comparison of Noah's children

Ham is the most caring of all of Noah's children, he wonders alot about his fathers work and repeatedly offers him help. Ham was obedient but didn't follow all of his dad's rules such as "no painting, ham" say's noah. Shem lazy, not as caring as Ham, didn't really believe in his father's work, thought he was crazy and constantly mocked him.

Genesis 15-25... 10 chapters of B.S

Now, chill out readers! I know the title is very harsh, but its supposed to be like that! I knew every single thing in the chapter was coming, I must have some kind of sixth sense. I foresaw everything. Now that Mr. Tangen, deserves a 4.

First of all, Abraham's death, that was obvious. The guy dies at 136 years of age and honestly,(and I don't mean to be rude) I'm glad (good job on not being rude). I am very glad because I will probably never have to hear his name again. Personally he was really annoying because his name sprung up in every sentence, but still it is kind of sad. Before he dies he marries Sarah, a good wife, who gives him what he wants: "And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah".(Gen.25 2) He had a six more sons, until he finally died at 137 years old.

Now it gets good. A little sibling rivalry and jealousy is exactly what the story needed, Esau and Jacob hate their gust and from what I read from the book, hate each other. Isaac prefers Esau, and Rebekah prefers Jacob. As Esau was about to be blessed for hunting, Rebekah deceived them both and put Jacob in Esau's place. Of course, this generated a lot of anger on Esau's part as we can see here: "And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob".(Gen.28 41). A frightened Jacob had to leave the country in fear of his own life. A little sibling rivalry is o.k, but come on! Are you gonna kill your brother because your mom prefers him? Good luck those times are over, I would've been toast!

I am pretty much done with these chapters, the last thing I want to dwell with is this. An interesting part of these chapters was Jacob's "wrestling" with god. This was a conflict in Jacob's head where he was angry with god, but now we see the nicer side of god. Remember in the last couple of chapters? Where he was portrayed as kind of vengeful and mean? Now we can see that he forgives Jacob and that he never stops loving him although Jacob is angry at him. In a way I do believe that and I love god and his forgiveness. I really liked these couple of chapters, but as I said before, I SAW IT COMING!

Genesis 17-24... The important thing is to multiply

Another exciting chapter about god and beliefs, and...Circumcision?!

I think this was the easiest chapter to understand, and the idea it was trying to transmit was easy to grasp and understandable. I can start this topic by sharing what god said about circumcision, “it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you”. What I found very weird was that god obligated boys to be circumcised, I guess I never thought that belief applied to everyone, I thought it was much less common, and what surprised me was the very strict and not so noble anymore, god. Where everything he said was the law and it was either his way or the highway, I guess I didn't enjoy the characters much in this chapter. As I was reading the chapter in which Abram is introduced, I started to think about his name, I thought it was Abraham, but figured out it would explain itself as the story went on, and it did. When god says: "Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee (Gen. 17)." Now it was all clear, I had always heard of Abraham but never Abram, I now realize it was the same guy. And in someway when god changes his name from Abram to Abraham, he is acknowledging more power unto Abraham, by saying that in someway the name Abraham shows more power than Abram... Weird, I know. Another thing I found interesting was that Abraham didn't want to have kids at age 90, when people in other bible stories have kids at age 400 or even more. Isn't that weird?

As I read these pages everything is just so new and so contradicting that my ideas get tangled up in knots, tightly wounded knots. God has always been introduced to us as a noble being, who only wants love and prosperity in our lives, and i'm not saying hes not, I just think that if god wanted to test Abraham's braveness and emotions, he could've found a less savage way other than killing his grandson. The god I know and believe in would not do such a thing, he would make him take a long journey in which he proves himself, but a life taken away to prove a point? Is that fair? And plus, if god knows everything and is so wise, why doesn't he know that Abraham is brave and has emotions? As I said... Very contradicting.

In this chapter we can see a very special bond between Abraham and god, I think Abraham is to god what Muhammad was to Islam. Abraham is god's messenger, or shepherd if you will, and that is why god gives Abraham such amazing gifts. He gives him everything he desires, kingdoms, children and many others, must be cool to have god by your side.

A thing about this chapter which I can't really explain well is the incest, the daughters sleeping with his old father, I can't even explain it: “do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.”

Genesis 10-16, oh boy! Re-birth after the flood?

After the flood had ended it was up to Noah and his sons: Shem, Japeth, and Ham (weird name), to restore humanity and start again from scratch. Fortunately all of Noah's sons were accompanied by their wives, which would enable them to reproduce and restore humanity as we know it, a very hard task for six people.

After years of reproducing finally comes Abram, a very noble, and religious human being. This caused God to notice him and communicate with him. The Lord presented Abram with a very difficult task, he said: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed"(Gen 12). Do you think Abram felt a little pressured?

Abram is a lucky man, as you may have noticed he has a smoking hot wife!



But, for some reason God does not want anyone to know this so makes Abram disguise Sarai by telling everyone she's his sister. Since everyone think they're just brother and sister, they start hitting on Sarai and they would end up cursed and had to pay Abram with cattle amongst other things. She was so beautiful that even princes saw her and invited her to their palace, and because of that: "The LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife".( Gen. 12: 17). I really don't think its fair with all the guys that tried to hit on Sarai because they really don't have a clue that Sarai was already married and therefore I believe it was unfair that they were punished, while they had no bad intentions.

Sarai loved Abram very much and would give him virtually everything he wanted. Abram wanted a child and Sarai wasn't able to conceive. Sarai was so disappointed with herself that she told the maid to have Abram's child. Which she has. Sarai for some reason (don't ask me why)is mad because the child Abram had was not from her, but from her maid. I can understand why Sarai would be mad at this, but it is very foolish of her to be mad after saying: "The LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai".(Gen.16 2). I mean, women are so foolish they even contradict THEMSELVES!! Poor men, will we ever understand?

Sistine Chapel poem!

"I'm more superior than you", a humble God said,
"I know that" said Adam while nodding his head.

Adam longed for God's touch, he couldn't wait longer,
but as God was reaching out, they started to ponder.

What would come of this connection? Equality maybe?
"I don't know" said Adam, I'm as smart as a baby!

And god knew this, therefore couldn't touch him.
Adam's brain was as useless as his limb.

Genesis 1-2- the beginning!

This is the beginning of genesis where we deal with creation, we talk about how god created everything and how he said: "let there be light and there was light"(gen, pg.1). It says that everything was chaos and dark before god went there and named land and the seas and everything else, it reminds me of metamorphoses where everything before creation was chaos, and I think that both texts were written under the same idea.

Although I am a catholic and share most beliefs catholics have, I don't agree with all the ideas or facts if you will, about creation. I believe when he states names for light (day) and for darkness (night), he can't take credit for these names because humans worked for many years and had to start up from scratch to adapt names and to get accustomed to these.

I hope that this doesn't make me a bad catholic but I myself believe in evolution as a more reliable fact than god saying "let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters" I think that everything started from scratch and evolved there on.

I believe in my faith and love being a catholic, but some things are contradictory...sorry mom!

Noah's ark-Adam and Eve

These famous bible stories have been translated in many languages and have had many adaptations for children, adults, teen and a varied audience.

Both of these stories relate to modern society's ideals and beliefs, one story deals with the creation of man and where the whole human species started, where Adam and Eve had children, and their children had children, and so on they multiplied.

The other story also relates to modern society because god speaks to Moses and warns him of the flood that is coming, he tells him he must build an ark with two of every animal (male and female) in order to reproduce.

The basic message of these stories isn't too hard to grasp, in Adam and Eve the message is: Everything has consequences, and Obey and do what your told. we can sense that Adam and Eve realize what they have done when Lord God calls out to Adam: "Where art thou?", Adam comes out from his hiding place and responds "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." That is when god realizes and starts to blame Adam, where he blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent. We can see the very common "blame-game" which is used by many children now a days, Adam and Eve both used these to be guilt-free.

Noah's ark seem very irrational to me, that god such a powerful and wise being has to erase the mankind to start all over again. I think that such a powerful being, someone we look up to should have had an alternative to fix or change mankind, if you will. I think this translation was much more complicated than the kids version, although the classical version is much more wordy, it's a much better version. as god said: "come thou and thy house into the ark."

Phaeton, Psyche, and Eros

This story I really liked, I think one of the reason's I enjoyed it so much was bcause I could really relate to it because when Phaeton asks Apollo (his dad) If he can ride on the son his dad is shocked and bewildered and I personally have had that same reaction from my parents.

I think we can sense that Apollo regrets telling Phaeton that he can have anything he wants because he thinks that riding the son is pretty absurd because hes says that he can have whatever he wants, but within reason, which once again I can relate to.

I also think that Apollo was not very responsible and really didn't think about the outcomes of his promises. I mean come on, what do you expect when you promise your son anything he wants? I also think that apollo should have backed out of the promise and mended his mistake by giving Phaeton something else.

The next story I read was the one of Psyche and Eros. I really didn't like the story itself, but I thought it was cool that they used a question/answer format. I believe it was entertaining and allowed you to look at the text in a very different way.

In conclusion I really liked the story of Phaeton, but not so much the one of Eros and Psyche, although I enjoyed the question/answer format. I enjoy Zimmerman's writing alot more than Dryden's, I think Mary is very humorous and fnds a way to make boring text more enjoyable and interesting.

Iambic Pentameter for Phaeton

For being brute, the world was all burned down.
No happiness came from this foolish clown.

Vertumnus, Pomona and Myrrha

This chapter starts with a scene with the famous character of greek myths: Narcissus. This is a story of a man who was so egocentric and so amazed with his own beauty that he stared into a lake and got instantly paralyzed. I have always liked this myth and I think it is my favorite of all because it relates to modern society. From this myth come the term: Narcisist, people who think they are the most beatiful and people that are very egocentric are called: Narcisists.



The next scene that is presented to us is the story of Vertumnus and Pomona. This was, in my opinion, a very romantic story about love between two characters, and as we should have noticed this is a very popular theme in greek literature and mythology. I also like that it teaches a lesson at the end. One of the examples of the love these two felt for each other is when Vertumnus dresses as an old women to make Pomona fall in love with him, but then they are caught by her father and he tries to drown him (harsh reaction).

I think this is a really unique story although the love theme and sacrifice theme is very popular and used very commonly. Still I really enjoyed the story and I hope I get a chanc to read more literature of thi kind.