Tuesday, May 29, 2018

So It Begins . . .

There are some biblical explorations so awfully daunting that attempting to study them seems downright foolhardy.  Such is the case with the first book of the Bible: Genesis.  Although I've wanted to study the book, I've put it off due to, well, fear mostly....fear I'll not get it right, fear I'll miss something, etc.  Plus, it is going to mean a lot of work, a ton of study, which I am not sure I'm up for at the moment.  I can't seem to escape it, however.  When God chases you with something, you might as well just stop, surrender and try to wrap your faith around it.  Even if your "faith arms" won't reach all the way around, or are weak, God uses such insurmountable experiences to strengthen your faith and "grow it".  So, here we go:  Hello Genesis!

There are few books of the Bible as hotly contested as the first one.  It seems important to ask why that should be the case?

To answer that question, let's look at geometry.  (Those who know me well are chortling right about now.  A math wizard I certainly am NOT.)  When in the ninth grade of American public schooling, I studied geometry.  Needless to say, I hated it, although I admired my teacher because she was so fashionable, young and pretty, lol!  Her name was Miss M.  Some of my blog readers may remember her and may have, in fact, been in my same class!  But, I digress.....
One thing I remember about the actual course content - - in attempting to prove a mathematical theorem, if you made a mistake in the beginning of your proof, the rest of the proof argument did not matter!

Similarly, if the book of Genesis can be discredited, then what is to stop the rest of God's written revelation from being similarly discredited? The anti-God crowd, the pagan culture driven by satanic thought, has been pretty successful in conning the pseudo-intellectual crowd into believing that Genesis is myth or poetry or hymn or legend or exalted prose . . or downright make-believe.  This provides the springboard for unbelievers to go on and reject the rest of the Bible.  "Anything that begins with that crazy, far-fetched, anti-science nonsense..."

So, the truth of Genesis has been obscured, twisted, and maligned in recent human history, although a literal interpretation was how scholars understood it until the 18th century.  Luminaries such as the Jewish historian, Josephus, early church fathers (Lactantius and Basil the Bishop of Caesarea, for example), Martin Luther and John Calvin also viewed Genesis as literal, historical narrative.1

Where did Genesis come from?
According to centuries of biblical tradition, as well as the testimony of other Scripture, Genesis (and the rest of the Torah) were given to Moses by God Himself.  There are several excellent arguments that point to Moses as the author of the first five books of the Old Testament (often called The Torah or The Law). 2
1.  Moses had the necessary education to write these books, educated as he was in the royal courts of his uncle, the Pharaoh of Egypt.
2.  Moses lived through much of Israel's history, so that his accounts are first-hand accounts.
3.  Moses had the time to compose the history of the Jewish people, according to Exodus 18:13-26, which tells us he was relieved by an organizational hierarchy of more trivial governmental matters.  This would have given him time to write.
4.  Scriptures like those below testify that he wrote it.  Jesus referred to the Torah as "the Law of Moses".*

Exodus 17:14 and 24:4 and 34:27
Numbers 33:2
Deuteronomy 31:19, 24-26
Joshua 1:7-8, 8:30-31
John 1:17
Romans 10: 5 (where Paul refers to Leviticus 18:5)
2 Cor 3:14-15
Acts 15:1 (ref. Genesis 17 - - circumcision)
John 7:19, 23 *
Luke 24:44 *
John 5:46-47 *

So, my conclusion is that Moses was given the history and laws for the nation of Israel by God, through divine inspiration, and that Moses recorded this literal, historical narrative for our use in the few thousands of years hence. 

Moses lived, according to Rabbinic Judaism, from 1391 to 1271 BC.3  This means that he wrote concerning more than 4000 years of human history, occurring before his birth.  Did God orally dictate Genesis (and the other books) to Moses?  Did Moses use other, earlier written sources to write Genesis?  We will explore that further in the next post.

Sources:

1    https://answersingenesis.org/hermeneutics/is-genesis-1-literal-literalism-or-literalistic/

2    https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_676.cfm

3    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses 

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