So it’s the start of another year. For 2019 I have plans to be more frequent with my posts. One aspect of this will be a series of posts on the first chapters of Genesis, till the account of Babel in chapter 11. I will spend more time on the first three chapters since these chapters play an enormous role in the formulation of Christian theology, especially concerning the plight of humans and the work of Jesus.
I will take breaks from this series once Lent sets in and again during Advent. That is so that I will be able to make posts that are more relevant to those two seasons of the Christian calendar.
In this series I intend to cover the theology of the first chapters of Genesis as I understand them. Where necessary, I will provide the Hebrew text and an English transliteration. The Hebrew text I will use is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex that I have accessed at BibleGateway. The transliteration I will use is provided by BibleHub. I find BibleGateway a good resource for reading different versions of the bible, including Hebrew and Greek while BibleHub provides a lot of easily accessible tools that make studying the bible quite simple. (Disclaimer: Neither BibleGateway nor BibleHub has given me any incentive to make this plug!)
The first eleven chapters of Genesis is normally considered to portray ‘primeval history’.1 I think the word ‘history’ here is quite misleading as it can connote a strict linear progression of facts that are supposedly described in the narrative. So I will use the term ‘primeval account’ as in the title of this post. Moreover, I will not be taking a strict literal view of these initial chapters of Genesis. Rather, I am assuming that these first few chapters of Genesis fall within the category of myth, meaning by which “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon”2 That is, the biblical narrative gives an account that explains how things came about without intending to be taken as history. In other words, these chapters were written with some purpose in mind and to answer some questions that the original readers were faced with. And it is important to be able to get as close as possible to that original intent if we are to properly understand the text.
So with this in mind, let me sign off for today. We will deal with an overview of the first two chapters of Genesis next week.
Prayer:
Almighty, Creator God. As we begin this journey into the first few chapters of Genesis, we ask you to be with us through the power of your Spirit. Lead us and guide us so that we are enabled to understand and interpret the scriptures honestly and with integrity. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
1. See, for example, Genesis Introduction. (Accessed on 26 December 2018). See also A Perfect World. (Accessed on 26 December 2018).↩
2. Myth from Merriam Webster. (Accessed on 26 December 2018)↩
Purposes Crossed 