Bible: The Role Of Beasts In The Bible

The biblical metanarrative touches the storyline of the main book, the Bible, from the beginning from Genesis to the end of Revelation. Throughout the bible there are many stories that have a message and come across to Christians that relate to their life. The bible is one book with many events that tells one big story. There are five acts of the biblical metanarrative consists of which are, Act I: The God of Creation, Act II: Sin Enters the World, Act III: God Covenants with Israel, Act IV: Jesus and the New Covenant, and Act V: The Fellowship of believers. Each of these Acts have stories about the life of Jesus that has a meaning Christians relate to.

In contrast, in the story of Genesis God gave man dominion over all the creatures of the Earth. (Genesis 1:28) The man to this day, hunts animals of all kinds and disrespects nature, with clear-cutting of forestry and pollution.

The sin stories in the Book of Genesis address theological, cosmic, social, and ethical questions. These sin stories, The Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, and Noah and the Flood, and The Tower of Babel show the functions of myths and demonstrate man's likeliness to sin. These myths let the readers learn of the culture, beliefs, and foundation of the time.

God’s relationship with animals holds the same importance as his relationship with mankind. In African culture, animals have many uses and are not only used for food but are also used for religious rites (Mbiti 51). Additionally, certain animals such as snakes have ties to spiritual beings and the living dead (Mbiti 51). Snakes play an important role in the Bushmen myth, when Cagn rescues a girl from the snakes he orders the snakes to lie down, and then proceeds to use his stick to magically strike the snake body until a human crawls out (Sproul 32). He proceeds to sprinkle canna onto the snake skins so that the snakes will permanently remain in the form of people (Sproul 32). This resembles a form of creation because he creates “people” out of the snakeskin. The snakes could have also have ties to mystical spirits (Mbiti 192), and Cagn punishes them for attacking him by changing them to become his people.

Serpents also play a big role in both the epic and in Genesis. It says in Genesis 3:1-5, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” The serpent in

In the words of the temptation of Eve and the Fall of mankind – Genesis chapter 3, it talks about a creature called ‘The Serpent’, we can automatically think that a serpent is a snake like creature, but why would it be in bible readings? Some people say that the story is just a symbolic story that was only written to tell a story and show meaningful meanings throughout it, they think this because animals do not speak human

2: 19, it says, “Now the Lord had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and birds of

After reading Lord of the Flies many people think to themselves what is the “Beast”. Well if you take a few moments to think about what you have read you may think of a few things. Like perhaps, it was fear taking over their body and there wasn’t really anything there, or may think war. They knew that war was going on the violence was surrounding them and for there to be violence there has to be some kind of contact with someone or maybe even something. Another thing you might think of is they are most likely going insane on this island.

God was unhappy with man and decided to destroy both men and beast because of their wickedness. But God found favor in Noah and his family. Noah had to get ready because a flood was coming.

Oswalt first learned about the issues in “The Bible Among the Myths” while taking a class taught by Dennis Kinlaw at Asbury Theological Seminary. His interest in the subject has grown since with graduate study and his own classes which he taught. William F. Albright, his students, and G. Ernest Wright led the rethinking of the evolutionary paradigm within the philosophy of Idealism. Although they believed the differences between the ways the Israelites thought and their neighbor’s thoughts of reality caused no evolutionary explanation to show, today it is found that Israelite faith can be explained by evolutionary change. Scholars today say that it is no longer about the differences between the two, but more about the

"What is man without the beast? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are interconnected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth...If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves...Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." (Perry, 1971)

The second beast is a bear with three tusks in it’s mouth is told to devour many bodies. It is not clear the source of this command though it unlikely to have came from YHWH, but not impossible because we must remember the Israelites are not completely innocent of disregarding the commands of the YHWH. Stephen Cook, in his book, “The Apocalyptic Literature” warns readers about domesticating the Book of Daniel especially the symbols and images. “In Daniel, the heavenly court is intimately engaged in the daily unfolding events of earthly geopolitics. People and powers on earth do not act in autonomous isolation” (Cook, p. 127). Who stood up the lion-like beast on two feet and gave it a human mind? Nevertheless, chaos is not without leadership

God’s role in the Bible is characterized in several different ways, with dramatically competing attributes. He takes on many functions and, as literary characters are, he is dynamic and changes over time. The portrayal of God is unique in separate books throughout the Bible. This flexibility of role and character is exemplified by the discrepancy in the depiction of God in the book of Genesis in comparison to the depiction of God in the book of Job. On the larger scale, God creates with intention in Genesis in contrast to destroying without reason in Job. However, as the scale gets smaller, God’s creative authority can be seen in both books, yet this creative authority is manifested in entirely distinctive manners. In Genesis, God as

There are many central themes that are in the Old Testament, and many may say that there is only one theme of the Old Testament, which is Jesus, and even though that is true in a lot of ways due to the fact that a lot of the minor prophets actually talk about the coming of Jesus, His death and His resurrection. However, I have discovered five main themes of the Old Testament that I found quite interesting. And in this paper I will discuss two of them. I believe one of the most important themes of the Old Testament is Covenant.

From a religious aspect, God also puts the fear of man into the animals and again animals are used to fill the needs of men (Genesis 9:1).