how vast a distance separates our own world of experience from that of the story itself.
The 'myth' of enormous life spans was commonly used in the ancient world to show the superiority of the beginning times. The Sumerian king list, only one of many such that we know from the Near East, lists the names and ages of the kings who lived before the flood. They range in age from 18,600 year to over 43,000 years. Hindu traditions also make exaggerated claims. One myth speaks of humans who lived 8,400,000 years."
Another weird age thing is the age of Abraham and Sarah at the time of Isaac's birth. He was reported to be 100 and she was 90. Again the exaggerated ages serves a theological purpose. God's promise does not happen in our time frame but His. God promised them a son but they had to wait with faith long beyond what would seem reasonable. That is a big part of faith - believing even though reason and common sense seem to mock our belief. Our faith stands as a bridge in the tension between promise and fulfillment. This serves to highlight how great God's gift to them was. When all hope is gone, God can bring hope.
To be honest with you, what I find even more remarkable is that following the birth of Isaac, Sarah and Abraham pack up and move. At this point, Sarah is taken into the palace of Abimelech. God warns him in a dream not to do anything to Sarah since she is married. Abimelech is righteously upset with Abraham because he led him to believe that Sarah was his sister. A few chapters earlier it appears that the Pharaoh did take Sarah as a bed companion. Does anyone have problems thinking this 90+ year old woman is so "hot" that a king can't wait to get his hands on her? There is obviously an irony here.
Again, this is a literary device that signifies the importance of the birth and the fulfillment of God's promise. To draw attention to Sarah at this point implies that when God fulfills his promises it has the effect of renewing or regenerating us. This is symbolized by Sarah apparently being totally regenerated from the physical appearance of an old woman to someone so hot that she caught the eye and fancy of the most important man in the world. Before we rush in to discount this, let us not underestimate just how truly extravagant God's promises can be!!! For in reality, there is nothing too hard for God (see Genesis 17:1-19; 20:1-18).
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Around 1792 BC the king Hammurabi inherited the throne of Babylon - he's the king that first wrote down laws that we still have on stone today and that are called Hammurabi's Code. He did many things in his qwest to be "fair" to all people - even though in his "code" he advocates an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I thought this was from the time of Moses as that was the standard of the day but, anyway along with his "code" and the fact that he began to conquer pretty much the whole southern part of Mesopotamia the Babylonians must have scooped up some smart people along the way as they were the able to figure out that the earth goes all the way around the sun. They called it one time "one year." They also divided a year into twelve months and were the first to divide a day into 24 hours and an hour to 60 minutes. So if we inherited this from the Babylonians... is it possible then to assume that the calendar of old used during the time of Abraham and Sarah was in fact not what we would call a year? Unless we have a way of knowing what they called a "year" couldn't we again only assume they lived a really, really long time or they were extremely old by our standards? Do we have the ability to say 100 years then = 25 now or whatever? I don't know of a chart that will allow you to calculate an age from thousands of years ago... unless it was directly from the era of the Babylonians (after they figured it out). Who knows if after that everyone agreed with them anyway back then - people may have liked their own way of keeping time and hated the Babylonians. Even now we have people that don't agree with BC and AD... we now have to say BCE or CE. Mostly because people don't like that Jesus is the reason for our current dating system.
ReplyDeleteSo it is possible that Sarah wasn't an old prune, just older, and/or may have been hot looking if the king was an old man himself?
Just a couple of thoughts....
L.M.D.