1.8 Genesis I: Stories of Creation

History in the Bible

Garry Stevens

History, Christianity, Judaism, Bible, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 693 Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2015

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The opening chapters of Genesis recount two stories of creation, neither of which involves Satan. One is from the J source, the other from the P source. I compare these to the creation stories from ancient Mesopotamian sources. Genesis has always been more important to Christians than to Jews, who regared Exodus as telling the central story of Judaism. Naturally, that leads to a discussion of Jewish attitudes to IVF.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.
0:24.8	All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles.
0:44.6	Thank you. Episode 1.8, Stories of Creation.
0:50.2	In the last episode, I got sidetracked, explaining how the Bible was divided into chapters and verses.
0:56.6	When I started this podcast, I envisaged a 20-part series, exploring all the history in the Bible,
1:02.0	from Genesis to the books of Maccabees. Looks like it'll take me a lot more than 20 episodes.
1:07.7	So let's get to Genesis, the first book in the Bible, known in Hebrew as better shit,
1:11.9	at the beginning or when first, the very first phrase in the Bible.
1:17.1	In the ancient world, texts were often named after their first words, a practice that the popes continue with their encyclicals. In the Christian tradition, the name comes from
1:22.0	the Septuagint, which used a Greek translation of the Hebrew word Tolodot, story, record, line, begetting.
1:30.7	Genesis is the first book of the holiest portion of the Jewish scriptures, the Torah or the Pentarchic.
1:37.5	All of these books are traditionally ascribed to Moses, but none of the books claims Moses as their author.
1:46.0	Jews read a portion of the Torah called Palishthout, each week over the cycle of one year. The first seven chapters of Genesis
1:51.9	are the first read in September or October at the beginning of the Jewish New Year. Genesis is one of the
1:59.1	longest books in the Bible. In its opening 11 chapters, Genesis starts with the creation of the world, its destruction during the time of Noah, and includes such popular family stories as the murder of Abel and the building of Babel.
2:12.5	In this collection of loosely connected tales, God repeatedly punishes humanity for its wickedness and its
2:19.9	refusal to accept its subordinate status. Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden when they
2:25.5	get too uppity, and humanity is confounded with a multiplicity of languages when it attempts to build a
2:30.6	great tower. In its remaining 40 chapters, the book traces the history of a single
2:36.4	family, the family of Abram, a man from Err in Mesopotamia. Completely out of the blue, God singles
2:44.2	out Abram to be the progenitor of a great and mighty people, who will always be under God's
2:49.4	personal protection. God commands Abram to leave
	...

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