Recently, blogger Marv (a.k.a asphaleia) posted an excellent series of discussion regarding his view of the redemptive plan of God. It winds up being a progressive dispensational model but was interesting enough to house here on the Bible Archive for consumption by friends and family. This is post 2 of 5.
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).
How would you write a history of the world?
Most of us would spend hours researching Liby , Herodotus, some Ibn al-TiqtaqÄ’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.
Way back I noted that words are important but especially within their context; they are intended to communicate immediate meaning to the reader. Literary methods are also used as vehicles for this meaning: markers that unite ideas (structure) are accentuated with repetition (patterns) and are all used for carrying through the overall idea (the flow of thought).