GENESIS
Overview
By Dr. Robert Fieldhouse, Disciples Path Ministry – St. Augustine, Fla.
This overview is just that – an overview. The information contained herein comes from many different sources; however, I believe the content is as sound as any history of this age can be. I hope that you will find this overview and the deeper dive, coming after this overview, into the BOOK of GENESIS fun, challenging, exciting, and thought-provoking. Here we go!
The first five Books of the Bible are called the Torah or the Pentateuch (the Law). A Pentateuch means "five books," which is another way of saying there are five books. However, we should note that the Pentateuch is also known as the Torah in Hebrew (religiousfacts.com). The first Book of our Bible is titled GENESIS, and that word comes from the Hebrew word Bere'shit. Genesis, or Bere'shite, both roughly translate to Beginning. The Book of Genesis, the foundational text, is the only one consisting almost entirely of stories, with just three explicit laws. Here, we learn the origins of mankind and the Israelites, with stories of Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, conflict, and many bad decisions made by humanity.
Chapter 1 – 11 is about God and the whole world. Chapters 12 – 50 are about God and Abraham's family. Of most interest is the point at which those two parts meet or come together. At that seminal point, we discover the actual message of the Book itself. In Chapters 1 and 2, we read how Creation happened. Of course, humans being humans have debated the story and all recorded details since the story was first relayed. As TRUE Believers, I like to state that complete acceptance of the written word regarding Creation is the first choice one must make if genuinely attempting to study this Book seriously. Let's leave all the debate, arguing, and scholarly posturing to others. It's been my experience that when all that confusion and scholarly posturing happens, there is usually a speaking tour or a book deal around the corner. I digress. So, you are undoubtedly wondering what my take on the Creation story is, right? God turns a watery, dark mass of chaos into something beautiful and perfect. God says seven times during the Creation process that what He Created was "Good." On the sixth day of Creation, God Created Adam and Eve. Roughly translated, the word Adam means "humanity," and Eve is Hebrew for "life." God Created Adam and Eve in His image, meaning humanity is intended to reflect God's goodness, Creativity, and actual character into the world He had made.
Interestingly, God gave Adam and Eve a moral choice. I refuse to believe this is some test, but rather a choice presented to them out of Divine love. We read about the Tree of Knowledge and Good and Evil here. At this point, Sin enters. Reflecting from our current time back to Adam and Eve, we humans have always been absolutely horrible about defining good and evil without God!
Genesis 3 – 11 traces the downward spiral of humanity. We even read that Adam and Eve can't trust each other anymore. Sin has taken root in them, and shame is experienced for the first time! Even though we learn they covered themselves, we will explore, at a future date, the idea that they were shameful and trying to conceal or cover more than just their bodies from God. A little further in the reading, we learn that Cain kills his brother Abel out of ego, pride, and jealousy. Then, someone named Lamech thought he would collect wives for fun and treat them as his property rather than people. He was also a very violent man, much worse than Cain, and he was actually proud of being that way.
Time passes, and God decides that humanity has gotten so bad that He will wipe everything out and start over. Here again, it is easy to see this act by God as something hateful, dark, and horribly vengeful; however, upon close reflection of the word, we see it all started with God's grief and deep sadness (Gen. 6:5-7). God, in His infinite wisdom, decides to spare a man named Noah and Noah's family, as well as a selection of animals, birds, etc., of their own kind. God does this so He can "reboot" humanity. After things settle, Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk, and passes out in his tent. One of his sons enters the tent and does something, evidently horribly disgusting and sinful, while Noah is passed out drunk on wine.
Time passes, humanity grows again, but once again, humanity starts to spiral down. Next comes the story of the Tower of Babel. All the people band together to use a new technological advance they invented called – a brick. They decide to build a supercity, including a tower that will reach the gods. God, in His Mercy, and able to foresee the future, chooses to scatter all the people and confuse their language.
Have you noticed that all these stories appear to have a pervasive thread? Humanity is trying to do everything its way without God. That plan hasn't worked since the time of Adam and Eve, and we are doing the same thing here and now all over the earth. The Book of Genesis is much more than a series of single stories. It combines a series of single stories that write a novel or a Book with one common thread. What do you think that common thread might be?
Let's Review
Our next lesson begins our deep dive into the first Book of the Bible – GENESIS. Let's take this opportunity to review some of the information we have covered up to this point from previous lessons.
. Our Bible contains two main divisions—the Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament
(NT).
. The word testament means "promise."
. The languages used in the writing of The Bible are Hebrew, some Aramaic (some parts of Daniel), and later Greek (The Septuagint). The Septuagint (from the Latin for seventy) is the oldest surviving Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible to date. It is traditionally believed to have been written by 72 Jewish scholars sometime during the third century BC (overviewbible.com). For 300 years, the Greek Septuagint Bible was essential for Jewish life and worship. The Septuagint filled a considerable gap for the general Jewish population in their thirst for the word of God. Hebrew was functionally extinct among the Jews, so the Hebrew Scriptures were only used by the High Priest and the Sadducees. Here is a little backstory on how the Hebrew language almost went extinct. After the Babylonian captivity of 605-536 BC, the Jews used the Hebrew language less and less until the time of Alexander the Great, when almost none of the Jews spoke Hebrew anymore (Bible.ca). Outside of Judea, the Jews spoke Greek in their synagogues and used the Septuagint exclusively from 280 BC, hundreds of years before the time of Christ Jesus. The dialect of the Greek language used at that time is called "Koine" Greek. That dialect was the primary language used.
. The OT and NT are inspired by God, "God-breathed" (2 Tim. 3:16, 2 Peter 1:20-21).
. The word inerrant is used when speaking of the word of God in our Bible. Inerrant means no contradiction. It is very probable, at least to me, that some copy errors might have been made; however, I have never found or heard of where the message and essential truths of the word have changed over thousands of years.
. The writings span from about 1500 BC to 85 AD.
. There were 40 authors.
. GENESIS means beginnings. Most Biblical scholars accept the author of the Book of
GENESIS as Moses.
. Moses most likely wrote the Book of GENESIS while in the wilderness of the Sinai in the
15th century BC.
I pray that you will find the "deep dive" study of the Book of GENESIS as exciting, inspirational, and challenging as I did and still do. After all my decades of study from various sources, I continue to learn new things through quiet reflection and prayer. God will only reveal to us what He deems appropriate when He believes we are ready to receive it.
Disciples Path Ministry – St. Augustine, Florida