Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [21]
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Gen. 2:17 KJV)
* Why are there two Creations in Genesis?
* Who was right, Genesis or Darwin?
* Were there really apples in Eden?
* Was Eve really Adam’s first woman?
* Where did Cain’s wife come from?
* Do the “sons of God” sleep around in the Bible?
* Didn’t Noah get some blueprints for the ark?
* Was Noah the first drunk?
* Do they “babble” in Babylon?
* Where did Abram come from?
* Why did Lot’s wife turn into a pillar of salt?
* Would Abraham really have done it?
* What is Jacob’s Ladder?
* How did Jacob become “Israel”?
* Was there a “coat of many colors”?
* What was the sin of Onan?
* Who was Joseph’s Pharaoh, and could a slave become Egypt’s prime minister?
Every stand-up comedian, speaker, or preacher knows that the best way to get an audience’s attention is to tell a good story. If the story is funny, that’s even better. A little sin and sex? Better still. That is why writers from Homer, Aesop, and the other Greeks right through Shakespeare and up to modern Hollywood have always dressed up their “messages” with great stories.
A good story makes up perk up our ears and pay closer attention. As the great American newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer is supposed to have said, “First fill the pews. Then preach.”
That is one reason why the Bible is still around. It is full of great stories. And not just the simplistic “Virtue” tales many of us remember from Sunday school. The Hebrew prophets often cloaked their messages in stories. And Jesus certainly relied upon parables and short stories to teach.
But nowhere is the truth of the Bible being a great story more evident than in its opening book. Here is an entire account of the beginning of human civilization and God’s unique relationship with humanity reduced to a series of fascinating narratives. This “miniseries” is filled with all the cliff-hanging action and humor that we expect from television or the movies. The stories are poignant, funny, compelling—and not a little troubling. On one hand, there is faith, goodness in the face of evil, and obedience to God. But on the other hand, there is betrayal, trickery, thieving, incest, and murder. These aren’t the simplistic moralizing Sunday school tales of a bunch of “goody-goodies” who are well behaved and did exactly what God told them to do. And what God told them to do wasn’t always so nice in the first place. That’s one reason to believe that these characters were all real: if you were going to make up stories about your ancestors, you would not have them behave the way this bunch in Genesis does.
The English title Genesis is derived from the Greek words Genesis kosmou (“origin of the cosmos”). The Jews, who know each of the five books composing their Torah by the opening words or first significant word in the book, call it Bereshith—“In the beginning.” Readers who return to Genesis after an absence may be surprised to discover that it is a much different story from the one they may dimly recall from childhood.
Genesis covers time, from the the beginning of the world through early human history and the rise of civilization to the establishment of God’s special relationship with the Patriarchs, Matriarchs, and people of Israel—told through the compelling stories of Abraham and Sarah; Isaac, Rebekah, and their twin sons, Esau and Jacob, and Jacob’s wives and family, the chief member of which was Joseph. It ends with the death of Joseph and the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, setting the stage for Exodus.
BIBLICAL VOICES
And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” (Gen. 1:26 KJV)
Why are there two