Genesis: Creation to Flood

“When God began to create heaven and earth,
and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep
. . . God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.”

The Book of Genesis

For centuries, for people across the world, the stories in the Book of Genesis have held a rich narrative inheritance woven throughout cultures, literatures, and languages. Genesis records a grand account of creation, destruction, and regeneration; faith and disobedience; promise and fulfilment. It tells how a people understands their beginnings, their place in the world and their relationship to the divine.

This six-meeting study will explore the first eleven chapters of Genesis. These opening chapters tell the history of the world from Creation to the Great Flood, including the great foundational stories of Adam and Eve in Eden, of Cain and Abel, of Noah and the Ark, and the tower at Babel. Our discussions will explore how these stories attempt to understand our humanity, morality, the nature of divinity, the sacred and the profane.

We’ll pay special attention to the language and poetry of this stunningly beautiful and deeply disturbing portrayal of the cosmos and the place of humans in it. We will also trace connections between the stories in Genesis and those in other myth traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world.

Our study will read from three translations of Genesis. Those of Robert Alter and Everett Fox seek to honour the meanings and particular literary strategies of the ancient Hebrew. We will also read from the King James Version, which for many readers is identical with the idea of Genesis and the Bible.

STUDY DETAILS:

• Six-week virtual study (via Zoom) led by Mark Cwik
• Thursdays, 3.00-5.15 pm (UK), 5 January to 9 February 2023
• £165 to include opening notes and resources
• Recommended editions:

  Genesis: Translation and Commentary, translated by Robert Alter, W. W. Norton 1997, ISBN-13: 978-0393316704

  Genesis And Exodus, translated by Everett Fox, Abingdon Press, Shocken 1990 edition, ISBN-13: 978-0805209945

  The Bible, King James Version, any edition