"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Together with a couple of guys from the Council of Man, I’m reading through the Bible this year. We’ve just finished reading through the genealogies of Genesis.
The last time I read through Genesis, I found it really helpful to visualize the genealogies. So, if anyone else out there is reading through the Bible this year, hopefully you’ll find this helpful:
I am currently in the middle of Trent Horn‘s latest book, Hard Sayings. In his book, he spends some time discussing the objections raised by critics of the Bible as they interpret Genesis’ account of creation. Just as I was finishing this section of the book, my friend Len shared the following video his Facebook wall:
This video is a 2015 episode of FocusToday, an interview programme which is part of a Christian apostolate. In this particular episode, Jimmy Akin, apologist at Catholic Answers, is interviewed concerning the Catholic interpretation of the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis. As usual, Jimmy discusses the issue in a clear and measured way.
At around the twenty-eight minute mark, the interviewer and Jimmy are joined by John Mittendorf who is associated with the ministry Answers In Genesis. He takes about ten minutes to respond to Jimmy’s position, after which Jimmy has an opportunity to respond, marked as always with his characteristic gentleness.
I’ve recently started studying the first five books of the Bible in more depth. Almost as soon as I started, I had an “Oh, I never knew that!” moment which is the subject of today’s post.
The opening books of the Bible are known by the Greek word “Pentateuch”, which literally means “five volumes”. Unsurprisingly, there are five books which make up the Pentateuch:
1. Genesis
In Greek, “Genesis” means “Beginning”, which is an appropriate title for this book since it describes the Creation of all things. It also covers the lives of the early Patriarchs, up until the time of Jacob and the Twelve Tribes.
2. Exodus
The second book of the Bible describes the escape of the Children of Israel from Egypt and the giving of the Ten Commandments on Sinai. This is reflected in the book’s title, which literally means “Departure”.
3. Leviticus
If you’ve ever tried to read Leviticus, you’ll know that it goes into great detail concerning all the different sacrifices in the cultic worship of Israel. This worship was performed in the Temple by the priestly tribe of the Levites, which gave rise to the this volume’s title, “Book of the Levites”.
4. Numbers
This book recounts the events of Israel’s sojourn in the desert. Unlike the other volumes in the Pentateuch, its title is not very descriptive, being so named because the opening pages of the book concern a census that was taken among the people.
5. Deuteronomy
The final volume in the Pentateuch contains the Law given by Moses on the plains of Moab prior to his death and before the entry into the Promised Land.
My first “Oh, I didn’t know that!” moment was when I found out the meaning of this book’s title. The Greek word for “Law” is “nomos” and it’s the word used throughout the New Testament to refer to the Law of Moses. You can see this Greek word hidden away in the name of the book: “Deuteronomy“. The prefix, “deutero” means “second” (e.g. “deuterocanon” means “second canon”). Therefore, “Deuteronomy” means “Second Law”. It is so called because it’s the second major piece of legislative material in the Books of Moses.
I previously knew that the Jewish people often refer to the Pentateuch as “The Torah”, the Hebrew word for “Instruction”, “Teaching”, or “Law”. However, what I didn’t know was that the they have different names for each of these books. The names which I listed above (Genesis, Exodus, …) come from the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Pentateuch sometime around 250 BC. Within Judaism, however, the following Hebrew names are used:
1. Bereshith (“In the Beginning”)
2. Shemuoth (“Names”)
3. Wayiqra (“And he said”)
4. Bamidbar (“In the desert”)
5. Debarim (“Words”)
As you might be able to guess from the translations in parentheses, the Jews follow the same naming convention used in Catholic Papal Encyclicals, naming the book after the opening words of the document.
Well, that’s enough nerding out for one day… 🙂
Last week I published a post in which I examined the different roles of Adam, as part of my In The Beginning series. I demonstrated from the Scriptures how Adam was a son of God, bridegroom, priest, prophet and king.
I explained that it’s important to understand these different roles of Adam because in understanding Adam, we come to understand the blueprint, God’s original design, the original state of affairs before everything started going all askew. Salvation History is the story of our redemption and the return to that original state of affairs.
In today’s post I’d like to look at how Adam’s various roles are taken up once more…
The other day I did a post in which I looked at the sequence of events in the creation narrative of Genesis. In verse two of Chapter 1, we are told that “the earth was without form and void” and I explained how God spends the rest of the chapter fixing these two problems.
He solves the problem of formlessness in the first three days by creating the domains of time, space and habitat. He then solves the problem of emptiness by then populating each of these realms with rulers: first sun, moon and stars, next fish and birds, and then finally land animals and humanity.
I compared Genesis chapter one to the building of a house, God first builds the structure of the house and then fills its rooms. However, at the end of the post I explained that God wasn’t just building a house, but a temple…
Why do I say that God was building a temple? Well, we know that other cultures at the time of Genesis’ authorship also considered the cosmos to be something of a temple in which the gods were to be worshiped, but we also find a similar strain of thought concerning the first book of the Pentateuch…
In Bible study we’re currently doing a whistle-stop tour of the Bible. Last week we looked at the opening verses of Genesis. It often goes unnoticed what God is actually doing in the account of creation found in the opening verses. Today I’d like to do a short post covering the first part of our discussion and speak about the literary structure of the first chapter of Genesis.
In Chapter 1, verse 2, after affirming that “God created the heavens and the earth”, the author says that “the earth was formless and void” (Hebrew: “tohu wabohu”). The rest of the chapter sets about explaining how God solved both of these problems…
I’m subscribed to Clients From Hell. Here’s a great post from yesterday:
Client: Do you animate bible stories?
Me: We don’t currently, but we can animate anything you like. What do you have in mind?
Client: Well how much is it to animate the bible?
Me: Well it depends on what stories from the bible you want. The duration of the animation, how many characters, sets etc. Do you have a script?
Client: Well I don’t want to elaborate on the bible, I just want to animate it for the kids.
Me: Right, okay, but in order to give you a budget I need to start somewhere so I can figure out roughly how many characters, props and such.
Client: How much time will it take for creation?
Me: The creation of the assets? Characters, sets etc?
Client: No, Creation, in the book of Genesis.
Me: A lot more then 7 days.