Kalev Creative

 March 15, 2026

In this first class, we discussed proposals for studying Genesis 1-11. Since so many of us have read this first ~10 pages of the Bible so many times, it is easy to slide right through the passage without taking much thought for the ideas in it and move on. We intend these proposals to help us break out of that approach and dig deeply.

-God wrote to us intending to communicate. Of all the things he could have said to us, these are the things he chose to come first. His interests in communicating appear to center around: Who God is, Who we are, How we relate to him and each other 

-We should be willing to say, “I don’t know.” Acknowledgment of our limitations makes space for new ideas and growth.

-Be willing to put our desire to reach conclusions on hold until we have enough information and recognize sometimes the biblical authors don’t tell us everything we might like to know.

-The biblical authors (and the Holy Spirit behind them) are writing in a place and time and to an audience. We are not the original audience and don’t live in that place and time. The Spirit intended this for us, but it wasn’t originally written to us.

So we need to be humble in our interpretation. Don’t assume:

-the way we might receive these ideas today is the “correct” way to receive them

-we have superior knowledge or understanding

-the biases we have are valid

-we are somehow above the text or the authors

-difficult, challenging, or offensive ideas in Scripture are not valid

-The biblical authors are efficient. They rarely, if ever, include trivial detail.

-The biblical authors use wordplay, structured text (i.e. symmetry, parallelism, repetition, etc.), and various genres (i.e. narrative, genealogy, geography, poetry, census, law code, prophecy, apocalypse). It’s important to recognize them if we want to understand what we’re reading well.

-Because we are reading in translation, some of this literary structure and artistry is obscured by translation choices, so sometimes it will be important to consider the Hebrew version of the text. We’ll work to make this accessible to everyone.

-Biblical authors often use patterns and unusual vocabulary to link passages, even ones that are far apart in the Bible, to suggest comparisons to meditate on (i.e. Genesis 2-3 and Noah’s story, Noah’s story and Lot’s story, Jacob’s family and David’s family).

-It is natural to bring our own questions to the Bible. It isn’t wrong to do so, but if we want to understand what God is saying to us, we should set aside our questions and let God tell us what he wants us to know, focus on what he wants to focus on, and attempt to conclude (or leave ambiguous) what he wants. We should read humbly, letting the biblical authors lead us to the ideas they want to communicate.

If we do these things, we will likely encounter and understand the Bible differently than we have before.

-We should do our best to invite the Holy Spirit’s presence and guidance as we study. He’s the author and intends for us to learn, receive, and change as we study.

-God desires to communicate with us, delights in devout study of his word, and will honor our attempt to know him with deeper relationship in ways we cannot anticipate. 

Pitfalls to avoid:

-valuing our background, training, and experience over the text

-defending ideas we value rather than reading to understand

-lacking humility

-avoiding discomfort

-avoiding ambiguity

-being impatient, insisting on drawing a conclusion based on what’s in front of me

-basing interpretation on a single passage without attempting to comprehend parallel or otherwise related passages

-ignoring structure or relationships between passages

-relying on our own intellect vs inviting the Spirit

-trying to be in control

If we do this Bible study well, you can expect it to be an uncomfortable experience sometimes. I don’t intend it to be abusive. I will not try to harm you with it, but I expect it will be uncomfortable to realize we don’t understand things we thought we did or that things we’ve long believed aren’t well supported or, possibly, are even wrong. When that happens, it’s tempting to defend our old position, but I would instead encourage you to pause and meditate on what the text says, what your old beliefs were, and what a new belief based on the text might look like. Then, there will be implications for the new belief. Sometimes those implications are far reaching and take a long time to comprehend. Often, our emotions are driven by the realization that changing our belief will have significant implications, which it’s uncomfortable to think about or embrace. I hope ultimately we will each be able to arrive at conclusions consistent with the text, well thought out, and integrated into a larger understanding of what the Bible is saying to us across all its books. 

My intent is to keep the focus on the text itself. Sometimes, though, we will introduce secondary material to give us context that may be necessary to understand the text well. We live several millennia and half a world away from the original author and audience, so our context and assumptions are likely quite a bit different than theirs. Considering topics like geography, ancient stories and religious practices, and archaeological evidence may help us understand the ancient context better. These things aren’t scripture, but they may aid us in understanding it. 

Most of all though, we should maintain an attitude of humble, prayerful, Spirit-inviting meditation. This is God’s word. He uniquely understands it and can assist us in understanding. He delights in relationship with us and has given us this word for that purpose.

Consider the themes of Genesis 1, Joshua 1, and Psalm 1, the first chapters of each section of the Hebrew Bible. What do they consistently tell us?

When I was in school, the textbooks used a model a lot like this to describe an atom. It’s not what an atom actually looks like. It’s a model used to show some key ideas, but it’s simplified to an extreme degree. There is benefit to teaching this model – it helps us to understand important concepts, but it isn’t the same as a real atom.

One way of interpreting Genesis 1 is as an analogy to this kind of model. It is intended to communicate key ideas. It does so in an incredibly sophisticated manner, but it’s discussing all of Creation in a single page. It will necessarily lack important detail to fully understand the origins of the universe and of life. It has the utility its author intends, but it is not designed to answer all the questions we have or support in-depth scientific inquiry.

Orality – Tonya Slaubaugh

The Israelites lived in a primarily oral culture. Scholars think it is most likely that Genesis was told orally before it was written down at a later date. We live in a primarily literate culture. Reading and writing are the main means of. communicating information and history. Neither are better or worse than the other. But they are different, in more than just speaking vs reading. Oral cultures learn differently than written cultures.

It has been my experience that the more literate people have a harder time learning through a story (and vice versa). Usually a very literate person only understands the story after someone explains it to them (exposition). The Israelites, being a primarily oral culture, would have had lots of practice with using stories to teach and learn. It’s a completely different method than the one we were taught in school.

I would like to walk you through an example (if you are willing) of learning through story.

Have someone read this story out loud: 

“The Gift” 

“In one seat, a wispy old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was

a young girl whose eyes came back again and again to the man’s flowers. The time

came for the old man to get off. Impulsively he thrust the flowers into the girl’s lap. “I can 

see you love the flowers,” he explained, “and I think my wife would like for you to have

them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” The girl accepted the flowers, then watched the old

man get off the bus and walk through the gate of a small cemetery.” - Bennet Cerf

Take a few minutes and have everyone answer this question silently: “Which character did you see yourself in or resonate with? Why?”

Then, have a few people share their answers with the whole group. Next, have everyone turn to the person next to them and share their answers. Then, have each person ask the person next to them, “What could you learn from that character/the part of the story that resonated with you?”. Have each person discuss. Have a few people share what they learned from the story that might apply to their own life (i.e. how they might live a little differently or think a little differently about something).

Discuss this exercise as a large group. What parts of that were easy? What parts of that were hard? Did you like that? Did you not like that? Okay, now let’s do an exercise for literate learners with the same story.

Have someone read the story out loud for the group again:

“The Gift”

“In one seat, a wispy old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was

a young girl whose eyes came back again and again to the man’s flowers. The time

came for the old man to get off. Impulsively he thrust the flowers into the girl’s lap. “I can

see you love the flowers,” he explained, “and I think my wife would like for you to have

them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” The girl accepted the flowers, then watched the old

man get off the bus and walk through the gate of a small cemetery.” - Bennet Cerf

Take a few minutes and have everyone answer this question silently: “What is the point of this story?”

Then, have a group discussion with the answers from the whole group. What is the point of this story? Have everyone come to a general conclusion. Then, take the point of the story that you came up with and discuss just that concept. Next, have everyone turn to the person next to them and answer the question, “How might you apply that concept to your life?” 

Okay, so now that you have done both exercises, which one was easier for you? Which one was harder for you?

Now let’s read the first chapter of Genesis, keeping in mind that in oral cultures, stories often do not have a single meaning or point (stories build upon and use other stories, but we will get to that later!)

March 29, 2026

Genesis 1:1-2:4 – read first

We’ll talk more about the structure of Genesis 1 in the future, but I think it’s important to recognize an outline from the start. The pre-creation state is darkness over the waters, an empty and undifferentiated land. On day 1, God separates light from darkness. Day two, God separates waters above from those below. Day 3, waters below recede to reveal dry land and plants emerge. Day 4, corresponding to day 1, God populates the heavens with sun, moon, and stars and gives them purpose. Day 5, corresponding to waters above and below of day 2, God populates with birds and fish. Day 6, corresponding to the land and plants emerging on day 3, God populates with animals and finally man.

There are apparent relationships between day 3, where trees are emphasized to bear fruit and day 6, where humans are blessed to be fruitful, and between day 4 where heavenly bodies are designated for signs, for seasons, and to rule over day and night, and day 6, where humans are made in God’s image to rule over animals.

Trees and animals are fruitful but do not rule. Heavenly bodies are rulers but not fruitful. Uniquely, humans are made both fruitful and as rulers.

John Sailhamer was a biblical scholar who wrote on biblical narrative and understanding its meaning. Near the end of his career, he published a popular level book discussing the early chapters of Genesis which did not receive wide acclaim within biblical studies but does contain some key ideas that make it worth considering some of his proposals.

I’ll be summarizing a book-length somewhat technical argument into a much smaller space so will inevitably present some things in a less than ideal manner. Sailhamer’s approach in his book Genesis Unbound (also here) begins in Genesis 1:1 – “God created the heavens and the land.” He suggests that a naïve reader, one who had not previously read the passage, would reasonably wonder whether this is a reference to something that has already happened or is a summary of what’s about to happen. Arriving at verse 2, where land and waters already exist, the reader would conclude that some creation has already occurred prior to the six days described in the remainder of the chapter.

Sailhamer then suggests that rather than identifying the creation of each element, the narrative of the six days recalls earlier creation (in the beginning) and describes appropriation or assignment of mostly existing creation toward the purpose of preparing a fruitful land suitable for man’s life, fruitfulness, and relationship with God.

He accepts the evening and morning phrases as indicating 24 hour days, but for him, there is no problem with defining that 24 hours because he views the sun and the earth as already made in the beginning.

For me, the real significance of Sailhamer’s approach is his recognition of the passage’s focus on the preparation of a fruitful land for relationship between God and people. We will return to Genesis Unbound as we read Genesis 2, and there he goes further to connect the fruitful land found in these initial chapters to recurring themes in later narratives.

Tonya gave us a couple of exercises that will lead us into the next section:

An Egyptian creation myth (summarized in normal English):

At first there was nothing but Nun, the primal ocean of chaos which contained the seeds of everything to come. In this jumble of waters the sun god reposed. Finally, by an exertion of will, he emerged from chaos as Ra and gave birth to Shu and Tefnut by himself. In turn Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture, gave birth to Geb and Nut, the earth god and sky goddess. Thus the physical universe was created.

Men were created from Ra’s tears. Eons passed and Ra grew decrepit, so the ungrateful race of men plotted against Ra. When Ra learned of these plots he angrily called a council of the gods.

The gods decided that mankind must be destroyed, and Ra dispatched the goddess Hathor to wipe out humankind. Hathor did an effective job of it, killing men by the tens of thousands until only a tiny remnant was left. Then Ra relented, and men were spared. But Ra was thoroughly sick of the world and retreated into the heavens, leaving Shu to reign in his place. At that time the present world was established.

Against the orders of Ra, Geb, the earth god, and Nut, the sky goddess, married. Then Ra in his wrath ordered Shu, the air god, to separate them. Shu defeated Geb and raised Nut aloft, separating them permanently. However, Nut was pregnant, and Ra had decreed that she could not give birth in any month of any year. Seeing her plight, the god of learning, Thoth, gambled with the moon for extra light and thus was able to add five extra days to the official Egyptian calendar of 360 days. On those five days Nut gave birth to Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nepthys, successively. Osiris became the incarnation of good, while Set became the embodiment of evil. In this manner the two poles of morality were fixed once and for all.

Discussion question: what things stuck out to you that are similar to the Genesis narrative and what things are different?

A Babylonian Creation myth (summarized in normal English):

Everything originated with water. From the mixture of sweet water, Apsu, with salt water, Tiamat, the gods arose. Apsu and Tiamat gave birth to Mummu, the tumult of the waves, and to Lakhmu and Lakhamu, a pair of gigantic serpents. In turn these serpents produced Anshar, the heavens, and Kishar, the earthly world. And from these two came the great gods, Anu, Enlil, and Ea, as well as the other gods of the sky, earth, and the underworld.

Many of these new gods were noisy, which upset Apsu and Tiamat, since they could not rest. These primordial goddesses then discussed whether they should annihilate their progeny. When Ea, the all-knowing, learned of Apsu's plan to destroy the gods he used his magic to capture her and Mummu. Tiamat was furious and created a monstrous army of gods and freak creatures to punish Ea and his cohorts.

Ea went to his father Anshar, and Anshar advised him to send Anu to fight Tiamat. But both Anu and Ea were afraid of the goddess and her army. Then Ea called Marduk forth. Marduk promised to conquer Tiamat if he were given supreme authority over the gods. The gods agreed that he was to have lordship and feasted in his honor. Marduk was invested with the scepter, the throne, and an invincible weapon.

Armed with bow and arrows, lightning, the winds, a hurricane, and a special net, Marduk rode forth to meet Tiamat in his chariot, which was a tempest, drawn by four fearsome steeds. They clashed and Marduk caught Tiamat in his net. When she opened her mouth to swallow him, Marduk let loose the hurricane, which filled her jaws and belly, thereby stunning her. Then Marduk shot an arrow into her belly and killed her. Tiamat’s army fled in confusion at her downfall, but Marduk caught them in his net, chained them, and cast them into the underworld.

As he was cutting up Tiamat’s body, Marduk conceived a plan. From one half of her body he made the dome of the heavens, and with the other half he made the earth. He established the dwelling of the gods, fixed the positions of the stars, ordered the movements of the heavenly bodies, and set the length of the year. Then to gladden the hearts of the gods Marduk created men from the blood of Kingu, the general of Tiamat’s army. Finally, he made rivers, vegetation, and animals, which completed the creation. In recognition of his triumphs the gods bestowed all of their titles and powers on Marduk, making him the God of Gods.

Discussion question: what things stuck out to you that are similar to the Genesis narrative and what things are different?

The similarities and differences may be significant in understanding the biblical authors’ intent. Among the similarities are pre-existing waters, separation, waters above and below in some form, the fruitfulness of the land as focus. The differences include that the biblical account lacks the violence of the others. The Bible’s humans have an elevated purpose where the others’ are slave labor. Interestingly, there is a subtle reference in the biblical account to a sea monster – on day five the word often rendered in English as “great sea creature” is elsewhere translated as “dragon,” “serpent,” or “sea monster.” Unlike the titanic struggle between the Sumerian/Babylonian/Assyrian creators and their sea monsters, Elohim of Genesis 1 speaks the sea monster into being without further remark, and it presents no threat to God or creation. The God of Genesis 1 is sovereign, desires relationship with his people, and appoints them as his image, his representatives to his creation. For God, we have value and purpose, and he’s given us an essential role in this story.

The opening line of Genesis 1 – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the land”

The closing line of 2:4 – “in the day God created the land and the heavens”

The middle events of 1:1-2:4 are day 3, the waters receding to reveal the land, and day 4, the population of the heavens.

The culminating event of Genesis 1 creation is God forming humans, who are the image of God in the land, a connection between heaven and earth. This done, God rests on the seventh day.