janeeyreofmanderley replied to your post “okay, this is the second time abraham has told some poor sod that...”
Oh all the double told stories! :D What you're suffering through are sevreal stories concerning several persons which got patched together centuries after their Invention for political puroposes, So don't be surprised if stuff doesn't work.^^ And the age thing, well there are some REALLY weird explanations to it but the easiest is that people had a different reltaionship to numbers then. So 90 was like "freaking old to have a first Baby" in that time she was probably 35
huh. so they’re basically doing the same my five year old sister does when she claims she has a thousand chocolate bars? that’s somehow pretty cool :D
still seems a weird story, and even weirder to be common enough to end up repeated in that sort of patchwork, no? like, it seems so utterly pointless as a story, and it doesn’t seem to have any sort of consequences for either sarah or abraham or the poor sod plagued by god. did someone just go ‘hey, that’s hilarious, we should keep that’
runecestershire replied to your post “lady-threewhiteleopards … well. i’ve made it to...”
I think the /point/ of it is simply a family tree, so you can keep track of which important figure is related to which other important figure and how, but as simply a list instead of a tree, it isn't as handy as it could be.
but, like, they must have told this story to people, right, before it was written down, or even once it was written down, because there’s tons of different versions and accounts
i mean, i could see a serious book keeping this stuff because reference, but any storyteller worth their salt would just skip or at least elide all this listing? like, i have been listening to this as carefully as i could, and so far, what i got from it was ‘abraham is somehow descended of noah who is somehow descended of adam, and also methusalem is by far not the oldest guy on that whole list’, which... doesn’t seem much useful?
or maybe i am just overthinking it, and some well-meaning historian or accountant just made up a bunch of numbers and names to appear more impressive...
runecestershire replied to your post “lady-threewhiteleopards … well. i’ve made it to...”
Heh, when I was like 14 I made a point if sitting down and reading all the begats. I flaked out naybe two thirds of the way through, but golky was I a weird kid. Also, the names are really cool.
the names are brilliant :D
(i did make it through all the begats, but the text i had back then was some sort of ~modernised~ version supposed to be ~accessible~ and it mostly made me wince, since the classic german translations clearly do have the rhythm of poetry (for a very german definition of that term), and then having that underlying structure covered up with someone’s misguided idea of what kids today talk like is... not pretty
ghost-hermione replied to your post “okay, this is the second time abraham has told some poor sod that...”
she... gets a miraculous child at ninetysomething, so you know...
yeah, but at least that is part of the story? i mean, it is relevant to the plot, and it’s prophesised and discussed before it happens, and then not only happens, but causes lasting consequences, so at least it makes sense in that regard, but those episodes just... happen out of the blue, and then are never mentioned again? like, why. is it like those episodes in tv series that are officially canon, but fandom as a whole just decided that they never happened?
