Series: Main Project

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Gen. 2:7) And just like that, here in Genesis 2:7, God creates man. Like with so many of the biblical stories, the brevity of the sentence belies the…

The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the…

In the beginning there was relation, and in the act of turning toward the other, humanity was born. Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923) Today we bring the second chapter of Genesis to a close with the introduction of Eve. Today’s post will deal with Adam’s need for a helper, the differentiation of humanity into male…

I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself Genesis 3:10 I Here we are, the temptation and the fall from paradise. In many ways the story of the temptation and the fall from Eden was the corner piece of the jigsaw puzzle for me….

If you recall, this project began with an epilogue for very particular reasons which are outlined in that article. Now we find ourselves at the end of this first section and as we prepare to proceed we do so with a prologue. Before jumping into it, I want to take a moment here and discuss…

The story of Cain and Able is a short one. It is fewer than 300 words. I timed myself reading it and it took fifteen seconds. I consider myself to be well read and I can say, especially given its brevity, I do not believe there exists a more profound story than the story of…

Heraclitus, writing in the sixth century before Christ, opened his work with an observation that has never been surpassed for its combination of precision and devastation: the logos, he wrote — the organizing principle that governs all things — is always present, always operating, structuring everything that exists and everything that happens. And yet most…

In the last essay we established the pattern that precedes the flood — the dual force of entropy and human failure, the return of the tohu va bohu, and the figure of Noah who survives not by escaping the chaos but by building a structure capable of carrying order through it. We ended with the…

The two essays that precede this one have established the pattern and the mode of being. We know what the flood is — the return of the tohu va bohu, the reassertion of the primordial chaos that was never eliminated but only held at bay. We know what Noah is — the tamim man, undivided,…

We have established who Noah is. We have looked carefully at the world he inhabits and the condition of the civilization around him. We know what walking with God requires and what it costs. We know that the waters rising are the same waters that were there at the beginning. Now we enter the story…