The same source where I heard about the firmament also had an interesting take on “gopher wood”. The suggestion was that “gopher wood” was not the wood of a particular tree, but rather a particular woodworking/carpentry technique, or perhaps a method of treating the wood that would make it the most suitable for the purpose; the exact technique/treatment has simply been lost to time (not that we don’t still know how to do it, but rather that we simply don’t know what process is meant by “gopher wood”). For example, today we have creosote-treated wood that we use for telephone poles and railroad ties, and we have plywood. Maybe 4000 years from how, people may not know what today’s literature means when it mentions plywood.
My (limited) understanding is that most ancients viewed the (flat) earth as resting on a great ocean (the waters below) with a huge dome above it. The dome has holes in it, and sometimes water leaks through (hence, rain) and sometimes light leaks through (hence, stars.) This is the dome that Atlas holds up in Greek myth.
The Genesis perspective is not inconsistent with this, but neither fully committed to this view. I’ve also heard that the etymology of the Hebrew word for “heavens” שמים is from שמ (“there is”) and מים (“waters”), referring to the waters above the sky-dome. However, I’ve also heard this is NOT the etymology, but is just coincidental.
Bumping this to say that I have nothing worthwhile to add, but am reading with interest. Thanks to all.
Regards,
Shodan
I was about to post the same thing. I have learned quite a bit from those who are much more knowledgeable about the subject than me.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share.
BTW, Shana Tova to Dexter Haven and cmkeller!
Since this is a festive day/week (and usually when a new thread starts), let’s hold off the next part until next week.
Speaking of which, should next week just cover 9:18-10:32 (all of 10)?
Yes, it makes sense to me to go through the end of chapter 10.
And Shana Tova wishes from me to you all as well!
Remarkable that the Flood story, which has been recounted for thousands of years, is still making news.
I just saw this article about a comet impact in Canada about 13000 years ago causing a massive climate change that may have killed off the giant mammals then extant in North America. Based on core samples containing iridium in the form of spherules that require temperatures of 2000 degrees C to form, they are now looking for an impact site even larger than the already known Corossal Crater (evidently named by a Japanese scientist).
The scientists advancing this theory say they think that it may have contributed to the release of the water in Lake Agassiz, which was a huge prehistoric lake in southern Canada that may have held as much water as the rest of the world’s lakes combined. When the ice dam holding it back finally gave way about 8000 years ago, it released enough water into the Arctic and North Atlantic to raise the sea level by nearly five feet, which in turn caused the Mediterranean Sea to spill over into the Black Sea, which along with the flooding of the area, converted the Black Sea from fresh to salt water.
Some scientists think that this disruption is what caused the relatively sudden and widespread growth of agriculture in Europe, which accords well with the story in Genesis, where after surviving the Flood, Noah promptly plants a vineyard.
Thanks, Tony. I’ll have to file that away for future reference.
This is going back a ways, but it’s topical since the new Noah movie came out.
Can any of our experts on Jewish lore comment on this article, which talks about Gnostic interpretations of Adam, Eve, Noah, etc.?
Terrible article. Very sloppy.
The “ancient religion of Gnosticism”? Gnosticism was never a single, unified religion, whether ancient or modern. See Michael Williams’ Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category.
Citing Adolphe Franck and - let’s see here - no other scholar whatsoever? C’mon. A thing or two has happened in this field since the 1840’s.
And then there’s this:
Bullshit. Christian Gnostics believed in Christ. Some non-Christian Gnostics believed in Derdekeas; others in Seth. Then you had the Mandaeans, and… Well. The list goes on.
Now, some Gnostic groups - like the Ophites a.k.a. Ophians a.k.a. Sethians, the Naassenes, the Cainites, the Peratae, etc. - were certainly at least accused of worshipping the serpent, but a) we don’t know if they ever really did, and b) in any case, certainly there is nothing that indicates that, “generally speaking,” this belief was held “in common” by all, or most, Gnostic groups. Different strokes for different folks.
Then there is the author’s conflation of “Gnosticism” and Kabbalah, which he calls “essentially a form of Jewish Gnosticism.” That is absurd.
I appreciate your frankness, but at least for this thread, I’m not terribly concerned about whether he’s right about the different aspects of Gnosticism.
My question, which I should have been more clear about, is whether any of these themes had their origins in the Talmud or other rabbinic commentary on Genesis, as opposed to being invented much later by Christian and/or Gnostic mystics.
I haven’t seen the movie (and probably won’t until I can get it free) but I’d like to suggest that you start a new thread on this topic, you’ll attract more attention. This thread is really just bible text interpretation thread.
I don’t think such things were Talmudic, but I’m not an expert.
If you mean Gnostic themes generally, there’s a wide range of possible sources of inspiration - Judaism being one of the prime contenders. Roelof van den Broek writes the following:
I haven’t read Segal or Fossum, so I don’t know if the proto-Gnostic heresies of these minim pre-date or post-date the Talmud. Hopefully someone more knowledgable than me will chime in!
In any case, though, Gnostic ideas certainly didn’t pop up “much later,” as you write - the great Gnostic systems date from ca. the 2nd century CE, so around the same time as the Mishnah, and three centuries before the Gemara.
… I hope this answer is at least somewhat closer to what you were looking for! 
Yes, thank you very much. I’ll take Dex’s advice and leave it here for this thread.