In the Beginning, God...

"In the beginning, God..." The Bible begins with those simple, yet awe inspiring words. In the first two chapters of the book, Moses gives us a peek at the beginning of time and the universe itself. With the possible exception of Revelations, no other book in the Bible even approaches the amazing scope of Genesis or has the power to capture our imagination.

When we think of the book of Genesis, we think stories. By using the word "story" I do not mean to imply in any way that they are not true. It can appear to be a collection of stories thrown together and unrelated. Nothing could be further from the truth. While it includes stories (creation, the garden, the fall, Noah and the flood to name a few) it is not really about them or the characters described in them. Genesis is about God. He is the primary character in each story and Genesis is an introduction of Him to His people. Even in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we learn about some of the most fundamental aspects of God's nature and character. He is the eternal creator of all. He is and remains all powerful over nature and his creations. Although He judges sin, He is always ready to extend grace.

Understanding Genesis can be a challenge to believers. With the creation/evolution debate raging in our culture, it is easy to think that challenges to the proper interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis have only come about since Darwin wrote The Origin of Species in 1859. In fact, Christians have debated how to interpret the first three chapters of Genesis since the earliest times. By way of example, Church fathers Origen and Augustine argued in favor of reading the creation story as allegory rather than literal history. Others have demanded a strict, literal interpretation of the six days of creation. Sound familar?

In scripture, as in life itself, context is crucial to understanding. What motivated Moses to write the story of creation and the fall? We know and believe that he did so under the supernatural guidance of the Holy Spirit, but that does not take away the importance of trying to know what purpose he was trying to acheive in doing so.

In his commentary on the book of Genesis, Bruce Walke argues that Moses wrote the creation story as a polemic against the cosmology of the Egyptians. The people of Israel were leaving 400 years of slavery in Egypt and had been influenced in their thinking about God by the religion of the Egyptians. Moses wanted to set the record straight so that the people of God would know Him better.

Genesis is not the first account of creation ever told or written. The Egyptians and Mesopotamians had creation stories. The Egyptians believed that (1) there were many gods, (2) the world pre-existed the gods, (3) the gods were powerful but not all powerful, and (4) that the gods were often out to get mankind. In Genesis, Moses clearly distinguishes the true God from the gods of Egypt. We see in Genesis that (1) there is only one God, (2) nothing existed prior to Him and that he created everything, (3) He is all powerful and in control of everything and (4) He loves man and seeks relationship with him.

To further his arguments, Moses wrote about historical events. Genesis is theology through history in the form of poetry and prose. What do I mean by that? Genesis was not written to be a history of the world. It certainly contains much history, but that is not the purpose for which it was written. It was written as theology, to tell us things about God and what we should believe about Him. It uses historical accounts to do so. It describes those accounts in various poetic and prosaic forms used in the Hebrew language. However, if we ever lose sight of the fact that it is theology and often in poetic form, we will not be able to understand its full import.

Therefore, any study of Genesis must focus on one central question: What does this passage, this story, tell me about God? The answer to that question, in creation, the fall or any other story, is the only truly important thing. This study of Genesis will attempt to answer that question.