Having returned to Egypt from Midian and reestablished a connection with his brother Aaron, Moses is now reintroduced to his people

Exod 5 - Together, Moses and Aaron go to ask Pharaoh to let the Hebrew people go “hold-a-pilgrimage festival” ["hag" in Hebrew is related to hajj in Arabic] in the wilderness. Pharaoh wants to know “Who is YHWH, that I should hearken to his voice” (5:2). Pharaoh accuses them of just being lazy and looking for an excuse to get out of doing the work…

So we leave behind the first stories of the biblical narrative, the stories that present to us a God who is above all and who has a creative desire to create something that is good and pleasing, a desire to be in relation to man (male and female), beings who are “like” Him. In our freedom, we disappoint God and He respond to our failings with anger and persistent outreach. We finally see God reach out in a very personal way to Abraham, a man whose family by one account originated in Ur and…

Gen. 46 - At Beer-sheba, God appears to Jacob in a vision and for the last time (at night) repeats the promise of making him a great nation, even though there will be a sojourn in Egypt.  God had previously forbidden Isaac from going down into Egypt during a famine (26:1-2) as he had forbidden him to go back to Haran, but Jacob is permitted these journeys away from the land of Canaan.  All his offspring in the migration are listed.  The total number of offspring Jacob has in…

Gen. 40 – Joseph is gifted in having and interpreting dreams – we already have learned this about him. Now in jail because of the accusations made against him by Potiphar’s wife, Joseph has even there risen to a position of prominence. Joseph has been put "in charge" of the prisoners. When two men in the jail come to him with dreams they have had, he interprets the dreams, and his interpretations turn out to be accurate: one of the men - the chief cup-bearer of the Pharaoh – is…

It seems that the post I did last week I posted in a different place, so there is a little gap here for chapters 34 through 36. The post I made (wherever it was) can be found at the following place on the QuakerQuaker blog:…

Jacob realizes he MUST go; the Elohist version of the speckled livestock story appears here. Rachel and Leah see the deception as a way of returning to them the “bride-price” Jacob paid for them, which Laban has “wasted.”  When they leave, Rachel takes the household idols and hides them in her things.  Laban catches up with Jacob and tries to make him feel guilty, telling him he would have sent him off royally, had he only known they were leaving; but his anger is tapped over the household…

The heart of the Jacob-Esau story begins in chapter 27. Isaac [Yitzak] is an old man, unable to see at all well any more.  He wants some of the stew Esau cooks, so he sends him off, planning to reward him with his “innermost” [Tanakh] blessing when he returns.  But Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, has a different plan. She calls her younger son Jacob and concocts a plan that will permit him to get the blessing he needs to be carrier of the promise God made to both Abraham and Isaac.…

The matter of finding a wife for Isaac occupies chapter 24.  Abraham sends his steward back to his family’s kinsmen at Haran in Upper Mesopotamia.  Here he finds Abraham’s nephew’s daughter, Rebecca (Rivka) at a well. She and her whole family show the servant of Abraham great hospitality, and the family agrees to the marriage of Rebecca to Isaac; they only ask that she remain with them for ten days. At the end of the ten days, she goes with a “nurse” back to Abraham’s territory with the…

Gen. 18 shows us Abraham sitting at the entrance to his tent near a small tree called a terebinth at Mamre.  It is just getting to the hot part of the day, when three strangers appear.  Abraham runs over to them and begs them to accept hospitality from him.  He enlists Sarah’s help and arranges for meat and cheese to be offered.  While they are eating, they ask where his wife is and one of them says “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will then have a…

I'm feeling the need to slow it down a little even though there were few comments posted on the last entry. And I really didn't get to chapter 15 in the last post, so I am starting with it and going through chapter 17 only. I have also done a lot of reorganizing of some of my own blogs. I created another blog page called "The Narrative of Scripture" [http://scripturenarrative.blogspot.com/] where I can do posts similar to the ones I do…

Chapters 12 through 25 of Genesis present the story of Abraham, who will become the/or perhaps a “founding father” of the world’s three largest faith “communities” – Jews, Christians and Muslims. In my mind – seeing the array of biblical “stories,” legends, historical accounts and meditations – as a “narrative” put together by God in “His” very mysterious way through those who put “Him” first in their lives and consciousness - the story represents God’s new plan or approach to redeeming His…

The next seven chapters of Genesis set forth the early history of "fallen" man as they saw it. The descendants of Adam and Eve are told of and some early legends and myths set in the narrative build a sense of God's frustration with how his creation has turned out. Man's heart "fashioned nothing but wickedness all day long" (5). So God decides to basically start over again, to wipe everything out, saving only Noah and his family to start the "human being project" over again. Noah's name…

Moving on - the consequences of "the fall" are inescapable when we look at the history of "civilized" man. The story of Cain and Abel reveals to us the broader consequences of man's fall as they extend beyond the lives of the perpetrators into the lives of their children (all of us). Cain and Abel represent two ancient modes of life - the shepherd's and the farmer's. Both are already in the practice of relating to God through the giving of gifts, offerings or sacrifices. Why this mode of…

There are a good many interesting things in the story of the "fall" but the things most interesting to me in the past have been what I mentioned yesterday

1. The nature of the "death" that Adam and Eve suffer as a result of their disobedience?

2. The "fallen" nature of our lives on this earth, and do we continue to live in that fallen world/nature?

3. What Christians and especially early Quakers understood about what you might call God's "Ur-Promise"…

After God rests on the seventh day, we move on to yet another creation story - this one focusing on the creation of man (Adam) and his dwelling place, the garden in Eden. Here man is created separately and placed at the head of the earthly creation and given the job of caring for it.  There are all kinds of trees, but in the middle of the garden are the tree of life, from which Adam may eat, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - from that tree Adam is told he may not eat, "for on…

OK, so let's get started. I remember the day in 1986 when I stood up before a fresh class of Friends Academy (Locust Valley, NY) 7th graders and started to teach Quakerism for the first time. And since the early Friends writings that had been so critical to me in returning to Christ were so inaccessible to young readers, I decided to just use the biblical narrative to introduce them to Quakerism. We started talking about the Bible as if it were just another book you would take off the shelf,…