What does the original Hebrew text reveal about Genesis 1-11? - Dr. Steve Boyd

>> DEL: There are a lot of people who look at those early chapters in Genesis and one of the accusations is that the Bible is not a science textbook. So therefore we can't really refer to that when we look at the universe around us. What's your perspective as a scientist and a Hebraist?

>>STEVE: I would say, well, it's clearly historical — again, historical narrative, it's a magisterial literary presentation, and it's a foundational theological treatise. It also has an interesting perspective. It's what we call a phenomenological perspective.

It's what do you see. It's what do you experience with your five senses. And so and that's the perspective of the text.

>> DEL: Well, can you take me through it and show me what you're talking about? >> STEVE: Absolutely. We’ll work here with the Leningrad Codex because it is complete.

It's the easiest to read. I’m most familiar with this. >> DEL : It’s the easiest to read for YOU.

>> STEVE: But it begins with Genesis 1:1-2:3 as a preface to Genesis and the rest of the book. And then we have Genesis 2:4 is the beginning of the Toledot sections. I mentioned the Toledot has to do with the genealogy and giving birth and all that.

And so Genesis 1:1-2:3, that is the Creation account. And it actually starts I think very interesting that, what I call an introductory encapsulation — “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. " And the details are given in subsequent verses.

It starts with “in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. " There's no word in Hebrew for universe. That means He created everything.

And then the next thing we find in Genesis 1:2, we find a water ball, and it's empty and unfilled. God, in the subsequent days, is going to fill that universe. Before that His first act of creation, because it's the mind of God bringing from nothing everything, everything so that the physical laws, so that the light can work.

So that life processes can develop. All those things God puts those into place and then He creates light and so forth. Then He creates and spreads out the heaven.

It's very purposeful the way in which creation is presented. For instance, in Genesis 1:9, the best way to translate that is that "in order that the dry land would appear. " We don't have — in the Hebrew it's not two parallel things.

That the gathering… let the waters gather together into one place in order that the dry land might appear. Why? Because the dry land is where man will live.

Its purposeful. It's all moving towards the creation of man and creating a world where man will live. And so it's very purposeful, God's creation is that way — very organized as you would expect.

And so His Word is the same way. And that's why it has all these characteristics, why it's so creative, why it's beautiful literature, magnificent theology, all building from real historical events. And then we get to the fifth day of Creation and He creates life.

First with the fish and the birds. And then, the sixth day, animals and then man. And man is created in His image and we go then, as we go through Genesis 1:1-2:3, by that preface we also find in there a little section of poetry.

And so it goes from poetry — it goes from narrative to poetry to narrative — I call it a narrative-poetry switch. And because that little section of poetry is used to punctuate the prose at the point of the creation of man in God's Image. And now there's a lot of ideas about the Image of God — what does that mean?

I think that the Image of God is found in the verbs itself. Because what we find is — what does God do? And we do the same thing, but at a lower level.

We can communicate. Of course He speaks things into existence. We can't do that.

But He communicates. We can create. We can create a place like this with lights and so forth and so on.

Of course, He creates out of nothing. He pronounces things good. We evaluate and do things like that.

We label — science is all about labeling. We name things like that. We bless as He blessed.

I think the Image of God is right in the text. It's not some metaphysical thing like Augustine said of mind, will, and emotions. No, it's right in the verbs in the text.

And then we move from Genesis 1:1 -2:3 then into the details of the creation of man and how the name of God changes. It changes from Elohim which means the premier one, the pre-eminent one. Elohim.

And we move from there to Elohim, Yahweh Elohim. Yahweh, which is the covenant name. It's then about the creation of man and the way the creation of man is described is that God created man artistically.

The verb is Yatsar. A yatsar is a potter. And so he's created artistically and then we have the intimate action of God breathing into him the breath of life.

And then He creates man, He puts him in the garden, beautiful garden that He made for him. We have the prohibition not to eat a certain fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And then, of course, woman was created.

Marriage and, of course, we have another wonderful poetic section in which Adam waxes poetic when Eve was brought to him. Just like every man does when he finds his wife — all of a sudden he can start to recite poetry out of nowhere. And then we have the Fall.

There are those who want to deny the Fall. They'll say, "Well, this is just an account of why man's afraid of snakes. " That's all they say it is.

It's obviously much more than that. Apostle Paul says in Romans 16:20, he talks about "may the Lord crush. .

. may the Lord Jesus crush Satan under your feet. " This is obviously a reference back to Genesis.

With the Fall. . .

we have the. . .

Man is actually not cursed. The ground is cursed and the Serpent is cursed. But man is judged.

Adam is judged and Eve is judged. We have the expulsion from the Garden and death comes. But death becomes the means of life.

Because man can die, Adam can die, then Christ one day can die. And die for our sins. And so God turns things always- turns things around like that way.

And then we have in Chapter 4, we have just the opposite of what evolutionary biologists and anthropologists are saying. The ascent of man. We have the descent of man.

The first man who was cursed is Cain for murdering his brother. In his line we come upon one of his descendants by the name of Lamech. And Lamech, what he does — and again, in one of those N.

P. N. switches, he boasts to his wives in poetry that he murdered a man.

Taking the wonderful idiom of poetry, which is to be used to express the most sublime things, to use it to boast of murder. It shows how man has descended. And then we come to Chapter 5 of Genesis which begins a series of 10 genealogies that go from 5:1-9:29.

Here we have a Toledot, the book of the Toledot of Adam. And what we find here is the record of the death of Adam. God said when you eat you're going to die.

And here we have the death of Adam — and we have that like a hammer blow, over and over again. And he died. And he died.

Except Enoch. So we have in these 10 genealogies there's four that are different. Enoch’s is different.

Adam's is different because it talks about that he had a son in his image. Lamech’s is different — the good Lamech — because he prays that his son Noah will deliver mankind from the results of the Curse. And that's in Genesis 5:28.

And then in Noah's genealogy, we have the entire Flood account. And the Flood — is a un-creation. It's an un-creation of the world.

Until it gets to the point that the Ark is traveling no longer above the Earth, but upon the water. You can see that it's returned to a complete water ball, going back to what it started at in Genesis 1:2. When the waters are receding, the same wording is used when the mountaintops appear, the same wording that is used in Hebrew that is used in Genesis 1:9 — that the dry land .

. . In order that the dry land might appear.

So we find these deliberate allusions to Creation that the Lord is remaking the Earth. And the Flood — is it a global flood? Well, I, mean, I don't know how many times, I think 35 times or so, the word Kol, which is "all", occurs in the Flood narrative.

If this is a judgement on mankind then it has to be global, for the sin of mankind. The way it's described, the mountains being submerged, the highest mountains being submerged under water — this is a global flood. And why would you need the animals?

. . .

save the animals? After the Flood they come out of the Ark and then we have the… they come out of the Ark and we have the first words of Noah in which he actually curses his son Ham. So, there are the first words of Noah.

Noah says nothing during the Flood narrative. He just obeys God, whatever God tells him to do, you know, make this boat 450 feet long and, you know, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Make that boat, make that boat.

Says Noah did whatever God told him to do. And as we continue through these first 11 chapters of Genesis, we come to Chapter 10, which is called the table of nations, which are the sons of Noah. It mentions in that chapter that the people are in their different nations and their languages.

So, we now go back, Moses goes back to Genesis 11:1-9 and explains how the languages developed. This is one of the — again, one of the issues that evolutionists have a hard time. Where does language come from?

They can't explain, they can't explain human consciousness, they can't explain language. And so we understand that all the languages come from a judgment of God against a rebellious people who are trying to make a name for themselves. Now the word in Hebrew for “name” is Shem.

Only God can make a Shem, you see. And they're trying to make a name for themselves, and again it's a text which has certain sounds in it. And as you read through the text in Hebrew, you keep hearing these certain sounds, and when you string them together, it spells the word Nebelah, which is the word "folly".

And so this is not a tower which is going to establish them as these great people, but it's a tower of folly. This is a task of folly to try to reach heaven, to be as great as God. Then it continues, the narrative continues in Chapter 11.

The genealogy continues with the genealogy of Shem. The difference between Chapter 5 genealogy however 5:1-9:29 is that in each geneological generation there's no mention of death. Of course, people died.

But it's no longer mentioned so it's like a new beginning again and the age starts to shrink of the Patriarchs. We don't know exactly why. And that's something that the biologists and so forth are going to have to deal with.

You know, why that happened. And then as we move to chapter 11, we come to the Toledot of Terah. And the Toledot of Terah is not going to be about Terah.

It's going to be about his famous son Abraham. And then from then on in Genesis, Moses always will, first of all, give a brief genealogy of the rejected line. So, after Abraham we don't go to Isaac, we go to Ishmael for a brief section, then we go to Isaac.

And then with Isaac, we don't go directly to Jacob, we go to Esau, and then to Jacob. And then Genesis ends — actually ends with Joseph, a descendant of Jacob, and he is buried in Egypt. All of God's promises are for the land of Canaan.

So, it sets us up perfectly — the perfect cliffhanger for the Book of Exodus. >> DEL: Steve, when you just walked through that with me, it just seems so apparent that the latter parts of Genesis and all of the genealogy and the story of Terah leading up even to Abraham — that there is no disconnect between all of that and everything that we see in the beginning. It's just one long historical narrative, is it not?

>>STEVE: It is. As a matter of fact, the genealogies form the structure not just for Genesis, but the narratives are embedded in the genealogies. The genealogies are picked up — it's actually called the Toledot — in the book of Ruth to establish that David is a descendant of Judah, which is required by Jacob's prophecy that the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a law giver between his feet until Shiloh comes — the Messiah comes.

So, this is a prophecy having to do with a monarchy that must be in Judah. So, it's established in the Book of Ruth and it uses the Toledot formula. And then we move into the New Testament, how is the pedigree of Jesus established but with two genealogies — one going back through Mary's line all the way back to Adam, showing that he is a descendant of Adam.

And then we have in the Book of Matthew the genealogy goes back to David. And the important thing is that it goes back to David through Solomon, that's the royal line. But Jesus’ actual physical descent is not through Solomon, it's through another son of David — Nathan.

But we have these genealogies, two genealogies establishing Jesus as Messiah, as both the son of David and also the son of Adam. >>DEL: Let's just step back for a second How important is the historical narrative that we find throughout Genesis including all of the generations that are laid out? How important is that to Christianity?

>>STEVE: It shows that Christianity has a historical basis. The way the Gospel is presented in I Corinthians 15 is that Jesus died according to the Scriptures. It's what the Scriptures say and the Scriptures represent actual historical data, historical events.

And that He rose again according to the Scriptures. So, Christianity is not a leap in the dark. It is an understanding that has a very strong historical basis and that our Savior is also our Creator.