Begetting

"Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim."

And so on. Today, for no sane reason, I've been cobbling together the family trees in Genesis; or family tree, really, as Adam'n'Eve are so traceable. As mum very helpfully asked, "Hasn't someone done all that already? Isn't it on the Internet?"...well, yes, they have and yes it probably is, but that's not really the point. The real reason I decided to spend hours doing it is because I realised the names of Someone who begat Someone who begat Someone who married Someonette, daughter of Someone brother of Reginald, just weren't sinking in. The words were being read, but their meaning/relationships weren't registering. A bit like George Bush reading "And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us" (if you're going to pray it, at least pretend to mean it). What better way to really read something than record its every detail? So I set to with a big bit of paper, and the cat chasing my pen. There are a lot of names in Genesis (which is why it took hours!).

As with everything worth reading, the closer you look the more there is to see. One thing, when you really read the names properly (rather than scanning over them as "As..z" and "Tog..ah" - and I don't believe I'm the only one who cheats with the name-reading), the verse becomes less litany more poetry. It's well-established that the King James is good writing, but it's quite another thing to find out why - and it's not enough just to be told, I gotta figure it out. Today is the first time I've not found the repetition tedious, it's the first time I've read every letter of every name; and no matter how many times I've read Genesis before, this might as well have been the first time. At last! The names of the earliest period are great. Classrooms now might be full of Lukes, Matthews, Johns, Marks and Jameses (and the occasional Darth Vader or Addidas) but, really, the Old Testament names are the best, aren't they? Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Caphtorim and Arphaxad! Or, for the inner-city comp feel perhaps Uz, Huz, Buz (I'm not making these up!), Hul, Mash and Nimrod.

It's impossible to draw a neat family tree when people are marrying their brothers' daughters and 'knowing' their wives' handmaids, though, so the big piece of paper has a bunch of lines and scribbles all over it probably only legible to me (though where the cat intervened even I can't make too much sense of it). Tomorrow will be typing-up day, before I forget what goes where. Weekend away with the girls starts tomorrow, and I'll be taking Mark Twain's The Diary of Adam and Eve to re-read on the train - it's about the right length for the journey and topical.

The Interfering Cat, once he'd had enough and flopped: