JOSEPH IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS I

This post and the next two go along with Gospel Doctrine lesson 11: "How Can I Do This Great Wickedness?" and lesson 12: "Fruitful in the Land of My Affliction".

I've divided up the chiasms from the life of Joseph into three parts. This week you can read Joseph in the Book of Genesis I.

Joseph's bloody coat of many colors is shown to his father Jacob - by Ford Madox Brown

When you read this part of the Old Testament you may wonder if Potiphar (Genesis 39:1) and Poti-phera (Genesis 41:45,50) were the same person.

Let me say they are most likely two different men, and leave it at that. There is a Whole World of Woo Woo on the subject out there on the Internet. I recommend you leave well enough alone and not go there.

What did you learn in the Book of Mormon today?

JACOB IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS

This is Post #17. I made a schedule of posts for the entire year so I could try to include something about every Gospel Doctrine lesson.

My timing is unimportant, because almost nobody will read these posts before—or after—the lessons are given. But I'm having fun writing them.

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Rembrandt

If you do happen to stumble across this blog, you are invited to take a look at some chiasms in Jacob in the Book of Genesis.

And then be sure to read something in your Book of Mormon today.

THE MARRIAGES OF ISAAC AND JACOB

This 16th Post goes along with Gospel Doctrine lesson 10. Marriage in the Covenant. Take a look at some chiasms in The Marriages of Isaac and Jacob.

Abram lived in Haran (also called Padan-aram (Genesis 28:2 for example) and Aram-Naharaim (Bible Dictionary) until he was 75 years old. Haran is usually identified with Harran, a village in Turkey, but archaeologists have not positively connected the two.

In case you thought the words, sounding alike, meant something similar, Harran is said to be from an Akkadian word meaning "road", Haran (the place) is a Hebrew word that means "parched", and Haran (Abram's brother) is a Hebrew word that means "mountaineer".

When he was 75, Abram and Sarai moved about 450 miles southwest to Mamre. You can zoom in on Mamre and Harran, but you won't see much, not after 1900 years. Like Harran, the exact location of Mamre is disputed. Genesis 23:19 identifies it with Hebron itself.

Today, you can fly from Ben Gurion Airport to Sanliurfa Airport in 5 hours and 40 minutes. Either I've underestimated the distance, or they use very slow airplanes. Imagine how long it took to make that journey on foot or even in a camel caravan nineteen centuries ago.

Abraham sent his servant all the way back to Haran to get a worthy wife for Isaac. Genesis 24. The man's name is not given, but most Jewish and Christian sources say he was probably the Eliezer mentioned in Genesis 15:2. Abraham emphasized the importance of marriage in the covenant by going to so much trouble to get Rebekah.

Isaac Meeting Rebecca by Friedrich Bouterwek

Rebekah received a revelation about her unborn twin sons (Genesis 25:22–23). The elder boy would serve the younger boy. When these sons had grown up, Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of soup (Genesis 25:29–34).

When the time came for Isaac to give the birthright blessing, Rebekah persuaded Jacob to trick Isaac, who was blind, into giving him the blessing instead of Esau (Genesis 27:1-29).

Jacob fled to Haran to his mother's family to avoid Esau's wrath (Genesis 27:41-46). In fact, Isaac sent him there and commanded him to marry one of his cousins (Genesis 28:1-5), again emphasizing the importance of marrying in the covenant.

Jacob served his uncle Laban for seven years in order to marry Rachel, and he got her sister Leah in the bargain (Genesis 29:1-30).

What are you doing to make your marriage more of a Covenant Marriage?

Don't forget to include reading the Book of Mormon in that effort.

BIRTHRIGHT: ELDEST OR MOST RIGHTEOUS?

This 15th Post clarifies a common misconception about the birthright: as often as not, it didn't go to the "firstborn".

As you read The Birthright, ask yourself what should be learned from it?

Feel free to comment.

How are you doing on your study of the Book of Mormon?

ABRAHAM IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS

This 14th Post accompanies Gospel Doctrine lessons 8. "Living Righteously in a Wicked World", and 9. "God Will Provide Himself a Lamb".

John Welch was introduced to chiasmus on his mission in Germany in 1967, and later published his ground-breaking discovery of this kind of Hebrew poetry in the Book of Mormon. Within a short time, many other people were looking for these parallelisms.

I've spent many years collecting examples of parallelism from more than fifty different authors. I've found some original chiasms myself.

When I was a BYU student I found a remarkable chiasm in 3 Nephi that I'll show you later on this year when we get to Isaiah. In it, Jesus commands the Nephites to study the words of Isaiah on the Plates of Brass.

Some modern sermons by general authorities are chiastic, and if I run out of Old Testament material I may show you some of them.

This post reveals a wealth of Chiasms about Abraham in Genesis. You'll see how different authors have come up with very different ways of diagramming the same material.

After seeing some of these variations, you'll wonder if there is a "correct" structure for a particular set of verses. Well, you can always try to diagram them yourself.

One caveat is that I haven't validated ALL of these things myself. Some of the chiasms in these articles may have errors. If you compare something with the Scriptures and find problems, please comment!

Now, go read your Book of Mormon!

CHIASMUS AND HEBREW POETRY

This 13th Post gives a little background about a type of Hebrew poetry known as chiasmus. I've included examples in several of the previous Posts. Read my 1995 article about English and Hebrew Poetry.

The word chiasm comes from the appearance of these structures, which is like the left half of an X. Chi is the name of the Greek letter X.

You can also think of this kind of poetry as a reflection.

I don't know who took this beautiful photo.

As long as I'm discussing poetry, I'll put in a plug for good writing style.

First, I like simplicity. I abhor gobbledygook. Here is an example from the preface of an actual book.

If you are like me, you probably don't think a whole lot about the air you breathe unless, for some reason, it smells bad. However, our air is quite special. It contains 21% oxygen, and ours is the only world we know of (at least so far) with such elevated amounts. This is good for us because we are large animals and we need lots of oxygen to live. So also do our furry friends, cats and dogs, as well as the cows, chickens, sheep, pigs, and other animals on which we base much of our diet. Oxygen burns the fuel that heats our homes, and allows the warm glow of a campfire on a crisp autumn evening. In short, oxygen is a signature feature of Earth; the high levels in our atmosphere define the outlines of our existence, as they also generally define the nature of animal life on Earth.

I really LIKE the book I got that paragraph from, so I've been rewriting it without the unnecessary words to make it more accessible. So far, I've "degobbledygooked" 95 pages down to 72 pages. Here is the paragraph without the gobbledygook.

You probably don't think about the air you breathe unless it smells bad. Air contains 21% oxygen. Breathing the oxygen in air keeps us, our pets, and the animals we eat as food alive.

Second, I like information density. The reader shouldn't have to go through half a page of text to find one item of information.

Third, I like organization. Some articles look like the author wrote all his ideas on 3X5 cards, shuffled them, and then typed up the article in the order of the shuffled cards. This is especially true of newspaper articles!

I try to avoid writing in those ways. How am I doing?

One other thing that seriously annoys me about Internet articles is the use of teensy-weensy text or text that doesn't contrast well with the background, making it hard to read.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE PATRIARCHS

This 12th Post accompanies gospel doctrine lesson 7, The Abrahamic Covenant.

In this post I'm giving you an article I wrote in 1998 about the strange arithmetic associated with The Chronology of the Patriarchs. I'm sorry, but I don't know where I got the top half of the first page. I'll include an article I wrote ten years before that which contains some raw data I collected. Enjoy.

Aside from dating the Fall of Adam as 4000 BC, the 2013 LDS King James Bible Chronology doesn't even hazard a guess about any other date down to the beginning of Saul's reign in 1095 BC. Look it up on page 749 (2353 in the PDF).

Not everyone is this cautious, and someone has said that "for every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert". Some folks start with the 4000 BC date and work forward, using the information in Genesis, and others start with a well-established historical date like the beginning of Saul's reign and work backwards. Here are a few dates people have obtained in these ways, or simply pulled out of thin air, for the birth of Abraham. They span 350 years! I collected most of them in about 2000, as part of some research project I was doing at the time. Almost all the websites I got them from no longer exist. You'll just have to trust me.

2163 BC – Mindspring – if 430 years in Egypt
2134 BC – End Time Prophecy
2062 BC – Stephen O'Neil
2056 BC – A Chronology of the Patriarchs Timeline I created
2055 BC – Central Highlands Christian Publications
2018 BC – Bible Decoded article
2008 BC – Sequence of Prophecy
2000 BC – Internet Dynamics
1996 BC – Amazing Bible Timeline – possibly where I got my date
1992 BC – J. N. Darby
1991 BC – Dr. Len's Kenpo Pages
1948 BC – Mindspring – if 215 years in Egypt
1813 BC – NNDB

Wikipedia concludes that "the patriarchal age, along with the exodus and the period of the judges, is a late literary construct that does not relate to any period in actual history".

The real question is, does any of this have any bearing whatsoever on your salvation? Probably not.

Thanks for visiting.

Now, go read your Book of Mormon!

THE TOWER OF BABEL—CHIASM

This 11th Post accompanies gospel doctrine lesson 6, Noah and the Ark.

See the chiasm in the account of The Tower of Babel.

The story of the Tower of Babel is found in Genesis 11.

Nimrod is mentioned in Genesis 10:8-9. Hugh Nibley discussed Nimrod at some length in his Teachings of the Book of Mormon lectures, which were given to a four semester Honors Book of Mormon class at BYU in 1988-1990. Here are some quotes from the FARMS transcripts.

"Notice that it doesn't say the Tower of Babel. That's very important. As a matter of fact, we learn from the book of Ether in the Book of Mormon that the name isn't Babel, but it's Nimrod, which is exactly what it was. Remember it went north in the valley of Nimrod. Now we know through tradition and everything else that the tower was called "Nimrod's Tower," because Babel didn't come in until later. That was [determined] from the philological events, etc. And so they came out from the tower. It's careful not to say the "Tower of Babel," which was later. But Nimrod's Tower was that one, and it tells us in the first verse of the second chapter of the book of Ether that they went up into the valley northward where there never had men been, and it was the valley of Nimrod." . . .

"Nimrod was the first person to establish kingship, fortifications, armies, and things like that. Nimrod was a very righteous king when he was young. He had great intelligence and great strength, and the Lord rewarded him for his service to the human race by giving him the bow. This [story] is universal—you find this everywhere. Men at that time were threatened by the beasts; they couldn't defend themselves against the wild animals that were large and ferocious. Cave bears, saber-tooth tigers, and creatures like that can be rather dangerous. Men weren't up to it, so God gave Nimrod the bow to protect the human race. But Nimrod very soon discovered that by using the bow he could put the human race at his disposal. So he turned it against them and made himself the first king who ruled everything. He was given this tool to help people, and he found out, "Boy, what a profit this will give me! How great I can become now that I have the bow." And he did. He used it and organized the first armies, the first empire, the first tyranny, and all that sort of thing. He misused the great gift God had given him." . . .

"Anyway God gave the bow and arrow to Nimrod to defend the human race, for protection against their enemies. It didn't take Nimrod long to discover that he could use these arrows to put the human race at his disposal. It was put at his disposal to defend the human race. Now he discovered that if he turned it against human beings they were at his disposal. He was the boss. This is the famous bow of Nimrod. In the end he went crazy and turned it against God. He challenged God to a fight because he was ruler of the empire. He said, "I'm the creator; I'm the god." He built the Tower of Babel and went up to the top of it so he could shoot arrows into the sky and kill God. The Angel Gabriel, playing a trick on him, held up a fish. The arrow hit the fish and came back to earth with blood. Then Nimrod went stark raving mad. He said, "See, I've killed God; there's blood on the arrow." " . . .

"There are various versions of the story. It is very old and circulates everywhere. So he went nuts. To get rid of him and show his utter contempt, God finally dispatched him with the weakest and smallest of creatures. He sent a little, tiny gnat. It crawled up the nose of Nimrod and started tickling his brain. Well, of course, it drove him absolutely crazy. He had two servants stand on each side of him with hammers and hit him on the head alternately so he wouldn't be tickled to death by it. If they hit him on the head, he went bonggggg, so that was better than putting up with this gnat. In the end that did away with Nimrod. He is supposed to have founded the first army and the first city. He got civilization going. This is class number two, Babylon. Nimrod was the founder of Babylon. All the old sources will tell you, wherever you get them, that Nimrod founded Babylon."

I started taking a class from Dr. Nibley when I was a BYU graduate student. I was carrying 21 units that semester, and a lot of my classes were in advanced math and engineering. So I was "time challenged". But I'd always wanted to take a class from this great man. I sat through two or three of his lectures, and he never said a word about tests or grading. So one day, after class, I went up to him to ask about those things. He looked at me over the top of his glasses and said, "well, your grade is based entirely on a paper of original research of some kind that you'll submit at the end of the semester. Attendance at my lectures is entirely optional." So I handed him my drop card to sign. And that was that.

What did you learn from the Book of Mormon today?