Final Exposure and Judgement upon the Woman of Babylon

In Genesis, we are engaged with an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent God. The Lord saw all the evil upon the earth and devised a plan to cleanse it and start anew with a righteous man named Noah and his family. The Lord’s plan consisted of a flood to destroy the earth and all the evil in and on it. He instructed Noah how to build an ark, so his family and two of each animal, male

Did you know “it is strictly forbidden to cross the river and look upon the place of the gods”-By The Waters Of Babylon. Stephen Vincent Benet wrote “By The Waters Of Babylon”. He introduces the priest and the son of the priest John. In “The Waters Of Babylon” there was a quest to be fulfilled, but no one was brave enough to fulfill that. John felt an internal passion to go on the quest. So at the end he gained knowledge that everyone was afraid of. The author “By The Waters Of Babylon” uses modern society as textual symbols which are spirits and demons, deer, and a door with a broken lock.

In Gilgamesh we were told about a great flood that struck Shurrupak. A god called Enlil became mad at the city because it was very noisey due to its growing population, he complained that he can't sleep at night. He told the other gods about his complaint and they agreed they should wipe out the mortals. In an attempt to destroy mankind he creates a flood. Ea, another god, tells a man called Utnapishtim to build a boat out of his house in a dream. Utnapishtim does as he was told. Utnapishtim asks Ea how to make the others believe him. Ea says to tell the others that Enilil was angry with Utnapishtim, so Utnapishtim may no longer live on land. Utnapishtim builds a seven deck boat. When the boat was set into water he took his family, relatives, animals, and craftsmen who helped him build the boat. The flood lasts for six days and six nights. Utnapishtim sees a mountain, the boat floats towards it. Utnapishtim realeses three birds, one after the other, in an attempt to find shore. The first two birds return but the third, a raven, doesn't return. Utnapishtim then knows that there is shore for him to go to. Utnapishtim gives sacrafices of cane, cedar, and myrtle. Ishtar tells the others gods about Enlil and how he started the flood. Utnapishtim was then blessed with eternal life. This story is very similar to the story of Noah in Gensis. The flood in Noah was also to a punishment for mankind. Utnapishtim and Noah were chosen to build an ark to survive the flood and then

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.”(Genesis 6:5-8)

Which would you value more-knowledge, or truth? Stephen Vincent Benét explores this question in his short story “By the Waters of Babylon”. However, Benét doesn’t answer this question exactly, instead “By the Waters of Babylon” focuses more on a singular theme that knowledge and truth are intertwined. Benét brings the reader into a post-apocalyptic world where humans have resorted to a more primitive state after the “Great Burning”(310). Now the only humans left with any knowledge are the Priests, and John happens to be the son of one. John has been exposed to the only remaining knowledge that he’s been told his society has at that the time and now quest for more. This burning desire that John has to know more of

At the time of this story God saw how the thoughts of mankind were evil and he decided to destroy what he had created with a great flood intending to drown the earth. He chose Noah and his family to build an ark big enough to contain two of every animal to repopulate the earth. The world was flooded for a hundred and fifty days until the water subsided back into land.

When drastic times occur and sweep one of everything they own, do they have a plan of action? Will they be prepared for a life without power, resources, and stability? Many times when people are faced with this situation they find themselves unprepared and unable to live in such conditions. They lose the connections with the world, the water they drink is likely to get contaminated, and the scarcity of goods is a threat to themselves and anyone left alive. Everywhere around them there is death and destruction leaving them isolated in their own dystopia. Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon illustrates a nuclear bomb simulation. In such a way, he gives the readers a taste of isolation and survival needs when facing such drastic times.

In both I Am Legend and “By the Waters of Babylon,” the author and the director have very comparable styles when it comes to certain aspects of their work. The theme of both the film and the story revolve around the idea of humanity destroying itself due to the misuse of power and misunderstanding of the knowledge they had acquired. On the contrary, the mood in I Am Legend and “By the Waters of Babylon” are vastly different. In the film, the viewer feels the pain and loss embodied by Robert Neville himself; while in the story, John didn’t have any personal losses related to the catastrophic event that overtook those before him. Therefore the reader doesn’t connect to John in the same empathetic

Some aspects of the lifestyle ancient civilizations lived almost seem appalling or intolerable when compared to the very developed and carefully shaped the world inhabited today. One of these characteristics of previous societies that prove to be rather challenging to conceive in current times consists of the lack of rights, privileges, and equity women had. Society maintained this assumption of a man’s superiority up until the women’s rights movement of the early twentieth century; yet with the two sexes essentially equal in America today, imagining a restricted life as a female proves unfathomable. Looking back at the history of human kind, men almost always subdued women and treated them as property. When focusing on the first

Man had become wicked and only thought of wicked things which is why we had the great flood. The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time (genesis 6:5). Our wickedness as a civilization made God regret that he had made us; to me that means that we did and can be a slave to our flesh which is evil. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled (genesis 6:6). He was going to wipe out everything he had made if it were not for one man Noah, he had found favor in the eyes of God. This is the first time that one man has saved the human race from being wiped out. Later Jesus saved us from a certain death and gave us eternal life.

Knowing the historical context of a work is crucial to understanding both its general meaning and its deeper essence. Often times, authors use their works as outlets to freely express their personal feelings toward a social trend or issue. As such, the time in which a story is written can have a strong influence on the message the author is trying to convey to his or her reader. Their personal reflections can be asserted in many ways; among the most common being through the characters themselves and their development throughout the work, the setting, and the implied themes.

The world before the flood was already in turmoil and ruin, enveloped in sin and chaos; it is in this world that Noah’s faith made him the only righteous man. God had entrusted in Noah to complete a very important task that would test his faithfulness to Him. God’s plan was to destroy the world by way of flood as the result of mankind’s misdeeds. He instructed Noah to construct an ark to save his family and all species of animals, two of each kind - male and female. All of them would survive in the ark while God sent down a watery wrath to be swept across the earth, wiping out everything in its path. Noah was obedient; his life revealed qualities of patience and persistence which made him the perfect candidate for the building of the

In “Genesis” there is another story within it, I had read called Noah’s Ark. As everyone knows or should know that in Noah’s Ark there was a flood. God has seen and had noticed how chaotic and wicked everything was. What God wanted to do was erase any sort of life on what we call Earth. His purpose was not to destroy human life, but wipe take out the all the sin. In the midst of it all there was one man, Noah, among them all that God had

How would you feel if you had been deluded your entire life? In the story “By the Waters of Babylon,” the narrator, John, is going on a quest to learn about the unknown. John is the son of a priest and he wishes to become a priest himself. There is a place called the Dead Places where it is forbidden to go unless you are a priest or the son of a priest. To fulfil his wish of becoming a priest, John has to go on a journey. “It is forbidden to travel east. It is forbidden to cross the river. It is forbidden to go to the Place of the Gods. All these things are forbidden” (Benet 312). The Place of Gods has never been scrutinized by anyone in his village because it is forbidden to do so. On his journey, John travels to the Place of Gods and reveals its’ truth. The knowledge John and his people have is wrong. The narrator’s journey teaches him, everything he is told does not have to be true. Knowledge can be deceitful, but the truth will always be factual.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in. For forty days the flood kept coming on earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The water rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.