Genesis

“ Nay, it should teach us to regard the Book of Genesis with increased veneration, as a relic dating from the most ancient days of man's history on earth; its roots cross the great ocean; every line is valuable; a word, a letter, an accent may throw light upon the gravest problems of the birth of civilization. ”

“ The leading characters of Genesis—Adam, Enos, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph—seven in number, represent the seven chief stages of the soul's existence which follow each other like the notes in the musical scale. It is our own experience that is there portrayed, both present and prospective. What we as individuals, and nations are now going through in our efforts for betterment, is told in the story of Genesis. ”

“ The book of Genesis, wherein the virtues of the Patriarchs bud forth, is Paradise; Deuteronomy, wherein grow the precepts of the Law, is also Paradise, wherein the tree of life brings forth good fruit, and diffuses over all nations the precepts of eternal hope. ”

“ The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth. ”

“ If the order of Genesis was meant as science, then geology and Genesis are at issue; but, on the other hand, if the sequence in Genesis was never meant to be physical the wrong lies with ourselves, who have searched for geology where we should have looked for religion, and have, with the best intentions, persisted in trying to turn the Bible bread of life into the arid stone of science. ”

“ A second necessity for beginning with Genesis is that the living and real prelude of the older Scriptures is so Spiritual overture brief that it would almost seem, from the preponderance of unreality in the entire narrative, as if reality did not predominate over unreality, the light over the dark, the straight line of Spirit over the mortal deviations and inverted images of the creator and His creation. ”

“ The second chapter of Genesis depicts man's creation differently. Here he appears as the first of created beings, leading a life of perfect innocence in the garden of divine bliss. Before him God brings all the newly created beings that he may give them a name and a purpose. But the Serpent enters Paradise as tempter, casting the seed of discord into the hearts of the man and the woman. ”

“ Creation in Genesis is in the highest degree a common-sense one. The creation of (1) the heaven, and (2) the earth; the darkness—not upon the face of the earth, but upon the face of the deep. Then the expansion dividing the waters above from the waters below on the earth. ”

“ For in it I see a triple allusion, to the Maker, to the being made, and to the image. The being made is man; God made him, and made him in the image of God. If Genesis were speaking of an isolated God, it would certainly have been And made him after His own image. ”

“ Hence, we imagine, the exceeding fulness of the book of Genesis in its painting of character and life. Nowhere have we anything like such large and graphic portraiture as here. The reason is surely that in those ages life was richly doctrinal, and that the God who caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning saw that the history of such lives as those of Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Jacob, and Joseph, would be the most precious legacy which could be handed down from the age of the patriarchs to all time. ”

“ In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis and went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis the next day; if a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation,—if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience,—if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. ”

“ But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no scientific authority and possessing none. ”

“ Each of these originally independent stories illustrates its own peculiar religious teachings. None has taken a deeper hold on the imagination and made a deeper impression on the thought and literature of the world than that which is found in the second and third chapters of Genesis. Its theme— the origin and nature and consequences of sin—is of vital, personal interest to every man of every age. ”

“ But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which led me to put as little faith in modern speculations on this subject as in the venerable traditions recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis, was perhaps more potent than any other in keeping alive a sort of pious conviction that Evolution, after all, would turn out true. ”

“ We can easily imagine, some of us have bitterly experienced, the shock of this changed conception. But it was only because we mistook the clothing for the truth in both cases. We read science in its own terms; we read Genesis in its own terms. ”

“ Every book, whether sacred or profane, must be examined and interpreted according to the end for which it was designed. Now the end and scope of the Book of Genesis was not to instruct mankind about the movements of the heavenly bodies, or the physical changes of the Earth’s surface, or the laws which govern the material universe. ”

“ The slightest consideration must convince us, that all natural sources of information respecting so primitive a period must have ceased to exist, at least in any reliable form: and the earliest portions of the book of Genesis have every characteristic of that beautiful mythical composition, which is the first fruit of the literary activity of every simple-hearted nation, and which mingles together in one texture, tradition, fact, speculation, poetical conception, and moral truth. ”

“ In this regularity of composition, according to a settled plan, the book of Genesis may clearly be seen to be the careful production of one single author, who looked at the historical development of the human race in the light of divine revelation, and thus exhibited it as a complete and well arranged introduction to the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God. ”

“ Frank Wood Haveland (published by the author, 205 West 118th Street, New York, $2) , entitled Science, the Ancient Hebrew Significance of the Book of Genesis, is a little bewildering to one not initiated into the mysteries of Christian science. The book of Genesis is described as the foundation of all other books of the Bible and of every science, philosophy, and religion of all ages, and as explaining various biblical and human mysteries, including the science of healing of the sick, and revealing the highest conditions of thought. ”

“ In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall into the same lines of incidence in human thought. ”

“ With Science. Though “the conflict of science and the Bible” has been often referred to, yet the testimony of the best scientists is that the opening chapters of Genesis are in substantial and growing accord with geology; that the tenth chapter of Genesis tallies with the latest conclusions of comparative philology; and that modern astronomy furnishes the best illustrations of the attributes of God as revealed in Scripture.
5. The Fulfillment of its Prophecies.—It is very evident that no man, unaided by Divine wisdom, can know the future and make prediction of coming events. ”

“ But those older revelations, imparted to the first man and the second progenitor of mankind, are expressly laid down as the groundwork of that evangel of the creation, which forms the introduction to the whole volume of Scripture, and furnishes us thereby with a key to understand the history and religion of the primitive world—or, to speak absolutely, the true Genesis of the existing world, its history and its science. ”

“ Genesis v, 1, the history of Adam’s creation, and of his posterity. “The generations of the heavens and of the earth,” Genesis ii, 4, is a recital of the creation of heaven and earth. “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David,” Matthew i, 1, is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, and the history of his life. The ancients sometimes computed by generations: “In the fourth generation thy descendants shall come hither again,” Genesis xv, 16. “Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation,” Genesis 1, 23. ”

“ If, however, any one of you is not able to obtain all the books of the Old Testament, at least let him diligently take pains to transcribe for himself correctly the first book of the whole sacred history, that is, Genesis, by reading which he may come to understand the creation of the world. ”

“ Read without prejudice or bias, the narrative of Genesis i, creates an impression at variance with the facts revealed by science." The eminent professor ends by saying that the efforts at reconciliation are "different modes of obliterating the characteristic features of Genesis, and of reading into it a view which it does not express." ”

“ But at present I wish you to become fully assured that everything is subject to Genesis.’
Footnotes ↑ Wieseler thinks that the reading should be: “I did not retire.”↑ Genesis is destiny determined by the stars which rule at each man’s birth. ”

“ It will now, I trust, be clear that by such an interpretation of Genesis we at once give (1) a full and natural meaning to all the terms; we reconcile it with other Scripture, and we enhance all the sublime attributes which we have been reverentially accustomed to connect with this ancient passage. (2) We obviate the difficulty regarding the second narrative in chapter ii. 4. And (3) we place the whole above any possible conflict with science, and above any need for "reconciliation." ”

“ It cannot be taken as literal history, and it does not tell by divine authority how man was created.” To these utterances we reply that the two accounts are not inconsistent but complementary, the first chapter of Genesis describing man's creation as the crown of God's general work, the second describing man's creation with greater particularity as the beginning of human history. ”