Back to Genesis 1-3

As promised, we are returning to the first three chapters of Genesis to understand the context of the passages in Exodus which we were studying, and, indeed, of the entire Bible.

I had started this blog with the intent to trace the genealogies revealed in the Bible, particularly regarding the line of Abraham.  Actually, at first I had no real direction, other than being interested in those matters, and in learning more about the Bible and sharing the things which I had learned over the years with others.

Therefore, I had temporarily skipped these first three chapters of Genesis because I didn't want to get bogged down in creation vs. evolution controversies.  Not that these aren't important -- it was just that I myself was not fully prepared to discuss these matters and I had other aims at the time.  I figured that I would return to these matters later, hopefully when I knew more about them.

Well, now is later, although I have not studied creationism to the extent that I need to do.  However, I have studied the book of Genesis and it is one of my favorite books of the Bible, so I will begin by taking a look at the book as a whole and then proceed through the first three chapters.  After that, my previous posts have covered, at least in some form, the rest of the book of Genesis and up to chapter 26 of the book of Exodus.  Of course, the Bible is an inexhaustible book and I continue to learn more every day about passages which I have studied for years, so please understand that I do not pretend to know it all.  Also, please share your own insights in the comments section which follows each post.

First, a bit about Genesis.  However, I don't want it to be a lecture.  Genesis is such a wonderful book.  A truly awesome book, in a day when that word 'awesome' is greatly overused.  There are a lot of interesting things which I can write about it, but as I said above, I don't want it to be a lecture and I continue to learn more about it all of the time, so I need something which I can add to as time goes on.  How about a list?  Lists are kind of fun and easily digestible.  How about  100 Things About Genesis ?  Nope  -- too long.  OK, 50 Things About Genesis .  That is long enough to be a challenge and short enough to finish in one post.  I may get it done today or sometime over the weekend, depending upon whether this snowstorm we are experiencing in the Northeastern U.S. requires me to be busy with other matters.

Max, our dog, has plans of his own.  However, I believe they mostly have to do with napping:

Prequel

When I hear the term 'prequel', I think about the 'Star Wars' series of movies.

That was the first series of movies that I can recall which employed the technique

of producing another movie to explain in greater detail events which happened before the original movie's time.

 

I had to go back and find out more about that.

 

If you go here:

 you can see an interesting article

about the history of the making of the Star Wars series.

 

(You have to scroll down a bit to the article.  The relevant paragraph begins with "1973..." and discusses George Lucas and "American Graffiti"  Although the information about "Star Wars" doesn't begin until a paragraph or so later, this is still good background information.)

 

It turns out that there were four trilogies of movies.  George Lucas wrote the entire story, but it was far too long for one movie, so he first made the part which he thought to be the most exciting to film.  Later, of course, when the phenomenal success of the movies guaranteed the interest and funding to produce the others, a prequel and later other trilogies were produced.  At times, Lucas also waited until the development of special effects and cgi in filmmaking could catch up with his vision of how the movies should look.

 

Another article gave a list of plot elements which Lucas employed in the Star Wars series over and over again, to great success.  It was an amazingly long list, and very interesting...that is, if you are interested in that type of thing.  Since I love film-making and might write a historical fiction thriller someday, I was very interested and will have to take the time to study that list later.

 

All this to introduce an explanation about why I called this post 'Prequel':

 

As we proceeded through Exodus, I realized that soon I would come to the place where people would begin to wonder why so much detail was given to the construction of the Tabernacle.  What was the big deal?  Why did it matter?  Of course, the real big deal was that they were coming before a holy God, who set before them a way that they could approach Him.

 

However, to fully understand that, you would need to understand what had separated mankind from God in the first place.

 

Yet even before that, we'd need to think about the original relationship which existed between God and mankind.

 

I had been writing about the Scriptures which began around Genesis 4 or so, regarding the line of Abraham.  That continued until Exodus 26, when I realized that people would need to understand the pre-Abraham content of the Bible in order to have any interest in finding out more about the construction of the Tabernacle.  Things get a bit technical for a while, so I figured that the best way to understand the need for such detailed descriptions of Tabernacle furnishings (and the many details about the law which will come up in the chapters following Exodus 26) is to have an understanding about why God would have included this material in the Bible in the first place.  So that is why we are going back for a bit to the beginning of the book of Genesis.  That is why I call what is coming up a prequel...for it tells what happened before.  I'm also, as you no doubt have realized by now, having a bit of fun at the same time.