Genesis: A Study Of The Beginning

Genesis

A Study of the Beginning

by Jeffrey W. Hamilton

Genesis: A Study of the Beginning by Jeffrey W. Hamilton

Copyright © 2001 by Jeffrey W. Hamilton. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-557-07265-1

eISBN: 978-1-25721-040-4

An Introduction to Genesis

A Study of Genesis

We will begin a study of our Bibles that will prove to be profitable to you throughout your life as a Christian. The basis of our study will be the book of Genesis, which is found at the beginning of your Bible. As a matter of fact, the meaning of the word Genesis is beginning. Not only is Genesis found at the beginning of the Bible, it contains an explanation of the origin of many things. Genesis explains the origin of:

The universe and in particular our own world.

Life

Man

Marriage

Evil

Languages

Government

Culture

Nations

Religion

As you can see, Genesis is the foundation for many of the things we often take for granted. The New Testament refers to the book of Genesis in over 200 passages. Over 100 of those references are to the first eleven chapters. Every New Testament author, and Jesus himself, refers to this important book.

Genesis is so intertwined with the teachings of the Bible that a person cannot reject the book of Genesis without undermining the entire Bible. For example, how can you explain the need for a Savior without understanding how man had fallen prey to sin? If a person insists that Genesis is just a fable, then what will that person do with the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus’ teachings that refer to Genesis as a factual account?

Who Wrote Genesis?

The first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses. For example, in Luke 24:27,44, Jesus talks about the Law of Moses, Psalms, and the Prophets. The first five books of the Bible are often called the Law of Moses. The other books are Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It is interesting to note that sometimes these last four books are quoted with phrases such as Moses said. However, none of the quotes from Genesis are prefaced with the phrase Moses said. Some scholars explain this difference by stating that Moses wrote Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, but he only served as an editor and compiler of Genesis. The actual text of Genesis comes from people who lived before Moses.

There is some indication in Genesis to say that this belief is true. Throughout the book of Genesis, we find a Hebrew word toledoth appearing regularly. The word toledoth is translated as These are the generations of ... or These are the records of ... or This is the history of .... These appear to be signature lines of various authors of the previous transcript. The word toledoth appears eleven times:

As we go through the book of Genesis, I will be pointing out the various transitions between each record. For those of you who have read Genesis, you will find that these divisions explain the apparent repetition of some of the facts presented within Genesis. There are no repetitions within the records, only between the various accounts.

About Our Study

Each lesson will begin with a study of a section of text from Genesis. These studies are designed to give you a better understanding of the story being presented. Hopefully, these studies will spur you to ask questions about the things that you have learned. I have complied lessons that answer questions that I have been asked in the past about the basic lessons. These lessons will appear as supplements to the basic lessons.

Each basic lesson begins with a reading and a set of questions. You should be able to answer the questions directly from the reading. The purpose of the questions is to make sure you read your Bible with understanding. It is easy to sit down and read from rote and not think about the meaning behind the words being read. The questions are designed to force you to go back and re-read the text if you are just reading by rote.

After answering the questions, read over the discussion section. Keep a pencil handy as you study. Jot down questions that come to mind as you think about the lessons you are learning. Ask your teacher the questions while you review the lesson together. Too often, if we don’t write our questions down when we think of them, we forget to ask when there is an opportunity to get them answered.

Inspiration

The question is asked, Well, how did Moses receive God’s words to write them down? The process is called inspiration. In II Timothy 3:16, Paul said that all Scripture is God breathed (or inspired, depending on your translation). By this, Paul means that our entire Bible comes from the mouth of God. God told the various writers what to say and they then told the people and wrote the words down. A good illustration of this is found in Exodus 4:10-16. Moses was looking for an excuse not to do what God wanted him to do. His last excuse was that he was not a good speaker. God scolded him, but then told him that Moses’ brother Aaron would be the spokesman. God would tell Moses what needed to be said. Moses would then tell Aaron and Aaron would then tell the people. Verse 16 is the interesting verse. Moses’ action with Aaron would be like God’s action with Moses.

How God told the people what to say varied greatly, especially during the time before the New Testament. In Hebrews 1:1-2, the writer said that God spoke at different times and in different ways in the past. Sometimes he spoke to people in dreams, such as in Genesis 20:3. At other times he gave people a special dream that represented what they needed to know, such as in Genesis 37:5-10. God also used visions. A vision is seeing something that is not physically there. It would be sort of like a waking dream. An example of this can be found in Genesis 15:1. Sometimes God would send an angel to deliver his message, such as in Matthew 1:18-24. Another method that God used was prophets. A prophet was a spokesman for God. God would deliver a message to the prophet and the prophet would then deliver the message to the proper person. Moses was a prophet, but he held a special place. God did not use cryptic dreams with him or using sayings that were difficult to understand. God spoke plainly and directly with Moses just as a person would speak to his friend. (Numbers 12:6-8.)

Moses and the prophets that came after him, wrote the things that God taught them down into books. The book of Genesis is one of five books that Moses wrote. The other books are Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These five books are the first five books in our Old Testament. Because of the frequent use of the phrase these are the records of in Genesis, some scholars believe that Moses had access to the earlier writings of these people; either with a physical copy, or by God giving him knowledge of what these people wrote. Moses then compiled these separate records into a single book that we call Genesis.

In the New Testament, Jesus is the source of all our teachings. He talked to the apostles directly while he was on earth. Many of these teachings are recorded in the books that we call the Gospels. Gospel means good news. The first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are the Gospels. After Jesus died on the cross, he sent the Holy Spirit to guide the apostles in his teachings (John 16:13). The Holy Spirit made it possible for the disciples to accurately remember everything that Jesus taught while he was on earth (John 14:26). The disciples then wrote what the Holy Spirit taught them into the books that we call the New Testament.

Because of this use of people to relay God’s word, we find places in the Bible where the writings of a person is quoted, but we are told that God said the quoted statement or that the Holy Spirit said the quoted statement. For example, in Hebrews 3:7, the writer quotes Psalms 95:7 and says that these are the words of the Holy Spirit. Yet later, in Hebrews 4:7, the writer refers to the same quote and says that these are the words of David. Both statements are true because the Holy Spirit gave the words to David who then wrote them down in a psalm.

The Creation

Read Genesis 1:1-2:4a

1. Write a list of what was created on each day in your own terms. Do you think the order of creation was important? Why?

2. Some claim that each day was actually a long age. How long was a day? How can you prove your position?

3. What do you think it means that man was created in God’s image?

4. What responsibilities were given to man?

5. What was the initial food for man and every creature on the earth?

6. Why did God rest on the seventh day? Do you think He was tired?

7. Write what happened on each of the first seven days of the creation.

Commit to Memory:

Genesis 1:1

Genesis 1:26

The Seven Days of Creation

The Creation

Read: Genesis 1:1-2:4

The first verse in our Bible is one with which many people are familiar. It tells us where our universe and our world came from. There are many people who believe that this account is simply a myth along with most of the other stories found in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. However, these chapters are widely quoted throughout the rest of our Bible. Either the information in Genesis is factual or the entire Bible cannot be trusted to be true. Actually, there is no logical reason to doubt the facts presented in Genesis, but there are many reasons to be skeptical about the doubters.

There are many people who do not want to believe in God. Yet, they must still explain how this world came to be without a God. This world runs too well. There are too many things that fit perfectly together to say that it just happened to come together. Suppose you stumbled across a watch lying in the grass, would you jump to the conclusion that the elements just happened to shape a functional watch at that spot or would you conclude that someone made it and lost it? The later is more reasonable because we can see that the elements rarely shape things into tools. The natural process tends to tear things down. Only when some intelligence is applied do we get complex function. When we look at the world and its complex function, the natural conclusion is that there must have been some intelligence applied to shape the universe. Ultimately, this implies there must be a God.

The only alternative to a God is to believe that the universe came into being through random events. In order for random events to have a remote chance of coming together into some sort of order, you would need a large amount of time. However, the Bible tells us that the world isn’t all that old. Various scholars have worked out the date of creation and have come to believe that the creation occurred about 6000 to 7000 years ago. Obviously, these two ideas cannot co-exist either God created the world or it just happened. If it just happened, then the universe must be incredibly old. We will talk more of this in another lesson.

The first two verses tells us that God created the world. The Old Testament portion of our Bible was originally written in the Hebrew language. Going back to the Hebrew to learn the definition of its words is often enlightening. Many times when words are translated from one language to another we lose some of the original meaning. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim. This word is a plural noun ( im is a plural ending in Hebrew). Literally, the word means gods. Even though we speak of God as a single being, the Bible teaches that God is composed of multiple beings — three beings in particular: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (See I John 5:7 and Matthew 28:19.) We can see that there are at least two involved in the creation because of phrases like Let us make man in our image found in the first chapter. This is not a royal we, but a literal we indicating more than one person.

God created the heavens and the earth. The Hebrew word for created is bara. This word is only used in connection with God. It means make something from nothing. Only God can make something from nothing. When man makes something, we work with things that already exist. Our creations are putting things that currently exist into new forms or applying them to new purposes.

The first two verses tells us that God created three things from nothing: time (In the beginning), space (heavens), and matter (earth). Initially, there was no order to the matter. It was just one large blob. God said that there was darkness on the face of the deep. In other words, there was no energy and, without that energy, matter was just a shapeless liquid filling space. Then the Holy Spirit moved through the matter and energized it.

The first thing to be formed was light. The light was separated from darkness. The period of light was called day and the period of darkness was called night. This implies that the matter is now rotating. Notice that there was no source for the light. The sun, moon, and stars were not made until the fourth day. I do not understand how a person can have light without a source, but I trust that this was the way it was created. A period of one night cycle followed by a day cycle was called a day. The writer is making sure that we understand that a day is a 24-hour period. There are some people who try to make evolution blend with Genesis. They claim that each day was really a long age lasting thousand or millions of years. Obviously, this belief does not match the wording in the Bible. Later, the Jews were told to celebrate a day of rest every week because God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day (Exodus 20:11). If God is powerful enough to create a universe, then it is not difficult to believe that he could do the creation in any amount of time.

On the second day God gave form to the earth. Isaiah 40:12, 22 says that God precisely determined the world’s form. The air was separated from the water with a cloud layer overhead. Notice that the Bible confirms that clouds are just another form of water.

There is some confusion from the use of the word heaven. We already seen in verse 1 that heaven can be used in a general sense to mean space. The Bible also uses heaven in a specific sense to refer to three different areas or spaces. The first is what we call the atmosphere, the region in which birds fly (see Jeremiah 4:25). The second is what we call outer space where the planets and stars move (see Isaiah 13:10). The third heaven is where God dwells (Hebrews 9:24). The last heaven does not exist within this physical universe, but is outside of it.

On the third day, land was made and plant life was created to occupy the land. Notice that the plants were created full-grown. God did not plant seeds and weeks later the plants appeared. Order was placed on the plant life. Each kind of plant could only produce plants of its same kind. You can’t get a watermelon from a pine tree. Variation is allowed within a kind, but there are no changes between kinds. You can get green peppers, red peppers, yellow peppers, hot peppers, and mild peppers by breeding different peppers, but you will always get a pepper plant.

The fourth day saw the formation of the objects in outer space. We now have a sun, moon, and the various stars.

On the fifth day, God made sea creatures and birds. The description of these animals is different from the plants. They are called living creatures. Unlike plants, animals can move. They have life within them. Like the plants, the creatures were restricted to reproduce only after their own kind. (See I Corinthians 15:38-39.) You cannot get a cow from a fish.

On the sixth day, God made the land animals and man. Once again there is a distinction made between man and the other living creatures. Man is made in the image of God. This does not mean that God has two eyes, two arms and two legs. God is a spirit. Man is a living creature that also has a spirit. Therefore, man is three things in one - we have a physical body, a life which is sometimes called a soul, and a spirit. Animals only have a body and a soul.

Man was given the responsibility to rule the earth (see also Psalms 8:6-8). Man is responsible for caring for God’s creation. Pay attention to Genesis 1:29. Initially, man and the animals only ate plants for food.

On the seventh day, God pronounced his work very good. On this day God rested. It does not mean that God was tired. It only means he took a break from his work.

Is Science the Source of Truth?

Mankind has long fooled themselves into thinking they can accurately determine the truth. We call this process of searching for truth Science. Science is defined in Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as Knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method. Carl Sagan, a famous scientist often seen on television, described it this way, Science is a way of thinking, an error-correcting process by which we figure out what is true and what is not.

Notice that these definitions imply that science does not have the truth. It is only a way to search for the truth. In the process of this search, people are going to realize that they have made mistakes and they will have to change their thinking. As a result, we often see science producing contradictions. Daily, I find articles in my local paper about a new finding from some study that contradicts the knowledge we previously had held to be true. This constant contradiction has led some philosophers to take the easy way out and declare that truth must be relative to the beholder. In other words, they do not think there is an absolute truth. What is true for you may not be true for me. It is an old idea. When Jesus claimed to be the witness of the truth, Pilate replied, What is truth? (See John 18:38.) Pilate wasn’t looking for an answer from Jesus. Pilate did not think that there was an answer to his question. However, the Bible claims otherwise. It claims to be the source of absolute truth.

There are times when science conflicts with biblical teachings. Through many influences, we are encouraged to believe that science is more accurate than the Bible in its own realm. After all, wasn’t Copernicus ridiculed by the religious people of his day for thinking that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe? What people neglect to comment on is that the Bible never said the earth was the center of the universe. That belief was just a popular tradition that existed without foundation. How often are we told that science is based on the observation of facts and religion is just based on faith in the unobservable and the untrue? Too many religious people and far too many Christians have accepted these lies as true. They never have questioned its foundations.

First, let us establish one fact. The Bible is the truth. In John 17:17, Jesus said that God’s word is truth. It is true that the Bible deals with spiritual