Shabbat Shalom.

Well, here we are, in the week of Noach. This is probably my second-favorite parashah of the entire Torah year. It’s a favorite because, when it’s properly understood, it explains so much about world history, as well as about God, and yet it is so often either misunderstood, or dismissed as a fictional parable. So I thought rather than trying to fit all my thoughts about Noach and the flood into my commentary tomorrow, that I would be better off teaching about that tonight, when we have more time and space to really dig in and study.

So tonight, we’re going to try and cover three main points. First, who was Noach? Second, what can we take away from the flood narrative? And third, what was the aftermath of this experience on Noach?

The reason I think it’s so important to really understand Noach and the flood is because, perhaps more than any portion of the Torah, aside from B’resheet – Genesis, this is a parashah that has been cited as a reason for unbelief. The origins of man, and the flood of Noach have long been a focal point for the sciences to attack and discredit the Bible, and to foster unbelief. Now, it may require faith to believe these early chapters of Genesis, but I hope, by the end of tonight, you’ll agree that it doesn’t have to be a blind faith.

So, who was Noach?

Well, let’s start with what the Torah says explicitly at the beginning of the parashah.

Genesis 6:9
Here is the history of Noach. In his generation, Noach was a man righteous and wholehearted; Noach walked with God.

That’s not much, is it? In fact, after saying here’s his history, we get all of 14 words. The rest of the passage defines Noach not by his history, but by his actions – specifically, how he responds to Adonai. Is this all we know of the man, Noach? Not at all.

In this picture we see the most popularly-accepted image of Noach. There he is, standing on the deck of the ark, releasing a dove. He’s old and wearing robes and looking a bit like a cross between a first-century high priest and a first-century citizen of Rome. In fact, some might suggest he bears a striking resemblance to Socrates or Plato.

Now, there are many things wrong with this image, and we’ll get to several of them tonight. But is that all we can know about Noach? Not yet. We have this, courtesy of the Jewish Dictionary:

JewishDictionary.org
Noah: Son of Lamech and the ninth in descent from Adam. In the midst of abounding corruption he alone was “righteous and blameless in his generations” and “walked with God” (Gen. 6:9). Hence, when all his contemporaries were doomed to perish by the divine judgment in punishment for their sins, he “found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. 6:8).

We also know that Noach’s grandfather was Methuselah, from the genealogy given earlier in B’resheet. Methuselah was the son of Enoch (or, Hanokh, according to the Complete Jewish Bible). And this is important to understand.

Here is what the Bible says about Noach’s great-grandfather, Enoch:

Genesis 5:21-25
Enoch lived sixty-five years and fathered Methuselah. After Methuselah was born, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had sons and daughters. In all, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and then he wasn’t there, because God took him.

Enoch, to whom the book of Enoch is attributed, we are told that he walked with God, and then he wasn’t there because God took him. Can you imagine living so perfectly within God’s will, trusting in him so completely, that he would spare you from tasting death? Only two figures in the Tenakh are given this privilege: one is Enoch, and the other is the prophet Elijah.

So, while Noach was the only one righteous left on the Earth in his generation, we can see that walking with God was something that ran in his family line. A Jewish tradition about Methuselah says that Methuselah prayed for Adonai to bless his father, Enoch, and it was in part because of Methuselah’s selfless and righteous prayer that Enoch escaped death.

Let’s take a closer look at Noach’s family tree. Who among them did Noach know? Well, not Enoch. By the time of Noah’s birth, Enoch had been transmitted to paradise by Adonai for 69 years. So he didn’t know his great-grandfather.

Noach did, however, know his righteous grandfather, Methuselah. In fact, according to Jewish tradition, it was for Methuselah’s sake that the flood was delayed by Adonai until Noach reached his 600th year, and after Methuselah passed, there was a week of mourning allowed for his passing, and then the flood waters began to rise. If you look at the ages given for all of this, it works out. Methuselah did indeed die in the year of the flood.

What about Noach’s father, Lemekh? Well, Lemekh wasn’t around for any of it. He had Noach when he was 182 and lived for only 413 more years. Lemekh had been gone for 87 years when Noach was called by God to build the ark, and gone 187 years by the time the flood waters came upon the earth.

So from this, we learn that the line of the Messiah, from Adam to Noah, at this point is in trouble. By the time Noach is called by God the last righteous man on Earth, we can see that his father, Lemekh, is no longer alive and his grandfather, Methuselah, is a man of advanced years and, at the age of 869, is probably well beyond the task of repopulating the Earth.

Noach waited until nearly midlife to have his three sons at the age of 498, just before he was called by Adonai. With Noach being the only person in the line of Messiah of an age to father children, and the only righteous man left upon the Earth except perhaps for the aged Methuselah, who would not live to see the flood itself, Noach was indeed fit for the description the Torah gives him as “a man righteous and wholehearted.” Yet what is the true extent of Noach’s righteousness? Was Noach a man who could compare to Moshe or David? Or was he simply, “the best of a bad crop,” so to speak? This has been a topic of debate for generation upon generation of rabbis and Bible teachers, and opinions do vary.

Let’s take a look at what Louis Ginsberg had to say in his major work, The Legends of the Jews:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
It was by the grace of God, not on account of his merits, that Noah found shelter in the ark before the overwhelming force of the waters. Although he was better than his contemporaries, he was yet not worthy of having wonders done for his sake. He had so little faith that he did not enter the ark until the waters had risen to his knees.

Now, this is not a universally-held view of Noach by the rabbis. The Jewish Encyclopedia offers a wider variety of opinions.

JewishEncyclopedia.org
Although Noah is styled “a just man and perfect in his generations,” the degree of his righteousness is, nevertheless, much discussed by the Rabbis. Some of the latter think that Noah was a just man only in comparison with his generation, which was very wicked, but that he could not be compared with any of the other righteous men mentioned in the Bible. These same rabbis go still further and assert that Noah himself was included in the divine decree of destruction, but that he found grace in the eyes of the Lord for the sake of his descendants. Other rabbis, on the contrary, extol Noah’s righteousness, saying that his generation had no influence on him, and that had he lived in another generation, his righteousness would have been still more strongly marked (Sanh. 108a; Gen. R. xxx. 10) … Still, it is generally acknowledged that before the Flood, Noah was, by comparison with his contemporaries, a really upright man and a prophet.

So where do I come down in this debate? Well, my opinion is formed not from the arguments of various Rabbis and other Bible teachers, but from the actual words used in the text of the Torah.
In the case of both Noach and his great-grandfather Enoch, the same words are used. In English, they both are said to have “walked with God.”

This holds true in the Hebrew as well, as this entry from Strong’s will show:

01980 halak haw-lak’
1) to go, walk, come
1a) (Qal)
1a1) to go, walk, come, depart, proceed, move, go away
1a2) to die, to live, the manner of one’s life (fig.)
1c) (Hithpael)
1c1) to traverse
1c2) to walk about

I believe the wording here is intentional by Adonai. The same wording that was used to describe the life of Enoch, who walked so closely with God that he was spared physical death, is also used to describe Noach. Therefore, at least in the way he led his life before the flood, I do not believe that Noach’s righteousness was second-class in any regard. No one short of Yeshua could be said to have walked as closely with Adonai as did Enoch, and that’s who Noach is compared to here. That’s not second-class, only-by-comparison-to-his-generation righteousness. That’s the genuine article!

I also think this is borne out by Noah’s actions that follow in the rest of this parashah. For, as we read in:

Genesis 6:22
This is what Noach did; he did all that God ordered him to do.

And again in:

Genesis 7:5
Noach did all that ADONAI ordered him to do.

In fact, if Noach’s faith were so inferior, I doubt the author of the book of Hebrews would have honored him in the Faith Hall of Fame passage. As it is written:

Hebrews 11:7 (CJB)
By trusting, Noach, after receiving divine warning about things as yet unseen, was filled with holy fear and built an ark to save his household. Through this trusting, he put the world under condemnation and received the righteousness that comes from trusting.

Where the Stern edition uses the word trust, most traditional translations use the word “faith.” So at best, I think the more skeptical Rabbis have it half-right. Noach was indeed saved by faith, though the grace of Adonai; but this does not make his righteousness second-rate or lesser than other Biblical figures. For, as it is written:

Ephesians 2:8-9 (CJB)
For you have been delivered by grace through trusting, and even this is not your accomplishment but God’s gift. You were not delivered by your own actions; therefore no one should boast.

Therefore, Noach’s faith, his trust, are not that different from our own; where he differed is in the level of his obedience to Adonai’s directions. We can trust that these things were as true in Noach’s day as they are today, or in Yeshua’s time, for, as it is written:

Hebrews 13:8 (CJB)
Yeshua the Messiah is the same yesterday, today and forever.

One final thing we ought to know about Noach, before the flood. I mentioned it briefly earlier, and it is that Noach waited until midlife before having his children. Jewish tradition gives us a clue as to why:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
Noah had not married until he was four hundred and ninety-eight years old. Then the Lord had bidden him to take a wife unto himself. He had not desired to bring children into the world, seeing that they would all have to perish in the flood, and he had only three sons, born unto him shortly before the deluge came. God had given him so small a number of offspring that he might be spared the necessity of building the ark on an overlarge scale in case they turned out to be pious. And if not, if they, too, were depraved like the rest of their generation, [Noah’s] sorrow over their destruction would but be increased in proportion to their number.

As for who he married, the Jewish Encyclopedia sheds this light upon that topic:

JewishEncyclopedia.org
The “Sefer ha-Yashar” (l.c.) and Gen. R. (xxii. 4) both agree that Noah’s wife was called Naamah. According to the latter, she was the sister of Tubal-Cain (Gen. iv. 21); according to the former, she was a daughter of Enoch, and Noah married her when he was 498 years old. In the Book of Jubilees (Hebr. transl. by Rubin, iv. 46-47) Noah’s wife is referred to as “Emzara, daughter of Raki’el.” Emzara was his niece, and two years after their marriage bore him Shem.

Now, although Na’amah is the more widely accepted theory on who Noach’s wife was, I see potential problems with this identification. We must remember that Enoch, Noach’s great-grandfather, had been transmitted to heaven 69 years before Noach’s birth. Assuming the most optimistic circumstance – that Enoch and his wife had Na’amah just prior to his transmission to heaven – at best that means that Na’amah would have been 567 years old at the time Noach married her at the age of 498.
And that’s at best! In all likelihood, Na’amah would have been closer to 100 years older than Noach, and potentially nearing the end of her child-bearing years.

The book of Jubilees’ identification of a niece, Emzara, as his wife, may be a better fit, but in the end, the Torah simply does not identify her by name, so we cannot know who Noah’s wife might have been with any certainty.

Now that we understand who Noah was a bit better, let’s move on to the subject of the flood. Now, even Biblical minimalists are willing to concede that there MAY have been a man named Noach in history, but surely, they assert, the Bible has it wrong about the flood.

Before we can address that, let us take a look at the conditions that surround Adonai’s decision to send a flood on the Earth. The Torah paints the picture this way in:

Genesis 6:11-13 (CJB)
The earth was corrupt before God, the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth, and, yes, it was corrupt; for all living beings had corrupted their ways on the earth. God said to Noach, “The end of all living beings has come before me, for because of them the earth is filled with violence. I will destroy them along with the earth.

The part that stands out to me there is that violence is the reason cited by Adonai as his motive for sending such destruction on the Earth. Think about that. In our time, we have wars going on throughout the world, terrorist bombings, all sorts of violent crime from muggings to shootings and stabbings to rapes and other atrocities, more than we have time here tonight to name. As much evil as there is in the world today, yet Adonai is showing us mercy, but this generation of Noach’s, He destroyed. Was the level of violence then greater than it is now?

Some would argue, definitely not. That’s because there is a minority theory out there that the real reason behind the flood was not violence, but the presence of the Nephilim, which Simon spoke about last week. While there is some support for that as a contributing factor, I do not believe we can lay all the blame for the violence in the world at the feet of the Nephilim alone; if that were true, then Adonai would have found more righteous in the Earth than Noach alone.

One thing I find very important about the flood narrative, which also underlines Noah’s righteousness, is the parallel with the life if his great-grandfather, Enoch. Enoch walked with God, and as a result, was spared from physical death. Noach also walked with God, and it should be noted that by being selected by Adonai as the sole righteous person of his generation on the Earth, Noach was similarly spared from a type of physical death – in his case, death in the flood, rather than from all death.

Now, nearly all of us are familiar with the account of Adonai’s instructions to Noach on how to build the ark and what kinds of creatures, and how many of them, he was to gather together with him, so I’m going going to spend a lot of time on those details.

Instead, I want to focus on some issues I feel are often overlooked in relation to the flood. First, Adonai begins to establish his covenant with Noach before the first raindrop ever falls.

Genesis 6:18
But I will establish my covenant with you; you will come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife and your sons’ wives with you.

After the flood, Adonai reaffirms this covenant with Noach. As it is written in:

Genesis 9:8-11 (CJB)
God spoke to Noach and his sons with him; he said, “As for me––I am herewith establishing my covenant with you, with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you–– the birds, the livestock and every wild animal with you, all going out of the ark, every animal on earth. I will establish my covenant with you that never again will all living beings be destroyed by the waters of a flood, and there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”

This covenant led to the establishment of the Noachide laws … those commands of God which are incumbent upon all mankind to obey, and not just Jews living in the land if Israel. According to the parashah and further explained in the Talmud, here are the seven Noachide laws:

Sanhedrin 58b
1. Do not murder.
2. Do not steal.
3. Do not worship false gods.
4. Do not be sexually immoral.
5. Do not eat a limb removed from a live animal.
6. Do not curse God.
7. Set up courts and bring offenders to justice.

These are the laws generally considered incumbent upon all humanity to obey, since all humanity is descended from Noach.

And now, to get back to the flood.

As I pointed out earlier, the flood has been a major bone of contention between believers and scientists ever since science arose. It is important to remember, however, that science is limited to the realm of the observable, and even in that arena, science can fall short if limited by a preconceived set of notions.

Let’s start with what the Bible teaches as true, as it relates to the flood itself. As it is written in:

Genesis 7:17-24 (CJB)
The flood was forty days on the earth; the water grew higher and floated the ark, so that it was lifted up off the earth. The water overflowed the earth and grew deeper, until the ark floated on the surface of the water. The water overpowered the earth mightily; all the high mountains under the entire sky were covered; the water covered the mountains by more than twenty–two–and–a–half feet. All living beings that moved on the earth perished––birds, livestock, other animals, insects, and every human being, everything in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life; whatever was on dry land died. He wiped out every living thing on the surface of the ground––not only human beings, but livestock, creeping animals and birds in the air. They were wiped out from the earth; only Noach was left, along with those who were with him in the ark. The water held power over the earth for 150 days.

Later, it is started in:

Genesis 8:13-14
By the first day of the first month of the 601st year the water had dried up from off the earth; so Noach removed the covering of the ark and looked; and, yes, the surface of the ground was dry. It was on the twenty–seventh day of the second month that the earth was dry.

This is what science has a problem with: that the entire earth flooded, and that it lasted a year.

Recently, the cable channel History International did a one-hour documentary called “The Real Noah.” In it, they put forward a theory completely in conflict with the Biblical account, but one which, apparently, science is willing to accept.

In the account, Noach is transformed into a Sumarian trader, famous for trading in livestock on a boat that goes up and down a major river in the Middle East. The massive ark of the Biblical account is traded in for an average trader’s vessel, and the flood little more than a localized anomaly that may have flooded several cities in a valley after the bursting of a natural dam. In this documentary, this Noah’s boat wasn’t large enough to carry more than Noah and a few animals – there would have been no room for his wife, sons and their wives at all. And the idea put forth by this so-called scientific and historical Noah is that his legend grew in the retelling and retelling, until this small flood he weathered became the Biblical account we are familiar with.

Of course, it’s all nonsense. And I’m not the only one to say so. In his book, The Bible Has the Answers, Dr. Henry Morris puts it this way:

Dr. Henry Morris, The Bible Has the Answers
In fact, the ark was so commodious that the whole story makes sense only if the Flood were a universal flood. The ark was far too large for only local animals. For that matter, if the Flood were only local, no ark would have been needed at all! The problem of preserving human and animal life could have been solved far more easily by merely moving out of the endangered flood plains.

If one doubts that the flood was deep enough to cause th cessation of all life from the earth, a tradition from the Rabbis has it covered. We read in:

Sanhedrin 108
The generation of the Flood was judged with boiling water.

Now, this is where it gets kind of interesting. Science claims an Earth that is billions of years old and affected by an ice age, right? Yet is this an observable truth? Or simply a way of reinterpreting the facts in a way that cuts God out of the picture?

Let me start with the example of the dinosaur and the dragon. For millennia, people have told tales of dragons – which at their core are large lizards that at one time roamed the earth. Science calls belief in dragons superstitious nonsense. And we all know that the Bible does refer to dragons, as well, if only as an image of haSatan. However, when the fossil record reveals the existence of giant, lizard-like creatures, what do they do? They invent a new word: dinosaur.

Yet according to Merriam-Webster’s Online dictionary, the term dinosaur was coined in 1841 by Sir Richard Owen, a Victorian-era anatomist; he combined two Greek words, “deinos,” meaning “terrible,” and “sauros,” meaning “lizard,” to create the word. Suddenly confronted with evidence of giant, lizard-like creatures, do scientists admit the Bible is correct? No! They create a new word and suddenly belief in dinosaurs is scientific, but belief in dragons is not! But really, it’s just looking at the same information in two different ways.

I would like to offer the idea that it is the same way with the flood. Science finds polar ice caps, these huge blocks of ice; they find woolly mammoths in these icebergs – like the one shown here:

Often, such creatures are found frozen standing completely upright, in poses that do not indicate freezing to death, as the theory of Ice Ages would have us believe, but poses which would seem to indicate… drowning.

Now think about it: a flood covers the entire Earth. The destruction is vast and radically changes the entire face of the Earth, possibly even tearing continents apart. In fact, the theory of one pre-flood supercontinent, Pangaea, which was followed by the breaking up of the lands into the modern continents, was a theory first put forward by scientists who believed the Biblical account.

This slide shows how the sons of Noach may have spread out after the flood, before the continents separated completely, to populate the entire Earth. Consider the jutting mountains and deep valleys we now enjoy. What is the better explanation for them: a slow, centuries-long ice age process? Or a sudden and terrible worldwide deluge?

This may sound strange to many of you, but that’s because we live in a society trained from the earliest ages to look as the data in one way: the way of science. What I submit to you about the flood of Noach is not an insistence that you must believe it occurred contrary to all the evidence, but that it is possible to believe not only that it occurred, but that the evidence is there, but has been misinterpreted by a scientific culture bent on disproving the truth of Adonai’s Torah.

It’s food for thought and my only hope is that if you happen to be someone who believes in evolution, that this will at least pique your curiosity about whether there’s another way to interpret observable data.

Now we move into our third point: the effect of the flood on Noach. One thing we can be sure of is that, however wicked was the generation from which Noach emerged, it could not have been an easy thing to witness their total destruction. We get this insight from:

Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible
The narrative is vivid and forcible, though entirely wanting in that sort of description which in a modern historian or poet would have occupied the largest space. We see nothing of the death-struggle; we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the frantic agony of husband and wife, and parent and child, as they fled in terror before the rising waters. Nor is a word said of the sadness of the one righteous man who, safe himself, looked upon the destruction which he could not avert. But an impression is left upon the mind with peculiar vividness from the very simplicity of the narrative, and it is that of utter desolation.

Certainly being witness to such a tremendous loss of life – like none the world has known before or since, must have had a great impact on Noach – an impact that could not be explained by a mere local flood. Louis Ginsberg offers this insight from the Sages:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
When he stepped out from the ark into the open, he began to weep bitterly at sight of the enormous ravages wrought by the flood, and he said to God: “O Lord of the world! Thou art called the Merciful, and Thou shouldst have had mercy upon Thy creatures.” God answered, and said: “O thou foolish shepherd, now thou speakest to Me. Thou didst not so when I addressed kind words to thee, saying: ‘I saw thee as a righteous man and perfect in thy generation, and I will bring the flood upon the earth to destroy all flesh. Make an ark for thyself of gopher wood.’ Thus spake I to thee, telling thee all these circumstances, that thou might entreat mercy for the earth. But thou, as soon as thou didst hear that thou wouldst be rescued in the ark, thou didst not concern thyself about the ruin that would strike the earth. Thou didst but build an ark for thyself, in which thou was saved. Now that the earth is wasted, thou openest thy mouth to supplicate and pray.”

This guilt-trip by God is most likely a Rabbinic tradition meant to teach a point about showing mercy to others, rather than acting selflessly, for it does not portray Adonai in a way that would fit with the Torah. I would suspect these are the same Rabbis who view Noach’s righteousness as relative only to his generation, and being inferior of that to later Biblical figures.

Yet we do know something of how the flood affected Noach. As it is written in:

Genesis 9:20-21 (CJB)
Noach, a farmer, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank so much of the wine that he got drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.

Now, in a way, although it is sinful, doesn’t that make sense? If anyone has ever had cause to suffer from the condition we today call “post-traumatic stress disorder,” it was Noach. Turning to drink is an example of that type of reaction.

There is also a measure of irony in Noach’s fate, if the traditions of the Rabbis are valid. Just as Noach became the second father of all humanity, after Adam, so too did he fall from grace in the same way. According to:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
This deterred Noah no more than did the example of Adam, whose fall had also been due to wine, for the forbidden fruit had been the grape, with which he had made himself drunk.

Most of us think of an apple when we think of the forbidden fruit, but here the possibility of the grape as the forbidden fruit offers an ironic counter-point to the story of Adam, and it underlines the need for the promised Messiah. For it shows that, however much he walked with God prior to the Flood, after Adonai wiped the slate clean, Noach proved no better an example than Adam. Even the most righteous of men were still subject to sin, unable to break those bonds on their own. We needed Adonai’s help. We needed Messiah Yeshua.

Now, what became of the Ark of Noach? It’s hard to say, although there are historical witnesses to it. Josephus confirms its existence in his day, though he pointed out that so many people were carrying off bits of the ark as souvenirs and amulets, they he was now nothing more than “remains,” and he was a late contemporary of the generation of Messiah Yeshua. The 13th-century explorer, Marco Polo, also claims to have seen it during his travels, although he said it is covered in snows that never completely melt. Either way, we know that the Torah says the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

What became of Noach?

Well, many legends, most of them probably false, surround his latter days. They include tales of him writing a series of testaments that did not survive ancient antiquity and, according to some, were destroyed with countless other ancient works when the ancient Library at Alexandria was destroyed.

Others insist he became the father of ancient medicine, writing a tome on the use of herbs and medicinal plants which, being passed down many generations formed the core of medical knowledge for doctors from India and Greece.

Are any of these legends true? Who knows? We do know Yeshua referred to him, so he must be an historical figure.

What we can know, what we can trust about our knowledge of Noach, is what the Torah clearly teaches. Whatever our traditions are, whatever we believe about Noach beyond the Torah, we know that he was in the line of Messiah Yeshua, and without Noach, none of us would be here today.
Shabbat Shalom.

But the story doesn’t end there and we must see where this leads us:

Genesis 11:4
Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city with a tower that has its top reaching up into heaven, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.”

Now, this does represent a threat to Adonai. We continue in:

Genesis 11:6-9
ADONAI said, “Look, the people are united, they all have a single language, and see what they’re starting to do! At this rate, nothing they set out to accomplish will be impossible for them! 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language, so that they won’t understand each other’s speech.” 8 So from there ADONAI scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 For this reason it is called Bavel (confusion)–because there ADONAI confused the language of the whole earth, and from there ADONAI scattered them all over the earth.

Fortunately, I discovered this passage in Ginzburg, which more deeply explained why this ambition of the residents of Babel was so disturbing to Adonai:

Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews
The iniquity and godlessness of Nimrod reached their climax in the building of the Tower of Babel. His counselors had proposed the plan of erecting such a tower, Nimrod had agreed to it, and it was executed in Shinar by a mob of six hundred thousand men. The enterprise was neither more nor less than rebellion against God, and there were three sorts of rebels among the builders. The first party spoke, Let us ascend into the heavens and wage warfare with Him; the second party spoke, Let us ascend into the heavens, set up our idols, and pay worship unto them there; and the third party spoke, Let us ascend into the heavens, and ruin them with our bows and spears.

So, are there any remains of Babel? Here’s what Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible says on the matter:

Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible
Of the tower of Babel no certainly ascertained remains have as yet been discovered. It has commonly been identified with the ruins called Birs Nimrud, about six miles to the south-west of the site of ancient Babylon. Birs Nimrud is “a pyramidical mound, crowned apparently by the ruins of a tower, rising to the height of one hundred and fifty-five and a half feet above the level of the plain, and in circumference somewhat more than two thousand feet.”

So, hopefully now, Nimrod is not such a mystery to you, just as it has become clearer for me. He was not some simple hunter, but a ruler who was the first to make war, perhaps one of the first to be controlled by the spirit of the false Messiah, and a cautionary example of what can happen when we seek to exalt ourselves above Adonai our God, which I believe in our society today is the most prevalent form of idolatry. Let’s pray.

Adonai, we pray that you would strengthen us and protect us from the spirit of the false Messiah, and from the temptation to follow in the path of Nimrod, putting ourselves and our needs before Adonai and his will. Conform our wills to your perfect will through Yeshua the Messiah. Amen.

Shabbat Shalom.

Remind you of anyone?

HaSatan! Nimrod is perhaps one of the first in a long line of people who were possessed by the spirit of the false Messiah. And his manner and approach in this regard is no different than it was later in history, when the spirit of the false Messiah appeared in such figures and Haman, Antiochus Epiphanes, and, more recently, in Adolf Hitler, just to name a few. His nature is always the same; he seeks to replace God with himself. It is the same temptation that the serpent offered Adam and Haveh in the Garden. “You shall be like Gods.”

So what was Nimrod’s kingdom like? Well, according to Alfred Edersheim’s Bible History of the Old Testament:

Edersheim, Bible History of the Old Testement
Of the magnificence of Babel, the capital of the empire of Nimrod, “the mighty hunter,” it is difficult to convey an adequate conception, without entering into details foreign to our purpose. But some idea of it may be formed from its extent, which according to the lowest computation, covered no less than one hundred square miles, or about five times the size of London; while the highest computation would make it cover two hundred square miles, or ten times the extent of London!

Let’s take a look at an ancient depiction of a figure believed to be Nimrod:

Was this the man the Torah mentions so briefly? Let’s take a look at what the Jewish Encyclopedia teaches us.

JewishEncyclopedia.org:
Nimrod was not wicked in his youth. On the contrary, when a young man he used to sacrifice to haShem the animals which he caught while hunting … When the animals saw [Nimrod] clad in [Adam and Haveh’s clothing], they crouched before him so that he had no difficulty in catching them. The people, however, thought that these feats were due to his extraordinary strength, so that they made him their king.

Another entry offers more insight:

JewishEncyclopedia.org:
According to another account, when Nimrod was eighteen years old, war broke out between the Hamites, his kinsmen, and the Japhethites. The latter were at first victorious, but Nimrod, at the head of a small army of Cushites, attacked and defeated them, after which he was made king over all the people on earth, appointing Terah his minister. It was then, elated by so much glory, that Nimrod changed his behavior toward haShem and became the most flagrant idolater. When informed of Abraham’s birth he requested Terah to sell him the newborn child in order that he might kill it. Terah hid Abraham and in his stead brought to Nimrod the child of a slave, which Nimrod dashed to pieces. Nimrod is generally considered to have been the one who suggested building the Tower of Babel and who directed its construction. God said: “I made Nimrod great; but he built a tower in order that he might rebel against Me.”

So let’s focus on the Tower of Babel now. What was the world like prior to this episode? Well, according to:

Genesis 11:1
The whole earth used the same language, the same words.

Now, this never seemed like that bad a thing to me, as a young person. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if we were all able to communicate and speak the same language and understand each other?

Shabbat Shalom.

Our parashah today is Noach, which covers Genesis 6:9 through Genesis 11:32. Usually the focus of any Torah commentary on Noach focuses on Noach or the flood. Well, I had a chance to do an in-depth study on that part of this parashah in last night’s Erev service, so what I’d like to do today is put the spotlight on the very end of this parashah and take a look at an incident that not only gets overlooked frequently, but is often dismissed as mythology or pure fiction, rather than an important chapter in post-Flood human history.

First, I’d like to introduce you to a man named Nimrod. He is first mentioned in Genesis 10, part of a genealogy of the sons and descendants of Noach. Ham, the third son of Noach, and the son who dishonored Noach in his drunken state, was the father of Kush, and let’s pick up in verse eight:

Genesis 10:8-9
Kush fathered Nimrod, who was the first powerful ruler on earth. He was a mighty hunter before ADONAI––this is why people say, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before ADONAI.”

Now, this is a verse that has puzzled me from a young age. I mean, on first blush, it doesn’t sound like a bad thing to be “a mighty hunter before Adonai.” As a young boy, I pictured a fellow in blaze orange, with a couple of rifles and a compound bow slung over his shoulders, with a lot of stuffed deer-heads and moose-heads on the wall of his house, and some sort of “Great job, Nimrod!” message from Adonai in the mix there, somehow. Hey, I was young…

But as I grew older, I noticed that Nimrod is a figure that just doesn’t get talked about very much. Perhaps part of this is because the Torah reveals so little about him. So I’ve tried to do really dig in and see what I could dig up that might shed light on this controversial figure.

Here’s a bit more about Nimrod directly from the Torah:

Genesis 10:10-12 (CJB)
His [Nimrod’s] kingdom began with Bavel, Erekh, Akkad and Kalneh, in the land of Shin’ar. Ashur went out from that land and built Ninveh, the city Rechovot, Kelach, and Resen between Ninveh and Kelach–that one is the great city.

So we see here that Nimrod was actually an early ruler with a kingdom over which he held power and influence. That’s a bit more information. It helps to understand that the story of the tower of Bavel, which shortly follows, is an event that took place in the city of Nimrod.

Yet I wanted to know more, so I had to start searching outside of Torah alone, and along the way, I uncovered some interesting information; while this information is comprised of Jewish traditions and is not as reliable as the Torah itself, it does reveal an indication, at least, of what else we might learn about Nimrod, who the Torah singles out in this way.

Let’s take a look at this Jewish tradition about Nimrod, as related by Louis Ginzberg in his epic work, The Legends of the Jews:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
He gave him the clothes made of skins with which God had furnished Adam and Eve at the time of their leaving Paradise. Cush himself had gained possession of them through Ham. From Adam and Eve they had descended to Enoch, and from him to Methuselah, and to Noah, and the last had taken them with him into the ark. When the inmates of the ark were about to leave their refuge, Ham stole the garments and kept them concealed, finally passing them on to his first-born son Cush. Cush in turn hid them for many years. When his son Nimrod reached his twentieth year, he gave them to him. These garments had a wonderful property. He who wore them was both invincible and irresistible. The beasts and birds of the woods fell down before Nimrod as soon as they caught sight of him arrayed in them, and he was equally victorious in his combats with men. The source of his unconquerable strength was not known to them. They attributed it to his personal prowess, and therefore they appointed him king over themselves.

Now, this has the feel of mythology, but behind the myth of Adam and Eve’s clothes, what we see is an effort to explain a charismatic and seemingly invincible quality that surrounded Nimrod. This means he must have been a man of great power and influence, right?

Let’s see what else Ginzburg has gathered about Nimrod:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
His impiousness kept pace with his growing power. Since the flood there had been no such sinner as Nimrod. He fashioned idols of wood and stone, and paid worship to them. But not satisfied to lead a godless life himself, he did all he could to tempt his subjects into evil ways, wherein he was aided and abetted by his son Mardon.

So from this, we learn that Nimrod is not only a great ruler, but also a man of great sin. How great and deep was his sin? Let’s continue in Ginzberg:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
The great success that attended all of Nimrod’s undertakings produced a sinister effect. Men no longer trusted in God, but rather in their own prowess and ability, an attitude to which Nimrod tried to convert the whole world. Therefore people said, “Since the creation of the world there has been none like Nimrod, a mighty hunter of men and beasts, and a sinner before God.”

Now, that’s a bit more information than the version of that saying in the Torah, and it’s more revealing of Nimrod’s true character. We have one more bit from Ginzberg:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
And not all this sufficed unto Nimrod’s evil desire. Not enough that he turned men away from God, he did all he could to make them pay Divine honors unto himself. He set himself up as a god, and made a seat for himself in imitation of the seat of God. It was a tower built out of a round rock, and on it he placed a throne of cedar wood, upon which arose, one above the other, four thrones, of iron, copper, silver, and gold. Crowning all, upon the golden throne, lay a precious stone, round in shape and gigantic in size. This served him as a seat, and as he sat upon it, all nations came and paid him Divine homage.

Now, this rounds out our understanding of Nimrod. Not only was he a “mighty hunter before Adonai” and a great sinner, but he was perhaps one of the first rulers who wanted to be worshipped in place of Adonai, who wanted to declare himself God and be worshipped that way. Remind you of anyone?

Of course, that’s understandable. They are the books of Moshe, collectively, and the giving of the Torah is central to any understanding of haShem. It’s completely appropriate, so don’t misunderstand.

But I do really enjoy this first book of the Torah quite a bit, because it’s so rich with the history of other key figures. The only down side is how quickly it all goes by, like the way an ephedra-free fat burner disposes of unwanted weight. I mean, in the parashah of B’resheet alone, the topic covered include creation, the fall of man and the first murder. Each could merit at least one sermon all by themselves, if not an entire teaching series.

It’s a rich book and goes by all too quickly, so I’m pleased we’re back around to it again, and pleased I have a chance to do a 30-minute or so sermon, as well as a 10-15-minute commentary to explore this rich section of the Torah in at least a little depth.

The trick to overcoming distractions, I’ve found, is to rediscover what’s exciting about the task at hand in the first place. For example, I enjoy studying Scripture. I enjoy reading and researching ancient insights into Scripture. It’s fun to find nuggets of insight, polish them up, and present them in a way that opens up new ways of understanding those passages for other people.

I enjoy delivering a message. Sure, it’s a bit nerve-wracking at times, but once I start speaking, I enjoy the task of sharing the message I’m delivering with others. Perhaps it’s my background in theater, but being in front of a crowd isn’t that big of a hurdle for me.

Once I think about things like these, the call of that PS3 game diminishes into the background and I’m able to enjoy the heck out of the very activity that, at times, seems like a task rather than a joy.

I’ll use a more-recent illustration. Not from a KVM or KJV or anything like that, but from something we’re all culturally closer to.

In the history of America, our first president was George Washington. There is much about George Washington that is historically-verifiable fact. The wooden dentures, for example, are verifiable. The crossing of the Delaware is a matter of the historical record.

But the chopping down of the cherry tree? Well, that’s a bit more problematic. Young George may have been that honest, but there’s not a lot of historical witnesses to this episode in his life, and it’s quite possible that it is a tale spun to illustrate Washington’s honesty, long after he became president and after his parents, who might have been able to verify the tale’s veracity, were long gone.

Could the cherry tree incident have happened? Perhaps, but it feels more like George mythology.

In the same way, one can look at a tale about Haveh (Eve) having bad dreams about the enmity that would later manifest in her sons, Kayin and Havel (Cain and Abel), and see something that’s conceivable but impossible to verify; or at a tale about the Torah personified in a debate with Moshe and David and write that off as mythological; or to just about any tradition and, with a little logic and common sense, come to a conclusion to what extent a tale is either mythological or plausible.

Even Talmudic sources agree that this is a reference to the Messiah. While Adonai was indeed speaking creation into existence, he was also speaking prophetically about Messiah, who is often referred to as the Light of the world.

While messianic Judaism and mainstream Judaism differs on the point of who the Messiah was or is, there is unity in interpreting this passage as a messianic promise on behalf of haShem. One can be completely sober-minded (as opposed to a member of the wine of the month club) and find Messianic significance even here in the earliest passages of Scripture.

I’m blessed that it’s coming this particular week, as I’ll have a chance to cover one of the meatiest parashahs in the entire Torah cycle: B’resheet. This will give me a chance to talk about creation, the fall of man, and the first murder - the story of Cain and Abel.

What I would like to do, I think, is concentrate all 30 minutes on Friday on creation and the fall of man, and make the Torah commentary all about Cain and Abel. I’m not intimidated by the challenge of filling up all this time, but about keeping it all within the time limit, since these five-plus chapters of B’resheet are so full of meaning and significance, I could easily envision - someday - doing several weeks on just these passages alone.

I have plenty of textbooks and source material to draw from, ranging from intelligent design writings to the musings of the sages. I’m really looking forward to this one!

The movie is very roughly divided up into three main acts. The first act features a lot of nice photography of people from around the world, while Strobel drones on endlessly about the “need for a connection with the divine” that exists “within us all.” There’s nothing new or particularly convincing about this act, as it is the sort of standard PowerPoint presentation that might move some people to tears if on display at a Sunday morning worship service, among a community of like-minded believers, but contains little content that would influence the mind of a skeptic.

The second act focuses on the early career of evangelist Charles Templeton, who started his career around the same time as Billy Graham, but who experienced doubt and ultimately fell away from a life of faith and declared himself an agnostic. This is a very tricky portion of the documentary, due to how it’s constructed.

Strobel intersperses segments of an interview with Templeton conducted before his death in 2001, when Templeton was struggling with Alzheimer’s disease, complications of which ultimately took his life. Strobel’s interview segments with Templeton feature the former evangelist explaining why he stopped believing in God, but then cuts to Strobel explaining how he “defended the faith” to Templeton. While Strobel never directly claims to have influenced Templeton back to a life of faith, one is left with the impression that may have happened, an incredibly self-aggrandizing claim.

However, there is no evidence that the Alzheimer’s-stricken Templeton ever did retreat from his agnosticism late in life, even though he was able to talk about his former spiritual beliefs quite cogently.

Worse, however, is that this second act, also, is lacking in depth of content; for someone who is supposedly one of Christianity’s top apologists, there is a surprising lack of apologetics on display in this video; in fact, little of what he offers in answer to these “toughest objections” is unique or presented in a new way, and most of what he does offer goes beyond the simple homilies one might find in a “daily devotional” book of prayer.

The third act is perhaps the most convincing, and redeeming, act of the documentary. It focuses on the individual story of a husband and wife whose daughter was tragically killed in a driveway accident. The pain of their loss is clear and understandable in a way that Strobel’s over-simplified homilies of faith just are not.

The accident happened one winter, when his wife and son were preparing to leave to go to the store; his daughter was initially going to stay at home with her dad, but changed her mind and rushed out the door to join her mom and brother. The mother was backing up in the driveway, the daughter slipped on the snow and ice and she ended up beneath the car, dying almost instantly.

Such a mind-numbing loss would destroy many marriages. Guilt, recrimination and bitterness would be natural and understandable reactions. The testimony of how this family relied on their faith in God to overcome the emotional fallout of such an accident is emotional and moving. Their claim that is was a reliance on divine power that helped them overcome this tragedy may not convince everyone that God is real, but it is a far more convincing exhibit than any of Strobel’s simplistic devotional thoughts throughout the rest of the film.

Even those hard-pressed to be moved by any “evidence” in the movie will still find this family’s story moving and evocative. Strobel wisely backs off during this third act and reduces his own on-screen time, since the testimony of this family easily speaks for itself.

In the end, “The Case for Faith” presents and overwhelmingly weak case for, well, faith. The first two-thirds of the film are largely emotional and somewhat manipulative, and in the case of Charles Templeton’s final disposition toward faith, potentially misleading. They are definitely portions of your life you can never get back.

However, the final third of the film is, at minimum, watchable if not exactly convincing when it comes to answering logical doubts and questions about faith in Christianity. Over the years, many fine books of Christian apologetics have been written, many of them arguing persuasively for an evidential basis for faith in the God of the Bible; however, Strobel’s “The Case for Faith” is not among those more scholarly works. While his work may draw applause from a sympathetic audience at one of his megachurch homes, it is simply far too lacking in research, evidence and depth to influence most skeptics of faith.

Works like “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” by Josh McDowell, “Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity” by J.P. Moreland, “Hard Questions, Real Answers” by William Lane Craig, and “The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics” by Norman L. Geisler are all works that would provide a more intellectually-satisfying defense of Christian faith than anything Strobel offers here; sure, these books and authors are older and less trendy, but sometimes that’s not such a bad thing.

Thanks for your interest, please leave comments if you wish, and also, I’ll soon be revealing what my next Torah portion will be, so stay tuned!

Let’s look at what Paul says about this:

Romans 3:9 (CJB)

“So are we Jews better off? Not entirely; for I have already made the charge that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, are controlled by sin.”

John agrees.

1 John 1:8 (CJB)

“If we claim not to have sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

Even Yeshua himself does not exempt anyone and makes clear that the source of this is ourselves … sin in us.

Mark 7:20-23 (CJB)

“It is what comes out of a person,” he [Yeshua] went on, “that makes him unclean. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come forth wicked thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, foolishness… All these wicked things come from within, and they make a person unclean.”

So, coming back to Moshe at the end of his life, I now realize that there is no cruelty in what Adonai is telling Moshe here. He is merely confirming something Moshe already knows: The people will go astray. It’s nothing new. As it is written in:

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (CJB)

“What has been is what will be, what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

Near the end of the chapter, Moshe admits himself that he understands this. As it is written:

Deuteronomy 31:27 (CJB)

“For I know how rebellious and stiffnecked you are! Here, even while I am still alive with you today, you have rebelled against ADONAI; so how much more will you do so after my death?”

Many people regard the end of Moshe’s life as one marked by tragedy and disappointment. Not me. Moshe had faults and sin, but his life was one Adonai used to bring us the Torah. The Torah, in turn, exposed our need for Messiah Yeshua. As humble a man as Moshe was, as great as the L-RD’s accomplishments through him were, he was not a Messiah himself.

I think the people needed to cross over into the Promised Land without Moshe as a reminder that it was Adonai, not Moshe, who had brought them there. Moshe’s mortality needed to be made clear, so that God could be God.

Moshe, however, served the same purpose all true prophets of the L-RD serve: he pointed us toward our need for Adonai, and for the atoning sacrifice of Adonai’s messiah, Yeshua. At the end of his life, Moshe had to let go and realize the results were not in his hands: the rest is between us and the L-RD.

Shabbat Shalom.