Think: Genesis

Overview of Genesis:

Genesis is not just a bout of beginnings it is a book of gospel. All the major themes and ideas of the gospel are there in the pages of Genesis.

Genesis is the Bible in a book.

Genesis within the Torah:
the house of the tent of God in Exodus.
Israel plays out and bears Adam's commission. They increase in number, they fall (golden calf).

The structure of Genesis:

Generations... various sections of the book are separated out by phrases along with 'these are the generations of...' and what followed from.

1. Prologue (1:1-2:4a)
2. Generations of Adam (5:1-6:8)
3. Generations of Noah (6:9-9:29)
4. Generations of Shem, Ham and Japtheth (10:1-11:9)
5. Generations of Shem (11:10-26)
6. Generations of Terah (11:27-25:11)
7. Generations of Ishmael (11:27-25:11)
8. Generations of Isaac (25:19-35:29)
9. Generations of Esau (36:1-37:1)
10. Generations of Jacob (37:2-50:26)

Genesis and the scriptures.

The underlying assumption of the rest of the scripture is that Genesis is truthful and accurate and assume it's faithfulness.

The only answer the Bible ever gives to the problem of evil is basically to rehash Genesis 1 and do it sarcastically: I created everything, so hold your peace!

The New Testament affirms:

• Creation out of nothing
• Creation of humanity from the dust of the earth
• The creation of man as male and female, divorce, dress within the church, doctrine in the church.
• The deception of Eve and the fall of Adam into sin and death
• The historicity of Abel's sacrifice, and death, Enoch's non-death, Noah's ark, the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah wit fire and sulphur, Lot's wife, the miraculous conception and near-sacrifice of Isaac, Esau's sin, the Joseph story et al...

Some of them we are embarrassed by and yet Jesus made a sermon illustration out of all of them.

The position of Jesus remains however.. It is written.

Hermenuetical diversity:

• Allegorical readings (Origen, Augustine etc.)
• Source critical readings (were there four different authors, angle...)
• Grammatical-historical readings (what it means in its historical setting is what it means)
• Ancient historiography (the stories and ideas meant something distinctly different in that culture and that day than it does now)

Authorship: 

We can call the author Moses and yet recognise that it must also include insertions by other people.

re: Homer wrote the Ilyiad and yet in reality it was a community of people over time...

Genesis of Mythology:

There are lots of similarities between ancient myths from the region and the Israelite story. Lots of similarities but some very important differences.

God, rather than revealing himself to us individually and personally generation by generation instead revealed himself through human purpose. The authority is in the author. It is written for us but not to us. It transcends culture but is culture-bound.

We have to learn to see the world and the text in the way that the ancient Israelites saw the text. If we're going to read the Bible right we have to read it through ancient eyes. 

TEMPLE

The world that God is building is a temple, a three story house: a foundation, the temple building itself and, curtains. The water (the underlaying foundation), the earth (the building), the air (the curtains).

Eden is a prototypical temple. G. K. Beale.

The Levites are servants and guardians of the presence of God. That's what Adam was entrusted to do. In that sense Adam was the first priest-king.

The cherub was put at the entrance to guard the dwelling place of God, the same is true in the temple.

The temple imagery is full of plants and fruits; garden imagery.

Eden is the source of 4 rivers, it is high ground. The river of life flows from the temple. Rivers bring life. 

The garden has an eastern-facing entrance, like all subsequent temples in scripture.

Adam is told to both guard the presence of God and also subdue the earth. The challenge is a pastoral one. How do we guard and protect what God has given us and also extend the kingdom and bring people into it. Adam is told to take te presence with him, extend the borders of the garden called pleasant.

The purpose of the text isn't only to say (or even?) that 'this is what the garden looked like, and if you'd have been there this is what you would have seen with your camera'. It's to say more than that about the habitation of God on Earth. 

Myth = freight bearing worldview imagery 

Eden is a temple and temple is an extension of Eden and the call of the church, to be the outpost of God.

Ancient temples:

• The seven day/seven year is a common phrase in the ancient world for the dedication period of a temple.
• The final day of temple construction concludes with the placing of the god in the temple as the climax.
• Ancient readers would have recognised the form as a temple building story. It is a story about where God lives.

God lives in the heavens and his image is in his temple (Eden, humans).

The Growth of the temple:

Eden - Tabernacle - Temple - Jesus - Church - New Creation

Theophanies, Altars and wells.

There are no tabernacles or temples built in the rest of Genesis however...

• three aspects of the Garden-temple will reappear throughout Genesis:
• Theophanies: Melchizedek? Abraham's 3 visitors, Bethel, Peniel
• There are more theophanies in Genesis than there are in the rest of the Bible
• Altars: a major compnent of temple life and altars appear often in Genesis. Without a tabernacle or set place you have to do it elsewhere.
• Man and woman, fruitfulness, water and life: wells (wells are mini gardens/oasis) 
• The patriarchs meet their wives in mini-garden scenes

ORIGINS

All Christians are, by definition, creationists. - Denis Alexander

Scientific considerations: 

The age of the Earth:

• The Earth is thought to be 4.566 billion years old and the universe 13.7 billion years old. 
• The primary way we establish this is based on radiosotopes - atoms within rocks which have unstable nuclei that decay over set periods.
• 106m years for Samarium-147
• 18.8m years old for rubidium-87
• etc.
• Tree rings can also be counted and amalgamated, in central Germany back to 8400BC and the results compared with other dating methods.
• The same is true of layers in the Antarctic ice cap - one 3190m core has reached ice 740000 years old.
• Similarly: sedimentary rock erosion (grand canyon) can be measure and compared
• Within a relatively small margin of error (2% for radioisotopes, up to 10% for ice caps layers), all of these dating methods agree, leading to an estimated age of about 4.6b years.

Evolution may look random to us but that doesn't mean it is. 

Human origins and genetics:

• Psuedogenes (genes that don't have a function but exist nonetheless). We have 19k of them (genes that at one time had a function but don't any more; genetic fossils).
• Jumping genes: copy and paste genes that are nonprotein encoding part of the genome.
• Retroviral insertions: genes that emerge after a virus. We share these with other primates. the idea being that once upon a time our genetic ancestors had a virus that altered their genome that got passed onto us.
• Scientists regard genetics as much the most compelling evidence for evolution.

Scripture:

The writers purpose isn't always to teach things that are doctrinally binding.

Human origins:

• What does 'dust of the earth' mean?
• a literal clod of mud?
• physical stuff (cf. 2:19)
• Perishable matter (cf. 3:19; see also the 'dust' of Job, Psalms etc.)?

Death: in Paul death is usually used to mean separation from God. Dying for Paul is 'falling a sleep'

THE IMAGE OF GOD:

What does the image of God mean?

• Representing God: border marks. Human beings in that sense embody the kingly rule of God. when people see a human (not just a Christian), they see something of what God is like. Therefore - fill the earth and establish my rule everywhere. Exploring and travelling is all bound up with what it means to be human. We are also the priestly image of God. We are the icon of God. 
• Resembling God: 
• Ruling for God: God is a king and so are we.
• Relating like God: we are meant to be in community.
• Reproducing for God: Human beings were intended to have lots of sex and lots of children, so that the world would be filled with people bearing God's image and glory.
• Reasoning like God: The capacity to use language and abstract reasoning is unique to people. Primates cannot reason like we are. One expert on primates said 'you would never see to apes carrying a log together, and if we did it would completely change the way we understand them.' Such is the gap between us and primates. They cannot co-operate together in anything like the way we can. 
• Resting like God. No other creatures take one dat off in seven.

Authority and vulnerability:

Human beings are supposed to have high authority and high vulnerability. This enables us to be strong and weak. Jesus when he wraps the servants towel around him is both strong and weak. 

THE FALL:

If you were to only have Moses' account and ask the question 'what is the main consequence of the fall?' it is nakedness and shame. The idea being that we are vulnerable and insecure when we turned from looking at him and receiving warmth and affirmation and security. 

Instead of the question, 'where is God?!' We need to instead ask the question 'what went wrong to make this happen?'

Things to consider/illustrations: 

• Relational betrayal : Don Miller's friend catching his wife having an affair
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn : the line between good and evil runs through each of us (think 'Hans, are we the baddies?'
• The command 'don't eat from that tree.' : is less like 'don't walk on the grass' and more like 'don't feed the bears' or 'don't sleep with anyone else.' (it's not an arbitrary law but something that is for my good)
• It teaches us that independence is more important than happiness.  
• Cosmic consequence of sin against God : Children of Chernobyl 
• Why the tree? Keller's son : obedience vs agreement. His son (and us as human beings) must learn to obey God for obedience sake rather than because we agree with him or understand every reason behind his command. 

THEODICY:

Theodicy is an attempt to justify the ways of God to humans, usually with reference to suffering and evil. Ways of handling it:

• Soul-making - however... suffering doesn't appear to be distributed according to sinfulness.
• Free will theodicy - however... the new creation 
• Natural law theodicy, God creates natural laws that when violated have natural consequences - however... most pain an suffering isn't related always to poor choices (cancer for example)

Alvin Plantinga argues that rather than defending God he makes the case that God could have a good reason but I rather that I don't know what it is.

EVIL:

Evil is not a thing it is an absence of a thing. It is shadow, the place where light isn't, the place where goodness isn't. 

ABEL, HEBEL & BABEL:

Abel's name 'Habel' means 'vapour' / 'breathy' and is the opening line of Ecclesiastes 'hebel of hebel' Everything is hebel.

Joseph is the undoing of the Cain and Abel story. The younger brother survives an attempt on his life and redeems his brothers.

The boundaries God has drawn get undone by the sons of

REASONS FOR THE FLOOD:

'wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every intent of the thoughts was evil all the time.'

God floods the earth to get rid of evil and people are/were evil. After the flood

IS JACOB AS BAD AS ALL THAT?

Isaac is being ungodly by preferring the older.  Isaac prefers him for his appearance. Esau is Saul, Jacob is David.

When Jacob's mother favours him, she is right to do so as she is taking the word of God.

GOD:

Yahweh and Elohim are the two main names of God in Genesis.

Elohim is used of the sovereign, creator, big picture, wide-angle lens.
Yahweh is used of the personal, God of Israel, particular, narrow-angle lens, spoken of anthropomorphisms (walking, talking etc.)

Used to communicate different aspects of God and we shouldn't play them off against each other.

Genesis 18: Painting of the three angels waiting for Abraham to come out with the meal. The painting of them sat around is a picture of the painter's image of God.

MONOTHEISM:

God gives good gifts. This stands in contrast to the booby trapped gifts that the pagan gods give to men in their stories: Pandora's box, fire, woman etc.

JUSTICE & MERCY:

Abraham and Isaac. The gods of the other nations allowed and requested people to perform child sacrifices. So Abraham thinks 'ok let's see if you are like the gods of the other nations, but at the last minute God stops him and says emphatically 'I am NOT like those gods,' and swaps a child for an animal.

EXODUS: NOAH, TERAH, ABRAM..

Moses was put in an 'ark' (same word as Noah's boat!)

When Paul says 'creation is straining' new creation coming from inside the old. Like Noah.

Noah's 'fall' is strikingly similar to that of Genesis 3: fruit, nakedness, clothing, recognition, a curse on the tempter, a commendation of the other two.

Baptism is a heavily exodus shaped picture.  Not just Moses, but Noah as well. We are the people who receive the Lord's supper and baptism (Noah drinks wine in the new creation; albeit too much).

The journey of Abraham and Sarai into Egypt is one of the hardest stories to make sense of, if we assume the OT is like Aesop's fables.

Using his Exodus is really helpful rather than h doing a 'here's what we can learn from his faith...' Thus most preachers don't preach his exodus story. However it makes much more sense to use his story as an advanced foretelling of the exodus story.

Famine = should trigger exodus ideas.

Lot's Exodus:

Hard to make sense of if you don't see an exodus theme:

• Circumcision is a type of passover: Weird story of God threatening to kill Moses for not being circumcised is unusual but if we understand circumcision as, not only a covenant seal, but also a type of passover. 

Sodom was a well-watered place of great natural fruitfulness, much like Egypt.

Genesis 18: Angels 'pass by' and encounter Abraham in the doorway.

• LOT: 19:3 an evening meal of unleavened bread is eaten
• A doorway divides those who are safe from those who will be destroyed 
• The angels then practically force and lead Lot and his family out. 
• Lot is told to flee to the mountain.
• A fleeing individual looks back, pining for the destroyed nation (like the Israelites complain and want to go back) 
• ... a pillar of witness is established (salt in Lot's wife's case, stones in the Israelites case)

We, the church are described in Hebrews as being like this, caught between looking forward and looking back, pining for what we had/have. 

Joseph and Jesus:

Allow the Joseph story to enrich your understanding of Jesus.

The book switches from talking about genealogies and then with the Joseph story it introduces him very differently... 'Joseph was seventeen,'

The step from one child being given the blessing to here, in this story, allow of them are given the blessing; the twelve tribes are all blessed.  The writer's saying 'that isn't how this bit of the story is going to work.'

- The covenant isn't secured by physical succession, Jacob doesn't lay his hands on Joseph and say 'you will have the blessing,' but it is secured by rescuing them from peril. Joseph is special not because he receives the blessing but because he rescues the people from peril.

there is, ultimately, typological elemtns at work that brotthers will bow down to a brother. All the tribes will stand beneath you and worship.

37:17 Joseph is given a mission 'go out and find your brothers...'

The blood offering is offered to the Father. 

Joseph not only descends into the pit (=death) with blood (=atonement), but also goes into slavery (=ransom).

In prison:

Joseph innocent between two criminals. Jesyus on the cross between two thieves.

Joseph is hurriedly brought out of the dungeon - at the order of the Most High (41)

In prison: baker and cup bearer - bread and wine

Joseph's reconciliation to his brothers takes a long time and is drawn out.