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After rescuing Lot, a priest named Melchizedek blesses Abram with a sacrifice of bread and wine, and Abram gives him a tenth of everything. Heb 7:9ff says that Levi, who receives tithes, tithes through Abraham, and that if Christ is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek (as Ps 110 says), He would have to have an indestructible life.

Abram knows that his descendents will be numerous, but he does not know that they will be his children, but God makes a covenant that Abram’s children will have the land, with Abram, in the middle of animals cut into portions, essentially declaring that if the covenant be broken, the same death will fall upon the person who breaks the covenant.

After this, Sarai, who was barren, suggests that Abram should try to have a child with her maid, Hagar. Sarai than demands that Abram choose between her and Hagar, and Abram tells Sarai that she may do with her maid as she chooses. Sarai deals harshly with Hagar, and Hagar flees, but an angel convinces Hagar to come back and submit, telling her that God will multiply her children as well.

Abram’s family comes from Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram’s father, Terah, meant to move to Canaan, but only came as far as Haran. God calls Abram to Canaan. There is some confusion over some of the dating in the text, but we know that from Acts 7, Abram did not move until after his father died. God promises the land to Abram’s children, and Abram builds an altar there. This is the first of several times that Abram is described as building altars.

When a famine came into the land, he left to Egypt with his wife, Sarai, Lot, and his people, but when asked who Sarai is, Abram responds that she was his sister (in reality, his half-sister). This causes a dispute with the pharaoh, who attempts to take Sarai as his wife.

When they return to Canaan, Abram lets Lot his portion, and Lot chooses the more prosperous land of Sodom and Gomorrah. When Lot is captured during a rebellion in the land, Abram seeks him out and routs the army.

After the flood, God gives Noah and his family the land to populate, but instructs them that they are not to eat animals with their blood, as life is in the blood. This is one of the laws that the Council of Jerusalem stated apply to Gentiles.

Noah grows a vineyard, and becomes drunk and naked. His son Ham sees him in his vulnerable state and does nothing to help, though his brothers clothe Noah. Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan, which has prophetic importance as the civilizations of the Semites and the Canaanites would later be in conflict.

Men then turned to build a great city, known as Babel, with a tower in the heavens, but this sort of prideful overreach is punished by God by destroying the tower, scattering the people, and confusing their language.

Though there are poetic elements of the creation account in Genesis, there are important things that are related in Genesis. There was a first man and first woman, and they fell from grace due to man’s sin, and though they have an adversary in Satan, God does not abandon them, even though the effects of sin are immediately visible in Cain.

Genesis states that the sons of God had children with the daughters of men, and there are multiple interpretations as to what this may mean. Some say that the sons of God are men of the Sethite line and the daughters of men are women of the Cainite line. Another interpretation, supported by Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:17, is that the sons of God were fallen angels. This interpretation may explain why the lifespans before the flood are recorded as so long. A newer interpretation is that the sons of God may be ancient rulers who claimed to rule by divine right, but may have been demonically possessed.

God gives man ample warning through Noah that He is going to send a flood. The account in Genesis bears some similarity to other flood accounts in the region, but in other accounts, there are significant differences as to the reasons for the flood and the results of the flood. The flood mirrors in some aspects the account of creation, though the 40 days and nights of rain, the 150 days of flooding, and the time spent testing to see if the land was clear were much longer than the time described in creation.

God declares that He will not again curse the ground, though He knows that the human heart is inclined toward evil from youth.

Genesis 2 gives us another perspective on creation with an emphasis on man. Man is given the land to cultivate, and Adam is given Eve to help him. God instructs Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but he eats deliberately, knowing that this is a sin, and that it is grave matter. This meets the criteria of mortal sin. We can see the effects of Adam’s sin immediately after, when Cain slays Abel.

The first twelve chapters of Genesis concern the origin of Man. The creation is structured into seven days, but appears to be a thematic categorization of creation into ages, as the word for day is used shortly thereafter to also mean an era. The universe was created by God, who existed before everything else and created it out of nothing.

Much of the scholarship of the book of Genesis from the 18th century to the early 20th century was based on Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis that the Torah was collated from multiple sources based on various factions. The evidence for this comes from the type of content in portions of the Torah, and in particular the words used for the name of God.

The theory proposes that there were four authors of all of Torah, the Jahwist author, whose writings are theorized to be very personal, at around the time of Solomon in 950 BC, the Elohist author, who was supposed to be much more philosophical and less personal, writing about 100 years later, the Deuteronomist author writing at the time of Josiah’s reforms in 600 BC to support the reforms, and the Priestly author, who is supposed to be concerned with laws and rituals, writing after the end of the Babylonian Exile in 500 BC, and all of these various sources were later reconciled by an editor or editors. Please note that this is all conjecture and not endorsed by the Catholic Church.

No hard evidence for such documents exists, and similar differences exist in the writings of other ancient Semitic cultures. In practice, this theory tends to prevent a deeper faith.

Genesis is a book of origins, as the name suggests, but it is in many ways more addressed in the New Testament than the Old Testament. Genesis, along with the next four books of the Bible, was substantially written by Moses, though some portions, such as the death of Moses in Deuteronomy, may have been written or edited by others.

Genesis’ origin differs profoundly from the Semitic origin stories of other cultures, which serves to highlight how different our faith is from that of other religions. Notably, the origin stories explain the gods emerge from the chaos. Genesis is suitable for instruction in the faith and not be dismissed.