9.07.2018

Genesis (re)considered

"In the beginning" is a phrase most people recognize. The words that follow may or may not be equally familiar.

If the full book of Genesis was a new text to you before this class, 1) what expectations did you have for it (and what were those expectations based on), and 2) how were those expectations surprised? In others words, how was Genesis not what you thought it would be? Provide at least one specific example (include verse and chapter as needed) and briefly comment on your changed perspective.

If the book of Genesis was a familiar text to you before this class, 1) what was your perception of it before this most recent read-through (and what were those perceptions based on), and 2) how was that perception surprised after reading and discussing it? In other words, how is Genesis something new or different or more than it was previously? Provide at least one specific example (include verse and chapter as needed) and briefly comment on your changed perspective.

NOTE: don't waste any words on an intro statement, needless blather, or fancy tangled sentences. Say what you want to say with confidence, clarity, concision, and cohesion. Be thoughtful. Write something of substance. Use however many words you need to make your brilliant observation, and not a single word more. At the same time, don't use one word less than you need to fully and completely make your brilliant observation.

You can do this. Don't fret. Think about it. Mull it over. Dance through it a few times in your head. Then write it down, type it up, check for spelling errors (do. not. skip. this. step.), get rid of stray commas, post it, and enjoy a snack.

Posts are due by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday Sept. 12.

Carry on.

35 comments:

  1. Growing up in a Christian home, I am very familiar with the opening chapters of Genesis. As a 1st grade student at a private Christian school, I can recall a class assignment in which we drew pictures representing the 7 days of creation in number shaped boxes (kind of like this one: https://goo.gl/images/2rQgAh). Thus, I know this story very well, and I always viewed it as the full and complete story of how God created everything (material creation). These perceptions were mostly based on my lack of knowledge of translational and linguistic elements in the narrative (I have only ever read English translations and have researched Hebrew and Greek very little). However, our discussions about functional creation and God imposing order on things changed my perspective on the first chapter especially. Chapter 1 verse 6 had puzzled me for a while. I never truly understood the separation of "waters from waters," but when viewing Genesis 1 as functional creation, i.e. God ordering things in His own way, it makes much more sense. I'm looking forward to hearing new perspectives and insights as this class continues.

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  2. I was raised in a secular household with little talk about the Bible or religion My father was a lapsed Catholic and my mother was a recovering German Protestant. So I got very little religious training. But growing up in an Italian family—it’s Catholicism, family, and pasta. A lot of my friends were altar boys. For some reason, we never discuss religion-perhaps because I it seemed like a private thing with my parents and I didn’t want to intrude upon it.
    It followed, then, that my parents as adults, and were free from the overwhelming presence of religion and turned to a secular life. Not entirely, of course. Old habits are hard to break. My dad and I went to Catholic mass on Christmas and Easter without my mother until I was six-years-old.
    I believe my dad went to church because his parents were poor Italian immigrants whose lives centered on the neighborhood Catholic Church. However, I didn’t recite memorized prayers, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me. Although baptized Catholic, my dad didn’t bother to have me go to confirmation. I remained without religion simply because no one made any effort to teach me about religion-any religion.
    So reading the Bible as literature is mesmerizing to me. I was astonished by the power of the words in Genesis. I’ve learned a lot about the Bible there are classroom discussions. I see the value of learning about the Bible. Learning about the Jewish creation tale in Genesis has been fascinating.

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  4. Genesis was a familiar text to me before this class. My interaction with the book before this most recent read-through was that of a general understanding of the story and religious intentions, but I lacked an understanding of certain passages due to the details provided and their seemingly improbable data. My perception of Genesis was that the book explained the early history of God, Creation, sin, and the promise of a savior in a way that the followers of God could understand at the time and would still resonate with future generations. This was based on a religious background.
    After the most recent reading and discussion of the text, the cultural background of some of the wording and literary choices made by the authors shed light on some of the more confusing passages, such as the dates of the Flood. In the Noah story (Gen 6-9), the text detailing the Flood and the timing (Gen 7:11-8:14) involved make more sense now that the technique of chiasmus and the fact that this was written from a memorized retelling make the repetition and styling make more sense. My perception of the book remains much the same, but perhaps understood through a different lens. Some of the hyperbole, repetition, and other literary devises are placed where they are to showcase the main character, God, and His attributes rather than the perfect retelling of history.

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  6. Before our class discussions, my years spent in Sunday school provided me a familiarity with the stories of Genesis. They were cemented in my mind as big ideas whose details I didn’t have to continuously check to understand their purpose. They served as a reasonable explanation of the creation of the world and of mankind - mainly due to my being born into a Christian family. Reading the stories in the way we have - literarily and perhaps more skeptically - revealed some of their confounding pieces. Particularly in Gen 4 with Cain and Abel, and how after murdering his brother God marks Cain for protection, “ … lest any who found him should attack him.” (Gen 4:15). At that point the only other humans around should have been Adam and Eve, and similarly puzzling is the wife that Cain later finds and has a child with in Gen 4:17. These inconsistencies never before caught my attention because they weren’t the emphasis of the lessons I was being taught, but analytically they raise a lot of question. The questioning doesn’t lean directly into undermining because I now understand how particulars can be lost or forgone in the process of writing and translating such a book. Going forward I think I’ll start to see the stories and their details (or lack thereof) with this in mind, and more carefully consider those which are included and excluded to connect the events of the big picture.

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  7. Growing up in a religious household with continued aspirations to be the best Christian I can be, I was familiar with the texts of the old testament, especially genesis. My perceptions of the bible before were based purely on faith and reading the bible as a sacred book where everything was to be interpreted as truth. Recent bible studies and this class have begun to show me how to analyze the bible with a different lens. This allows me to not only enhance my understanding of biblical structure, but also to add new aspects to my faith. While all story's in the bible may not be historically accurate, the use of literary elements in the stories allows us to understand the message being portrayed. The use of hyperbole in the Noah story is just one example of this phenomenon. Understanding the literary elements can also help expand your faith. A specific example is dreamer theory and the Dreams of Joseph. After learning about the literary characteristics that make up dream type scenes, I was able to think deeper about the stories I read as a kid by looking for patterns and the elements that relate the dream back to God. By understanding the literary principles of dream scenes, I was better able to understand the intentions of the dream to Gods overall plan. In Genesis 50, we see this come to full circle as the dreams of Joseph introduced earlier in Genesis come to a conclusion. Specifically, In Genesis 50: 19-20 "Don't be afraid of me, Am I God, that I can punish you? You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good he brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people" This is a concluding characteristic of a dream type scene that analyzes God's plan. The years of Josephs conflict come with the true intention of serving God and his people. This analysis allows me to grow in my faith at the same time, understanding that hardship still may preside in God's long term plan of glory.In other words, faith must prevail in tough times.

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  8. Growing up I knew about the bible and the most of what the book of Genesis was about. I grew up in a christian household where religion was important, and yet I never felt knowledgable about my beliefs or why I had them. We only went to church on Christmas and Easter, the rest of the year it was always that we were too “busy” to go to church or really talk about our faith. Once I got confirmed my family began to go to church on a more regular basis and we spoke about our faith more often at home. Even with this change I still had never actually read the book of Genesis until this class. I figured I knew the gist of what it was going to say, so actually reading it seemed futile. My basis for knowledge of the bible was what I learned in church and a purely self driven interest of what the bible could bring to my life. As we have discussed Genesis in greater detail in class, I have learned more than I ever thought I could from the text. My perspective of Genesis has altered since our class discussion. Mostly based on our discussion of hidden meanings. I had always taken the passages of the bible in a literal sense instead of searching for deeper meanings. When we discussed Genesis 16 and questioned whether Sarai really wanted Abram to sleep with Hagar, it opened my eyes and allowed me to read the text through a different lense. I started reading the passages and examined them based on the gender theory. Throughout Genesis you see men and women portrayed and yet man is quite often portrayed as the dominant sex. For example before the flood in chapters four and five women are simply mentioned when they have given birth to a child. Yet in Genesis 16 we see Sarai telling Abram what to do. I am interested to see what other roles women may play as we continue to read through the bible.

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  9. Before this class I was familiar with the book of Genesis due to attending bible school in my early years as a child and being raised in a “Christian” household. I put Christian in quotations because as I was raised in a Christian household and claim to be a Christian myself, due to events in my childhood, my parents did not always direct me to my faith intentionally like many of my friends had growing up. Due to this, I feel that I know less scripture when comparing myself to other Christians in my community (more rationale and personal reasoning into taking this exciting course). My perception before reading through for class, I believe I had lots of holes and questions about the meaning of the stories/books and thus taking them with less truth for what they are (looking at the significance and not getting stuck on details). After reading and discussing Genesis from a standpoint of literature, I believe it is helping me educationally, as well as in my personal faith to begin to believe why certain things are the way they are in the Bible, from a time period, and cultural sense of view based on when the texts were written. Things like why individuals live well past a hundred, looking at gender as a theme/combing through relationships based on gender, and examining functional creation versus material creation are examples of things on which my perspective has changed when reading the Bible since starting this course. It is helping me to see the stories as they are and not getting stuck on the cultural/period details.

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  11. Before reading Genesis I have heard of the text in it but was not as familiar as how structured the books are in the Bible. I grew up in a strong Catholic family. Growing up in Guatemala I went to private Catholic schools. It was not until I came to the states that I stopped reading the Bible because it was hard to follow in English for when we would go to church. When we would go to church here, it would be a Christian school, which to us was not a big deal. Reading Genesis as a literature text has been a great experience just because I have been to understand the meaning behind many stories. The themes, theories, repetitions and so on. I am more of a visual learner, so those strategies and skills have been able to make the Bible books more vividly for me to understand. I was really not expecting to not understanding just because I was fairly familiar with some of it from a long time ago. I did not think it was going to be, honestly, so long and having so many names thrown at you in a book that starts off the whole Bible. However, everything just flows so natural and fluently together that follows each story. For example, going from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2, there's a big change from making the world to having Adam and Eve and how it just goes on from those two chapters. I am very excited to see what this class will bring for the rest of the semester.

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  12. I was familiar with the book of Genesis in a very general, broad manner. I knew the main stories and events pretty well: the creation story, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, Abraham and his sons, Jacob and Esau, Jacob wrestling with God, and Joseph being sold into slavery and then rising to power in Egypt. My perceptions of this book mainly focused around being an introduction to God’s creation and the introduction of sin into the world which set up the rest of the biblical messages surrounding humanity’s inherent flawed nature in terms of original sin and their relationship with God. I saw it mostly as an explanation for the beginning of everything and an exploration of various encounters of humans with God. Something that surprised me was the instances of things in Genesis that I previously thought would never really be there. Namely, the examples of polygamy and having children with other women. The two main examples I think of are Abraham having a child with Hagar and Jacob sleeping with his wives’ maids for children. I knew about the former but never really thought that much of it until I was older. Now when I read it, I was partially confused by God’s reaction to Ishmael. I always considered it a negative thing that Abraham had relations with another woman, but now, I better understand that whether or not Abraham’s actions are moral, this story serves to show the characterization of a God who blesses the child regardless of the actions of the parents. Similarly, in the story of Jacob and the conception of his many children, I saw surprised that God would still bless those who have engaged in the polygamous life. After our class discussions, I’m pleased to now understand that the lack of an explicit declaration about how certain actions are bad is not necessarily endorsing them. I feel as though I always knew that on some level but now am able to apply it to the Bible readings.

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  14. I grew up in a Catholic family, so the stories of the Bible and Genesis were stories I heard every Sunday and every Monday in my Monday School class. Although Genesis is something that has always been somewhat familiar to me, my first time critically reading Genesis was for this course. Any other times I read about or heard about Genesis were not very in depth. After not only actually reading it, but analyzing it and looking at it from multiple points of view, I feel like I have learned so much more about it than I ever thought possible. This is because we look into it with more depth in class. We look at different patterns, themes, and literary elements. For example, looking at gender/gender roles as a theme is something I never looked at while reading the Bible previously. Previously, I had only looked at and read the Bible as a holy text in church vs reading it as a literary text and looking at the literary elements like I am doing for this course. Something else that I have found interesting and new that I did not realize before were all of the common characteristics and themes in the dream type- scenes in Genesis. In our reading, we read that most dream type-scenes begin with a "situation of crisis" and the "conclusion relates back to God." After reading Genesis, I found that that is also the case with the dream scene in Genesis 20. Understanding the overall characteristics and themes within the dream type- scenes help me understand the intentions of the dreams. It has been extremely interesting to look at Genesis as a literary text rather than as just as a sacred text, and I look forward to doing that for the duration of the semester.

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  15. Before this class I was very familiar with the book of Genesis given the fact that I've been in catholic school since the first grade. My perception of the book was that it was the creation account and the stories that followed, so basically I knew Genesis as a holy book in the holy book. After reading more deeply into it in a non religious way I realized that a lot of the stories in there are very much exaggerated. The one thing that hit me the hardest while looking more into it was that you can believe that one of the stories isn't true, and you can still believe in the story. So for example I can think that the fact that Noah is 600 years old is not true, but I can still believe in the story as a whole.(chapter 7 verse 6)

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  17. My first perception of the book of Genesis was that God created the world in seven days, destroyed the people when they were misbehaving, and chose a certain family to bless. I grew up in a Catholic church and attended religious education class from pre-school to junior year of high school. I also come from a very faith based family. The book of Genesis has been apart of my life since I can remember. It wasn't until I started a bible study last semester, that I began thinking about the deeper meaning in the text. After discussing Genesis in class, I am learning how critical the translation of the bible is. One part that I found interesting in our discussion was the "dome". In Genesis 1:7, I understood He separated the waters from the air. I did not realize they believed that water was surrounding the earth and it was a literal dome. I appreciate this changed perspective because it helps me understand why it is written the way it is. This is by far my favorite class this semester, and I am very excited for what it has in store.

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  19. I’ve grown up going to church and I’ve heard the stories of Genesis many times. While I feel that I am a strong Christian, reading through Genesis for this class was something totally novel. I never considered reading Genesis as literature but it’s interesting to view things so differently now. In Genesis 1 and 2, we discussed functional creation rather than material creation which really stuck a chord with me because I had never considered it that way. I also really enjoyed discussing this mindset because it alleviated the “day” issue on what that length of time was because the point of the chapter is the order that God mad from chaos rather than the things created or the time it took him to do so. The discussion on Genesis 7 and 9 and theories which could be the lens through which these passages are read is very interesting. How you can read the same story but come out with totally unique thoughts is great. I think that is the biggest take away for me.

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  21. I was raised in a Christian household growing up. I was blessed to be able to attend a private, Christian grade school through my eighth-grade year. I was taught the stories of the Bible as a sacred text, and also at a very young age. This means that now as I am a junior in college, there has been some time since I've "studied" the Bible, and I have certainly never analyzed it as a literary work. The only time at this point in my life that I look at the Bible is during church for the readings. I have not read the Bible in its entirety and there are still several spots that are fuzzy to me. Given my background that I mentioned above, before reading it again for this class I was only readily familiar with the first half of Genesis. In other words, I was familiar with creation, Adam and Eve, the fall of man, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, etc. However, after this most recent read, I never realized that chapters 12 through 50 focused on one single family of descendants. Starting with Abraham in Chapter 12, the next 38 chapters describe his family and descendants and their relationship with God. Even though I was familiar with the story of Abraham before this class, the fact that most of the book of Genesis focused on his lineage was something that I had previously overlooked and was new to me.

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  22. Before this class, my perception of Genesis was two part. The first is that I thought the creation story was absolutely beautiful because it shares with us how supreme and creative our God is. On top of that, it tells us that we are created in His image. I absolutely love that. The second part is that after Genesis 2 I would kind of lose hope and just skim the text with the intentions that it was just a bunch of lineage hodge podge that I wasn't entirely interested in. While reading the text with a literary lens I was forced to not only consider God as a character, but everyone. That made the plot much more riveting which was what I desired all along. I love that the characters are relatable, perhaps most of my generation would disagree. Noah, the only man on Earth at the time God sees as righteous, even screws up and gets completely wasted after God spares him his whole life. Wow Noah is kind of stupid. What I related to the most was when Sarah argues with God. The scene starts in Genesis 18:14-15. "Is anything too hard for the LORD [even conceiving a child with a bare whomb]? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son. Sarah was afraid so she lied [at the fact that she did not laugh] and said, 'I did not laugh.' But He said, 'yes, you did laugh.' Ignorantly and cowardly Sarah lies to God. That is a character.

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  23. Most of my life, I have been raised in a Christian environment, whether that be directly in a church or family traditions. Without truly comprehending the text that I was reading, I was raised to believe the text word for word. As a child, I even had a Bible that had pictures corresponding to every event from old to new testament (NIrV Read with Me Bible), as well as Adventures in Odyssey. That childlike belief/faith continued until I was of an age where I began receiving questions and counterarguments to a book and religion that I had believed wholeheartedly. With these questions, I myself began to question the Bible, not understanding that science and the Bible could contradict/and or support each other. With reading Genesis with a different POV and with the discussions in class, I have been able to understand how science and the Bible can complement each other as well as the ability to interpret the bible and its stories with a more realistic outlook. Even with background in world history, I have not been able to change my perception of time and had viewed the Bible’s stories and ancient history facts in two different timelines, almost two different worlds in a sense. I have been able to read the book of Genesis as a history book. Through the comparisons in class and drawing upon the similarities of other religious stories and text have put into perspective how the Bible (Genesis-OT especially) is a recount of history told by many people who experienced or heard of similar events instead of a book written by the divine intervention of God.

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  24. Before this most recent read-through, I remembered Genesis as the beginning of the Bible. I grew up in a Christian family and have attended church almost every Sunday since I have been born. I have read the Bible multiple times, but never with the intent to look at it as anything but a holy book. After we read and discussed it, I realized that I may not have read the Bible as closely as I thought. I noticed in Genesis 1 and 2 the subtle change of “God” to “the Lord God” and difference in the telling of the order of creation. I have noticed the difference before, but I always chalked it up to translation error or just a restatement by the author to draw attention to God’s original plan. - Trevor Billings

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  25. I have always believed in the Bible as a sacred text; I grew up in a Christian household and I still hold the beliefs that my parents instilled upon me as a child. Although I am very familiar with the book of Genesis, I had never examined it from a literature perspective until taking this class. One aspect that we have covered that surprised me is the fact that it is very likely that hyperbole was used to describe some of the events that occurred. One example of a section of scripture in which hyperbole is probable can be found in the story of Noah and the ark. The measurements of "450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet wide" (Genesis 6:15 of the NLT) are probably exaggerated and just meant to represent a massive size. When we discussed the use of this literary device in class it shocked me as I had never consider the words of the Bible anything other than pure fact. This is making me look at the text in a different light, although I still consider it as truth. Perhaps it is simply truth with some literary pizzazz added to it.
    -Post by Micah Davis

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  26. Until about 2 years ago, I had a limited view of Genesis. I knew the main events, but I hadn't read it, or the rest of the Old Testament, very much because I thought they were boring and full of genealogies. I do read the Bible as a sacred text and decided last year that I would have to read all of it if I wanted to understand God's character and grow in my faith. Since then, I have gained a greater appreciation of the Old Testament as it applies to my faith and was excited to take this class. Reading Genesis with a literary lens highlighted things I was confused about but pushed out of mind for the sake of religion. One thing that had always perplexed me about the Bible were the ages ascribed to people listed in the genealogies. I like that we talked about the use of hyperbole and how their ages were probably exaggerated to emphasize their status as legends and heroes. It could also be done to show a passage of time, especially in the case of the passage on Adam’s descendants (Gen 5). Prior to this class, I never left room in my understanding of the Bible for literary devices, but after considering the ages and the palistrophic structure of Noah and the flood, I am excited to see what else we will find.

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  27. Before this class, I always looked to the Bible as a sacred text that I used throughout bible studies, conversations at church, and during the sermon for an additional reference point. Prior to us diving into Genesis, I knew Genesis as strictly the creation story. When I would read or study genesis it was always the first few chapters that would be highlighted and talked about. Once we started reading it in this class and applying literary terms, this is when I realized that Genesis is much more than just the first few chapters, and has more to offer from a literary perspective than I could have ever imagined. Through all of the studying of this book in class, the one thing that sticks out to me is the large amount of information that is given in such a short book. I was unaware that after the short few pages of the creation story, there is a ton of information presented. Following chapters 1-10, there is a long list and story line of a family starting with the early decedents and carrying on throughout the family tree.

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  28. My personal conception of Genesis frequently evolves. Although I am a cradle Catholic, my mother has never felt confident enough to share her understanding of the Bible as a whole to me. My father, who is also cradle Catholic, is a "poser" Catholic. In other words, he will tell you to your face that he is a "big believer" and loves Jesus and reads his Bible everyday, but he has not been to church in over a decade, nor have I seen a Bible anywhere in his apartment. His understanding of the Bible is also quite skewed.... My only exposure to the story of Creation and Genesis has been through children's Christian books as a result of my parents' long time avoidance of Christian teaching, so my knowledge has always been a dumbed down understanding. Thus I had to take it upon myself to learn more in-depth.
    When we discussed functional creation, my mind was blown. I have never ever viewed Creation from that particular lens. The same mind-blowing thing happened when we were told about how people understood the form of the Earth during Biblical times. I always felt that 7 day Creation and flooding the entire Earth was impossible, but as we read deep within the lines of the Bible and couple it with history, I fall deeper in love with the Bible and God seems more real and loving than ever before.

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  30. Genesis is a familiar text to me. The things that surprised me were the details within the book. I've always heard stories from the bible through a pastor. I knew God created the heavens and the earth. However, I didn't know that Eve was a woman made from man. His rib to be exact. I understood the different days and how earth came together. From the heavens and earth, day and night, animals and humans. I better understood the consequences of Adam and Eve. Getting into the second book it talked about the sons and relationships amongst families. Reading the different translations and seeing how both books offered two different perspectives was very interesting. Reading and learning about Noah and his righteousness was interesting to me. Growing up, my mother would always share the importance of being obedient to your parents and doing right by God. I like how we started with the Old Testament. In my opinion, the old testament is the history and the New is more of how to live right by God.

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  32. Growing up in a Christian household, I was very familiar with the contents of the Bible. I heard the stories through my time in church, through my homeschool education, and through media such as "VeggieTales". I grew up believing the stories to be true, taking them at face value. While I knew the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are one in the same, I oftentimes viewed the God of the Old Testament as One who had a tendency to be harsher and more easily angered than the God of the New Testament. I oftentimes viewed His actions in the Old Testament as unloving despite the weekly reminder in church that He was loving. For instance, I remember wondering how He could be so loving and yet destroy almost the entire earth with a flood. After reading and discussing in class, however, I realized that God is actually incredibly loving in the Old Testament. For example, after Adam and Eve sin, they are immediately aware and ashamed of their nakedness. Instead of kicking them out of the Garden of Eden, God’s first action is to clothe them. This shows that God truly cares about them, as He could have began by banishing them from the Garden of Eden before ever clothing them. Stories such this one helped me see that oftentimes the God I viewed to be unloving or angry was actually incredibly passionate and caring about the people He created.

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  33. I was born in the orthodox Christian religion believer family. All my life I have been around church. Religion is there kind of tradition to many people so I go church pray and worship God, but I did not have enough knowledge of the bible detail. I have not read the bible most often that I have not develop my knowledge of the bible word. I have read the book of Genesis, I have learned many things about our mighty power and ability. The God wonderful creation and God omnipotence’s who formed and brought things from nothing to everything. How God created the beauty of the universe and earth. He gave for Adam and Eve to rule and use it. This shows how God loves human being than other creatures. The literature also insight me more about the story of the bible and God which more inspire me to examine more the bible with some contemporary evidence relate to the bible which make me familiar with God word. Therefore, it does not affect my beliefs and faith at all

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  34. Before this class, my perception of Genesis was two part. The first is that I thought the creation story was absolutely beautiful because it shares with us how supreme and creative our God is. On top of that, it tells us that we are created in His image. I absolutely love that. The second part is that after Genesis 2 I would kind of lose hope and just skim the text with the intentions that it was just a bunch of lineage hodge podge that I wasn't entirely interested in. While reading the text with a literary lens I was forced to not only consider God as a character, but everyone. That made the plot much more riveting which was what I desired all along. I love that the characters are relatable, perhaps most of my generation would disagree. Noah, the only man on Earth at the time God sees as righteous, even screws up and gets completely wasted after God spares him his whole life. Wow Noah is kind of stupid. What I related to the most was when Sarah argues with God. The scene starts in Genesis 18:14-15. "Is anything too hard for the LORD [even conceiving a child with a bare whomb]? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son. Sarah was afraid so she lied [at the fact that she did not laugh] and said, 'I did not laugh.' But He said, 'yes, you did laugh.' Ignorantly and cowardly Sarah lies to God. That is a character.

    Hi Crystal, I posted this on September 11, so it makes sense you didn't see it. I also posted it with my name as "unkown". Thank you!

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