Why do we study the Bible?

What is the point of bringing people together for Bible Study?  Is it to show off our scholarship, showing how the Jews borrowed some ideas from other cultures at the time, such as a snake appearing in the Garden of Eden because the goddess Kaila had a snake and the Jews had no ideas of their own or stories of snakes.   Was the flood a myth as we can prove from other cultures of the time since they also spoke about a flood?   Did Joshua really bring down the walls of Jericho with a trumpet or should we perhaps look for a natural solution?  This all comes from what was called in the 80`s the HIstorical-Critical method of study which as it worked its way through the Bible eventually to dismissed the miraculous in the feeding of the five thousand with loafs and fishes as everyone sharing their sandwiches.   Is this really feeding us poor non academics the Word of God?   Why do
we study Genesis?  Is it just so that we can compare our story of Creation with everyone else?
But Genesis is not just about the Creation of the word but about the Creation of Mankind.   It contains certain truths we must understand or the rest of the Bible has little value.    The writer of Genesis was trying to find an understanding of how a God who was good could have created a people who were prone to evil.    He was inspired by the Spirit to write then that in the beginning man was created Good and waled with God `in a beautiful garden` which was a symbol of man`s unity and peace with God.  He was created in the image of God, that is he was destined to love like God loves, and live eternally.   But God wanted man to serve him freely and gave them a commandment not to of the tree which would give them a knowledge of good and evil.  So man was left to make a free judgement about something of which the notion of this tree was a symbol.    It certainly was not something like eating an apple.  But Adam freely chose to ignore God, and all the graces and friendship God had given was lost.   But in the first covenant with man God promised to restore this grace through the actions of a woman who would crush his head because of her offspring which was interpreted as a Messiah to come.    Now we know the beginning of our Christian story and that is why we study the Bible.












  




















 we study genesis

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