Stories From Sunday School: Noah's Ark

Welcome to our new series, Stories from Sunday School. 📝 These are the stories many of us learned as children, but they contain layers of meaning that are often overlooked. In this episode, we begin with one of the Bible's most familiar accounts—Noah's Ark. ⛈️

Far more than a children's story, the flood narrative explores humanity's corruption, God's judgment, the preservation of creation, and the hope of a new beginning. 🌈 Along the way, we discuss the Nephilim, the symbolism of the ark, the significance of the forty-day pattern, and why the raven and the dove serve as a deliberate response to the Epic of Gilgamesh. 🕊️

If you think you already know the story of Noah, this episode may surprise you. Join us as we revisit this familiar account through the eyes of the ancient world and discover why its deepest message is just as relevant today. 🎙️

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Transcript

Noah's Ark 
 

INTRO: Sunday School Stories Series 
 

[00:00:00]  
 

JR: Is that Genesis assumes the audience is familiar with flood traditions, and it tells a story in a way that deliberately contrasts 

David: Yeah 

JR: Israel's understanding of God with the gods of its neighbors, right? 

And so to me, it's not coincidental. It's an obvious and intentional reversing of the common narrative of the time.  

David: All right, I think I say this every series, but I'm excited about this series. It's a good thing I say it about every series, but I'm excited about this series because we're starting a series on stories from Sunday school. And probably take a couple minutes to explain what we mean by that. But these are stories that probably most kids who grew up in church got familiar with somewhere in Sunday school, right? 

I don't know, did they have the felt board when you were in Sunday school? 

JR: Oh yeah, the flannelgraph, sure. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: Yeah, I don't think they have that anymore much. 

David: No. 

JR: But, yeah, velcro came along and screwed all that up. You know, it'd be a Velcro board anyway. Yeah, no, the flannelgraph. Yeah, [00:01:00] those things were awesome. 

David: Yeah, now it's just, I don't know if it's just AI now, but you know, now that teacher just types something in AI and it spits it up on the screen probably. 

JR: and shows it to the kids. Yeah. 

David: Something like that, yeah. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: But yeah, I don't know if you remember this, but our grandmother on our father's side, she was a schoolteacher, and I remember when we would go visit her, down in her basement she had a flannelgraph board and all these things that she used to teach with. 

And I remember as kids, you know, we'd like go play with... We'd probably have Adam fighting Jacob and stuff like that, you know. I don't know. That's what we did as kids, but 

JR: No, no, I totally remember that. That and the Lincoln Logs. 

David: Yeah, that's right. 

JR: she had a Lincoln Log set. We'd play with that, too. 

David: Yeah.  

JR: That's funny. No, I forgot about the flannelgraph in the basement, but you're totally right. Yeah. probably 

David: Yeah 

JR: introduct- 'cause in Sunday school you weren't allowed to play with it. 

You know, they're like, "No, no." I mean, it's just kind of this cool little thing that they're telling stories with, but then they're not gonna let the five-year-olds rip it up.  

David: No, 'cause you'd 

JR: know. 

David: tear it all up, and so it goes right back into the folder as soon as they're done with [00:02:00] it, and you're like, "Man, I just wanna get my hands on that." 

JR: Yeah, 

David: it was kind of magic too. You're like, how does that paper just stick up there? And anyway, it was very low tech. We were impressed by very low tech things, I guess, in that day. 

JR: Oh yeah. Well, it's the age in which we were born, so. 

Yeah, so so kids' stories. It's all these stories that we were taught as kids, but we're kinda trying to look at it with adult eyes. And I was kinda thinking about how we should start this off and I don't know, it's just, it's kinda interesting that some of the stories we know the best because we were taught them as kids are actually the ones we understand the least, because we kind of compartmentalized and left it in our childhood maybe, And it's a great place to begin. It's a great-- This is a great story. We're gonna talk about Noah's Ark today, but it's a great story to give to kids, the Noah's Ark story, but it was never meant to be the place we stopped. We're supposed to continue to dig into these stories. 

David: Yeah, some of them lend themselves obviously to drawing kids in, right? Because they're fascinating, and [00:03:00] Noah's Ark is one of those. David and Goliath. That's why we're calling these Sunday school stories. But I think the problem occurs when we just leave them there. 

So when, when I was growing up, it was big church. So when we go to big church and they talk about Noah and the ark, I don't even remember messages on Noah and the ark. Or 

JR: I don't... From 

David: so- 

JR: no. 

David: yeah, and so sometimes we relegate these to kids' stories, and we go, "Oh, well, that's a kids' story." Right? And that's kind of the problem, and then you go back and read these as adults with new eyes or, or with some of the understanding that we do on this podcast. 

What's the symbolism here? What are the higher things going on? And you go, "Oh, wow, this story is chock-full of stuff." Right? There's a lot going on. 

JR: Yeah. Well, we call them children's stories, but they're not stories meant for children. They're just happen to be stories that lend themselves to, children's imaginations. But, yeah. No, I, I'm looking forward to this series because I... it's gonna be an opportunity to dig out the deeper [00:04:00] symbolism, the deeper truths that have been there all along. 

We just thought we outgrew them. 

David: Yeah, yeah. We thought, here's a simple story. I learned it growing up, and so there's not much to revisit. So yeah, I think a lot of times these are skipped over in church, or they don't fit into a lot of modern church series, right?  

JR: Yeah 

David: I don't know, like how to grow your spiritual life, how to manage your money, all the things that you hear in a lot of contemporary churches nowadays. 

These stories don't really fit in there, and so I don't know. My impression sometimes is they're kind of left behind, and we're, we're missing out on a very rich tradition. And you're right, they were not meant to appease the kids back in ancient times, right? In fact, these are very adult themes going on in these stories. 

JR: I don't think they pulled the kids together and said, "Okay, kids, let's talk about the fallen angels having sex with our women." You know? 

David: Yeah. 

JR: You know what I mean? 

David: Yeah. 

JR: But we erase that part of it, and we teach the Noah's Ark story to the kids. But then [00:05:00] yeah, I think we make a mistake by not revisiting it, by not going back with the adult eyes and saying, "Okay, let's take a look at this story 'cause there's a lot more to it than stuffed animals and a cartoon boat," you know? 

David: Yeah 

JR: yeah, so that's what we'll try to do. This'll be fun. 

David: Yeah, so we're gonna talk about Noah and the ark, and it always kinda cracks me up a little bit because you even think of Noah and the ark, I've actually seen several cases where this is a common theme for a nursery, right? So you have a newborn, and it's like, "Oh, we're doing a theme of Noah's ark." 

Which is all cute. You know, like you said, the stuffed animals and the s- 

JR: to the stuffed 

David: the stencil... Yeah, the stencils on the wall where, you know, all the giraffes and lions are sticking their head over the edge and smiling, and there's a rainbow and all that. Like, it lends itself to all that. But if you step back like, it's so strange that we pick this global calamity where most of every living creature perished on the earth, and we go, "Yeah, this is gonna be my kids' nursery's theme." Right? It's- 

JR: I wanna see [00:06:00] a nursery theme that is like Revelation. That's what I want. The four horsemen, the, the bowls, the trumpets. You know? Yeah, just the cartoon of the pale horse and... that'd be a lot of fun, right? 

It is funny that y- you don't see other... I, I'm sure you see other biblical stories. 

I'd have to think about it, but there is something about Noah that's just custom-made for nurseries. 

David: Yeah, it just seems to be a good fit. And maybe it's the kind of thing where if we really understood the story, maybe you could turn the nursery when the kid becomes a teenager. I just thought of this. Maybe that's where you could introduce the whole, dark side, the Nephilim, like all the... Like, on the other wall is, you know, all the dead bodies floating around, and that kind of lends itself to, like, the, the moody teenager, right? 

JR: Yeah, yeah. The raven? Sure. 

David: The r- yeah, the, 

JR: the, bring all 

David: goth, 

JR: in. 

David: the goth raven. Yeah. That's right. 

JR: Yeah, embody the raven. Ugh. 

David: All right, so we better get started on Noah here. But yeah, the point is I think we, Noah and the ark is a good example of a [00:07:00] story that we kind of pigeonhole, and we go, "Yeah, I know the story." But hopefully we're gonna try to pull some things out that maybe you haven't heard, right, about this story. 

TOPIC: Who Were the Nephilim? 
 

David: So it starts in Genesis chapter 6, and I guess Okay, so we were talking about this before we got started. Genesis chapter 6, the story of Noah starts in verse eight, but you have to look at verses one through seven to understand the story of Noah, right? And most people skip over one through seven. 

JR: Yeah. Well, just the whole Noah story to begin with. When most people hear this story, they think, like we just said, about the animals marching two by two. But the Bible - seems to think that the important question is something completely different. It's like, why did God decide creation itself needed to completely start over? And so that's where we need start. Like, why did did w- yeah, why did he think the planet needed to be destroyed? And so, yeah, that's in verse [00:08:00] one through seven 

David: Yeah, and that explains it. But a lot of times the story of Noah starts at verse eight. But verses one through seven, in case you haven't picked it up, this actually introduces the idea of the Nephilim, right? These giants on earth, and giants can mean nothing more than mighty men. There's a lot of speculation about, what a giant is in the Bible, but it's just a mighty person, right? 

And the whole idea of the sons of God descending to the daughters of men, 

JR: Mm-hmm. 

David: and like you said, their offspring become the Nephilim, okay? And let me just read, I won't read, all seven verses, but I'll read verse four here. " The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward," that's another story, "when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. 

They were the heroes of old, men of renown." Now, that sounds like a positive thing, but it's not in the Bible, right? 

JR: Well, obviously not, right. 

David: Yeah, so that's this [00:09:00] idea of the Nephilim, and again, we're gonna try not to go down this rabbit trail, but we have to talk about this for a minute to actually understand why God does what he does with a global flood, right? 

JR: Right. Yeah, where do you wanna start with the Nephilim? 'Cause this is, like, one of my favorite subjects. 

The Sons of God and Daughters of Men 
 

David: Okay, so first of all, there's been a lot of different ideas about who the Nephilim are and what these labels are, the sons of God and the daughters of men, okay? But I think you and I are pretty convinced that somehow the sons of God are the fallen angels, right? And the daughters of men are human beings. 

And so somehow, okay, and again, there's different theories, somehow these fallen angels procreate with human women, and the result is these kind of men of renown, heroes of old. And again, that sounds to us like a good thing, but it's not in the Bible. These are giants. These are violent people. These are [00:10:00] people with any kind of restraint, right? 

And that's this idea of this heroic person of renown. Renown just means they're well-known at that time. 

JR: Right. 

If you were 15 feet tall, you would be well known. 

David: True. Yeah. Yeah 

JR: Shaq is well known in our, our culture and yeah, tall people, big people, giants, whatever. 

David: Yeah 

JR: Yes, to your point, I mean, I tend to think that they were physically... I don't know what a giant means. You know, if you're talking about an eight-foot guy in biblical times, that would be a giant. 

David: would be a giant, yeah. 

JR: Yeah, but a lot of this comes from the Book of Enoch, and we don't have to... I mean, again, there's a hundred rabbit trails you can go down. But most of what we're talking about, the reason we believe it this way is it's confirmed by the Book of Enoch. There's a lot more details in the Book of Enoch talking about what exactly happened during the flood, who were the watchers, who were these Nephilim, who were the men of renown. 

And so that's kind of where we basically get our foundation for this idea. [00:11:00] And it's probably worth mentioning, uh, Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm, if you're interested in this, is a fantastic book. It talks about a lot of other things, but it really gets in on this topic, and it helped me kind of crystallize more than just a rumored opinion of what these giants were. It really helped me have a little bit more solid biblical foundation of what they were. And yeah, I'd encourage somebody to go read that, take a look at that book if you want more information. 

David: Yeah, yeah. Some other people have pointed out that angels don't actually procreate in the same way that human beings do. 

JR: Right 

David: So there's also been a lot of evidence that there were basically, religious pagan rituals where a god or a deity was kind of invited into a sacred bed in order to procreate, so the offspring would be seen as part divine. 

You even see this in Greek mythology, right? 

JR: Yeah. 

David: You know, y- this person is ... [00:12:00] Yeah, yeah. And you even see it, You know, Hercules was basically ... When the woman, like, became accidentally pregnant, she goes, "Oh, Zeus impregnated me," right? So it was Zeus's fault, which ... So you see this idea in, in Greek mythology as well, and there's other. 

But this idea is that there was a ritual where an angel wouldn't actually physically be with a woman, but ritualistically would be part of it, and so the offspring was somehow seen as part divine, or you might say a giant, right? Or a person of renown. Yeah 

JR: Right. Yeah, so whatever they were, they were definitely instrumental. That's why I kind of don't buy the idea of they were just simple mortal men that were powerful and corrupt, things like that. Because I don't know, it just seems like, the flood is a pretty extreme move to get rid of a handful of key people that were corrupting the [00:13:00] earth. 

David: Yeah. Yeah. 

JR: And it's also worth saying that, you know, because the Bible mentions multiple times that the earth was filled with corruption or it was filled with violence, and it's a lot more-- this is a lot more than people being mean, you know what I mean? But it's saying that everything had stopped functioning according to its created purpose, and so it was a complete collapse of God's ordered world. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: It's probably worth saying that if Genesis was chaos becoming order, then Genesis 6 shows that order is becoming chaos again, and the Nephilim are clearly instrumental in this chaos, to the point that they basically embody the evil that is ingrained into everything now. 

David: Right. Yeah. So yeah, we see this descent back into chaos. We're gonna see that in the flood story as well. So that actually brings us to the story of Noah, but that's foundational for understanding, like you said, why God goes to what seems like maybe extreme measures. In fact, the rest of the [00:14:00] Bible even basically, reinforces this idea that part of the reason that God sends a flood is because, well, we're gonna see here in a moment, we'll have you listen to chapter six, verse nine through 14, but that Noah was truly almost alone in his generation as being righteous, that everything else was corrupt, and that there was this race of people, right, the Nephilim, that was basically taking over to the point where God said, "I have to start over." 

And that becomes the foundation for the flood. 

JR: Yeah. But that kind of brings up two points, like right from the beginning. First one is what we just talked about, is that God's decision to destroy all living things on the earth except for what was on the ark clearly has something to do with the Nephilim. But the second thing that I don't think people talk about is that whatever the people were doing or had become was so corrupted that they were clearly beyond the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness. [00:15:00] And I don't hear people talk about that second part very much. Do you agree with that, or is that something I'm missing? 

David: No, I definitely think that's part of it. and especially if you talk about ... I don't know, this gets into 100 rabbit trails, but especially if you talk about if this clan of the Nephilim was truly somehow part of this fallen angels, okay? You look at how some of the ancient writers talked about these fallen angels at the beginning of creation or whenever it happened, right? 

That they were beyond repentance, right? In other words, it's like, "Well, why don't they just turn?" And it's like, that's not the way a lot of the church fathers saw this. They're like, "No, they're beyond repentance." So we're not talking about just someone who's down on their luck and made some bad choices and needs to be repentant, right? 

JR: Yeah. 

David: We're talking about most of the people at that time around Noah were really beyond that, and they had clearly thumbed their nose at God, and they had made their [00:16:00] choices, and they were clearly, whatever you might say, integrated with these fallen spirits. And it was just beyond anything that Noah could have done to call them to repentance. 

Yeah. 

JR: But I mean, don't you think it's strange that the evil is never really specifically described, or at least is laid out in these vague terms? It just says that the earth is corrupt and violent. 

Because, I look at the whole Bible as a simplistic view of the Bible is a whole list of don't do this, do this, don't do this, you know. 

David: Yeah 

JR: one instance where God destroys the earth, right, other than the people on the ark, is not described as, well, here's what happened. Let me explain this, I'm not talking about mean people, I'm talking about a bunch of murderers. People murdered everybody all the time. It's like I can't... 

It's hard for my New Testament brain to think of how bad things were, that the corruption was so bad that they were beyond any possible repentance, any possible forgiveness. You know what I mean? 'Cause that's every book in the New Testament[00:17:00]  

David: Yeah, yeah. That really gets into ... Well, some of that is described in the Book of Enoch, and there are other extra-biblical texts, I'm gonna talk about one in a minute, that actually go into detail about what was going on, in graphic detail, and it's not pretty, right? Maybe there was a bit of like, "Hey, we wanna keep, we wanna keep the Bible rated R." 

I won't even say PG, 'cause the Bible's not 

JR: I was 

David: Right? 

JR: it's definitely PG at least. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: Maybe PG-13. 

David: But, but there's another piece of it that I think sometimes, and we're gonna encounter this through several of these stories that we're gonna talk about in this series, sometimes the Bible assumes that the ancient audience already knew what was going on, right? 

So we, from a modern perspective, say, "Well, what was going on? Why didn't they tell us?" Well, the ancient audience probably knew what was going on. In fact, if you go to, um, later on in the Old Testament where they're taking the Promised Land, some of the way they [00:18:00] talk about the pagan tribes or the, clans that are around them and drive them out of the Promised Land, it does go into detail about what they were doing. 

And a- again, it wasn't just that they were mean people or dishonest. It was, like, gross pagan ritual. 

JR: Yeah. No, 

David: A- and s- 

JR: that's a good way to say it. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: It was beyond something, physical, it was spiritual. If you don't think that the Nephilim or something along the lines of some kind of dark spirits hybrid with fallen angels or something like that, then I think the burden is on you to explain why things were so bad off that God couldn't offer repentance. Cause once you start talking about the mixing of DNA and these hybrid Nephilim, things like that,  

David: then  

JR: you start to say, okay, well, God had to wipe this off or else all the bloodline, the human bloodline is gonna be corrupted with these spiritual entities. And at least that makes sense to me. It's like, well, you gotta wipe it out and start [00:19:00] over. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: So anyway, I just think that's worth pointing out, and that kinda rolls into verses nine through 14. 

David: Yeah, and let's have people listen to this, and then I actually wanna go back to this point as we start to talk about Noah, right? So the story of Noah starts in chapter 6 verse 8, but we're gonna have you listen to chapter 6 verse 9 through 14, and then we'll start to talk about Noah. 

Genesis 6:9-14 
 

This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 

So God said to Noah, I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. [00:20:00] I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood, make rooms in it, and coat it with pitch inside and out. 

David: All right, so that introduces the story of Noah that most of us are used to, right? Noah was perfect in his generation. There was wickedness all around him, and God says, "Okay, Noah, I want you to build an ark because I'm going to flood the world." 

Okay, so let's talk about this phrase real quick about Noah was blameless in his time or perfect in his generation. What do you think that's talking about there? 

JR: Yeah, well, you and I have read an interesting theory that goes back to the Nephilim again, but several old English translations say the word perfect in his generations, which is kind of strange wording 'cause we obviously know that Noah's generations weren't perfect the way we think about it, sinless, without sin, right? But another way to look at that verse is that Noah had a [00:21:00] perfectly human bloodline that had been uncorrupted by the Nephilim. 'Cause again, you start off with this strange mention of the Nephilim. It's like, what does that have to do with anything? That's weird. And then you just pick up the Noah's Ark story. But, this is the only time th-that exact wording is used in the Bible, and so it lends itself to be misunderstood, or at least, we can translate it different ways with no real evidentiary way of defending the translation if it's only used once, right? And so this particular phrase is only used once in the Bible, and so our English translation is perfect in his generations, but you and I tend to think it means a little bit more like maybe perfected DNA, right? Unadulterated, yeah, uncorrupted DNA, uncorrupted bloodline, yeah. 

David: Yeah, that's definitely a different take than a lot of times you'll hear. A lot of times you just say, "Well, Noah was a good guy, and he was surrounded by jerks." Right? Well, God would be flooding the earth all the time if that was the reason to flood the earth, right? 

JR: Yeah, it sounds [00:22:00] like my workplace. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: My neighborhood, yeah. 

JR: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And it does, it just gives a little bit more perspective on, you know, I don't know, you can just gloss over it and it's like, well, people were really wicked, and they were doing awful things, and so God had to wipe them out.  

David: And  

JR: again, you gotta go back to say, why doesn't he do that all the time? I know that there are stories like Sodom and Gomorrah and some other stories in the Old Testament, but you would look at that and say, "Man, why isn't that happening during the Holocaust?" Or, "Why isn't that happening during, some of these other awful events in history?" And I think again, if you just pull in that idea that Nephilim corrupted bloodline, those types of images, then this starts to make a little bit more sense 

David: Right.  

JR: From Old Testement to New Testament. 

Book of the Cave of Treasures 
 

David: Okay, so and I have to give props I heard a podcast that was talking about this book that I'm gonna talk about, and it was, Jonathan Pageau and Richard Roland, they were talking about this. And he was [00:23:00] talking about this, it's called The Book of the Cave of Treasures, and I thought- 

JR: this that, this is that universal history thing that they've got 

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah 

JR: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Keep going. 

David: So I was thinking this book sounds interesting, and so I downloaded it, it's like 99 cents, and I started reading it, and it is super fascinating. And in stories like this with Noah, it actually fills in a lot of the blanks at least what someone's take was tradition, what was going on at the time. 

And I want to share a little bit about that because it's called The Book of the Cave of Treasures. They don't know who wrote it, but it's like a fourth century AD manuscript because it describes the events of the Bible from creation to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. 

JR: But this person kind of takes the Bible as an outline, but then they take all these traditions, and this is in Syria, so like kind of Far Eastern traditions, right? And they kind of make it [00:24:00] into a commentary, okay? So the part that was really interesting about Noah was here's how The Book of the Cave of Treasures describes what was going on in Noah's time. 

David: Seth, okay, so Cain kills Abel, and then Seth is the third brother, right? 

JR: Mm-hmm.  

David: And so Seth and his line, his descendants, live on the mountain, but not at the top, because the top of the mountain is paradise. Already you can start to see the symbolism. That's really, really cool. 

JR: liking this 

David: Yeah, so the top is paradise and no one's allowed up there because humans were kicked out of paradise. 

But Seth and his generations, his family, live on the side of this mountain, and in the valley are the sons of Cain, okay? And so, so you can kind of already go, "Oh, yeah, I see where this is going." So the sons of Seth, and of course this is another thing I don't think I understood, 'cause when the Bible talks about all these different generations, you think of them as dispersed, but they're all [00:25:00] together, right? So 

JR: Yeah, why wouldn't they be? Right. 

David: Right, yeah. So ... And they lived at least, well, according to the Bible too, they lived hundreds and hundreds of years. And again, that's something you see in, say, other literature is ... we'll talk about this pattern of a flood, but another common denominator is before the flood, people live longer, okay? 

Anyway, they have the generations of Seth, who's by this time dead also, buried with his father Adam, I think, on this holy mountain in the cave of treasures. That's where the cave of treasures is. So you have basically the patriarchs of the sons of Seth are people like Methuselah, like Lamech, and Enoch, and Noah, okay? So these are the patriarchs at the time, and they're all there together. And they're telling the sons of Seth, "Don't go down and mingle with the sons of Cain." And then it even describes how demons kind of infiltrate the sons of Cain, and basically they're 

[00:26:00] And this is where it actually describes what was going on, the evil on the earth at that time. And it's the introduction of technologies, right? It's these pagan rituals where the demons are able to interact with the human beings. Then you have the Nephilim who come along, right? 

And so the sons of Cain down in the valley were basically the embodiment of everything that had rejected God, right? All right. So any way, this isn't a episode about that, but to wrap it up, basically one by one, the generation of Seth start to be lured down to the valley, to where Noah is the only one left because Enoch had been taken away, right? 

In some traditions, Methuselah's also taken away. Lamech had died. And so it's interesting because in that scenario where it says Noah was kind of perfect in his generation, it really was almost that Noah is the last person standing on the side of the mountain, and everyone else had abandoned it, and they were partying down in [00:27:00] the valley with the sons of Cain. 

And I thought, 

JR: kinda... 

David: "Man, that's really, really cool." 

JR: Yeah. And so again, that idea of perfect in his generations kind of is that not that Noah never made a mistake or any of those things. It just that he was final holdout that said, "Nope, I was told not to go down there. We're not going down there," 

David: Yeah 

JR: And great-great-grandfather Seth said, "Don't join them," and 

David: Yeah 

JR: he held his ground pretty good, but everybody else had faltered. Okay, that's kind of interesting. That's a good way to think about it, too. 

David: Yeah. Yeah, so he's literally almost the only one left, he and his wife and his three sons who all go on the ark, and then his wife's sons. 

JR: Okay. 

David: That's who goes on the ark. 

JR: All right, so they're sticking together. Okay. 

David: Yeah.  

JR: Well, I wanted to-- I actually, That Book of the Cave of Treasures, I want to download it myself. It's funny you brought that up. 

David: Well, and it's worth saying, we talk about this book of the Cave of Treasures, the Book of Enoch. We talked about this before, but I do think in American evangelicalism, there's a fear [00:28:00] of wandering into those books, 'cause you say, "Well, that's not in the Bible." Well, 

JR: Right 

David: okay, yeah, and we're not equating it with part of the Bible. 

We're not saying this is missing pieces of the Bible that should've been in there. But it is a record of tradition that for 1,000 years, this is what people held to be true. So that's why I bring it back to this idea of you were saying, what was going on that was so bad that God said, "I have to wipe out creation," right? 

And some of these traditions actually fill in the blank. Now, they're not journalistic accounts, but they are tradition about ... Yeah, none of it is, so it is a tradition that helps fill in the blank, and I just got a lot out of reading that book, because it made the whole lead-up to Noah make so much more sense. 

You know? That, that this is the division. This is going on. Noah is literally the last person of his generation that had not abandoned God, right? 

JR: Yeah. And this Book of the Cave of Treasures, the Book of Enoch, there's other extra biblical books that [00:29:00] actually do help you make sense of kind of what exactly was going on, as opposed to this kind of vague, people were wicked 

David: Yeah 

JR: and then let's move on. You know what I mean? 

David: Yeah, and it helps get over the idea that Noah was just minding his own business, and he was a good guy, and God comes to him in a dream and says, "I'm gonna flood the earth. Build an ark." And, you know, he looks like a crazy man in front of all his neighbors and stuff like that. And, again, that doesn't really make a lot of sense, and some of these other extra-biblical stories and traditions actually help explain what was happening. 

The other cool thing I'll say, and then we'll move on, because it's actually a good transition, is when God tells Noah to build an ark, he says, "Go down to the plain where the sons of Cain live and build the ark." Now, that's 

JR: it say that? 

David: in the Book of the Cave of Treasures. 

JR: Oh, okay. I was about 

David: Yeah. 

JR: I'm looking over at the 

David: No, yeah 

JR: Okay. Yeah, I was about to say, oh, that's cool. Okay, so yeah, go down and [00:30:00] actually build this container of the future of humanity in their space as if to give them an opportunity to either accept it or reject it. 

David: Yeah, so now we're gonna move on to the building of the ark in verses 14. But it starts to explain what this idea of an ark is. And if I ask you what an ark is, you'd say, "Well, it's a boat." 

JR: Sure. Yeah. 

David: right, all right, in the story, this is much more than a boat. Like, that's the most lowest resolution view that you could take of what an ark is in this story, right? 

So in The Book of the Cave of Treasures, the ark built in the plain of the sons of Cain actually functions what is, like, kind of what we talked about with the minor prophets. It's the opportunity for repentance, but if you don't repent, it's also a sign of judgment. 

JR: Okay. 

David: Right? 

STRONG TEACHING MOMENT: The Ark as Sacred Container 
 

David: So it's a call to repentance. I'm building an ark right next to your camp, right? And also the message [00:31:00] is, if you're not gonna repent, you're gonna wish you had been on this ark, right? 

TOPIC: Noah and the Ark — Building Sacred Space 
 

JR: Yeah. Yeah. I was also reading that the word ark in the Bible, is the Hebrew word, and it only appears twice, and the other time the word is used is for Moses' basket in Exodus, which is pretty cool, because it's another instance of a vessel preserving life and carrying the future of, in that case, Israel. 

But, that's kind of a cool concept. It's more than just a boat because the same word tebah in Exodus 3 or wherever it's at is a basket. So it's clearly not a big boat that she made. It's an ark. So it's something more... The word is trying to say something more than just a big boat, you know? To your point. 

It's a container of something. It's a container of humanity. It's a container of the future. Something like that, I don't know. 

David: Well, and then you have the Ark of the Covenant. Now, I'd have to look up real quick whether that's the same word, but in English [00:32:00] it's ... Okay, but we still call it an ark, right? And the idea of the Ark of the Covenant is it's a sacred container, which I do think there's a parallel to what the ark in Noah's Ark represents. 

It's a sacred container. Yeah, yeah. It's sacred space. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: Yeah, so it's much more than a boat. It's actually, it's a call to repentance, but it's also a warning of judgment. It's sacred space, right? It's a container of the sacred to ride out the chaos. It's all those things 

JR: Yeah. Which is cool that In that extra-biblical book, it's talking about build it down in the plain of Shinar.  

David: Yeah 

JR: this sacred space in the middle of this pagan worship, whatever was going on down there. Create a sacred space and give them the opportunity, but also it's gonna stand in judgment. That's a cool image. Well, the idea that, the sacred space, like, that's all through scripture. You've got the Garden of Eden, you've got Noah's Ark, you got, Moses' [00:33:00] basket, but you've got the tabernacle, like you said, the Ark of the Covenant. Even the church or the New Jerusalem, these are all sacred spaces that are built in, corrupt times, corrupt places. And so it's sorta like this, it's like this sacred container that's gonna hold onto, the seed and push it into the future. It's protection of, I don't want to say the godly, but it's probably not the right word. 

But anyway, yeah. It's a container to move humanity across the wilderness. It's something like that. I don't know. All that ties together. 

David: Yeah 

JR: it's, I'm just getting flooded, you know? 

David: Well, it occurred to me it's also an image of maybe how the church should be functioning, right? The church shouldn't try to appeal to all the partying that's going on in the sons of Cain, right? 

The church is actually preserving something that's available to the culture, but it's preserving it, and the church is saying, "We're going somewhere. [00:34:00] We want you to come along, but we're preserving something sacred in this space, in this community," right? 

JR: Yeah. No, that's well said. Yeah. It's the idea of a sacred space. And again, we think of sacred space as something like the Holy of Holies or... And that's true as well. But yeah, the sacred space being a container of something and saying, "Let's hold onto this," but in the midst of the chaos. 

David: Yeah. Yeah 

JR: you're right, that is the way the church should function. It should be down in the plain, it should be in the middle of this.  

David: Yeah 

JR: But it also it's the walled garden. The walls have to be up, to delineate the boundaries, something like that 

David: Yeah, yeah. There has to be some kind of boundary. I start to hesitate when I hear about churches who, you know, "Oh, we don't have any boundaries. Everyone's welcome." Every-- And I understand what they're saying, but in the same time, it's like, yeah, but at what point do you stop being this sacred vessel, right? 

That's gonna move through the chaos to a better future, [00:35:00] right? And that's really the way an ark functions in all of these examples. 

JR: Yeah. So we're trying to paint this picture of the tension between being, what is it? The-- What's the line? Being in the world, but not of the world. 

David: Yeah, yeah 

JR: of, that type of idea. And it's funny because it-- that pattern is all through scripture. And I'm glad you pointed that out about build the ark down in the plain of Shinar. 

Go right to where they're at and build it there. Which also makes sense because if Noah was the last of his generation, and him and his family were up on the middle part of the mountain, then it explains why, in the Genesis account that he was mocked by the surrounding people. It's like, "Well, I thought they were down in the valley." You know, it's like, "Well, no, go build it in the valley. That's where I want you to build it." 

David: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, and they're not mocking him 'cause he's just this crazy dude. They're mocking him 'cause he's the pious patriarch who lives on the mountain, right? 

JR: Right. Yeah. 

David: And so it just paints it in a different light. All right, real [00:36:00] quick, so we're to the point where God gives, and we're not gonna go through all of this, God gives him directions on how to build an ark. 

Now, the other thing I wanna point out here is it's interesting that God gives Noah the blueprint of how to build an ark. Now, there's a couple other times in the Bible where God actually gives the instructions. God actually gives the instructions about how to build a temple, right? 

JR: Yeah 

David: the idea is you're not gonna build something for me, I'm telling you what to build, and I'm going to inhabit it, right? 

Which gets to this idea of sacred space again. 

JR: And so I thought that was interesting as well. I don't know if you had any other thoughts on this idea of the blueprint that God gives Noah to build the ark? 

Yeah, it's that. It's the God gives the specifics for the Ark of the Covenant, 

David: Yeah, that's right 

JR: the tabernacle, and, yeah, there's a lot of parallels between that. You know, like even the, uh, build it with this particular wood and cover it in [00:37:00] pitch, and the Ark of the Covenant is build it in this particular wood and cover it in gold. 

And it's not just the dimensions that are important, it's the specificity of which he says. What does the song say? Build it out of gopher barky barky. Yeah. It's, 

David: Yeah. 

JR: The specifics of do it in this, line it with this pitch, three levels, you know what I mean? I f- I forget all the specifics, but there is a specificity to it that makes a modern reader think, "Huh, I wonder what the importance of this is." 

I'm sure ancient people knew how to build boats, I would think that God wanted more than a raft. So he's very specific on how this should be built. And yes, to your point, there's a pattern of God giving very specific dimensions for a few things in the Bible. 

David: Okay, that just occurred to me as you were talking, that one of the contrasts then you have is, again, what was happening on Earth that was such an abomination to God. And one of the things that different traditions bring in, and the Bible does eventually bring it in, although it's [00:38:00] not explicit to modern ears, is this idea of the misuse of technology, right? 

JR: Yeah. 

David: Tower of Babel, right? So some of the descriptions about what was happening was these fallen angels were given the sons of Cain technology. And the problem with technology in the Bible is it's knowledge before what? Knowledge before its time. Knowledge before you have the character to actually understand what to do with it. 

And so it's interesting that God gives Noah technology basically, but it's from God. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: That's kinda cool 

JR: too. 

Yeah. No, that's the whole Cain goes off to the Land of Nod, and his descendants are, I forget all of them, but then it gets to Tubal-Cain and, this one worked with metal, this one b- created weapons of war. So yeah, there is this kind of indication that either through spiritual, if it was given to them spiritually or whether it was their own devices that they figured out how to make these weapons of war, there is something that, a difference, in man-made technology and [00:39:00] God-ordained technology. And it really is kind of a mirror to Tubal-Cain and that, those generations , to your point, that they brought about technology that was misused. 

David: Yeah 

JR: it's not a problem with necessarily technology. It's a problem of, I don't know, where it comes from, what it's being used for.  

David: Yeah, and I don't know, like you could say with a lot of modern technology, it's also the character of the person whose hands it's in, right? So God gives Noah technology because Noah is righteous in his generation, right? As opposed to all the technology that was taking place, you know, down in the plain of Shinar that, man, it's just anything goes, right? 

And so I don't know, I think that's an interesting contrast, too, in this story. 

JR: Well, yeah. It's very timely for us. It seems like we're right in the middle of this technological boom, and you can use it for good or you can use it for evil or, 

David: Yeah. Yeah 

JR: and anything goes. And again, what were they doing so bad that [00:40:00] a flood had to come that's not going on today? 

Because it sure feels like a pretty modern problem that they're describing here. You know what I mean? 

David: Yeah, yeah. Especially the technology aspect. It's like, oh, it all depends on whose hands it is in. And, 

JR: exactly 

David: anyway. We'll save that for, Stranger Things 'cause I have a lot of thoughts on emerging AI technology and all that. All right, so we're 45 minutes in and we haven't even gotten to the flood yet, right? 

TOPIC: Animals on the Ark — A Miniature Eden 
 

David: So all right, let's move on to chapter seven where the animals come on board. Okay? So Noah's built this ark, and then chapter seven of Genesis starts in on the two of every animal, right? 

It's interesting because at the end of chapter six, he says, "Bring two of every animal into the ark." 

Clean and Unclean Animals 
 

David: And then in chapter seven verses 1-5, he actually specifies there's this delineation between clean and unclean, right? So bring two of every clean animal, and then seven of every unclean, which we'll get to that in a minute. So he's bringing the animals, on board. I don't know, any [00:41:00] thoughts on, like, the animals? What's going on here? 

And again, this is part of the whole kids story, right? All the animals are coming on board, right? 

JR: Yeah. Well, nothing more than, I just picture the ark kind of as a miniature Eden.  

David: Yeah. 

JR: Inside are the humans, the animals, there's God's presence, and outside is the sea, which we've talked about in other episodes. We've mentioned that it represents chaos, death, disorder, things like that. But the ark becomes this tiny protected creation floating in a sea of uncreation. Think about it that way, and that's why it makes sense that the animals bring in... It's just kind of remaking Eden a little bit, or at least it has a lot of those echoes. 

David: Oh, sure. Yeah. And there's even this idea, 'cause the instructions to build the ark does say make a lower level for the large animals, the middle level I think for birds and stuff like that, and then the top level for humans, right? So even in the pattern of the ark, you have this, [00:42:00] you know, what do you have? 

You have the mountaintop, right? Paradise. Then you have then you have the mount- side of the mountain, and then you have the valley. And you see that division even in creation, right? A- and so that pattern, again, I think that pattern is on purpose, that you're supposed to see the ark as a container of creation. 

So there's even order, there's a hierarchy even on the ark, right? It's not just this was convenient way to build it. 

JR: No, I think you're right. And it's more than just the practical, well, you want the elephants on the bo- you're not gonna put the elephants in the attic, right? And the birds up. It's more than that. You're exactly right. It's actually framing the mountain. It's framing creation. It's saying, "Here's the heavenly in the representation of the birds. 

It is laying out this hierarchical structure that we've seen the pattern all through the Bible. And so this is more than just a practical logistical decision of, "Hey, before you start putting animals all over the place, Noah, remember, put the, the big animals on the bottom.  

David: Yeah. 

JR: Don't put the sheep in with the [00:43:00] lions, and don't put the cats with the mice." 

You know what I mean? It's like, it's laying out that pattern of creation. 

David: I'm glad you said that because it also helps sometimes in our modern reductionistic thinking, we start to think of the logistics of it all, right? And we've all heard about this is why there are no more dinosaurs, 'cause they didn't fit on the ark. Or you don't want, right, you don't want a velocir- yeah, T-Rex. 

Like, Noah figured out real quick that wasn't gonna go well, so sorry, you're out of luck, right? You're gonna go extinct. Right? But, like, we get bogged down in the logistics of it all, and well, could you build a boat that held all the species? And I, I don't think that's the whole point of the original story, right? 

I think it was meant to say this is a container of creation, and just like God creates the animals, in Genesis 1, Noah is also going to preserve the animals so they can repopulate, right? 

JR: Yeah 

David: and don't read this as a scientific textbook about [00:44:00] the biology of animals and who would've survived the ark and how did they survive and all that. 

Like, that's not the point of this story. 

JR: No, yeah, I agree. 

Okay, so what, you mentioned earlier we're gonna come to the clean and unclean. What is the significance? What's the reason between two unclean, seven of the clean? With the understanding that I think there's an obvious that there's some sacrifices that are gonna be made, so you need a few extra. But I think there's more to this. What do you think? 

David: Yeah, so it is specified that it's seven of the clean, which means that there's a different purpose for them, right? And the two of the unclean. I don't know. There's a bunch of stuff that I've read, and we actually clarified this just now really quick so we got it right. But, you know, so before the flood, at least the, the biblical account is they didn't eat meat, okay? 

At least that's ... because after the flood, and he has this covenant with Noah, one of the things he says in the covenant is, "You're free to eat clean animals," which would indicate [00:45:00] then that before they weren't. All right? So there's a couple practical reasons I would say. Number one is the idea that clean animals were available to sacrifice. 

So when Noah gets off the boat, he offers a sacrifice. He does this covenant with God, right, that we'll get to at the very end. And obviously you can't sacrifice the male or female. Well, we may have said this, but, like, maybe that's why there's no more T-rexes, 'cause he sacrificed the female and then realized what he had done, right? 

He's like, "Well, that's, that's it. It's extinction for that." 

JR: Yeah. After the velociraptor caused all the havoc on the ark, Noah said, "Dude, you are the first sacrifice. 

David: You're going down. 

JR: Yeah. You are the first go, and then he realized, "Oh, man, sorry." Yeah, 

David: No more of ... Yeah. 

JR: mates." Yeah. 

David: Okay, so that's a practical reason why you need seven clean versus two unclean. And the other part is that if God says you can eat now of the clean animals, well, again, same thing. You can't eat ... [00:46:00] You have two sheep, you can't eat one of them, right? So you have seven sheep. 

And again, I, I wonder, I don't know, I wonder this is our modern brain thinking about, okay, you had seven sheep, and h- you know, now you have six. I wonder if it was more just saying, no, no, no, like this is, you have a pair that mates, and then you have seven, which is kind of this idea of a perfect number, right? 

Or it's the completion of a clean animal that is now available to consume and to sacrifice as well as to mate. It's gotta be something like that. 

JR: Yeah. Well, seven is never just arithmetic in the Bible. We know that. 

David: Yeah 

JR: It's completeness, it's sacred order, but it's something like-- it's also, you know, 'cause, creation was completed on the seventh day, and I'm trying to think of sevens that happened before the flood, because it's easy afterward to go talk about all the sevens. 

David: Yeah 

JR: up until that point, yeah, the seven pairs is maybe it's because these animals are set apart for God's [00:47:00] renewed creation. It's something like they're not merely surviving, they're like participating in worship. They're participating in creation once again. There's an image there that it kind of lays out. 

David: Yeah. You had also just looked something up and, and you had mentioned this idea that before the time of Noah, there wasn't really this idea of clean and unclean animals. That comes in later. So what's going on there that all of a sudden this idea of clean and unclean is introduced to Noah? 

JR: Yeah, because that doesn't come along until Moses, until the law of Moses. But it's interesting that God doesn't have to clarify the distinction. Noah knows the distinction. and yet in the biblical text, it doesn't give the distinctions about what a clean animal is and an unclean animal is like it does in Leviticus, which is later in the timeline. So I haven't thought about that, but yeah, it is weird that Noah seems to either intuitively know or God gave instructions that weren't written down as part of the biblical [00:48:00] corpus, up until this point. And so yeah, it's like the Mosaic law formalized what Noah was instructed. So it's almost like Noah started the idea of clean and unclean, which is... i've never thought about it that way, but I think that Maybe that's... Yeah, I think that's what's going on. 

David: Well, and if you look at this as like a tearing down of creation and then a preservation and a recreation, and we're gonna get to that pattern in a moment, then it's almost as if the story is introducing the idea that as part of this second creation go-round, then this is where the idea of the clean and unclean come in. 

That's gonna be formalized later, right? 

JR: Yeah. 

David: it could be something like that as well. 

JR: Yeah. But I do think it's interesting that God doesn't explain to Noah what clean and unclean are.  

He appears to know. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: Even though the first time it's introduced to us as readers of the Bible is in Leviticus. 

David: Yeah. And he understands that clean [00:49:00] means you can eat it, consume it, and also sacrifice it. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: And unclean means you don't eat it, you leave it alone, it's just part of creation, right? Which again, there, there's so many things to talk about here, but clean and unclean, does not mean good and bad. It's ritual, right? It's ritualistic purity. So just because an animal is unclean doesn't mean God didn't like it, right? That's not what it's saying at all. 

JR: Yeah. 

Okay, so obviously yet another rabbit trail, and this episode's gonna be full of them. But, moving on, in chapter seven, verses six through 12, we have the actual flood. We're finally getting there. The rain is about to come down. 

David: An hour in. 

JR: Yeah, yeah. So let's listen to, verses six through 12, and then we'll pick this up on the other side. 

Genesis 7:6-12 
 

Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and [00:50:00] unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 

And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened, and rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. 

TOPIC: The Flood — Undoing and Recreating Creation 
 

David: All right, so there's a couple things we need to talk about here, but it starts off with everyone knows it rained for how long? 40 days and 40 nights, right? Now, I think you specifically have talked before about that idea of 40. That's not a mistake. That doesn't mean that on this day it started raining and 40 days later exactly it stopped. 

Like 40 days and 40 nights is communicating something much larger. 

JR: Yeah, that's right.  

STRONG TEACHING MOMENT: 40 Days as Wilderness Pattern 
 

JR: 40's often associated with the [00:51:00] wilderness, right? And the wilderness being unordered chaos of the world. We've talked about this in other episodes. But in the flood story, it's cool because the wilderness is basically everything outside the ark, right? But in 

David: Yeah 

JR: the Israel, you know, Israel wandering in the desert, in Moses, Elijah, Jesus, 40 days in the wilderness, all those, they all went through the same time of testing and transformation. And for whatever reason that we've explained in other episodes, it was the length of time required before entering into a new world. And so that's what Noah's doing. That's where the 40 days of rain. 

It's the transition to the new world that all these other patterns of 40 are explaining also. 

David: Yeah, I like that idea that everything outside the ark was the wilderness. So Noah in the ark he's going through the wilderness just like the children of Israel do, just like Jesus does, right? He's crossing over the wilderness, and of course the reason you go through the wilderness is to reach a new phase of life, like a [00:52:00] new creation, and that's exactly what's happening here with Noah. 

JR: Yeah, that's right. The promised land, so to speak. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: So, yeah, 

But yes, it's the difficult journey, and the time it takes to prepare yourself for the new world. Whether that's the Promised Land, whether that's Jesus going into his ministry, 

David: Yeah 

JR: the flood, whether that's... 

Right? It's like there's a time of preparation.  

And so we've said this in other episodes, but there's something about,  

POSSIBLE SHORTS: 40 Days in the Wilderness 
 

JR: if you feel like you're in this time of chaos, like you feel like you're in the wilderness, whether it's you're looking for a job or there's family issues, whatever your personal problem is, if you try to rush that, you're rushing the wilderness, and the wilderness is not necessarily bad. 

It's a time of testing, and a time of testing actually is preparing you for the new reality that's on the other side. And so while we look at these times of testing, it's like, man, how long is this gonna last? And again, the 40 is just a representation, a numerical representation, whether it's 40 days or 40 years. [00:53:00] It's not necessarily that let's wait 40 days before I try to tackle this new job or something like that. It's more like take the time to learn what the wilderness has to teach you and has to prepare you for this new reality that you're walking into. This obviously happened on a global scale, but it even happens on the personal scales of our lives. 

David: Yeah. It happens all the time. If we're paying attention, yeah, it happens all the time, and the wilderness always lasts 40 days if you're paying attention and understand what the Bible's trying to say. That's a good way to think about it. 

JR: right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly 

David: All right, so this is where now the flood, the world floods, right? 

Epic of Gilgamesh and Flood Traditions 
 

David: You know, this gets into the whole idea of, well, the Epic of Gilgamesh, right? It describes the same thing, and then you have people go, "Oh, they just borrowed from the Epic of Gilgamesh," right? 

Right, that's kind of like... I think we kinda understand that that's nonsense now, but a lot of us grew up hearing that. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: But there is something about... I- I just wanna address it real quick. Actually you hear [00:54:00] flood stories from all over the place. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: right? And so... 

JR: and you don't wanna ignore that 

David: Right. Right. That's actually telling you something. 

So instead of being a just, "Oh, well, they just copied Gilgamesh." No, they're actually describing something that was cross-cultural, that almost any culture describes, which is there was a flood. There was a sea of chaos that undid the world, and then a new world emerged, right? 

JR: Yeah. Yeah, there's something like, uh, there's over 100 flood stories in historical, different history, different cultures. And so, yeah. I know I'm glad you mentioned the Epic of Gilgamesh, 'cause that's an interesting book. 

But yeah, if there was a universal flood, it stands to reason that all these different cultures are needing to explain it. They've got their own stories behind it. And so it's not the fact that Epic of Gilgamesh, which is an older... We, you know, our copies of the Epic are probably older than our oldest copies of Genesis, but that [00:55:00] obviously doesn't mean that it was written before that. I mean, this is oral tradition, you know, went on for generations before it was written down. 

So who knows what the original story was. It's a little bit disingenuous to say, "Well, they just copied the Babylonian story." It's probably more likely that every culture has their own creation story and their own flood story 

David: Yeah 

JR: to communicate their explanation of the meaning behind it. And so I'll get into this a little bit deeper when we talk about the dove, 

David: Okay 

JR: ' cause I want to come back to this. But what's fairly obvious to me at least, is that the Genesis account is written with the understanding that there are other flood myths out there circulating. 

David: Yeah. Yeah 

JR: You know what I mean? And again, we'll get to this when we talk about the dove. I'll come back to this idea. But yeah, it's out there. It's written knowing that there are other accounts of floods, and so it's kind of written with that in mind. And so that's why there's so similar stories that are out there that seem to, 

Well, which one [00:56:00] is it? Is it the Babylonian? Is it the biblical? It's like it all happened, it's just everybody has different take on the reasoning behind it, and Genesis is no exception. It was written with the understanding that there are other stories out there, and so it's gonna try to distinguish itself in these subtle ways that we'll talk about here in a minute. 

David: Yeah. No, I'm glad you brought that up. A lot of stories in the Bible actually resemble other stories because they're actually referencing those stories and saying, "Let me give you the true version of what's happening." But that's another topic. But that is ... Yeah, you do see that in the Bible. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: Okay, so there's something we gotta talk about. And I just brought that up because I don't want people to get hung up on, well, did the whole world flood, and is that possible? And this, again, this isn't a meteorological account. This is a very common theme throughout all cultures, and they're trying to explain a catastrophic event, and then basically the world that emerges after that, right? That's the way to think of that. 

But there is a pattern that I [00:57:00] do wanna point out because the rest of chapter seven talks about the idea of the flooding that happens. One of the things that's ... I'm convinced that's happening in this story, if we haven't made it clear yet, is it is an undoing of everything that happened back in Genesis chapter one and two. 

And 

JR: Yes 

David: the way that the story is written, now we don't necessarily see it in our English versions, but the way the story is written is actually very intentional saying, "Here's what's happening," right? God is undoing creation, and then he's going to rebuild creation. And I wanna just point out a couple of examples of that. 

So, Genesis 1, he has the waters above and below, and then out of that comes dry land, right? So it's no mistake then that I think in Genesis 7:11, it talks about, when it started to rain, it said that waters from the heaven came down, and the springs of the Earth came from below. Yeah, the fountains of [00:58:00] the Earth. 

All right, that's intentional undoing of creation of what happened back in Genesis 1, right? 

JR: Yeah. No, that's cool because again, we want to put our scientific hats on and say, "Oh, it's saying that there was water stored up in the earth, and somehow the springs, geysers, as well as..." And it's like, no, it's the separation. 

David: Yeah 

JR: can overlay chapter six basically with Genesis 1, and you almost see this sequential undoing. 

David: Mm-hmm. 

JR: It's almost like they were made to be read together. 

David: Yeah. Yeah, so then it gen- 

JR: the, what is it? Pink Floyd and Lis- and The Wizard of Oz. They were made to be lis- 

David: I've heard that. 

JR: in that way. 

David: I've never tried it, but I've heard of it, yeah 

JR: I haven't either. But no, they were made to be kind of mirrors of each other. 

David: Yeah, they were intentional mirrors of each other. So in creation, you have the watery chaos, but then dry land emerges, right? So in the flood, what do you have? The watery chaos starts to overtake the dry land, and so there's no more separation of land and water anymore, right? 

JR: [00:59:00] And that's day one of Genesis, so we got the separation of the waters, 

David: Yeah 

JR: and now we've got same thing. Okay, so then you go to day two or three or whatever. 

David: Mm-hmm. 

JR: The land, and then, yeah, we go to 

David: And then 

JR: creatures or fill 

David: all the living creatures, right? All the living creatures filled the Earth, and what happens in the flood? All the living creatures except for the ark, right, except for the sacred space, are destroyed. And so you go through this, and one by one it's just ... Man, it's a mir- like you said, it's a mirror of what happens in Genesis, and a mirror is a good way, because a mirror you see the opposite, right? 

You see, 

JR: Yeah 

David: you see the inverse of what's happening. And so this is very much an inverse of what happened at creation. And that's one of the things that I think the ancients would absolutely pick up that sometimes we miss, is this is an undoing of Genesis 1. 

And And then actually you see the recreation part very intentional as well. 

You see dry land emerge, right? You see the ark resting and the animals repopulating the Earth again. So [01:00:00] it's a great pattern that you see in here that's sometimes hard to spot 

JR: Yeah, you wrote down in your notes, Genesis 8:1, which is really cool 'cause I never picked up on this, but God sends a wind over the waters to begin restoring order. 

David: Yeah. Yeah 

JR: yeah, that's God's spirit in Genesis 1 moving over the waters." 

David: The Spirit of God hovering over the waters. Yeah, yeah 

JR: Which is again, we don't really quite understand that. I think the ancients had a better grip on what that represented, what that meant. But as a kid, you would just read that and say, "Okay, the holy Spirit's flying around over the waters. I don't know," and then move on to the next verse. 

But that has weight to it, and so does Genesis 8:1, where God sends his Spirit again to move over the waters, to restore order. 

David: And I'm glad you mentioned that. I had forgotten it, but the word wind and spirit in Hebrew is the same thing. So when it says God sent a wind to, dry up the land and land emerges, it's the same thing as God's spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis 1. 

JR: Yeah. [01:01:00] Yeah. That's kinda cool too. 

David: Yeah, that's really cool. So to me, this is one of the main points of the story of Noah and the ark. 

We finally got there, 

JR: right? But, but it's an undoing of creation. It's a preservation in the Garden of Eden, right, on the ark, and then it's a recreation. 

Yeah. So Genesis 1 is about creation. Genesis 2 through 5 are about the undoing of that creation. We talked about that earlier. And then the flood story is just recreating it all once again. And the whole thing is just an ark story. You know what I mean? 

David: Yeah 

JR: That sacred space journey across the wilderness to create humanity once again. Yes, it's just a beautiful pattern that you see all through it. 

David: In fact, let's have people listen to chapter eight, verse one through six. As you're listening to it, listen to the pattern of recreation, and then we'll come back and wrap things up. 

JR: Okay 

Genesis 8:1-6 
 

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the [01:02:00] earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. 

At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. 

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark.  

David: Okay, so I hope just in those verses, the handful of verses there, I hope you actually heard how creation is happening again, right? God's spirit, uh, separation of the waters, right? The ark comes ... Well, the ark hadn't rested yet. And it's interesting, I think you pointed this out earlier, but then we come to [01:03:00] actually a second period of 40 days, because 8:6 actually talks about how for 40 days after it rained, right, everything started to dry up. And so there's this second period of 40 days. I don't know, what do you think's going on there? 

JR: I don't know. I wanted to ask you the same thing, 'cause I'd never noticed it until we kinda outlined this. I was like, "Oh yeah, there's two 40s," but again, I can't help but think that it's something like rebuilding creation is a cooperative effort between heaven and Earth. 

You know, so we've got this mirror undoing of creation. We've got creation, we got the undoing of creation, we got the recreation, and so I don't know. So the 40 days of rain is something like heaven's process of transformation, and Noah's waiting 40 days later to send out the raven represents humanity's process of transformation before stepping into the new world. 

It's something like that. It's sorta like I've never thought about it, but it feels kind of that verse that says, "As in heaven, so it is on Earth." It's that type of mirror image again. Do you kinda [01:04:00] see it that way, or do you have a different take of the, about the second 40? 

David: No, 8, 8:6 real quick says, "After 40 days Noah opened the window that he had made in the ark." So this is after it rained 40 days and 40 nights. I don't know, my take is that it's such a large-scale pattern of undoing creation and recreation that I think it took 40 days to undo creation, right? That's one way to think about it. 

And now I think we're seeing, again, it's almost like, you know, down the valley, up the mountain again. It's like, okay, so now here's the second period of 40 that's going to take what? To start the process of recreation, because it's during the second that the dry land starts to appear. You know, this happens right after God's Spirit hovers over. 

So it's not a seven-day creation like in Genesis, but it is that same period of 40 that it's like, okay, I've undone creation, and now you're going to take the second journey through the wilderness, which is waiting for [01:05:00] new creation to happen. I don't know, I think it's something like that. 

JR: Yeah. Like you said, the go down to the valley and back up, 'cause one is, you know, again, the 40 days of the rain coming down, that represents the spiritual realm, their process of uncreation, and then Noah waiting, so that's humanity's process of transformation. 

David: Yeah 

JR: know, it's like, it's that mirror image. 

They fit together like Legos. One is the undoing, one is the doing, one is, heaven's part, one is man's part, and so it's sort of this cooperative effort to recreate and repopulate the world. 

David: Yeah. I think it's very intentional that it's in there. 

TOPIC: Raven and Dove — Old World vs New 
 

David: All right, so then we get to the raven and the dove. So first, he sends out a raven and it comes back. He sends it out again, it comes back, and then he sends out a dove. And again, there's a lot going on here, but this specifically, the raven, you said you wanted to circle back around and talk about. 

JR: Yeah, no, this is an interesting one. It's one of the first things I noticed when I read the Epic of Gilgamesh, is that the Earth is flooded in the [01:06:00] Epic of Gilgamesh. He sends out a dove, a swallow, and then a raven, and then it's the raven that doesn't return in that story, and so he knows that the Earth is habitable, I guess, right? 

And it's one of those things that we mentioned this earlier, it makes Christians a little uncomfortable, but the Epic of Gilgamesh is by all accounts an older written document than the Book of Genesis, but that doesn't mean the Babylonian story is older since, you know, we already mentioned all this stuff. But it's almost like the Genesis account is intentionally engaging the Babylonian story in this one little detail. And so that's why I wanted to bring it back up again. 

STRONG TEACHING MOMENT: Genesis as Deliberate Contrast to Babylon 
 

JR: Is that Genesis assumes the audience is familiar with flood traditions, and it tells a story in a way that deliberately contrasts 

David: Yeah 

JR: Israel's understanding of God with the gods of its neighbors, right? 

And so to me, it's not coincidental. It's an obvious and intentional reversing of the common narrative of the time. I don't know if I'm taking that too far or not, but that's what it feels like to me. 

David: No, I think that's definitely [01:07:00] there. I can almost see telling the story and saying, "He sends out a raven and it comes back, and then he sends out a dove." And the people are going, "No, no, no. I thought it was a dove and then a raven." And it's like, "No, no, no. The Babylonian story got it wrong." Right? It's, almost like, "No, no, I know that's what you think. 

I know that's the story you heard, but here's..." Uh, okay, and so here's an interesting idea of why the Bible might correct that view. And I don't know if you've read this as well. So first of all, a raven is an unclean animal. It's a scavenger, 

JR: Right. 

David: right? 

JR: right. 

David: Okay. And a dove 

JR: it's like why is a raven unclean? I thought all birds were clean, but that's what it is. It's a scavenger. 

David: A scavenger, yeah. 

JR: Yep, 

David: and think about, if you've just had a flood and all these animals and people died, right? Creation died, and the water starts to recede, what is the earth full of? Dead bodies. 

JR: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, floating bloated bodies, 

David: a s- so it's a smorgasbord, [01:08:00] right, for a raven, for a scavenger animal. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: And, and I think there's something there where the Babylonian epic talks about the raven goes out, and why does the raven not return? Well, he's feasting on the, all the bloated bodies, right? All the rotting carcasses. 

JR: Yeah, verse seven says that it kept flying back and forth until the waters had dried up from the earth. 

David: Yeah, yeah. 

JR: They were looking for back and forth to what? He didn't find land. It's like, no, back and forth to the floating horses and cows. 

David: Yeah, yeah. So there's something, there's ... Yeah, the floating T-Rex. He found the T-Rex and didn't return. So there's something there though about, I don't know, the idea that the Babylonian epic said that he sent a raven out as kind of ... What is, uh, an augury? is that the idea of like, reading birds? 

JR: Oh, I have no idea. Wow, never heard of it. 

David: Anyway, I think that's the right term. The idea of augury is reading the pattern of birds, and that tells you what the gods... So there's something, let's say this. There would be [01:09:00] something offensive almost to the Hebrew mind that the raven was the bird that went out to proclaim that the world is safe. 

And I think they're intentionally saying, "No, no, no. The raven went out and feasted on all the carcasses, and that's actually not a safe world to live in." Right? 

JR: No, that's cool. No, I like that. It's a cool distinction between the two stories. 

David: Yeah 

JR: I really do think that they're intentionally addressing the Babylonian flood tradition. And so, yes, you're right, on a practical level, the raven is a scavenger, and it can land on floating debris, whatever, and so you don't really get a real gauge on whether dry land is emerging 'cause the raven's just not gonna come back. 

David: Right 

JR: But the symbolic level, which is what we're interested in, is that the raven in Biblical story, the raven is unclean and goes first, followed by the dove who's clean. 

And it's almost like  

POSSIBLE SHORTS: The Raven vs the Dove 
 

JR: the old world belongs to death, the old world belongs to the raven.  

David: Yeah. 

JR: And [01:10:00] the new world is announced by peace, which is the symbol of the dove. 

David: Yeah, of course, then that goes to the symbolism of the dove. He brings back a, I think it's an olive branch, right? Is that right? 

JR: is, th- there's symbolism there too. 

David: Yeah, you, you don't even have to explain that one. But the idea of the earth is no longer full of, like, rotted carcasses. It's full of new life, right? And so the dove actually is the symbol that the world is safe to inhabit again. 

I don't know. I think there's a lot there, and I agree with you. I think it's very intentional. 

JR: Yeah, no, I think that's good. 'Cause something else is that again, on the practical side, you might see the raven as Noah testing to see if the world was survivable with the raven. But then he sends the dove, and he shows that it's not only survivable, but it is flourishing. 

It's growing. 

David: It's growing, yeah. 

JR: New growth is going. Yeah. No, that's cool. I like that imagery, and I think there's something there, and I think there's something to it explaining or correcting the Babylonian 

David: Yeah. 

JR: tradition. 

David: Yeah. Yeah. I think the [01:11:00] listeners would've expected the raven to go, and then it says, "No, no, no," the raven comes back because this is not how God's creation works, right? Anyway, yeah, it's fascinating.  

JR: And the listeners are saying, "Well, where's the swallow? I thought, I know that there was a swallow." I'm like, "No, no, no, just forget the swallow." 

David: You're hung up on the swallow.  

JR: Yeah. What does that represent? It doesn't represent anything, man. Come on. 

David: Mordecai, move past the swallow already. 

JR: Okay. 

David: All right, we, all right, we gotta wrap this up. Verse 17 of chapter 8, this should now make more sense, says, "Bring out every living creature that is with you, the birds, the animals, all the creatures that move along the ground so they can multiply on earth and be fruitful and increase the number on it." 

All right, so there's the command again. Same thing in Genesis chapter 1, be fruitful and multiply, right? It ... any more thoughts on that? So the ark lands, the ark rests. By the way, have you seen in the news recently, I don't know, there's this renewed idea that they know where [01:12:00] the ark is. Have you been seeing that? 

Yeah. 

JR: Yeah. I've seen some stuff about that. A story like this pops up every few decades. It seems like they've found something. But yeah, you're right, the recent story is pretty interesting. They kinda show the outline. The weird thing about that is 'cause, my thought is, well, send a team over there. 

Let's test it. Let's see what we... Let's see if we find the daggum T-Rex. 

But I think it's difficult politically to get to it. Like, you know, it's controlled by, I don't know. There's political problems of just sending a team out there. But no, I did see that. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: That's cool. 

That'd be awesome if they could find the ark in our lifetime, 

David: Yeah.  

JR: Or at least solid evidence. You know, those who buy into it would love it, and those who don't aren't gonna be convinced. But it'd be really cool if they found something that was pretty definitive. 

David: Yeah, yeah. I don't know what it would do for people, but it w- yeah, it would be interesting if they actually go, "Hey, we found the ark, and the T-Rex is underneath," and, you know, We found gopher wood," and all that stuff, you know? Anyway 

JR: Yeah.  

TOPIC: Noahic Covenant — God's Promise to Creation 
 

David: All right. So to wrap this up, I keep [01:13:00] saying that, but to wrap this up, let's have people listen to 8:20 through 22 because this is the covenant with Noah, and then we can get final thoughts. 

Genesis 8:20-22 
 

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. 

And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. 

JR: Okay. So, they get off the ark, they hit dry land. He's told to build an altar and, give burnt offerings. So this goes back to the seven, why you would have seven. There's burnt offerings, plural, and so at least it's a couple of [01:14:00] them, right? 

David: Yeah, and so I also think that this is another place where I think something is being formalized in the story that didn't occur previously. Now, Cain and Abel have their offerings, right? 

JR: Yeah, you're right. I also think it's interesting that in those verses it says, "And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, 'I will never again curse the ground.'" 

So it's almost like it's the first definitive explanation of what the burnt sacrifice represents, the smoke going up into the air, being experienced by God, and God being pleased with that. This is the first time that that happens, I guess. 

David: Yeah. Well, I, I was curious. I just looked this up. Cain brings the fruits of the soil, but Abel brings the fat portion from the firstborn of his flock. 

Okay, so in any case, it is implied that Abel's sacrifice was the fat of an animal. Okay? So we know that was happening before. Doesn't really say they ate it, although that's also really implied in this idea of what a [01:15:00] sacrifice is. It's a meal. You know, so there's a lot going on here. 

But any case, I think it's safe to say that, yeah, this is kind of formalizing the idea of what an altar and what a sacrifice should look like moving forward, with the clean and the unclean and all that. 

JR: Yeah. I've never thought about that, but it's like the sacrificial system that Moses outlines in Leviticus is a going back to the Noah tradition. I haven't thought about it that way, that, 

David: Yeah. 

JR: It's almost like, you would think you'd go all the way back to the beginning. Let's formalize some sort of ritual that represents the original creation. 

But It's almost like Moses is saying, "No, we're gonna formalize and ritualize creation in the Noahic account, not necessarily the Genesis 1 account." 

David: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's going on there. 

JR: remembered, 

David: like that idea of 

JR: starts 

David: Yeah, I like that idea of we're gonna formalize what's been happening since the time of Noah, basically. 

JR: Right. Yeah. And it's the first time, you're right. God says, "I'll [01:16:00] never curse the ground because of man again," that's a covenant. That's covenantal language. And so when Moses formalizes it, he's going back to the first covenant. And so yes, that's kind of cool. I never really picked up on all that, the nuance of all that. But yeah, the sacrificial system is remembering the first covenant with man. 

David: Yeah, that makes sense. 

JR: 'Cause it certainly makes sense in the New Testament, perspective of the reason we don't sacrifice now is because of the new covenant, 

David: Yeah, exact- 

JR: of Jesus' sacrifice. 

David: Right, yeah. All right, so I guess to summarize, that's a good place to start summarizing this, but I do wanna say, part of the Noatic Noatic, 

JR: Yeah. 

David: Noahic covenant, part of that covenant is this idea that, this whole idea of tearing creation down and rebuilding it, part of what it's saying is, you know, and we know the phrase that God says,  

STRONG TEACHING MOMENT: No More Global Destruction 
 

David: "I'll never flood the earth again." 

Part of what that's saying is, "I'm not going to do creation over anymore. We're gonna roll with what we got." [01:17:00] Right? A- and so 

JR: Yeah. We're gonna roll with what we got. What's done is done. Look, if you screw this up. 

David: That's, it, it's a different translation. That's my own, but it's there, right? We're gonna roll with what we got. So that's important to see in this covenant is God saying, "This is not going to happen again in this way." Right? And we talked about this, I think, in one of our Stranger Things episodes, where if you actually understand the story of Noah,  

POSSIBLE SHORTS: Why God Doesn't Destroy the World Today 
 

David: you don't have to live in all this existential fear that a meteor is gonna hit the Earth or that climate change is going to destroy the entire planet. 

You know, we talked about that, and I'll maybe link it to that episode if people are curious. But this idea of there's not going to be a global catastrophic destruction anymore and recreation, that's specifically what God is noting here in this covenant with Noah. 

JR: Yeah, That's right. So we don't have to worry about that. Now we're gonna cause our own problems, but yes, to your 

David: yeah 

JR: until the second coming, look, we don't have to [01:18:00] sweat that too much. 

David: Yeah. Yeah. 

JR: It is interesting the first covenant, this is the original covenant that we can always go back to and say, "Okay, here's the promise." And I mean, we can get into the rainbow, we can get into other aspects of the covenant, but it's just a representation of the original covenant God had with man. And I guess I can't overstate the importance of that as far as again, if you're worried about we're gonna come to some sort of cataclysmic end one day, it's like, well, if you believe in God at all, this is the original covenant, and that's, you, 

David: Yeah. 

JR: I'll take Him at His word. 

David: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. The second thing I would say, I want to go back to the Nephilim, and not to go on another rabbit trail, but one of the things in Noah that's important to see is this was the end of specifically the Nephilim. Now, there are giant tribes later, and that's kind of a whole other topic, right? 

But the understanding is that after the flood, the Nephilim are something different. All [01:19:00] right? The Nephilim after the flood, it's really interesting, and I think Heiser talks about this, the demons basically after the flood are the spirits of the Nephilim that perished in the flood. 

I think I got that right. Right? 

JR: No, that's right. 

David: Yeah. And so you see giant clans, you see demons. You know, Jesus cast demons out, and they kind of refer back to this whole event. We've talked about that before. But it is important to see that the flood is the end of basically this race of mighty men of renown that were causing havoc all over the earth, right? 

JR: Right. Which also goes back to there's something more than just these wicked people, right? The flood got rid of the physical embodiment of the Nephilim, but since they're spiritual creatures, you can't kill the spirit. And Enoch talks about this, 

David: Mm-hmm. 

JR: Says that there's, basically an agreement of, "Well, what do we do now? 

You can take our bodies. may kill our physical bodies that we have, but our spirits aren't gonna die." And so that's why they were cast into the [01:20:00] deep, and they are allowed to roam the earth until the second coming. 

David: Yeah, they're allowed to roam the earth until they are destroyed in the lake of fire, basically. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: That's the way it kind of lays that out. And again, we're not reading it ... Well, you could accuse us of reading into this, but I think that's very grounded in the story of Noah, right? 

JR: Yeah. 

TOPIC: Aftermath — Nephilim Spirits After the Flood 
 

David: And then of course, the final pattern is what we've been talking about. It's the destroying of creation and the recreation and the new creation. And so all those patterns are in the story of Noah. I don't know. I hope we've ... I feel like we haven't even scratched the surface, but all that is in the story of Noah, and I hope we've let people think about it a different way, that it's more than just a guy who builds a boat and survives a flood and takes a bunch of animals on the boat. Like, there's a lot more going on. I don't know. Did I miss anything in terms of just kind of summarizing it? Anything you want to add? 

JR: Yeah, the reason we're doing this, and the reason it's so hard to take a story like Noah and tackle it in an hour and a half or two hours is [01:21:00] because it's such a foundational story that all these references, extending the olive branch, the 40 days, all these references, it's such a fundamental story that all these references come from this, and that's why it's difficult to, cover everything. You really can't cover everything. And so what I hope we've done today is really dug in enough that makes you say, "Yeah, there's a lot more going on than the children's story." And not only that is this is the roots of so many of what we almost take for granted in the Bible as just sort of like the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. 

Well, it starts right here. And it's just, it's hard to capture all of it in a concise way because it's such a foundational story, which is why we teach it to kids, but it sure doesn't explain why we don't move past the Noah story, past fifth grade or whatever, you know what I mean? And dig into it as adults.  

Why We Stop at the Children's Version 
 

David: And it's also why we don't teach all this to kids. So when you say, "Hey, [01:22:00] what did you learn in Sunday school?" They start talking about the Nephilim and, you know, the destruction of creation and recreation. You're like, " I'm gonna talk to your teacher. Like, this, this isn't age appropriate." 

JR: mean when demons sleep with women? Yeah, okay. 

David: Anyway 

JR: Yeah, that's right. That wasn't on the flannelgraph. 

OUTRO: Summary and Next Episode 
 

David: Yeah, yeah. All right, so this is just the first one. I guess so people can follow along next time we're gonna talk about David and Goliath. And if you wanna read ahead, you can read 1 Samuel chapter 17, or you can watch The House of David on Amazon Prime. 

JR: That's a great series. That's a great series. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: That'll be easier because it's not such a foundational story. 

David: Yeah, there's still a lot going on. 

JR: move through it. 

David: Yeah, there's still a lot going on there, but yeah, it's not as dense as the story of Noah and the ark. So yep, we will talk to you next episode. 

JR: Can't wait.