John H. Walton: The Ancient Near East

The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament. Sandra L. Richter, InterVarsity Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-8308-2577-6

There has been much debate over the interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2 throughout the years and continues today. The reason for this debate is because of the wording of Genesis 1:2 that the “earth was without form and void” (formless and empty). The real debate is the relationship of this verse to Genesis 1:1. When trying to interpret this text or any text in the Bible one must look at the grammar and structure of the passage – the original Hebrew as well as well as principles of hermeneutics to determine which interpretation is the best fit for the text. This essay will evaluate the interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2 especially the view known as the Gap theory in determining whether there is any justification for a long gap of time between the two verses (Genesis 1:1&2). This will be done by analyzing the grammatical-syntactical relationship between these two verses.

     In this essay I will take an interpretive look at Genesis chapters 5-9. The main focuses will be: the relationship between God, Noah, and Noah’s generation of mankind; the barriers and boundaries for

To study Genesis in terms of its literary and historical content is not to say that we are in any way being irreverent in our reading of this part of the Old Testament. In other words, it is possible to read Genesis in both a spirit of appreciation for its position as the opening exegetical narrative of the Bible and as a document that reflects literary and historical realities and influences during the time when it was being written down. This paper examines some of the contemporary sources that influenced the two sets of writers who recorded the events of Genesis.

In the book of Genesis, we are introduced to everything. From the creation stories to the sagas in between Genesis is an opening to the old testament and an opening to the book of exodus. This essay will contrast each creation story and describe each stories interest, explain how Genesis 12: 1-3 links the stories of 2: 4b-11 with the ancestral narratives in 12-50 and connect the sagas of Abraham/Sarah, Isaac/ Rebecca and Jacob/ Racheal.

Joseph M. Bolton RELS 103-02 Online Old Testament Studies Spring Semester 2011 Session E May 8, 2011 to July 2, 2011 The Old Testament TimeLine Creation & Primeval History The Creation: * God creates the Heavens and the Earth * God creates man in his image. *

Too much of the Christian worldview’s attention is focused on reconciling the Bible with science and archaeological discoveries when it should be focused on redemption. The theme of the Bible could be summarized into four categories Creation,

Although, Professor Albright’s most noteworthy work was working with the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was his innovative work in the field of biblical archaeology that had the biggest impact. Professor Albright, “More than any other scholar Albright’s astounding corpus of books, articles, and public lectures defined a new relationship between archaeology and biblical studies.”

In this essay I will compare and contrast the Babylonian creation story found in the Enuma Elish with the creation accounts presented in Genesis, the Jahwist and Priestly source. The reason for this comparative essay is to show that the creation stories in the Jahwist and Priestly sources of Genesis, and that the Enuma Elish have some similarities along with major differences. Including but not limited to a chaotic primitive state, the creation of mankind, the idea of “image”, and the division of primitive waters. I will then close the essay by stating what we can learn from the comparisons between these accounts.

For the past two-thousand years, the Book of Genesis has served as work of literature to the western civilization. Whether people believed in the Bible or not, the Book of Genesis tell stories they talk about having good morals, teaching live-learned lessons and overall it gives a glimpse of how the first human being acted when the world was developing and how they handle problems and situations. However, even though the book of Genesis shows a tone of life long morals, Genesis also shows the different sides of humans. Genesis shows how human can be deceitful, evil, and disobedient to authority figures. But these traits with humans were rarely displayed by man, but mostly by woman. In

Looking back, we can see glimpses of the lives of those who lived in the Ancient Near East, known as the ANE, through their stories and myths that have survived over centuries of time. Many of these stories contain unique elements that make each one personal to the civilization that they belong to, but there are common themes and ideas that are virtually shared between the traditional stories stemming from this region of the world. In fact, these parallels even extend into Old Testament literature; laced within the stories that we’ve come to know and love. It is not surprising that the Old Testament contains similarities found within ANE tradition, seeing that

This presentation is about the book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Its main purpose will be to educate you, the audience on hermeneutics, the literal and contextual interpretations of the creation story, as well as the history, author, date and importance of the book of Genesis.

In the first days of discovery and study, there was much excitement and anticipation surrounding these biblical texts. 70 years ago, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we had only the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint. Our history of biblical texts was based on those books. Now, thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have older copies of biblical texts. This new information shapes our picture of the Bible before 135 B.C. Nothing grand has changed, but our focus has sharpened. The picture is

Genesis 1-3 offered the very first outline of societal norms and therein introduced interpretations of norms related to family, gender, and sex. In our now-progressive society, the constraints of indubitable religion are removed and the differing interpretations of gender, sex, and family within religion are freely debated. Since the text of creation is divine and human logic cannot fully interpret or understand God’s word, there are copious, varying interpretations of the text. An essential starting point for interpreting the Bible is the understanding that misinterpretations are bound to happen. The difference in time and context alone is causation, let alone the factors of translation and transcription. Susan T. Foh and Carol Meyers, both graduates of Wellesley College, have very differing strategies regarding how to interpret divine texts. Meyers, a professor at Duke, directed attention towards the context in which the text was written. Since our societies are constantly in flux, the context from when the text was written is often different from the context in which predominant and accepted interpretations were fabricated. Foh’s strategy of interpreting and understanding the text is to utilize latter parts of the text, which were written with more recent contexts, in order to understand the text. Both of these methodologies set up the text to be re-interpreted, however, Foh’s methodology is more complete because it allows the text to speak for itself rather than bring in

The impact of literary studies, which increasingly questioned the relationship of the complex of biblical narratives from Genesis to 2 Kings to history, has undermined confidence in the construction of vast periods of Israelite history. The result has been the loss of the Patriarchal and Conquest periods from many historical accounts and an increasingly fierce debate over the nature of the settlement and early monarchic periods. Ironically, therefore, the very search for the world of the Bible which informed many of these revisionist studies of the history of Israel has resulted in the removal of several centuries previously attributed to that world. The conviction that the Hebrew Bible was the product of the Persian and Hellenistic periods has underpinned this radical shift. R. P. Carroll states baldly what many biblical scholars have been coming to accept for a long time: 'The Hebrew Bible is the product of the second Temple period. This ought to be an uncontentious statement, but I imagine some unreconstructed biblical scholars may wish to contest it in favour of a First Temple period origin for the Bible with some appendices from the time of the second Temple. While I can see that there may be something to be said for the view that the Bible contains fragments of material from before the collapse of the temple in the sixth century, the claim that the Bible as we