Genesis Excerpts (King James 1611 translation): Vocabulary: Anaphora; Epistrophe; Firmament; Masoretic Text; Nephilim; Parallelism; Personification; Septuagint; the “P," "J," and "E," texts of Genesis Identify the following Characters or Creatures: God, the sons of God, the nephilim, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth, Noah, Ham, Shem, Japheth Introduction: What English translation are we using in our textbook excerpts? What year was this translation first published? Lecture or Handouts: What does the word Adam mean in Hebrew? How does this connect to a pun concerning Adamah? What does the word Eve mean in Hebrew? Where is the modern day mountain Ararat located? Why do Biblical scholars think that the modern day mountain cannot be the same as the one described in the Biblical account? Reading Questions: Which came first in the Genesis narrative, the passing of the first day and the first night? Or the creation of the sun and moon? In the Genesis narrative, what does God create to divide the “waters” from “the waters” on the second day before creates dry land? Which does God create first in the Genesis narrative: birds that fly above the earth? Or land-creatures like cattle and others that “creepeth upon the earth”? What does God see about the quality or nature of his handiwork at the end of the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth days? How is this statement different than Genesis’s statement about his creation on the sixth day? According to (Genesis 2:4-3:24), how does the earth outside of Eden receive its water to nourish the ground? According to the geography of Genesis, a single river flows out of Eden and then splits into four different rivers. These four rivers are given names. Out of the five rivers listed below, which one does NOT appear in the Genesis account? (a) Pison, (b) Gihon, (3) Hiddekel, (4) Mesopotamis, or (5) the Euphrates. According to God’s first commandment given to man, what will happen to man on the day he eats of the fruit? Does that even happen on that day? In the Genesis narrative, from what substance does God make Adam? In the Genesis narrative, from what material does God make Eve? What is the serpent cursed to eat for the rest of its days in the Genesis account? What type of angel is placed as guard outside of Eden to prevent man from returning to Paradise? What does this angel carry? (Genesis 4:1-5:5) What profession or job does Abel have? What profession or job does Cain have? According to God, what cries out to him from the ground that lets God know Cain has sinned? Where does Cain go after being cursed by God? (The Flood) According to Genesis 6:1-9:29), what creatures or beings find the daughters of men attractive, and interbreed with them? What are the children like who are born of this union? According to Genesis, what are the names of Noah’s three sons? According to Genesis, about how long is the ark? (Note that a single cubit is probably about 18 inches, or 1.5 feet). How many pairs of each clean species does Noah bring on the Ark? How many pairs of each unclean species? In the Genesis account, why can’t the raven Noah sends out at first find a place to land? What does the dove bring back in its beak after Noah sends it out? How many days has it been since the waters dried up to allow this plant to grow since the last bird was sent out before the raven? God makes a covenant with “every living creature” for “perpetual generations” not to destroy the earth with a flood again. What does God set in the sky as a reminder of this covenant? According to the Genesis account, who is supposed to see this covenant and remember the bargain? In Genesis 6:1, what limit does God place on human longevity? What embarassing activity does Noah engage in after planting a vineyard? How does Ham react to this situation? How do Shem and Japheth react to it? What curse does Noah place on Canaan, the son of Ham? (Genesis 11:1 through Genesis 11:9) According to Genesis, what are two reasons men want to build the tower? What reason does God give for stopping this building project and then scattering them across the face of the earth? Why does this seem strange from an omnipotent God? According to Genesis, how did the city of Babel get its name? What does the word Babel probably mean in Chaldean? What does the word Babel mean in Hebrew? Sample Quotation Identification: A. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” B. “Because thou hast done this, Thou art cursed above all cattle, And above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go And dust shall thou eat All the days of thy life. . . .” C. “I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?” D. “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” E. “I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that a bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember my covenant. . . . and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant. . . .” F. “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

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