Session 1 Beginnings in Genesis Chapters 1 to 15 - Table

1 The Human and World Scene

2 Abraham - Through you I will bless the whole world

From my reading

NOT GOD (1)

Item	Chapter / verse	Description
1	1v1	Heavens and Earth (two places)
2	1v1	Plurality of single God (2)
3	1v3	The creative Word (Jesus - compare John 1v1)
4	1v3	Separation of Light and Dark (physical and spiritual - note the light is good, doesn‘t say the darkness was!)
5	1v6	Separation of water above and below (physical and spiritual, if water represents people or beings on earth and in heaven, or heavenly minded and earthly minded - evocative of the gulf between Lazarus and the rich man in the parable)
6	1 v 9	Separation of water and land (God is in charge of the waters feared in Canaanite myth)
7	1 v 11	Plants
8	1v14	Heavenly bodies
9	1 v 14	Years, Seasons, Days, etc (Note that the bodies used to define the length of the day were not created until the fourth day - how were the first three days measured? What were ‘evening and morning’ before there was a sun?)
10	1v 20	Everything that swims or flies (including the sea monsters feared in Canaanite myth(3))
11	1v24,25	Wild animals
12	1v24,25	Tame animals
13	1v24,25	Creatures that move on the ground - a third category? (Suggest non-Adamic hominids - unspiritual man, ie looks like a man but has no spirit to relate to God, is like an animal - Neanderthals etc)
14	1v26	Man
15	1v26	An image of God
16	1 v 26	Delegated authority
17	1v29	God provides food
18	2v2	God rests. Exhausted? No, complete!
19	2v2	Sabbath
20	2v9	Evil (an aspect of the tree)
21	2v10	Rivers, especially Tigris and Euphrates which feature later in the Bible
22	2v15	Work
23	2v15	Rules
24	2v19	Man starts to exercise delegated authority
25	2v21	A living creature not formed from dust
26	2v24	Marriage, monogamy. You can’t leave home to be joined in unity with multiple wives.
27	2v25	Innocence
28	3v1	The Accuser enters the scene to spoil God’s work and separate mankind from him. Was the Accuser a literal snake, created along with the other animals? Was the snake possessed by the Devil? Was the snake a symbol of the Devil? We believe God created all things, and that the devil was initially perfect, but at what stage in the six days was he created? (If in the six days?!) When did he turn against God?
29	3v1	Doubting God’s word. “Did God really say?” Reads like a 20th century theology textbook!
30	3v3	God’s word embellished with human rules
31	3v4	Temptation
32	3v4	God accused of lying to protect himself
33	3v5	The desire for a moral framework outside of God.
34	3v6	Human Sin (Evil already existed in the tree and in the serpent)
35	3v6	Sin spreads like a disease.
36	3v6	Man does what his wife tells him to! I used to think that Adam was absent during the temptation and that she took it to him and he ate, possibly unwittingly. Here it says he was with her, so he knew the story and was fully culpable and had no grounds for passing the buck. He was the one who had received the command from God, but he did nothing to correct Eve’s misquotes and did not support her against the Devil and did not intervene to stop her taking the fruit.
37	3v7	Guilt and shame. Separation from each other
38	3v8	Fig leaves - a vegetable sacrifice attempting to cover sin (like Cain’s). See item 50 below
39	3v8	Hiding from God (The garden changes from meeting place to hiding place) (4)
40	3v9	God calls sinful man, still desiring relationship. He knew what had happened and where Adam was, but wanted a response.
41	3v10	Confession
42	3v12	Blame culture
43	3v14	Punishment
44	3v15	Enmity between those whose father is the Devil (eg he is the father of lies, and also of murder John 8v44) and the living (ie Spiritual) whose mother is Eve (v20). In Particular this refers to Jesus.
45	3 v 15	God’s plan of salvation introduced.
46	3v16	Difficulty in procreating - once sin is in the world it becomes hard to obey Gods commands!
47	3v16	Disruption of gender relationships
48	3v17	Work becomes painful toil - see item 46 above.
49	3v19	Death - not instantaneous as might have been expected, giving apparent credence to the Devil’s lies, but death does come.
50	3v21	Blood sacrifice to cover sin (like Abel). The wages of sin is death, as promised by God. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sins.
51	3v22	A new exclusion from the tree of life which was not forbidden before - continues the death theme - but ultimately leads to the tree of life that is the crucified Christ.
52	3v24	Exclusion from God’s presence.
53	4v1	Sex/pregnancy/birth
54	4v2	Varying roles Shepherd/farmer. Although livestock is mentioned in many places before here, (which implies that rather than becoming domesticated at a later stage God had created the animals to be domestic) Gods instructions had been to tend the garden (implying plants). And he banished Adam from Eden to work the ground (implying plants). So was Abel straying from the plan by keeping flocks rather than farming? And if so, why was the vegetable sacrifice rejected? NIV study notes (5) point out the difference in Attitude - Cain just brought ‘some of the fruits’, whereas Abel carefully chose the best, the firstborn. This looks forwards towards the Tithe. It also points to Jesus, the chosen firstborn lamb of God. Were the sacrifices for sin, for thanks, or for love and worship?
55	4v4	God responds to human’s sacrifices. Won’t accept any old thing. How did Cain and Abel know that God had/had not accepted their respective offerings?
56	4v5	God accepts the younger brother, rejecting the older. (Compare Esau/Jacob, Joseph, Israel, David etc)
57	4v8	Sin moves on to the next generation, together with the lies and excuses to cover up. Again, the Lord knows everything, but still asks so as to bring out the response from Cain. The curse is very similar to his fathers curse on the ground, with a similar ejection from the place where he was.
58	4v13	Unrepentance, complaint about God’s justice
59	4v15	God provides for the sinner
60	4v19	Polygamy
61	4v20	Nomadic lifestyle, music, metalwork
62	4v25	God starts again with a new genetic line.
63	4v26	Men began to call on the name of the Lord. This seems different to the previous ongoing relationship - perhaps more distant? NIV study notes (6) contrast Seth’s line calling on God, rather than the self reliance of Cain’s line illustrated by Lamech in the previous verses.
64	5	Genealogies!!!
65	6v2	Mixing of spiritual and unspiritual things by mankind. Interpretations of the sons of God/daughters of men sons daughters 1 Angels humans(7) 2 kings subjects(7) 3 Godly men Ungodly women (7) 4 The line of Seth The line of Cain (7 and 8) 5 Humans (the image of God) Female hominids (see item 13 above) 6 Men (Adam made by God) Women (Eve made from man’s rib) (I suggest 4 makes the most sense)
66	6v3	God restricts man’s life. (This suggests that the extreme ages in the text are not accidental or just different ways of measuring time. Tests with laboratory animals have shown that lifespan is affected by the level of irradiation, which would change in the cataclysm of the flood. The rate of change follows a similar pattern in the Bible and the lab)
67	6v4	The Nephilim
68	6v6	God suffers pain owing to human sinfulness
69	6 v9ff	God provides deliverance from his judgement, but this requires obedience and faith
70	6v22	Someone does as he is told at last!
71	8	A new beginning, marked by an acceptable sacrifice! (tough on the birds - survive two years of flood and then get sacrificed!) No more curses on the ground
72	9	A Covenant.
73	9v3	Meat added to man’s diet, but respect for life maintained
74	9v25	The start of conflict between Canaanites and Israelites
75	10	Population of the world
76	10v10	Cush built cities and centres of population, but did God really intend a dispersed rural population? (see Ch11 v4)
77	10v10	Babylon.
78	11	False religion - attempt to reach heaven by human effort. False Gods.
79	11 v 7	Languages
80	11v26	Abraham
81	11v31	The start of the Spiritual journey to the promised land
82	12	The Abrahamic covenant
83	12v6	The Lord appears at Shechem - where later the tabernacle would rest, and where the Samaritan woman told Jesus “our ancestors worshipped on this mountain”. The covenant renewed and detailed.
84	12v10	Egypt comes into the story
85	13v14	The covenant renewed and detailed
86	14v18	Melchizedek - A priest-king like Christ - king of righteousness and king of peace
87	14v18	Jerusalem
88	14v18	Bread and wine - just a normal meal here, but given by Melchizedek it does point towards Christ.
89	14v20	Tithing -allegedly - but this one-off giving a tenth of possessions does not in my view lead to regular tithing of income.
90	15	The covenant renewed with symbols. Blood. Fire. Details added to the covenant about time and place, and things in between.
91	15v6	Righteousness through faith

References

1 NIV Study Bible, Hodder and Stoughton, 1987, note on v1, p8

2 ibid

3 ibid, note on v 21, p9

4 ibid, note on v8, p12

5 ibid, note on v3 and 4, p 13

6 ibid, note on v26, p 15

7 ibid, note on v 2 p16

8 My Dad told me so it must be true!