{On Mishkan Katan, I began this series on May 1, 2024. You can find the video on my YouTube channel, under that date. My channel's handle is: @genahood2818.}
The Bible is the most amazing compilation of writings ever assembled, a tapestry woven from Heaven to Earth.
I have spent a great deal of my life, studying this book. Why? I was asked one time by someone very close to me several years ago, “Who builds their life on a book?” I’ve never forgotten that question because it pierced me to my heart. In that moment, I realized I had done that, and it was a beautiful revelation.
Even though the Bible is very complex, it’s central message is quite simple: God loves mankind and wants to make it possible for us to have a living, growing relationship with Him. That has always been the core truth. And, here, then, is the core question that has been posed to men and women down through the many generations: what will you do with Him? Will you draw near to Him? Or not?
It has been one of the greatest joys of my life to study about the Divine, Majestic Mystery whom we call the One true Elohim, through the Holy Scriptures He gave to us. One of the things I have found, though, is that when we study about the one, true God, revealed in this inspired, inerrant book, we tend to approach it like a smorgasbord.
When I was a child, I used to LOVE going with my parents to Morrison’s Cafeteria. There, I was the bane of my mother’s existence! I wanted everything! Most of you have eaten at a cafeteria. Of necessity, a patron must limit his or her food choices there. Although it is all good to some extent, the customer must narrow it down, in order to be economical and to be healthful. For example, it would be inadvisable to load one’s tray with five desserts, tempting though they may be. One of my favorite cafeterias, just a little hole in the wall, puts the desserts first. 😊
If you think of the Bible as a cafeteria line, we often approach it in a similar way. We browse through, and although we may study a particular book in depth, it is only one book. We tend to “consume” our favorite bits and ignore the “dark, leafy greens.” But, as it is hard to get a healthy diet by eating only chicken nuggets, it is hard to get a complete picture of God’s story by studying only one book, or only one of the two “testaments”, so called.
I realized a few years ago, when I began to teach a ladies class at church that the greatest majority of believers, if asked to tell the Bible’s “story” from start to finish, could not do it. That’s not said to cast any aspersions on my ladies class, which is still meeting, by the way. I think that statement is true of most followers of Yeshua (the Hebrew name of Jesus). And, that is one reason I decided to tackle this subject at this time on Mishkan Katan. There’s another reason. I’m tackling this topic for some very specific individuals in my circle, with whom I feel it very important currently to broach this particular subject.
So, let’s begin our journey. As we go, we are going to be noting chronological signposts. The Bible is a history book, but it is not primarily a history book. To reiterate, it is a book that invites mankind to draw near to the one, true God. I invite you to create your own timeline of Scripture, as we go along through these sessions. It does not have to be fancy. All you need is a pen and some notebook paper.
The first signposts are, understandably, in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, a book about which there is much debate. One thing that is NOT usually questioned is that, chronologically, this book occurred first, even as it is placed first positionally, as the first book of the Bible. One of those first debates is about the age of Earth. On one end of the spectrum, you have Young Earth scholars and on the other, the Old Earth Scholars. But, there are some “combination” positions in between those two very divergent opinions. If you take the Bible literally, with a literal interpretation of the word “day”, the record of mankind (not creation, but mankind) is no more than about 6000 years old. And, the current “heavens and the earth” were created in six, literal days. At this point, we are not going to launch off into a series of teachings, regarding the various viewpoints. That would be a severe digression. Whether I believe that the biblical “day” here is one 24/25-hour evening to morning to evening, is irrelevant for now.
Creation of Adam/Eve
The first signpost on the Glory Road, then, is the creation of Adam, the first man into whom God breathed the breath of life. More about Adam in a moment.
Another debate which begins in Genesis concerns the biblical calendar. The calendar the world operates in today, by and large, is the Gregorian calendar. It is a solar-based calendar that was devised several hundred years ago. However, the biblical calendar is largely a lunar calendar, although the prophets also made references to a solar calendar and used solar calendar dates as well. For the most part, Christians have ignored the biblical calendar - - to their spiritual detriment.
If you went to a corral of starving coyotes, assuming you COULD corral them, and threw a dozen raw steaks into the area, there would be a feeding frenzy, right? Jews, including Messianics, when the word “calendar” is mentioned, often have a similar reaction. It is quite the contentious subject. From the time of Moses, the Jews had a very detailed biblical calendar system. In fact, it was given to the Hebrew people by Father (God) Yahweh at Mt. Sinai. It functioned and kept excellent “time” for thousands of years. However, when the last Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, things went off the rails in many areas, the calendar being one.
While the Temple was standing, there was no need for a written calendar, because the very organized priesthood guarded the calendar process closely. The ancient system rotated around the concept of when the new moon of each month was seen in Israel. The location was a key point. Once the Jews were dispersed, that system could no longer function. Therefore, the last Sanhedrin instituted a calendar that would be self-perpetuating. The Jews of the late first century CE also realized that there was a very real danger of calendar knowledge being lost. So, they decided to put into writing their knowledge of the earliest biblical dates. This document, created in 162 CE, was known as “The Great Order of the World”. It gave chronological dates from Adam to the days of Alexander the Great.
However, this important calendar document was flawed, in part due to revisions during some dark years. This rabbinical document (which means it was created by rabbis) in many cases disagrees with widely-accepted recorded history. According to that calendar, the earth is in year 5784. Most of the Jewish world follows that calendar still, despite its foibles and lacks.
There was a 17th century biblical historian named Bishop James Ussher, who wrote a book called, “The Annals of the World.” What he did in his body of work was to take the historical dates about which there was much agreement and then counted back and forth in time, using biblical references. Most of us don’t realize that the Bible gives us an extensive number of time stamps in its pages, because we really don’t think they matter. We tend to blithely skip over them. Who cares how long Seth lived, or how old he was when his son was born, right? Wrong. These dates, these time stamps are extremely important to establishing not only a biblical chronology, but also the history of man since Adam.
A moreh (Hebrew for "teacher") whom I highly esteem is Andrew Gabriel Roth, an incredible Bible scholar, translator and calendar geek. For several decades, he has worked to develop a calendar called the ETC, Eternal Torah Calendar. He has built on the work of Ussher, and also that of Thiele/McFall, who tackled successfully the chronology problems in Joshua/Judges. He used these sources and other historical references, as well as astronomy computer software to develop his calendar. You can find it by googling Eternal Torah Calendar or by going to Andrew’s website: onefaithonepeopleministries.com. Moreh Roth has also written a book about restoring biblical chronology. It is called “Wheel of Stars: The Ancient Biblical Calendar of the Future.”
According to that calendar, our actual, real-time year since the creation of Adam/Eve is 5924. Throughout this study, I will be giving you dates from the ETC, which gives both Gregorian and lunar calendar dates. One thing on which Moreh Roth and the rabbinical world agree is that the Earth age since the creation of Adam is almost 6000 years old. The rabbis say that when the Earth reaches 6000 years old, the next millennium will be the one that is the last millennium on this Earth. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s re-focus on the first signpost on the Glory Road and write down in our notes that Adam was created on Tishri I, Friday, Sept. 24th, 3901 BCE.
There was one big problem that Ussher faced, as well as all biblical chronologists. It is this: the differing ways to count time. Here are two examples:
The kingdoms of Judah and Israel counted the reigns of their monarchs differently.
Daniel the prophet counted time in his prophecies four different ways! WHY??!! Because, in his day, there were four major ways to count time, and he wanted to cover all his bases.
Allright, the rabbis believe that it was not long after the creation of Adam and Eve that “the Fall of Man” occurred. While we are not given a specific date for that cataclysmic event, it was before Adam “knew” his wife Eve, in the fleshly sense, and knowing how men and women are, doubtless it was not long after Eve was created that the Fall occurred. So, on your timeline, you can write down The Fall in the same year as the creation, 3901 BCE.
The linchpin of the Fall was the first mention of Father Yahweh’s redemption plan, the so-called protevangelilum, found in Genesis 3:15. This high-sounding Greek word can be translated as “First Gospel”, because it was here that Father Yahweh promised to send a redeemer, one who would purchase mankind back from eternal destruction. This was the promise to send Yeshua/Jesus, of course. From that point on, it was “game on” between Satan and God’s chosen people. Satan’s chief aim? To prevent the birth and subsequent redeeming work of the Messiah.
After the Fall and their expulsion from Eden, Adam and Eve began to have children. The Scriptures mention Cain, Abel and Seth. Do you think there were more? I think there were many, many more sons and daughters. One of the mistakes I believe we make is assuming that Adam and Eve were physically just as we are today. But, we must remember that Adam and Eve were initially created to live forever in their human forms. And, as sin began to corrupt their physical bodies after the Fall, it also began to corrupt the Earth. The Earth itself right after Creation was pristine. I believe the vegetation, which mankind ate was of much higher quality (righteous people were vegetarians prior to Noah’s family exiting the Ark), that the atmosphere before the Flood was better, etc. This helps to explain how the earliest men and women lived for hundreds of years. After the Flood, things were very different.
But, back to our point, it seems very likely that Adam and Eve had many, many children and that these children and their offspring married each other to populate the Earth. Before you argue that genetically this would be a bad idea, I refer you to the point I just made. We cannot assume that the human genome was as weak then as it is today. There are several examples of close relatives marrying, in the Old Testament, with God’s approval.
Here is another important principle of the Bible: just because someone or something is not mentioned does not mean he/she/it was not there. The additional sons/daughters of Adam and Eve, for instance. The Bible tends to mention only those people whose lives are key to establishing other important information.
Here are some more dates for your timeline:
Birth of Seth - - 3771 BCE Seth was another son of Adam and Eve, and the ancestor of Jesus.
Birth of Enoch - - 3279 BCE There were two named Enoch in Genesis, but this one was one of the great-great-great grandsons of Seth. This is the Enoch who never died. It is recorded in Genesis 5:24 - - Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. How did God take him? We don’t know. The Scriptures don’t say. But, it is clear that he did not die.
Birth of Methusaleh - - 3214 BCE He was a son of Enoch, and the longest-living man explicitly named in Scripture, having lived for nearly 1000 years. He died in the same year of the Great Flood, just before it occurred. Methusaleh was 130 years old when Adam died. So, all these people just mentioned KNEW ADAM.
Birth of Noah - - 2845 BCE Noah was born about a hundred years after Adam died.
Great Flood - - 2245 BCE. Noah is 600 years old, having taken 100 years to build the Ark. Shem, his youngest son, was only 2 years old when the Flood began. I always thought that all 3 of Noah’s sons were young men when the Flood came, didn’t you? Nope! Not according to Scripture!
The pre-Flood world - - we have heard a little conjecture about what it was like. If you have ever visited The Ark Encounter near Williamson, KY, you have seen some ideas. But, one thing was sure: it was full of all manner of evil and violence. So much so that the human race had become hopelessly corrupted. Remember that it was the enemy’s chief aim to prevent Messiah from being born. Some say that, according to Genesis 6:4, the human race had in those days become corrupted with “angel seed” - - that is, fallen angels mating with human women and producing hybrid offspring. Others have other explanations for this cryptic verse. That’s another lesson for another day; we won’t be tantalized by that severe digression either. But, most theologians agree that Noah’s family was the only one that had avoided the genetic corruption, whatever it’s source. Had not his family been spared, then Messiah Yeshua could not have been born. And, that would have made the redemption of mankind an impossibility.
When sin is unleashed, a lot of evil can proliferate in 1656 years....
After Noah and his family got off the Ark, in the Turkish mountain peaks known today as Ararat, God made with him what is known as the Noahic Covenant. It’s recorded in Gen. 8:20-9:17. This was an unconditional covenant, one made to all humanity. It stabilized nature by prohibiting another world-wide destruction by floodwaters. The Earth was washed clean. But, it was still a fallen world, far from how it was created to be “in the beginning.” And, righteous as Noah was, sin soon exerted itself within his family.
Of his three sons, Shem, the youngest, a mere toddler during the Flood, was the one chosen by Father Yahweh to be the ancestor of Jesus, the Messiah.
Before we go any further, we need to again touch on and explore more fully the topic of an “Oral chain of transmission” of knowledge.
Both Adam and his son, Seth, lived more than 900 years.
Enoch, Seth’s son, was born 622 years after Adam and 492 years after Seth was born, Adam had over 300 years to educate his grandson, Enoch.
Before Enoch was "translated", that is snatched away by God up to Heaven without dying, he had 300 years to train his son, Methuselah (oldest living man), and 113 years to train his grandson, Lamech. Methuselah and Lamech, the 7th and 8th generation from Adam, lived around Noah for the first 600 years of Noah’s life.
This oral tradition of the Word of God continued during the first 600 years of Noah’s life, then, AFTER the Flood.
Because Shem, Noah’s son, lived more than 500 years, he was still alive well after Abraham’s son, Isaac, was born. Shem was able to pass down to Abraham’s father, Terah, the accumulated knowledge and history he possessed. These long lives firmly facilitated the oral transmission of God’s ways from generation to generation.
Our next signpost is that of Abraham, and his wife, Sarah - - 10 generations after Noah - - Abraham was born in 1953 BCE, almost 2000 years after Adam’s creation.
Ur was in northern Mesopotamia. 600 miles northeast of the Promised Land.
Abraham was a Chaldean, an Aramean. The Jews are fond of saying, “Our father was a wandering Aramean.”
There are many things we can say about Abraham. But, there are two verses I want to highlight in particular. At first glance, these two verses appear contradictory. Here’s the first one.
Genesis 15:6 - - 6Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.b (cf Romans 4: 3 and Hebrews 11:8)
And, here’s the second: Genesis 26:4-5 4I will multiply your [b]descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your [c]descendants all these lands; and by your [d]descendants all the nations of the earth [e]shall be blessed, 5because Abraham [f]obeyed Me and fulfilled his duty to Me, and kept My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”
Are these in contradiction? What constituted Abraham’s right relationship with Father Yahweh? Was it his faith that was credited to him for righteousness? Or, was it his obedience to Father Yahweh’s righteous commands, etc.?
It was that the former generated the latter. His faith was such that it was manifested through his actions, his “works”, his deeds. Here we see revealed God’s requirement for drawing near to Him. We are made right with Him through having faith, trusting Him to do what He promises, taking Him at His word. And, what is the evidence that we have done that? We walk in His ways. This is why Abraham was such an important example for us, and why he is known as “Father Abraham”.
However, in addition to this key teaching point, there are other aspects of Abraham’s life we need to examine, since he was the father of both Judaism and Christianity, the latter having begun, in its purest form, as a sect of Judaism.
Genesis 12:1-3 and Genesis 15:18 and Genesis 17 and Genesis 22) - - - In these verses, passages, we see the very important “Abrahamic Covenant” detailed. In this agreement between Abraham and God, God promised to make Abraham’s descendants a special people, more numerous than the sand on the seashore or the stars in the sky. God tested Abraham’s faith severely, throughout his life, and Abraham passed most of them “with flying colors”.
The first two sons God gave to Abraham were Ishmael and Isaac. Although promises were given to both sons, it was through Isaac that the Messianic line (Jesus’ ancestral line) would flow.
Hagar, Ishmael’s mother was an Egyptian. The descendants of Ishmael (he had 12 sons) mainly settled in the area we today call northern Saudi Arabia, and eastern Egypt.
The last major event from Abraham’s life is called The Akedah. It was the most severe test Abraham was given by God. In this test, Abraham was asked to take his son, Isaac, by this time in his mid to late 30s, and sacrifice him on an altar on Mt. Moriah. Mt Moriah is later where the two holy Temples stood, one after the other, in the city called Jerusalem. Why is the Akedah important? God stopped the hand of Abraham that day from killing his son. But, just over 1800 years later, Father Yahweh sacrificed His only Son, on a hill across the valley from Mt. Moriah. Father Yah did not stop His own hand. He did not, so that He could honor the covenant He made with Adam, in Genesis 3:15.
Did Noah leave any written documents? Did Abraham? If so, they have not survived to modern history. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, during the 40 years of “wilderness wandering”, following the giving of the 10 Commandments at Mt. Sinai, along with the 613 commandments God gave His people for righteous living.
What specific information did Moses receive from these patriarchs concerning Adam, Creation, the Flood, etc.? Might there have been some ancient books that were in the ancient libraries of Egypt, where Moses grew up and studied? We will never know.
There are some people groups mentioned in the Tanakh (Old Testament), and I want to share their origins with you, briefly. Abraham had a son with Keturah, his wife after Sarah died. That son’s name was Midian. The Midianites descended from Abraham that way.
{Session I ended here, as I ran out of broadcast time.}
This is fantastic Gena. Thank you for doing this and sharing it.
ReplyDelete