The Surprising, Actual Story of Genesis 1-2

Exploring My Strange Bible

BibleProject

Religion, Theologian, Tim Mackie, Pastor, Bible, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Strange Bible, Philosophy, The Bible Project, Exploring My Strange Bible, Christianity

4.9 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2026

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In modern Western culture, we have two very different narratives swirling around the first two pages of the Bible. In the first narrative, the creation story in Genesis 1-2 represents a literal seven days, and this all happened only a few thousand years ago. In the second narrative, earth and its inhabitants took billions of years to evolve into their present form—and therefore, Bible-believing Christians are fools. What if both these narratives miss the main point of what Genesis 1-2 is all about? In this lecture, Tim explores the Bible’s creation story alongside other ancient creation stories, revealing a very different narrative about the origin of life, our purpose and identity as humans, and what all of this tells us about the God of the Bible. Tim taught this lecture in January 2016 at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, I'm Tim Mackie, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying
0:15.0	Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you
0:23.4	have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've
0:29.8	been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission
0:35.9	of Jesus and the journey of faith.
0:38.1	And I hope this can all be helpful for you too.
0:40.4	I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.
0:43.1	We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology.
0:49.5	You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com.
0:52.8	With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week.
0:59.5	It's good to have you guys here.
1:02.0	My name's Tim, and we're going to be exploring some light topics tonight,
1:10.0	like how to read and interpret the first two pages of the Bible.
1:16.5	So nothing controversial there. But I'm really excited to be here with you guys.
1:24.8	And, you know, why do I care about this?
1:28.8	You know, I see some people from the home team, Door of Hope,
1:32.5	my community over there, and I know many, many of you from Bridgetown.
1:38.2	I have lots of friends who are part of Bridgetown that are friends from many years.
1:43.0	So, you know, some of you know a bit about me, but when I write all that,
1:50.0	I wrote all that out earlier today and I was like, I get tired just thinking about it.
1:54.4	I need to eliminate something for my life.
1:56.6	I just have too many things going on, but I love them all,
	...

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