These two chapters, as well as some (now several millennia later) boring stuff about wells, contain some of the heights and depths of human experience. A birth to a childless couple, well well after normal childbearing years, and nasty vindictive selfishness. But also an outrageous demand from God, blind obedience and a few hints of [&hellip...
Paul’s summarises the Old Testament story from a Jewish-Christian perspective as a world looking for a saviour. Then John showed that still “today” not just in ancient times people are looking for a saviour. Jesus not only died, but rose, and this is the keeping of God’s ancient promises. In Jesus God fills out, fully, [&hellip...
Don’t look for happy families in the tales of the ancestors, matriarchs and patriarchs, of God’s chosen people. Genesis 27-28 carry the story into the next two generations but present a thoroughly dysfunctional family. Yet Genesis 28 tells also of one of the most dramatic revelations of God and renewal of God’s promises to this [&hellip...
Genesis 12 marks the beginning of the real story of the Bible. Chapters 1-11 are a prologue both to Genesis and to the Bible as a whole. They introduced us to “characters” (not least God – singular and with a capital G) and to the central issue that the Bible addresses. In chapter 12 we [&hellip...
The first week’s readings covered the prologue to Genesis, the second week covers the Ancestors of Faith, the Matriarchs and Patriarchs of Israel. Here we begin to see the first outlines of God’s plan to restore a world warped and twisted by human sin. We also begin to discover what it means to be “people [&hellip...
If this was a merely human story you’d expect God’s bold attempt at drastic punishment to have an equally bold result. Either humanity reformed, or the rebellion gets deeper 😉 But of course neither is possible. humanity is unreformable, just try making a few worthwhile New Year’s resolutions to prove that 😉 nor is rebellion [&hellip...
I think I’ve avoided really looking at this passage, and I notice that my teaching has focused too much on the signs of two source texts being edited together, and noticed too little how the story works, because like the genocide texts it offends my sense of right. The story looks different when one hears [&hellip...
All, speech requires prior knowledge to be understood. Usually this is largely shared within a culture. So if I say “the cat” I do not usually have to tell you first what a cat is. (Even if in the context of a novel about old-time sailors it might be a whip.) Some courses of study [&hellip...
