Life is Too Short

I want to express deep appreciation for the work Forrest has done these last couple of years. But for me life is too short; my time draws near. No more than the hilites, the mountains of scripture seem appropriate for consideration. (Of course my hilites may not be yours.) Feel free to suggest your hilites and put them in your comments.

Northrup Frye in his last years gave a good reference for this concept; he called them types. A type is a passage that will bring forth antitypes in subsequent scriptures. Moses was a type; Jesus an antitype (among many other things). Maybe we could bring up some antitypes for the Garden (the Fall). There are quite a few others in Genesis.

Frye was an ordained minister in Canada, but most famous as a teacher of literature. For several years before he died he worked on a masterpiece in two volumes (The Great Code and Words with Power). Many of us waited for it for years. He finally came forth and went on to the next life.

Gensis 1.24-25

And God said, "Let the Earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so.

And God made the beasts of the Earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1.20-23

And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the Earth across the firmament of the Heavens."

So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the Earth."

And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

The Flood

Anthony Prete has an interesting discussion of The Flood and God's relations with Noah, and by implication the Israelites, in The Quaker Bible Reader. His argument is that God was not punishing evil people, but rather acting like a potter who simply can't do anything with a blob of clay and returns to the clay pile to get a new one. Like many Quaker and other scholars a primary interest is to refute the idea of the angry God, probably the most common vision of God in our age like most others.

Prete has particular reference to the writers of late Isaiah and quotes in Isaiah 54:7-10, speaking of the days of Noah and its close relationship to the Israelites at and after the Captivity.

The Flood of course is one of the Bible stories familiar to all sorts of people, and I for one feel called to disabuse people of their vision of the angry God in every way possible, primarily by interposing the God of Jesus.