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Core Bible
The Hebrew name of the book is Bereshit (in the beginning). This practice of naming books after the first or one of the first words was common in ancient times. In Greek, the book is called Genesis, from the Greek word with the same meaning. The first eleven chapters are often referred to as prehistory. They describe the creation and early history of humanity. They provide fundamental answers to questions about our existence. It is God who created the universe, made the earth habitable, filled it with life, and finally created man in his own image—to care for and be responsible for creation. Everything was good until sin entered the world. At the same time, God's plan of salvation runs like a thread through the entire book, with a savior who will defeat evil already promised in Genesis 3:15. The story continues to describe how humans grow both in number and in wickedness. Prehistory culminates in the dramatic story of the flood, after which humanity once again begins to spread across the earth. After prehistory, the focus shifts to how God chooses a man and his wife, Abraham and Sarah, to become the special people God will use to bless all of humanity. We follow the drama of how the people grow in four major literary units focusing on Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and finally Jacob's twelve sons. The last unit contains the unforgettable story of Joseph.
The Toledot formula
The Hebrew word toledot comes from the word for “to give birth” or “to give rise to” (Hebr. jalad). The word toledot is used as a marker for a new unit. In Genesis, the toledot formula appears eleven times (Genesis 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2). The Core Bible translates toledot with the phrase “continued story.” What follows the toledot formula may be a family tree or a story, but often a combination of the two is included. What they have in common is that the person whose name the toledot bears exists when the toledot begins. The story or family tree starts with him. Sometimes, as in Noah's toledot (Genesis 6:9–9:29), Noah is the main character throughout the toledot, while it is common for the person who gave the toledot its name to die at the beginning, after which the action focuses on someone he fathered, his son. This is the case, for example, in Terah's toledot (Genesis 11:27–25:11), where Terah dies five verses into the toledot, while the rest of the long toledot consists of stories about his son Abraham.
As a rule, the toledot bears a person's name, but the first toledot is called “the toledot of heaven and earth” (Genesis 2:4–4:26). Heaven and earth exist, but man has not yet been created, and from there the story continues. The second toledot is called “the toledot of Adam” in Hebrew (Genesis 5:1–6:8), which can be interpreted either as the toledot of the person Adam or the toledot of “man,” as Adam means “man” in Hebrew. The toledot begins with the creation of man and continues until the flood story begins.
The various toledot units are linked together, so that the beginning of a new unit links it to the end of the previous unit. If one is unaware of this, it may seem as if the text is unnecessarily repetitive in the “seam” between the toledot units, when in fact it is skillfully linked together.
Based on the use of the toledot formula, the Book of Genesis can be divided into twelve overall literary units.
1. The creation story (Genesis 1:1–2:3)
2. The continued history of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 2:4–4:26)
3. The continued history of man (Adam) (Genesis 5:1–6:8)
4. The continuing history of Noah (Genesis 6:9–9:29)
5. The continuing history of Noah's sons (Genesis 10:1–11:9)
6. The continuing history of Shem (Genesis 11:10–26)
7. The continuing story of Terah (Genesis 11:27–25:11)
8. The continuing story of Ishmael (Genesis 25:12–25:18)
9. The continuing story of Isaac (Genesis 25:19–35:29)
10. The continuing story of Esau, in Canaan (Genesis 36:1–8)
11. The continuing story of Esau, as the progenitor of the Edomites (Genesis 36:9–37:1)
12. The continuing story of Jacob (Genesis 37:2–50:26)
It should be noted that there is another toledot formula in Numbers 3:1: the toledot of Aaron and Moses – from the time following God's conversation with Moses on Mount Sinai. This last toledot covers the rest of the Books of Moses (from Numbers 3:1 and the entire Book of Deuteronomy) and ends with the death of Moses. This means that the five Books of Moses together consist of 12 overarching literary units preceded by the creation story, the story of the beginning of everything. If we include the last one, this means that Jacob's story would continue from Genesis 37:2 all the way to Numbers 2:34. In that case, the unit ends with Israel's first census and how they were to encamp according to their tribes. A perfect ending to Jacob's (Israel's) continuing story.
Reality harmonizes with the Bible's story
The creation story answers the question of who set in motion our finely tuned universe with its matter, time, and energy. It also answers the question of where the wisdom came from that was able to program the program code that constitutes DNA and is found in all life.
Everything is described in the right order. After conditions on Earth were made such that it could sustain life, plant life came into being first, then animal life in the sea and air, followed by life on land, and finally, humans were created. Life is created as different main groups or species of animals. From these, a natural development or specialization takes place, which means that, for example, the wolf, the dog, and the fox have been able to evolve into separate species over time. In these cases, it is only the size or color of already existing organs that changes for natural reasons, driven by natural selection. Archaeological finds harmonize with the biblical account. It is quite obvious that an enormous catastrophe of the magnitude described in the flood story has occurred. Enormous fossil graves bear witness to a terrible catastrophe in which billions upon billions of plants and animals died and were quickly buried, allowing fossils and even coal and oil to form.
The fact that human languages seem to go back to different families and groups has surprised linguists, but it is entirely consistent with what the story of the Tower of Babel describes. There is no good scientific reason why a week consists of seven days, but the Bible provides the explanation in its very first story. The Bible's description of reality is in harmony with reality!
The goal – fellowship with God
One of the names for the five books of Moses is Torah. The Hebrew word Torah means teaching. The word comes from the verb jara, which means to throw (like an arrow) or to shoot something. In 1 Sam 20:20, the word is used specifically to refer to shooting arrows at a target! Torah shows a direction and provides guidance. The word for sin in both Hebrew (Hebr. chata) and Greek (Greek hamartia) means to miss the target. The goal for humans is to live in communion with God, their Creator.
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Jesus in creation
The first word in the Bible (Hebr. bereshit) begins with the prefix be-, which can mean in, but also with or through (e.g., as in writing with the help of a pen or through someone's efforts, it is possible). This is followed by reshit, which means the beginning and the first, but also the best, the most distinguished, or the finest. It is probably this first word that Paul alludes to when he says in Col 1:16:
For in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible.
The phrase “in him” can be derived from bereshit, which can also be interpreted as “through/in the first/best” – the only begotten Son Jesus – God created the heavens and the earth.
The first verse of the Bible is mathematically perfect on several levels. It consists of 7 Hebrew words and 28 (4 x 7) letters:
bereshit bara Elohim et hashamaijm veet haarets.
The middle word et consists of two letters, alef–tav, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The word et is an object particle that indicates that the following word, which is “heavens,” is the object in the sentence. In Rev 1:8, Jesus says that he is the alpha and omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, which is the equivalent of alef–tav in Hebrew. Although this is only a linguistic grammatical detail in Hebrew, it can be interpreted that Jesus is also represented in the middle of the Bible's first verse, moreover at God's side – et follows directly after Elohim (God). Interestingly, the letter alef was originally written as an image of the head of an ox. The ox was used as a sin offering for the whole people. The sacrificial animal (the ox) was then combined with a cross (a tick), which is how the letter tav was originally written.
One could view this as a coincidence. The object particle appears countless times, and the idea is not that every time it is used, Jesus is represented. But in the light of the New Testament, one can sense that already in the first verse of the Bible, centrally placed, there is a hint of “the first and the last” who will one day die a sacrificial death on the cross.
The days of creation
No time interval is specified from the creation of the universe in the beginning in verse 1 until the first day, when God lets there be light (verse 3). The sun and moon, which have the task of marking days and time, are given that task on the fourth day, see verse 14.
There are at least three ways in which the six days of creation can be understood from the Hebrew:
• Six 24-hour days that follow each other directly.
• Six 24-hour days, but the days do not follow each other. First comes day one, an unknown period of time passes, then comes a second day, and so on.
• The six days are a beautiful literary way of describing what God does in six distinct stages and in a specific order, but the days should not be understood as literal days even though they are described as such in literary terms.
In addition to these three ways, there is also the idea that the word day (Hebr. jom) refers to a period of indefinite length. When jom is combined with the prefix be (bejom), it sometimes has that meaning. The most common meaning is “that day” (138 times) and refers to something that happens within the span of a day (Joshua 8:25). On about thirty occasions, the meaning is an indefinite length of time and not a specific day, e.g., a time of distress (Psalm 77:3). In addition, bejom is the expression used in Hebrew for “when” or “if” (Gen 2:16, 17; Ex 10:28; Lev 14:57; Ps 20:10). It is the context that determines the meaning. In the creation story, bejom is not used, only jom, and in combination with morning and evening. The natural interpretation is therefore that the author's intention was to describe ordinary days. The seventh day is described as having no end (no evening or morning) and could continue. This is correct, but the six days of creation all end with “and there was evening, and there was morning,” which makes one of the three alternatives above more likely.
There is a parallel symmetry between the first three days (days 1-3) and the following three days (days 4-6):
• Light and time – The first day focuses on light, and night is separated from day; time begins. On the fourth day, the heavenly bodies are assigned their function as light bearers and signs for days, months, and years.
• Water and air – The second day is about water and the atmosphere that forms a living space (the air). On the fifth day, the water and air are filled with life.
• Dry land – On the third day, the land emerges and begins to grow green. On the sixth day, it is filled with life.
The earth.
©NASA
Time and space
In the early 1900s, Einstein formulated the theory of relativity, in which time is the fourth dimension. Here, in the first verses of the Bible, we sense how God can stand outside of time and know the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), while at the same time existing in time.
The heavenly bodies are the basis of our perception of time and our calendar. A year is the time it takes for the earth to complete one full revolution around the sun. A month is the time it takes for the moon to revolve around the earth. A day is the time it takes for the Earth to rotate once around its own axis. The fact that we have a week of seven days is actually illogical, as seven is not divisible by the number of days in either a month or a year. Despite this, humanity has always used the biblical seven-day week.
The Hebrew word for year (shana. see verse 14) consists of three letters (shin–nun–he) whose numerical value is 355 (300+50+5). In our Gregorian solar-based calendar, a year is 365 and 1/4 days. A normal year in the Hebrew calendar has 355 days, which exactly corresponds to the numerical value. The Hebrew calendar has twelve months, but compensates for this by adding an extra 13th month every second or third year. See also Exodus 12:2 for more on the months.
©Hazze Sandström
©Hazze Sandström
Man
Now comes the absolute climax of the story: Man is to be created. This is emphasized in several ways. God uses the first person plural “let us” when he speaks. This occurs only here in the creation story. The same way of speaking by God occurs only twice more in the Books of Moses, even then when something out of the ordinary happens, see Genesis 3:22; 11:7. A natural interpretation is that God is speaking to the other persons of the Trinity: the Son and the Spirit (or alternatively to the entire heavenly court, including the angels).
Unlike all animals, man is created in God's image. The two Hebrew words tselem and demot are used. The word image (Hebr. tselem) can refer to physical images, such as idols (Num. 33:52; Ezek. 7:20). It was believed that the person represented in the image was present in the image, that his spirit dwelt there. But “image” is also used to refer to the role of the pharaoh as representative of the sun god Ra on earth. That man is created in God's image—in God's likeness—can be understood as meaning that man is created to function as God's representative on earth. It is man who is to rule over the rest of creation. Humans are also made in God's image in that they are spiritual beings, in whom God's Spirit can dwell (John 4:24). The combination of “image” with “likeness” (Hebr. demot) also means that humans bear a certain outward resemblance to God. Throughout the Bible, when someone sees God in a vision, he is described as “human-like” (sitting on a throne, wearing a robe, etc.), despite all differences.
The Sabbath
The first day of the Jewish calendar is Sunday. It is called jom rishon (day one). The week then continues with jom sheni (day two), jom shlishi (day three), jom revii (day four), jom chamishi (day five), and jom shishi (day six). The seventh day (Saturday) breaks the pattern and is not called jom shevii (day seven); instead, only the word shabbat is used. It is a day when man's work “shall cease.” The Sabbath is not instituted here, but when it is mentioned among the commandments, reference is made to the six days of creation and that work then ceased on the seventh day, see Exodus 20:9–11. The Sabbath, and what counts as work or not, was something that was often discussed in Jesus' time, see Mark 2:27; Matthew 12:10–12, and even today among rabbis.
