Floods and other wholesale destructions of humanity: Noah, the valley drowned around Philemon and Baucis, the first people of the Popol Vuh, and Sekhmet’s slaughter stopped with red beer.
Lamech named his son for rest. Noah built a chest sealed with the letters of atonement, fed every creature in it for a year, sent out the dove, and woke from his wine to curse a grandson. Read beside the giants of 1 Enoch, the birds of Gilgamesh, Peter’s eight souls, the dove at the…
Ra sends his Eye against the humans who plot against him, then floods the fields with beer dyed red to stop the slaughter he ordered. Creation, rebellion, substitution, and a sun that has to be reborn every night.
By the fourth chapter of Genesis the named population of the earth is four people, and one of them has just killed another. The murderer then says something that makes no sense in a world containing three people. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy…
Genesis 6:4 ends with a phrase that belongs to Homer more than to Moses. The children born to the sons of God by the daughters of men, it says, became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. That is heroic vocabulary. It is the language a poet uses of Achilles or of Gilgamesh,…
