I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 1.

    Today’s passage is one of those which is why I stayed with the One Year Bible Online reading list for so long. However, this passage reminds me of, and provides some of the basis for, some of my thoughts regarding The Biblical account of Creation. This passage tells us that Peleg was so name because it was during his lifetime that humanity was divided into different language groups. That would mean that Peleg was alive during the building of the Tower of Babel. Further, we see that Peleg was five generations from Noah, and Abraham was five generations from Peleg.

    One of the things which many people have noticed is the similarity between various Mesopotamian creation myths and the beginning of the book of Genesis. From this they reach the conclusion that the Genesis stories derived from the Mesopotamian myths. It is certainly true that there must be some connection between the Mesopotamian myths and the Genesis stories. However, I have never heard anyone suggest that the influence may have run in the other direction. I was going to spend some time making the case for the Genesis account being the original, but that would have taken too long because what I really wanted to discuss was the implications of the influence running from the Genesis accounts to the Mesopotamian mythology. It would explain why Abram’s father, Terah, began the process of leaving his homeland. If Terah was part of a keeper of the creation stories, he may have been afraid of them becoming corrupted by the alternate stories being told in Ur. This would also explain why he stopped in Haran. There he found a community which still honored the Creation accounts which he knew. This would also explain why Abraham insisted that Isaac have a wife from there. This has gone quite far from the idea of Peleg being alive when God divided the languages. I think at some point I will need to write my thoughts regarding the migration of Abraham and the relationship between the Creation account and the myths of Mesopotamia.