1)  Why is time--the night-day cycle--the foundation of creation?  What is unique about our experience of time that the Israelite author of Genesis recognized it as foundational?

2)  God keeps the darkness but never calls it good.  What does it mean for God to allow the "not-good" to exist along side the good--to name it and make it part of the beginnings of creation?  Or is it better to think of this as an oversight by the author of Genesis?

1)  Can you see how images of light and darkness could be destructive?  Constructive?  Which of these two do you think speaks louder?  Sometimes imagery is outdated; other times it speaks across generations.  Can you think of Biblical or Christian images that don't work anymore?  Or images that some people dislike, but you find particularly beautiful?  Or images that, like light and darkness, might be hurtful to some communities or peoples, depending on how they are presented?

2)  How do you perceive God's creation though speech?  This is, of course, different from Genesis 2, where God fashions the human out of dust of the earth; the latter gives a more "hands-on" feel.  Which of the two "methods" of creation speaks more strongly to you, and why?  Can you imagine words having action and power?  In what ways do words have power today?

1)  How does it affect our understanding of Holy Scripture to know that we don't really know the meaning of every word -- that some of our translations are just guesses?

2)  The beginning of things doesn't sound quite as "empty" and "chaotic" as we were led to believe growing up.  A "wasteland" and "the deep" is a lot more priomordial stuff than, as one storyteller says of the beginning of Genesis, "nothing but nothing."  How does this change the way you think about the beginning of creation?  And does it nullify the Christian doctrine that God created ex nihilo -- "out of nothing?"

3)  What do you think resonates best with your understanding of the Bible?  The Spirit of God?  A wind from God?  God's breath?  Why?

4)  How do you draw comfort from God's presence in the midst of fear or devastation?

1)  What surprises you about the way that medieval people looked at and used the Bible?  What parts of today's lesson sound like business as usual in today's world?  What delights you?  What disappoints you?

2)  The principle of Gezerah Shavah -- the connection of two unrelated passages of scripture based on similar words -- is used in surprising and sometimes fruitful ways in medieval writings.  (While Jewish writers relied more heavily on it, Christians did it too!)  But similar principles are used by people like Jack van Impe and Harold Camping today to connect unrelated Bible verses and describe things like the Rapture, which are terrible misuses of scripture.  Where can we draw the line between the two?

3)  Does it change things for you to think of the whole Bible as a story being told in media res -- in the middle of things?  Where God doesn't tell us about what comes before or after, but only tells us about our life together?

1)  Are we picking nits here?  Is this level of examining a Biblical text bordering on overkill?  Or can you see some utility in scholarship that delves at this deep level?

2)  Reading Hebrew and Greek isn't possible for most of us.  Even your pastors, who had to learn the languages in seminary, don't really have the facility in these languages to use them on a regular basis.  But often, some of the translation choices are noticeable when comparing more than one English translation of the Bible.  We use the New Revised Standard Version in church, because it has careful scholarship behind it, uses literal translation choices more often than figurative expressions, and when it shows it's translation bias, it tends toward traditional Protestantism.  But there are many other good translations out there.  Do you have a favorite Bible translation, and if so, what do you like about it?

3)  In today's study, three translations for the first verse of the Bible were given:

     a)  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
     b)  In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth...
     c)  As God was beginning to create the heavens and the earth...

Is there really a difference between each of these?  How does the meaning of the passage change between these translations?  Which makes most sense to you?

4)  How does thinking of each act of creation as taking place in a "day" shape your reading of the creation story?  How does this change when you think of each of them as taking place in a "generation?"

1)  What other cultures' creation stories do you know?  Do they reflect on/help us read our own creation story?  What have we got that they don't got?  Or vice versa?

2)  Why has the story of creation inspired the imagination of generations of Christians and Jews?  Why is it important to us?  What about cultures or religions that don't have a creation story?

3)  How does the interests of the story's writer (the priest looking out his window in 5th century B.C. Babylon, for example) effect the validity of the (much older) story for you, if at all?

1)  Are you surprised at the inconsistencies between Genesis 1 and 2?  What do these differences tell you about the story of Creation?  The purpose of telling the story?  The nature of the Bible?

2)  Does it take away from God's word if the Bible is inconsistent?  What does it mean to say that the Bible is "God's word?"  That it is "perfect?"  "Infallible?"  Is it these things?

3)  Why are these things included in our Bible?  Why does God want us to know about Creation?

Pastor Aaron