Genesis, a Greek word meaning "origin" or "beginning", was the title given to this book by the translators of the third century B.C. Greek Old Testament known as The Septuagint. The first word in the Hebrew text, Bereshith, means "in the beginning" and is used as the Hebrew name for this book.
Although this book begins with the creation of the universe, the focal point is the creation of man. As the human race multiplies, the account is narrowed to certain genealogical limits...
Certain scholars question the historicity of the events recorded in Genesis 1-11. Although they regard them as "mythical" or "supra-historical" stories, they assert that these stories have religious value. This position is difficult to maintain in view of Christ's authority and attitude to the Genesis record as is reflected in the following passages: Matthew 19:4-6; 24:37-39; Mark 10:4-9; Luke 11:49-51; 17:26-32; John 7:21-23; 8:44.
The book of Genesis, as the introductory book in the account of God's progressive self-revelation to the human race, is crucially important. It is quoted more than sixty times in the New Testament, where this revelation culminates in the person of Jesus Christ. In this way Genesis provides the historical account of the beginning of God's relationship with man foundational for and essential to a proper understanding of subsequent divine revelations.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Forward to Genesis
I found the following in the preface to Genesis in my Amplified Bible. Its too good not to share!...
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3 comments:
I'm not sure who said, but it has stuck with me. It went something like this, "If you can assure me Genesis 1:1 is true, then everything that follows after presents no problem for me." You are sure right. Genesis has everything to do with the here and now.
I have been impressed with your site. I am new to this blogging thing and I would love any suggestions you might have on increasing traffic to my blog. Blessings.
Luke,
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate it. Blogging is a tough world to get into with good reviews. The things that I found helped increase my readers was:
1. Blog as often as possible. If you have your site syndicated it will move your site up in search engines.
2. Use keywords that people may search for like people's names or topics they are interested in. This helps with the search engines, too.
3. Find bloggers of similar interests and be sure to comment regularly on their blogs with things that show you actually read their material (like what you did with me ;) ).
God bless!
Chris
While I think the author of this preface has a reasonable point (that the Genesis text presents info about God which shouldn't be ignored), it is dangerous to say that those who do not hold a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 are contradicting the authority of Christ. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but it would seem that the author is polarizing the interpretations of Genesis; there are those who believe it to be purely figurative and those who believe it to be purely literal. The literalists have it right and they affirm the authority of Christ. Scholars (and myself) could go on for hours about this. I'll leave this though, Jesus affirmed God's work and instruction from Genesis as being useful. He never frames Genesis from the two poles (not to be confused with Polish people).
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