GENESIS: the creation week Introduction This presentation is about the book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Its main purpose will be to educate you, the audience on hermeneutics, the literal and contextual interpretations of the creation story, as well as the history, author, date and importance of the book of Genesis. Throughout history, people have asked the ultimate question 'Where did it all begin?' For the majority of fundamentalist Christians, the belief is that the beginning of all life itself came from the supreme power of the Almighty Lord God. This point of view appears in the Bible, but can this be taken in a completely literal sense? Did one God create it all? Through examination of the literal and contextual meanings truth and fiction can be separated. The Creation Week Genesis is the first book of the Bible and serves as an introduction to the rest of its writings and the overall history and basis of the Jewish religion. Scientifically, it presents rather irrational concepts, but has been widely accepted in a literal sense by most Jews and Christians. In short the text says that on the first day in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' and created light, thus separating the night from the day. On the second day the sky is created and then god made the sky and he separated the waters above from the waters below' The third day God separated land from the waters God called the dry land earth, and the waters he called the seas.' And drew forth grasses and plants and other foliage. The fourth day God adds the sun, the moon and the stars The fifth day comes and god then creates the fish and birds show in the text as, 'let the waters bring forth in great numbers moving creatures ... ... middle of paper ... ...y one source and this will never, and should never, be enough to satisfy human curiosity. Even through the use of hermeneutics to decipher fact from fiction the fundamentalist Christians and Jews will continue to believe in the literal sense of the story. Despite this fact, Genesis is an important book in the Bible for Christians and Jews and if taken contextually, can be a metaphor for the creation of the world. Bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses http://mb-soft.com/believe/txs/genesis.htm http://www.religioustolerance.org/jepd_gen.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis http://www.bibleontheweb.com/Bible.asp http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c021.html http://www.hope.edu/bandstra/RTOT/PART1/PT1_1B1.HTM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahwist http://scriptures.lds.org/en/biblemaps/map9.jpg
Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy lay out four possible ideas as to what the creation story in Genesis of the Bible means and how we should interpret it in terms of the age of the earth. The first interpretation they propose is the Young Earth View, which suggests the Earth was created in the recent past and is the most commonly accepted reasoning for the timing by most Christians. It states that each day is a twenty-four hour period because of the use of the Hebrew word “yom” which is used solely to refer to a twenty-four hour period. The second option they offer is the Day Age view which paints the Earth as being created throughout different ages of time and each “day” of creation being within a different age until it got to the 6th day where God created man and thus began the story of Adam and Eve and the progression of the Bible from there. The third possibility they consider is the Restoration View which touches on God restoring a fallen creation and Adam and Eve being the second creation after a time of darkness. This fallen creation is said to be the time described in the Old Testament as the battle between God and Satan, and the eventual fall of Satan into the darkness of the void. The last viewpoint and the one in which this paper will lend its focus, The Literary Framework View, which says that the timing of the events in Genesis do not need explanation or a literal interpretation of the chronology, but rather are there to show the power of a single God in bringing order from nothing and setting up the story for which the Bible is based upon. The Literal Framework model makes the most sense for three reasons, the fall of Satan is not chronologically placed within the creation s...
Book of Genesis in the Old Testament or from the Hebrew Torah. What may be less familiar to
The Bible has been at the center of many highly controversially issues over the last 2000 years. Believers and non-believers alike have been debating whether it is the true word of God, or just a collection of stories and myths. At the forefront of this debate is the issue of creation. Many Christians believe that God created the world in 7 literal, 24-hour days. Using this theory, they would say the earth is roughly 6000 years old, but there is also a minority who believe in an old earth and that the creation story in Genesis 1 should be taken figuratively. Those who believe that the creation story is written in figurative language hold a variety of different beliefs on the issue, but at the center of their argument is the statement that: “Genesis 1 should not be taken literally, and that there is no way the earth is only 6000 years old”. In order to understand both sides, the true meaning of the Biblical text must be understood.
The Original Context Summary: Genesis 1: 1- 32 is the story of Creation. It is defined as either a Historic and/or poetic narrative. The narrative was written to tell the story of how God had created the world we live in today. “Six Days of Creation and the Sabbath” is the chapter title and it goes on to give details of what was created on each of the six days. Each day the world had gotten better and more useful. The first day god created the earth and made day and night. The second day he made the sky. The third day he separated the land and sea. The fourth day God created the Sun, Stars and Moon. The fifth day God created animals for the sea and air. The last day was the sixth day and god created animals for the dry land as well as the first
Verses 3-5 talk about the creation of light and separation from darkness and how the Lord called the light day and the dark night.
Then God said, "Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years.” God created all from none so that his people could praise him eternally. Edward Taylor uses allusion, simile, and rhyme in “From Preface to God’s Determination” to relay his message that there is a higher power that created all.
his ideology was given to Adam. “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every
Jumping into biblical analysis is extremely difficult without any direction; luckily that direction comes in the form of biblical analysis methods, chiefly the historical and theological methods. In Genesis 1-3 there are two different stories of creation, each written by a different author. Both methods examine the stories of the Bible with different assumptions. On one hand, the historical method assumes that there is cultural and historical information that can be found within the Bible, whereas the theological approach assumes that the Bible was written as a self-revelation of God. While reading the Bible in a historical approach, readers are interested in information such as, who wrote this story, when were they alive, why did they write this story, and where did this happen. Theological critics argue that
In Genesis, god created merely by speaking. It was god who created the heavens and earth also known as cosmos. Water was already pre-existent matter; everything else was created by god. It all began when god spoke in the darkness and said let there be light and there was light. God saw that the light was good. During the day there would be light, and the darkness would be at night. By the second and third day, god created a firmament (dome) which separated the waters from the waters. God called the firmament heaven and said that all the waters under heaven should be gathered as one allowing for dry land to appear. This created one place for the water and another place for dry land. It was the dry land that beca...
Genesis reads that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth,” then “God’s spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.” Another characteristic is how, after the water, came land. How the World Was Made, describes how the “soft mud,” from under the water “began to grow and to spread out on every side until it became the island we call the earth.” In The Sky Tree, the soil was “placed...until they made an island of great size.” A final similarity, is how after land came animals and how the animals helped to take care of the people on the earth. In How the World Was Made, the world the animals lived in was called Galun’lati. Galun’lati “was very much crowded,” and “the animals wanted more room;” Water Beetle left to find land so that the animals could have more space. While Water Beetle helped find land for the animals, in The Sky Tree a turtle sees a woman falling from the sky after she had jumped after a sacred tree. Turtle told his friends what he had seen and had them “bring up pawfuls of wet soil,” and place it on his back which created a “new earth,” for the woman to “settle gently on.” In Genesis, God created the animals
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”
Throughout the world there are various cultures with varying religions and creation stories to explain the creation of the Earth and it’s inhabitants. Of these creation stories two with similar and also different characteristics is the Creation story in the book of Genesis which is a part of the 1st Testament in the Hebrew Bible and explains the creation of Earth and humans, and the Theogony which is the greek creation story that describes the origins of the Earth and the Greek Gods. Both the Theogony and the Creation in Genesis show nature as a blessing for humans but it can also affect them negatively, However the myths differ in the ways that the Earth and humans were created and how humans interact with the deities of the creation stories.
Framework interpretation sees the creation week as a topical guide not truly focused on the real chronology of the week but more of what Moses talks about what God tells him to write. While interpretation the creation week this way there are the views of the Dividing works of Creation into two triads, Moses presents the reader with a literary device to demonstrate theological truths of covenant promises and the role of the Sabbath (Ross). Although the fiat creative events "Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light" refer to actual historical events that actually occurred, and the Creation Week is presented in normal, solar days, the Creation Account really functions as a literary structure presenting the acts in a nonessential,
Genesis 1 is titled “The Beginning” discussing how the earth was formed. The very first paragraph discusses God creating the heavens and the earth. This includes the whole frame and furniture of the universe. As Christians, their duty is to keep heaven in their eyes and the earth under their feet. The earth was made empty and formless. God decided the earth was so shapeless that he needed to create light and darkness to separate day from night. God saw that the light was good and would call the light “day”, and the darkness would represent “night”. Light was seen as the great beauty and blessing of the universe. The light was made purely by the word of God’s power. God saw the light as good, exactly how he designed it. Light was fit to answer the end for which he designed it. He had simply said, let there be light and it was done, there was light. This is how the separation of day and night was created by God, never allowing them to be joined together.