Status Updates From The Manifold Beauty of Gene...

On the entire Pentatuech being law, including Genesis, "For the original audience, law (torah) was more than just legal codes. It was instruction, which could be communicated as much by stories as by edicts. Scholars sometimes use the phrase “narrative law,”..."

In the chapter on the layer of temple: "...there is a sense, figuratively speaking, of seeking but not finding a place of rest. Not a rest from fatigue, but of dwelling. Ordering and filling were first required to create a place in which to rest... In other words, God did not rest *from* his creation, he took up rest *in* his creation."

Back to this one after a break. This book has very full footnotes, which include recommended reading, questions to ponder, and quotes. I chuckled at this one, attributed to Volatire: "In the beginning, God created man in his own image, and we have been trying to return the favor ever since.”

"When noting similarities between the Bible & the customs or stories of contemporary civilizations, some Christians have an instinctively suspicious reaction. There is an understandable fear that the authority of Scripture is being diminished by claims of “borrowing” ideas from influential pagan neighbors. This is not what is being suggested. Rather, the comparisons reveal widespread cultural norms, familiar to socie

and the customs or stories of contemporary civilizations, some Christians have an instinctively suspicious reaction. There is an understandable fear that the authority of Scripture is being diminished by claims of “borrowing” ideas from influential pagan neighbors. This is not what is being suggested. Rather, the comparisons reveal widespread cultural norms, familiar to societies across the region, which God intentio

Layer 3 (Polemics) notes so far:
Key ways Genesis 1 differs from other Ancient Near East accounts of Creation/origin:
-no backstory for God
-a real beginning
-only one God
-creatures, not deities
-Creation was not an accident or byproduct
-no personification of primeval chaos
-order in Creation to reflect an orderly Creator
-human worth & exceptionalism (quote below)

On polemics, particularly against worshiping created things like the sun and moon: "... Third, even their normal labels - "sun" (shemesh) and "moon" (yareakh), which reflect Ancient Near East names of deities - are dismissed in place of "greater light" and "lesser light". These textual features serve to downplay the special status conferred to sun and moon outside of Israel."

Okay Missy, help me out here. I feel dense for not quite getting this but I'm not sure how layer 1 (parallel days, framework structure) and layer 2 (sequential days, analogy) can both be perfectly true. Thoughts? They raise the objection and answer it by saying that the Bible has deep truths and surface truths (my paraphrase) and that sometimes it's like the painting where you look again and see a new perspective...

Reading this while doing a Jen Wilkins study and soon after reading "Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes" feels like being at the center of a three-circles Venn Diagram - lots of cool overlap on literary themes in Scripture, interpreting Scripture as inerrant vs literal, etc.

The author challenges his own motivation for writing: "Is this book really just a clever ploy to dismiss the historical veracity of the Bible? OR to make the creation story palatable for those looking to merge the Bible with modern scientific theories of origins?"
He then claims no, there will be no scientific theories discussed. I confess I did suspect that motivation so I'm glad he addressed it.

He quotes Gregory the Great saying the Bible is "a river in which a lamb could walk and an elephant could swim".