♰
              Bible Study by
              Abouna Angelos
                2018 Sep 5

In the beginning...

We are now going to start reading the
Bible from the beginning. Please have
handy the Strong’s Concordance and the
Orthodox Study Bible (for the Septuagint
version).

Genesis. This book in Hebrew is called
“Barsheet” (רֵאשִׁית rḗšı̂yth, ray-sheeth')
because it starts, “In the beginning.”

In English we use the Latin not Hebrew
names for these books. However, the Hebrew
book names are simply the first words of
the books.

For example, the second book that we call
Exodus is called in Hebrew “Sefer Ashimot”
(from שֵׁם šēm name) because it starts
“These are the names of the children of
Israel who came to Egypt”.

Now, what is “the beginning?” St. Cyril of
Alexandria says, the beginning (also as
referred to in St. John Chapter 1) is not
a point in time, it is a place of
beginning of the Word. What would St.
Cyril say is the beginning of the World?

St. Cyril would say the Father is the
beginning. Very specifically, the phrase
“In the beginning was the Word” means “In
the Father was the Word.” In other words
“The Beginning” = “The Father.”

Now the Wisdom is the Co-Creator, the
Logos, the Word, that is in the Father.
For example, let us take a look in the
Wisdom of Solomon called the book of
Proverbs.

  [Proverbs 8]

  22 “The LORD possessed me
       at the beginning of His way,
     Before His works
       of old.

  23 I have been established from
       everlasting,
     From the beginning,
       before ever there was an earth.

  24 When there were no depths
       was I brought forth,
     When there were no fountains
       abounding with water.

  25 Before the mountains
       were settled,
     Before the hills,
       was I brought forth;

  26 While as yet had He not made
       the earth or the fields,
     Or the primal dust
       of the world.

  27 When He prepared the heavens,
       was I there,
     When He drew a circle
       on the face of the deep,

  28 When He established
       the clouds above,
     When He strengthened
       the fountains of the deep,

  29 When He assigned to the sea
       its limit,
     So that the waters
       would not transgress His command,
     When He marked out
       the foundations of the earth,

  30 Then was I beside Him
       as a master craftsman;
     And was I daily His delight,
       Rejoicing always before Him,

  31 Rejoicing
       in His inhabited world,
     And my delight
       was with the sons of men.

So the Creation was the work of the Son!
By Him, through Him and for Him, according
to Colossians 1.

  [Colossians 1]

  15 He is the image of the invisible God,
     the firstborn over all creation.

  16 For → by Him all things were created
     that are in heaven and that are on
     earth, visible and invisible, whether
     thrones or dominions or principali-
     ties or powers. All things were
     created → through Him and → for Him.

  17 And He is before all things, and in
     Him all things consist.

Imagine the Father is the Owner and the
Son is the Architect.

Imagine a King who wants to build a house
for his Prince who will be married, but it
happens that this Son is the greatest
Architect, so he uses his own Son to build
for Himself.

  “In the beginning God created [Heb. בָּרָא,
  “bara,” meaning “created from nothing,”
  so this could only be from YHWH] the
  heavens and the earth.”

In the Hexameron, St. Basil would say,
don’t think about a time, in regard to “In
the beginning.” This is not an event. it
did not happen in a measure of time, not
even in a split second, otherwise that
beginning would have a beginning.

God is actually creating time and space
here. However, this account of the
creation is not particularly about the
cosmos. It is about the earth.

  “The earth was formless [תּׂהוּ TAHO],
  and void [בּׂהוּ BAHO]...”

TAHO - formless - unorganized
BAHO - void - empty

Can something be simultaneously
unorganized and empty?

When you build a home, first you build the
walls or rooms, then you populate them.

Our God is a God of Order. He looked out
and saw chaos and emptiness and came up
with a solution for both.

In the six days we have:
  three days forming - anti-TAHO
  three days filling - anti-BAHO

Three days forming:

  Day 1:
    Created Light
    Divided it from Darkness

  Day 2:
    Created the Sky
    Created the Sea

  Day 3:
    Created the Land

Three days filling:

  Day 4:
    Made the Sun control the Day
    The Moon & Stars the Night

  Day 5:
    Filled the Sky with Birds
    Filled the Sea with Fish

  Day 6:
    Filled the Land with Beasts
    Filled the Land with Man

And every time he says “And God saw that
it was good.” What does this “good” mean?

  [Genesis 2:9]

  And out of the ground the LORD God made
  every tree grow that is pleasant to the
  sight and good for food.

Notice that God’s creation is pleasant to
the senses and is nutritious. He is
creating things not only for function but
also for beauty.

  Problem  Solution
  -------  --------
  Chaos    Beauty
  Empty    Function

Good = beautiful and functional,
       pleasant and beneficial.

  Aside: Do you remember how Jesus got mad
  at the fig tree? It was showy but did
  not deliver. That is hypocrisy. For God,
  to be beautiful without being beneficial
  is a form of hypocrisy which He detests.

Now, what would Rabbis say about the
seventh day? They would say the calendar
is filled with cycles: Week, Month, Year.
The Month follows the celestial phases of
the Moon, and the Year follows the
celestial seasons.

What about the week? It has no celestial
cycle. The week is a divine cycle, God’s
making, having nothing to do with
celestial objects. Recall from Revelation,
the seven Spirits of God, the seven Horns
of the Lamb. The seven Eyes of the Lamb.
The Jews would even swear by the seven, “I
SEVEN myself!” (I curse myself.)

Consider that seventh day. God rested from
all the work he had done, all the work he
created and made. Did God then do no other
work on that day?

  [Genesis 2]

  2 And on the seventh day God ended His
    work which He had done, and He rested
    on the seventh day from all His work
    which He had done.

  3 Then God blessed the seventh day and
    sanctified it, because in it He rested
    from all His work which God had
    created and made.

What are the actions of blessing and
sanctifying? Who does them? When? (There
is a lot of priestly work in Chapter 1.
We didn’t scratch the surface!)

To Bless =

  To heal.

  To take away all that is
    wrong or unhealthy.

  To restore.

  To bring to the status of
    creation, complete peace,
    resting, satisfaction.

To Sanctify =

  To bring back to God.

  To restore to God’s
    ownership.

  There is nothing that can
    be called Holy without
    belonging to God.

On the Sabbath day, in the time of the
Jews, Jesus would go around and heal, tell
people, “Show yourself to the priest,” and
remove demons from a demon-possessed
person. (Would a demon-possessed person
make a good offering?) Was he abusing the
Sabbath?

The Sabbath is a day that continually
brings the Creation back to Himself, to
keep those two processes going on
(blessing and sactifying). This is why the
seventh day was made.

Now a word about consistency of the
creation with science.

What does science say about the first
billion years of the earth? They found a
4.4 billion zircon crystal in Australia in
a farm. There is a print of something in
all the oldest rocks. It is water.
Wherever they find old rocks, they find
the evidence of water in these rocks.
There is a consensus that the earth was
covered with water completely from the
very beginning. They disagree where the
water came from; it is a puzzle. Now, they
used to think the earth started out hot,
but not so much anymore. The first
continent was Africa. It is filled with
pelo-lava, the oldest rocks on earth. They
are lava of volcanoes formed under water.
All the rocks were formed under huge
pressure under the oceans. Science says
the earth was not actually land. In the
beginning it was oceans. Science also
believes that all life sprang from the
water.

Take a look at Genesis 1:21. “So God
created great sea creatures and every
living thing that moves, with which the
waters abounded, according to their kind,
and every winged bird according to its
kind. And God saw that it was good.”

Today science knows that birds and sea
creatures are some of the most primordial
creatures, that birds are the descendants
of the dinosaurs. That chicken dinner you
are eating is the descendant of Dino. How
did the text of the Bible know this at the
time it was written?

There is a movie, *How the Earth was Made*
which shows six periods of darkness, but
then there is light, and once there is
light, amazing things happen on earth.

Today we talked bout the material side of
creation. Next we need to talk about the
divine side. Next time, we will take a
look at this same text and contemplate
Good and Evil, Prayer & Meditation, what
it means to be like God. The whole first
three chapters is about these things. The
first three chapters is not to prove or
disprove science; it is about good and
evil. Here we can find out how to
communicate with God.


Homework

What is Good & Evil according to Genesis 1
and 2? (Chapter 1: good. Chapter 2: not so
good.)