10 Things You Didn’t Know About Genesis
Here are 10 things that you probably didn’t know about the book of Genesis.
- There are no children in the Garden of Eden.
- Noah invented plow and wine.
- Thomas Malthus’s original name was Jared. He lived five generations before Noah. There’s a Thomas Malthus, who doesn’t believe in having children, in almost every epoch.
- Abraham and all the forefathers were very wealthy, and the book of Genesis is very concerned with what we learn from their wealth and how to handle it. In that vein, Andrew Carnegie and Abraham had different approaches to wealth.
- Despite what I wrote above, one of the major medieval commentaries believes that Isaac became poor. But, in fact, he just changed his livelihood and the family business from shepherding to farming.
- Abraham used game theory and FBI negotiation tactics in order to acquire the cave of Machpelah, for a good price, while keeping his values intact.
- Jacob rolled the rock off the well, and impressed his future wife Rachel. The rock was there in order to prevent a tragedy of the commons. With people fighting over it, water was a scarce resource.
- Joseph’s dreams were a shock to his brothers because he dreamt about farming and the cosmos. And they were just shepherds, not in tune with the economic transition to agriculture.
- Joseph organized an urban revolution to enable Egypt to overcome the 7 years of famine. He rehauls the Egyptian economy to focus on commerce and trade, while building urban grain storage and local distribution centers.
- Jacob on his deathbed appointed one of the tribes to be responsible for imports and exports for the economy of Israel: Zebulon.