Ok, here we go. We are going to kick the study off by going through Genesis 1-6.
We all have read these chapters to death and back again, I understand that. When you read it this week, try to take yourself out of your 21st mindset and context, and read it as someone would have read it centuries ago. Since the Bible wasn't directly written to us, we need to read it as the original audience would have read it (yes, we won't do this perfectly, but it's a good habit to get into). What would the original audience look for? How might they react to what was written. What would be significant to them?
I'll post more questions later, but this is just a start. May God's grace allow us to be impacted in the reading of this text!
Abonohu te:
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I will get on reading it. Genesis is one of my favorite books within the Old Testament. This brand new semester will allow each and every one of us within our small group to grow more and I am glad to be on board with it.
Right on Seabiscuit! Let's all not forget to be in prayer during our studies!
Ok, I got a question. Why is Adam and Eve's nakedness seemingly emphasized in chapters 2-3?
Adam and Eve's nudity...
It's a funny question because we ourselves are so intrigued and embarrassed by nudity, especially our own. Which, I think, is key to understanding what was going on with Adam and Eve.
Eve had a conversation with a snake, who convinced her that she should go ahead and eat the fruit, which she saw was “desirable for gaining wisdom.” She was tempted and intrigued. So she took the fruit that she thought would make her a greater person, and likewise offered it to her husband. He was apparently thinking the same thing because he raised not even a minor complaint about her sin against God. And they ate.
And what is the very next that we are told? They “realized they were naked, and made coverings for their loins.” No one had to tell them. They simply learned of good and evil, and their nakedness became a problem.
The hard thing to imagine is not that they began to have a problem with their own nudity, but that at one point they did not have a problem with their nudity. Ask anyone if they would stand in front of a crowd of strange people naked, and they would most likely say no. The people in our society who are willing to do this kind of thing we all agree are morally bankrupt: strippers and pornographers must break their own consciences to do the kind of work they do. Generally speaking, we know that the nudity of the human body is something to be ashamed of, except in a marriage context. But to be completely innocent about your own nudity, to be able to stand in front of that crowd, a grown man, and think nothing of your appearance, indeed, very little of yourself at all, that is a mystery we cannot comprehend.
I'm not quite sure if there is a moral dilemma with being nude. It's all a matter of who sees you; what is the context? What your wife sees your neighbor should not. It must, then, be the good and and evil that nudity is capable of. For nudity is a thing of such strength, oddity, terror and ferocity that it requires an equally strong response. Are we disgusted? Tempted? It is a thing which calls us to moral action or choice.
All of which could be a partial explanation of the author's strange insistence on the first couple's change in perspective regarding naked flesh. We were once like all of nature; our naked appearance was our only appearance, just as a lion would never think to wrap a bow around his mane. Yet once we understood the gravity of our actions, that our nudity could be interpreted and used as an object of lust or scorn by our peers, we knew it must be covered.
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