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!)