How many beginnings are in the book of genesis

Covenants usually involve promises, conditions, blessings for keeping the covenant, and curses for breaking it. Covenant is what moves the story forward in Genesis. God promises the childless Abraham that he will be the father of nations, that his descendants will have a land, and that the world will be blessed through them. The next four books tell the story of how these descendants become a nation and make their move toward claiming their promised land.

In the twelfth chapter, God promises to bless Abraham, bless his allies, curse his enemies, and eventually, bless the world through him —3. This kicks the rest of the book, the rest of the Torah, and indeed the rest of the Bible into gear. From this point on, God has a special relationship with Abraham and his family. The rest of Genesis watches this promise unfold—and it involves a lot of people getting blessed.

But before another Cain and Abel situation takes place, Jacob escapes to a distant land, where he starts a new life. When Jacob returns, he wrestles with God—who blesses him.

As you read and study Genesis, keep an eye on who blesses whom, and what happens when people are blessed. In fact, this is pretty much all of Genesis. Then the book of Genesis swings us through a long series of sub-accounts:. As you read through Genesis, pay attention to these lines—they signal that the focus of the book is shifting from one family to another.

Genesis is a collection of origin stories—these genealogies feel trivial to modern readers, but they give us a good idea of how the ancient Israelites thought about the countries surrounding them. One more important theme in Genesis: the land of Canaan. Abraham wanders through Canaan, Isaac settles there, and Jacob eventually settles here, too. However, at the end of the book, the budding nation of Israel is dwelling as guests in Egypt. The next four books of the Torah tell us how they make their way back to Canaan.

Genesis told the ancient Israelites that God had befriended their ancestors, promised them a land, and had a plan to bless the world through them. But the story of Genesis is really just the grand prologue to Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It will be a good way to "begin" our year together. Description Messages The word "genesis" refers to a beginning.

In the opening three chapters, we are provided with Scriptures' essential teaching about the ultimate issues in our existence: the nature of God, the origin and nature of our world what it means to be human the purpose of human life what has gone wrong with a once-very-good-world why there is still hope for our now imperfect world and its people. To his glory, Dr.

Jesus had to shed His blood for the sins of man. The sacrifice of Christ in which His blood was shed was necessary for our sins to be forgiven. In the chapter where we read of the beginning of sin, we also see the beginning of blood sacrifices. It was not explicitly stated so it may be easy to overlook. Garments were necessary because they were naked, despite their attempt at covering themselves Genesis But notice these garments were made of skin.

This skin would have come from an animal, one that God had killed so that He could clothe the man and woman. Paul wrote that sin leads to death Romans These sacrifices remind us of that. This is the redemption we noticed earlier Hebrews The theme of the Bible is the redemption of man. God carried out this plan because man was His special creation, made in His image. God did all of this to restore the relationship that man severed through disobedience.

This plan was eternal, but the execution of it began in Genesis. He suffered on the cross, but in His death He destroyed the power of Satan Hebrews His plan was in place from the beginning of time.

In Genesis we read of its start and why it was necessary. Let us praise God for his work in creation and redemption and do what He has called us to do so we can be saved by the blood of Christ and be with Him in heaven forever. Email address:. Jesus Christ came to set us free from the bondage of sin Romans ; John Yet many Christians are content to remain enslaved to it.

They have been convinced that we can never defeat sin; therefore, they have resigned themselves to the belief that they will always struggle with it.

Paul said there is a way of escape for every temptation 1 Corinthians Although the full picture will not emerge until the book of Exodus, which follows next, Genesis leaves us with these clear alternatives, which represent in fact a permanent human choice: a world in which the rational mastery of nature and the pursuit of immortality leads ultimately to the enslavement of mankind under the despotic rule of one man worshiped as a god, versus a way of life in which all human beings, mindful of their limitations and standing in awe-and-fear of the Lord, can be treated as equal creatures, equally servants of the one God toward whose perfection we may strive to align our lives.

This book on Genesis, addressed to serious and thoughtful readers of whatever kind or degree of religious knowledge and practice, has three major purposes: First, to demonstrate by example a wisdom-seeking approach to the Bible that attempts to understand the text in its own terms yet tries to show how such an understanding may address us in our current situation of moral and spiritual neediness. Second, to recover in their full power the stories of Genesis as tales to live with, as stories illuminating some of the most important and enduring questions of human existence.

Third, to make at least plausible the power of the Biblical approach and response to these questions, with its emphasis on righteousness, holiness, and reverence for the divine. Great difficulties face anyone who proposes such a philosophic approach to the Bible.

For it is far from clear that the Bible is a book like any other, or enough like any other, to be read and interpreted in the usual ways. Because of its place in our religious traditions, few people are prepared to approach it impartially. Even before they read it some people know—or think they know—that the Bible speaks truly, being the word of God; others know—or think they know—that, claiming to be the word of God, it in fact speaks falsely.

In addition, as already noted, the academic study of the Bible has raised major methodological questions, not least about whether the Bible—and even the single book of Genesis—is in fact a coherent and integral whole.

The so-called documentary hypothesis argues that what we call the Bible is in fact a latter-day compilation of disparate materials, written by different authors at different times, having different outlooks and intentions, even employing different concepts of and names for God. But even granting that the material compiled in Genesis came, to begin with, from different sources, one must still consider what intention or idea of wholeness governed the act of compilation that produced the present text.

Must one assume that the redactor was some pious fool who slavishly stitched together all the available disparate stories without rhyme or reason, heedless of the contradictions between them? Or should we not rather give the redactor the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knew precisely what he was about? Could he perhaps have deliberately juxtaposed contradictory stories to enable us to discover certain contradictory aspects of the world thereby made plain?

True, finding a coherent interpretation of the whole does not guarantee that one has found the biblical author's or redactor's own intention. But it should give pause to those who claim that the text could have no such unity. Besides, knowing the historical origins or sources of the text is no substitute for learning its meaning; to discover the meaning, a text must be studied in its own terms. An equally severe difficulty comes from the other side, from those who regard the Bible as the revealed word of God.

For them it is definitely a book, but not a book that can be read and interrogated like any other. It seems rather to demand a certain prior commitment to the truth of the account, even in order to understand it. Faith, it is sometimes said, is the prerequisite to understanding. But the Hebrew Bible in fact suggests the contrary. In Deuteronomy, Moses asserts that observing the statutes and ordinances that God has commanded is Israel's "wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the people, that when they hear all these statutes shall say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people'" The wisdom of the Torah is said by the Torah to be accessible to everyone, at least in part.

Be this as it may, the biblical text, whether revealed or not, whether read by believers or atheists, is not self-interpreting.

To understand its meaning, the hard work of exegesis and interpretation is required. The task of interpretation is complicated by the fact that the Bible, like most great books, does not explicitly provide rules for how to read it. As with the content, so with the approach, the philosophical reader is forced to find his own way. As a result of many readings and rereadings, I now make the following "methodological" assumptions in my efforts at interpretation: First, there is a coherent order and plan to the whole, and the order of the stories is of more than chronological significance.

Second, every word counts. Third, juxtapositions are important; what precedes or what follows a given sentence or story may be crucial for discovering its meaning. It matters, for example, that the Noahide code and covenant appear as the immediate sequel to Noah's animal sacrifice tendered at the end of the Flood. It matters, too, that there are two juxtaposed and very different stories of the creation of man or of the multiplication of nations and languages. Fourth and finally, the teachings of the text are not utterly opaque to human reason, even if God and other matters remain veiled in mystery.

Though, as we shall see, the text takes a dim view of the sufficiency of human reason, it presents this critical view to human reason in a most intelligible and powerful way. One can approach the text in a spirit of inquiry, even if one comes as a result to learn the limitations of such philosophic activity.

I am well aware that this suggestion, though allowed for by the Bible, still appears to be at odds with the way recommended by the Bible. As I noted near the start, the beginning of biblical wisdom is said to be fear awe-reverence for the Lord, not open inquiry spurred by wonder.

In addition, there is the great danger that hangs over all efforts at interpretation: I will find in the text not what the author intended but only what I have put there myself usually unwittingly. For these reasons, a philosophic reading of Genesis must proceed with great modesty and caution, not to say fear and trembling. If I sometimes forget myself and seem too bold, it is only out of zeal for understanding.

Moreover, I make no claim to a final or definitive reading. On the contrary, the stories are too rich, too complex, and too deep to be captured fully, once and for all. The pursuit of wisdom, through the direct and unmediated encountering of the text, can proceed even as one is humbly mindful of the inexhaustible depths and mysteries of the text and the world it describes. As the example of Socrates reminds us, humility before mystery and knowledge of one's own ignorance are hardly at odds with a philosophic spirit.

Let me try to make these remarks about reading philosophically yet humbly a bit more concrete. When we set out to read the book of Genesis, we begin, quite properly, at the beginning. But getting started is not as easy as it seems. For though we know where to start, we do not yet know how to proceed.

To begin properly, it seems, we need prior knowledge. What kind of book are we reading? In what spirit and manner should we read? For the beginning reader, answers to these questions cannot be had in advance. They can be acquired, if at all, only as a result of reading. We are in difficulty from the start. The opening of the book only adds to our difficulty, even before we get to the first chapter. Unlike most books, it declares no title and identifies no author. The name we call it in English, Genesis, meaning "origin" or "coming into being," is simply the Greek mistranslation of the book's first, Hebrew word, ber'eshith, "in beginning," by which Hebrew name the book is known in Jewish tradition.

That tradition ascribes authorship to Moses—the first five books of the Hebrew Bible are also known as the Five Books of Moses—yet nowhere in Genesis is such a claim made or even supported.