Genesis - Biblical Survey

Genesis * Who (Author) o Long story short - Moses. o We will see that for most of the books in the Bible there is at least some debate as to who wrote what. o For Genesis we need to remember this is part of the Pentateuch - the first five books. o For many books, we can look within the book to help discover the author, but for Genesis we will look at a few books outside of Genesis. o First and foremost we can look at what Jesus said in Mark 12:26 26 Now about the dead rising-have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?1 Yes, that event is in Exodus. But back then, they didn't separate it into 5 separate books. It was all one book to them. o Jesus himself has half a dozen other quotes in the NT of referring to what Moses had written or said. o Lets jump back to OT references o King David referred to the Law of Moses - 1 Kings 2:3 and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses. Do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go2 o Here its not intended to say that the Law is from Moses, but that he was the one that wrote the pentanteuch. o We can also reference what was written in Ex 17:14 Then the Lord said to Moses, "Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered3... o What are some other theories? 2 of them * A liberal view by a French physician - Jean Astruc. Jean suggested that Genesis was an editorial composite. He suggested the different names used for God pointed to different source documents. * Graf-Wellhausen-Kuenen or Documentary Hypotheses or the JEDP. This one states only 4, not five books. (1) J, which uses the name YHWH for God, dates about the 9th century bc. and comes from Judah; (2) E uses the name Elohim, dates from the 8th century, and comes from the northern kingdom; (3) D is Deuteronomy and is supposed to come from the time of Josiah, about 621 bc; (4) P is the priestly element, which deals with matters of the priesthood and ritual, dating to the 5th century bc. or later.4 * When o I mean when it was written, not when the content took place. We will get into that a little later. o We are going to go with Moses being the author of Genesis. As with all the other books, when depends on the who. And if there wasn't enough debate on the Who, the When can often be more varied in the ideas. o Don't be expecting dates like - this was written October 10th 1387 BC. We just wont be that accurate. o Now in general we will probably be with in a decade or so for the NT books, but OT books might be a couple of centuries for the range of possible dates of authorship. o 1 Kings 6:1 In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord5 o Full transparency - history is one of my weaker subjects, not as bad as the English language and grammar, and definitely not as bad as my spelling. But, its not great. o But, in Kings we see a pretty clear reference to a date as to when Israelites came out of Egypt. Does that mean that's when Moses wrote everything? Well maybe. Its possible he wrote it when he was in exile with the Kenites. o If we agree that he wrote in the 40 years of wandering then we can have a pretty solid date. At least by a few decades. o Lets put a range of 15th-13th century BC. * Where o Genesis might be a unique book, in that the 'Where' has two different aspects to it. The Creation story is in here. And so we could say that the 'Where' is everywhere. It mentions the universe being created. o More specifically, when we get to us humans, the scope of where is more limited. Obviously the Garden of Eden, and then after that its what we would consider the middle east. * It mentions the following locations * Ur of the Chaldees * Babel * Mesopotamia * Egypt * Canaan * And others * Major Characters o Yaweh o Jesus o Adam o Eve o Cain and Abel o Abraham o Isaac o Jacob o Joseph * What o Genesis is a fairly large book with 50 chapters. o Around 36000 words in translations. Interesting though only 32046 in the original Hebrew. o The first 2 chapters cover the creation of the Universe * In Chapter 2 we are introduced to the first humans - Adam and Eve. o Chapter 3 forward is historical accounts of the Fall all the way up to the death of Joseph. Basically a lot of years o Side note - How old is the Earth? This can be a great topic among Biblical scholars at Thanksgiving or other parties - where we want some good arguing. There is people that believe in a young Earth or about 6-8000 years old. Others believe in a more scientific belief of millions and millions. I'm not going down this rabbit hole - probably ever. AS I said earlier, history is not my best subject and there are some very very smart people out there that have very compelling stories for both sides. So if you want to debate any of the dates I list or talk about, have at it. I'm probably not going to put up much of a fight. o So I would wager Genesis spans about 2500 years? * Why * Highlights o At 50 Chapters - We would be here a long time if I tried to recap everything. So if I leave something out that you really wanted in there, I'm sorry. o For me, the biggest highlight is covered in the first 2 chapters. God created the Universe. * Many years ago, I was in a discussion about animals. I really love animals and pets. The ones I love the most are those of other people. To be honest I'm just not a person that wants animals in my own house. I would probably make an exception for a Pig, but that would be it. I really like Pigs I think they would be a great pet. * Anyways the discussion was around the lines of how valuable were animals lives compared to human lives and do animals have souls, meaning will we find out pets in heaven? * Warning - this is getting into the weeds and I'm sure there are strong feelings for both sides. * In doing some research into this subject I found 2 verses to look at. First Gen 1:30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so. 6 * And Gen 2:7 - Then the Lord God formed a man w from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 7 * In both of these verses it mentions the breath of life. The phrase the breath is Stongs number H5397 and of life is H2416. What does that means? WHAT IS STRONGS The point is that it's the same Hebrew words used in both places. So its not as if the translators took two different phrases and translated them the same - to make a point that they wanted to make. Meaning that the translators of a certain translation were pet lovers. * So in talking about both humans and animals, its mentioned that both have the breath of life. I believe that animals do have souls and that they will be in heaven. o Unfortunately we can't talk about Creation without talking about the Fall. The eating of the Apple. * But was it really an Apple? I know this is another rabbit hole, and at this pace I'm not going to come close to keeping this at 15-20 minutes. But, here goes. * At the end of the day, we simply don't know. The Bible never says what fruit it is. If we look at what fruit is common in the area where we think the Garden was at, then its probably a fig or a grape. * So how did it become an Apple? * If we look at the work of Azzan Yadin-Israel, a professor of Jewish Studies and classics in the School of Arts and Sciences, * And this is a wonderful demonstration on how important "context, context, context" is. * There are 2 common explanations. * Since the 17th century, scholars say this: Latin word for apple is "malum" which is a homonym for evil. Since the fruit caused our banishment from the garden, we can say its "evil". Then its easy to substitute Apple for evil. Easy enough. * But Azzan, spent a lot of time in researching this. And he looked at medieval Latin commentaries on the Book of Genesis, and no one uses the play on words. Even as late as the 14th century, commentators still refer to the fruit as a fig or grape. * So how does it become apple? Well, we have to look at two things, which just happen to be the two things I'm not great at. Historical linguistics. So not just language, but historical language. * The answer comes from an unexpected place - historical linguistics. Latin authors most commonly refer to the forbidden fruit as a pomum, a Latin word meaning "fruit" or "tree fruit." Not surprisingly, Old French, which descends from Latin, has the word "pom" (modern French "pomme"), which originally meant "fruit" as well, and was used in the earliest Old French translations of Genesis. * "Adam and Eve ate a pom," meant "Adam and Eve ate a fruit." Over time, however, the meaning of pom changed. Rather than a broad, general term for "fruit," it took on a narrower meaning: "apple." Once that change in meaning became widely accepted, readers of the Old French version of Genesis understood the statement "Adam and Eve ate a pom" to mean "Adam and Eve ate an apple." At that point, they understood the apple to be the fruit that the Bible itself identified as the forbidden fruit and began representing it in these terms. o The next couple of chapters deal with the fall, Cain and Abel. In Chapter 5 we get to the first section of genealogy. From Adam to Noah. I imagine that when you get to genealogies, your eyes might roll, maybe a deep sigh. Genealogies can be difficult to get through. I'm just as guilty as the next, of breezing over these. But, there are always some good nuggets of information in them. I highly recommend that take a deep breath and make a concerted effort to read them with an open mind. o We know the story of Noah and the Flood. Then we get to tower of Babel. o In Chapter 11 we get to one of the major characters, and a large chunk of Genesis tells us about Abram/Abraham. Until about Chapter 25, or close to 25% of the book o From 25 to 37 it covers the children of Abraham and in 37 we get to Joseph. I love the story of Joesph. He perseveres so much in his life and always remains faithful to God. And when confronted with his brothers, the people that were going to kill him and then sold him into slavery, he had the power to kill them. To throw them in prison and throw the key away. He could've denied them food, and no one would've questioned him. He was 2nd in all of Egypt. o But, instead he welcomes them in. I get it, he did put them through some stress. But, I don't think we can blame him for that. o In Chapter 50 we see the reuniting of Joseph and his family and then his death. o 1 The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Mk 12:26. 2 The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 1 Ki 2:3. 3 The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Ex 17:14. 4 Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, "Genesis, Book Of," in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 851-852. 5 The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 1 Ki 6:1. 6 The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Ge 1:30. 7 The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Ge 2:7. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------