The Literary Plot of Genesis
14. Genesis tells of Israel's origin as a nation and gives a message of hope for non-Jews. 15. The Book of Genesis has fifty chapters that fall into two sections. 16. The first section of Genesis, Chapters 1-11, focuses on the relationship between God and all humanity. 17. Genesis, Chapters 12-50 reveal God's relationship with the nation of Israel’s ancestors. 18. In section 1, God brings order out of chaos and creates humans to help govern the earth. 19. Humans were supposed to reflect God’s character. 20. The narrator refers to the Garden of Eden as a “Garden Temple.” 21. The setting of the Book of Genesis is in the Ancient Near or Near East. 22. Garden temples were important to the ancient Hebrews. 23. The Hebrew temple in Jerusalem takes center stage for a large part of the Old Testament. 24. In the first major section of Genesis, a sense of the supernatural surrounds the narrative about an evil serpent that comes into the garden and tricks the woman into rebelling against God. 25. The Genesis narratives continue with an account of the sons of God having relationships with humans. 26. In ancient Jewish tradition, the Nephilim were part demon and part human. 27. People believed that the Nephilim were regular humans that eventually became so powerful that they were worshipped as gods. 28. In Genesis, supernatural evils, along with the human disobedience, corrupt the world. 29. As the stories progress, the world becomes increasingly corrupt. 30. A glimmer of hope for humanity appears when God foretells that a human will defeat the serpent that is a representative of evil. 31. The Flood narrative is one of divine judgment upon humankind from which God spares only one family. 32. In the Genesis stories, God values human life, and He wants humanity to continue to grow and flourish. 33. In the last sub-section, people repopulate the earth and decide to build their own structure that will reach into heaven. 34. In the Tower of Babel narrative, God disburses humanity into various nations so that each group speaks a distinct language. 35. In the Torah, ancient Israelites believed that God also distributed the nations to different gods. 36. The second section of Genesis begins with a man named Abram. 37. God promises to make Abraham a very great person in history. 38. God says that Abram will have innumerable descendants. 39. Abram, later named Abraham, obeys God’s order to leave his home. 40. God promises Abraham a place called Canaan, also known as the Promised Land. 41. God’s promises pass from Abraham to his son Isaac, to Isaac's son Jacob, and on to the nation of Israel. 42. God instructs Abraham to leave his relatives and travel to Canaan, but Abraham never settles in the land. 43. Chapters thirty-seven to fifty focus on the sons of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson. 44. Jacob has twelve sons that later became the tribes of Israel. 45. The story about Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, tells of a coat with assorted colors. 46. The story centers on sibling rivalry and divine intervention.
Academic Initiatives for Biblical Literacy in Secondary Education
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