Basic interpretation principles

One important principle of biblical interpretation is to try to understand Scripture from the point of view of the original audience and then use that as a stepping stone to work out what it means for us. Along with this original audience principle is the principle of original intent: what did the author intend to communicate to that original audience?

If we ask these two questions of chapter 1 of Genesis, the story of creation, we may find the answers surprising. The prophet Moses is presumably the author of Genesis, the first of the five books he wrote while the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. These people, the original audience, had just emerged from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. Joshua 24:14 explains that many of them had been idolaters there.

Pantheon of gods

The Egyptians had a god or goddess for virtually everything: the sun, moon, stars, crocodiles, flies, cats, the Nile--all of these and more were considered divine and were worshiped. But Genesis 1 explains that neither the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, neither that water nor the sky, nor any plants, nor fish, birds, beasts, or creeping things are divine. To paraphrase the significance of Genesis 1 for the original audience, it's as if Moses said, "All that you have been worshiping the true Creator spoke into being in the beginning. He alone is worthy of homage; He alone is God, and king over all of His creation."

A world shift

This truth would have had a profound effect on the former slaves of Egypt. They had lived in a world in which virtually every object was a spiritual being, whose will had to be accommodated, whose wrath must be placated. But when the one true God revealed His nature through Moses, including His relationship to all that He had made, the world shifted. All of those objects were drained of their spiritual significance. Now they were only objects, things that human beings could handle and manage without fear. Yet the new world that stood in place of the old was not bereft of its spiritual dimension. All of the power, the mystery, and the majesty of the Egyptian pantheon, the Hebrews learned, belonged to the one true God, the king of the universe. And furthermore, and herein lay the good news, The Almighty cared about them, and He was ever faithful and reliable.

Theological foundation

Genesis as a whole serves to lay the groundwork for the Law of Moses that is revealed in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Nothing in the Law is more foundational than what is expressed in the Shema, accepted for thousands of years as the credo of Judaism and acknowledged by Jesus Himself as the "Greatest Commandment":

Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.