Differences in Genesis 1 and 2

Darby King

RST 201-20

Dr. Wiley

4 February 2016

Genesis 1-2 Assignment

It's important to study Bible passages and stories within their context. Taking verses out of context leads to all kinds of error and misinterpretation. Understanding context begins with three principles: literal meaning, historical setting, and synthesis, or comparing the text to others in the Scripture to more fully understand the original text. Context is crucial to biblical exegesis in that it is one of its most important fundamentals. The first thing is survey the entire passage for basic content and structure.

The story opens with a formless, empty darkness into which the activity of God comes as wind and light. This activity of God divulges in a sequence of six very ordered stages, each beginning with a creative word of God. When these stories were created, the people that created them looked for the logic in things that hadn’t yet been explained. For example, when looking at the blue sky and experiencing rain, the ancient peoples concluded that there must be an overhead sea with a dome to keep it up. These concepts and deductions helped lay the foundation for the creation of the idea of God. While it is impossible to determine the time of the Earth’s creation, we associate the historical contexts of the Genesis stories with those of the first recorded people, the earliest Israelites.

The concept of myth is actually just a form of communication. A form of story-telling. People have always created stories for what they do not understand to help better their personal sense of the world. Myths are stories that may have been real at some point. They influence the way people perceive the world up to this day, but at some level they are too fantastic to believe. For example, a man could fly or walk on water, etc. Stories are fiction, and there is no doubt about it. Although some stories are true stories, about a real person and the events in his/her life, they can be verified....