Bible
Lecture 1: Preparation
Genesis
Part 1
● Essentially the book falls into 2 main parts:
○ Chapters 1-11 tell the story of God and the whole world
○ Chapters 12-50 is about God and Abraham’s family
● The first chapters are about God’s creation of the world
○ God takes a dark watery chaos and he turns it into a beautiful garden in which humans can live
and grow
● Adam and Eve are the first people that are living inside the garden and they both have a certain
representation to them
○ Adam is the Hebrew word for life and Eve is the Hebrew word for life
● The people living in the world are supposed to continue this type of creation in which they are creative
and produce gardens and art, etc.
● God gives Adam and Eve a choice and Adam and Eve decide to eat from the tree and this is the point at
which the story starts in a downward spiraling plot
● The human race is doing so bad that it seems as if God wants to wipe out human beings.
● The story about the flooding has often been thought of as God being angry even though it is actually
more about God’s sadness and grief regarding the state of the Earth
● Therefore, in order to preserve the good in the world, he washes it clean with a flood
● The bottom line of the story is that as soon as humans want to decide for themselves what is good and
what is evil, this is when things end in both tragedy and death
Part 2
● God has a plan to bless the rebellious world through Abraham and his family
● Abraham’s family continues to make bad decisions however God remains faithful to them
● Abraham’s family is pretty much God’s plan to restore humanity in the same way that it was before in
the garden of Adam and Eve
● The entire story is about giving Abraham and his wife Sarah a family
● Joseph (the favorite son) is sold into slavery however he goes from being in a prison cell to obtaining a
position as a commander
● The brothers of Joseph go to Egypt then to look for food where they find Joseph who is now a
commander. Instead of being angry with them, Joseph actually saves his brothers from starving
● The overall message of the book is that humans keep choosing evil even though God uses this evil to
turn it into something good
Exodus
,Part 1
● The book of Exodus begins 400 years after the story of Genesis has ended and the family of Abraham
has expanded and the people have now grown and increased and have become the people of Israel
● However, the problem is the Israelis are enslaved to the King of the Egyptians who is the Pharaoh
● The Pharaoh is so brutal that he orders all the Israeli boys to be thrown into the river the Nile but Moses
is saved
● God sends several severe plagues to the people to defeat the Egyptians and free the Israeli people
● Pharaoh and his army are destroyed in the red sea as Israel passes into freedom
Part 2
● After Adam and Eve rebelled in the Garden of Eden, the access people had to God was lost
● However, God wanted to restore this presence to all the other nations through the promise he made to
Abraham
● In the mountain of Sinai, God’s presence is now right in front of them
● They built a tent for God but Abraham cannot go inside the tent and walk into God’s presence
● The other people are rebelling once again and this makes God feel grief and be upset once again
Lecture 2: Introduction
Introduction of The Bible Unearthed: “Archaeology and the Bible”
1) Why and how the Bible was written is closely linked to a tale of modern discovery:
- Between the empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia
- In a tiny land with a tiny population, where there was a lot of warfare and recurrent drought;
poor cultural material
- Bible was written in Hebrew
2) Relevance of understanding the archaeology behind the Bible:
- To identify oral and written sources on which the present biblical text was based
- To produce a very good knowledge of the material conditions, languages, societies and historical
developments of the centuries during which the traditions of ancient Israel became clear
- Help us distinguish between the power and poetry of biblical saga, and the down-t-earth events
and processes of ancient Near Eastern history
- Help us reconstruct the history behind the Bible
3) What is the Bible?:
- “The collection of ancient writings long known as the Old Testament”: legends, laws, poetry,
prophecy, philosophy and history
- 39 books originally divided by subject or author
, - Hebrew bible is:
- The central scripture of Judaism
- The first part of Christianity’s canon
- A rich source of allusions and ethical teachings in Islam
- Divided into three main parts:
- The Torah (“Five books of Moses”/”Pentateuch”): Genecis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy; about the story of the people of Israel from the creation of the world;
the end = Moses’ farewell to the people of Israel
- The Prophets: the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter
Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Josea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micaj, Nahum,
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi); about the story of the people of
Israel a bit later on and the oracles, social teachings and condemnations of a diverse
group of inspired individuals; from the mid-VIIIth century to the end of the Vth century
BCE
- The Writtings: Poetry (Psalms, Proverbs and Job), The Five Scrolls (Song of Solomon,
Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther), Prophecy (Daniel) and History
(Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah); poems, prayers, proverbs and psalms that represent the
powerful expressions of the devotion of the ordinary Israelite; from 586 to the XXnd
century BCE.
4) From Eden to Zion:
- Story of the Bible: description of the rise of the people of Israel and their continuing relationship
with God
- The Bible’s tale begins in the garden of Eden and continues on the fate of the Abraham family
(chosen by God to become the father of a great nation) which travelled from their original home
in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan
- Abraham family: wife = Sarah and son = Isaac (inherited the divine promises first given to
Abraham); grand-son = Jacob (who then got 12 sons that fought among one another, worked
together and left their homeland to seek shelter in Egypt; with his son Judah ruling over them all
→ Genesis 49:8-10)
- The people of Israel were then enslaved in EGypt and God helped them through Moses to be
liberated into the Sinai
- YHWH: the sacred name composed of four Hebrew letters, pronounced Yahweh
- The Arameans of Syria then harassed the kingdom of Israel
- The Assyrian empire brought unprecedented devastation to the cities of the kingdom of Judah
- Return of some of the exiles to Jerusalem and reconstruction of the Temple: Israel is no longer a
monarchy but a religious community
