Reading Questions for 1/26

Posted on January 19, 2006

This week you're reading the first half of Genesis and three chapters from the Art of Biblical Narrative. Here are some questions that might help focus your biblical reading and to which you're welcome to respond both in class and in the comment section at the end of this post.

Genesis begins with two different creation stories. How would you characterize each one? Why do you think there are two? How do they work in "conversation" with each other?

The story of Noah and his ark should be pretty familiar to everyone. But when you really stop to think about it, what kind of story is this? "Righteousness" is a word that gets used a lot in the story, but what's the status of that concept by the end of the story?

With the story of Abram and Sarai we are introduced to the idea of the covenant, the "contract" that is the foundation of Hebrew monotheism. Think about the terms of that contract and the toll it takes on Abram's family, and Isaac's family thereafter. How can we characterize the relationship between God and Abram's family? How might we characterize the relationships between just the human beings in this story?

Think about the "sign" of the covenant, the bodily sign. What do you make of it? Why that? What's its significance?

In chapter 18, God promises Abraham and Sarah a son, but an awful lot happens before that son is born in chapter 21. Think about the significance of the stories that come between the promise and the delivery--how are they in a kind of conversation with the text that frames them?