The book of Genesis is truly amazing. It lays out the origins of everything, people, animals, the cosmos, and the earth. I have spent many happy hours searching through Genesis. It doesn’t read like a list, but like a story.
If you take it literally, you can create a timeline of births and deaths and how long people lived, both before and after the flood. Even if you don’t believe in the Great Flood, the information is still there.
The book of Genesis is called the First Book of Moses. Did Moses really write it? These were things that happened wa-a-a-ay before his time. So let’s dig into this a bit.
Are there really two different accounts of creation in the book of Genesis?
The Hebrew word for generations, when it was translated into Greek for the Septuagent, became the word Genesis. So, then, the book of Genesis became the book of generations, which implied both origin and chronological records.
According to historical scholars and researchers, it was a common practice in antiquity, that when a chronicler completed a tablet, he would affix his signature to the bottom. This is known today as the COLOPHON. It might appear something like this: These are the historical records of …
Then if another writer continued the same chronicle on another tablet, he would key it to the previous one by some identifying word or phrase which corresponded to the closing portion of the previous tablet.
Since the authorship of Genesis is attributed to Moses, it is most likely that Moses received tablets that had been passed down through the generations, and then edited them. If you look closely, you can discern different styles of writing, and different points-of-view at each colophon.
When you read the creation account in Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 2:3, you realize that the creation of the earth, the animals, the cosmos and man could not have been observed by any person. But, just as God supernaturally wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets, couldn’t He also have written this first chronicle on a stone tablet? Or, he could have just told it to Adam supernaturally and let Adam do the hard work.
Here is God’s colophon, or signature.
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Genesis 2:4
What follows, then, is the creation from Adam’s point of view. These are two different chronicles of the same events, so that when you look a little further, you can find Adam’s colophon:
This is the book of the generations of Adam. Genesis 5:1
Chapter 5 of Genesis tells of the descendents of Adam and ends with Noah. What follows Genesis 5:1 is the chronology of Noah. You can find Noah’s colophon at Genesis 6:9.
These are the generations of Noah. Genesis 6:9
Then you have the chronology of the three sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, which leads you up to the Great Flood and afterwards when these three men were positioned to be the forefathers of the entire population of the earth. This section finishes with Genesis 10:1:
Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Genesis 10:1
Genesis then goes on to give the chronology for Shem, who was the ancestor of Jesus:
These are the generations of Shem. Genesis 11:10
After this, we get into the life of Abraham and his family, which pretty much takes up the remainder of Genesis. There are still more colophons to be found for the sons of Abraham. I will leave these to you to find for now.
The purpose of this particular mapping study is to see if there is written and historical evidence that we can find so that we can discover where the descendants of the three sons of Noah migrated, and if there is evidence that points to exactly which son ended up where. It should be a challenging study.
If you take Genesis at face value, there is an immense amount of information, which is supported, both historically, and in other places in the Bible. I think this is going to be fun.
Hope you can come back for more.
Blessings to you
Chandra