Another Small Prayer From Another Source

My previous prayerful outpourings were not inspired by this, but it is a bang-up prayer, originally from The Atlantic's poetry section.

Small Prayer
Elizabeth Spires

If my heart were scoured,
if my soul were remade
into a new and shining garment,
then would I have to die?

Lord, if perfection is death,
let me stay here
a little while longer,
spotted and stained.

Holy Moly: All the Animals?

And God said to Noah, "Everything that lives and moves will be your food. Just as I gave you the green grasses, I now give you everything."

God then introduces the kosher concept that one cannot eat meat which still has blood in it.  But God just said, "Bro, eat all the animals.  Like, all of them."

Because Genesis 9 doesn't originate from when kosher was a thing, kids. Remember that. It's just as silly to believe that kosher has always been a thing as it is to believe that hala'al has always been a thing. Or that parts of Daniel are talking about 21st century life.  Or, despite the fact that the writers of the Gospels definitely want to convince us that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies, that the prophets in the Old Testament would have agreed.  The Bible is a collection of oral history written down way later and collected way later than that.

I also spoke to Noah, briefly, with regard to the covenant, and he said, "Note that God didn't say He would never wipe out all life again.  He just said it wouldn't be a flood.  So if you're worried about climate change being divine wrath, just remember that all life isn't going to be wiped out in a flood.  Mass starvation, wars, disease, drought, wildfires, and tornadoes maybe, but you just stay put in your coastal cities because you're the most important people in the history of ever and God said there wouldn't be another flood.  To me, a proto-Jew.  Yeah, you people are idiots."

I tried to get him to elaborate, but he just chuckled and took a sip of his beer.  Then he devoured a giant ham hock.

Holy Moly: The Thing About Birds

I've been through this already but I'm going to have to go through it again.  And then again.  And pretty much every single time I hit it in the Bible, which is going to be a lot.

This book was not handed down by God to King James I, who then had some type-setters print it out.  It's a collection of extremely old stories which were told for a long, long time before they ever got written down, probably in a language which changed as the stories were retold.  And then it was written down.  Not in English.  And then it was copied.  Still not in English, but into other languages than the original.  For a long time.  And then it was translated into English.  By a bunch of different people.  This cannot be stressed enough.  Basically, the Bible I'm reading is about as far from the stories in the Bible, textually, as... well, as anything can be.  Yes, there are a few works which have come down from a longer history, and probably some which had a more convoluted history before they were ever translated for the first time, but the Bible is up there.  One could even make the argument that the Christian Bible is more convoluted than the Jewish Torah, which has a lot of what I've just said baked into it.

So the Bible is as old as the hills.  Older than the hills.  As old as dirt.  But there are, as I said, possible a few things older than it, and one of them is the story of Gilgamesh.  We've got written versions of Gilgamesh from back when Noah was probably just a Semitic name that some tribal storyteller gave to a part of the Gilgamesh story to make it applicable to his particular tribe.  Or hers.  I'm better his, because of what we know about Semitic tribes, but who knows?  We don't.

Oddly enough though, that Gilgamesh has a flood story in it isn't proof that Noah was just ripping off Gilgamesh.  There are other flood stories too, all of them from the "older than dirt" school of literature.  And the thing is, the Flood isn't in Gilgamesh so much as it's talked about in Gilgamesh.  Utnapishtim, the immortal man, tells Gilgamesh his story, which involves the Flood.  And that story is found elsewhere too.

Why am I telling you all this?  What does this have to do with birds?  Give me a second.

Let's get back to Noah.  After some more time jumps (told you, collected oral history and that means it doesn't always make sense with itself) Noah gets the bright idea to check whether the flood has gone down enough that he can finally let all of the passengers out of what must have been a stinky boat.  So he sends out some birds to check things out.  This isn't the stupidest idea in the Bible, let me tell you.  Maybe not the smartest, but certainly well within the realm of smartness.  He sends out one bird and it flies around until the water dries up.  Then he sends out another because this is collected oral history and it doesn't make any goddamn sense, again to see if the water has dried up.  No dice; the bird comes back without being able to land anywhere.  He sends it out again and it brings him back some plant material, so he knows that the water has subsided.  Then he sends it out again and it doesn't come back, so... he knows the water, etc.

Let me race through the rest so I can get back to the point at hand: Noah then opens up the hatch and takes a shufty and low and behold, water gone.  And then the water was gone, and the water was gone again.  You'd think that they would have edited out the repetitions that internally conflict, but they didn't.  I'm really not trying to say that the Bible is bad because it contains these internal inconsistencies.  It is what it is and I'm just addressing them as I come to them.  Wait until we hit David and Goliath.

Then, in the capstone to this story, the part that everyone takes away, God says to Noah, "Okay, I promise I will never again kill everyone with a flood, so no need to freak out if you see a storm brewing.  And here's a rainbow to remind me and you that I said that."  And that should have been the end of Chapter 8, but instead it's dragged into Chapter 9, half and half.  I am going to criticize the later, much later, people who numbered and divided chapters and verses.  That's your button, assholes.  Come back when you've workshopped it a bit more.

So that's the point of the story and Noah is great and God isn't mad any more.

But let's go back to Utnapishtim.  Turns out Utnapishtim had the same bright idea about birds when he washed up on what could easily have been the only dry land in the universe.  He sent out three birds, one after another, until the last one didn't come back and he knew there had to be dry land somewhere.  Why he didn't just look out the damn window is anyone's guess, but they didn't have glass back then and maybe the windows had to stay shut so as not to swamp the boat.  Whatever.

Utnapishtim sent a dove, a swallow, and a raven, and the raven didn't come back.  Ravens are smart birds.  Maybe there's a just-so story there.  But for our purposes, the raven was last.

Noah also sent out a raven.  First.  And it, seemingly, found dry land, because, if you read it, "it flew back and forth until the waters over the entire earth had dried up."  So I'm calling shenanigans on the Noah story here.  This, more than anything, is my textual clue that there might be a bit of borrowing going on.  And if that had been all there was to it, I wouldn't highlight this particular part, but rather I'd go on and hit that Covenant button like everyone else.

But that's not all there is to it.  Noah sends a second bird, and he sends a dove this time.  Ravens can probably fly further than doves, so maybe it was insurance to make sure that the raven hadn't found dry land fifty miles away or something.  And if the dove had flown out and not flown back, that would be all there is to it.

But the dove brings back proof.  It brings back a plant, specifically an olive leaf.  That's good proof: olives are important and if the water has gone down in the olive groves, that means the cast-aways have something to snack on.  And maybe that's all there is to it.

But remember the last time you saw a dove bearing an olive branch?  It wasn't the international symbol for, "Floodwaters Receding."  Before Noah leaves the ark, before he burns those offerings that are somewhat anachronistic, before God even thinks to Himself, "I don't think I should do that again," let alone tells Noah or sets up the rainbow, before all that, a bedraggled dove, who failed previously to find any dry land, brings back a scrap of olive branch.

And that's why the Bible is the Bible and Akkadian myths are Akkadian myths.  Because the Bible doesn't end with the raven or with dry land.  The Bible lets you know that the dove is the important bird.  Because even way, way back then, God wasn't just concerned with power or intelligence or greatness.  Even back then, God, and God's people, loved a bedraggled dove and the message it brought to those who thought they'd never see the end of the Flood.

And that's what God's about.  God's not just about rainbows and promises and being fruitful.  God's about terrified people huddling in a ship on the top of a mountain, just praying that their dove comes back to them.

A Prayer

Dear God,
if there is one,
and I'm not sure,
make me whole in my broken places
and strong in my weak places
because I'm scared.
I'm so scared.
But if there is no God,
if it's all a lie
and the dead don't merely sleep
and hope fails
and love doesn't conquer all,
the only thing that matters
is that I keep pretending
because if I can make it better
I should.