The Book of Genesis will not answer all of your questions. For that matter, no book of the Bible will, that’s not the nature of scripture (link to The Bible, Uses and Misuses). Genesis does not tell us, for example, where Cain found his wife. I like to ask my students if Adam and Eve had belly buttons, just to get them thinking. Genesis is not a science book. If God had thought we needed a science book, he would have given us one. The Bible was given to express a particular message. The most basic message of scripture is that we need a savior. Genesis was written by Moses, by the inspiration of God, to meet a specific need at that time. Were it written to impress our scientific minds and to our understanding in this time, it would have been worthless to the Hebrew audience of that time. There are a couple of questions to consider when reading a book of the Bible: 1) Who wrote it? and 2) Who was it written to? Genesis was written by a Hebrew prophet to an ancient, Mideastern people. We must read it in that context.
A survey of the Bible does not go verse by verse, chapter by chapter. This an excellent way to study the scripture, and I highly recommend it. While we will not be doing that here, it will seem as if our study of Genesis is highly detailed. It’s kind of like watching the pilot episode of a t.v. series, or reading the first chapter of a novel. We must be introduced to the characters. The truths about God presented in the first verses of the this first book of the Bible will become themes running throughout the Bible. We will spend a little bit of time getting set up correctly.
I will not presume to ignore the New Testament. We will not pretend the whole Bible is not about Jesus. The Master’s Table is Christ centered, the Bible is Christ centered, our relationship with God must be Christ centered. Jesus is all over the Bible, as we will explore together, and we meet him for the first time early in Genesis. The trinity is suggested in 1:26, and by chapter 3 we find the first veiled prophesy of Jesus.
If you want homework, read Genesis 1:1 to 2:3, the Biblical account of creation.
May 4, 2009 at 12:34 am |
Sounds pretty cool. I think I’ll tag along. And I’ll do the homework assignment. About how often do you plan to update?
May 5, 2009 at 3:43 am |
I was planning to update once or twice a week, but it’s tough. Each of these lessons requires much more time, energy and research than a regular blog post.