The article I have chosen for this critique assignment is “Genesis 1-11” written by J. Rogerson. He made it cognize clearly to his readers at the beginning of his article that the article aims to cover with separate inquiries: ( a ) How did the presumed Israelite readers of Genesis chapters 1-11 understand these transitions? ( B ) What do we intend when we classify Genesis 1-11 or parts thereof as myths or fabulous? These are the two ends the article aims to accomplish. In order to make this. the writer of the article divides the article into 16 subdivisions. with each of which concentrating on a peculiar issue which is either debatable or controversial. Some issues touch on broader countries ( e. g. One Creation Story or two? ) whereas some others are concerned with the life events of peculiar characters in Genesis ( e. g. Cain and Abel ) . All these issues/topics. whether wide or narrow in visual aspect. do hold a broad range of theological deductions.

In the first subdivision of the article. the writer explains that the Israelite readers can understand Genesis 1-11 because the narratives in chapters 1-11 were compiled from ancient traditions about beginnings which the Israelite shared with other antediluvian Near Eastern neighbors whose folk narrative motifs enable the Israelite readers to believe in the contents of Genesis 1-11. Sing the inquiry of ‘myths’ . the writer claims that he is convinced by Muller’s attack to myth: the narrations of Genesis 1-11 are more or less the same as their similar traditions from the antediluvian Near East. even if the latter are polytheistic and the former is monotheistic. Section 2 Tells us that Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the celestial spheres and the earth” . is likely a drumhead statement of what God had done. and the words in poetry 2 “darkness” and “without form” suggest something sinister about the unformed Earth which was helter-skelter. Section 3 of the article tries to separate between ‘Creation by Word’ and ‘Creation by deed’ .

An illustration of the former is ‘Let at that place be light’ and an illustration of the latter is ‘He besides made the stars’ . Section 4 Tells us that the ‘good’ in ‘God saw that it was good’ which recurs in Genesis 1 agencies ‘good for accomplishing its purpose’ . The writer says in malice of the subsequent expletive and inundation. the creative activity is still good in that it provides the order and stableness in which the life given by God can be lived out. Section 5 references that the procedure of creative activity described in Genesis 1 involve distinguishing. puting boundaries and delegating places. For case. visible radiation is distinguished from darkness. the firmament sets a boundary between the upper and lower Waterss. and birds are assigned to the celestial spheres. The writer further points out that if creative activity implies order. so that order is non restricted entirely to the non-human universe ; it must include human relationships ; otherwise. the creative activity would be immoral. The writer. in subdivision 6. contends that Genesis 1 is a creative activity narrative while Genesis 2 is an origins narrative in such a manner the Genesis 1 relates the formation and ordination of the existence and Genesis 2 presumes the being of the Earth and depict how it was populated and ordered.

Section 7 studies that Genesis 1:1-4 and 2:4-3:24 may come from different beginnings. One ground is that they use different names for God. The cardinal job is that Genesis 3 Tells us that Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden so as non to allow them eat the fruit of the tree of life. non because the disobeyed God’s bid to eat from the tree of the cognition of good and evil. Now the inquiry is: ‘Was there one tree or two? ’ In Section 8. the writer tells us that a parallel to Genesis 3 is found in ancient literature. which is Ezekiel 28:11-19. In both transitions. the iniquitous characters were punished by ejection. The writer of this article concludes that in the formation of Genesis 3:1-24. the author of Genesis used a narrative similar to that in Ezekiel 28:11-19 to keep a narrative integrity. Section 9. entitled ‘Cain and Abel’ . points to the possibility of Genesis 4:1-16 being intentionally composed to mention back to Genesis 3:1-21. An illustration of trouble in understanding chapter 4 is that Cain says to God in verse 14 that he would be killed by anyone who finds him rolling on the Earth. but there were merely three people on Earth at that clip.

The writer believes that Cain. like his parents. is a type —- he represents human existences who violate the affinity bonds. Section 10 references several jobs which once more suggest that the author of Genesis might hold gained entree to more than one beginning when composing up the contents of Genesis. For illustration. a patched job is that the order of the coevalss in 4:17-21 is different from that in 5:1-28. Another dramatic thing are the great ages attained by Adam’s posterities. This. to many readers of Genesis. would presumptively be impossible! So. this is something that would back up the position that some contents of Genesis 1-11 are. possibly. myths. Besides. what is the chief deduction of ‘did non decease but was “taken” by God’ in the instance of Enoch as reported in Genesis 5:24? Was it fabulous? In subdivision 11. the writer thinks that Genesis 6:1-4 is a unusual transition because it says the boies of God married the beautiful girls of work forces. which makes many readers puzzled about who the ‘sons of God’ were. The writer believes that this transition implies a confusion of boundaries. with godly existences perchance inter-marrying with human existences. Section 12 Tells us that the two narratives of the Flood seem to hold mingled together to organize a individual narrative as there exists some conflicting contents. for case. between Genesis 6 and 7— in chapter 6. Noah is asked to convey braces of everything into the Ark whereas in chapter 7. he is asked to convey seven braces of clean and one brace of dirty animate beings into the Ark.

Section 13 studies a job: why didn’t Noah expletive Ham. whose error is described in Genesis 9:22. but Ham’s boy called Canaan? Section 14 goes on to proclaim that Genesis is composed of two types of narrative. viz. the P narrative and the J narrative. each of which performs a different map. The formulaic stuff lists out the posterities of Noah and depict how they spread all over the Earth while the narrative component informs Israelite readers about the beginnings of the people familiar to them. Section 15 points out a clear contradiction: Genesis 11:1 Tells us that the whole Earth shared one linguistic communication whereas chapter 10 implies that each state had its ain linguistic communication. Again. the writer observed the presence of boundaries misdemeanor in the narrative of the Tower of Babel. Finally. subdivision 16 confirms that any efforts to day of the month elements of Genesis 1-11 are at best plausible instead than likely.

Both the positive and the negative unfavorable judgment will imply some treatments of the literary contexts and characteristics in relation to the author’s reading of Genesis 1-11. In fact. the Drumhead Section above has mentioned some of these issues. First of all. the general strengths of the article prevarication in: ( a ) its distinct format which divides the article into 16 distinguishable subdivisions with each of them showing one on more jobs spotted throughout the texts in Genesis 1-11 ; ( B ) the author’s determination to province the end of the article clearly in simple English right at the beginning of the article ; ( degree Celsius ) the author’s effort to supply a quick. simple reply to Question 1 ( the first end of the article ) in subdivision 1 of his article before traveling onto the following undertaking which is much more complicated.

Diging deeper into the strengths of the article. one can gain that the writer has succeeded in: ( vitamin D ) acquiring across his of import message to the readers that the similar antediluvian traditions shared between the Israelite and their Near Eastern neighbors did heighten Israel’s apprehension of the transitions in Genesis 1-11 ; ( vitamin E ) exemplifying rather convincingly with illustrations that the author of Genesis has likely used different beginnings during the procedure of composing up Genesis 1-11 ( e. g. Genesis 10 is composed of 2 types of narrative ) ; ( g ) foregrounding the being of analogues ( e. g. Genesis 3 being ‘similar’ to Ezekiel 28:11-19 with both transitions adverting ejection as a penalty and the activity of the guardian cherub ) . These analogues further uncover the ‘divine wisdom’ behind the composing pen of the writer of Genesis because inter-scripture and inter-testamental echoing would be impossible without godly engagement ; ( H ) indicating out some far-reaching theological deductions which should be learnt by Christians of different coevalss ( e. g. the narrative of Noah’s inebriation and Canaan’s expletive reminds us that the human race after the inundation was non perfect ) .