The Design of Genesis 1-11 pt 1
Genesis 1 # There is a cyclical pattern of Genesis 1-11. Introduction 1:1 may be a summary heading rather than the first “verse”. Chaos # The narrative begins in 1:2, and the start of everything is a “non-created world”, which in the ancient mind we should think about as “non-ordered reality”. תֹּ֫הוּ | to-hu | formless בֹּ֫הוּ | ba-hu | empty, void The first image is that there is “unordered wild and waste (wasteland)” (we typically see this as formless and void). There is also “darkness” and “deep”, which is a dark chaotic ocean - and this is the ANE person’s conception of “nothing”. Westerners think “nothing” means “no atmoic particles, no matter” but the ANE person would’ve thought about creation as unordered chaos. God’s spirit is hovering over the dark, formless, wild, chaotic ocean. Day 1 # Creation starts by separating light from darkness. The darkness is now tamed, it is apart of an ordered cycle. The ordering of the days is now established and is repeated in every subsequent…