The Gospel According to Yeeks

Genesis 2:7 "... then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground ( adama ) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man ( adam ) became a living creature." (Genesis 2:7) Genesis 3:17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife     and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you,     ‘You shall not eat of it’, cursed is the ground ( adama ) because of you;     in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth ( adama ) shall be blessed.” Genesis shows strong links between the ground ( adama ) and the man ( adam ). Genesis 2:7 shows the man being formed from the ground. Genesis 3:17 shows the ground being cursed because of the man But Genesis 12:3 tells us that the ground has hope. All the families of the ground ( adama ) find their hope in an ...

In preparation for a series of things that I will be busy with next year, I am currently making my way through "Dominion and Dynasty: A Biblical Theology of the Hebrew Bible" by Stephen Dempster. Dempster argues that the order of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh (TNK spelling out the Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim) has a literary purpose. Unlike the Old Testament order, it begins with Genesis and ends with Chronicles. In this arrangement, the ending of Genesis and Chronicles display remarkable similarity. At the end of Genesis, Joseph about to die tells his brothers: “I am about to die, but God will visit  (Hebrew root: paqad ) you and bring you up  (Hebrew root:  alah ) out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” (Genesis 50:24) At the end of Chronicles, Cyrus sends the exiles home to rebuild the temple: “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he h...