Photograph: Plitvice Falls in Croatia. Photo credit: WallpapersB. Eden was the source of four rivers that diverged, which means that it was a higher elevation. Ezekiel called it a mountain (Ezk.28:13 - 14). Perhaps Plitvice Falls comes close to the beauty of Eden.

Below are messages, personal study notes, small group leader notes, and exegetical notes on the Book of Genesis.

Notes and Essays on Genesis

Literary Structures in Genesis

Genesis has one introductory section (1:1 - 2:3) and ten genealogies (2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12; 25:19; 36:1; 37:2). This fits a pattern of God acting in a pattern of ten actions. Additionally, Genesis 1 - 11 is in the literary format of other Ancient Near Eastern creation myths, which accentuates the points of disagreement. Then, major chiastic structures are found in Genesis: the Noah story; the Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar story; the Jacob, Leah, and Rachel story; the Joseph and Judah story. These chiastic structures influence our perception of the characters and interpretation of these stories, so they are vital to consider when teaching and studying Genesis.

God, Omnipotence, and Evil: God in Genesis

Text of a presentation about the three “omni’s”: omnipotence; omniscience; and omnibenevolence. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, can He do something that He didn’t think of before? Pitting omnipotence against omniscience is a logical problem. Either one has to take precedence. Since God is Triune, His character is loving, so His omnibenevolence comes first, and His omniscience serves His omnibenevolence, and His omnipotence serves those qualities.

The Genesis Account and the Documentary Hypothesis

Text of a presentation. The Documentary Hypothesis is the idea that the Pentateuch is a political compromise between four different schools of thought in Israel, and is commonly taught in deconstruction circles. But critics raise four concerns. First, there’s no physical or historical evidence for these four schools of thought. Thus, the Documentary Hypothesis rises and falls on the literary arguments alone. Second, there is the Samaritan Pentateuch. If the “Elohim” school, which stands for the Northern Kingdom, already had a fully integrated Pentateuch, and not just an E document, how do we explain that? The Samaritan Pentateuch has literary features that fatally damage the Documentary Hypothesis. So does another manuscript family, the Masoretic text. Third, a damaging literary point: most of the literary analysis was done in ignorance of the actual properties of ancient literature at the time, and the literary analysis done primarily by Jewish rabbis and scholars. In fact, most of the foundational research on the Documentary Hypothesis comes from Germany, and it had undertones of German anti-Semitism from that period. And fourth, none of the literary criteria work in any consistent way. We examine specific examples.

The Creation Account and the Narrative of Science

Text of a presentation about how to interpret the diversity of life (evolution) and the origin of life. The presentation considers a range of mutually complementary options between the narratives of Genesis and science. The presentation encourages us to not go to the extremes: Neo-Darwinian evolutionists and “literal” six-day creationists.

The Creation Account in Genesis and Tolkien's Silmarillion

A short reflection Mako wrote for Dr. Gary Deddo, for his class in Systematic Theology 1, to illustrate God’s providence and plan. The sheer number of parallels Tolkien’s creation story has to the biblical story is impressive. (1) Tolkien has one eternally existing God, Eru Iluvatar, as the biblical story has one God. (2) Iluvatar creates the angels through a verbal means, singing, as God creates everything by a verbal means, speaking. (3) Iluvatar desires goodness and harmony in the universe, as God clearly does by the order He builds into creation. (4) Iluvatar allows the angels freedom, as God implicitly does. This explains why (5) Iluvatar is not the author of evil, as God is not the author of evil. Rather, (6) that role falls to a disobedient angel named Melkor, the Satan figure. Finally, (7) Iluvatar commits himself to overcoming the dissonance introduced by Melkor, as God commits himself to overcoming the dissonance introduced by Satan.

Jesus in Genesis?

Slideshow presentation as part of a paper that includes a bit more material. Why do Christians think that “the angel of the Lord” is the pre-incarnate Jesus? Is that fair to the text? Or is it cleverness based on a conveniently worded text where the angel only represents God? A proper response must consider how God is at least binitarian, if not overtly trinitarian: transcendent, immanent, and the link between them. Thus, theophanies of God would culminate in Jesus. In addition, the human characters of Genesis reflect God’s desire to restore human partnership to what He intended, which would culminate in Jesus as well.

Covetousness or Christ at the Heart of an Empire: Desire and Spiritual Formation in Ambrose of Milan’s On Naboth

Slides to a presentation Mako Nagasawa gave to a class at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in February 2024. Here is the English text of the treatise, which Ambrose wrote in 389. See video recording. Ambrose uses King Ahab as a case study of greed when he seized Naboth’s vineyard, in 1 Kings 21. This presentation relates to the Genesis creation story because Ambrose structures it around Genesis 1. He says that God gave all humans a shared dominion over the creation. In Christ, God gives us dominion, in principle, over sin. Covetousness, therefore, is a double problem. It interferes with the shared dominion over the creation, and it causes us to fail in exercising proper Christ-centered dominion over the sin in ourselves. Ambrose shows that Ahab became cruel, like the wild dogs that eventually fed off his dead, unburied body, as in 2 Peter 2:19 - 22. Ambrose also draws upon Matthew 6:19 - 24 because of how moths and rust share in our physical goods whereas God shares in the development of our moral goodness. Ambrose draws as well on Luke 12:13 - 34 because the greedy tear down barns/granaries and build bigger ones, finding more pleasure in the rising price of grain, not its widespread availability. A few slides refer to Ambrose’s understanding of the human being as a human becoming, Jesus’ work of atonement as a medical substitution healing human nature for us and inviting us to share in him, the pressing issue being human desires and not deservingness per se, and hell as the love of God but experienced by those who have become addicted to sin.

Whose Family? Which Union? Reflections on Scripture, Human Sexuality and God's Purposes

A paper summarizing the five Letters to a Gay Friend. This is an exegetical and pastoral paper examining biblical passages that are important in the discussion about what God’s vision for human sexuality is: Genesis 1 - 2; Leviticus 18 and 20; Matthew 19; Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6 - 7; 1 Timothy 1. Ultimately, we have to look at the the nature of human desire in general, as a gift from God to move us towards extending ourselves towards Him and others. However, we are called to submit our desires to Jesus, who demonstrated the normative human emotions and desires.

Why Did God Choose a "Chosen People"? Why Not Just Skip Right to Jesus? 

These two questions stand behind all of the questions that we might have about God’s relationship with the people of Israel as portrayed by the Old Testament. Why did God apparently favor Abraham and Sarah and their family? Why did God protect them by taking other human life, like in the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Egyptian firstborn, etc.?

The Troubling Acts of God: Noah's Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Egyptian Firstborn, and the Canaanites

When God took human life in these occasions, it was not to supposedly demonstrate "retributive justice," but rather to protect His human partners at the time, until Jesus came among the Israelites.

From Garden to Exile: A Thematic and Canonical Analysis of the Old Testament

There is a pattern in the canonical shape of the Old Testament literature, as divided into three sections: Pentateuch; Prophets; Writings. Each section begins with a garden or garden imagery. Each section ends with a state of exile yet hope for restoration. Biblical scholar John Sailhamer calls these ‘compositional seams’ linking and holding together books of the Bible. The arrangement of the books within each division reinforces the story and significance of garden to exile. Hope builds on itself.

Bible Studies and Messages from The Anástasis Center: Torah:

Bible Studies and Messages from The Anástasis Center: