| Back | Contents | Next |
We now come to the text of Genesis 1 and 2 itself. Because we live in the midst of a thick smog of false teachings and assumptions about the book of Genesis, we will often have to stop and deal with these falsehoods lest they wrongly influence our understanding of the Scriptures. Also, Genesis deals with God’s stupendous work of creation in just two short chapters, leaving us with mysteries, unanswered questions, and problems of interpretation. We will therefore find it helpful to stop and examine some of these as well. Our goal is that, by the end of this chapter, you will be equipped to read and interpret Genesis 1 and 2 as God intended. Doing so also buttresses our understanding against false alternatives and heresies.
Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV) with references to the original Hebrew text. There are quite a few transliteration23 methods out there, but right or wrong, we will use the pronunciation (not the transliteration) of the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible24 to refer to Hebrew words.
23A transliteration converts the alphabet of another language to the reader’s language. I chose to use the Strong’s pronunciation instead of the transliteration because transliterations are mostly useful for people who are already at least somewhat familiar with the original language, and because most Hebrew transliterations do not actually tell you how to pronounce the word.
24This work is published widely in both paper and electronic form. This book uses the version supplied by the Crosswire Project. (http://www2.crosswire.org/sword/modules/ModDisp.jsp?modType=Dictionaries). For software with which to access it and to obtain the latest versions, start with https://www.crosswire.org/applications.
| Back | Contents | Next |