“Why don’t you start at the beginning?
“Yes and when you reach the end… Stop..” – March Hare and Mad Matter, Alice in Wonderland
Genesis. The beginning. A good place to start. But we shall start by talking about the book, rather than what is in it. Author an audience often bring us insight into the purpose of writing. The cultural setting can also give us insight. So, this is where we will begin.
Genesis is the first book of what the Jews call the Torah: The Instruction. The Torah consists of the first 5 books of our bible, and give us stories from the time of creation until just before Joshua crosses the Nile River into Cannan.
It is presumed that Moses wrote Genesis, and that is the traditional, although no authorship is claimed. I have no reason to disagree, and a few to think that this is the case, so we’ll go with it. Moses was born to an Israelite slave woman, but was taken in by the Egyptian royal family and raised by a princess of Egypt. We’ll get to his story in Exodus. But what this means is that Moses was educated. He would have known how to read and write well. Not something your average Israeli slave would have learned. Certainly some of the priests during Moses’ time would have learned to read and write, as they continue to keep the writings, and continue to chronicle Israel’s stories.
Given that the five books of the Torah are the Instruction or the Law to Israel, the Old Covenant, as we call it today, the audience is pretty clearly Israel. If we peek forward a bit, we can see that after leaving Egypt, Israel does not do well to follow God consistently. In fact, when they’re traveling, they grumble, and when they camp, they break the covenant. So, my sense is that Moses records all these things for the Jews of that time (probably those going into Cannan) and those who come after to read their history and to know their covenant, their Torah, and to learn from their ancestors’ mistakes.
Thus, we will expect to see hints of things to come in Genesis, specifically items related to Israel and the Torah. For example, in the story of Creation, God rests on the seventh day. Now, if this was independent of the remainder of the Torah, we might think that God was tired, or decided that He was finished, and it was time to stop. But when we look ahead, we see that God institutes the Sabbath (seventh) day as a day of rest for all in Israel. That day of rest is based in the creation story, where God rests after creating for six days.
We should see more of this as we go along.
The culture, or more accurately cultures, of Genesis are many. We will be covering those as we come across each of them. Even in the most conservative calculation of time, Genesis covers three to eight thousand years of time. The beginning of Exodus happens somewhere between 2450 and 1400 BC. If the young earth creationists are correct, and the earth is six to ten thousand years old, then Genesis covers at minimum from 6,000 BC to 2,400 BC, potentially from 10,000 BC to 1400 BC. That’s a lot of time. And if we presume that Genesis skips some time and a few generations along the way, this could be much longer.
And that is a good point to remember. Most books in the bible cover at most few decades of Israel’s story. So, we will have to keep that in mind as we read. It is honestly hard to fathom Noah living to be over six hundred years old. Or Adam living to be 930. Time in Genesis is just different from how we experience it now.
Religion in Genesis is actually quite fascinating. One would think that with a story that starts with God creating that at least Genesis would have many believers in God. But even during this time, there are many gods, many idols, and many pagan beliefs. And, on at least one occasion, a group of those who worship God whose story is not told, except to be mentioned briefly.
Finally, Genesis has some fairly strong themes. Starting with Gen 2:4, Genesis is broken down into sections introduced by “These are the generations of…” These seem to organize the book into the stories we’ll be focusing on.
There is also a theme of survival: Will mankind survive? Will there be those who worship God? Will there be generations to follow that will fulfill the promises of God. The idea of birth and family lines and fulfilling the command to procreate and fill the earth is very strong throughout Genesis.
Finally, Genesis is filled with God’s interaction with His creation. He shows up in a very direct way many times throughout the book. We will take some time to discuss what God reveals about Himself as we see Him interact with His creation.
So, let us see what Genesis has to hold…
