Latest / Woodlands Church Academy's Podcast / Session 2- Genesis- Tim Dobson & Dan Viner- Spring Bible School 25

Transcript

Session 2- Genesis- Tim Dobson & Dan Viner- Spring Bible School 25 · Woodlands Church Academy's Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: We love about the book, we want to communicate, but we actually want to try and make sure we're kind of uh doing what you'd like to know as well.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: So um for this part of the room.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_04: Any any questions or comments that or things that you'd like us to look at?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_05: We just realize how big the book is and how many people are in there.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_05: I know.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_05: 50 chapters, isn't it?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_05: It's a big book.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_05: Lots of stories though, as we suppose night, it's part of the Old Testament is an easier read, isn't it, than a lot of other books?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_05: But there are a lot of people, so I don't know where uh okay.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_04: Well maybe we'll look at that.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_04: So how do you when you read the Bible with the different what we call a genre, actually there is lots of stories there.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_04: So how do we how do we hear God's voice when it's story that's being recorded?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_04: Anybody else from there have a question?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_05: Um maybe just a bit of like the science paired with it.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_05: That's possible.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, science has science as and the book of Genesis go together.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we can do that.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, anybody from the middle section here?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was thinking more of what's historical fact and what's just uh like poetry or what what we had saying, where like the floods, for example, is the flood historical or is it just just destroying the Bible, really?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_04: So so how does where does poetry meet history?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_04: So it's historical fact kind of thing.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, so so Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were probably historical characters.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I believe Noah could come to the historical context of like the authors and how what their kind of like worldview and how that affected their writing.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so the author at the time, their worldview, kind of what they're writing about, yeah, that'd be great as well.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Anyone else?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_05: I've heard a theory that um I don't believe there were mankind elsewhere.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: So that might be how how literal is it?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yes, rather than just they were the only two.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_04: So when Seth goes off to marry somebody, there's uh other people there somewhere.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, okay, we'll we'll we'll look at that as well, yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_04: Brilliant.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, well, I'll just pray and then Dan's gonna take us through our first section.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh so local, thank you so much for your word.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you that it's uh useful for for training, correct and beauty, and training righteousness, and um it's it's God breed because you want to speak to us and communicate with us and help us to understand and navigate the world in which we live.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_04: So we pray that you'll be with us uh tonight as we open the book of Genesis and as we um uh talk together in Jesus' name.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_04: Amen.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you want me to read the chapter, I'm not gonna read the chapter.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we get we'll go through, I think.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, how are we doing everyone?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: You all hear me?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, as we've said, there's obviously a lot going on in Genesis.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's really big, it's like you know, 100 pages or whatever in your Bible, there's a lot of stuff happening.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, to begin with, we need to understand a little bit, just of that basic foundations, what's going on.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we're all on the same page.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got who is it written to?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's obviously written to the people of Israel, you know, exactly when it was written and you know, you know, sort of how it was written, you know, there is debate about that, but it's it's to the nation of Israel, it's to the people who are in the wilderness, you know, there it's probably compiled and put together over a long period of time, uh, from the original author to the the Old Testament version of the book that we have today.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and why was it written?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably more important.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a science textbook?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a minute-by-minute account of what happened?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll get into that a little bit, but I think the key point is to establish who God is.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: The God that they're worshiping.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're out in the wilderness.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Things have gone a bit funny.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: They've obviously strayed from God, that's why things have gone a bit wrong, and they need to re-establish who God is and who he is to them and what their relationship is with him.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go into a little bit more what it's communicating as we go through.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's interesting is that we have sort of a few really distinct sections in the book.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, a few of you picked up on that already.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have this bit at the start, which is you know, sort of roughly chapters one to eleven, which is maybe what you know, we might appear to be a little bit more poetic at times.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the structure of the chapters is a bit different sometimes, the sort of repeated words and themes, and and that sort of deals with big picture stuff, you know, the nations as a whole, you know, the Tower of Babel, Noah and the Flood, Adam and Eve, all that kind of stuff.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's really big picture, all of humanity stuff.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have another section which is a history of the chosen nation, and that's kind of Abraham through to the end.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's dealing with a single family.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So those are kind of key building blocks of the book, you know, just to begin with, that's that's what we're dealing with.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have what's interesting is this subdivision below that.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got the nations and the chosen nation.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: There are repeated phrases throughout Genesis, which just as you read it are useful to look out for.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: The really key one is this is the account of.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like a little chapterization.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, when we read our Bible, we see chapter one, verse one, etc.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I'm sure you know that that wasn't how the book was originally written.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was just written in one go, a huge chunk.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in order to break it down, the authors at the time came up with different ways of doing that.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So one of them is this little repeated phrase, this is the account of 12 little mini-stories within the book as a whole.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of them are only a couple of verses.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the account of Ishmael is seven verses or so, you know, the account of Esau and his family is a couple of verses.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: But then some of them, you know, the account of Jacob, it's 13 chapters.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But within there, there's a lot of unity and homogeneity.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is the way that the book is broken down, and it's a way that we can know, oh, that's the end of one section and it's the start of a new section.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are themes that run throughout, but it's a nice way of breaking it down as we read through.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's obviously a lot, we won't be able to cover every single thing in the book of Genesis over the next four weeks, but as you go away and read yourself, it's just a useful little tool for you to have.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we like to do in Bible school as a whole is to place a real value on reading the word out loud and you know, in full at times.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible was meant to be read out loud.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we do a lot of picking and verse by verse reading ourselves, we have a memory verse, a verse of the day, but we miss out on something when we do that, I think.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: The cultures which the Bible's written to, whether it's the new or the Old Testament, were oral cultures that read the Bible out loud.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something about the Bible being read in you know, some sizable chunks that gives it a different impact.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we're gonna do is we're just gonna read Genesis chapter one.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a bit of imagery on the screen, there'll be the words.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just read through it and you know, allow yourself to reflect on the words, maybe in a different way than you have before, as someone else reads to you, you know, as the imagery you know kind of speaks to each phrase.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: But let's just read through it quickly.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now the earth was formless and empty.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So God made the expanse, and he separated the water under the expanse from the water above it, and it was so.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: God called the expanse sky, and there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: God called the dry ground land, and he gathered the waters, he called them seas, and God saw that it was good.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then God said, Let the land produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The land produced vegetation, plants bearing seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And God saw that it was good.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there was evening and there was morning the third day.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: He also made the stars.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate light from darkness.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And God saw that it was good.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there was evening and there was morning the fourth day.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let the water teem with living creatures.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: So God created the great creatures of the sea, and every living and moving thing, and every winged bird according to its kind, and God saw that it was good.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Livestock, creatures that move along the ground, wild animals, each according to its kind.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures along the ground that move according to their kinds, and God saw that it was good.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then God said, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, over livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: So God created man in his own image, and the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, Genesis 1.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot in there.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of you know repetition you can hear, there's a sort of rhythm to it, there's repeated phrases, there's things that keep coming back to it.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go through a bit of that today.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we're gonna go across the course of the four weeks.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, obviously, there is a chance to ask questions.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You guys have already said some things you'd be interested in looking at.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: We'll definitely try and pick some of those up as we go.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: But because there's so much, we're not obviously gonna be able to cover everything, but we are looking to establish a bit of a roadmap of where we're going because you know it's easy to get lost in Genesis because it is wild.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, as I'm sure you're aware, there is some stuff in there that is a bit confusing, upsetting, strange, you know, even a bit you know, concerning sometimes.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's Lot's daughters, Abraham and Isaac, the concept of circumcision, siblings, slave traders, there's treatment of women that's pretty horrendous.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot in there that is intense.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if we you know dive into everything every moment, we'll we'll get lost.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need a bit of an overarching theme that we're gonna follow.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna try and today set a context and look deeper at what the themes are running through the whole book.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna then gonna unpick those week by week.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the first week, this week, we're gonna look a little bit at just you know, the context the book was written in, what was the worldview of the people who wrote it, how did they see the world?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna use Genesis 1 and 2 as an example to kind of unpack that and show the relationship that this has to other stories from the time.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Week two, we're gonna look sort of up to the end of that initial kind of chunk.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's gonna be kind of humanity as a whole, destiny, purpose, and the brokenness that results when humanity doesn't do things as it should.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: In week three, we're gonna do a big chunk uh following the story of Abraham and his family, but we're gonna do that through the theme of covenant, human failure, and we're gonna look at what covenant is to begin with as well.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final week, we're gonna take a step back, we're gonna look at the whole book, and we're gonna do that through the lens of Jesus, or you know, a savior.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is the theme that is gonna emerge as you know the key center point of Genesis is the need for a saviour.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Time and again, we're gonna see that Genesis points forward to Jesus.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is the big theme that we're gonna unpack in that week.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: But that is all for the next few weeks.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, do have a think about any questions you might want to bring if you want to come back.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: But today we're just gonna look at Genesis 1 and 2 and the context that surrounds it and how that can change the way that we look at the story.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's revealing, it's interesting that we can maybe recognise different questions we should be asking than the ones we might bring initially.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully, I'm gonna show that there's some really amazing truths in the stories.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're gonna find some really, really deep stuff in there as well that only emerges in a really significant way when we look at the stories in the light of what's going on in the culture around.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not gonna look, you know, to begin with, we're not gonna be dealing with science versus faith and you know, poetry versus history.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's not really the point of this conversation.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: We want to try and enter into the world that the authors were in.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: How did they see what was being written?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: How did they understand what was in Genesis 1 and 2?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a quote that is um just from a novel, but I think it really, really nails what we're trying to do here.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: The past is a foreign country and they do things differently there.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know if you've ever been abroad or you've been to a culture that's particularly different, but you know, if you imagine somewhere like Japan or South America or you know, a tribal culture in the middle of the Amazon, if you just turned up there, started speaking English, expected everyone to drive on the left, and you know, you could get sausage and chips at a pub for 10 quid, you know, that would be weird.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: It just wouldn't work.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't be able to communicate effectively if you didn't do a bit of work to begin with.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you would go expecting things to be different.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going to somewhere that they use a different alphabet, everyone looks different, they sound different, they eat different food, you would expect there to be a bit of work that you need to put in to appreciate the culture.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think what we often do is approach the Bible as if it was written yesterday.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: We approach it with our own, you know, preconceived culture, with our biases, with our understanding of the world.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we know that the Bible is old intellectually, but is that how we approach the Bible in a real way?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: What does it look like to approach the Bible on the Bible's terms?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a really great book that a guy called John Morton read, which wrote, which is called The Lost World of Genesis 1.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really, really good entry-level book to understand a bit of the stuff that we're going to be talking about.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be drawing from some of that today, but if you're looking for something to read, that's a really good place to start.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what he says is that rather than translating the culture, you know, just you know, taking the original Hebrew and Aramaic that the book was written in and writing it in English and then just taking it as literal, we needed to try and enter the culture.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: There is just difference in translation.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Words change meaning, concepts change meaning.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: The way that we see the world is not the way that someone 5,000 years ago in the ancient Near East would have seen the world.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible was written for us, of course.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's God's word.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's useful for teaching, for rebuking, for you know, all the good things that we know it's for, but it wasn't written to us.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't make sense if it was, because Genesis, if it was written to us today, what would everyone for the last 5,000 years have done with it?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you had to have a modern-day understanding of science or history to do that, well, that's for a very specific point in time.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: That wouldn't necessarily make sense.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to understand that the Old Testament authors saw the world in a different way to us.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to understand how they thought.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: We have to understand the assumptions that we bring as well.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: If we come to the Bible just assuming that it is seeing the world exactly as we do, then we could miss something.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: We could misunderstand something, or we could pick up something that's secondary and treat it as the most important thing in the passage.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I wonder what you think of when you see this image.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the world.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's an astrophotography image of the world.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: We can see North and South America, we can see some cloud formations, we can see some climate patterns forming.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you will just think that instinctively.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: You just know what that is, and UK's UK.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's Spain.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: UK's behind here somewhere.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when I think of that, oh, it does make me think of creation a bit.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's clearly all of earthly creation in one image, you know, one half of it at least.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it makes me think a bit of Genesis 1.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1 verse 1.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the earth, isn't it?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, remember Genesis 1 verses 1 is one of the most famous phrases in the English language, but it wasn't even written in English.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an English phrase, and it's not written to an English audience.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: This kind of image is only about 50 or 60 years old, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: For for you know, for hundreds of years, for thousands of years, we've known that the world was round, we've known a bit about, you know, you know, planets and stuff, but no one has thought of the earth this way until the last 50 years.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because we hadn't gone to space.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: But for us, this is so completely ingrained.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: When I say Earth, you think that.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not really any other way that you could conceive of things.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: But even more so, the people who were reading the Old Testament, Genesis 1, they didn't think of a globe.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't think of the world as round.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: To them, the world is flat.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Their understanding is much more simplistic.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: When they read this, the heavens and the earth, they just think up and down.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God made what's up there and what's down here.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Which makes complete sense because that's their understanding of the world.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is a bit more like how they saw the world.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you can see that.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: The text on there is a bit small, but um, we'll send the slides out.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, what this is, is a graphic representation of how people saw the world in this kind of time period.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is what um academics would call the three-tiered cosmos, which is just a fancy way of saying water, land, water.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Three levels.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Really simple.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when you read the six days of creation, that's God populating this.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: You've got land, you've got sky stuff, you've got above there, water, you know, above this kind of dome, it's called the vault.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Down here, you've got, you know, the underworld, shale, which um is referred to in the Bible, and then you've got water underneath.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then God populates each of those three areas.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's based on what they could immediately see and feel and touch, which of course makes sense because that's all they had to go on.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have you know satellites floating around taking pictures of stuff, they had their senses, and that's how they understood the world.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, I don't know, water below.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you dig down far enough, you find water.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're in the desert, they know how to dig a well.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you go down far enough, there's water, we must be floating.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's sea at the edge of the land, it doesn't have any end because you can't see it, and if you keep going in any direction, you find more sea.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we must be on an island, everything must be floating, there's water underneath us.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, fine, that makes sense.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: When you go out at night and you look at the stars, it's kind of sort of dome-like, it's a bit curved, and oh, it must be a dome.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it's solid because oh well, sometimes water comes down.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess you know, God just opens the window sometimes, lets the water out, and that's really good because it gives us water on the land and we can grow stuff.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sometimes the the ground shakes a bit, but you know, nothing can move.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's probably on pillars.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably on pillars.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes the pillars wobble, and you know, we have you know the ground shakes.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: That that makes sense.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the water uh out on on the sea, that's that's you know, pretty fierce and chaotic, and we can't control it, but it doesn't seem to come on the land, so it must be God.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: God's just holding it back.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the stars are there in the sky.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're moving around, they're probably alive, they're probably spiritual beings.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, that makes sense because they're moving.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you know stuff that's not alive doesn't move?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they must be alive.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: It makes sense.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they see reality in the way that it's informed by what they can see, and in the same way, you know, their words have that kind of meaning.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: When we say heaven, you think of clouds and you know sky and you Know up in the you know the heavenly realm, you know, whether or not you've got a you know a developed view of what heaven practically looks like is another thing, but there's probably some harps and some cherubs and some you know some clouds and stuff, even if that's not really what you think heaven's like.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's informed by medieval art and it's informed by you know pictures and Dante's Inferno and all that stuff.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's all part of our cultural reference point.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: For them, they have nothing like that.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: They've just got what they can see, and so you know that's how their world looks.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: What I think is really interesting, just as we as we come to look into this in a bit more detail, is that God communicates with them within their cultural understanding of reality.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's no you know evidence really of the Bible imparting secret scientific knowledge to the Israelites in their culture in their time that gives them a leg up on the people around them.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: God doesn't teach them about chemistry or atoms or the building blocks of life or DNA or anything like that.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: They have the same scientific and cultural understanding of the world as the people around them.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: God communicates everything that he needs to within the context of Genesis, within the context of the rest of the Old Testament.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that's interesting to ponder.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if God had communicated something to them that gave them some kind of advantage, that would be interesting, but that's just not the case.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why don't we just really quickly have a chat with the people around you?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: How is it that looking at Genesis with this kind of perspective in mind, how might that change how we understand what happens in Genesis 1 and 2?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Have a little chat just quickly, and then we'll feed back in a second?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right, everyone.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um sorry to uh to cut across your conversations there.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've obviously opened uh a bit of a can of worms with some of this stuff, but um, I'm interested.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Does anyone have any any thoughts that they they'd like to feed back at all?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that someone said in your group discussion that was interesting or that you you know want to share with the group or other questions to raise?
• 24:20
  unknown: Wow, nothing interesting from all that conversation.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Did everyone hear that?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really interesting.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll actually get on to that in a minute.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh that's interesting though.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um anyone else?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Any any other things to uh to sort of to raise?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose um it's the mess what is God trying to say to the people like this truly like a actual account, or is it something else?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: What message are you actually trying to convey?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what message is God trying to give in Genesis?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a really good question.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's have a look.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we are gonna look a little bit at what I'm calling the cultural geography of what Genesis, uh of the world that Genesis inhabits.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we've established, you know, we're gonna be good tourists, we're going overseas somewhere, you know, we're going back in time to be uh you know in the culture of Genesis.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's draw up a little guidebook.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's you know have a look and see what is the geography that we're gonna, you know, we're gonna inhabit.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to really spell out this impacts everything.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, today we're gonna look at creation, but in the coming weeks, we're gonna look at a whole range of other themes that need exploring.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I said we're gonna look at covenant in a few weeks' time, but how can we understand what covenant really means, the depth of significance of what that meant to Abraham if we don't know what a covenant is?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't know what that meant to people in Palestine 5,000 years ago.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we might know a marriage covenant from a context like we might have in a church or in our relationships, but what did it mean to them in that time?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: As an example, you know, what are the images and the reference points that are common to them?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: How do they perceive the world?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if I was to talk about creation, if I was to explain to you how I see the universe, I'd probably use words like atoms and gravity and stars and you know supernova, black holes, that kind of stuff.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Did I make that up?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Did I come up with that?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Am I stealing gravity from Newton?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did I am I raiding NASA?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Am I just copying them?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'd argue that I'm not.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I am using what's you know common to me.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can't conceive of reality without that stuff.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I've got glasses on.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: I see everything through the lens of stuff like that.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: When I think I'm breathing, well I know I'm not just having nothing go in.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's gas going in and out, there's an exchange of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide in my lungs.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's just how I see the world, and I can't see it any other way.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is true to them?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: How do they see the world?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: We need to understand how they perceive things.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we need to look at how Genesis interacts with that kind of common understanding and how it's different.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when it's different, why is it different?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when it's the same, why is it the same?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: The stories come to life in relation to the context that they're in.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if I told you a story, but you know, everything was the same, but you know, when I dropped something, it it floated upwards.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't mention it at all, but that was how it was.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: You would instantly go, oh, that's interesting.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Stuff's going up.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's weird.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Gravity stuff goes down.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you'd instantly be you know, be a big flashing red ring around that little detail.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: But that wouldn't necessarily mean anything to someone who was raised in space because everything floats in space.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: So there is something that, because of our shared culture and our understanding, we would know that something's different there.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to recognize what are those differences and what are those similarities in that kind of Genesis context.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the other cultures we're gonna look at.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be fairly brief, we're just gonna run through a few other you know, images and stories from the time.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: These are the cultures we're gonna be looking at.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Egypt, you've probably heard of the Egyptians, they had quite a big impact on the Israelites, obviously.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're a really old culture, they're from the south, sort of south um southwest there, and they have a really defined mythology about the creation and gods, and that is quite impactful at the time.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have Sumeria, um, or sorry, Sumer, the Sumerians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're three different empires, they're all in sort of Iraq, Iran kind of area, you know, three really ancient empires, and they kind of go one after the other.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sumer came first, and then that kind of faded, and Assyria came up, and they obviously took away some of the Israelites, then they kind of fell away, and Babylon came up, and they're really, really important, and they all kind of interrelate their stories.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also have Canaan.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now they are, they kind of just copy stuff a bit more from the other, the bigger empires.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Canaan is where the Israelites ended up in the sort of the nation of what's today Israel, um, but that's also very important because that's the culture that the Israelites go into.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they kind of inhabit, they interact with a lot when they go into the land.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we have to begin with a few just really common images that we're gonna look at.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: These are gonna be common throughout all of the stories we're gonna look at.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: We've got creation is order, and pre-creation is disorder.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: We'll look into that in a minute.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the images of water, images of kind of dragons or sea snakes, that kind of thing, and conflicts.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: These are all really common themes throughout all of the creation stories at the time.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: So to begin with, this is really important.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: This kind of touches on your question earlier, where was God before stuff existed?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: For them, not a question they'd ask.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: We have um what, according to John Walton, is a complex where it's an ontological conflict.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: That means the way that we see the world, the way that we perceive reality, is just different.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have a concept of nothing.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: For us, when we think of pre-creation, whether that's the Big Bang or Day One or whatever it is, before that, what we think of is just a big black blank space, probably.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: We think of nothing, just nothingness.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing there.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe God's there, but it's nothing.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: For them, that's just not possible.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's not just not a way they would see the world.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how the world works for them.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: For us, reality is stuff.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we can touch it, we can feel it, we can taste and eat it.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we are, you know, physical in our reality.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: For them, reality is about order.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that that sounds you know self-explanatory, it sounds really obvious, but for them that's really important.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Reality is order, and disorder is pre-creation.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: The whole creation story is about bringing order out of chaos.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because for them, if you think about it, they're a farming culture, they have you know an agrarian way of life.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Disorder is death.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: If your crops aren't planted on time, if you let your animals roam free and they run off, if you have disease in your farm, it's just death.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's nothingness.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the way that they see the world.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1 begins with an earth that is formless and void.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: We say, but what do you mean?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I thought God hadn't created the earth yet.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't make sense to them.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was chaos, disorder.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's pre-creation for them, not nothingness.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And similarly, because for them creation is ordered, someone has to have done it.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's no such thing as an atheist back then.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: That just doesn't make sense.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is ordered, so someone needs to have ordered it.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's no random events, there's no sometimes God does stuff, and sometimes it's just the rain comes.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Everything has a god or gods behind it.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why you pray, that's why you sacrifice, that's why you do rituals, that's the way that they see the world.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Water is another very, very important theme that we will see time and again.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes sense.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Again, they are in the desert, basically.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the culture, the climate wasn't quite as bad there as it is today, but they're surrounded by sea, which is scary because you can't see the end, you can't swim to the bottom, you can't drink it, and if it comes on the land, your farm dies and you die.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's intense.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes there's storms and big waves, and that's scary.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, water is a source of life.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the desert.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the big rivers around there that those cultures are built on, they flood.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that irrigates the land, and that means that stuff can grow, and that's really important.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a division, there's a duality.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Water is both a source of life, but also when it's uncontrolled, it's chaotic and it's scary.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dragons feature a lot in the stories of the time.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: The word we use dragon, it just is the Greek word drakon, it's just another word for snake.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're kind of the same thing, but dragons sounds cooler.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: So these two, Tiamat slash Rahab or Rahav, this is kind of Babylon and Canaan.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Canaan just sort of steals the story and gives it another name.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is a uh a violent serpent uh who attacks the land.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: She's there.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Apophis is a serpent in the Egyptian creation story, tries to eat the sun every night.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Chaos and aggression towards the created order from sea snakes or dragons is a recurring theme.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when you understand their view of the sea, you know, it's chaotic, it's scary, they fear it, they respect its power, and also they think everything natural has a god behind it, you can start to see why, oh well, this big scary elemental thing over there, that's probably a scary god that's behind it.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Look at this, look at those storms, look at those waves.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Must be pretty aggressive.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like it's trying to attack the land.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's instinctive, it makes sense when you think about it from their perspective.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we also see this in the Bible.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: So Genesis 1.6, God, you know, put the grey, great sea creatures in the sea.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's this word tanin in Hebrew.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really know what that means.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people have a guess, but we there's no direct translation.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it is, you know, sea creatures.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: There is a reference there to great something in the sea, but that God put there and it's good, and God's in control of it, and he's put it over there, and that's where it lives, and that's okay.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's just uh you know a little dialogue there with the other stories, and already a nod to the fact that God's just he's got that.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, we also see in all the other creation stories, there's just a lot of conflict.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're violent, people die.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are battles, and you know, there's gods fighting gods and people being killed, and there's violence, and everything is just really aggressive.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: In the you know, one creation story, humanity comes from the body of a dead god.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: In another one, you know, there's the great sea snake attacks the sea, and there's an army, and there's a fight, and it's just all a scary way to perceive reality.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the Egyptian story, the chief god Ra has to kill a sea serpent every night to stop it from eating the sun and stopping the dawn from coming.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine if that's you went to bed each night not knowing if you were gonna wake up and there would be the sun there or not?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's just intense.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite scary.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um obviously that's quite different to how Genesis is.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Has anyone got any questions about that?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Does that all kind of make sense?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm aware that's quite a lot of information.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is everyone with me still?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll look at a couple of creation myths.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna do a massive line-by-line reading.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is just really top-line, really basic details.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: These are the stories that they are inhabiting.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is what's informing their conversations.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is the adolescence of the ancient Near East.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is watching this, listening to this, taking it in.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is informing them.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, Egypt basically what happens is God comes out of an egg in the water and creates everything else.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit weird, but pre-creation is just a sea with nothing in it.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then out of the sea, there's an egg, and out of that egg comes the chief god, Atun.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes out of the water and he kind of creates himself.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: But he comes out of an egg in the sea.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then he creates all the other gods and kind of gives each of them a different thing to do, and they each have a different area of authority over creation.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: And together they all kind of work together to maintain the divine order.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Got it?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Eggs, sea, gods.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's Egypt.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Babylon.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are quite a few of these, and we have some really good records of them, you know, sort of full versions of these stories that have been discovered and translated in the last kind of couple of hundred years.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is the Atrahasis epic, and I want to spell out again, Babylon's really important for our understanding of this kind of time period in the Old Testament, particularly.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you can see, you read through the Bible, Babylon comes up again and again and again.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Tower of Babylon, it's the same word, Babel, Babylon.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Babylon's there in in Revelation right at the end.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Babylon is like the archetype of what you don't want to do in the Bible.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because largely, as far as we can understand it, the Old Testament was put together during the Babylonian exile.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean it was written originally then, but when they kind of forming into one coherent whole with the books and the orders that they're in, for the Jewish people at least, they're in Babylon.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's in that cultural context that a lot of the Bible comes to be finalized.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the way that we see their stories work, there's some similarities with Genesis.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this one begins quite famously when gods were in the ways of men, which means when the gods were less gody, when they were doing work, when they were having to actually labor a bit.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: There is a multi-tiered system of gods, which ironically reflects pretty closely onto the Babylonian society of the time.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lower gods serve the higher gods, basically.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a feudal society.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then basically, the lower gods get really bored of working, they dig out some rivers, and they're like, ah, this is rubbish.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just make some slaves.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they go on strike and they kill a god, and then they make us.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have to do the work.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Basically.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it, that's how it goes.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: We are the excuse me.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're the response to a labor dispute, and we come out of death.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we tire, the gods out, we're smelly, we make lots of noise, and then they destroy us in a flood.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Which sounds familiar.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: But there's one guy who gets warned and he makes a boat, so he survives.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that story.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: We then have another story, which is in some ways similar, there's some similar themes, but this is more about Babylon itself.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is them saying, This is why we're great.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're the best.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is why.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's because our god is the best god.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Their god is called Marduk, this guy, and basically he fights back the sea.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's the god of storms, he fights the sea, a god called Tiamat, who has a dragon, and he wins.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting here is there's a kind of the world is created, but then chaos comes back.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's creation, in other words, ordering, and then decreation, the sea invades the land, and then recreation again.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: The sea gets fought back, creation is reordered, and then Marduk, the Babylonian chief god, reorders the world, and he creates heaven and earth out of the dead body of the sea snake.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot there.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit violent, it's a bit intense, but that's kind of how they saw the world.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, excuse me, how do we see Genesis in that context?
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: Again, there's a lot here.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm aware actually on this screen, it's quite tricky to read some of that text because of the pink.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's much clearer on my laptop.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go through it.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we learn what Genesis says in this context?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll go through each theme one by one.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: So to begin with, chaos.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: There is chaos in all these stories, but in the other creation stories, chaos requires violence and struggle to subdue it.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it remains in rebellion.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the sea, Tiamat, fights back.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: The sea invades a land, there's an army, there's a battle after creation's already happened.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of fighting backwards and forwards, gods battle each other.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, let's kill one, let's make some people to deal with some of the mess.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot going on there.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: But in Genesis 1, creation is ordered with a word.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's there at the start.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, the world was formless and void, it's unordered.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: But then God just says, let there be light.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's no violence, there's no battle, there's just.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it was.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely different.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting is that chaos remains under God's control.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this interesting word here, tehom, which is the Hebrew word for abyss.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: There was darkness over the abyss, darkness over the tehum.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's an unusual word, and it's only used one other time, and that's in the story of Noah, when God opens the abyss.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Waters flood out of the abyss and they flood the world again.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: But at God's command.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: God retains control over chaos.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is completely held in check just by his word.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: We see in the theme with the dragons and the sea serpents, again, that they remain a violent challenger to the authority of God.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: All the gods.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: There is war, there's battle, there's constant struggle and strife.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: That happens.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: But then in Genesis, the Tarin, the sea creatures, Genesis 1 verse 6, they're just in the sea.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're just mentioned in passing, like all the other animals, like the birds, like the livestock.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're just there.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're part of creation and they're good.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: God ordains them to be there.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we get references to them later on throughout in the Bible.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: For example, in the book of Job.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you've read that bit at the end, there's that sort of famous little reference to the Leviathan and the Behemoth, and some people say it's hippos and crocodiles, and some people say it's a mythical beast, and it kind of doesn't really matter in this context.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: God's saying, oh, you know all these big, scary creatures?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, alright, I've got them.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're over there, they're having fun.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Did you give them the sea to play in?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: I did that.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's got it.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even a thing to him.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely different to how the rest of the world sees that kind of stuff.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Water.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Water in the other stories, that's pre-existent.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: The gods come from out of the water.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: The water is personified as a god.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the sea, the sea is personified as a monster in lots of ways.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's positive and negative.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes it's giving life, sometimes it's taking it away.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit uncertain.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, you know, to be fair, the same as we see in Genesis.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: At the start, pre creation, there's water.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's how they see the world.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: But God is in charge again.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: God is in control.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: The waters are chaotic, but they don't predate God and they aren't a threat.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: There from the beginning.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God, not water.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God created, and you know, He provides order to that kind of abyssal sea that we see.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's negative water when it's you know unordered and it's positive when it's placed within its boundaries, it has life within it.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: We see God's got an instant impact on water as well.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right in that first verse, there was darkness over the surface of the abyss.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: It feels a bit negative, but the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in the space of a verse, by the actions of God, you know, his presence, we go to water.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Water's a good thing.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're fully under his control, he populates them with life, they're controlled, it's all good.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we stand?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where does humanity sit in this context?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is really important because it relates to how we perceive ourselves and our relationship with God.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: In the other stories, we're an afterthought.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're slaves, we're nothing, we're just some creatures made to fulfill a purpose, to follow the God's will.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: But in Genesis, we are created in God's image.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Male and female.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is radical for the time.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Women don't exist, pretty much, in most cultures.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're property.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: But Genesis 1, the start of the Bible, male and female, he made them equal in God's image.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: Women have the image of God in them.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: That makes no sense in their culture.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it's right there at Genesis.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: God's image is on women, it's on men.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we're purposed.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: We are made to be loved.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're made to be in relationship with God.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing like that anywhere else.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: God's authority and power is challenged constantly in other stories.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's limited in scope.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Each God has his own little bit.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: But in the other ones, God is unchallenged and supreme in Genesis.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: He isn't finite, he isn't challenged, he's completely powerful, he's completely unopposed, and he is pre-existent.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't come from anything, he's not created, he's there from the start.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we learn from this?
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: We see that, well, chaos is ordered with a word, not a war.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity's purpose, we're not an afterthought, nothing is a threat, there's no challenge to God's authority.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Creation's good.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not violent, it's not inherently bad, it's good.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: God's character can be seen in his works.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: God is pre-existent and preeminent, nothing caused him.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, we can see the rest of the Old Testament in a really new way through this kind of understanding.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, the story of Noah, like I mentioned, that instead of just a flood, becomes a massive act of decreation.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: God has made the world and it's suddenly gone wrong because of humanity.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: So he doesn't just bring a flood, he decreates.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: He allows chaos to come back in, he opens the world apart back to the chaotic waters right at the start.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's starting anew.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you can then see the story of Noah, reading that in the light of the Genesis narrative, Genesis 1 and 2 narrative.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many parallels there.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly he's starting the world anew again.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really, really significant act.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's imagery from the Psalms, for example.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: This one talks about God smashing the head of a sea snake in the depth of the sea.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's not anywhere else in the Bible, but you can then suddenly see, oh, that's that's the Babylonian story.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: This guy's writing that in Babylon.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying, No, your gods, nah it wasn't them, it was our God, he did that.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter in this instance, you know, it's a psalm, it's being poetic, but he's saying, all of your great narratives of you know, godly power, no, that's nothing compared to our God.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can pick up those themes all throughout the Old Testament, and as we go through the rest of Genesis, we'll see some of them emerge.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm aware that I've talked for quite a bit, so I'd like you to do a bit of talking to sort of process a little bit.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a couple of minutes.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to have a look at, well, just to say, was this new to you?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Did you learn anything?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Was that interesting?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to ponder this.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've just told you how important context is, but a lot of this stuff we only found out in the last couple of hundred years as we've archaeologically excavated, you know, ancient Babylon, that kind of thing.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: How much does context matter?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: How much can we appreciate Genesis without knowing what the Babylonians thought about the universe?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: How important is it?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have a quick chat and then we'll full feedback in a few minutes.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm struggling.