Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Rambling OT Thoughts

Being a history lover, it can be tough for me to distance myself from wanting to fit everything in Genesis into a historical timeline. I just had some thoughts that I'd love to hear input from you on if anyone has time... I know these are rambling and maybe even unanswerable. Still, I'd very much enjoy hearing your collective thoughts.

  1. How come the OT seems to skip in huge leaps? We go from Noah, with no one left on the Earth, to Babel, where it seems we have a million people together building a tower. Then, we flash to Abram, and it seems as though we are in some part of the zenith of Egypt while a big city has been built in Sodom.
  2. Local flood vs. global flood? Does it matter?
  3. Was Noah's time the absolute peak of sin? How did everything devolve so quickly? Were they necessarily more wicked than modern day people? Were they given an opportunity to repent? Is that what the time period around the building of the ark was?
  4. How did the author of Genesis know the lifespan of everyone?
  5. What were the logistics of being a person of faith in the early OT? Did it involve simply "being" righteous? Is that salvation through works? (What have I opened here...)
I don't know. I used to be a super-militant 6,000 year old Earth creationist in high school and have since mellowed out a ton. As a reader, the transition seems so blurry between this (completely factual) myth and quite precise genealogies.
Posted by at
Labels: ,

4 comments:

  1. John and Kristina RaineMay 20, 2009 at 6:54 AM

    Well, I don't think that the Bible and Genesis in particular were written to be political histories; they are meant to be the history of redemption. I guess that answers the first question more than the others. It skips around so much because those stories show more about God and how he works in His people.

    In response to the last question, I think that we would have to look to the New Testament more than just at Genesis, but I think that Hebrews speaks to that a bit. Chapter 11 talking about how "by faith" the heroes of the old testament did all sorts of things. But I think that they were looking forward to God providing an atonement, whereas we are looking back to the atonement provided.

    ReplyDelete
  2. camelboy129May 20, 2009 at 8:02 AM

    I'm worthless for these kind of answers... Id cut and paste that question into an email to Mark T.

    and then fwd me his response :)

    Ive never used one of those before. I like it!

    :) camel (:

    ReplyDelete
  3. KristinaMay 21, 2009 at 11:52 AM

    Yeah, I agree that the purpose of Genesis (and the other narrative books) was less about providing detailed history like an academic book and more about passing down the history of the people of God. The focus was more on stories that had to do with God's interaction and intervention with his people, and communicating his purpose for the nation of Israel to live as his people. So there aren't so much exhaustive histories of the other nations or even the minutia of life for Israel as there are passages that tell the story in a big-picture kind of way. Although that does make it seem a little strange when there are random details like people's ages or the number of sheep they owned. I think it also helps to know that none of the books were meant to stand on their own. They each have a different style & way of telling the story, but you only get the whole story reading all of Scripture. Like we are doing right now. So that's cool.

    ReplyDelete
  4. KristinaMay 21, 2009 at 12:03 PM

    oh, and I almost forgot - Ronny, was that really the first time you EVER used an emoticon?

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)