“The seven days of Genesis 1 are a chiasm, and therefore these sections are a chiasm. The Adam who doesn’t come to rule at the beginning is answered by the Adam who does come to rule at the end.”

Adapted from James B. Jordan, “The Life of Jacob,” Biblical Horizons No. 258, July 2017.

Genesis has a sevenfold structure. Many books of the Bible, including Revelation, have the same structure. The book is marked out in sections by a phrase that is found about ten times in the book: these are the generations of. Chapter 5:1: “These are the generations of Adam.” Chapter 6:9: “These are the generations of Noah.” The word “generations” in Hebrew is toledot. The “ot” is a feminine plural ending. “Sabbaot”—Lord of sabbaoth—Lord of hosts—armies. “Im” is masculine plural—“Elohim”—plural of “El” or God—majestic God, or many gods. Toledot is the plural of generation—toledah, and the reason I mention that is that these sections of Genesis are called toledah sections.

There are ten of these sections, but if you look at it more carefully you notice that some of the sections are grouped so that we come up with seven sections. The structure of Genesis consists of an introduction and then seven sections that correspond to the seven days of Genesis 1…

This sequence of seven speech actions is the way God always works with the world… That is why Genesis has seven sections, and why the first seven books of the Bible follow the same format. Genesis is the book of the first day. Exodus is where the firmament is made—the firmament people—that is the Tabernacle. Leviticus has to do with flesh and blood, plants and seeds. Numbers has to do with stars. Deuteronomy has to do with the organisation of a group of people. Joshua has to do with planting of a people int he land. Judges has to do with sin bringing a time to its fulfillment on the Sabbath Day. The Spirit works that way, and that is why the Bible is written as it is.

Now, the first section we have is the generations of the heaven and earth, what the heaven and earth brought forth. The heaven and earth bring forth—they marry—and bring forth humanity. What is generated by the heavens and the earth? Genesis 2:4, “This is the generation of the heaven and the earth after they were created in the day Yahweh God made earth and heaven.” Verse 7, “Then Yahweh God formed man of dust (not clay) of the ground,”—that’s the earthy part—“and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—that’s the heavenly part. The Spirit comes from heaven into dust, the marriage of earth and heaven, and man is formed. That is what the heavens and the earth generate. They generate Adam. And Adam generates Eve, and Adam and Eve generate Cain and Abel and Seth. That’s the generation of the heaven and earth, and what the heavens and earth bring forth is Adam.

This corresponds to day one—the creation of heaven and earth out of formlessness corresponds to the creation of man. The earth was formless and the Spirit of God moved in. Dust is about as formless as you can get. A brick has form. A rock has form. Clay has form. Dust has no form. Man wasn’t made of clay, but of dust. It is formless, and then God’s Spirit comes into it as a parallel to day one. In Genesis 2 the creation of man corresponds to the creation of light on day one. Genesis 2 has the same sevenfold fold outline as Genesis 1. In Genesis 2 the phrase “The Lord God did” follow the same sequence as in Genesis 1, and forming man is parallel to making light on the first day, which is followed throughout Bible. Human beings are lights, stars, etc.

The comes the separation of light and darkness on day one. “God separated the light from the darkness, he saw the light was good. He called the light day, and the darkness he called night.” That separation theme is carried through in this section of Genesis by the judgment on man where he is separated from the Garden, and then primarily the separation of Cain and Abel into a darkened and light kind of people. This second section goes down to the end of Genesis 4.

The next section is the generations of Adam. Chapter 5 says, “This is the book of the generations of Adam,” and then it talks about Adam. Adam had a son in is likeness named Seth, so Adam generates Seth, and then Enosh, Kenan, Mehalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah.

This corresponds to the establishment on the second day of the firmament to separate waters above from waters below. The godly line of Seth is the human form of that firmament, and the corruption of that line is answered by the removal of the firmament and the re-coalescence of the waters in the flood.

The godly line stands between, as Adam was supposed to do from the beginning, heaven and earth. There was a mountain rising up out of the earth, and on the mountain stood the priest who mediated between God and man. Symbolically speaking, this was Adam’s position in the firmament—below God and above the world. That is the position of the godly line that comes from Adam, the Sethites. The creation of the Sethite race, as opposed to the Cainite race, is equivalent to the formation of the firmament, linked with that aspect of creation week. This is the second toledot section in Genesis and it relates to the firmament. All of the things made in the first week have a human equivalent now in this story. This group of human beings is placed between heaven and earth.

Noah brings forth Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and the whole “table of nations” comes from them. Just as in Day 3 of Genesis 1 there are two section where land and sea are separated, and then the plants are put on the earth—two actions on the third day. So here, the separation of land and sea is answered by the flood, and then the fact that as the flood receded we have a new separation of land and sea. This is very much the same language as in Genesis 1.

And then the multiplication of plants on the land is answered by the table of nations in Chapter 10. “These are the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth…” This is another subsection of toledot. The 70 nations grow up, which are the plants on the earth. Does the book of Genesis symbolize humans as plants? Yes, it does, and that is clear from the very first chapters when God says that the earth will bring forth thorns and thistles. Man is made of earth, and what is the next thing that happens after God says the earth will bring forth thorns and good things? First there is Cain, then Abel. But that isn’t where it starts. It starts when God says that the seed of the woman will defeat the seed of the serpent. Women don’t have seeds in a biological sense. In Genesis 1 the plants are said to have seeds about 8 or 9 times and establishes what is meant. In vs. 11 God says, “Let the earth sprout forth vegetation, plants seeding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit with seed in them on the earth.” And the earth brought forth vegetation, verbs seeding seeds after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind. On and on the word “seed” goes. I have given you every plant seeding seed, and every tree having fruit yielding seed.

The seed of a plant comes when it blooms and has seed to become the next generation. The seed of the woman comes when she blooms by getting pregnant and has the next generation. The seed of the woman is the child, but this is plant language. So to make people analogous to plants is right there in Genesis. We are in the third section of Genesis, and we read about all these nations, which are plants growing and spreading all over the earth.

Then for the fourth day section we have the generations of Shem—just a short section. The fourth day is when the lights are put in the heavens, and the Shemites are the new light bearers to rule the heavens. Genesis 9:26 says, “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.” Shem has the responsibility for worship. Japheth needs to dwell in the tents of Shem, which means to come to worship. Shem is designated as the line of the covenant seed, and that will later be specified to be Weber, and then Abram, then Isaac, and then Jacob. This is a series of narrowing specification. This is the firmament line of light bearers who maintain God’s truth in the firmament position between heaven and earth.

The fifth section in Genesis is the generations of Terah. What did Terah bring forth? He brought forth Abraham, so this is the Abraham narrative (Genesis 11:27). Terah brought forth Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Corresponding to Day 5 when great swarming creatures were made and God gave his first command to any creature, these themes of multiplication and law are highlighted in the story of Abram, which Genesis 11:27-25:11 delineate. In fact, this theme of multiplication and swarms of people is greatly emphasized here. God says to Abraham, “Your seed will be like the stars of the heavens, like the sand of the sea,” and not only that, Abraham’s brother, Nahor, has twelve children (Genesis 22:20-24). The whole theme of having twelve children starts here, which is multiplication. If you have twelve children you haven’t just reproduced, you have multiplied.

It is part of the “patience” theme that is one of the major themes of Genesis. Abraham has to look over at his brother and say, “He has twelve children,” and then Isaac has to look over at Ishmael and say the same thing while his wife is barren. Abraham has to say the same thing, finally he has just one child. At every point the believers are being told to wait and be patient, while God is giving numerous children to all the unbelievers, or at least those not marked by Divine election to service.

The next section is the generations of Ishmael and Isaac, two section that need to be grouped together as one. In Genesis 25:12 are the twelve sons of Ishmael who are twelve princes, and then vs. 10 gives the generations of Isaac.

We have the generations of Terah, which is the Abraham narrative, and then we have the generations of Isaac, which is the Jacob narrative. You will notice there is no section called the generations of Abraham. There is no Isaac section. There is an Abraham section, a Jacob section, and the ones ones are the generations of Jacob which is the Joseph/Judah section. The Jacob section is a very carefully constructed chiasm, as is the Abraham section. These are very carefully constructed literary units. The first part of Isaac’s life is in the Abraham section when he is a son, and the second half is in the Jacob section where he is a father.

The generations of Ishmael and Isaac correspond to Day 6. Just as Day 6 had two sections—the creation of animals and the creation of man—the toledoth of Ishmael corresponds to the creation of helpful animals because the Ishaelistes are not enemies of Israel Ishmael is regenerated, and is in heaven. The Bible tells us so. They are helpers to Israel. And then the seance half of Day 6 is the creation of man, which corresponds to the generations of Isaac, and is concerned with Jacob, the man who is able to wrestle with God and prevail. This is what it means to be a real, true godly man.

And then the last section is the generations of Esau and Jacob. Genesis 36 is the generation of Esau. That is Cain, the bad thorny plant. The generation of Jacob is the story of Joseph and Judah that has to do with sabbath rest—coming into rest, enthronement, feeding the entire world, and living in the best part of the land. Trace it through in Genesis. It says that the area of the city of Sodom was like the circle of the Jordan, like the Garden of Eden. Then it says that the land of Goshen was the best part of Egypt, and it was like the circle of the Jordan. Being put in Goshen was the equivalent to being put back in the Garden of Eden. Genesis ends with a return to full redemption and Sabbath rest in the story of Joseph. Everything broken has been fixed, at least partially. When we get to Exodus we find that it falls apart. It is Jesus who has to bring the full and final restoration. The generations of Esau in chapter 36 point to the fall of man, which happened on the Sabbath. A false Sabbath rest is given to Esau as he multiplies and takes control, while true Sabbath rest is given to the godly in the land of Goshen.

This is a general chiastic structure. The seven days of Genesis 1 are a chiasm, and therefore these sections are a chiasm. The Adam who doesn’t come to rule at the beginning is answered by the Adam who does come to rule at the end. Adam was supposed to mature and rule, but he didn’t. Joseph does. Adam makes his own clothes. Joseph is given robes by those who honor him. Adam is not honored and not given robes—just bloody animal skins.

It still seems a bit odd for the title of the Abraham narrative to be called the generations of Terah, since it turns out to be all about Abraham. The reason for that is that it is the seed of the woman, the second Adam, who is going to accomplish everything. At every point in Genesis it is the son, the next person in line who is going to accomplish tings, who is going to save the world and be the Messiah. That is the first thing Eve says when she gives birth to Cain. That is why the book is laid out the way it is—the book of generations—the father isn’t adequate, so the son has to come and accomplish the mission. That son turns out to be inadequate, so his son has to come and do it until the coming of Jesus who is the fully capable Son.

Why do serious theologians persist with a story that reads like third-rate fan fiction?

This is a response to Andrew Wilson’s recent thinktheology post, “Nephilim, Anakim, and Why We Care.”

As the proponents of paedobaptism and full preterism doggedly continue to demonstrate, even the brightest theologians are susceptible to crazy ideas. Unsurprisingly, both of these erroneous doctrines – along with the “fallen angels” reading of Genesis 6 – are the result of a common flaw, and that flaw is a failure to put a finger on the pulse of the actual story.

Substandard fan fiction suffers from the same deficiency: while it is enthralled by the features of the original narratives, it mistakenly identifies these facets as the heart of the story rather than merely elements through which its genius is expressed. While paedobaptism, full preterism, and the “fallen angel” reading of Genesis 6 all manage to scrape together some semblance of support from the Scriptures, they seem oblivious to how “out-of-character” their stories are as intended explanations (or perhaps more correctly, adoring extensions) of the Bible. Many of the trappings of the sacred texts are present, which gives them a veneer of authenticity, but the internal logic – the unseen principle which governs the originals and makes them so captivating – is missing. As with the authors of substandard fan fiction, the driving force of the biblical narrative has not been comprehended by some of its most committed fans.

Ignorance of Covenant Structure

Wilson writes:

I take it as read that the Nephilim (Gen 6:1-4) were the results of sexual relations between angels and women. Many don’t, and I used not to, but I now find the Jewish and early Christian witness compelling, the alternatives (Sethites and Cainites? Kings and harems?) quite unconvincing, and the best counterargument something of a tangent. (For those who are counting, the best counterargument is that Jesus says in Matthew 22:30 that it is impossible for angels to have sex. The obvious response to which is simply: no, he doesn’t.)

Despite the fact that angels are never mentioned in Genesis 6, Wilson has mistakenly written off the intermarriage of Sethites and Cainites as being the best explanation of the story. This is because not only have modern theologians atomised the Bible, they have failed to comprehend the text as repeated iterations of the same sacred architecture. We do not have the freedom to treat the interpretation of Genesis 6 as a multiple choice question in an exam because all the questions in this exam have the same answer. Let me explain.

The history from Adam to Noah is a “macrocosmic” recapitulation of the testing of Adam. The step in the narrative where Adam and Eve grasp equality with God corresponds to the rise of these “god-like” mighty men in Genesis 6, the ultimate outcome of the “seed of the serpent.” This most likely explains the word nephilim which is derived from the word for fallen. These men were no more the offspring of angels than was Cain, who failed to “rule over sin” and instead established his own rival kingdom. Even more significantly, the step where the Lord covered Adam’s sin in Genesis 3 corresponds to the point where God revoked the Edenic atonement through animal blood and covered the entire world. The sin of Adam was “the one,” that is, the cultus, and the sin of the sons of God was “the many,” that is, the outcome of the same sin in the culture. The “fruit” that was stolen was the daughters of men, and they were not stolen by angels but by those, like Adam, who had access to the Sanctuary.

This raises another point: every biblical Covenant is a tour of duty, with a mission, a prize, and accountability. Adam faced blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. The fivefold pattern of the commission in Genesis 2 establishes the sevenfold shape of the entire Edenic narrative.

Although an angel was involved in the temptation, it was only its “bestial” earthly counterpart which suffered a humiliating curse, since it was part of the world which God had promised to put under Adam’s feet. The angel was actually exalted to a place in the heavenly court, not as an advocate for mankind but as an accuser, an office he held until the ascension of Christ. Thus, the flood was the curse upon those who had broken the “new covenant” established by God in the shedding of sacrificial blood. The angels were not under any Covenant obligation which is why, for angels, who are mere servants and not sons, there is no redemption.

This micro/macro relationship between Eden and the world is the reason why both narratives work through the pattern established in Genesis 1. To help us to understand it, this pattern is later expressed not only in the elements of the Tabernacle, but also in Israel’s annual festal calendar (Leviticus 23):

Noah, whose name means rest, becomes the “Day 7” of the process, the first man to bear the sword on God’s behalf as the legal representative of heaven upon the earth. He entered into God’s rest and brought Sabbath to the entire world. Since Noah qualified, the word “covenant” is mentioned for the first time in the Bible.

This point concerning Covenant structure might seem obscure or perhaps even irrelevant to some but it is in fact the most potent argument against the “sons-of-God-were-angels” theory.¹If you care to study the fundamentals of the Bible’s fractal “Covenant-literary” structure, there are some helpful links here. The purpose of this sevenfold process is spiritual maturity. The Lord calls all men to submit to Him that He might exalt us. Priesthood must precede kingdom, just as it did in the history of Israel, and in the ministry of Christ. This is the core of the entire Bible. If we are humble, we will be lifted up. Adam was promised a kingdom but he would only qualify for government if he first submitted to God. It was the same for Jesus, of course, who now possesses all authority in heaven and on earth. What Adam seized, Jesus was given as a gift.

Following Adam’s sin, this rivalry between priesthood and kingdom became incarnate in Cain and Abel. The result was the division of humanity into a priestly line (the Sethites) and a kingly line (the Cainites). The priestly line continued to shed the blood of sacrifices on behalf of sinful people, but the kingly line rejected the mercy of God and instead shed the blood of human beings in unmitigated vengeance. Thus, the intermarriage between priests and kings led to the end of God’s mercy and long-suffering. The ultimate irony is that God once again gathered animals, as He had in Eden, but He destroyed all those who rejected the ministry of substitutionary atonement via the blood of “priestly” domestic beasts.

This revoking of mercy explains the reference to there being “no more sacrifice for sins” in Hebrews 10:26. Almost all mankind had trampled underfoot the blood of the Covenant established in Eden, just as the Jews rejected the offering of Christ for the sins of the world. That is why this exact Adam-to-Noah pattern can be overlaid upon the history of the Apostolic Church. Jesus, as Abel, was slain, which led to the prophetic warnings of the Apostles, as Noah, and finally a judgment which Jesus warned would not only be as sudden as the flood in the days of Noah, but would also bring an end to the “kingly” sins of the Herods, including intermarriage for political gain:

For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Matthew 24:37-40)

This rejection by Wilson of the Sethite/Cainite solution is due to an ignorance of the Bible’s consistency, which is governed by its Covenant-literary structure. However, it is also an outcome of a failure to understand the reason for the establishment of the Circumcision and the Law, which founded and set apart an entire nation as a priesthood which was prevented from intermarriage with the other “kingly” nations. This act by God was necessary to avoid another global judgment, and to maintain a faithful shedding of substitutionary blood on behalf of all nations. This gives us the context of the downfall of Solomon through intermarriage with idolaters, the destruction of the Temple, and of Ezra’s blunt condemnation of the Israelites’ marriages with pagans during the exile. This theme of the confusion of priestly and kingly offices through intermarriage runs throughout the Bible, and is an expression of the fundamental core: man’s unwillingness to humble himself before heaven and his theft of the promised dominion over the earth. If this were understood by most theologians, bogus theories like sex with angels would be relegated to the dust bin where they belong.

Fruit of Land and Womb

Wilson continues:

I also take it as read that the Anakim, the sons of Anak whom we meet in the book of Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua, are descended from the Nephilim: “And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (Numbers 13:33). Which is to say that, when Israel first spied out and then conquered the Land, there were very large individuals milling around, who could trace their lineage back to sexual relations between angels and women. Bizarre, admittedly. But biblical.

This claim by the Israelite spies looks like solid evidence only if we ignore the greater Covenant context. Firstly, it must be noted that the spies were executed for their “evil report,” so its veracity must be questioned. It is possible that they were exaggerating in an attempt to deceive their fellows, and simply threw in “of the nephilim” to terrify the Israelites. But does the word refer to an actual tribe whom everyone knew could trace their descent from the antediluvians, or does the Hebrew phrase simply mean “from among the giants”? After all, there were other over-sized warriors in and around the Land of Canaan.

Secondly, the notion that the nephilim as Nephilim, a separate people which somehow managed to survive interbreeding and was able to pass on its genetic attributes through the many centuries following the flood, is not only highly improbable, it also fails to explain how this people evaded inclusion in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, which contains no mention of Anak or Nephilim. Moreover, where were these Nephilim when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sojourned in the Land? The giant Goliath was a Philistine, and we know that the Philistines shared a common descent with the Egyptians as sons of Mizraim, a son of Ham (Genesis 10:6). It seems far more likely that the stature of these people was due more to the abundance of food now available in Canaan than merely genetic factors, just as the average height of various races throughout recent history has increased as diet has improved.

Thirdly, and related to the second point, are we also to assume that the size of the haul of grapes from the Valley of Eshcol is due to its lineage from antediluvian grapes? The point of these observations concerning size is that the barrenness of the land promised to Abraham had been reversed by God, along with the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. The Adamic curses (from Genesis 3) were placed upon Abraham on behalf of all nations that they might be reversed by faith, the kind of faith in God which Adam had not demonstrated. (For more discussion, see Stones and Fruit: Divination and Procreation.) After four centuries, not only would the numerous oak trees planted by Abraham now be fully grown, but the size of the fruit of the Land and the fruit of the womb in the Land (its people) showed that it was now ripe for the taking. The mighty people of the Land were to be crushed like grapes, and their houses and vineyards seized as an inheritance for the righteous. The strength and the possessions of these kingly usurpers would be possessed by a priestly people as a witness to the power of God. Israel would defeat the Canaanites just as David would later bring about the fall of Goliath, the one who had called down the Covenant curses upon the people of God, and ultimately (but indirectly) King Saul, who was also a giant bearing a spear. The mighty men (gibborim) of the earth (including its nephilim) would fall before the mighty men of heaven, those whose victories resulted not from the strength of their limbs but from their faith in God (Psalm 147:10). The grapes of Eshcol were a promise of the same kind of rest enjoyed by Noah, so it should be no surprise that the “heptateuch” (the narrative from Joshua to Judges) follows the sevenfold pattern above. Interestingly, just as the nephilim appear at the centre of the Adamic/Noahic narrative, so David and Solomon appear at the center of the Old Testament narrative (see Destroy This Temple).

Numbers 13:33 can only be regarded as evidence for angel-human sexual relations if we lose our grip on the metanarrative of the Torah, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy. Like many others, Wilson fails to interpret every text within the context of Covenant and thus misses the point of the story.

The End of all Flesh

The question is: why do we care? Besides being an intriguing sideshow that raises smirking questions on training courses, why does it matter? Let me suggest two reasons, both of them apologetic in nature.

The first is that they provide a biblical basis for biological continuity between antediluvians and postdiluvians. (Or, in English: they demonstrate that some people on earth, besides Noah’s family, survived the flood.) If everyone on earth apart from Noah’s family had died, then there would be nobody left who was descended from (min) the Nephilim—but the Anakim show that this is not the case. Therefore it is likely that, even from the perspective of Israelites in the Bronze Age, the cataclysmic flood did not wipe out every single person on planet earth outside the ark. Rather, it suggests that the scope of phrases like “the whole land” (qol erets) and “all mankind” (qol adam) is limited to the ancient Near East. Which, given that this was the entire world known to the writers at the time, is exactly what we would expect. It also indicates that attempts to demonstrate geologically that the flood covered the Himalayas are, at least, unnecessary.

I admire Wilson’s commitment to exegesis for the purpose of apologetics, but he fails on both counts.

Firstly, anyone who claims that the Great Flood was local has overlooked the fact that Adam was intended to be the legal representative of “all flesh.” Due to his failure, and the subsequent failure of the culture established by his offspring, “all flesh” was condemned to die “in him.” If anyone had survived the flood, then there were human beings who were outside of the jurisdiction of God. This also goes for those who claim (with a breathtaking cognitive dissonance and an even greater deficiency in basic logic) that the events in Genesis 2 are simply a “liturgical” description of Adam being chosen from among other human beings and given a special role or office before God. There were no “Adamites.” We are all Adamites. That is the foundation of Paul’s theology of the atonement. No one was outside the Noahic Covenant and no one is outside the jurisdiction of Christ. The separation of the human race came with the call of Abraham, not Adam. To claim otherwise is to pervert the narrative beyond recognition in a game of “kick the can.” Moreover, what was the “Covenantal” reason for the disinheritance of Adam’s contemporaries? Had they sinned in some way before Adam sinned? The miraculous integrity of the narrative exposes any tinkering for what it is: disingenuous theological posturing resulting from cowardice and unbelief. (For more discussion, see “Jenga Bible” in Michael Bull, Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.)

The real reason behind any toleration of the notion of a local flood is a desire to bow to the paganism which currently masquerades as science, the monkey religion which underpins every corruption in Western culture, and is quickly bringing about its end. As a friend once said, evolutionary theory – the unscientific assertion that chaos, sex and death somehow constitute a creative force – is just “Enuma Elish baptised in post-Enlightenment balloon juice.” Any attempt to harmonise the Bible with an old earth, let alone evolution, is an exercise in futility, and requires basic logic to be sacrificed on the altar of a misplaced faith.

However, what really concerns me here is the failure to understand the Promised Land of Canaan as a microcosm of the “dry land” of Genesis. That is the reason why the same word is used. These “lands” were not equivalent in size any more than the Canaanites constituted all the people of the globe. Canaan was to be a sacrificial substitute for the actual “dry land,” serving as its legal representative before God (see Cosmic Language), and this representation was an act of mercy for the peoples of the world. The story of Abraham’s qualification is a local recapitulation of the global narrative from Adam to Noah (see Microcosmic Abram). To claim that these were both local not only misses the point of the ministry of Israel as a nation among nations, but also demonstrates an utter ignorance of the layered construction of Covenant history: the Abrahamic Covenant was not established in place of the Noahic Covenant but within it (see The Myth of Covenant Membership). The “floods” of troops which invaded Israel under the judgment of God were the reason floods of waters could be averted. Indeed, the original “flooding” of Canaan was the armies of Israel come to claim the Land promised to their fathers, and importantly, to execute God’s judgment upon its inhabitants. This brings us to Wilson’s second failure.

Genesis Matters

If we allow an extraneous theory such as angel-human sexual relations to skew our take on the narrative, we find that scales eventually grow over our eyes and we are unable to interpret the text faithfully. This is evident in Wilson’s (and Michael Heiser’s) erroneous explanation of the kherem warfare in the book of Joshua.

The second is that they provide vital context for the kherem warfare that took place in Canaan under Joshua. This is a point I had never seen until I read Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm recently, and in particular his description of the “Deuteronomy 32 worldview,” in which Yahweh has disinherited the nations and assigned them to the rule of lesser gods (Deut 32:8 etc). Heiser explains:

Israel is Yahweh’s elect portion of humanity, and the land of Canaan is the geography that Yahweh, as owner, specifically allotted to his people. In the view of the biblical writers, Israel is at war with enemies spawned by rival divine beings. The Nephilim bloodlines were not like the peoples of the disinherited nations … the target of kherem was the Anakim.

Heiser offers a number of clues that he is right about this. (1) The emphasis on giantism in the initial spying mission (for all that this has since been domesticated in contemporary preaching, the point is not just that the people are large, but that they are descended from rival deities). (2) The explicit statement that the Israelite spies had seen the Nephilim in the Land (Numbers 13:33). The giant-like descriptions of enemies of God who live in the land, from Og (Deuteronomy 3:11) to Goliath (1 Samuel 17) and beyond (2 Samuel 21; 1 Chronicles 20). (4) The way in which the summary of Joshua’s kherem conquests (Joshua 11:21-23) focuses on the obliteration of the Anakim: “And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel.” (5) The fact that the very next verse points forward to the ongoing presence of giants in the land of the Philistines, who of course will be the key enemy for Samson, Samuel, Saul and David for the next couple of centuries: “Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some [Anakim] remain. So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses” (Josh 11:22b-23). If Heiser is right here, then the motive for kherem warfare in Joshua was not merely the cleansing of God’s dwelling place, as we know, but the removal of the giant-like offspring of specific divinities.

So why should we care about the Nephilim and the Anakim? Partly because they help us think through the question of the global/local flood, and partly because they provide crucial context for our understanding of kherem warfare, which is one of the most pressing biblical challenges of our generation. And, of course, we should care about things that are in the Bible. There’s always that.

Wilson’s/Heiser’s misinterpretation of Genesis 6 (or failure to interpret it within the context of the biblical Covenants) renders them utterly clueless concerning the reason for the conquest of Canaan. And when I say clueless, I am not being cruel. They really have no idea what is going on. Instead of taking note of what is actually mentioned in the texts leading up to the kherem warfare, they seem totally oblivious to it, focussing instead on evidence for their bogus doctrine of some fictitious angelic bloodline within humanity. Not only does this lead to them offering a stupid “angel sex” explanation for “one of the most pressing biblical challenges of our generation,” they miss a golden opportunity to truly demonstrate the brilliance and integrity of the book of Genesis, and indeed the entire Bible.

The first and most heinous problem is the switch from the moral accountability of the people in the Promised Land to something which is merely racial or genetic. Modern skeptics love to level the charge of genocide against the nation of Israel (and the one true God) but that can only be done if all the previous texts are ignored. Asserting that the necessary context is found in their errant reading of Genesis 6 does nothing to help matters. The warfare is still genocide, but now the targets are giants. They are not destroyed because they have sinned, what they have done, but because of who they are. Besides the incredible theory concerning their origin, this does nothing at all for Christian apologetics.

When Abraham sojourned in the Land, he did not “call upon” the name of the Lord. He “proclaimed” it. He was an evangelist. The people of Canaan were accountable to God, just as later Gentile nations surrounding Israel became accountable once they heard the way of salvation. The books of the prophets all begin with judgment at the house of God (Garden), work their way out into the disobedient tribes of Israel (Land), then out again into the local Gentiles (World). This pattern originated in the history of Adam-to-Noah. As with that history, the process is chiastic, working back into the Land and then into worship established in a new Garden (Noah’s vineyard). The New Testament, as a Covenant lawsuit against first century Israel does exactly the same thing, which is why the letters to the Gentile Churches are placed before the final warnings to Christian Jews, followed by the book of Revelation which begins with a glorified “son of Adam” surrounded by fiery trees and ends with a barrage of Joshua imagery. Jerusalem would be circumcised – “cut around” with a Roman trench – just as Jericho was marched around by a newly circumcised Israelite army. Jericho was a devoted (kherem) firstfruits of the Land, and Jerusalem was a devoted firstfruits of the World.

But to understand the giving of Canaan to the children of Abraham as an inheritance, we must look further back than Abraham. Noah had cursed Canaan, the son of Ham, pronouncing that he would serve as a slave to both of his brothers (see Out of His Belly). So when we reach the book of Exodus, the fact that the Hebrews were serving as slaves in Egypt, “the Land of Ham,” is intended to strike us with horror. But once again, we are clueless as to what is going on because modern theology – which does not take Genesis seriously – has carved the living Word up as if it were a corpse requiring an autopsy. The descendants of Shem not only destroyed the Land of Ham, they also inherited the Land of Canaan. The context is Noahic, and the conflict in Egypt and the conquest of Canaan are both examples of the rivalry between priesthood and kingdom, and the constant attempts to cut off – not corrupt or hijack – the seed of the Woman. This not only renders the angelic bloodline theory redundant, but it also serves as a witness to those who doubt the integrity of the Bible.

A review of Birds of the Air: Theological Twitter

by Jared Leonard

“Birds of the air dropping bombs on your brain” or “Shot through the heart and you’re to blame”

This isn’t just a collection of tweets; it is more like a quiver of spiritual and cultural crossbow bolts aimed at the heart of secularism and theological syncretism. Mike has a well-oiled crossbow and impeccable aim as each barb pierces and punctures everything from progressive cultural liberalism to ivory tower elitism. Shoot some of these through your social media outlets and enjoy the writhing discomfort of those who enjoy darkness more than light.

“By the imperative, time is formed into a cup, still empty but formed for the special purpose of being filled with the content demanded by the order.”

The Imperative Comes First

Essay by John Barach

As many people have pointed out, in Christian ethics, the indicative precedes the imperative. First God says, “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” and then he gives the Ten Words (“You shall have no other gods before me…”). First Paul tells us what Christ has done and who we are in Christ, and then he summons us to act accordingly. First comes the good news of what God has done for us and then comes the summons to respond in faith and love and new obedience.

But when we look at the very beginning of Scripture, what we discover is that the imperative came first.  God creates the heavens and the earth, and then the first word God speaks is a command: “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).  Now, that’s not the first word in the Bible — first comes the narration, the story of God creating the heavens and the earth, and the description of the earth at the time of creation — but it is the first word recorded that God spoke with regard to that creation. He creates the world. It’s dark, unstructured, and unpopulated, and the Spirit is hovering over the deep. The narrative reminds us that there’s always an indicative implicit in and before the imperative, so that the imperative assumes and develops a personal relationship between commander and commanded, so that the imperative is never mere imperative but rather is a vocation.  Nevertheless, in terms of God’s speech in history, the imperative comes first, and surely that’s significant.

With regard to man, something similar is the case.  In Genesis 2, which develops and expands the account of Day Six in Genesis 1, we learn that when Yahweh God placed Adam in the Garden, he spoke to him: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Here, the first thing Yahweh God says is indicative (“Of every tree of the garden you may eat”), but it’s an indicative indicating permission (as opposed to a mere statement) and is tied to the next clause in the sentence, which is an imperative disguised as an indicative: “you will not eat” is indicative in form but imperative in force, meaning “don’t eat.”  So the permission given in the first clause also shares something of that imperatival character. Again, there is a lot of implicit indicative here, including the personal relationship of Adam to Yahweh God who is his creator and the commander.  But the first thing Yahweh God says to Adam has the force of a permission and a command with regard to the trees, something imperatival in force.

Returning to Genesis 1, we find that God’s work with creation takes the form of a series of imperatives, moving through the days of creation up to the sixth day, when man is created, male and female. While the events in Genesis 2 take place first, before the creation of the woman, in Genesis 1 the first word of God to the pair, to man as the image of God, male and female, again takes the form of an imperative.  God’s first word to Man (male and female) is not a description of creation, not a presentation of all of God’s goodness, not a report about how God made man in his image, not a promise of what God would do for Adam and Woman.  Instead, it’s a command. Sure, it’s a blessing, but it’s a blessing in the imperative: “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:28).  Only after that does he go on, in the indicative, to say that he has given man the green plants and the trees for food (1:29). The first thing Adam and Woman heard from God was an imperative, and surely that’s significant.

In fact, we can go back before the creation of man to the first word God spoke, and again it is an imperative: “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).  That’s not the first word in the Bible — first comes the narration, the story of God creating the heavens and the earth, and the description of the earth at the time of creation — but it is the first word recorded that God spoke with regard to that creation. He creates the world. It’s dark, unstructured, and unpopulated, and the Spirit is hovering over the deep.  But then comes the imperative and things begin to change (“And there was light”). Again, the imperative comes first, and surely that’s significant.

What does an imperative do?  Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s observations are helpful here:

The imperative not only commands the listener; it at the same time lights up an alley of time into the future. A trail into time is beaten by the logic of any order given. A high tension current places the moments following the order under the expectation: will this command be followed up and fulfilled? The term “fulfillment” used in this connection is significant. By the imperative, time is formed into a cup, still empty but formed for the special purpose of being filled with the content demanded by the order. The action following the order is not a blind accident of the moment. By having been ordered, it has become organized into one “time span” which stretches from the moment in which the order was given to the moment in which the report is echoed back: “order fulfilled.” Orders connect two separated human beings into one time span, of which the imperative forms the expectation, the report the fulfillment (The Origin of Speech, 46-47).

When God speaks to man for the first time and uses the imperative instead of the indicative, he is creating what Rosenstock-Huessy calls a “time cup.”  There is now a dramatic tension in the story: Will Adam and Woman obey God? Will they be fruitful and multiply? Will they have dominion over the animals? What will they do in response to God and to his commanding word? His order now orders their lives, revealing to them their calling, their responsibility, their relation to God and to the world– revealing how they are to use and order time.

The imperative creates the story that follows: by creating the expectation and setting the standards for judgment, it makes the story that follows what it is.  Without the imperative, it would just be a story of God creating man and then man doing, well, whatever he felt like. There would be no tension, no expectation, no hope, no sense of satisfaction at a job completed, no disappointment in failure and rebellion, and no corresponding joy at redemption and restoration — by which I mean: restoration to the original task and calling, the calling of maturation, fruitfulness, multiplication, and dominion.

But there was an imperative, an expectation, an impetus forward, creating the story.  It’s a story in which, in an important sense, the indicative does precede the imperative: God takes the initiative (as he does even in the Creation narrative) and man responds; God acts on our behalf so that we then can and do respond to him in trust and obedience.  In all imperatives, there’s at least an implicit indicative that underlies it, as I’ve said above.  But what makes it a story is that it’s a time cup, an imperative-created expectation awaiting fulfillment. We still look forward to man’s fulfilling of the mandate given in Genesis 1 (and so does God), with the joyful certainty because of Christ (here’s the all-important indicative!) that it will be fulfilled. In fact, even the imperative that was God’s first word in his creation (“Let there be light”) has not yet been fulfilled to the fullest extent, and all of history — and all of our lives — are meant to be aspects of that fulfillment until the earth is full of God’s glorious light.

History — the history of the world, and our history — is a time cup, formed by God’s imperatives.

“Far more can be known about the early recorded history of mankind than is generally allowed, and what is revealed by this history is a story that is very different indeed from the one that we are used to hearing.”

Those who take Genesis 1-11 as literal history are considered ignorant by the “more respectable” echelons of Christian academia. But it turns out that it is these scholars who are the ignorant ones, and there is documentary evidence to prove it. Two thousand years of recorded history which corroborates the testimony of the Bible was deliberately ignored and is excluded from the modern curricula. Bill Cooper writes that this evidence is not difficult either to access or to read, which means that much of Christian scholarship has either been duped by secular historians about the historicity of Genesis, or is deliberately lying to the people of God.

Excerpts from Bill Cooper, After The Flood: The Early Post-Flood History Of Europe Traced Back To Noah.

In the Beginning

It is commonly thought in this present age that nothing is worthy of our belief unless first it can be scientifically demonstrated and observed to be true. This idea, known today as empiricism, has been around since the 1920s, and says basically that nothing is to be taken on trust, and that anything which lacks direct corroboration must be discarded from mankind’s fund of knowledge as simply not worth the knowing. Not surprisingly, a special case was made by those who had thought of the idea for including the Bible in this great process of deselection, and it was assumed without further enquiry that nothing in especially the earlier portions of the biblical record could be demonstrated to be true and factual. This applied particularly to the book of Genesis. There all was relegated, by modernist scholars at least, to the realms of myth and fiction, with very little of its contents being said to bear any relevance at all for 20th-century man. Not even a moral relevance was granted. In other words, we were solemnly assured in the light of modern wisdom that, historically speaking, the book of Genesis was simply not worth the paper it was printed on.

When I first came across this problem some thirty years ago, I found it most perplexing. On the one hand I had the Bible itself claiming to be the very Word of God, and on the other I was presented with numerous commentaries that spoke with one voice telling me that the Bible was nothing of the kind. It was merely a hotch-potch collection of middle-eastern myths and fables that sought to explain the world in primitive terms, whose parts had been patched together by a series of later editors. Modern scientific man need have nothing whatever to do with it.

Now, it was not possible for both these claims to be valid. Only one of them could be right, and I saw it as my duty, at least to myself, to find out which was the true account and which was the false. So it was then that I decided to select a certain portion of Genesis and submit it to a test which, if applied to any ordinary historical document, would be considered a test of the most unreasonable severity. And I would continue that test until either the book of Genesis revealed itself to be a false account or it would be shown to be utterly reliable in its historical statements. Either way, I would discover once and for all whether the biblical record was worthy of my trust or not. It seemed a little irreverent to treat a book that claimed to be the very Word of God in such a fashion. But if truth has any substance at all, then that book would surely be able to bear such a test. If Genesis contained any falsehood, error or misleading statement of fact, then a severe testing would reveal it and I would be the first to add my own voice to those of all the other scholars who declared the book of Genesis to be little more than fable.

With any ordinary historical document, of course, a simple error or even a small series of errors, would not necessarily disqualify it from being regarded as an historical account, or one that could at least be made use of by historians. But Genesis is no ordinary record. No ordinary document would claim inerrancy in its statements, and any document which did make such a claim for itself could expect a thorough and severe drubbing at the hands of scholars. But, if Genesis was indeed a true account of what had happened all those years ago, it if was indeed everything that it claimed itself to be, then the truth that it proclaimed could not be destroyed by any amount of testing. It could only be vindicated. In that regard at least, truth is indestructible.

…when, over my twenty-five years of research, that confirmatory evidence grew past 40% to 50%, and then 60% and beyond, it soon became apparent that modern wisdom in this matter was wide of the mark. Very wide of the mark indeed. Today I can say that the names so far vindicated in the Table of Nations make up over 99% of the list…

What I had not expected at the time was the fact that the task was to engage my attention and energies for more than twenty-five years. Nor had I expected the astonishing degree to which Genesis, particularly the tenth and eleventh chapters, was to be vindicated. These chapters are conveniently known to scholars as the Table of Nations, and the sheer breadth and depth of the historical evidence that was available for their study astonished me. It bore very little relation indeed to wheat I had been led to expect. But that was not the only surprise in store.

The test that I devised was a simple one. If the names of the individuals, families, peoples and tribes listed in the Table of Nations were genuine, then those same names should appear also int he records of other nations of the Middle East. Archaeology should also reveal that those same families and peoples are listed in Genesis (or not as the case may be) in their correct ethnological, geographical and linguistic relationships. I allowed for the fact that a good proportion of these names would not appear. Either the records that once contained them had long since perished, or the diversity of language and dialect had rendered them unrecognisable. Some would be lost in obscurity. It simply was not realistic to expect that every name would have been recorded in the annals of the ancient Middle East and would also have survived to the present day. I therefore would have been content to have found say 40% of the list vindicated. In fact that would have been a very high achievement given the sheer antiquity of the Table of Nations itself and the reported sparsity of the surviving extra-biblical records from those ancient times. But when, over my twenty-five years of research, that confirmatory evidence grew past 40% to 50%, and then 60% and beyond, it soon became apparent that modern wisdom in this matter was wide of the mark. Very wide of the mark indeed. Today I can say that the names so far vindicated in the Table of Nations make up over 99% of the list, and I shall make no further comment on that other than to say that no other ancient historical document of purely human authorship could be expected to yield such a level of corroboration as that! And I will add further that modern biblical commentators must make of it what they will.

But the test didn’t stop there. I had determined at the very beginning that the test was to be one of unreasonable severity, so even the astonishing level of vindication so far achieved did not fully satisfy the requirements of the test. The reason for this was simple. The Table of Nations was written in the Middle East. But all the records consulted by me in investigating that Table were also written in the Middle East. I therefore decided that the test should continue beyond those geographical bounds, and I carried the search into the records of the early peoples of Europe. I wanted to see firstly whether the same patriarchs mentioned in Genesis were evident in the most ancient genealogies and chronicles of the peoples of Europe, and I wanted also to assess the level at which these early peoples were aware of other events mentioned in Genesis. The important part of this test was that the documents and records consulted by me had to date from before the time that any given European nation was converted to Christianity. That was because it is too often alleged by certain scholars that the early Christian church, particularly the monastic community, was given to forgery and invention. So only documents that pre-dated the coming of Christianity and its forging monks to a particular nation whose records I was consulting would be considered. This part of the test was crucial and was to yield as great a level of vindication for the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis as the first part of the test…

Where to begin?

History has never been so popular. The man in the street has never been so well informed about his past as he is today. And yet it is a sad and unhappy fact that for all that has been said, written and broadcast about the early and more recent history of mankind, there remains a very large body of historical evidence that is mostly poised over in silence by today’s scholars. And because it is passed over by today’s scholars, it never reaches today’s general public.

I say that this is sad because it is not as if this vast fund of knowledge is hard to get at. On the contrary, every fact that you are about to read is available to anyone who takes the trouble to look. And each fact can be obtained cheaply enough. It does not lie in obscure libraries about which no one has heard or to which none can gain access. Nor is it written in languages or scripts that cannot be deciphered. Indeed, scholars have been aware of the existence of this vast body of information for many years. So why is it passed over in such silence?

Why is it, for example, that no modern book on the early history of Britain goes back beyond the year 55 BC, the year when Julius Caesar made his first attempt to invade these islands? We may read in such books of this culture or that people, this stone age or that method of farming. But we will read of no particular individual or of any particular event before the year 55 BC. This has the unfortunate effect of causing us to believe that this is because there exists no written history for those pre-Roman times, and that when they landed in Britain the Roman encountered only a bunch of illiterate savages who had no recorded history of their own. But our conclusion would be wrong, for we will see as our study progresses that the Britons whom the Romans encountered were, on the admission of the Romans themselves, a people who could teach the Romans a thing or two about the finer arts of warfare, and who left a clear and written record of themselves dating back to the very earliest years of their existence as a nation.

These records still survive, and we shall be considering them in some detail. We shall also be examining many other ancient records that various peoples have left behind them and we shall note with interest the story that is told by each one of these documents. Far more can be known about the early recorded history of mankind than is generally allowed, and what is revealed by this history is a story that is very different indeed from the one that we are used to hearing. But where to begin?

When applied to the Table of Nations, this healthy historical research yields some surprising facts, surprising that is, in the light of what most commentaries go to such great lengths to assure us of, namely that Genesis is not be trusted as accurate history.

We must being our investigations with one of true oldest historical documents in the world. This document comprises the tenth and eleventh chapters of the book of Genesis and is known to scholars as The Table of Nations. However, when I use the word ‘document’, it must be understood that this in no way subscribes to the erroneous view propagated by Julius Wellhausen and his colleagues int he 19th century regarding the much-vaunted but still fashionable ‘documentary hypothesis’ of biblical criticism. That hypothesis was designed to be destructive of any impression that the Genesis record in particular was a reliable source of historical information, whereas the objective of our present study lies in entirely the opposite direction. But it does recognise the fact that the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis consist of a self-contained unit of information that is complete even if read in isolation from the rest of the Genesis account. In that sense, at least, it forms a document that we may study in isolation. But how accurate is that document? Most scholars today would renounce it as unreliable, and some would dismiss it from any further discussion by attaching to it labels of ‘myth’ and ‘pious fiction’, favourite terms among modern scholars, thus assuring their readers that its study, and especially faith in its accuracy, is a waste of time. These terms and labels will become more familiar to us as we come across a great many extra-biblical records that substantiate rather than undermine the Genesis account, but their over-use by certain scholars has left the definite impression that the modernist protests too much, and when applied as often as they are to so many historical records, they become tired and meaningless phrases that convey no information at all. There is doubtless method in this academic madness, given the question that if Genesis cannot be relied upon when it comes to stating accurately simple historical facts, then how can it be relied upon when stating higher truths? But the over-use of such labels becomes wearisome and ultimately meaningless, and is of no service whatever to healthy historical research.

When applied to the Table of Nations, this healthy historical research yields some surprising facts, surprising that is, in the light of what most commentaries go to such great lengths to assure us of, namely that Genesis is not be trusted as accurate history. This became very clear when I first began my researches into the Table of Nations, and the nature of those researches is as follows.

When we consider the truly vast body of evidence from the Middle East that is conveniently ignored in modern commentaries on the book of Genesis, such wholesale omission will appear as hardly surprising. Yet perhaps the reader is unaware of the sheer scale of this omission…

Having constructed the Table of Nations into a simple genealogy, I wanted to see how many of its names were attested in the records of other nations in the Middle East, which indued for my purposes all the nations of Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and even Greece. It was an obvious procedure, but one that had not, as far as I was aware, been conducted before and the results published. I had already found certain individual names that were mentioned in scattered works of varying merit, often Victorian, but the whole had never been gathered together into one cohesive study. And so my research began. Over the years, little by little, pieces of corroborative evidence came together and a picture bang to build up that revealed the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis to be an astonishingly accurate record of events. The Table of Nations had listed all the families and tribes of mankind in their correct groupings, whether those groupings were ethnological, linguistic or geographical. All the names, without exception, were accurate, and in more than twenty-five years of searching and analysing, I uncovered not one mistake or false statement of fact in the Table of Nations.

It has to be said here that such a result could simply not be expected or obtained from any comparable historical document, especially one as ancient as this. The Table of Nations embraces a sweeping panorama of history that is not only truly vast in its content but unique. Its like simply does not exist…

…throughout the Table of Nations, whether we talk about the descendants of Shem, Ham or Japheth, every one of their names is found in the records of the early surrounding nations of the Middle East, even the many obscure names of certain remote Arab tribes that are otherwise not evident in any modern history book of the times, and enough is available for a detailed history to be written about them. It is a phenomenon of immense implications. These records were mostly written (and then lost until their rediscovery in modern times) during the Old Testament period, during which time many of the peoples mentioned in them had vanished altogether from the historical scene or had been assimilated into other more powerful nations and cultures. Even those who retained their national or tribal identities soon lost all trace and memory of their own beginnings and went on to invent fantastic accounts of how they came to be. Indeed, the very early emergence of such mythological invention and the exceedingly rapid growth of paganism is a very telling point indeed against the modernist motion that Genesis is a late composition, for many of the names recorded with such astonishing accuracy in the Table of Nations, had disappeared from the historical scene many centuries before the time in which modernism would say that the Table of Nations was written. The Table of Nations, it thus seems, is a very ancient document indeed.

I cannot think of any other literate nation on earth that has managed to obliterate from its own history books two thousand years or more of recorded and documented history. Not even the censors of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China in their vigorous hey-day were this effective…

In time, of course, the true histories of several of these early nations became obscured beyond all recognition. Josephus was given good cause to complain that this had happened to the Greeks of his own day, and he lamented the fact that by obscuring their own history, they had obscured the histories of other nations also. Yet by no means all of the early nations were to follow this path. We shall see that many kept an accurate record down the centuries of their beginnings and wrote down the names of their founding patriarchs, bringing the records up to date with the advent of each new generation, and it is these records that provide us with such a surprising link between the ancient post-Flood era depicted in Genesis and the history of more modern times. These lists, annals and chronicles have been preserved and transmitted from generation to generation not by the nations of the Middle East this time, but by certain European peoples from times that long pre-dated the coming of Christianity, and it is most important that we remember the pre-Christian aspect of much of the following evidence, for it is too easily and too often alleged by modernist scholars that these records are the inventions of early Christian monks and are therefore worthless. Such claims of fraud will be examined in detail, particularly with regard to the records that the early Britons have left us and which are omitted in their entirety from modern history books, the media and the classroom.

When we consider the truly vast body of evidence from the Middle East that is conveniently ignored in modern commentaries on the book of Genesis, such wholesale omission will appear as hardly surprising. Yet perhaps the reader is unaware of the sheer scale of this omission, for the records of the early Britons, and that’s not counting the Irish Celtic, Saxon and continental records which we shall also be examining, cover not just a particular phase of history, but span more than two thousand years of it. I cannot think of any other literate nation on earth that has managed to obliterate from its own history books two thousand years or more of recorded and documented history. Not even the censors of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China in their vigorous hey-day were this effective, or even needed to be this effective, in doctoring their own official accounts. So how did this extraordinary circumstance come about, and who is responsible for it?

By way of a refreshing change, we cannot lay the blame entirely at the door of those evolutionary Victorian and later educationalists and philosophers who laid the foundations of our modern curricula. They are surely to blame for much else that is amiss, but this time the story begins long before their age and influence…

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” John 15:1

One of the problems with exalting Enlightenment thinking over the Scriptures is that it disconnects theology from the real world. One is left to wade through and deal with the sometimes stimulating but mostly irrelevant tomes of philosophers who jettisoned our only source of light. The main reason modern Christians need to be up-to-speed on philosophy is to deal with godless philosophers in terms they can understand. I don’t consider myself to be up-to-speed, but from what I have read, many if not most of the questions they consider to be profound are really just the shadows left once Jesus is locked out. The average man has more pressing matters to contend with, and subsequently has a better grip on real life. For instance, we can spend hours swatting every available philosopher and lawyer on the existence or nature of natural law, and interact with all of them, or we could just ask the man on the land.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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Something a bit off-brand today, so don’t let it throw you. The beauty of true theology is that it is at home anywhere, applicable in any situation, and has something to say in the most mundane, most visceral, most public, and least abstract, situations.

The Saddest Dilemma

Firstly, a thoughtful and compassionate online friend posted an article which calls our attention to the need for more funding of government services for children who are at risk.

It does need priority, but that would just be a bandaid. This simply is not government’s role, and government cannot do any better regardless of funding levels. It is the role of the Church in each of its parishes/communities to evaluate and help out on a personal level. The society which rejected the Church and its care is suffering the consequences, and as it always turns out, those who suffer most are the children.

If we banish the Church from our hearts and homes, the vacuum will be filled by the State, which was not created or ordained to fulfill this type of ministry. As long as we think this is a government problem rather than a community problem, it will only get worse. This applies to Church institutions to some degree as well. Those who work tirelessly in the system are to be admired, but a system is a machine. The Church is a living body. The first man was tested to qualify him as a tree of righteousness, that is, food and shelter. There is no true shelter without prior reference to and submission to God.

Big Bang Theory Ratings Fall

A possible Nobel-prize winning discovery is the existence of a signal left in the sky by the super rapid expansion of space just after the Big Bang. I ridiculed a Christian friend’s posting of this and copped it (probably rightly) but an integrated worldview means that nothing escapes its attention. Every statement must be rightly discerned.

It’s a terrible thing for Christians to succumb to dogma which blatantly contradicts the Bible and supports a worldview which is quite directly tearing our society apart. This is not a side issue for the Church. I can understand the pressure upon people, especially academics, but it isn’t that hard to sort the empirical science from the dogma. Yes, they have discovered something, but they immediately  take it as evidence for a theory which is losing ratings even among the ranks of secular scientists, and conveniently leave out all the problems with the theory because it doesn’t fit their godless narrative. This stuff matters.

Refugee Support

Another friend posted a speech given recently by a senior local man who spends a lot of his time helping refugees. His charity is admirable and a great example but his accusations against Australia’s new government and their policy concerning “boat people” are lacking some understanding. As usual, this has to do with focussing only on individuals, beginning with his own story as a refugee from the Holocaust.

Governments have to make big picture decisions. Do we help out the local single mum? Yep. Do we subsidize single mums with taxpayer money so single motherhood becomes an epidemic, which leads to much greater levels of delinquency, further societal breakdown and even greater costs? No. Helping the single mother is the responsibility of the community. As above, this is a personal ministry. Welfare is not generosity. Too often it is enablement and even encouragement. This gentleman might change his mind if he spent a week in government faced with the tough decisions rulers have to make. A view of the big picture might help him to see the difference between the sovereign responsibility of government and the responsibility of a community to be gracious. It’s not a simple issue because these two issues are related. Should we do more to help asylum seekers? Yes. Should we encourage people to risk their lives to get here through lax border protection? No. It will make things worse, a lot worse. Most of this confusion is the result of deluded secularists (usually working in public education) putting the responsibility of the state in the place of the Church, which it despises. The problem is that they will never understand how indispensable the Church’s role in community is. And the products of public education, even many Christians, are too often sucked in by the well-meaning but short-sighted compassion of unwitting statists.

Thou art the man

And finally, a lot of Christians are saying even nastier things about Mark Driscoll, now that he has publicly repented of things which other “celebrity pastors” will never repent of. Imagine if God was like that. Thank God He isn’t.

A message of grace will attract people but only a culture of grace will keep them, and a culture of grace includes repentance and forgiveness. This sort of apology by Driscoll is exactly what is missing from just about any authority you can name in our culture.

Regarding Driscoll himself, he might go off the tracks with a passion, but he gets back on them just as passionately. It seems to me most people fail to realize that his obvious weaknesses are the flipside of his obvious strengths. In other words, he has a spine, and he’s passionate, things which many of his Christian critics will never understand. God has done more through this flawed man than He could ever do with the armies of cowardly pastors who hide in their churches, never take any risks for the sake of the Gospel, and are not willing to be bold for the sake of the truth. And I’m not talking about sizes of churches here. There are many courageous men who have small churches. But there are many cowards who do nothing but hide and criticize.

Driscoll has stumbled numerous times but he just keeps getting back up again. God asked Adam what he did wrong and he blamed everyone else. So did King Saul. Driscoll is taking the blame, and it disempowers the devil every time. His critics really ought to start reading the Bible. The narrative concerning King David might be good start. Driscoll is a real man of God, like David, and he has the faults and the faith to prove it.

One of my favorite maxims is “The person who says it can’t be done often gets run over by the person doing it.”

“Things ain’t cookin’ in my kitchen
Strange affliction wash over me
Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire
Couldn’t conquer the blue sky…” [1]

Today, the Australian government’s carbon tax repeal bills cleared Parliament’s lower house. They will be voted upon in the Senate next year. To see this reported as an act of climate vandalism by the media isn’t a surprise. What is surprising is the consternation of many Christians.

One facebook acquaintance summarized some data from the national broadcaster’s “vote compass,” a site which was set up prior to the recent federal election. The voter enters their leanings on certain issues and the site tells them which party best represents their views. He writes:

Compared to other religious affiliations, Protestants are the least welcoming of asylum seekers, least concerned about climate, least supportive of foreign aid, most supportive of increasing military spending, least supportive of mining tax increases, least supportive of constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians, least supportive of a faster NBN, least supportive of public services, most supportive of CSG and least supportive of workplace protections.

NB Before anyone complains, the results have been weighted by census data, so with a huge sample size (1.4m), it is basically irrelevant that it was a self-selected sample.

This gentleman is concerned about the future of the planet, mostly for the sake of his young son. He has spent years reading the science concerning climate and is understandably worried. But for the Christian, there ought to be some biblical “pillars” undergirding one’s worldview. The first one is Bible history and the second one is Bible prophecy. That probably sounds boring, but if you’ve been around this blog long you should know by now that I rarely take the reader where he expects. Because that’s boring.

Bad Science

When it comes to climate science, we have more data than we know what to do with. As someone who loves to look for patterns in things, I can understand the desire of scientists not only to figure out what is going on, but also to predict future weather.

Looking for patterns begins with past records, and it is here that modern climate science is revealed as the victim of modern philosophy, that is, Darwinism.

We are told that 97% of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change. But 98% of palaeontologists believe in evolution, and they are wrong. What is more relevant is that these two consensuses are related.

I don’t deny the data used to support climate alarm, just as I don’t deny the stuff palaeontologists dig out of the ground, or pretend that the devil put it here. What I deny is the story of how it came about. The stories told by modern science are all based upon their deluded revision of the history of the planet. If we deny the historicity and reliability of the book of Genesis, all our science will be wrong. We will be basing our models upon a past that never really happened. How so?

The Creation event itself is fundamental, but the catastrophic global flood seems to have a direct bearing on climate data. Tas Walker writes:

I just listened to a podcast by climate scientist Murry Salby to the Sydney Institute entitled “Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources.”

During question time toward the end of the recording (55min 15sec) he says:

Just a historical note, the guy who started this was a Swedish chemist whose lab I used to work at Stockholm by the name of Arrhenius. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry and for his understanding of the temperature dependence of chemical reactions he got the Nobel Prize. He got into this and he started the whole global warming thing because he was actually trying to explain ice ages and he saw CO2 varied and temperature varied and he figured maybe CO2 caused the Ice Age. Now I don’t think anyone believes that anymore …

In other words, the whole idea that global warming is caused by CO2 came out of the need to explain what caused the Ice Age—a mystery that still eludes modern scientists.

In the Wikipedia entry on Arrhenius it says:

He was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming. Arrhenius clearly believed that a warmer world would be a positive change. From that, the hot-house theory gained more attention. Nevertheless, until about 1960, most scientists dismissed the hot-house / greenhouse effect as implausible for the cause of ice ages as Milutin Milankovitch had presented a mechanism using orbital changes of the earth (Milankovitch cycles). Nowadays, the accepted explanation is that orbital forcing sets the timing for ice ages with CO2 acting as an essential amplifying feedback.

Note the term “amplifying feedback”. This means that Milankovitch cycles are not enough to explain the Ice Ages, which is understandable considering the relatively small variations in orbital parameters for the earth. So, they added a positive feedback mechanism from CO2. A positive feedback means the system is unstable, which explains why many scientists today are concerned about global warming and the earth reaching an unstable tipping point.

The problem is that these scientists have ignored the huge climate catastrophe of Noah’s Flood. By ignoring the Flood they cannot explain the post-Flood (Pleistocene) Ice Age. The Ice Age was the earth’s thermal response to the massive climate shock caused by the biblical Flood. It was largely the volcanic activity during that year-long event that produced the necessary conditions—warm oceans and volcanic dust high in the atmosphere. But the earth returned to equilibrium in about 700 years, demonstrating that it is a stable system. The biblical Flood provides the only explanation for the Ice Age.

See how a wrong understanding of the true history of the earth leads to a misunderstanding of what is happening in the present. And a wrong understanding will lead to wrong decisions about what we need to do.

So, the stupidity of evolution and the stupidity of modern climate science are directly related. They both misinterpret the data because they both base their interpretations on uniformitarian assumptions.

Bad science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a result of something. Evolutionists constantly tell us that their science is constantly under review “because that’s how science works,” while they desperately protect their failing dogmas from real scientific criticisms. Bad science is the product of bad philosophy, which is in reality a bad religion, a religion which goes way back.

Bad Religion

98% of palaeontologists might be evolutionists, but 98% of westerners are now statists, and they, too, are wrong. Statism is believing the government is god, and in control of prosperity, and now it seems even the weather. A climate action rally in Sydney last weekend was rained on, creating a sea of colourful umbrellas. This action was most likely the peak of effectiveness for this endeavour, the weather equivalent of putting a paper bag over one’s head in a nuclear attack.

It is bad enough seeing Christians sucked into a “science” which cannot tell the future because it rejects the past. It is worse when these intelligent Christians believe the government can do anything about it. If Protestants are the least concerned about the left wing issues mentioned above, the reason might not be that Protestants don’t care about them, but because Protestants are far less likely to fall for statism and its pretenses. They know that government is rarely the solution, and usually the problem. There’s a reason that good government and prosperity flowed from Christianity, and then Protestantism. God blesses obedience. The entire world was blessed through the principles of the British Empire, which brought good government when it arrived and left it as a blessing when it departed. But Protestants understand that good government is an extension of Christianity, and not itself the spring of life. Without Christ, Western Culture cannot be “progressive.” It amazes me how incapable these progressives are of perceiving their progress as a reversion to paganism.

On a panel TV show on the national broadcaster recently, entitled “Dangerous Ideas,” one panelist jokingly said that abortion “until the age of 30″ might be a good idea. Without realizing it, these fools have become basically pagan, albeit in a new guise. Sacrifice your children and give your wealth to the weather gods. Whatever their “scientific” pretense, the only real option to true Christianity is baalism. Science without God promised to make Man into god, the manipulator of nature. Modern man got more than he bargained for apparently—anthropogenic climate change. Frustratingly, the weather is not a vehicle we know how to drive properly. It possesses a seemingly infinite number of variables. Like your average shopping cart on swivelling wheels, it seems to have a mind of its own. It does have a mind of its own but it is not mechanistic. The weather is the chariot of God, and He never takes His hand off the wheel. [2]

Covenant Science

As Gary North observed, “power religion” assumes control over nature through “stimulation,” whether that be oblations to the gods, infant sacrifice, or religious prostitution. Nature is Man’s to manipulate. Man makes the miracles.

“Dominion religion,” however, is a different process. The blessings of abundance, of “increase,” are to be gained miraculously, but at the hand of God, not through manipulation but through obedience. This is what we see in the life of Joseph. Wherever he served, his faithfulness resulted in abundance. His masters recognized that the Spirit of God was with him.

Modern science was the direct result of men who submitted to God. The amazing discoveries and advances we enjoy were all gifts to the minds of men by the Spirit of God. Because we were made in the image of God, we can use these gifts as blessings or as curses. Nuclear fission and genetic modification of food are prime examples. This is because every gift is intended to bring greater judicial maturity.

Our leaders do esteem “ethics,” but not God’s ethics. They intend to do what is right, but what is right in their own eyes, not the eyes of God, who can see much further and whose sight is far keener.

Watching commentators from the Right and the Left argue about how much taxation is right, and where those dollars should be spent to solve our problems, is frustrating. An example might be the current desire to spend untold millions on mental health. Nobody ever mentions sin. Why does no one ever mention that infidelity costs Australia between 3 and 6 billion dollars every year, not to mention the resulting delinquency of children and burgeoning mental health problems? If anybody, even jokingly, suggested that it would be good if we all tried to keep the Ten Commandments, they would be ridiculed and shouted down. Religion is a private matter, they would say. And what goes on in the bedroom is nobody else’s business.

Turns out it is everybody’s business. These educated people are extremely stupid.

Based on the blessings and curses of the One who rides a chariot of fire in a cloud of glory, anthropogenic climate change is indeed possible. In Deuteronomy 28, Moses gave Israel a great list of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. These cover the natural realm (the Land and the womb) as well as Israel’s economic status in relation to other nations. Land, womb and nations sounds very Abrahamic. That’s because it is, and it is also the reason Israel suffered so many famines in her history. It was always the result of the shedding of innocent blood.

And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God… Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord xwill cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven way. The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. (Deuteronomy 28:1, 6, 7, 12)

But if the Covenant, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, now includes all nations, is it beyond possibility that God would bless a faithful, obedient nation or culture with good weather, with rain in due season, with a decrease in mutating diseases or problems like food allergies, diabetes, autism and cancer? Is it beyond possibility that the reason for our food allergies may be deeper than we think, and related to the fact that we no longer say grace before our meals?

I am a postmillennialist, and thus an optimist. This is not only because of the way in which I interpret Scripture but also my faith in the character of God. Peak oil and a climate tipping point don’t seem to fit with Jesus’ plan for the world. He kept fingers off red buttons during the Cold War and He will continue to restrain evil until His work is done and His words are vindicated before all nations.

Things this side of the final judgment will never be perfect, but things are getting better, thanks to the many blessings brought about by the incarnation and resurrection, the Scriptures, and two millennia of Christianity. All improvement comes from the Spirit of Christ, whether it be in medicine, technology or even widespread literacy (another problem which the idiot statists believe can be solved with money). If we do not wish to lose these blessings, we need to humble ourselves and repent before God as a culture. Stopping the murder of the unborn, the shedding of innocent blood, is the first place to start. The goddess of “sexual freedom” behind these murders would be next. This cultural repentance can only occur if it begins in the Church, the source of all new spiritual life, and the guardian of the sacred heart of any nation.

Certainly, climate science is not a simple issue, and we must keep our wits about us, but we must not surrender to the baalism of the secular state, which calls us to sacrifice our children for prosperity and give our wealth to the weather gods. These people have unimaginable amounts of data at their fingertips, yet they interpret it all in the dim light of their naturalist fantasy. CO2 is a “Day 3″ blessing from God, oil (and other fossil fuels) is a “Day 4″ blessing from God. As history moves from Garden to City, who knows what our good God has in store for us next. The 20th Century brought blessings and curses which would have been unimaginable in the 19th. Like Joseph, we just need to trust and obey, let the Pharaohs be humbled by their bad dreams, and let God bring the increase. Our Joseph is always one step ahead of the weather.

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[1] The title refers to the song “Weather With You” by Crowded House.
[2] For some more thoughts on the weather, concerning “the sons of thunder,” see Jesus’ New Broom.

Part II – The Black Sabbath

“For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night,
in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.” (Exodus 40:8)

Continued from The Household of Faith – 1

“You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:3)

Israel took the man who was collecting kindling on the Sabbath and nipped his sin in the bud. His intentions were plain, so they wanted to know what should be done with him. It sounds brutal, but Exodus and Leviticus give us a plethora of strange laws for Israelites. At least, they seem strange until we understand that not only was Sinai replicated in the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle was to be replicated in every Israelite tent, and indeed in every Israelite. Every household was a tent of God, a cloud, and every Israelite a burning star in the sky. The tribes were, after all, arranged around the tent in military “constellations.” This new Black Sabbath was to reconnect every tent with its source, the tent of God.

The man executed for collecting kindling is referred to not as an Adam but as an Ish. Ish is Adam’s “new name,” a Covenant/bridal name, in Genesis 2. It may be related to the word for fire. “Strange fire” is thus spiritual harlotry, and this man is a Covenant breaker. He has put his own household, his own authority, above the authority of God. Perhaps the reason his actual motives are not recorded is the same reason such things are not recorded elsewhere in the Bible. It is to force us to contemplate the events in the fiery light of the Law. We are called to judge these situations, just as Israel did in this instance. This is one time they got it right. [1]

What was the reason for the introduction of the Mosaic Law? It was because of transgressions, not merely those of this generation, but also of the tribal heads, the lawless brothers of Joseph. The multiplication of Israel into a nation required a national law, although, as suggested above, this law also made every Israelite a “living sacrifice.” Its ethical, ceremonial and civil elements cannot be untangled from each other, any more than Father, Son and Spirit could be divided.

On the Sabbath day, the only fire was to be God’s fire. The only warmth, God’s warmth. The only light, God’s light. To have one other light visible among the tents would be to claim autonomy. Perhaps this darkness was a disciplinary measure after the idolatry of the golden calf. Without a fire for every household, the Sabbath would have resembled the ninth plague in Egypt, where the entire land but for Goshen was veiled in darkness. And Goshen was a Garden. A single brightness coming from the tent of meeting would be like the flaming sword at the Gate of God. Every Sabbath would be a reminder that Israel had failed to enter into God’s rest.

Immediately after this new commandment, Moses called for donations for the construction of the Tabernacle. This was a new creation. Light and darkness had been divided, with only the light of God visible. That was Day 1. Now the construction of a new house began.

At the end of this process, the glory of God moved in, and those who had been in darkness saw a great light. This building process takes us from Day 1 to Day 7, and we see a correspondence in Israel’s entire festal year, with one major difference.

The Sabbath Week becomes the “first day” in a sense, as a pattern for the entire year. And the Feast of Booths becomes Day 7, when Israel, after the Day of Atonement, has been purified, and is now ready to invite all nations to participate. It is at this feast that every house becomes a “glory cloud.” At the Feast of Booths (Ingathering), every house had its own fire. In this great international feast, Israel symbolically entered into God’s rest. Instead of a Black Sabbath like that of Adam, God became the father of lights. His promises would still come to pass.

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[1] For a manifold revelation of how often we moderns misjudge the events of Genesis, get a copy of James B. Jordan’s Primeval Saints.

“And as he prayed, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his clothing was white and glistening.” (Luke 9:29, King James 2000 Bible)

The Tabernacle was covered in three layers: linen, red-dyed ramskin, and a third layer of tachash. What’s tachash? The word is a mystery, and there have been many suggestions concerning its meaning, from unicorn to dolphin. But perhaps that mystery has now been solved. And the glistening solution is nothing like you’d imagine in a million years.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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