I put that in my post what was in the Torah which agrees with what Steve said.
What I saw in your post was the issue of genetics being the focus when it came to not mixing animals with men. But cool that you agree with Steve.
inappropriate behavior with animals is not so much about depravity as it is in using G-ds creation to take it from being 'good' to quite the opposite.
Using God's creation and taking it from good to opposite is depravity - just as it it with anything else God makes which man perverts.
To understand this fully one must realize why Noah was 'chosen' it wasn't because he was a holy man and so was his family it was because he was ' a just man and perfect in his generations', that is the key to understanding, 'perfect in his generations' means that he was the product of untainted genealogy all the way back to Adam. The word translated as 'perfect' means to be whole, or complete, meaning totally Human.
His father was and so was his Grandfather, Methuselah who died right before the flood came, which was no coincidence, the flood would not have happened with him still alive. Only Noah and his sons were pure Adamite stock left after Methuselah died.
Being fully human also deals with being human as God sees it - as man was intended to live, in obediance to His Laws/commands and what he wants. I've yet to see where it was discussed within Judaism that Noah was sparred simply because of his genetics - and to be clear, I don't think genetics didn't play a factor. Nonetheless, lifestyle makes a difference as well...for one can be genetically perfect and yet in willful sin against the Lord.
Noah was consistently noted within scripture to be a preacher of righteousness and one who lived properly before the Lord.
Hebrews 11:7
By faith
Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the
righteousness that comes by faith.
Hebrews 11:6-8 /
Hebrews 11 (
2 Peter 2:5
if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected
Noah, a
preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
2 Peter 2:4-6
Ezekiel 14:13-15/
Ezekiel 14
Son of man, if a country sins against me by being unfaithful and I stretch out my hand against it to cut off its food supply and send famine upon it and kill its men and their animals, 14 even if these three menNoah, Daniel[
a] and Job
were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness, declares the Sovereign Lord.
As it concerns genetics and some of the other things happening in the time of Noah, I recall where more was shared on the matter in a recent thread on Giants/Nephilim - as seen here in #
5 and here in #
192. Years ago, I was following a dialouge between two well known scholars in the body of believers..known as Michael Heiser and Greg Boyd (who's a good friend of Heiser) when they were discussing the Nephilim/their identity, as seen if one goes online/looks up an article entitled
"Random Reflections - Boyd and Heiser Dialogue On The Nephilim Question - Greg Boyd"( ). As Brother Boyd noted (for brief reference):
Heiser marshals a number of convincing arguments against those who try to argue that the sons of God in this passage refer to the righteous lineage of Seth and that the daughters of men refer to the unrighteous lineage of Cain. Making use of his expertise in Ancient Near Eastern languages, he also refutes those who attempt to argue that the word Nephilim means fallen ones (as in fallen people) rather than supernaturally conceived giants. He thus defends the uniform ancient Jewish and early Christian understanding of this passage as a report of angelic beings (called "Watchers") who took on flesh, had intercourse with women and beget hybrid, quasi-divine creatures who were extraordinarily tall, strong and violent. According to Heisner, these Nephilim are the offspring of ha nachash that Yahweh had earlier prophesied would war against humans. Satans strategy, presumably, was to pollute the human gene pool in order to prevent the arrival of the fully human descendant of Eve (Jesus) who would overthrow Satans reign on earth.
Humans were apparently willing participants in this rebellion, for the Genesis account says the sons of God took wives. In other words, they didnt rape women. According to I Enoch (which Heiser thinks is passing on reliable traditions), this unnatural intermingling began in the days of Jared, who is referenced in Genesis 5:18. This means this rebellious angelic activity had been going on for centuries before God decided it was time to judge humanity, the fallen angels and their hybrid children in Noahs day. Moreover, Heiser argues that by telling us that only Noah and his immediate family were unsullied at this time, the Genesis author was showing that the seed of the woman had nearly been eclipsed. The purpose for the author inserting this strange episode at this point in the narrative was to justify Gods drastic action in flooding the land.
But the flood didnt permanently solve the problem, Heiser argues. The Genesis author himself notes that the Nephilim existed not only before the flood but also afterwards (vs. 4) and we find descendants of the Nephilim all over the place in the land of Canaan. How is this possible? Heiser suggests that perhaps the flood was local, not global. (Its important to remember that the word earth (eretz) in the Bible doesnt refer to a planet [they had no such concept] but to whatever land a given writer had in mind when he or she wrote). On the other hand, if the flood was in fact global, perhaps the rebel gods resumed their project of creating hybrid-creatures once again after the flood. In support of this, Heiser notes that Genesis 6:4 could be translated: The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward whenever (not simply when) the sons of God went to the daughters of humans beings and had children by them.
Thankful to know the Nephilim aspect is going to be taken seriously. For more information, more can be found at his organization known as "
The Divine Council - Michael Heisner"..... I take what Dr. Heisner seriously. Although he is not necessarily a "Messianic", he is a well-trained scholar in Near-Eastern/Middle Eastern studies and Semitic languages. He also works with Logos Bible Software, used throughout the Body of Christ and well known for their excellence in the programs they give out. He has done alot of work on topics that can be of a controversial nature....and what he has often noted in his work concerning the "Divine Council" has been very insightful/engaging over the years. I've been very blessed for many of the things he has noted. I remembered when I was first able to investigate some of his views on the Nephilim in an article he wrote entitled
"Why Mylipin; / Myliypin; (Nephilim) - Michael S. Heiser" ( \), noting Numbers 13:32-33 and the reasons behind why the Nephilim were still present in the Promise Land just as they were in Genesis 6. Very engaging, as well as refreshing since it is often noted by many scholars that the Nephilim are to be demonized as the offspring of angels and men....even though the scriptures do not note that they sinned as the angels did.
And for his lectures on the subject:
Sadly, there are others who feel that what he was advocating is essentially a "Serpent-Seed" theological viewpoint...but I think he was very careful to clarify where he didn't support such. Be it in his work "The Facade" or in his articles when he shared that he was not for what "Serpent-Seed" advocates believed when they claimed that Cain was somehow fathered by the Devil and that there are others today that are "less than human/valuable" due to their ancestry - with people like Noah only being saved because of genetics. I'm glad he tried to set the record straight in his article entitled "Was Cain Fathered by the Devil? No, Wait Extraterrestrials | PaleoBabble" ( ).
One thing no one mentioned is that if all the animals had survived the flood there would not have been enough for them to eat which would have caused them to starve which is not what a righteous G-d would do.
Very good point, as over-population of a species is something that makes a difference...and I do believe even within nature that the Lord allows for certain things to either prosper or die out - and then reboot the system.
Psalm 104:28
These all look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
28 When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
29 When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
30 When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
Be it through predation (and yes, the Lord made certain animal species deadly and that glorifies Him - more shared
here and
here in #
81 / #
287 ) or through change in the environment, it does seem that there is a principle of survival changing animal variety and make-up.
After the flood man and beast changed from being vegetarians because the plant life was destroyed and it's abundance never flourished again because the ecosystem that was created for a perfect world was destroyed also in the flood. That is why we have fossils of great plant life that isn't seen today, such as the huge ferns.
Some of what you noted was shared more in-depth in a thread I made called
The Lion, the Lamb &...Lettuce?: Was Torah Meant for Vegetarian Leanings? - examining the ways that a vegetarian diet was in view BEFORE the flood. The ecosystem was truly impacted in many ways and caused a necessary change in the types of diets man had...
I think that there are examples of this destruction of mutatious animals but are just called other things, like dinosaurs. You believe what you are told.
Could be...although I think that some forms of dinosaurs were simply marvelous creations the Lord made.
