A new way of looking at the Book of Genesis
Previews of an upcoming newsletter
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Yesterday I announced that on January 21 I’m launching two new daily newsletters, the Daily Bible Chapter and Daily Miracles.
Here are some snippets from the Daily Bible Chapter.
From the 1st newsletter (Genesis 1):
When I hear the word “light,” I may think of several things:
- A flash, spark, ignition, or explosion that immediately changes the state of things.
- The means to see the physical world through the body’s eyes such as the sun or light bulbs.
- Warmth; the sun may light the way, or a campfire may help us see at night, but they also warm us.
- Lightness, as opposed to heaviness, in terms of weight or mass.
- An emotional state (light-hearted, lighter than air).
- Enlightenment, or a “flash” of understanding
At the start of Genesis, there seems to be water but no light. That is, no warmth. As if before the “beginning,” there was only ice and darkness.
Perhaps God wanted light to melt the ice so it becomes liquid or vapor. Or maybe God wanted to feel lighter. Maybe God wanted to grow, and required light the way life needs light to grow.
Or maybe God wanted to become enlightened.
From the 2nd newsletter (Genesis 2)
So in Chapter 1 we may have a general account of how dry ground in general came to be, and how humanity in general was created. Beginning in verse 4 of Chapter 2 we have a story of a specific part of the earth that was seemingly barren, and here Jehovah God created a man, and made the place a garden, and brought in the animals, and created the woman from the man.
Imagine a book that starts with “In the beginning the human built the automobile.” Then starts with how the human built the wheel, then the wagon, then engines, etc.in a way that implies a general anthropological summary of thousands of years up to the 19th Century Then, in Chapter 2, we get a story, not of how the human built the car, but how Karl Benz, a human, built a car. Is it “contradictory” even when all the details are different? Far from it.
