World English Bible · Before the nations
Genesis 10
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Now this is the history of the generations of the sons of and of , , and . Sons were born to them after the flood. The sons of were: , , , , , , and . The sons of were: , , and . The sons of were: , , , and . Of these were the islands of the nations divided in their lands, everyone after his language, after their families, in their nations. The sons of were: , , Put, and . The sons of were: , , , , and . The sons of were: and . became of . He began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before . Therefore it is said, "like , a mighty hunter before ". The beginning of was Babel, , , and Calneh, in the land of . Out of that land he went into , and built , Rehoboth Ir, , 12and between and the great city . became of , , , , , (which the descended from), and . became of (his ), , the , the , the , the , the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. Afterward the families of were spread abroad. The border of was from —as you go toward —to —as you go toward , , Admah, and Zeboiim—to Lasha. These are the sons of , after their families, according to their , in their lands and their nations. Children were also born to (the elder brother of ), of all the children of . The sons of were: , , , , and . The sons of were: , , , and . became of . became of . To were born two sons. The name of the one was , for in his days the earth was divided. His brother's name was . became of , , , , , , , , , , , , and . All these were the sons of . Their dwelling extended from , as you go toward Sephar, the mountain of the east. These are the sons of , by their families, according to their , lands, and nations. These are the families of the sons of , by their generations, according to their nations. divided from these in the earth after the flood.
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The world at this moment · Before the nations, 2600 BC to 2100 BC ›
The opening chapters, from creation to Babel, told on a scale that covers the whole earth before the story narrows to one family.
- The neighbours' own stories
- Mesopotamia told its own versions of these events. Atrahasis and the eleventh tablet of Gilgamesh tell of a flood, a survivor, an ark, and birds sent out to find land. Enuma Elish tells of a world made from a defeated sea. The resemblances are close enough that scholars have argued about them for a century and a half, and the differences are where the argument gets interesting: Genesis has no quarrel among gods, no accidental humanity, and a flood sent for moral reasons rather than because people were noisy.
- Babel and the ziggurat
- A tower with its top in the heavens, built of brick and bitumen on a plain in Shinar, describes a Mesopotamian ziggurat exactly. Dozens were built, the best known at Ur and Babylon, of mud brick because southern Mesopotamia has no stone. The detail about brick instead of stone is the kind of thing someone writes who has actually seen one.
- The wider world
- If these chapters are placed anywhere in ordinary chronology, the surrounding centuries are the age of the Egyptian pyramids, the Sumerian city-states, the Indus Valley cities, and the first phase of Stonehenge. Writing was a few centuries old and existed in two places on earth.
All of Genesis