Revised book - In the beginning - A commentary on the early chapters of Genesis

 

Are you struggling with the traditional interpretation of the Genesis creation story? 

Why is it that dinosaurs are not mentioned? Does Genesis present us with an accurate portrayal of the origins of humanity that stand up to scientific and historical evidence? What about talking snakes? And where did Cain’s wife come from? Did people like Adam really live for hundreds of years? Was the flood in Noah’s time a global event? 

Many aspects of the early chapters of Genesis have come to be regarded as fables or metaphors devised by primitive people to explain their origins. Yet the Apostle Paul obviously regarded Adam and Eve as real people who existed in the past. Was he wrong? 

‘In the beginning’ is a study that explores this early narrative from the opening verse of Genesis to the time of Abraham’s birth. It offers some radical, new, but coherent interpretations that nevertheless remain consistent with the text of Scripture. This study, originally written in 2020, has now been revised to remove some repetitive sections of text, amplify a few explanations and eliminate some grammatical errors. It is available from Amazon as a paperback book.

Principles of living a set apart, godly life [3] – Repentance [1 of 12]

 What happens when a Christian engages in wayward behaviour that God disapproves of? Christians often talk about ‘repentance’, by which they often mean feeling a sense of regret and turning back to God with sadness and grief at their wayward behaviour, together with a resolution and desire not to repeat it. But what do the Hebrew and Greek words translated into English as ‘repent’ actually mean?

There are lots of calls to repentance in the New Testament, particularly in the gospels with regard to Jews. We also see such calls in the Old Testament, where the Hebrew word is ‘shuwb’, a verb meaning ‘to return’ or ‘to turn back’. It’s first use is in Genesis 3 v 19 where Adam was told that he will work hard until he returns to the ground and returns to dust. Similarly in Genesis 8 v 3 it describes the floodwaters turning back, and in Genesis 8 v 9, it refers to the raven that Noah sent out from the ark returning back to the ark. In I Kings 8 v 47 it is used with regard to Jews returning to and pleading with God, confessing their wayward and wicked behaviour. 

The near-equivalent New Testament Greek word is the verb ‘metanoeó’, from ‘metá’, which can mean ‘with’, ‘after’ or ‘among’; and ‘noiéō’, from a root word meaning ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’, and thus ‘noiéō’ is taken to mean ‘perceive’, ‘understand’, or ‘think’. As a result, ‘metanoeó’ means ‘to think and perceive with or afterwards’. It occurs 34 times in the New Testament. The Greek word is more differentiated than the Hebrew word, such that it does not precisely mean the same thing. In the New Testament, the word often translated into English as ‘repent’ is actually focussed on the ‘mind’ – on thinking and reasoning things through to a conclusion after something has been said or done. Unlike the Hebrew word it is not primarily focussed on behaviour, and in some of the next posts we will see that some of the texts clearly indicate this more specific focus on the mind.