His wife said to him, "Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!" – Job 2:9

Today's Scripture Reading (June 30, 2021): Job 2

Ernest Hemmingway instructed that "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." He is right. I know that I am sometimes guilty of not listening completely. It is often too easy to make our decision about what is being said very early in the conversation, and from that moment on, all of the energy that should have been spent on listening is now invested in what we need to say. I, and we, need to learn to listen better and more completely.

Job's wife has become a prime example of an unsupportive and sharp-tongued wife. But that is because we weren't listening completely. The truth is that Job is not the only person in pain in the story. His wife is suffering as much as he is. And often, when two people are in extreme pain, it is hard for either to properly support the other.

In the Septuagint, an early Greek version of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, the interpreters put more words in the mouth of Job's Wife.

How long wilt thou hold out, and say, "Behold I wait yet a little while, expecting the hope of my deliverance?" For, behold, thy memorial is cut off from the earth – [even thy] sons and thy daughters, the pangs and pains of my womb, which I bore in vain, with sorrows; and though thyself sittest down to spend the nights in the open air among the corruption of worms, and I am a wanderer, and a servant from place to place, and house to house, waiting for the setting of the sun, that I may rest from my labours and my pains, which now beset me. Now curse God and die. 

Job's wife is in pain. She has lost everything, and the memory of that loss costs her every day. And watching her husband's pain daily just reminds her of all that has been taken away from her. She wants it all to be over. She has lost faith in life, tomorrow, and any hope that the future could be anything more than the pain already dominating her present. She wants it to be over. She wants Job to curse God and die.

As far as Job's wife is concerned, Job's integrity has not gained him anything, and neither has his service to his God. Of course, the reader knows more of the story than she did. We know that God was still in control. And maybe we can remind ourselves when we are in pain that we don't know the whole story either. Our truth is that God is still in control, even when we feel that he isn't.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Job 3

One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. – Job 1:6

Today's Scripture Reading (June 29, 2021): Job 1

Christianity has developed a dichotomy in its popular theology. Everything appears to exist in either complementary or opposite twos. For the person, it is body and soul. It is often the body that is considered evil; it is often described as the place of the desires of the flesh, and it is the soul that contains a piece of heaven. The body is mortal and finite, but the soul, for good or bad, is eternal. And everything that we do as humans is either to serve the needs of the flesh or the desires of the soul. The spiritual realms are also divided into two, heaven and hell. In popular thought, heaven is ruled by God, and hell is the domain of Satan.

What is surprising is that this dichotomy is partially the influence of Greek thought on the Christian doctrine. Much of the Hebrew belief is not about dichotomy but unity. As people, we are not made up of two distinct parts, but one with our body and soul, each deeply interconnected and heavily influenced by the other. Heaven is the realm of God and, I get this is hard to believe; it is also the realm of Satan. Satan doesn't rule in hell. According to the Bible, it is his place of suffering as much as it is our place of punishment.

The story of Job takes place in two realms. One is the earthly realm of men, and the other domain is heaven, the traditional home of God. And for the reader to understand the story, we have to understand what is taking place in both realms. It is the inclusion of the conversation in heaven that makes the story of Job, for some, a story of historical fiction. It is possible that Job was an actual person who suffered many disasters and then was finally reinstated. Someone then took it upon themselves to write this story to explain the suffering of this good man.

But regardless of in which genre you might place the Book of Job, part of the importance of the story is what it tells us about Satan. In Job, the word that we have translated as angels is "ben Elohim," literally "the sons of God." "Ben Elohim" is the traditional way of describing the angels. According to Job, the sons of God came to present themselves before God, gathering around his heavenly throne. Among the "sons of God" gathered at the throne of God was Satan. The text seems to indicate that Satan was not just among the "sons of God," he was a member of that group. Satan was an angel, and so he belonged in heaven. Zechariah seems to agree. "Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him" (Zechariah 3:1). Satan not only belongs in heaven, but he has access to God.

The story of Job also tells us something else; Satan is not God's equal, and hell is not Satan's domain. Satan is a created being, one of the "sons of God" or an angel. He is not God. Satan is also not "Almighty," and he cannot do anything that God does not allow him to do.

 Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Job 2

Sons were also born to Shem, whose older brother was Japheth; Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber. – Genesis 10:21

Today's Scripture Reading (June 28, 2021): Genesis 10

Leopold Frankenberger is one of three men who are often rumored to have been the biological paternal grandfather of Adolf Hitler. While Johann Georg Hiedler is the man that Adolf claimed as grandpa, there is some historical confusion about the true identity of grandpa. What makes the suggestion of Leopold Frankenberger so intriguing is that Frankenberger was of Jewish descent. If Frankenberger was Hitler's grandfather, it complicates everything we know about Hitler and his campaign against the Jewish people.

But it also highlights part of the problem with modern society. As much as we might want to claim to be of a particular descent, the truth is that almost all of us are some sort of mixture of nations. I may identify as Irish, but the truth is that I know I have Irish, English, German, and Dutch people in my family tree, and probably many other nationalities and cultures. What is notable about this list is that many of my ancestors were, at some point, from competing cultures. Probably the best that I can claim is that I am, primarily, of European descent.

But it hasn't always been that way. In a time when people didn't wander too far from the places where they were born, maybe we married into more culturally pure lines. But, for better or worse, it has been generations since that was true. We are all, more or less, the mongrels of our society.

Genesis says that the sons of Noah all went in different directions. The result was that the descendants of Noah could be separated into relatively pure lines of descent. Shem became the father of the sons of Eber, from which we have derived the words Eberites and Hebrew. But Shem is the father of the Hebrew people in the broadest sense of the word, not just of the Hebrew nation as defined by Israel, but Hebrew as defined by being the ancestors of Abraham, and descendants of Shem and his great, great-grandson, Eber. It was a big, vast family and an important one that would shape the world. Shem's name is proudly mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus as is listed in Luke (Luke 3:36), as is Eber (Luke 3:35). Shem may not have been the oldest of the sons of Noah, but that didn't make him any less important.   

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Job 1

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth." – Genesis 9:1

Today's Scripture Reading (June 27, 2021): Genesis 9

August 13, 1961, is known as Barbed Wire Sunday. The night before, August 12, an order had been signed by East German officials to erect a wall between East and West Germany in an effort to stop the migration of people out of the East into the West. And the fulfillment of the order was swift. On August 13, 1961, construction crews were already hard at work tearing up roads and erecting temporary and barbed-wire barriers that would later be replaced with a wall. Overnight, the world changed; what had existed on August 12, 1961, was no longer the dominant reality on August 13. 

At the time of Barbed Wire Sunday, I was only a year old. My reality is that by the time I was ready to be educated on European geography, Germany had disappeared. The European nation had been replaced by East Germany, a nation that existed in the orbit of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc, and West Germany, a country allied with the Western European nations like France. The separation of Germany, which had been a reality since the end of World War II, was now symbolized by a wall that surrounded West Berlin. Rumors of German reunification circulated, but few could see any way that that it would happen. East and West Germany were our reality, and no one could seem to see Germany in any other way.

And then, on November 9, 1989, almost as suddenly as the building of the wall, the wall fell. While August 13, 1961, is known as "Barbed Wire Sunday," November 9, 1989, is remembered as "The Night the Wall Came Down." Just as the reality changed on August 13, 1961, we woke up to a different world on November 10, 1989. And suddenly, German reunification seemed like it might be a possibility. Less than a year after "The Night that the Wall Came Down," East and West Germany ceased to exist, replaced by a reunified Germany.

Noah stepped out of the Ark after the flood and was confronted by a very different world from the one that had existed before the flood. The civilization that the descendants of Adam had built had been wiped out. There were no cities, no businesses or organizations, no buildings, and all of the everyday things that Noah had likely depended on in the first 600 years of his life, were now gone. Now, Noah had to learn to do things differently, and he had to grapple with what it meant to be alone, with only his family to depend on for help.

In the much-maligned 2014 movie, Noah, the builder of the Ark, is depicted as a man with severe mental and emotional issues, suffering from a self-directed angst that was a direct result of being the only survivor of a worldwide disaster. It was a different take on this religious icon but not an interpretation without merit. I'm not sure that any of us would be on stable mental or emotional ground if we were the only survivors of a worldwide disaster.    

God meets Noah as he steps out of the Ark, and his instructions are the same as he had given to Adam; "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth." Don't worry about the rebuilding of society; we will leave that to your descendants. Your job is to start to repopulate the earth, knowing that every child will have a critical role to play in the rebuilding of the society into something that was, hopefully, better than the one that was destroyed.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 10

Personal Note: Happy 62^nd Anniversary to my Mom and Dad.

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. – Genesis 8:20

Today's Scripture Reading (June 26, 2021): Genesis 8

In "The Last Unicorn," American fantasy author Peter Beagle writes that "real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back." It is an excellent definition of real sacrifice, giving up something that is important to us and costs us something significant. King David understood this kind of sacrifice. During his reign, David would be instructed by God to create an altar on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Araunah offers the site to David at no cost. "Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. Your Majesty, Araunah gives all this to the king" (2 Samuel 24:22-23). But David refuses, arguing, "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing" (2 Samuel 24:24). And so, David paid for all that Araunauh had agreed to give to him.

Noah builds an altar and then takes some of the clean animals that he had with him on the ark and sacrificed them to God. It was a significant act. Noah had only brought a few animals with him. Admittedly, he had more clean animals than unclean animals. God's instructions had been clear. ^"Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth" (Genesis 7:2-3). So, at the beginning of the voyage, there were seven times as many clean animals as unclean animals. Scholars wonder about the difference. Some have argued that some of the clean animals might have been consumed as food during the year that water covered the earth. Or maybe there were more clean animals than unclean animals because God had imagined precisely this moment of sacrifice.

Noah builds an altar. This is the first time an altar is mentioned in the Bible, with the next altar that the Bible mentions being built by Abraham. It is unlikely that these are the first-ever altars. But, in the aftermath of the flood, Noah builds an altar and sacrifices something precious on it, a clean animal that Noah had brought with him on the ark. There was no guarantee that the animal that Noah sacrificed could be replaced, but he placed his trust in God and made a sacrifice of something that was not only precious to him but to the future of the world as well. And with this very significant sacrifice, Noah prayed that God's "magic" would be returned once more to the earth.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 9

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. – Genesis 7:11

Today's Scripture Reading (June 25, 2021): Genesis 7

In "Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality," Donald Miller writes, "My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity." We are good at telling only part of the Bible story. We skim over the top of the story, often missing the uncomfortable aspects. We do it all the time.

The historicity of "The Great Flood" has been intensely debated, but there are indications that something happened. First, we have found the skeletons of fish in unlikely places, like on or near mountain tops. Actually, the existence of any fossils indicates the presence of water at some time in the past. Water and mud are part of the process of creating a fossil. Adding to these unexpected fossils is the reality that many cultures seem to have a version of a flood story. Greek myth includes the story of Deucalion and a flood that was brought onto the world by Zeus. According to the tale, the Arcadian King, Lycaon, had sacrificed a small boy to Zeus, and the Greek God was outraged at the act. In his anger over the wickedness of Lycaon, Zeus decided to release a flood onto the earth. It was Deucalion who created a box to wait out the flood with his wife, Pyrrha. One significant difference from the biblical flood account is that no animals were saved, and the floodwaters receded after only nine days. The Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico have a tradition that says, "Dios told an old man and old woman that it would rain for 40 days and nights."

A number of the cultural flood stories do share four major themes. The people were destroyed because they were evil, a great boat was built,  animals were saved in the boat in many of these stories, and a sacrifice was made to God at the conclusion of the story.

When we talk about the cause of the Great Flood, we often point to the rain falling from heaven as the primary cause of the disaster, likely because it seems to be a more direct connection to God's decision to destroy the earth. But I have lived through a few floods, and the truth is that while rain is often present in a flood, it is seldom the primary cause. In the floods that I have lived through, it was more the quick melting of snow in the nearby mountains, swelling the rivers and saturating the land, than the rain that caused the excess of water. The rain simply adds an extra factor to flood; it is rarely the only cause.

So, while the stories we tell in our fairy tale versions of the Flood often point to the rain that came upon the earth for forty days and forty nights, those who examine the possibility of a Great Flood often point to another significant cause for the flood. Some argue that a meteor may have collided with the earth, upsetting the balance and causing water to spring up from the oceans and the depths. Or maybe it was a series of earthquakes that set the waters of the earth in motion. But something happened besides the presence of the rain.   

So maybe it isn't surprising that the actual biblical story of Genesis agrees. Yes, Genesis says that "the floodgates of the heavens were opened," but it also says that "all the springs of the great deep burst forth." The rains came down, but the earth's waters also burst forth, and the result was a flood that covered the surface of the planet.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 8

The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. – Genesis 6:6

Today's Scripture Reading (June 24, 2021): Genesis 6

In his "Foundation" series, Isaac Asimov postulates the concept that the great movements of the future might be foreseen. In contrast, the individual actions of history might be a mystery wrapped up in the turns of chaos. To put that simply, given the conditions that existed after the First World War, we probably should have seen that an Adolf Hitler-like character would arise out of the ashes of Germany, but not specifically that that person would be Adolf Hitler. It could have been someone else. Of course, then someone appears in Asimov's story who can upset the grand movements. I have to admit that I like Asimov's idea.

I struggle with the idea of how much that God knows, specifically about the future. And sometimes, I wonder if the truth is more like Asimov's concept of the future than it is about God knowing every detail of what is about to happen. My problem is that there are hints throughout the Bible that seem to teach the idea that God doesn't know every detail of the future. And we twist ourselves into pretzels trying to prove something that, at least in places, the Bible doesn't want to tell us. I am not saying that God is not omniscient, and I understand that he is outside of the concept of time, but there are still moments where we seem to surprise God.

And this is one of those moments. Genesis indicates that God "regretted" the creation of the human race. As much as we might want to argue something else, to "regret doing something" indicates that we expected a different result. I regret doing many things, and it is never because the events turned out exactly as I had planned. Maybe it was just a test, but I am not convinced that is true. God regretted creating the human race, partially because of our remarkable ability to cause each other pain. It is not that God did not understand that we might choose that path, but he hoped we would choose to do something different. I believe that God still hopes that we will make a different choice. But I suspect that God doesn't know for sure what choice we will make, at least not in every circumstance.

I don't believe that that weakens God in any way. It would be sadistic of God if he created us, knowing that there was only self-inflicted pain in our future. And like a pet that we have to put down because it is suffering during the end stages of life, if all we are capable of is instilling pain, then maybe the more humane thing is to put us down, ending our short reign over the planet.

The most important part of the story of Noah is simply this; Noah showed God that something different was possible for the human race. Noah proved to God that we could choose a path that leads us to make a positive difference in our world. God's regret didn't extend to Noah. Noah was different, and he chose a better path. But the choice was ours then, and it still is. However, we have an advantage that Noah lacked; we have the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit who can help us make those positive choices. As a result, we can make our Creator proud of how we live our lives, making this planet a better place for everything God has created as we live out our existence together on our Blue Marble.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 7

Altogether, Lamech lived a total of 777 years, and then he died. – Genesis 5:31

Today's Scripture Reading (June 23, 2021): Genesis 5

Who do you think is the most influential person in human history? Who is it that has changed the course of life as we know it, shaping our world, for good or bad? And to make this a little more complicated, let's remove the religious icons like Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha (Siddartha Gautama), or Confucius. Of those who are left, who makes your top five influencers of history?

It was a question that astrophysicist Michael Hart undertook in the early 1990s. In the process, he came up with his top 100 influencers, released in 1992. Hart put a lot of work into developing his list, but it was not a list without its problems. Hart was not playing by our rules, for starters, because he left the religious icons in his list. Muhammad took the number one spot, while Jesus was relegated to number three, Buddha came in at number four, and Confucius rounded off the top five. You might be wondering who the lucky person might have been that took the number two position, and Hart lists the mathematician Isaac Newton behind Muhammad and before Jesus.

Another problem with Hart's list is that white men dominate it. Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times said that the book "stands out as a textbook example of cultural parochialism: Hart's list includes three Africans, two women and one South American." He declared Hart's choices to be arbitrary.  

Ken McGoogan of the Calgary Herald wrote,

If Michael H. Hart has done nothing else, he has demonstrated that picking a public fight can be profitable … How about, for starters, ranking both Muhammad and Isaac Newton ahead of Jesus Christ? Or including John F. Kennedy while relegating Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln to a list of "honorable mentions and interesting misses."

But then, I guess we all have our own opinions of who should be included or left off our list of influencers. And, for Hart, it was not just those who influenced the world in a positive way that were included in his list. Genghis Khan, a name that instilled fear into the people he conquered, is included in Hart's list at number 29, as is Adolf Hitler, who is listed at number 39.

Genesis 5 does not just present us with a list of names. We are also not sure that a member of every generation is included in the list, but we should understand that this sampling of men were the influencers in the early history of our world. Martin Luther makes this comment about the men of Genesis 5.

"This is the greatest glory of the primitive world, that it had so many good, wise, and holy men at the same time. We must not think that these are ordinary names of plain people; but next to Christ and John the Baptist, they were the most outstanding heroes this world has ever produced. And on the Last Day we shall behold and admire their grandeur" (Martin Luther, cited by James Boice).

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 6

Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of the LORD. – Genesis 4:26

Today's Scripture Reading (June 22, 2021): Genesis 4

Author Robert Brault said that "having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don't fool." As a child, we dress up and pretend to be a princess or a superhero. I remember running around the house with a bath towel as a cape pretending to be Batman or some other caped vigilante. And as we grow older, the disguises change, but they never come off. And all the while, we look for the one with whom we can be honest, who sees us as we are and is never tricked by the disguise.

I call that person God, although different people have different names for the one who sees through our disguises. But our reality is that we have been searching for the one who sees through our disguises for a long time, even if we can't articulate for whom we are looking. Deep in the heart of the human race is a desire to find the one we can't fool. And it has always been that way.

Genesis says that it was with the generation of Enosh that people began to "call on the name of the Lord" for the first time. It is an interesting turn of a phrase. We have no idea what "name" they might have been "calling on." The name that Genesis uses here is Yahweh, but that might be revisionist history. Yahweh is the sacred name of the God of Israel, but Israel won't exist for thousands of years. The name Yahweh might even be the result of Moses's interaction with God in the wilderness. When Moses asks God for his name, the response he received was -

I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I am has sent me to you.'"

God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.'

"This is my name forever,
            the name you shall call me
            from generation to generation (Exodus 3:14-15).

"I am who I am" is literally "haya haya" (haw-yaw haw-yaw) which might have been transformed into "Yahweh." But another way of looking at the name of God is that "I am who I am" is essentially God saying I am the God who exists. You can chase after all of the false Gods that your mind can invent, but in the end, I am the one who exists, who is real. That is also the essential meaning of Yahweh, which means "the existing One."

Does it matter what the name might have been that Enosh's generation called God? Probably not. Enosh's age participated in the first revival as they sought the one who could see beyond their disguises. They worshipped "the existing one," the God of Adam and Eve, regardless of what they called him.     

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 5

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. – Genesis 3:21

Today's Scripture Reading (June 21, 2021): Genesis 3

President Harry S. Truman commented, "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." Ronald Reagan argued almost the same thing when he said, "There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit." Both agreed that when we take our eyes off of ourselves, at that moment when we decide that something must be done even if no one ever finds out that we did it, then the sky is the limit for what we can accomplish.

Unfortunately, that is not usually our reality. We seem much more willing to do something good or something sacrificial if we know that our name will be attached to the act. Even if it comes in the form of a "humble brag," we want to advertise the good that we do. And as a result, we limit the good that we can achieve. And the reality is that if we want to make this world a better place, we have to be willing to take our eyes off ourselves and concentrate on the world around us.

I find it distasteful that many biblical scholars seem to want to argue that God's action of making garments for Adam and Eve was a nod of approval toward our sense of modesty. The argument is often made in contrast to naturalists who believe that nudity represents a higher and freer lifestyle. The Christian rebuttal is that if that were true, then God wouldn't have clothed Adam and Eve. But that interpretation seems to ignore the story that goes before this moment.

When Genesis comments that "Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame" (Genesis 2:25), the point of the comment is not that something was missing in the life of Adam and Eve. God did not give them shame so that they would have what they had been missing. Adam and Eve gave themselves shame through their misdeeds.

In the beginning, giving or taking credit was an unknown phenomenon. Adam and Eve simply existed in the garden, enjoying everything that God had created, and in the evening, going for a walk with their Creator. Then the serpent appeared with his lies. And suddenly, the focus of the first couple was turned inward, and credit became something meaningful, at first in the form of blame. Adam pointed at Eve, and Eve, in turn, pointed at the serpent.

And shame entered our world, not as a positive affirmation of a God-approved modesty, but as a negative result of the sin of Adam and Eve had committed. Suddenly, they became aware of themselves; their sin made them naked and ashamed.

As a result of the sin and the shame, the first sacrifice had to be made. The author of Hebrews teaches that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Hebrews 9:22b).  Apparently, that was true from the very beginning. An animal had to die so that Adam and Eve could be clothed and their shame eased. Modesty enters our story, becoming part of our reality because of our sin, and in the process, we became aware of ourselves. The actions of stealing credit and placing the blame on someone else became a part of our daily lives. And, suddenly, we discovered a need to cover everything that we feel is wrong with us.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 4

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. – Genesis 2:4

Today's Scripture Reading (June 20, 2021): Genesis 2

My grandfathers were both great storytellers. That might be why I treasured my time with them and miss them both very much. Admittedly, sometimes when they were alive, I might have outwardly dreaded another telling of one of the more familiar stories, but inside, all I wanted to do was to sit with them and listen to their stories one more time. I also have to admit that, sometimes, it was years after the first hearing of the story that the message grandpa was trying to tell me finally got through to me. As I grew older, I found that I understood some of the story's finer points just a little better, making the story new again. And there are very few things that I want more than to sit beside them one more time and just listen to them tell me their stories.

Genesis, at its heart, is a collection of stories. Traditionally, Genesis is the first of the five books of Moses. But the Book of Genesis, unlike the other four books of Moses, is outside of the experience of Moses. So, one question that needs to be asked is, "how did Moses come to be in possession of these stories?" For some, it is believed that Moses knew the stories because God verbally communicated the stories to him. And while this is possible, it is more likely that these are the stories that were committed to memory and told from father to son. We might live in a culture where we look and try to find where the information we need is written down if we want to know something, but Moses couldn't do that. In his culture, great effort was taken to pass down the information from generation to generation in stories. And we know that these stories, in most cases, were passed down with great accuracy.

Genesis presents the phrase "This is the account" ten times in the book of Genesis. In addition to these ten incidences, Genesis once states, "This is the written account." Each time that Genesis uses the phrase, it begins a story or a genealogy for the reader to consider that is part of the history of the beginnings of everything. It seems likely that these were individual stories handed down from father to son and repeatedly told whenever the family gathered. "This is the account" indicates the oral history of the story from Adam to Jacob. And everything that those involved in those stories considered to be important were contained within the tales.

"This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created" begins the second creation account that we have in our Bible. It is a more theologically oriented account than the Great Creation Poem that makes up the first account. But, while this is the second creation account, this story likely is the earliest of the creation accounts, and the first of the stories passed down from father to son.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 3