Unlocking the Bible. David Pawson

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СКАЧАТЬ of the Bible. We learn that there is one God, the creator of the universe. We are also told that of all the nations, Israel were the people chosen for blessing. Scholars call this ‘the scandal of particularity’, that of all the nations, Israel should be especially selected. This is a theme which runs through the Bible to the very last page.

      The importance of Genesis is confirmed if we ask ourselves what the Bible would be like if it began with Exodus instead. If that were the case, we would be left wondering why we should be interested in a bunch of Jewish slaves in Egypt. Only if we had a particular academic interest in the subject would we read any further. It is only by reading Genesis that we understand the significance of these slaves as descendants of Abraham. God had made a covenant with Abraham promising that all nations would be blessed through his line. Knowing this, we can appreciate why God’s preservation of these slaves is of interest as we see how his unfolding purposes are achieved.

      What sort of literature is Genesis?

      Many readers of Genesis are aware of the considerable debate about whether the book is God’s revelation. Some have suggested that it is a book of myths with little historical basis. I would like to make three preliminary points concerning this.

      1 The whole of the Old Testament is built on the book of Genesis, with many references throughout to characters such as Adam, Noah, Abraham and Jacob (known later as Israel). The New Testament also builds on the foundations which Genesis provides and quotes it far more than the Old Testament does. The first six chapters are all quoted in detail in the New Testament, and all eight major New Testament writers refer to the book of Genesis in some way.

      2 Jesus himself settles all questions concerning its historicity by his frequent references to the characters of Genesis as real people and the events as real history. Jesus regarded the account of Noah and the Flood as an historical event. He also claimed to be a personal acquaintance of Abraham. John’s Gospel records his words to the Jews: ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.’ Later he said, ‘…before Abraham was born I am.’ John also reminds us in his Gospel that Jesus was there at the beginning of time. When Jesus was asked about divorce and remarriage, he referred his questioners to Genesis 2 and told them they would find the answer there. If Jesus believed that Genesis was true we have no reason to do otherwise.

      3 The apostle Paul’s theological understanding assumes that Genesis is historically true. In Romans 5 he contrasts Christ’s obedience with Adam’s disobedience, explaining the results in life for the believer. This point would have no meaning if Adam had not been a real historical figure.

      If Genesis is not true, neither is the rest of the Bible

      Such considerations do not have implications for Genesis alone. If we do not accept that Genesis is true, it follows that we cannot rely on the rest of the Bible. As we have already noted, so much of the Bible builds on the foundational truth in Genesis. If Genesis is not true, then ‘chance’ is our creator and the brute beasts are our ancestors. It is not surprising that this book has been more under attack than any other book in the entire Bible.

      There are two prongs to the attack: one is scientific and the other spiritual. We will examine aspects of the scientific attack when we look at the contents of Genesis in more detail later. For now we merely need to note the claim that many of the details included in the early chapters do not square with modern science – details such as the age of the earth, the origin of man, the extent of the Flood and the age of people before and after the Flood.

      Behind the scientific attack, however, it is possible to discern a satanic attack. The devil hates most the two books in the Bible which describe his entrance and his undignified exit: Genesis and Revelation. He therefore likes to keep people from believing the early chapters of Genesis and the later chapters of Revelation. If he can persuade us that Genesis is myth and Revelation is mystery, then he knows he can go a long way towards destroying many people’s faith.

      How did Genesis come to be written?

      Genesis is one of five books which form a unit in the Jewish Scriptures known either as the Pentateuch (penta means ‘five’) or the Torah (which means ‘instruction’). The Jews believe that these five books together form the ‘maker’s instructions’ for the world and so they read through them every year, taking a portion each week.

      It has long been the tradition among Jews, Christians and even pagan historians that Moses wrote these five books and there seems to be no good reason to doubt it. By the time of Moses the alphabet had replaced the picture language which prevailed in Egypt and is still used in China and Japan today. Moses was university educated and so had the learning and the knowledge to compile these five books.

      There are, however, two problems to consider if Moses wrote these five books.

      PROBLEMS OVER MOSES’ AUTHORSHIP

      The first problem is quite minor. At the end of Deuteronomy Moses’ death is recorded. It is a little unlikely that he wrote that part! Joshua probably added a note about it at the end of the five books to round off the story.

      The second, and major, problem is that the book of Genesis ends about 300 years before Moses was born. He would have no problem writing the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, since he lived through the events they record. But how could he have obtained his material for the book of Genesis?

      The problem is easily overcome, however. Studies made of people in non-book cultures have revealed that those who cannot write have phenomenal memories. Tribes which have no writing learn their history through the stories passed on around the camp fire. This oral tradition is very strong in primitive communities and would have been so among the Hebrews, especially when they became slaves in Egypt and wanted their children to know who they were and where they had come from.

      There are two kinds of history normally passed down in this memory form. One is the genealogy, since their family tree gives people an identity. There are many genealogies in Genesis, with the phrase ‘these are the generations of’ (or ‘these are the sons of’ in some translations) coming 10 times. The other is the saga or hero story – telling of the great deeds which ancestors accomplished. Genesis is composed almost entirely of these two aspects of history: stories about great heroes interspersed with family trees. With this in mind, it is easy to see how the book was composed from memories which Moses gleaned from the slaves in Egypt.

      Nonetheless, this does not answer all the questions about Moses’ authorship. There is one part of Genesis which he could not possibly have picked up that way, and that is the first chapter (or rather 1:1 through to 2:3, since the chapter division is in the wrong place). How did Moses compose the chapter detailing the creation of the world?

      It is at this point that we must exercise faith. Psalm 103 refers to God making his ways known through Moses, including the creation narrative. It is one of the few parts of the Bible that must have been dictated directly by God and taken down by man, just as God clearly tells John what to write in Revelation when describing the end of the world. Usually God inspired the writers to use their own temperament, memory, insight and outlook to shape his Word (as with Moses in the rest of Genesis), and he so overruled by the inspiration of his Spirit that what resulted was what he wanted written. But he gave the story of creation in direct revelation.

      A confirming detail is provided when we consider that there was no record of the Sabbath being observed before the time of Moses. We do not read that taking a day for Sabbath rest was part of the lifestyle of any of the patriarchs. Indeed, there is no trace at all of the concept of a seven-day week. Any time references are to months and years. Since we have Genesis 1 at the beginning of our Bible, we assume quite wrongly that Adam knew about it and observed a Sabbath as a model to everyone after him. But it seems СКАЧАТЬ