A Christian Stroll Through the Hebrew Bible: "In the Beginning God..."

By John F. Wall, Jr.

A Christian Stroll through the Hebrew Bible will be a welcome resource for both Christians and non-Christians who feel that their grasp of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is tenuous. John Wall walks the reader through the major stories and lessons of God’s wonderful message. The story is one of God selecting Abraham to found a nation to be his own possession, but his chosen people prove to be stiff-necked and unfaithful. Nevertheless, the Lord demonstrates his love, compassion, patience, and forgiveness time after time over the ages.  The Hebrew Bible progressively reveals the nature of God and his love for all humanity.  The epitome of this love is that he would eventually send his only begotten Son—the Word of God, the Messiah, Yeshua of Nazareth—to die for us and bear our punishment as the only acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the whole world!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483537535

Book preview

Israel

PREFACE

At about 0100 on Sunday, 23 January 2011, I woke up troubled. I tossed and turned and could not go back to sleep. I had prayed on many previous early mornings that God would show me what I should do for him after retiring for the fifth time. I had my own ideas since leaving active ministry as priest-in-charge from St. Peter’s Church in Port Royal, Virginia in September 2009, but I did not believe that the Lord had endorsed any of them. On that cold, dark morning, while Gulf Coast gales wildly shook the chandelier of our eighteenth-floor condominium in Florida, I felt that God was giving me some direction.

I heard God telling me that I should write a short book—a primer, not a systematic theological treatise—explaining a simple way of coming to the Lord, or of being born again. As I commenced to write in earnest, the Lord (and my editor) seemed to be pushing me to write two books: an overview of the Hebrew Bible and a shorter work on how to come to the Lord and be born again spiritually.

Except for a few Bible stories learned in Sunday School, most of us are appallingly ignorant of the Hebrew Bible, which outlines the foundation of Christianity. The Hebrew Bible is important and is the scripture our Lord knew, used and taught. A rabbi once told me, You Christians are our grandchildren. The more I thought about his remark, the more I realized its wisdom. Therefore, this book briefly discusses the Hebrew Bible from a Christian perspective and the Lord’s glorious plan for his creation and his people.

Hopefully, this work will motivate readers to open the Hebrew Bible, earnestly delve into it on their own, and discover its beauty and rich heritage to our Christian faith.

Therefore, here begins a deliberate stroll through centuries of God’s plans and relationship with his chosen people. Those plans promised that a Messiah would come who would also offer salvation to those of us who are not ethnic Jews!

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INTRODUCTION

The entire Hebrew Bible highlights God’s plan for the crown of his creation, the people he created in his own image.¹ In bringing into existence the universe from nothing, God made man very late in the sequence of things. God did not make us automatons for he wished us to voluntarily choose him as Lord. Therefore, he gave us free will; as a consequence, we have temptations and make bad choices. We can choose God or reject him. We must make a decision. God wishes us to freely accept him as our Lord, and to love, enjoy, and serve him.²

In the beginning, after the creation, God wanted companionship with people; he selected one old man, Abram (who had a barren wife well past the age of child bearing), to be his friend, and to father a people that would be a holy nation of priests and a blessing to peoples of all nations.³

God changed Abram’s name to Abraham; Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, was the progenitor of the Israelites. The Israelites and even some Gentiles easily professed God but lacked persistence when disappointments occurred; they grumbled, disobeyed the Lord, and strayed away to worship and serve other gods.

This story is not just about the journey to the Promised Land out of bondage in Egypt and the continuing story of a people. It is also a story of God’s love, mercy and grace for all of us in our personal search for God and our individual journey to his Promised Land!

The first eleven chapters in Genesis are prologue to the Hebrew Bible. The prologue consists of two parts:

• Chapters 1-4 deal with the creation of the universe, including the earth and all that is in the earth, culminating with the creation of man. God made man, the crown of his creation, in the likeness of himself because he wanted and continues to want companionship with us.

• Chapters 5-11 rush from the first man Adam, his wife Eve and the original sin, to Noah and his three sons, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the introduction of Abram, later renamed Abraham.

The prologue introduces God’s desire to select a people for himself through one man, Abram, and his wife Sarai. Although God initially chose for himself one people, the Hebrews, he wants desperately to include all nations and peoples in his circle of worshipers. God has always been a missionary deity; he intended the Hebrews to be a light to the Gentiles,⁴ bringing them to the one true God.

Time after time, the people the Lord selected to begin this process disappointed him severely. Yet God graciously continued to offer them forgiveness and reconciliation, while the people and their rulers turned away and ran after other gods. Because God is just, he must punish people who sin. He dictated remedies to the Hebrews for unintentional sins—sacrifices and offerings of unblemished animals and first fruits—but there were no sacrifices pure enough for intentional sins.⁵

COMPOSITION OF THE HEBREW BIBLE

As a Christian, I prefer to call the Bible used by Jews⁶ (our spiritual grandparents) the Hebrew Bible rather than refer to it as the "Old Testament." To refer to this scripture as the Old Testament seems to downgrade its importance, and to call this important library of books the Hebrew Bible seems much more appropriate!

The authors of the Hebrew Bible wrote primarily in Hebrew with some of it in Aramaic. Jews refer to their Bible as the Tanach or Tanakh, which is formed from the first letter of each section title of the Hebrew Bible: Torah (The Law or Pentateuch, the first five books authored by Moses)⁷, the Nevi’im (Prophets), and the Ketuvim (Writings). One adds the vowel a to each of these first letter consonants (T, N, Kh) to arrive at Tanakh).

The twenty-four books in the Hebrew Tanach consist of three sections as shown below in Table 1.

Genesis, the first book of the Torah, covers the creation and early dealings of God with mankind. As recorded in Chapter 11, God chose a people to be his people. He did so through Abram of Ur who was elderly and had a barren wife! God commanded Abram to go to an unknown place that God would designate later. The rest of Genesis concerns the lives and dealings of the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Christ-like Joseph, eleventh of Jacob’s twelve sons, played a significant role. Because Genesis is such an important book, I have organized its contents into five parts (1) From the creation to Abram’s Father Terah, (2) Abraham, (3) Isaac, (4) Jacob, and (5) Joseph.

The remaining four books of the Torah deal with the central figure, Moses, God’s friend, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. It covers the Hebrew flight from bondage in Egypt, the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, the Israelites’ unfaithfulness, the journey of forty years before entering the Promised Land, the death of Moses, and the designation of Moses’ replacement. Today, Jews, in their synagogues and in daily prayers at home, read the entire Torah in designated passages throughout the Jewish calendar year.

The Prophets cover the history of the Israelite people in Judah and Israel, their conflicts with other peoples, and the immorality of most of their rulers, who were unjust and wicked in the eyes of the Lord. These books cover the rise of the monarchy, its dissolution into two kingdoms, the Assyrian elimination of the northern kingdom of Israel, the Babylonian defeat of the southern kingdom of Judah, the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem, and the beginning of the Exile. Today, Jews read a passage from the Prophets during each synagogue service.

The Writings consist of poetry, rules for righteous living, apocalyptic predictions, psalms, love songs, laments on the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, a long discourse on why bad things happen to good people, musings on the meaning of life, a short story, and some Israelite history.

The Hebrew Bible was accepted as holy in final form incrementally:

• Torah ca. 400 B.C.

• Prophets ca. 200 B.C.

• Writings ca. 90 A.D. at the Rabbinical Council of Jamnia after the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem.⁹

The Masoretic Text finalized at Tiberius in the 9th century A.D. serves as the standard text used today. The earliest known (fragmented) texts from the 1st century B.C. that exist today are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which correspond closely to the Masoretic text!¹⁰

In the early Hebrew Bible, there were twenty-four books, and each of the following comprised one book: 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, the twelve Minor Prophets, Ezra and Nehemiah, and 1 & 2 Chronicles.¹¹ Eventually, these five early books were divided into the books we know today for a total of thirty-nine books. Christians accepted the entire Hebrew Bible into their canon of Holy Scripture, but the order of books varies from that of the Tanach.

In the early Christian Church, the Septuagint served as the most commonly used Scripture. Reportedly, Ptolemy Philadelphus (late-to-mid 3rd century B.C.) desired a copy of Moses’ Law for his Alexandrian library. The Septuagint (aka LXX) means seventy. Compilers chose this name because of the questionable tradition that seventy (actually seventy-two) scholars in the 3rd century B.C. concurred with one another in their translations of the Pentateuch into Greek.

Later, scholars translated the other books of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The Greek translation benefited the large number of Greek-speaking Jews in the ancient world who had lost their ability to read Hebrew.¹² The apostle Paul and other New Testament writers were familiar with the LXX and often quoted from it.¹³

THE APOCRYPHA¹⁴

The LXX expanded over a period of many years and included books of the Apocrypha. Ecclesiastical acceptance of these books varied widely. Apocrypha means hidden things. St. Jerome, working in Bethlehem, included the Apocrypha when he translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin in the 5th century A. D. The Apocrypha consists of 15 books written in the first and second centuries B.C:

• 1 Esdras

• 2 Esdras

• Tobit

• Judith

• Esther (the rest of the book)

• Wisdom (of Solomon)

• Ecclesiasticus (Sirach)

• Baruch (usually concludes with the Epistle of Jeremy)

• The Prayer of Azariah, Song of Three Holy Children

• Suzanna Bel and the Dragon Prayer

• Prayer of Manasseh 1 Maccabees 2 Maccabees

• Epistle of Jeremy or Jeremiah (see Baruch above)¹⁵

The Hebrew Bible does not include the Apocrypha. The LXX includes all of the Apocrypha except 2 Esdras and does not differentiate the Apocrypha from other books in the Hebrew Bible.¹⁶

The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible included all of the Apocrypha as a separate section in the original 1611 publication. The Church of England and The Episcopal Church (in the United States) do not recognize the Apocrypha as canonical but treat it as useful instruction. Article VI of the church’s thirty-nine articles states, the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine. Canticles 1, 2, 12 and 13 in The Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer present the Song of the Three Holy Children. Canticle 14 is from the Prayer of Manasseh.

The Jerome Bible includes all of the Apocrypha but with the titles of 1 & 2 Esdras changed to 3 & 4 Esdras. The Roman Catholic Church ascribed canonicity to the Apocrypha (excluding 3 & 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh) and placed the Apocrypha in a separate section in their Bible.¹⁷ The Letter of Jeremiah is Chapter 6 in Baruch; the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men comprise Chapter 3 of Daniel; Suzanna is Chapter 14 in Daniel.¹⁸

The Eastern Orthodox Church accepts only part of the Apocrypha. The Synod of Jerusalem, 1672, decided Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, and Wisdom were to be considered canonical.¹⁹ The Luther Bible included the Apocrypha without 1 & 2 Esdras in a separate section. The Geneva Bible includes the Apocrypha, but for instruction only, and the Westminster Confession dismisses the Apocrypha as documents written by man.²⁰

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE PROTESTANT BIBLE

William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale were the first to translate the Protestant Bible into English, with the Apocrypha included. The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England²¹ still includes Coverdale’s translations of the Psalms (before 1611).

The Church of England developed the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible through a number of committees formed by King James for the translation project. The KJV immediately became the standard English Bible upon completion in 1611 and still remains the Bible for millions of Christians today.²²

As the majestic KJV language became dated, as archeologists discovered additional copies of text, and as groups of translators wished to clarify passages to target certain groups of readers or to insert theological interpretations, many new translations appeared. Among these are the Revised Version, Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, New King James Bible, Good News Bible, and the New International Version Bible. There are many other translations and no doubt there will be many more! In discussing the Hebrew Bible, this work follows the arrangement of the original KJV and quotes from the KJV. The work draws on other translations to help interpret the meaning of the language used in the KJV.

I am convinced that the Bible, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, is the progressive revelation of God as he reveals himself to us in Scripture. Until the Second Coming, Jesus of Nazareth, fully man and fully God, provides us the perfect revelation of the Lord. It is up to us, individually, to ask the Holy Spirit to guide us through the library of books in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. We need to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest²³ God’s Word to discover who God truly is.

The Hebrew Bible is important! Without the Hebrew Bible pointing the way to the Messiah, we cannot fully appreciate God’s work in human history and his plan of redemption for Jews and Gentiles alike. Without the Jews, there is no Christianity!

At the heart of God’s Word is the call to establish our own personal relationship with him. God has no grandchildren. Our parents cannot do it for us! Each one of us must do it on our own in faith! When and where will you start?

ORGANIZATION OF THIS WORK

The Hebrew Bible can typically be divided into four or five major groupings. I decided on the following: Genesis, The Rest of the Torah, Historical Books, Books of Wisdom and Poetry, Latter Major Prophets, Daniel’s Apocalypse, and the Latter Minor Prophets. The contents of these seven groups are:

Genesis: In the Beginning God; The Real Beginning of the Bible; Isaac and Rebecca; Jacob, Leah, and Rachel; Joseph.

The Rest of the Torah: The Torah or the Law, the remaining four books of Moses—Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Historical Books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.

Books of Wisdom and Poetry: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon.

Books of the Latter Major Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel.

Daniel’s Apocalypse.

Books of the Latter Minor Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.

RECOMMENDED READING

For those who wish further study of the Hebrew Bible and its intertwining relationships with the New Covenant (Testament), I recommend, as a minimum, the following:

Bibles: King James Bible, The New International Study Bible (NIV), The Scofield Study Bible (1909),²⁴ and another Bible translation of your choosing.

Concordances: NIV Bible and King James Bible.

The Complete Book of Who’s Who in the Bible by Philip W. Comfort and Walter A. Elwell.

The classic Smith’s Bible Dictionary.

A good one-volume Bible commentary.

The Complete Jewish Bible, An English Version of the Tanakh and B’rit Hadashah (New Testament), Translation by David H. Stern, Jewish New Testament Publications, Clarksville, Maryland, 1998.

A Jewish Bible from the Masoretic text in Hebrew with English translation.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. In what ways is the Bible true?

2. Did the Holy Spirit dictate to the writers?

3. Why was printing the Bible in English so controversial?

¹Genesis 1:26-28: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'

²Hebrew prophets began to predict the coming of God's Anointed One, the Messiah, to save them.

But since we sin and disobey him, God found a way in which we could be reconciled to him. Both Gentile and Jewish Christians believe that God always had a plan for sending his Messiah.

³ Is anything too difficult for the Lord?

⁴ Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6

⁵ God seemingly had a problem: Being just, he must punish intentional sins, but he is also compassionate and merciful. How then can he be just and merciful at the same time? His plan, eventually, was to send a Savior, his anointed one, the Messiah, and God’s only begotten Son. This sinless Savior would voluntarily die on the cross as the perfect sacrificial Lamb of God for all man’s sins—past, present, and future, once and for all. The Hebrew Bible predicts the eventual arrival of the Messiah through various writers, whom the Holy Spirit inspired, informed, guided and directed.

Several hundred years after the last writing of the Hebrew Bible, Jesus of Nazareth, as prophesied, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judea. At about the age of thirty, Jesus began his short three-year ministry. His work commenced with baptism by John the Baptist, continued until he was crucified at Calvary outside the walls of Jerusalem, and ended with his resurrection and ascension. The completion of Jesus’ work on earth launched his spiritual ministry in absentia, continued on by the Holy Spirit until the Second Coming! God invites all people individually to establish their own personal relationship with the Lord by repenting of their sins, professing and accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, and believing in their hearts that God raised him from the dead. See Romans 10:9-10.

⁶ The people we know now as Jews were not called such until the Exile; before that time they were referred to as Hebrews or Israelites.

⁷ The Law is tricky to define, for it could have a wide range of meanings; for example, the Torah (first five books of the Hebrew Bible traditionally written by Moses), the written law (The Torah augmented by the parts of the Prophets or even parts of Proverbs), rules and ordinances, or oral law, later transcribed. Jews revere the Torah and give deference to it in their liturgy, much as many Christians give deference to the Gospels in their liturgy. Jesus or Jeshua of Nazareth participated regularly in Torah-style worship services in his lifestyle and sometimes taught in these services. In an appendix, I explore the beliefs of Messianic Jews who accept Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth as the Messiah.

⁸ Early prophets include the individuals identified as prophets in these books; for example, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Nathan. Two major figures are identified as prophets of the Lord in the Torah: Abraham (Genesis 20:7) and Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15). Also, Numbers 24 identifies the pagan Balaam as a prophet of the Lord.

⁹ Joan Comay and Ronald Browning, Who’s Who in the Bible, Two Volumes in One: Comay, Who’s Who in the Old Testament Together with the Apocrypha, and Browning, Who’s Who in the New Testament (New York: Random House, 1993), 12.

By around 135 A.D., Christian groups, probably in house gatherings, were using rudimentary creeds, e.g., Jesus is Lord. They read selections from the Hebrew Bible or Septuagint, and maybe a letter or two from a Christian teacher. They had also developed some order of ministry (deacons, presbyters, and overseers).

¹⁰ Comay, 12.

¹¹ F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 382.

¹² Cross, 70-71. It contains the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible but without the three divisions of the Hebrew Scripture (Law, Prophets, and Writings) and in a different order from the Hebrew Bible.

¹³ Cross, 1260.

¹⁴ Books written during the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. known as the Apocrypha, a phrase coined by the 5th century Roman Catholic scholar, St. Jerome.

¹⁵ Cross, 731

¹⁶ Cross, 70

¹⁷ Cross, 70-71, 1451-52

¹⁸ Comay, 385-387

¹⁹ Cross, 71

²⁰ Cross, 71

²¹ Technically, Coverdale created the first English translation of the Bible since Tyndale omitted some of the Hebrew Bible in his translation.

²² (An excellent exposition of the development of the KJV is given in Adam Nicolson’s book, God’s Secretaries, The Making of the King James Bible.)

²³ The Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer,"Collect for Season After Pentecost," Proper 28 (New York: Church Publishing, Inc., 1979), 236.

²⁴ The old Scofield Study Bible, 1909, or Volume I, is attuned to the KJV; there is no volume II; and volume III should be used in conjunction with the NKJV.

THE BOOK OF GENESIS

In the Beginning God!

The Real Beginning of the Bible

Isaac and Rebecca

Jacob, Leah, and Rachel

Joseph

CHAPTER

1

IN THE BEGINNING GOD!

Creation to Terah, Abram’s Father

"In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth."

Genesis 1:1

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, honour, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Revelation 4:11

The Hebrew Bible commences in a startling manner, In the beginning God... which is a statement of fact, accompanied by no argument, but only that he, God, existed in the beginning and created everything—out of nothing! God spoke and it happened. Genesis tells us that the Spirit of God hovered over the expanse of the waters and that God said what he wished and it came into being.¹

Eventually, after a long period of creation of all things, God, at the last second of the last minute of the sixth day, created man in his image. Since then, man has returned the favor by creating God in man’s image!

When is an ongoing argument among scientists, and between evolutionists and creationists.

• Classic creationists insist that an Intelligent Being created the planet earth in six days as told in Genesis; that evolution is a theory without convincing demonstrable scientific evidence; that only God can create new species; that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old, and that fossils could form in that short time.

• Generally, evolutionists maintain that new species evolve through processes of nature, that is, by chance. One could generalize that there are two classes of evolutionists: those who believe that species evolve through happenstance and those who believe there is a God who uses evolution as a tool.

Most scientists believe the earth alone is over four billion years old, and then one gets into the Big Bang theory and other hypotheses.

In our own galaxy, the earth’s rotation relative to the sun defines a day, but according to the first chapter of Genesis, God did not create the sun until day four. This timing implies that the term day is relative and could be a period of time considerably more than twenty-four hours—perhaps thousands or even millions of years. All agree that man himself appeared very late in the creation process.

How is a complicated and bitter theological issue. Some believe that the earth and the universe just happened. Those of a Biblical bent believe that a loving, omniscient and omnipresent God created the earth and the entire universe out of nothing (ex nihilo)! God spoke and it was so. All agree that the entire universe is expanding and will some day wind down, just as an unwound clock loses its energy, slows down, and eventually stops.

Many people love the way the Hebrew Bible deals with the issue: In the Beginning God... ² There is no argument or attempt to prove that there is a God, but a very simple and adamant statement, "In the Beginning God" created the heavenly bodies and the world!

The idea of the Trinity, or one God in three persons, is implicit in the very start of the biblical story of creation. God, the Trinity, was at work: God, the Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost), was hovering over the waters. God, the Father, spoke the Word—God the Son—who was the agent (did the work) of creation.³ And it was so!

The successive creation events over the six days agree with the scientific hypotheses of the successive development of the geological earth, the seas, the land masses, vegetation, and the various animal life species. Man appears even later than the last minutes of the twenty-third hour of the sixth day.

The story continues with God saying: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."⁴

God created the first man Adam (From the Earth or Formed from Dust) and then God (the Holy Spirit) breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.⁵ The Bible describes Adam’s mate, the first woman (Created from Man or Womb-man). God announced, Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh.⁶

Genesis describes the delightful Garden of Eden, the paradise that God gave the man and the woman so they could live in it as partners and work the ground. There was also a river running through this paradise that watered the garden. (One cannot help but imagine that trout filled the river!) In the last chapter of the Christian Bible, one encounters this river of life again.

Initially, the first couple may have been completely innocent, but God had given them free will and the ability to make choices. The man and his wife were unashamed of their nakedness. They lived in a wonderful, green, lush paradise—the Garden of Eden. Rich vegetation grew in the garden; the growth of greenery included the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Living was easy. There were no laws (except one), no litigation, no poverty, no social or racial issues, no sadness, no illness, no wars, no death. Life was truly idyllic! God imposed only one single law: The couple could eat the fruit of any tree in the garden except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.⁷ The penalty for breaking this rule would be death.

Genesis 3 describes the first (original) sin of mankind. We know little about Satan (the Devil) other than at one time he was an angel in heaven, who had succumbed to pride and rebelled against God. God threw Satan and the other rebellious angels out of heaven and cast them down to earth. We know the Devil is evil and that he is a tempter, liar, and deceiver. One of his names is Lucifer, which means light, but it is a false deceptive light.

THE FIRST OR ORIGINAL SIN⁸

In the garden, Satan assumed the guise of a serpent. The serpent was wilier than the other animals. He asked the woman, whom Adam had named Eve, if God truly had commanded them not to eat the fruit of that special tree. Here, Satan tempted the woman to doubt the very word of God.

Eve, carrying on a bit, answered that they might eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden, even the tree of eternal life. However, if they even touched the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die. The serpent replied that this was not true; if they did eat of the fruit of that forbidden tree, they would become like God.

When Eve, deceived by the serpent, saw that the forbidden fruit was pleasing to the eye and looked good enough to eat, she tasted it. Perhaps she succumbed to the temptation to be like God. Eve also gave some to Adam. Note that Satan had deceived the woman, but Adam deliberately and intentionally violated God’s command.

After eating the fruit, the couple realized they had no clothes on and covered themselves with fig leaves. Innocence was gone forever. When one sins, the person loses innocence, and there are penalties to pay. Because of this original sin, we now have all sorts of strife and evil in the world! Praise God that he developed a long-range plan; the penalty each of us owes for our sins can be paid and wiped out. Now through Christ, each one of us can be forgiven for our many intentional and unintentional sins and brought home to the Father!

Later, in the evening, Adam and Eve heard the Lord strolling in the garden and they hid from him. The Lord called out to Adam wondering where he was. Adam answered the Lord that he was naked and afraid so he was hiding. Then the Lord asked Adam how he knew he was naked and whether he had eaten fruit from the forbidden tree. One can visualize the man pointing accusingly at his wife saying, "This woman you gave me, invited me to eat and so I did." The Lord then asked the woman why she had done this thing. Eve probably pointed accusingly at the serpent and said that the snake tricked her into eating the fruit. (We all have the tendency to blame others for our own misdoings, do we not?)

The Lord cursed the serpent: It was to be inferior to any other animal; it was to crawl on the ground by wiggling on its belly; it was to be an enemy of Eve. Her offspring would strike snakes on the head, and snakes would bite the heels of people. The Lord told the woman her punishment would be that she and all women would suffer pain in bearing children, and husbands would rule their wives. Since Adam had listened to Eve and ate of the forbidden tree, he and all his male descendants would work the land, cursed with thorns and thistles, by the sweat of their brows. Then they would return to the ground for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.⁹ Then the Lord drove Adam and Eve out of the garden; he positioned cherubim with flaming swords in the garden to prevent re-entry.

In relating this story, Father Terry Fullam quips that when Adam and his son, Seth, were later walking by the fenced-off garden, his son said, What a beautiful place! Adam replied, Yes, it truly is; we used to live there! Seth asked, Why on earth did you leave? Adam replied, Well your mother ate us out of house and home!

THE MARK OF CAIN

The story continues with the first two sons of Adam and Eve—Cain and Abel. Cain was a farmer and Abel a herdsman. One day, both made gifts to the Lord. Cain brought some of his harvest as an offering, but Abel carefully selected some firstborn animals.

The Lord was pleased with Abel’s offering but not with Cain’s. Cain became despondent. The Lord tried to comfort Cain and defuse his anger but to no avail. The Lord told Cain to do what was correct, and that sin (jealousy) was stalking him. Later, when Cain and Abel were in the fields, Cain murdered his brother. When the Lord asked Cain about his brother’s whereabouts, Abel, feigning ignorance, lied and asked, "Am I my brother’s keeper?"¹⁰

God then put a curse on Cain and drove him from the land after putting a mark on Cain to protect him. The mark was a warning to all people not to kill Cain.

Why did Cain’s offering not please the Lord? This has been a mystery to many. Perhaps it was because Cain gave only some of his fruits and not the best first fruits. Abel’s offering was the best of the first born of his herd.¹¹

WAS THERE SIN BEFORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS?

One might ponder why there was sin at that time, since God did not give the Ten Commandments to the Israelites through Moses until thousands of years later at Mount Sinai. However, God had commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the forbidden tree, and violation of God’s command was indeed sin. Because they ate the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve acquired a twinge of conscience for they were ashamed at being naked. Cain must have had a similar twinge of conscience: He lied to God by saying defensively that he did not know where Abel was.

The fact is that man possesses an innate knowledge to recognize, without ordinances, that some things are unjust or just not right. Remember, the fruit that Adam and Eve ate was from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Consider C. S. Lewis’ story in Mere Christianity about an incident on a double decker bus in London. At the time, Lewis was an avowed atheist. He saw a man and a woman climb the stairs to the second level of the crowded bus. There was only one seat available; the man hurried over to it, heading off the woman, and sat down without any visible remorse. Lewis thought to himself that this was not right. Then as an atheist, he pondered what made it not right. He reasoned that some higher power made him realize that the action of the rude man was improper. This was one of the keys that led Lewis to become a Christian.

Chapters 5-11 of Genesis describe Noah and the flood (and God’s unconditional covenant¹² with Noah), the Table of Nations, and the Tower of Babel¹³ in what is now Iraq. Chapter 11 introduces Terah; his son Abram; Terah’s brother, Haran; and Haran’s son, Lot. The real "meat’ of the Hebrew Bible commences at Genesis 12, with God calling Abram to found his people. The first 11 chapters of Genesis provide an important prologue and context for the history of the Hebrew people.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. Did the earth and the heavens come into being literally in six days?

2. What biblical evidence is there for the Trinity in Genesis 1?

3. Are modern civilizations building towers of Babel?

4. What are some of the validations of the flood in archeology, geology, and ancient written epochs?

¹ Historically, this is in line with the doctrine of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Father, Son (The Word, God said and it was so), and the Holy Spirit). The Trinity consists of One God who is manifested in three equal, distinct Persons but of one substance. The concept of the Trinity is a mystery and cannot be understood rationally but by divine assistance. All three divine aspects of the Trinity are present in the Creation story in Genesis one: see also the preamble to the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to John (John 1:1-18).

The concept of the Trinity is neither explicit in the Hebrew Bible nor in the New Testament, but refer to Matthew 28:18-20 (And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.)

² Genesis 1:1

³ See the preamble to John's Gospel in John 1:1-18.

⁴ Genesis 1:26

⁵ Genesis 2:7

⁶ Genesis 2:24. Note that a man shall cleave to his wife, a female, not another man.

⁷ Genesis 2:16-17

⁸ Genesis 3:1-24

⁹ Genesis 3:19. Priests in some denominations use this phrase at the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday.

¹⁰ Genesis 4:9b

¹¹ Genesis 4. Abel's offering was a blood offering. Cain's offering was neither a blood offering, nor one of a sacrificial nature; it was probably one of thanksgiving. Later in festivals outlined in Leviticus, there is a wave offering of first fruit agricultural products that is acceptable to the Lord. There were many blood sacrifices, especially on the Day of Atonement.

¹² God always initiates covenants in the Bible and these are either conditional or unconditional. The one with Noah was unconditional: He will never destroy the earth again by floods of water. An example of a conditional covenant is 2 Chronicles 7:14: If my people repent and return to him, he will forgive them.

¹³ Angry with the arrogance of the people and the height of the tower, the Lord caused the people to speak different languages, creating disunity and construction abandonment. God later overturned the babble of different languages in the New Testament (Acts 2). With the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, everyone could hear Peter in their own native tongues.

CHAPTER

2

THE REAL BEGINNING OF THE BIBLE

God Chooses Abram to Found His People

God selects a friend to found God's people and initiates a plan to bless all peoples through Abram and his descendants. Abram believes the Lord who counts Abram's faith as righteousness.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Romans 10:9-10

And he [Abram] believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

Genesis 15:6, Galatians 3:6, Romans 4:1-22

The Bible is a collection of stories about men and women seeking God, and God seeking them. The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament contain a collection of sixty-six books (thirty-nine in the Hebrew Bible, twenty-seven in