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genesis

Convenient Rereadings of Genesis 1

Regarding Genesis 1 and 2, I’ve often heard an offhanded and basically unsubstantiated comment to divert attention away from creation and evolutionary debates. Indeed, reading my own blog, you might see a variation of that very comment when I discuss conclusions from the text: the emphasis is not on the What or the How as much as the Who.

That is still true. The text is emphasizing the person of Elohim over the celestial objects, over the waters, over mankind—but some have used that very real main point to detract from the fact that the text does actual contain “what” and some “how” in it as well. Yes the text says that the Who is Elohim but it also expressly says What He did (he created) and how (by speaking).

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dispensationalism genesis history israel

Making Promises to Abraham

We were talking about the hinge in Genesis by which the first half of the book flows into the second and connecting the two stories.We noted how the author puts together each story in such a way as to underscore a point which he wants the reader to hold on to. Structurally speaking the hinge of the book are those covenantal promises that God makes towards Abram. Now that assumes a lot but you have to read the last post to see why I said that.

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dispensationalism eschatology genesis hermeneutics israel

Abraham: The Hinge Point of Genesis

In Genesis, the author has not only repeatedly used specific terms (favor, blessing, cursing, etc.) but he uses them all in such a way that they interconnect across the entire book. I want to show that in this post but I know that this will be difficult without charts—but I’m going to have to make do without them because sometimes folk fall into reading the chart instead of following the argument.

Now, the argument I’m making isn’t a deductive argument (e.g. If p then q. p. Therefore q.) An inductive argument is where one concludes with the most probable answer as reasonable to hold (like you can’t deductively prove that there is someone posting this, but you can inductively support it to make belief in that reasonable).

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dispensationalism genesis

Thematic Patterns in Genesis

How would you write a history of the world?

Most of us would spend hours researching Liby , Herodotus, some Ibn al-Tiqtaqā’s, the Mayans and the Aztecs, plus some Jedi Holocron over in the rediscovered Jedi Temple and then compile something in chronological order (starting a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away). Some of us would delve into Josephus and Eusebius to spice it all up with some Church History. We’d make a timeline, group it by geographical area and then tick off major events within those areas. We would try as much as possible to remove ourselves from the recounting and Stick To The Facts And Nothing But The Facts. We most definitely would avoid interpreting historical events but only rarely wondering what would’ve transpired if events went another way.

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apologetics dispensationalism genesis history human

Is There A Covenant of Works?

I keep hearing about this Covenant of Works that Adam failed in. It was part of the reason why I started writing about our relationship to Adam (here, here and here). But I want to examine this: Is there a Covenant of Works or a Covenant of Creation in the Biblical record?