Down To Egypt It then chronicles their history as eventually seventy of them went down to Egypt. The Scripture records their miraculous delivery from Egypt, some four hundred years later and their journey on the way to the Promised Land. As the nation was on their way to the Land of Promise certain questions would naturally arise among the people. Where did their nation come from? What promises were made to Abraham and his descendants?
Where did they live? What was the nation's special relationship to God? Where did the patriarchs come from? Where did humanity originate? How did the universe begin? Where did animal and plant life come from? Did God create the universe for a purpose? What was the origin of marriage and family?
How did the world get to be so evil? Why is humanity now in an alienated relationship with God? All these questions are answered with the writing of the Book of Genesis. It answered the questions of the people where they came from, how and why they got down to Egypt, and what was their heritage? Genesis And Mt. Sinai One of the purposes of the author of Genesis was to make a connection between God's original plan of blessing for humanity and His establishment of the covenant with the nation Israel at Mt.
The covenant at Mt. Sinai is God's plan to restore the blessing lost in the Garden of Eden when humanity rebelled against God. This lost blessing will be realized through the descendants of Abraham. Blessing Not Restored The covenant at Mt. Sinai did not restore God's blessing to humanity because Israel, the chosen people, failed to keep their part of the covenant.
Hence God promised future blessings for the people that He Himself would bring. The Lord said there will come a day when God will give Israel a new heart to trust Him. Sinai, there is a promise of future blessing where God's promises will be fulfilled. The author of Genesis, therefore, is calling people to have faith in a faithful God who will ultimately succeed where humanity has failed. Selective Accounts The viewpoint of Genesis is not that of the modern historian who gathers his material and arranges it in a chronological order.
The writer, or compiler, of the Book of Genesis was selective in the material that he used. The purpose of the author is to present a brief outline of the history of divine revelation up to the beginning of the national life of Israel. The creation account, for example, is not a complete account of all things that occurred in the beginning.
The events recorded fit the author's purpose and set the stage for the momentous things that were to follow. Summary We can conclude the following regarding the reason for the composition of the Book of Genesis. The title Genesis comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew text. The English translators kept the Greek title of the book. Genesis has two main divisions.
The first eleven chapters cover the Creation, Fall, Flood, and Tower of Babel while the great majority of the book involves God dealings with one man - Abraham and his descendants.
The book was written to explain to Abraham's descendants-Israel, why they were going to the Promised Land. The nation Israel on their way to the Promised Land, needed to know where they came from, where the world came from, how humanity had originally failed, and how God was going to fulfill the promises to redeem His fallen creatures from their sinful condition. The author also links the events in Genesis to the covenant at Mt. The descendants of Abraham had a chance to restore the original blessing lost by Adam's sin.
Unhappily they also failed. The author is selective in the events he records. They are written to chronicle the main events in the history of the Israelite people. There is no attempt at thoroughness or to give all the events in a strict chronological order. Donate Contact. Blue Letter Bible is a c 3 nonprofit organization. APA Format. Chicago Format. SBL Format. The question of when Genesis was written is not a new one. It has been a focus of modern biblical scholarship since the eighteenth century.
Unfortunately, this scholarly development is often looked on as largely negative, as if it is simply unsettling the undisturbed consensus of thousands of years of Jewish and Christian opinion. Modern biblical scholarship is hardly above criticism, and some dramatic shifts have happened that were unprecedented in the pre-modern period. But it is wrong to suggest that a universal and undisturbed consensus was suddenly under attack by academics.
Modern scholarship on the Pentateuch did not come out of nowhere; the authorship of the Pentateuch as a whole had posed challenges to readers centuries before the modern period. Having some insight into when the Pentateuch was written has helped readers today understand something of why it was written. That why question is important when the discussion turns to the relationship between Genesis and modern science—be it cosmology, geology, or biology.
The more we understand what Genesis was designed to do by its author, the better position we will be in to assess how Genesis is or is not compatible with modern science. Making false assumptions about what to expect from Genesis is perhaps the single biggest obstacle to a fruitful discussion between science, especially evolution, and Christianity.
Moses wrote Genesis for the people of Israel, whom he led out of slavery in Egypt back to the land of their forefathers.
Genesis provides a history of those forefathers—their origins, their journeys, and their covenants with God. The first eleven chapters of Genesis paint the early history of the human race in broad strokes. Genesis covers the most extensive period of time in all of Scripture, longer than the other books in the Bible combined! To the original readers of Genesis, the book was valued as a history of their people. It told them the story of how God created the world and dealt with all humanity until He initiated a personal relationship with their forefather Abraham.
Genesis revealed to them the eternal promises God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—promises which extended to their descendants. For later readers, Genesis offers a thorough background to the rest of the Bible. Here we learn ancient history and geography and are introduced to significant people and events found later in the Bible. God also reveals many facets of His nature through His dealings with people.
The Bible is divided into two major parts, the Old and New Testaments. Testament is another word for covenant. Sin broke the perfect peace between God and humanity Genesis 3 and instead of enjoying the blessing God intended, humanity was burdened with the curse.
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