Genesis (Greek) Beginning; generation; birth, production; the first book in the Bible as translated into Greek, whose opening chapters deal with the genesis of worlds and creatures. The Book of Genesis is based on the cosmogony of the Chaldeans.
Genesis: (Gr. genesis) Coming into being, particularly the coming into being of a substance through the taking on of form by matter (Aristotle.). The biblical account of creation (Book of Genesis). -- G.R.M.
In addition to a historical account of the Quiche nation, the first portion of the scripture deals with cosmogony and the birth of humanity. The opening lines are similar in conception to the book of Genesis: M-bM-^@M-^\Here is the narrative of how all was in suspense, all was calm, all silent, all was motionless, all was peaceful, and empty was the immensity of the heavens. . . . The face of the Earth was not yet visible. Only the sea was, and all the space of the heavens.M-bM-^@M-^]
Isaac ::: (Heb. Yitzchak) One of the Israelite patriarchs, the son of Abraham and father of Jacob in the accounts in the book of Genesis.
Jacob ::: One of the Israelite patriarchs, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham in the accounts in the book of Genesis. See also Israel.
ReM-bM-^@M-^Yshith (Hebrew) RM-DM-^SM-bM-^@M-^YshM-DM-+th [from rosh head, chief, principal, first, beginning] Beginning, headship, the most excellent or highest of a series; wisdom. The first word in the Bible (prefixed by the prepositional letter B, meaning in, through, or by means of). M-bM-^@M-^\The fathers . . . dreaded above all to have the esoteric and true meaning of the word Rasit [reM-bM-^@M-^Yshith] unveiled to the multitudes; for if once the true sense of this sentence, as well as that of the Hebrew word asdt . . . were understood rightly, the mystery of the Christian trinity would have crumbled, carrying in its downfall the new religion into the same heap of ruins with the ancient MysteriesM-bM-^@M-^]; M-bM-^@M-^\Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, Chalcidius, Methodius, and Maimonides, on the authority of the Targum of Jerusalem, the orthodox and greatest authority of the Jews, held that the first two words in the book of Genesis M-bM-^@M-^T b-rasit, mean Wisdom, or the Principle. And that the idea of these words meaning M-bM-^@M-^\in the beginningM-bM-^@M-^] was never shared but by the profane, who were not allowed to penetrate any deeper into the esoteric sense of the sentenceM-bM-^@M-^] (IU 2:34, 35). The beginning of Genesis is quite correctly translated M-bM-^@M-^\by wisdom,M-bM-^@M-^] or M-bM-^@M-^\by means of wisdom,M-bM-^@M-^] (cf Fund 98-102). See also BEREM-bM-^@M-^YSHITH
treeoflife ::: Tree of Life In the Book of Genesis, this is a tree whose fruit gives everlasting life, i.e. immortality. After eating of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, after which God set angels to guard the entrance to the Garden fearing they would also eat of the Tree of Life and so become immortal. The Tree of Life is also the symbolic representation of the Kabbalah, comprising the ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two paths of spiritual wisdom. It is a powerful means of gaining personal and spiritual realisation.
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1:The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 2:Imagine how things might have turned out had the Neanderthals or Denisovans survived alongside Homo sapiens. What kind of cultures, societies and political structures would have emerged in a world where several different human species coexisted? How, for example, would religious faiths have unfolded? Would the book of Genesis have declared that Neanderthals descend from Adam and Eve, would Jesus have died for the sins of the Denisovans, and would the Qur’an have reserved seats in heaven for all righteous humans, whatever their species? Would Neanderthals have been able to serve in the Roman legions, or in the sprawling bureaucracy of imperial China? Would the American Declaration of Independence hold as a self-evident truth that all members of the genus Homo are created equal? Would Karl Marx have urged workers of all species to unite? ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 3:Whichever way it happened, the Neanderthals (and the other human species) pose one of history’s great what ifs. Imagine how things might have turned out had the Neanderthals or Denisovans survived alongside Homo sapiens. What kind of cultures, societies and political structures would have emerged in a world where several different human species coexisted? How, for example, would religious faiths have unfolded? Would the book of Genesis have declared that Neanderthals descend from Adam and Eve, would Jesus have died for the sins of the Denisovans, and would the Qur’an have reserved seats in heaven for all righteous humans, whatever their species? Would Neanderthals have been able to serve in the Roman legions, or in the sprawling bureaucracy of imperial China? Would the American Declaration of Independence hold as a self-evident truth that all members of the genus Homo are created equal? Would Karl Marx have urged workers of all species to unite? ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:One leather-bound copy of the Bible, black, Book of Genesis repeated twice One ~ Wendy Mass, #NFDB
2:Every single Biblical doctrine of theology, directly or indirectly, ultimately has its basis in the book of Genesis. ~ Ken Ham, #NFDB
3:Feminists who accept the claim made in The Book of Genesis, and, that God is a he, need to make their minds up. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
4:When the first list was being drawn up in the rock and roll book of Genesis, it would have been: In the beginning, God created Pink Floyd. ~ Rick Wakeman, #NFDB
5:The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
6:The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
7:The Book of Revelation should be taken literally no less than the Book of Genesis. Paradise lost, in Genesis, becomes Paradise regained, in Revelation. ~ Henry M Morris, #NFDB
8:A Creator must exist. The Big Bang ripples and subsequent scientific findings are clearly pointing to an ex nihilo creation consistent with the first few verses of the book of Genesis. ~ Henry F Schaefer III, #NFDB
9:Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return, the priest quoted from the book of Genesis, holding his arms skyward. May your soul rest more peacefully than the manner in which you left us, beloved sister. ~ Kerri Maniscalco, #NFDB
10:The Book of Genesis tells us that God created man and woman entrusting them with the task of filling the earth and subduing it, which does not mean exploiting it but nurturing and protecting it, caring for it through their work. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
11:When I went to high school in Australia, I was exposed to textbooks that outlined evolutionary ideas - such as ape-like creatures turning into people. I recognized the conflict between evolutionary ideas and a literal reading of the book of Genesis. ~ Ken Ham, #NFDB
12:St. Augustine accepted a date of about 5000 B.C. for the Creation of the universe according to the book of Genesis. (It is interesting that this is not so far from the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 B.C., which is when archaeologists tell us that civilization really began.) ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
13:The token of a true cosmos is in fact a particular kind of design, referred to in the book of Genesis in the phrase ‘God created Man in his own image’. This ‘divine image’, the characteristics of which we must study in detail, can be found on all levels, and is the hallmark of a cosmos. ~ Rodney Collin, #NFDB
14:Now, if the book of Genesis is an allegory, then sin is an allegory, the Fall is an allegory and the need for a Savior is an allegory - but if we are all descendants of an allegory, where does that leave us? It destroys the foundation of all Christian doctrine-it destroys the foundation of the gospel. ~ Ken Ham, #NFDB
15:How should the first two chapters of the book of Genesis be understood in their internal, that is, spiritual, sense? It must be done by applying what the Christian world has so utterly forgotten: that everything in the Word, to the smallest detail, envelops and signifies spiritual and celestial things. ~ Henry Corbin, #NFDB
16:The first command given by God when Adam and Eve were pitched out of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis is, "Be fruitful and multiply, and subdue the Earth." We've been trying to do that for a long time, and now the Earth is fighting back. I'm not sure that we're going to survive as a species. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
17:The Bible as a whole would surely be considered (even by those who don’t believe in its inspiration) as the book that has exerted the greatest influence on history of any book ever produced. The Bible, however, is actually a compilation of many books, and the Book of Genesis is the foundation of all of them. ~ Henry M Morris, #NFDB
18:The vocation of being a 'protector' [. . .] means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us [. . .] In the end, everything has been entrusted to our protection, and all of us are responsible for it. Be protectors of God’s gifts! ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
19:No book in the world today comes to us in the particular way that the Bible comes to us, exactly where we are, in our exact predicament. In other words, this third chapter of the book of Genesis is absolutely essential to a true understanding of life, the whole of life as it is at this moment for each individual. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
20:The purpose of the Scripture is for instruction in righteousness. It was not written to teach you geology or biology. It was written to show man’s relationship to God and God’s requirements for man and what man must do to be saved. You can write this over the first part of the book of Genesis: “What must I do to be saved? ~ J Vernon McGee, #NFDB
21:Where are you, Adam? According to the book of Genesis, Adam went into hiding after the fall. By trying to be more than human, Adam felt less than human. Before the fall, Adam was not ashamed; after the fall he was. Toxic shame is true agony. It is a pain felt from the inside, in the core of our being. It is excruciatingly painful. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
22:According to the creation story in the biblical book of Genesis, God said, “Let there be light.” I like to imagine that light replied, saying, “God, I have to wait for my twin brother, darkness, to be with me. I can’t be there without the darkness.” God asked, “Why do you need to wait? Darkness is there.” Light answered, “In that case, then I am also already there. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
23:When we talk about the environment, about creation, my thoughts turn to the first pages of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, which states that God placed man and woman on earth to cultivate and care for it. And the question comes to my mind: What does cultivating and caring for the earth mean? Are we truly cultivating and caring for creation? Or are we exploiting and neglecting it? ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
24:We know from the book of Genesis that God created men and women 'in His image and likeness.' We know from the first letter of John that 'God is Love.' Therefore, men and women are made in the image and likeness of Love. This isn't hard to see. Look at the design of the male and female bodies. They are made for each other. In fact, neither one makes complete sense apart from the other. ~ Jason Evert, #NFDB
25:It is, indeed, a unique occasion at which the distinguished word qadosh is used for the first time: in the Book of Genesis at the end of the story of creation. How extremely significant is the fact that it is applied to time: “And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.”7 There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
26:For the pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark Age in which men still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard scientific treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo'a demonstration of Leonardo da Vinci's simple remark that the earth is a moon of the sun, Sir Humphrey Davy's invention of the safety lamp, the discovery of electricity, the application of steam to industrial purposes, and the penny post. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
27:It's an attitude of superiority. We are superior to the rest of life. The Book of Genesis says: 'Increase and multiply and have dominion over the birds of the air and the animals and so forth.' You run it; it's yours; do what you like with it. I don't know how old that text is, but it represents an attitude that probably really got going with the beginning of agriculture. Before that, the hunter-gatherers were gentler people than the agriculture. ~ W S Merwin, #NFDB
28:The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition ( ) - Your Highlight on Location 1139-1142 | Added on Wednesday, February 25, 2015 7:03:13 AM the book of genesis received its English name from the Greek translation of the Heb word toledot, which is used thirteen times in Genesis and is translated as “story” (2.4), “record” (5.1), or “line” (10.1). In Heb, it is known, like many books in the Tanakh, by its first word, bereshit, which means, “In the beginning. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
29:Such a series of hammer blows! Mankind, it seemed, was now suddenly really rather—dare one say it?—insignificant. He may not after all have been, as he had eternally supposed, specially created. The Book of Genesis, believed by so many to be Holy Writ, was perhaps no more than the stuff of myth and ancient legend. And now even the continents themselves, long supposed to be the most reliable and unshifting bedrock of our very existence, had become mobile. ~ Simon Winchester, #NFDB
30:According to the book of Genesis, the Creator gave man dominion over the whole wide earth. A mighty big present. But I am not interested in any such superroyal prerogatives. All I desire is dominion over myself—dominion over my thoughts; dominion over my fears; dominion over my mind and over my spirit. And the wonderful thing is that I know that I can attain this dominion to an astonishing degree, any time I want to, by merely controlling my actions—which in turn control my reactions. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
31:hereditary and transmitted through the paternal line. Therefore, a person whose father is not a priest cannot be a priest either. * Though without being as insulting as Shammai was. * An infrequently quoted Talmudic passage teaches that Timna, a female character in the book of Genesis, came from a royal non-Israelite household. At an early age, she became interested in the Israelite faith and sought to convert. But when she approached the patriarchs—at one time or another, all three of ~ Joseph Telushkin, #NFDB
32:If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
His words, in His Bible. The Book of Genesis, chapter eleven
So our God, our all -powerful God got so scared He scattered the human race across the face of the earth, and shattered their language to heep His children apart.
An almighty God this insecure? Who pits his children against each other, to keep them weak. This is the God we’re supposed to worship? ~ Chuck Palahniuk,#NFDB
33:In the Book of Genesis, Abraham believes that God is commanding him to sacrifice his beloved son as proof of his love and obedience. But just as Abraham is about to thrust the knife into his terrified child, an angel grasps his hand and there in the thicket is a sheep that God has provided for the sacrifice. Most people find this story horrifying, but what my father taught me that day was this: No matter how sacred the calling appears, it is not God’s will for parents to sacrifice their children. ~ Katherine Paterson, #NFDB
34:In the book of Genesis He is the Seed of the Woman. In the book of Exodus He is our Passover Lamb. In the book of Ruth He is our Kinsman Redeemer. In the book of Psalms He is our Shepherd. In the book of Isaiah He is our Prince of Peace. In the book of John He is the Son of God. In the book of Acts He is the Holy Ghost. In the book of Hebrews He is the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant. In the book of James He is the Great Physician. And in the book of Revelation He is the King of kings and Lord of lords! ~ John Hagee, #NFDB
35:Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. An infinitely old universe, always evolving, may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end. Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science. ~ Hannes Alfven, #NFDB
36:The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself?...a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. ~ Philip Pullman, #NFDB
37:The book of Genesis says of the Flood that “… all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered…” Taken literally, this seems to indicate that there were 10,000 to 20,000 feet of water on the surface of the earth, equivalent to more than half a billion cubic miles of liquid! Since, according to biblical accounts, it rained for forty days and forty nights, or for only 960 hours, the rain must have fallen at a rate of at least fifteen feet per hour, certainly enough to sink any aircraft carrier, much less an ark with thousands of animals on board. ~ John Allen Paulos, #NFDB
38:Centuries before anyone had ever heard of biological evolution, Saint Augustine warned of creating false fundamentals in regard to our interpretation of the book of Genesis. “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision,” he wrote, “we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
39:The depiction of the divine family is one of the key expressions of the greatest word of power, the Unpronounceable Name of God, or Tetragrammaton. This fourfold name is comprised of the Hebrew letters Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh corresponding respectively to the Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter. The correct pronunciation of Tetragrammaton, which was said to be immensely powerful and capable of destroying the universe, has been lost for centuries. Significantly, if the Yod, symbolising God the Father, is removed from this name, we are left with Heh Vav Heh, which spells Eve, the first woman of the Book of Genesis and some of the Gnostic texts. ~ Sorita d Este, #NFDB
40:The book of Genesis is a window into what cultures were like before the revelation of the Bible. One thing we see early on is the widespread practice of primogeniture—the eldest son inherited all the wealth, which is how they ensured the family kept its status and place in society. So the second or third son got nothing, or very little. Yet all through the Bible, when God chooses someone to work through, he chooses the younger sibling. He chooses Abel over Cain. He chooses Isaac over Ishmael. He chooses Jacob over Esau. He chooses David over all eleven of his older brothers. Time after time he chooses not the oldest, not the one the world expects and rewards. Never the one from Jerusalem, as it were, but always the one from Nazareth. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
41:Our trust is core trust because it is actually trust in the core of ourselves. Built into our human personhood is a gift from the universe. This gift is an ability, an inclination to make something good, growth-fostering, or useful out of anything that happens, no matter how painful or negative it is. This is also a way of saying that the universe is ultimately friendly, helpful to and in favor of our evolving richly in love, wisdom, and healing power. Thus, nothing is fully negative, since anything can be passed through the life-trusting core of us and be transformed. As early as the Book of Genesis, this possibility was noticed by humans and the word God was used for 'core' : 'What you intended for evil, God has turned into good' (Gen. 50:20). ~ David Richo, #NFDB
42:Or consider a story in the Jewish Talmud left out of the Book of Genesis. (It is in doubtful accord with the account of the apple, the Tree of Knowledge, the Fall, and the expulsion from Eden.) In The Garden, God tells Eve and Adam that He has intentionally left the Universe unfinished. It is the responsibility of humans, over countless generations, to participate with God in a "glorious" experiment - the "completing of the Creation."
The burden of such a responsibility is heavy, especially on so weak and imperfect a species as ours, one with so unhappy a history. Nothing remotely like "completion" can be attempted without vastly more knowledge than we have today. But, perhaps, if our very existence is at stake, we will find ourselves able to rise to this supreme challenge. ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
43:When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat...disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. ~ Stasi Eldredge,#NFDB
44:We are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our own lives but reactors. The fragmentary nature of our experience shatters us into fragments. Instead of being whole, most of the time we are in pieces, and we see the world in pieces, full of darkness at one moment and full of light the next. It is in Jesus, of course, and in the people whose lives have been deeply touched by Jesus, and in ourselves at those moments when we also are deeply touched by him, that we see another way of being human in this world, which is the way of wholeness. When we glimpse that wholeness in others, we recognize it immediately for what it is, and the reason we recognize it, I believe, is that no matter how much the world shatters us to pieces, we carry inside us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons to us. It is part of what the book of Genesis means by saying that we are made in the image of God. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
45:In the Book of Genesis it says, ‘It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’ I’ve known this woman most of her life and know that she is more than up to the task. Russell and Julie, as you prepare to take these vows, give careful thought and prayer, for as you make them you are making an exclusive commitment one to the other for as long as you both shall live. Your love for each other should never be diminished by difficult circumstances, and it is to endure until death parts you. Hand in hand you enter marriage, hand in hand you step out in faith. The hand you freely give to each other, is both the strongest and the most tender part of your body. The wedding ring is a symbol of eternity, it is without end. It is an outward sign of an inward and spiritual bond which unites two hearts in endless love. And now as a token of your love and of your deep desire to be forever united in heart and soul, you, Russell, may place a ring on the finger of your bride. ~ Wayne Stinnett, #NFDB
46:Begin in Genesis with the well-loved story of Noah, derived from the Babylonian myth of Uta-Napisthim and known from the older mythologies of several cultures. The legend of the animals going into the ark two by two is charming, but the moral of the story of Noah is appalling. God took a dim view of humans, so he (with the exception of one family) drowned the lot of them including children and also, for good measure, the rest of the presumably blameless) animals as well.
Of course, irritated theologians will protest that we don't take the book of Genesis literally any more. But that is my whole point! We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories. Such picking and choosing is a matter of personal decision, just as much, or as little, as the atheist's decision to follow this moral precept or that was a personal decision, without an absolute foundation. If one of these is 'morality flying by the seat of its pants,' so is the other. ~ Richard Dawkins,#NFDB
47:Chapter III: Transformation of the Hero
1. Primordial hero and the human
We have come two stages: 1) from the immediate emanations of the Uncreated Creating to the fluid yet timeless personages of the mythological age; 2) from these Created CReating Ones to the sphere of human history. The emanations have condensed, consciousness is constricted. Where formerly causal bodies were visible, now only their secondary effects come to focus in the little hard-fact pupil of the human eye. The cosmogonic cycle is now to be carried forward, therefore, not by the gods, who became invisible now, but through heros, more or less human in character, through whom the world destiny is realized. This is the line where creation myths begin to give place to legend-as in the book of Genesis, following expulsion from Eden. Metaphysics yields to prehistory, which s dim and vague at first, but becomes precise in detail slowly. The heros become less fabulous, legend opens into the common dayliight of recorded time. ~ Joseph Campbell,#NFDB
48:Notice how wickedly and cunningly the serpent tempted Eve: “God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.” The basic sin, the original sin, is precisely this self-deification, this apotheosizing of the will. Lest you think all of this is just abstract theological musing, remember the 1992 Supreme Court decision in the matter of Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Writing for the majority in that case, Justice Kennedy opined that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, of the mystery of human life.” Frankly, I can’t imagine a more perfect description of what it means to grasp at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If Justice Kennedy is right, individual freedom completely trumps objective value and becomes the indisputable criterion of right and wrong. And if the book of Genesis is right, such a move is the elemental dysfunction, the primordial mistake, the original calamity. Of ~ Robert E Barron, #NFDB
49:When a thing happened that had not happened before, a confusion often descended upon people, a fog that fuddled the clearest minds; and often the consequence of such confusion was rejection, and even anger. A fish crawled out of a swamp onto dry land and the other fish were bewildered, perhaps even annoyed that a forbidden frontier had been crossed. A meteorite struck the earth and the dust blocked out the sun but the dinosaurs went on fighting and eating, not understanding that they had been rendered extinct. The birth of language angered the dumb. The shah of Persia, facing the Ottoman guns, refused to accept the end of the age of the sword and sent his calvary to gallop suicidally against the blazing cannons of the Turk. A scientist observed tortoises and mockingbirds and wrote about "random mutation" and "natural selection" and the adherents of the Book of Genesis cursed his name. A revolution in painting was derided and dismissed as mere "Impressionism." A folksinger plugged his guitar into an amp and a voice in the crowd shouted "Judas! ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
50:If you are worried that no one has sent you nice notes, given you credit, or offered a compliment that you can put in an Encouragement File, I have a solution. Write yourself some nice letters. Write down what you like about yourself. List your strengths. List your accomplishments. List some of the good things you’ve done for others.
When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. It should come from the inside.
This is what God did. He praised Himself. We’re told in the book of Genesis that God created the waters and He said, “That was good.” He created the sky and He said, “That was good.” He created the fish and the animals and He stepped back and said, “That was good." He created you and me and said, “That was really good.”
I love the fact that God praised Himself. Most of the time we are so critical of ourselves, and so focused on what we’ve done wrong, we never even think about complimenting ourselves. ~ Joel Osteen,#NFDB
51:WENDELL P. BLOYD
They first charged me with disorderly conduct,
There being no statute on blasphemy.
Later they locked me up as insane
Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.
My offense was this:
I said God lied to Adam, and destined him
To lead the life of a fool,
Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.
And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple
And saw through the lie,
God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking
The fruit of immortal life.
For Christ's sake, you sensible people,
Here's what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:
"And the Lord God said, behold the man
Is become as one of us" (a little envy, you see),
"To know good and evil" (The all-is-good lie exposed):
"And now lest he put forth his hand and take
Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:
Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden."
(The reason I believe God crucified His Own Son
To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him.) ~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB
52:Wendell P. Bloyd
They first charged me with disorderly conduct,
There being no statute on blasphemy.
Later they locked me up as insane
Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.
My offense was this:
I said God lied to Adam, and destined him
to lead the life of a fool,
Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.
And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple
And saw through the lie,
God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking
The fruit of immortal life.
For Christ's sake, you sensible people,
Here's what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:
"And the Lord God said, behold the man
Is become as one of us" (a little envy, you see),
"To know good and evil" (The all-is-good lie exposed):
"And now lest he put forth his hand and take
Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:
Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the Garden of Eden."
(The reason I believe God crucified His Own Son
To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it
sounds just like Him).
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB
53:Jews, Christians, and Muslims share a creation story from the Bible, found in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. Like many such stories, it begins with sky and earth intertwined in darkness. God first brings forth light, then separates what is above from what is below, thus making oceans, land, and sky. Although some people insist that Genesis 1 is a literal scientific account, it is best understood as what Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls a “liturgical poem,” a form for use in worship that invites a community “to confess and celebrate the world as God has intended it.”4 In the opening pages of the Bible, a cosmic vision of creation unfolds with the making of plants and forests, the stars and suns and moons beyond, all the fishes and birds and animals, and finally human beings. At each juncture, God proclaims blessing on what has been made, declaring it good, and with the creation of humankind the whole of the universe is pronounced “very good.” At the end of the poem, God sends human beings out to till and keep the soil and to work on behalf of the earth, delighting in all its gifts.5 ~ Diana Butler Bass, #NFDB
54:Einstein preferred to believe that "God does not play dice with the cosmos."
It may be that Einstein and the Book of Genesis are right. A system left to itself may evolve in the direction of randomness. On the the other hand, our world may not be a system left to itself. There may in fact be a creative impulse acting on it, the Spirit of God hovering over the dark waters, operating over the course of millennia to bring order out of chaos, It may yet come to pass that, as "Friday afternoon" of the world's evolution ticks towards the Great Sabbath which is the End of Days, the impact of random evil will be diminished.
Or it may be that God has finished His work of creating eons ago, and left the rest to us. Residual chaos, chance and mischance, things happening for no reason, will continue to be with us, the kind of evil that Milton Steinberg has called "the still unremoved scaffolding of the edifice of God's creativity." In that case, we will simply learn to live with it, sustained and comforted by the knowledge that earthquakes and the accidents, like the murder and the robbery, are not the will of God, but represents that aspect of reality which stands independent of His will, and which angers and saddens God even as it angers and saddens us. ~ Harold S Kushner,#NFDB
55:A step further. Creationism. If you want to go in so deep as to ignore all of the advances and hard facts that SCIENCE and LEARNING have provided us in the field of biological evolution and instead profess that the creation story, written by men from their holy visions, about how the Christian deity spinning the world together out of the void in the magic of Genesis describes the true origin of the universe, that is your business. Terrific. It’s a cool story, don’t get me wrong; I love magic. Check out Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which won a Newbery Medal. For the record, I don’t believe the book of Genesis ever won one of those. You and your fellow creationists profess belief in a magical story. You are welcome to do so. Sing and chant, and eat crackers and drink wine that you claim are magically infused with the blood and flesh of your church’s original grand wizard, the Prince of Peace. I personally think that’s just a touch squirrelly, but that’s your business, not mine. You will not be punished for those beliefs in our nation of individual freedoms. But I do think the vast majority of your fellow Americans would appreciate it, kind creationists, if you silly motherfuckers would keep that bullshit out of our schools. Your preferred fairy tales have no place in a children’s classroom or textbook that professes to be teaching our youngsters what is REAL. Jesus Christ, it’s irrefutably un-American, people! ~ Nick Offerman, #NFDB
56:Sexual desire, as it has been understood in every epoch prior to the present, is inherently compromising, and the choice to express it or to yield to it has been viewed as an existential choice, in which more is at risk than present satisfaction. Not surprisingly, therefore, the sexual act has been surrounded by prohibitions; it brings with it a weight of shame, guilt, and jealousy, as well as joy and happiness. Sex is therefore deeply implicated in the sense of original sin: the sense of being sundered from what we truly are, by our fall into the world of objects. There is an important insight contained in the book of Genesis, concerning the place of shame in our understanding of sex. Adam and Eve have partaken of the forbidden fruit, and obtained the “knowledge of good and evil” — in other words the ability to invent for themselves the code that governs their behavior. God walks in the garden and they hide, conscious for the first time of their bodies as objects of shame. This “shame of the body” is an extraordinary feeling, and one that only a self-conscious animal could have. It is a recognition of the body as both intimately me and in some way not me — a thing that has wandered into the world of objects as though of its own accord, to become the victim of uninvited glances. (...)
We lost what was most precious to us, which is the untorn veil of the Lebenswelt, stretching from horizon to horizon across the dark matter from which all things, we included, are composed. ~ Roger Scruton,#NFDB
57:Call it the Human Mission-to be all and do all God sent us here to do. And notice-the mission to be fruitful and conquer and hold sway is given both to Adam and to Eve. 'And God said to them...' Eve is standing right there when God gives the world over to us. She has a vital role to play; she is a partner in this great adventure. All that human beings were intended to do here on earth-all the creativity and exploration, all the battle and rescue and nurture-we were intended to do together. In fact, not only is Eve needed, but she is desperately needed.
When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat...disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. ~ Stasi Eldredge,#NFDB
58:The book of Genesis is a window into what cultures were like before the revelation of the Bible. One thing we see early on is the widespread practice of primogeniture—the eldest son inherited all the wealth, which is how they ensured the family kept its status and place in society. So the second or third son got nothing, or very little. Yet all through the Bible, when God chooses someone to work through, he chooses the younger sibling. He chooses Abel over Cain. He chooses Isaac over Ishmael. He chooses Jacob over Esau. He chooses David over all eleven of his older brothers. Time after time he chooses not the oldest, not the one the world expects and rewards. Never the one from Jerusalem, as it were, but always the one from Nazareth. Another ancient cultural tradition revealed in Genesis is that in those societies, women who had lots of children were extolled as heroic. If you had many children, that meant economic success, it meant military success, and of course it meant the odds of carrying on the family name were secure. So women who could not have children were shamed and stigmatized. Yet throughout the Bible, when God shows us how he works through a woman, he chooses the ones who cannot have children, and opens their wombs. These are despised women, but God chooses them over ones who are loved and blessed in the eyes of the world. He chooses Sarah, Abraham’s wife; Rebecca, Isaac’s wife; Samuel’s mother, Hannah; and John’s mother, Elizabeth. God always works through the men or the boys nobody wanted, through the women or girls nobody wanted. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
59:Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not. Is it not possible to attract only positive conditions into our life? If our attitude and our thinking are always positive, we would manifest only positive events and situations, wouldn’t we? Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real. Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time. Even a brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and unreal in your life, what ultimately matters and what doesn’t. Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise: they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is — which is the only sane way to live — there is no “good” or “bad” in your life anymore. There is only a higher good — which includes the “bad.” Seen from the perspective of the mind, however, there is good-bad, like-dislike, love-hate. Hence, in the Book of Genesis, it is said that Adam and Eve were no longer allowed to dwell in “paradise” when they “ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
60:When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. “It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]” (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is “notoriously difficult to translate.” The various attempts we have in English are “helper” or “companion” or the notorious “help meet.” Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat . . . disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing, “One day I shall be a help meet”? Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it “sustainer beside him.” The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens to help you . . . Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD? He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword. (Deut. 33:26, 29, emphasis added) I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Ps. 121:1–2, emphasis added) May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you help. (Ps. 20:1–2, emphasis added) We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. (Ps. 33:20, emphasis added) O house of Israel, trust in the LORD—he is their help and shield. O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD—he is their help and shield. You who fear him, trust in the LORD—he is their help and shield. (Ps. 115:9–11, emphasis added) ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
61:Your frequent claim that we must understand religious belief as a “social construct,” produced by “societal causes,” dependent upon “social and cultural institutions,” admitting of “sociological questions,” and the like, while it will warm the hearts of most anthropologists, is either trivially true or obscurantist. It is part and parcel of the double standard that so worries me—the demolition of which is the explicit aim of The Reason Project.
Epidemiology is also a “social construct” with “societal causes,” etc.—but this doesn’t mean that the germ theory of disease isn’t true or that any rival “construct”—like one suggesting that child rape will cure AIDS—isn’t a dangerous, deplorable, and unnecessary eruption of primeval stupidity. We either have good reasons or bad reasons for what we believe; we can be open to evidence and argument, or we can be closed; we can tolerate (and even seek) criticism of our most cherished views, or we can hide behind authority, sanctity, and dogma. The main reason why children are still raised to think that the universe is 6,000 years old is not because religion as a “social institution” hasn’t been appropriately coddled and cajoled, but because polite people (and scientists terrified of losing their funding) haven’t laughed this belief off the face of the earth.
We did not lose a decade of progress on stem-cell research in the United States because of religion as a “social construct”; we lost it because of the behavioural and emotional consequences of a specific belief. If there were a line in the book of Genesis that read – “The soul enters the womb on the hundredth day (you idiots)” – we wouldn’t have lost a step on stem-cell research, and there would not be a Christian or Jew anywhere who would worry about souls in Petri dishes suffering the torments of the damned. The beliefs currently rattling around in the heads of human beings are some of the most potent forces on earth; some of the craziest and most divisive of these are “religious,” and so-dubbed they are treated with absurd deference, even in the halls of science; this is a very bad combination—that is my point. ~ Sam Harris,#NFDB
62:Augustine, who assumed that Genesis 1 was chapter 1 in a book that contained the literal words of God, and that Genesis 2 was the second chapter in the same book, put the two chapters together and read the latter as a sequel. Genesis 2, he assumed, described the fall from the perfection and original goodness of creation depicted in chapter 1. So almost inevitably the Christian scriptures from the fourth century on were interpreted against the background of this (mis) understanding.
The primary trouble with this theory was that by the fourth century of the Common Era there were no Jews to speak of left in the Christian movement, and therefore the only readers and interpreters of the ancient Hebrew myths were Gentiles, who had no idea what these stories originally meant. Consequently, they interpreted them as perfection established by God in chapter 1, followed by perfection ruined by human beings in chapter 2. Why was that a problem? Well I, for one, have never known a Jewish scripture scholar to treat the Garden of Eden story in the same way that Gentiles treat it. Jews tend to see this story not as a narrative about sin entering the world, but as a parable about the birth of self-consciousness. It is, for the Jews, not a fall into sin, but a step into humanity. It is the birth of a new relationship with God, changing from master-servant to interdependent cooperation. The forbidden fruit was not from an apple tree, as so many who don’t bother to read the text seem to think. It was rather from “the tree of knowledge,” and the primary thing that one gained from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge was the ability to discern good from evil. Gaining that ability did not, in the minds of the Jewish readers of the book of Genesis, corrupt human nature. It simply made people take responsibility for their freely made decisions. A slave has no such freedom. The job of the slave is simply to obey, not to think. The job of the slave-master is to command. Thus the relationship of the master to the slave is a relationship of the strong to the weak, the parent to the child, the king to the serf, the boss to the worker. If human beings were meant to live in that kind of relationship with God, then humanity would have been kept in a perpetual state of irresponsible, childlike immaturity. Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden, not because they had disobeyed God’s rules, but because, when self-consciousness was born, they could no longer live in childlike dependency. Adam and Eve discovered, as every child ultimately must discover, that maturity requires that the child leave his or her parents’ home, just as every bird sooner or later must leave its nest and learn to fly on its own. To be forced out of the Garden of Eden was, therefore, not a punishment for sin, so much as it was a step into maturity. ~ John Shelby Spong,#NFDB
6 Christianity
2 Psychology
2 Integral Yoga
1 Philosophy
5 Saint Augustine of Hippo
2 Jordan Peterson
4 City of God
2 Maps of Meaning
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
monly understood. For the biblical Book of Genesis tells of
two ways in which Adam was created. In the one he was at
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
embedded in the oldest (Jahwist) creation myth in the familiar Old Testament Book of Genesis. The Jahwist
story begins in the fourth stanza of the second chapter of Genesis, and describes the masculine God
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
In the Book of Genesis, the fruits of the tree of knowledge are ingested in mythic action by the free
(though sorely tempted) act of the individual. The myth uses a particular act, the incorporation of food, as
7.10 - Order, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Hebrew Book of Genesis, in its own way, also tells a story of order.
In the beginning there was chaos, that is, disorder and darkness. And the first act of God was to throw light upon this disorder, just as a man shines the light of his lamp into the gloom of the dark and dirty cellar he wants to enter.
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
the Book of Genesis? While it is positively absurd to believe the "transformation of
species" to have taken place according to some of the more materialistic views of the
Book of Genesis, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
--- THE Book of Genesis DESCRIPTION
Genesis, the first book of Hebrew Scripture, also serves as the first book of the Torah or Law of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch. The Torah was called the Law by Jesus, the concrete expression of God's will. The Law of Moses includes the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
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The Book of Genesis presents essential religious teachings about God and his relation to man: his creative activity through which all things are made and on which they all depend; the creation of man in God's image and likeness; the institution of marriage as the union of one man with one woman; the fall of man from his original state of innocence through pride and disobedience, and its consequences on Adam and Eve and the human race; and God's loving kindness and continual offer of reconciliation through covenants with Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Moses was the author - in the sense of originator and collector of traditions - of the Torah or . This is revealed in the text of the Law (Exodus 17:14, Exodus 24:4, Exodus 34:27-28, Leviticus 26:46, Numbers 33:2, Deuteronomy 31:9, Deuteronomy 31:24-26); the Prophets (Joshua 1:7-8, 8:31-32, 8:34, 23:6, I Kings 2:3, Daniel 9:11, 9:13); and as we learn from Jesus and the New Testament writers (John 1:45, John 5:46, Acts 3:22, Romans 10:5, Romans 10:19, First Corinthians 9:9, 2 Corinthians 3:15). Characteristics of ancient Hebrew language, as well as common themes that course through the Torah, support one original author for the Law of Moses or Pentateuch. Modern theory suggests the text of the Pentateuch developed through the ages.
The primeval story of creation in Genesis has been compared to other ancient literatures, such as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, the Atrahasis Epic, and the Babylonian Enuma Elish, as well as ancient writings of Egypt and Greece. These diverse writings indicate the universal concept of God and the creation of the world. What is unique is that the Book of Genesis records only one God, the Lord God of Israel.
Seven key themes of Hebrew Scripture are initiated in the Book of Genesis and are developed throughout the Torah: God is one; the goodness of creation and the world; God's undying love for his creation mankind in spite of man's sin and disobedience; God presides with justice and mercy; God is active in history by making covenants with Israel, his chosen people; the proper response of obedience to God's Word through observance of traditions and institutions will bring blessings; the gift of Hope through prophecy of the coming Messiah.
The first three chapters of Genesis are the best known of Hebrew Scripture: Chapter One presents God's creation of the world. In Genesis 1:14, God designated appointed times - - moadim - for His creation. Genesis 1:26-27 relates that God decided to make man in our image and likeness. The idea of human dignity, that we are created in the image of God (1:27), supports the theological basis for human equality and the core principle of liberty in Western Christian civilization, as found in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Chapter Two provides further detail on the creation of man and woman. Chapter Three records the temptation and fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. The first line of Genesis is truly one of the most famous lines of Hebrew Scripture:
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The Book of Genesis is the subject of many artistic endeavors; the painting of Joseph's dream of the sun, moon, and eleven stars in Genesis 37:9 by Vincent Van Gogh entitled "Starry Night" in 1889 is one of the most famous.
The following Scripture is the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible, now in the public domain, and the New International Version. King James I commissioned a group of Biblical scholars in 1604 to establish an authoritative translation of the Bible from the ancient languages and other translations at the time, and the work was completed in 1611. The original King James Bible included the Apocrypha but in a separate section. A literary masterpiece of the English language, the original King James Bible is still in use today. Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica - The International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of Biblica - The International Bible Society. Chapters 5 and 12-50 are from the King James Bible, and Chapters 1-4 and 6-11 are the NIV version.
BOOK XI. - Augustine passes to the second part of the work, in which the origin, progress, and destinies of the earthly and heavenly cities are discussed.Speculations regarding the creation of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
HERE BEGINS THE SECOND PART[440] OF THIS WORK, WHICH TREATS OF THE ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND DESTINIES OF THE TWO CITIES, THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY. IN THE FIRST PLACE, AUGUSTINE SHOWS IN THIS BOOK HOW THE TWO CITIES WERE FORMED ORIGINALLY, BY THE SEPARATION OF THE GOOD AND BAD ANGELS; AND TAKES OCCASION TO TREAT OF THE CREATION OF THE WORLD, AS IT IS DESCRIBED IN HOLY SCRIPTURE IN THE BEGINNING OF THE Book of Genesis.
1. Of this part of the work, wherein we begin to explain the origin and end of the two cities.
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But if some one oppose our opinion, and say that the holy angels are not referred to when it is said, "Let there be light, and there was light;" if he suppose or teach that some material light, then first created, was meant, and that the angels were created, not only before the firmament dividing the waters and named "the heaven," but also before the time signified in the words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;" if he allege that this phrase, "In the beginning," does not mean that nothing was made before (for the angels were), but that God made all things by His Wisdom or Word, who is named in Scripture "the Beginning," as He Himself, in the gospel, replied to the Jews when they asked Him who He was, that He was the Beginning;[506]I will not contest the point, chiefly because it gives me the liveliest satisfaction to find the Trinity celebrated in the very beginning of the Book of Genesis. For, having said, "In the Beginning God created the heaven and the earth," meaning that the Father made them in the Son (as the psalm testifies where it says, "How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! in Wisdom[Pg 477] hast Thou made them all"[507]), a little afterwards mention is fitly made of the Holy Spirit also. For, when it had been told us what kind of earth God created at first, or what the mass or matter was which God, under the name of "heaven and earth," had provided for the construction of the world, as is told in the additional words, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep," then, for the sake of completing the mention of the Trinity, it is immediately added, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Let each one, then, take it as he pleases; for it is so profound a passage, that it may well suggest, for the exercise of the reader's tact, many opinions, and none of them widely departing from the rule of faith. At the same time, let none doubt that the holy angels in their heavenly abodes are, though not, indeed, co-eternal with God, yet secure and certain of eternal and true felicity. To their company the Lord teaches that His little ones belong; and not only says, "They shall be equal to the angels of God,"[508] but shows, too, what blessed contemplation the angels themselves enjoy, saying, "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."[509]
33. Of the two different and dissimilar communities of angels, which are not inappropriately signified by the names light and darkness.
That certain angels sinned, and were thrust down to the lowest parts of this world, where they are, as it were, incarcerated till their final damnation in the day of judgment, the Apostle Peter very plainly declares, when he says that "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment."[510] Who, then, can doubt that God, either in foreknowledge or in act, separated between these and the rest? And who will dispute that the rest are justly called "light?" For even we who are yet living by faith, hoping only and not yet enjoying equality with them, are already called "light" by the apostle: "For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord."[511] But as for these apostate angels, all[Pg 478] who understand or believe them to be worse than unbelieving men are well aware that they are called "darkness." Wherefore, though light and darkness are to be taken in their literal signification in these passages of Genesis in which it is said, "God said, Let there be light, and there was light," and "God divided the light from the darkness," yet, for our part, we understand these two societies of angels,the one enjoying God, the other swelling with pride; the one to whom it is said, "Praise ye Him, all His angels,"[512] the other whose prince says, "All these things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me;"[513] the one blazing with the holy love of God, the other reeking with the unclean lust of self-advancement. And since, as it is written, "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble,"[514] we may say, the one dwelling in the heaven of heavens, the other cast thence, and raging through the lower regions of the air; the one tranquil in the brightness of piety, the other tempest-tossed with beclouding desires; the one, at God's pleasure, tenderly succouring, justly avenging,the other, set on by its own pride, boiling with the lust of subduing and hurting; the one the minister of God's goodness to the utmost of their good pleasure, the other held in by God's power from doing the harm it would; the former laughing at the latter when it does good unwillingly by its persecutions, the latter envying the former when it gathers in its pilgrims. These two angelic communities, then, dissimilar and contrary to one another, the one both by nature good and by will upright, the other also good by nature but by will depraved, as they are exhibited in other and more explicit passages of holy writ, so I think they are spoken of in this Book of Genesis under the names of light and darkness; and even if the author perhaps had a different meaning, yet our discussion of the obscure language has not been wasted time; for, though we have been unable to discover his meaning, yet we have adhered to the rule of faith, which is sufficiently ascertained by the faithful from other passages of equal authority. For, though it is the material works of God which are here spoken of, they have certainly a resemblance to the spiritual, so that Paul can say, "Ye are all the children of light, and[Pg 479] the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness."[515] If, on the other hand, the author of Genesis saw in the words what we see, then our discussion reaches this more satisfactory conclusion, that the man of God, so eminently and divinely wise, or rather, that the Spirit of God who by him recorded God's works which were finished on the sixth day, may be supposed not to have omitted all mention of the angels, whether he included them in the words "in the beginning," because He made them first, or, which seems most likely, because He made them in the only-begotten Word. And, under these names heaven and earth, the whole creation is signified, either as divided into spiritual and material, which seems the more likely, or into the two great parts of the world in which all created things are contained, so that, first of all, the creation is presented in sum, and then its parts are enumerated according to the mystic number of the days.
34. Of the idea that the angels were meant where the separation of the waters by the firmament is spoken of, and of that other idea that the waters were not created.
BOOK XIII. - That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam's sin, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But, say they, when the Scripture used the word "spirit,"[628] it would not have added "of life" unless it meant us to understand the Holy Spirit; nor, when it said, "Man became a soul," would it also have inserted the word "living" unless that life of the soul were signified which is imparted to it from above by the gift of God. For, seeing that the soul by itself has a proper life of its own, what need, they ask, was there of adding living, save only to show that the life which is given it by the Holy Spirit was meant? What is this but to fight strenuously for their own conjectures, while they carelessly neglect the teaching of Scripture? Without troubling themselves much, they might have found in a preceding page of this very Book of Genesis the words, "Let the earth bring forth the living soul,"[629] when all the terrestrial animals were created. Then at a slight interval, but still in the same book,[Pg 555] was it impossible for them to notice this verse, "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died," by which it was signified that all the animals which lived on the earth had perished in the deluge? If, then, we find that Scripture is accustomed to speak both of the "living soul" and the "spirit of life" even in reference to beasts; and if in this place, where it is said, "All things which have the spirit of life," the word , not , is used; why may we not say, What need was there to add "living," since the soul cannot exist without being alive? or, What need to add "of life" after the word spirit? But we understand that Scripture used these expressions in its ordinary style so long as it speaks of animals, that is, animated bodies, in which the soul serves as the residence of sensation; but when man is spoken of, we forget the ordinary and established usage of Scripture, whereby it signifies that man received a rational soul, which was not produced out of the waters and the earth like the other living creatures, but was created by the breath of God. Yet this creation was so ordered that the human soul should live in an animal body, like those other animals of which the Scripture said, "Let the earth produce every living soul," and regarding which it again says that in them is the breath of life, where the word and not is used in the Greek, and where certainly not the Holy Spirit, but their spirit, is signified under that name.
But, again, they object that breath is understood to have been emitted from the mouth of God; and if we believe that is the soul, we must consequently acknowledge it to be of the same substance, and equal to that wisdom, which says, "I come out of the mouth of the Most High."[630] Wisdom, indeed, does not say it was breathed out of the mouth of God, but proceeded out of it. But as we are able, when we breathe, to make a breath, not of our own human nature, but of the surrounding air, which we inhale and exhale as we draw our breath and brea the again, so almighty God was able to make breath, not of His own nature, nor of the creature beneath Him, but even of nothing; and this breath, when He communicated it to man's body, He is most appropriately said to[Pg 556] have breathed or inspired,the Immaterial breathing it also immaterial, but the Immutable not also the immutable; for it was created, He uncreated. Yet, that these persons who are forward to quote Scripture, and yet know not the usages of its language, may know that not only what is equal and consubstantial with God is said to proceed out of His mouth, let them hear or read what God says: "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."[631]
BOOK XVI. - The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
God appeared again to Abraham at the oak of Mamre in three men, who it is not to be doubted were angels, although some think that one of them was Christ, and assert that He was visible before He put on flesh. Now it belongs to the divine power, and invisible, incorporeal, and incommutable nature, without changing itself at all, to appear even to mortal men, not by what it is, but by what is subject to it. And what is not subject to it? Yet if they try to establish that one of these three was Christ by the fact that, although he saw three, he addressed the Lord in the singular, as it is written, "And, lo, three men stood by him: and, when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent-door, and worshipped[Pg 145] toward the ground, and said, Lord, if I have found favour before thee,"[294] etc.; why do they not advert to this also, that when two of them came to destroy the Sodomites, while Abraham still spoke to one, calling him Lord, and interceding that he would not destroy the righteous along with the wicked in Sodom, Lot received these two in such a way that he too in his conversation with them addressed the Lord in the singular? For after saying to them in the plural, "Behold, my lords, turn aside into your servant's house,"[295] etc., yet it is afterwards said, "And the angels laid hold upon his hand, and the hand of his wife, and the hands of his two daughters, because the Lord was merciful unto him. And it came to pass, whenever they had led him forth abroad, that they said, Save thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all this region: save thyself in the mountain, lest thou be caught. And Lot said unto them, I pray thee, Lord, since thy servant hath found grace in thy sight,"[296] etc. And then after these words the Lord also answered him in the singular, although He was in two angels, saying, "See, I have accepted thy face,"[297] etc. This makes it much more credible that both Abraham in the three men and Lot in the two recognised the Lord, addressing Him in the singular number, even when they were addressing men; for they received them as they did for no other reason than that they might minister human refection to them as men who needed it. Yet there was about them something so excellent, that those who showed them hospitality as men could not doubt that God was in them as He was wont to be in the prophets, and therefore sometimes addressed them in the plural, and sometimes God in them in the singular. But that they were angels the Scripture testifies, not only in this Book of Genesis, in which these transactions are related, but also in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where in praising hospitality it is said, "For thereby some have entertained angels unawares."[298] By these three men, then, when a son Isaac was again promised to Abraham by Sarah, such a divine oracle was also given that it was said, "Abraham shall become a great and numerous nation, and all[Pg 146] the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him."[299] And here these two things are promised with the utmost brevity and fulness,the nation of Israel according to the flesh, and all nations according to faith.
30. Of Lot's deliverance from Sodom, and its consumption by fire from heaven; and of Abimelech, whose lust could not harm Sarah's chastity.
BOOK XXII. - Of the eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the body, and the miracles of the early Church, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
And consequently overgrown and emaciated persons need not fear that they shall be in heaven of such a figure as they would not be even in this world if they could help it. For all bodily beauty consists in the proportion of the parts, together with a certain agreeableness of colour. Where there is no proportion, the eye is offended, either because there is something awanting, or too small, or too large. And thus there shall be no deformity resulting from want of proportion in that state in which all that is wrong is corrected, and all that is defective supplied from resources the Creator wots of, and all that is excessive removed without destroying the integrity of the substance. And as for the pleasant colour, how[Pg 514] conspicuous shall it be where "the just shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father!"[1006] This brightness we must rather believe to have been concealed from the eyes of the disciples when Christ rose, than to have been awanting. For weak human eyesight could not bear it, and it was necessary that they should so look upon Him as to be able to recognise Him. For this purpose also He allowed them to touch the marks of His wounds, and also ate and drank,not because He needed nourishment, but because He could take it if He wished. Now, when an object, though present, is invisible to persons who see other things which are present, as we say that that brightness was present but invisible by those who saw other things, this is called in Greek ; and our Latin translators, for want of a better word, have rendered this ccitas (blindness) in the Book of Genesis. This blindness the men of Sodom suffered when they sought the just Lot's gate and could not find it. But if it had been blindness, that is to say, if they could see nothing, then they would not have asked for the gate by which they might enter the house, but for guides who might lead them away.
But the love we bear to the blessed martyrs causes us, I know not how, to desire to see in the heavenly kingdom the marks of the wounds which they received for the name of Christ, and possibly we shall see them. For this will not be a deformity, but a mark of honour, and will add lustre to their appearance, and a spiritual, if not a bodily beauty. And yet we need not believe that they to whom it has been said, "Not a hair of your head shall perish," shall, in the resurrection, want such of their members as they have been deprived of in their martyrdom. But if it will be seemly in that new kingdom to have some marks of these wounds still visible in that immortal flesh, the places where they have been wounded or mutilated shall retain the scars without any of the members being lost. While, therefore, it is quite true that no blemishes which the body has sustained shall appear in the resurrection, yet we are not to reckon or name these marks of virtue blemishes.
COSA - BOOK XII, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
extollers of the Book of Genesis; "The Spirit of God," say they, "Who
by His servant Moses wrote these things, would not have those words
--
write the Book of Genesis, have desired such a power of expression and
such a style to be given me, that neither they who cannot yet understand
ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
First a few words about the distinction of periods in general. Among unreflecting people, for centuries, it has been customary to settle disputes by appeals to the Bible as a whole. This was always satisfactory, until somebody else came along who held totally different views, which he supported just as satisfactorily from the same authority. The result was the century-long bloody wars of the Reformation, everywhere leaving1271 in that particular place, as the orthodox, the stronger. Since thirty years, however, the situation has changed. The contradictions of the Bible, so long the ammunition of scoffers of the type of Ingersoll, became the pathfinders of the Higher Criticism, which has solved the otherwise insoluble difficulties by showing them to rest on parallel documents, and different authors. It is no longer sufficient to appeal to Isaiah; we must now specify which Isaiah we mean; and we may no longer refer to the Book of Genesis, but to the Jehovistic or Elohistic documents.
This method of criticism is slowly gaining ground with other works. The writer, for instance, applied it with success to the Gathas, or hymns of Zoroaster. These appear in the Yasnas in two sections which have ever given the editors much trouble. Either they were printed in the meaningless traditional order, or they were mixed confusedly according to the editor's fancy, resulting of course in a fancy picture. The writer, however, discovered they were duplicate lives of Zoroaster, and printing them on opposite pages, he has shown parallel development, reducing the age-long difficulties to perfectly reasonable, and mutually confirming order.
For a Breath I Tarry, #unset, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Driving the plot and setting its tone are allusions to other literature, most specifically the first chapter of the Book of Job, both in situation and language, as verses are both quoted directly and paraphrased. Additionally, echoes of the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis appear. Finally, Frost and Mordel enter into a Faustian bargain, with, however, better results than in the original.
The title is from a phrase in A. E. Housman's collection A Shropshire Lad.[3]
--- Overview of noun book_of_genesis
The noun book of genesis has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. Genesis, Book of Genesis ::: (the first book of the Old Testament: tells of Creation; Adam and Eve; the Fall of Man; Cain and Abel; Noah and the flood; God's covenant with Abraham; Abraham and Isaac; Jacob and Esau; Joseph and his brothers)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun book_of_genesis
1 sense of book of genesis
Sense 1
Genesis, Book of Genesis
INSTANCE OF=> book
=> section, subdivision
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
=> music
=> auditory communication
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun book_of_genesis
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun book_of_genesis
1 sense of book of genesis
Sense 1
Genesis, Book of Genesis
INSTANCE OF=> book
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun book_of_genesis
1 sense of book of genesis
Sense 1
Genesis, Book of Genesis
-> book
HAS INSTANCE=> Genesis, Book of Genesis
HAS INSTANCE=> Exodus, Book of Exodus
HAS INSTANCE=> Leviticus, Book of Leviticus
HAS INSTANCE=> Numbers, Book of Numbers
HAS INSTANCE=> Deuteronomy, Book of Deuteronomy
HAS INSTANCE=> Joshua, Josue, Book of Joshua
HAS INSTANCE=> Judges, Book of Judges
HAS INSTANCE=> Ruth, Book of Ruth
HAS INSTANCE=> I Samuel, 1 Samuel
HAS INSTANCE=> II Samuel, 2 Samuel
HAS INSTANCE=> I Kings, 1 Kings
HAS INSTANCE=> II Kings, 2 Kings
HAS INSTANCE=> I Chronicles, 1 Chronicles
HAS INSTANCE=> II Chronicles, 2 Chronicles
HAS INSTANCE=> Ezra, Book of Ezra
HAS INSTANCE=> Nehemiah, Book of Nehemiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Esther, Book of Esther
HAS INSTANCE=> Job, Book of Job
HAS INSTANCE=> Psalms, Book of Psalms
HAS INSTANCE=> Proverbs, Book of Proverbs
HAS INSTANCE=> Ecclesiastes, Book of Ecclesiastes
HAS INSTANCE=> Song of Songs, Song of Solomon, Canticle of Canticles, Canticles
HAS INSTANCE=> Isaiah, Book of Isaiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Jeremiah, Book of Jeremiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Lamentations, Book of Lamentations
HAS INSTANCE=> Ezekiel, Ezechiel, Book of Ezekiel
HAS INSTANCE=> Daniel, Book of Daniel, Book of the Prophet Daniel
HAS INSTANCE=> Hosea, Book of Hosea
HAS INSTANCE=> Joel, Book of Joel
HAS INSTANCE=> Amos, Book of Amos
HAS INSTANCE=> Obadiah, Abdias, Book of Obadiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Jonah, Book of Jonah
HAS INSTANCE=> Micah, Micheas, Book of Micah
HAS INSTANCE=> Nahum, Book of Nahum
HAS INSTANCE=> Habakkuk, Habacuc, Book of Habakkuk
HAS INSTANCE=> Zephaniah, Sophonias, Book of Zephaniah
HAS INSTANCE=> Haggai, Aggeus, Book of Haggai
HAS INSTANCE=> Zechariah, Zacharias, Book of Zachariah
HAS INSTANCE=> Malachi, Malachias, Book of Malachi
HAS INSTANCE=> Matthew, Gospel According to Matthew
HAS INSTANCE=> Mark, Gospel According to Mark
HAS INSTANCE=> Luke, Gospel of Luke, Gospel According to Luke
HAS INSTANCE=> John, Gospel According to John
HAS INSTANCE=> Acts of the Apostles, Acts
=> Epistle
HAS INSTANCE=> Revelation, Revelation of Saint John the Divine, Apocalypse, Book of Revelation
HAS INSTANCE=> Additions to Esther
HAS INSTANCE=> Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Children
HAS INSTANCE=> Susanna, Book of Susanna
HAS INSTANCE=> Bel and the Dragon
HAS INSTANCE=> Baruch, Book of Baruch
HAS INSTANCE=> Letter of Jeremiah, Epistle of Jeremiah
HAS INSTANCE=> Tobit, Book of Tobit
HAS INSTANCE=> Judith, Book of Judith
HAS INSTANCE=> I Esdra, 1 Esdras
HAS INSTANCE=> II Esdras, 2 Esdras
HAS INSTANCE=> Ben Sira, Sirach, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach
HAS INSTANCE=> Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom
HAS INSTANCE=> I Maccabees, 1 Maccabees
HAS INSTANCE=> II Maccabees, 2 Maccabees
--- Grep of noun book_of_genesis
book of genesis