Brian McLaren’s Bible Overview – Audio Podcast Series (.mp3 format)
I just finished the first free podcast. It’s pretty good 🙂
I like TNIV too, and the Bible Experience is awesome.
Hermeneutics: Conservative vs. Liberal
I like the following one line:
Give us inquiry and awe which keeps heart and mind open to the Original Mystery.
Israel’s Two Creation Stories (Part 1)
Israel’s Two Creation Stories (Part 2)
Israel’s Two Creation Stories (Part 3)
One of BLC’s LiFE Groups is looking at the Book of Genesis afresh. I get excited when people want to seriously engage the Bible.
For readers today, there are four very good reasons to focus on the differences between the creation stories in Genesis.
First, if this is what Scripture presents, as many alert readers have indicated, it is reason enough for us to look at it carefully.
Second, two different perspectives on creation in Genesis suggest (as it did to Philo) that “recording history” is not the point. That is clearly a very important point to ponder in the discussion between Christianity and evolution.
Third, outlining the distinctives of the two creation stories encourages respect for what is actually written, rather than obscuring those elements in order to achieve some artificial unity. Genesis 1 and 2 is not the only place in the Bible where two different versions of the same story are placed side-by-side. (For example, there are two genealogies in Genesis 4 and 5 and two accounts of the spread of humanity in Genesis 10 and 11. There are also two distinct histories of Israel, one in Samuel/Kings and the other Chronicles, and four distinct tellings of the story of Jesus.) So, when we see the “two-ness” of the creation story, we should pay close attention to what we can learn from this.
Fourth, perhaps ironically, seeing how Genesis 1 and 2 differ will help us appreciate what role they play together at the beginning of the Bible.