" their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white"

 Kymber Brockbank I think that there is likely a Hebraic literary play on words between the words light אור and עור skin. In Hebrew, both words are pronounced [or]. We see similar literary uses of these words in the Bible, “Though your skins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow...” (Isaiah 1:18). When Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden, the Lord made coats of “skins” for them. They were protected and covered by the Lord (through the Atonement, and the covenant). The symbolism of white garments plays into this symbolic connection. The color white inherently contains all of the spectrums of light. I believe this has deep symbolic significance, as Jesus Christ is the light of the world and all light and enlightenment is a blessing from him.

Like many words (עבד servant/slave, תמימ complete/ perfect) our modern understated of those words changed over time due to our experiences with various societal standards. I believe that the curse had very little to do with the color of ones skin, it had to do with the countenance of one’s character. The curse was and has always been connected with whether or not the Lord’s Spirit dwells with us. The consequence of sin is revocation of Spirit, when that happens we become a dark and fallen people.

When we have the light of Christ in our lives we have his Spirit to dwell with us, to guide us. The curse is connected with the blessing that was explained by Abraham and Moses, and restated over and over again in the Book of Mormon, “Inasmuch as he shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land.” The Lord is bound when we keep his commandments and our covenants. However, when we stray from that path we have no such promise. Read the last part of Deuteronomy for a very detailed list of the many forms the curse might take when we disobey his law and turn to worship the various idols of the world: the people of the covenant who forsake the Lord suffer the consequences of their own sins, frequently to greater degree than those who had never received the covenant in the first place. They no longer have the protection of the Lord to help them. They often become hated and despised. They are cast into bondage (both physical and spiritual). They are persecuted, killed, driven and scattered from the promised land. There are wars, natural disasters, a dissemination of ignorance (Confounding of language, Babylon), etc...

The necklace

 

When a train filled with a large transport of Jewish prisoners arrived at one of the Nazi killing centers, many Polish gentiles came out to watch the latest group as they were taken away. As the disoriented Jews were gathering their possessions to take with them into the camp, a Nazi officer in charge called out to the villagers standing nearby, "Anything these Jews leave behind you may take for yourselves, because for sure they will not be coming back to collect them!"

Two Polish women who were standing nearby saw a woman towards the back of the group, wearing a large, heavy, expensive coat. Not waiting for someone else to take the coat before them, they ran to the Jewish woman and knocked her to the ground, grabbed her coat and scurried away.Moving out of sight of the others, they quickly laid the coat down on the ground to divide the spoils of what was hiding inside. Rummaging through the pockets, they giddily discovered gold jewelry, silver candlesticks and other heirlooms. They were thrilled with their find, but as they lifted the coat again, it still seemed heavier than it should. Upon further inspection, they found a secret pocket, and hidden inside the coat was .... a tiny baby girl!

Shocked at their discovery, one woman took pity and insisted to the other, "I don't have any children, and I'm too old to give birth now. You take the gold and silver and let me have the baby." The Polish woman took her new "daughter" home to her delighted husband. They raised the Jewish girl as their own, treating her very well, but never telling her anything about her history. The girl excelled in her studies and even became a doctor, working as a pediatrician in a hospital in Poland.

When her "mother" passed away many years later, a visitor came to pay her respects. An old woman invited herself in and said to the daughter, "I want you to know that the woman that passed away last week was not your real mother ..." and she proceeded to tell her the whole story. She did not believe her at first, but the old woman insisted.

"When we found you, you were wearing a beautiful gold pendant with strange writing on it, which must be Hebrew.I am sure that your mother kept the necklace. Go and see for yourself." Indeed, the woman went into her deceased mother's jewelry box and found the necklace just as the elderly lady had described. She was shocked. It was hard to fathom that she had been of Jewish descent, but the proof was right there in her hand. As this was her only link to a previous life, she cherished the necklace. She had it enlarged to fit her neck and wore it every day, although she thought nothing more of her Jewish roots.

Some time later, she went on holiday abroad and came across two Jewish boys standing on a main street, trying to interest Jewish passersby to wrap Tefillin on their arms (for males) or accept Shabbos candles to light on Friday afternoon (for females). Seizing the opportunity, she told them her entire story and showed them the necklace. The boys confirmed that a Jewish name was inscribed on the necklace but did not know about her status. They recommended that she write a letter to their mentor, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, explaining everything. If anyone would know what to do, it would be him.

She took their advice and sent off a letter that very same day. She received a speedy reply saying that it is clear from the facts that she is a Jewish girl and perhaps she would consider using her medical skills in Israel where talented pediatricians were needed. Her curiosity was piqued and she traveled to Israel where she consulted a Rabbinical Court (Beit Din) who declared her Jewish. Soon she was accepted into a hospital to work, and eventually met her husband and raised a family.

In August 2001, a terrorist blew up the Sbarro cafe in the center of Jerusalem. The injured were rushed to the hospital where this woman worked. One patient was brought in, an elderly man in a state of shock. He was searching everywhere for his granddaughter who had become separated from him.Asking how she could recognize her, the frantic grandfather gave a description of a gold necklace that she was wearing.

Eventually, they finally found her among the injured patients.At the sight of this necklace, the pediatrician froze. She turned to the old man and said, "Where did you buy this necklace?""You can't buy such a necklace," he responded, "I am a goldsmith and I made this necklace. Actually I made two identical pieces for each of my daughters. This is my granddaughter from one of them, and my other daughter did not survive the war."

And this is the story of how a Jewish girl, brutally torn away from her mother on a Nazi camp platform almost sixty years ago, was reunited with her father .....

Adapted from the book "Heroes of Faith"

https://www.facebook.com/groups/173109549513523/?ref=browser

So what is the flood account, then?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/benjaminthescribe/2014/02/gospel-doctrine-lesson-6-moses-819-30-genesis-65-22-71-10/

 by Ben Spackman 

Part of his article

So what is the flood account, then? To begin to answer that question, we need to know that the Genesis flood account is one of several ancient Near Eastern flood accounts, and it resembles them greatly. (This is an introductory Institute handout about these other major stories.) In fact, those resemblances, combined with German Protestant assumptions and anti-Semitic bias at the time, led to early conclusions that the Genesis flood was a simplistic rip-off of these other Mesopotamian accounts. Scholarship become much more nuanced since then, but Peter Enns pointedly asks the still relevant question.

The problem raised by these Akkadian [flood and creation] texts is whether the biblical stories are historical: how can we say logically that the biblical stories are true and the Akkadian stories are false when they both look so very much alike? (Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, 41.)

Here again, we have to recognize that simple dichotomies like “true” and “false” fail to account for the complexity of scripture and life.

My summary position is that the Genesis account is both an adaption of and a reaction against other ancient Near Eastern flood stories, much as creation in Genesis 1 is both an Israelite adaptation and polemic reaction against other ancient Near Eastern creation accounts.Very briefly, I think there may be a historical, limited-flood kernel behind the current text, but as it currently stands in the text, the flood tradition has been pressed into use and expanded (for polemical anti-Mesopotamican purposes?) into a universal cosmological flood. It is a reverse creation, undoing Genesis 1 by erasing order and structure, and returning the world to its pre-creation watery/chaotic state (as in Gen. 1:2, the tehom or watery Deep from which everything was created.) Then the waters recede, and Noah is the new Adam in the new creation.

This is tied very closely to the Priestly creation account (Gen 1-2:4a). Note I say universal, not global. Neither the Israelites nor their neighbors conceived of the world as a globe, but a flat, relatively small land surrounded by water on all sides, with water beneath, and waters above, held back only by the firmament, which was supported by the mountains at the ends of the earth, including the mountain range of Ararat (the land of Urartu.) This is the cosmology, or view of the universe assumed and made explicit in Genesis 1, which literalists must take pains to rationalize away. The flood account envisions the ark bumping up against the mountainous sides and nearly the ceiling (firmament) of creation, as the cosmic waters fill to the brim, and then recede.  Creation and its subsequent pollution (see the article by Frymer-Kremsky below for more on this term) are thus wiped away, resulting in a new creation with Noah as the new Adam. While it is a universal or cosmological flood, it is not necessarily a historical flood.

While the manual wisely avoids nearly every historical question to focus on application, it’s inevitable that someone somewhere is going to make fundamentalist claims on this topic.Let’s briefly address a few questions of the flood, frustrated once again at how little we can really do here. (I have a pipe dream of turning my not-yet-finished-but-somehow-wildly-successful-in-my-mind book into a trilogy, with the second volume on the flood in Genesis 6-9, and the third on Genesis 2-3.)

First off, we should note the views of someone like Elder John Widtsoe, who struggled with the idea of the flood. He tentatively proposed that it simply rained everywhere simultaneously, so the world was covered in a minuscule layer of water for a millisecond. In doing so, he offered several wise observations about reading scripture.

We set up assumptions, based upon our best knowledge, but can go no further…. Many Bible accounts that trouble the inexperienced reader become clear and acceptable if the essential meaning of the story is sought out. To read the Bible fairly, it must be read as President Brigham Young suggested: ‘Do you read the scriptures, my brethren and sisters, as though you were writing them a thousand, two thousand, or five thousand years ago? Do you read them as though you stood in the place of the men who wrote them?’ (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 197-8). This is our guide. The scriptures must be read intelligently.- Evidences and Reconciliations, around p.126.

(I would point out that our best knowledge  of this topic has increased significantly since he wrote that.)

Second, in case you’ve never seen the scientific arguments (i.e. the problems raised by reading Genesis 6-9 strictly as a history), it is flatly impossible that there was a global flood that covered the highest mountains and left no trace at all, unless God is a trickster of some kind who insisted on removing all evidence. I believe in a deity who does have the power to unleash a worldwide flood (and it would take supernatural physics to produce that much water), but not a god who would then hide all evidence of such a massive worldwide geological miracle. It should have left all kinds of evidence all over the world, but there simply isn’t any.

In any case, it’s not necessary (as some LDS have done) to attribute all arguments against a historical worldwide flood to disbelief or “the world” (guilt by association?) since the Bible itself  is not consistent on the topic.  I think two things are clear.

•  The Biblical text in Genesis 6-9 depicts a universal flood.
  • (Whether this is because it was a universal flood or because it only appeareduniversal from the perspective of the ark’s occupants is a traditional side argument. While questions about “who is the author, and what perspective do they write from?” are great questions we should ask when studying scripture, they don’t help much here. The cosmology of the text, its connections to Genesis 1, and the details make it a universal flood. This does not necessarily make it a historical flood.
• The Biblical text elsewhere knows nothing about a universal flood and seems to assume it didn’t happen.
  • Genesis 4:20-22 tell us of “Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock.His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and pipe.[And] Tubal-cain, who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools.”  (NRSV) The post-flood author seems to assume that the descendants of each of these three still exist in semi-distinct groups. Weren’t they all killed off in the flood?
  • Genesis 6:4 tells us of “giants” or nephilim, pronounced nuh-fill-eeym, accent on last syllable (no relation to Nephi. The root of nephilim is NPL, the root of Nephi is NPW or NPY); “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days [before the flood]– and also afterward“! (NRSV, emphasis added.) The Nephilim are around before and after the flood text. Numbers 13:33 tells us that the Anakites are their descendants. If we’re talking about a historical, universal flood, why weren’t they all killed off? How can they have descendants? One Jewish tradition maintains that one of them held on to the ark, and survived that way.

A final summary by John Walton from his Genesis commentary.

Any [interpretive] solution must take the text seriously, yet be willing to see the text in ways that the original author and audience may have seen it. It likewise needs to take logistical problems seriously. It is a weak interpretation that has to invent all sorts of miracles that the text says nothing about in order to compensate for the logistical problems.

My final advice is, stick with the manual, and the ideas it teaches, as summarized by the Jewish Study Bible, that “the ark symbolizes the tender mercies and protective grace with which God envelopes the righteous even in the harshest circumstances.”

Should We Take Creation Stories in Genesis Literally

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/creation-stories-in-genesis

Many scholars believe that the ancient Israelites had creation stories that were told and retold; these stories eventually reached the Biblical authors, who wrote them down in Genesis and other books of the Bible. Creation stories in Genesis were etiological, Shawna Dolansky and other Biblical scholars argue.1 That is, the creation stories in Genesis served to provide answers to why the world was the way it was, such as why people wear clothes and why women experience pain during childbirth.
 

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In the free eBook Exploring Genesis: The Bible’s Ancient Traditions in Context, discover the cultural contexts for many of Israel’s earliest traditions. Explore Mesopotamian creation myths, Joseph’s relationship with Egyptian temple practices and three different takes on the location of Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham.
 

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Creation stories in Genesis were among the many myths that were told in the ancient Near East. Today we may think of myths as beliefs that are not true, but as a literary genre, myths “are stories that convey and reinforce aspects of a culture’s worldview: many truths,” writes Dolansky. So to call something a myth—in this sense—does not necessarily imply that it is not true.

Scholars argue that Biblical myths arose within the context of other ancient Near Eastern myths that sought to explain the creation of the world. Alongside Biblical myths wereMesopotamian myths in which, depending on the account, the creator was Enlil, Mami or Marduk. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the creator of the world was Atum in one creation story and Ptah in another.

“Like other ancient peoples, the Israelites told multiple creation stories,” writes Shawna Dolansky in her Biblical Views column. “The Bible gives us three (and who knows how many others were recounted but not preserved?). Genesis 1 differs from Genesis 2–3, and both diverge from a third version alluded to elsewhere in the Bible, a myth of the primordial battle between God and the forces of chaos known as Leviathan (e.g., Psalm 74), Rahab (Psalm 89) or the dragon (Isaiah 27; 51). This battle that preceded creation has the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish as its closest analogue. In Enuma Elish, the god Marduk defeats the chaotic waters in the form of the dragon Tiamat and recycles her corpse to create the earth.”

In what other ways do Biblical myths parallel ancient Near Eastern myths? What can we learn about the world in which the ancient Israelites lived through the creation stories in Genesis? Learn more by reading the full Biblical Views column “The Multiple Truths of Myths” by Shawna Dolansky in the January/February 2016 issue of BAR.
 

Daily Life in Ancient Israel

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/daily-life-in-ancient-israel

 
The Israelite villages built by the settlers of Canaan were on hilltops. They were quite small, possibly 400 people in the largest of these—Shiloh or Gibeon, for instance. These towns were mostly unwalled, though they were part of larger political units or regional chiefdoms that provided security. The Israelite villages within a given region were subjects of the major town of the area, some of which, like Shechem, were very large and controlled considerable territory.

Israelites lived in nuclear households during the time of the Biblical Judges, often with their relatives in clusters of houses around a common courtyard. Houses were made of mudbrick with a stone foundation and perhaps a second story of wood. The living space of the houses consisted of three or four rooms, often with sleeping space on the roof or in a covered roof loft. One of the first-floor rooms was probably a courtyard for domestic animals, mostly sheep and goat.

At that time of the Biblical Judges, the hills were densely overgrown, covered with a thick scrub of pine, oak and terebinth trees. And it was often too rocky for the sheep, so raising animals never stood at the forefront of the economy. Instead, the early Israelite settlers of Canaan would burn off some of the brush, terrace the hillsides within an hour’s walk of the village, and plant grain, primarily wheat. Other lesser crops included lentils, garbanzo beans, barley and millet. They had orchards on these terraces as well.
 

slips of the tongue

Yiddish in common English