https://youtube/watch?v=p8nao7mOahc Tom posted this video today, thought this part was really interesting: “How do we fit what’s going on with Genesis… with Egyptian or Mesopotamian creation myths? The best parallels are from Mesopotamia- considered by Assyriologists to be the front-end of the worldview story. The stories from Mesopotamia tell about the world… gods shaping the world that existed. Initially you just have the senior and the junior gods, and the junior gods were doing all the hard work… tilling the fields or digging irrigation canals, and they got tired of that and went on strike and convinced the senior gods… to create human beings to take over the hard work. …most of the people in ancient Mesopotamia would have been at the lowest levels of the society and they would see themselves as being here to do the hard work that the junior gods didn’t want to do. So it puts them in their place and it protects the kind of society… different levels of society. …your standard person living in mesopotamia would be getting the message: the hard work you’re doing is what you’re here for so quit your complaining and get back to work. Genesis is aiming to tell the front-end of the story of the world the right way… in Genesis you just have one God and it’s a good place, it’s a place God is happy with. You have God making human beings not to do the work that he doesn’t want to do, but they’re put in a position of ruling the world on his behalf. Their job is to rule the world, to exercise wise and loving dominion over the world. And God puts them in Eden where their work is to care for this lush garden, and part of their job is to make more human beings and then to fill the earth, to spread outward and bring the life of Eden to the rest of creation. So human beings are dignified, they’re in God’s image, the object of his special concern.” (—> “the fall” and program of redeeming human beings, as the background to the Abraham story.) “God’s plan is through this family to bring his redemption to the rest of the world- situates them in history, the stewards of this great redemptive story. To be the vehicles of blessing for the rest of the world is why they’re here. Life in Palestine is supposed to be a sort of reinstitution of Eden. By being Eden-ic the nations around will see that’s what they’ve been yearning for.”
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 23:16:25 +0000
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