Well, friends, here we are, another episode of
the Semi -Seminarian. As always, we're going
to continue looking at the Bible in another installment
of our series that we're calling the Bible for
Grownups. We're going to begin in the beginning
and we're going to look at the very first book
of the Bible, the book of Genesis. Discussion
is entitled A Love Affair because what we're
going to see is that God created the universe
and created us so that we could fall in love
with each other. I hope that you'll see what
I'm seeing and I'll see you on the other side.
So in this episode, we're going to begin a new
series within our study series we're calling
The Bible for Grownups. In this series, we're
going to look at the first book of the Hebrew
Bible, the Genesis. And rather than beginning
in the beginning, let's take just a moment to
step out and take the 30 ,000 foot view and look
at the Hebrew Bible as a whole. Then we'll drill
down to what the Torah is. And then we'll look
at the first book of Genesis. And then in this
particular episode, we're just going to focus
on the creation narrative that we find in Genesis
1 and Genesis 2. The Hebrew Bible is in Hebrew
called the Tanakh. And then within the Tanakh,
the first five books are known as the Torah.
That word means teaching or instruction or law.
The first book, Genesis, in Hebrew is known as
Bereshit. That comes from the first word of the
book, which is common amongst the books of the
Hebrew Bible, in which the Hebrew title of the
book is taken from the first word or phrase of
that book. In this instance, Genesis or Bereshit,
it comes from the words in the beginning. That
could also be translated as in a beginning. And
in English parlance would probably be the equivalent.
of saying once upon a time. The first five books
of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, is basically
a narrative that moves from the creation of the
world to the creation of Israel as a free people
who find themselves on the edge of the promised
land. Now within this narrative, there are some
very decisive events. There's the flood and the
call of Abraham and Sarah. the changing of Jacob's
name to Israel, the call of Moses and Miriam
and Aaron. Then there's the exodus of the Israelite
people, the establishment of the covenant between
Israel and Yahweh. And it begins with a broad
view of the relationship between God and not
just of the Israelite people, but in the beginning,
begins with a broad view of the relationship
between God and the whole of humanity. Then,
It focuses upon a relationship between God and
the family of Sarah and Abraham. Again, it broadens
its view as the family then grows into a whole
people who are called to be a blessing for the
whole world. The Torah can be divided into six
major parts. Primeval history, which we find
in Genesis 1 -11. The ancestral period, Genesis
12 -50. The liberation from Egypt, which is Exodus
1 through 18. Then there's the stay of the Israelite
people at Sinai or Horeb. That's Exodus 19 through
Numbers 10. And then there's Leviticus, the journey
to the promised land, which is Numbers 10. 11
through 36, 13. And then there's the patriarch
Moses' farewell, which we find in the book of
Deuteronomy. Now, we recognize that the book
of Genesis is written by people in their understanding
of their relationship with God. Now, if God didn't
write the Torah, who did? As I had mentioned
earlier, traditionally, Moses is associated with
the writing of the Torah as the one who taught
Israel the commandments from God. However, it's
important to remember that the Torah as a whole
never actually claims that Moses wrote it. In
fact, the description of Moses' death at the
end of Deuteronomy would seem to argue against
Mosaic authorship of this material. What might
it mean? if Moses actually didn't write the Torah.
So let's begin in the beginning. Let's look at
Genesis 1, chapter 1. The words of God read,
In the beginning, God created the heavens and
the earth. Now, the earth was formless and empty,
darkness was over the surface of the deep, and
the Spirit of God, that word in Hebrew is ruach,
was hovering over the waters. And God said, let
there be light, and there was light. God saw
that light was good, and he separated the light
from the darkness. God called the light day,
and the darkness he called night. And there was
evening, and there was morning, the first day.
Although the opening phrase of Genesis 1 -1 is
commonly translated in English, as I just read,
the Hebrew is actually ambiguous and can be translated
at least three ways. As a statement that the
cosmos had an absolute beginning, like in the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
as a statement describing the condition of the
world when God began creating. In other words,
when in the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth, the earth was untamed and shapeless.
And essentially similar to that second version,
but taking all of Genesis 1 verse 2 as background
information, it could also be interpreted as
saying, when in the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth, the earth being untamed
and shapeless. God said, let there be light.
Verse 6 of chapter 1, And God said, let there
be a vault between the waters to separate water
from water. So God made the vault and separated
the water under the vault from the water above
it. And it was so. God called the vault sky,
and there was evening, and there was morning,
the second day. Now the Hebrew word rakia, here,
or vault, is of an unspecified material. It represents
the boundary between heaven and earth and its
main function is to hold back the waters that
are above. Some mountains are identified as intersecting
the sky and perhaps holding it up. The concept
of heavenly waters is the natural human deduction.
That's drawn from our experience of precipitation.
If water comes down from the sky, it seems that
there's water up there. Thus, the sky becomes
the pivotal phenomenon associated with weather.
And God said, let the water under the sky be
gathered to one place and let dry ground appear.
And it was so. God called the dry ground land.
and the gathered water he called the seas. And
God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let
the land produce vegetation, seed -bearing plants
and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed
in it according to the various kinds. And it
was so. The land produced vegetation, plant -bearing
seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing
fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.
And God saw that it was good. And there was evening
and there was morning the third day. Now, the
indication that the land produces vegetation
here is not a statement about the land being
somehow involved in creation. What is actually
being created by God here is a function whereby
the land that is spoken of regularly and characteristically,
in other words, in order of things, produces
vegetation. The principle fecundity whereby agricultural
can exist and food can be grown. Verse 14 of
Genesis 1 continues, And God said, Let there
be lights in the vault of the sky to separate
the day from the night, and let them serve as
signs to mark sacred times and days and years.
And let them be lights in the vault of the sky
to give light on the earth. And it was so. The
author or authors of Genesis now has emptied
the elements of the cosmos of their personal
traits we find so frequently in ancient Near
East text. The sun and the moon, for example,
are not depicted as gods in the Genesis account
as they would have been in other Near East literature.
Verse 16 continues, God made two lights, the
greater light to govern the day and the lesser
light to govern the night. He also made the stars.
God set them in the vault of the sky. Here we
go again. To give light on the earth, to govern
the day and night and to separate light from
darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there
was evening and there was morning, the fourth
day. Verse 20 continues, And God said, Let the
water team with living creatures. Let birds fly
above the earth across the vault of the sky.
So God created the great creatures of the sea
and every living thing with which the water teams
and it moves about in it according to their kinds
and every winged bird according to its kind.
And God saw that it was good. In the mythologies
of the ancient Near East, a variety of Terrible
creatures inhabited the sea. These are occasionally
associated with the threatening forces of chaos
that need to be defeated and harnessed by creator
deities. God blessed them and said, be fruitful
and increase in number and fill the water in
the seas and let the birds increase on the earth.
Verse 23 continues, and there was evening and
there was morning, the fifth day. Verse 24 says,
And God said, Let the land produce living creatures
according to their kinds, the livestock, the
creatures that move along the ground, and the
wild animals, each according to its kind. And
it was so. God made the wild animals according
to their kinds, the livestock according to their
kinds, and all the creatures that move along
the ground according to their kinds. And God
saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us,
make mankind in our image, in our likeness. We'll
come back to this just in a second. So that they
may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds
in the sky, over the livestock and all of the
animals and over all the creatures that move
along the ground. Now let's pause here just for
a second and ask ourselves, to whom is God speaking?
There are four popular answers to this question.
One, that God is speaking to angels. The second
suggestion would be that the use of us there
is just a plural usage to indicate the majesty
of God's station. The third possibility is that
the plural should just be translated as a singular.
It's just a mistranslation. And then the fourth
possibility is that the us refers to the members
of the Trinity. So let's look at each one of
those. The first instance, the angels. Angels,
some have taught that the reference to us refers
to God speaking to angels. Now this has been
a very popular interpretation amongst the Jewish
people. However, it doesn't fit with the rest
of scripture. In fact, nowhere do we find angels
involved in any type of creation. According to
the Bible, angels are created beings. and not
co -creators with God. Others have argued that
the plural is only a plural of majesty, which
speaks to God's dignity and God's greatness,
because God is just simply too majestic to be
spoken of in the singular. They argue that the
plural form of the noun of God, Elohim, can be
explained somewhat in that way. That word Elohim
is a plural. It's been contended that the phrase
let us makes reference to discourse where the
subject, although singular, speaks of himself
in the plural. Though this use of editorial we
is popular in Western literature, there's just
simply No evidence of it anywhere else in the
Hebrew Bible or in any literature of the ancient
Near East. One of the most common ways of viewing
this verse is that we have communication within
the members of the Trinity, our fourth possibility.
Though not explicitly stated in the verse, the
implicit nature of the Trinity seems to be evident.
Elohim plural, the Hebrew noun Elohim used throughout
chapter 1, is plural in form, but when used it
takes a singular verb. To me this appears to
speak of the plurality of persons within the
nature of one God. The pronoun us also seems
to suggest itself a plurality of persons. When
this phrase is used elsewhere in scripture, it
seems to bolster the idea of the Trinity. In
the third chapter of Genesis, chapter 3, verse
22, has God stating that the man is like one
of us. There are some Christian interpreters
who believe it's not correct to find a reference
to the Trinity in this passage. They, in fact,
argue that the Trinity was not revealed until
the New Testament and that the passage could
be better interpreted as something else, like
the plurality of majesty. While affirming the
doctrine of the Trinity, they deny that we should
read it into this particular passage. They don't
believe that it would have been in the mind of
the writer or it would have been in the mind
of the audience. That's a pretty compelling counter
-argument. Genesis 1, verse 27 continues, So
God created mankind in his own image, in the
image of God. He created them, male and female.
He created them. God blessed them and said to
them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill
the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in
the sea and the birds in the sky and over every
living creature that moves on the ground. Now,
this is in stark contrast to the role of humanity
that we find in other examples of creation stories
within the ancient Near East, where in fact,
In almost all of them, humanity is created to
serve the gods. In Genesis here, we see the attribution
to all people, what seems to have been the sole
prerogative of the king in the rest of ancient
Near East literature. Now from verse 29 here,
we see this newly imagined role as the created
in relationship with the creator. Continue. Verse
29 says, Then God said, I give you every seed
-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth
and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.
They'll be yours for food. And to 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. God saw that he had made all that he had
made and it was very good. And there was evening,
and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus ends
the reading of chapter 1. Now chapter 2 continues
with a shorter condensed version, and in some
ways a little bit different than what we just
read in Genesis 1. Genesis 2 is an additional
creation story that begins with a conclusion
from chapter 1 that says, Thus the heavens and
the earth were completed in all of their vast
array. By the seventh day, God had finished the
work he had been doing, so on the seventh day
he rested from all of his work. Then God blessed
the seventh day and made it holy, because on
it he rested from all of the work of creating
that had been done. Now here's this second account
here. Verse 4 of chapter 2 says, This is the
account of the heavens and the earth when they
were created, when the Lord God made the earth
and the heavens. Now no shrub had yet appeared
on the earth, and no plant had yet sprung up,
for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth,
and there was no one to work the ground. But
streams came up from the earth and watered the
whole surface of the ground. Now Genesis begins
with a time when no irrigation or planning strategies
of organized agriculture were actually being
carried out by the people. In the ancient Near
East, this... obviously would then result in
no offerings for the gods. In Genesis, though,
God plants the garden and then puts people in
it. The similarities show this common idea that
creation accounts proceed from an unordered,
non -functioning beginning, in other words, chaos,
through an ordering process. This is the way
that we imagine these... ancient people of the
Near East, imagine their relationship with this
one God. That out of chaos, out of the lack of
organization and lack of structure, through divine
intervention, ordering, and process, came to
civilization. This beginning here doesn't mean
that God had not yet produced any plants. It
means God has brought an ordered process to cultivation.
Verse 7 of chapter 2 continues, Then the Lord
God formed a man from the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, that word is neshima, and the man became
a living being. Man is made from the dust, and
since he'll also return to dust, all people can
be seen as created from the dust. The creation
of Eve from Adam's side, likewise, expresses
a relationship between man and woman that permeates
the race. In these, Adam and Eve are actually
archetypes, which represent the whole of humanity
in creation, just as they do in their own sin
and their own destiny, which, unfortunate to
the human condition, is death. Their function
as archetypes to this story does not necessarily
suggest that they're not historical individuals.
It only suggests that they actually function
more importantly as representatives of the race
of humanity. Verse 8 continues, Now the Lord
God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden,
and there he put the man he had formed. Then
Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of
the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye
and good for food. In the middle of the garden
were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. The phrase there, good and
evil, that phrase, tov warah, it literally translates
as good and evil, but it might be an example
of a type of figure of speech which is known
as a mirism. which is a literary device that
pairs up opposite terms together in order to
create some broader general meaning so that a
phrase like good and evil, tov or ra, might simply
imply everything. So a knowledge of everything.
Verse 10 continues, a river watering the garden
flowed from Eden. From there, it was separated
into four headwaters. The name of the first is
Pishon. It winds through the entire land of Havilah,
where there is gold. Verse 12 says the gold of
that land is good. Aromatic resin and onyx are
also there. The name of the second river is Gion.
It winds through the entire land of Cush. The
name of the third river is the Tigris, and it
runs along the east side of Asher. And the fourth
river is the Euphrates. Recent investigations
have attempted to identify the Pishon as a major
river that has since dried up in antiquity. This
possibly emerges from the analysis of sand patterns
and satellite photography that we have made with
technological improvements, which have since
revealed an old riverbed which actually runs
northeast through Saudi Arabia from the Hejaz
Mountains near Medina. which happens to contain
one of the richest gold mines in the region,
to the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, near the mouth
of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. Verse
16 continues, The Lord God took the man and put
him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take
care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man,
You're free to eat from any tree in the garden,
but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you'll
certainly die. The Lord God said, it is not good
for man to be alone. I'll make a helper suitable
for him. Now the Lord God had formed out of the
ground all the wild animals and all the birds
of the sky. He brought them to the man to see
what he would name them. And whatever the man
called each living creature, that was its name.
So the man gave names to all the livestock. The
birds in the sky and all of the wild animals.
In ancient Near East culture, the power to give
something a name gave the namer power over that
individual. Again, what we're seeing here is
this expression by the divine to enter into a
relationship with the created over creation.
But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So
the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep
sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took one
of the man's ribs and closed up the place with
flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the
rib that he had taken out of the man, and he
brought her to the man. The man said, This is
now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and
shall be called woman. She was taken out of man.
That's why a man leaves his father and mother.
and united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
And Adam and his wife were both naked, and they
felt no shame. In Genesis, the nakedness of humans
here doesn't appear to be a negative comment,
though it is contrasted through wordplay to the
craftiness of the serpent in the next verse,
which we'll study in the next section, and it
might actually refer to a relative nativity.
So what we see here in the first two chapters
of Genesis are an account of the creation of
the world. Now, what many people in our secularized
society today want to focus on is the impossibility
that someone would be able to describe the events
of the creation of the universe before they were
themselves ever created. And that's not necessarily
the point of this primeval story. The story is
not necessarily how God created the world, but
that God created the world. In other words, it's
not the how, but the who. The first two accounts
of the creation of the world that we find in
Genesis 1 and 2, the author or authors are trying
to exhibit their understanding of the way that
the divine, a creator, a being that exists outside
of their creation interacts with the created
of the world. Now, the Hebrew account. certainly
exists in common with other examples of the creation
story that we find in ancient Near East cultures.
For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which we
will learn about the flood account. There's also
the Enuma Elish. But what makes this particular
account different, or believers in Yahweh, in
God, as Christians, in the way that Christianity
sees itself in relation to the creator Hebrew
God, the difference here is that there is but
one God and that God created his creation out
of a desire to live with them and operate with
them as the way, as best as we can understand
it, within our own mortal frames, as individuals
that work in relationship, in covenant with God,
and not merely subject to God. And what we find
here is the very first expression of a love affair.
God creates his created. in an effort to have
a loving relationship, not a relationship that
is based on servants, because the gods have become
tired and weary, so they create servants to appease
them. This is what makes the Genesis account
unique, in that God, Elohim, or Yahweh, the way
that we perceive the Jewish or Christian God,
his universe so that he could have a relationship
with us, that we might live in relationship with
him in a love affair. Now things right off the
bat turn ugly and eventually humanity will and
continually We'll mess up that relationship.
The beauty of this love is that God continues
to pursue his desire. And we'll pick that story
up next time when we look at Genesis chapter
3. Well, there you have it. I hope that that
was as enlightening for you as it was for me
in preparing it. I just want to tell you about
a couple of things. The first is a change to
the podcast. In contrast to what we've been doing
with the Bible study in the past, every two weeks
we have been releasing a new installment. of
our series over a particular book of the Bible
in which we are calling the Bible for Grownups.
We're going to add a new installment in that
second week. So we'll have a new episode every
week. So what we'll do is we'll introduce a new
study of a particular book of the Bible in which
we look at particular chapters. And then on the
next Friday, we'll have a commentary. about some
of the things that we found and maybe answer
some questions that may have rose over that installment
from the week before. So we'll be uploading new
episodes every single Friday. On one Friday,
we'll upload the new lecture series installment,
and then the next Friday, we'll have commentary,
perhaps probably correcting maybe some of the
mistakes that I'd made in the initial lecture,
and also delve a little bit deeper into some
of the concepts that maybe I just brushed over
in the lecture part. I hope that you'll enjoy
it, and I hope that you will continue to like
and subscribe to the podcast while I'm talking
about that. If you like what we're doing here
at the Semi -Seminary, I would appreciate it
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listen to the podcast, if you would subscribe
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people a little bit of feedback on what they
might expect. Anyway, I'll see you next Friday
as we take just a moment to delve a little bit
deeper into some of the concepts that we just
discovered of a love affair, Genesis chapter
1 and 2. I'll see you next week.