Today, we're exploring some big questions about life, starting with how the books of Genesis and Job provide foundational answers. We’ll explore how these texts reveal God's desire for us to know Him and how they lay the groundwork for understanding life’s challenges. The episode breaks down the authorship and dating of these books, emphasizing that they are not just ancient stories but pivotal narratives that shape our understanding of existence and suffering. We’ll touch on why it’s essential to read these texts in chronological order to grasp their significance fully. By the end, we’ll highlight three crucial truths about God’s sovereignty and the nature of our relationship with Him, setting the stage for the deeper discussions to come in this series.

Takeaways:

• The Bible serves as a crucial means for understanding God's nature and our relationship with Him, providing insights necessary for salvation.
• In this series, we delve into Genesis and Job, addressing fundamental questions like the origin of humanity and the nature of evil.
• Understanding the chronological order of biblical texts enhances our comprehension of the overarching narrative of God's redemptive plan.
• The authorship of Genesis and Job is attributed to Moses, emphasizing the importance of traditional interpretations in biblical scholarship.

Links referenced in this episode:

• bible805.com
• sefaria.org

The transcript for this podcast is A.I. generated and though it has all the content, it sometimes has odd breaks, spelling, and spacing.

For an almost exact copy of the text, go to the www.Bible805.com site for downloadable NOTES or to the www.Bible805Academy.com for FREE, downloadable and editable Notes, Discussion Guide, Audio and Video files, plus the original PowerPoints—for your personal study or all you need to teach the lesson.

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Welcome to the Bible 805 podcast.

God wants us to know him and the Bible is one of the ways he's communicated everything we need for our salvation and a closer, more personal walk with him now and forever.

In this podcast, which comes out every Wednesday with supporting materials published by Friday each week on www.bible805.com I take sometimes difficult sounding Bible topics and them easy to understand and apply. At least that's what my students tell me. See for yourself as we get started on our topic today, which is----

Answers To the big questions of life from Genesis and Job.

This is part one of this series where we're going to talk about an overview and introduction to the books, the authorship of the books and the dating of both books. So let's get started. Before answering any questions, I want you to meet the one who will answer them.

We're introduced to the protagonist of the story that fills the Bible when it says in the beginning God. From beginning to end, it's his story. The story begins with God creating a parenthesis in eternity to carefully craft a world.

He then fills this world with living creatures and ultimately with one created in his image. Mankind, male and female, to whom he assigns fulfilling work and with whom he will walk in a perfect world.

But an enemy is also there, Satan, the antagonist. Almost immediately he enters the scene and God's beloved creation turn against him.

Believe Satan's lie and that sets up the plot, the storyline of the rest of the Bible. This is a setting for the answers to the big questions we all ask. And here they are. Here are the big questions this series will answer.

How did we get here? What went wrong? Who is Satan and what power does he have? 3. Is there life after death? 4. What about people who've never heard about Jesus? 5.

Why do innocent people suffer? And 6 how can we help people who are suffering?

We'll cover the first three in part two of this series and then the second three in part three of this series. Now, God doesn't make us wait to answer these big questions of life or make us read through the whole Bible for answers to these questions.

They're given early on if you do a correct chronological reading of the Bible.

Now, not only in the Bible 805 reading plan, which of course I put together and I think is one of the best you can use and you can get a copy of it on the www bible805 website. There are many chronological reading plans where you'll begin reading in Genesis, which is where most people expect you to begin reading The Bible.

But then almost immediately, you jump into Job. What is going on? Most people ask. Now, in most Bibles, the book of Job is close to the middle of the book, just before Psalms.

However, in most chronological Bible reading plans, Job is placed near the beginning of the book of Genesis.

Now, the chronology is important because instead of unrelated Bible stories, hopeful promises, upbeat snippets when you read the Bible in chronological historical order, or put another way, in the order that the events actually happened in the entire story of God's redemptive plan for his creation will make much more sense.

When you understand the correct chronological order of God's revelation to his people, you get the foundation in place and God's actions in the rest of the Bible are more understandable.

This is why it is extremely important to date and read Job correctly very early on, because it teaches foundational truths that are important for our understanding of the Bible and big questions in life that if we aren't solid on an understanding of them, we're always going to have problems. Now, three important foundational lessons to understanding the Bible and life that you're going to get from this series.

When you read the Bible with Genesis and Job as you start, and when you correctly understand how to interpret Job, which you'll learn in this series, you'll learn three incredibly important foundational lessons for not only understanding the Bible, but really for all of life. Now, I'm giving them to you very briefly below. Each one of them could have a huge discussion on it, but I'm giving them to you briefly. Now.

We will go into them in much more detail as we go through the other lessons. The first one, God's absolute right to do things. We must understand this.

He is in control over all things in heaven and earth, people, Satan, his demons. This right is also known as his sovereignty. He is king. 2.

A foundational reality we must grasp, and that is our relationship with him is not a transactional one where we can put expectations and demands on him based on what we want or think we deserve or what we think is in the Bible or God. You promise this and you've got to do that.

And the whole idea that if we do certain things, he's obligated to act a certain way, kind of go back to number one. No, he is in charge. He decides we do not obligate him to do things.

Number three, there's a lot more going on in the spiritual world than we are aware of in ways that are both terrifying and ultimately comforting. Now, again, these were huge statements.

We will go into them in more detail, but you will learn the answers and a much better understanding of them as we go through this series of lessons. Now, just a corrective, just in case.

I don't want to sound too harsh, and I realize that another way to put what I just shared is the popular saying, God is God and we are not.

Now, I don't want to give you the impression that in saying that God is in charge, that he is king, that he is sovereign, that his control is that of an unfeeling despot.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and we must always be assured that God's control over all events in our lives comes from a God who in his very nature personifies love, and who has our eternal best always in mind for us, no matter how challenging current circumstances might be. We have a good God who will ultimately right all wrongs, heal all pain, wipe away all tears, and bring us safely home.

With that clarified, let's get into the lesson by first establishing the authorship of both Genesis and Job and the timeline of when they were written. Genesis and Job have one author, Moses, and I'm going to give you the reasons why that's true.

However, in both books, Moses is more of an editor than how we normally think of an author. An author creates the content, but in Genesis and Job, the words are not originally his. The content was revealed from God to Moses.

In addition, Moses had access to oral and written records of what happened prior to his life. We'll next look at a chart on the lengthy timelines of the early biblical characters to illustrate how this is possible.

Now, if you are listening to the podcast, please check out the video on the Bible805 YouTube channel where you can actually see this chart. It will also be in the downloadable handouts, but I think you'll find it really interesting.

After we look at that chart, we're going to look at the traditional geographical and also historical details that affirm Moses as the author. Here is a chart, a timeline of the Old Testament patriarchs that shows us how important oral history is.

And what oral history is is basically it's just one person telling another person about their life.

Now, I wish you could all see this, but the point of it is the long line lifespans of the people in the Old Testament enable many generations to know what happened early on. Now here is in this timeline you can see how we have Adam and he lived almost a thousand years.

And when, when you actually plot it all out, Adam was still alive when Noah's father was born. So Noah's Father Shem's grandfather who came off the ark, Lamech knew the first man created. Can you imagine that?

Just before the flood, the man who knew the first man was still living. And after the flood, Abraham, the patriarch of Jewish history, was still alive before Shem died. So you're only two people away from creation.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the family history, the stories, which, you know, in formal terms we call it the oral history that they could talk about.

I mean, and you think your grandma has great stories in reality, Abraham's grandparent knew someone who knew the first man created. Yeah, kind of wrap your mind around that.

I've read some goofy things where they talk about, oh well, you know, writing was just beginning when Moses was there and he, you know, couldn't have read any record. That's absolutely crazy.

And the reason I'm bringing this up is there's contemporary anti supernaturalist views that dispute that Moses was the author of the Book of Job. And they refer to it as a fictional allegorical story by an unnamed author. But there's no evidence of any sort for this view.

However, in contrast, we have literally thousands of years of history and tradition that support that Moses was the author. I'm going to quote you something from the IRC organization. This is the Institute for Creation Research.

It's a conservative Christian site and it summarizes it in this way. It says uniform Jewish tradition ascribed the Book of Job to Moses and also accepted it as part of the true canon of Scripture.

This ascription seems quite reasonable if Moses is regarded as the editor, which, as I said earlier, that's more what he really was.

Moses most likely came into possession of Job's record during his 40 year exile from Egypt in the land of Midian, not far from Job's own homeland in Uz, and quickly recognized its great importance.

It's probably similar to how he compiled and organized the primeval of or relating to the earliest ages, records from which he also has given us the Book of Genesis. Now, here's another quote, and this is really kind of a neat one.

It's from sephora.org and I'll tell you a little bit more about this organization in a minute. This particular organization, it's a collection of Jewish history and writings. I read you something that's a conservative Christian view.

This is a Jewish one, a scholarly site about Moses authorship. And here's what they say. According to the Talmudic sages, Moses was the author of the Book of Job.

The Midrash explains that he wrote the book in order to comfort the children of Israel during their suffering in Egypt, employing the techniques of analysis and philosophical contemplation. This is talking about a particular Jewish scholar. He examined and investigated this subject before the word of God was revealed to him.

However, in his glosses on the passage in the Talmud that ascribes the composition of Job to Moses Rashi, again, a Jewish scholar notes that Moses also composed some additional psalms. One of these, Psalm 92, relates to the same topic as Job, namely the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous.

Now, if you're not familiar with the Sefaria Library, just a little brief parentheses here for those of you that are Bible teachers or who want to look things up. Safaria.org S E F A R I A.org it's an incredible resource for anyone who wants to study the Old Testament. It has, and it's.

It's a totally Jewish resource. It has, and I've got a picture of it again on the website. Just great resources for you there.

And one of the things that I recommend for those of you again that are teachers or studying, always go back to what the different groups say about themselves. For example, whenever I'm preparing a lesson, I don't just look at conservative Christian commentaries, of course, I always look at those.

But then I also look at ones that disagree with them.

If it's something about the Old Testament, I look at Jewish sources, I look at the Catholic Encyclopedia, I look at all of these different things and we must weigh them all carefully and not just get very narrowly focused. And it's quite interesting, I think, how Jewish scholarship consistently says this is where Job came from. Moses is the author to it.

Now, the Book of Job, based on these things, is probably the oldest book in the Bible. Some of the different reasons for it.

The IRC has another quote where it says Job contains more references to creation, the flood and other primeval events than any book of the Bible except Genesis, and provides more insights, insight into the age long conflict between God and Satan than almost any other book. I think this view is true and it's so important because these are such key topics, obviously creation, the flood, God and Satan.

If you just look at Job as some fictional account written later on, it loses all its power.

But in summary, just as later books in the Bible refer to other accounts of contemporary history in their books, since we have ancient writings from other civilizations from that time, the Gilgamesh epic, things like that, and if we realize that Moses had access to all the learning of Egypt, remember he was a prince of Egypt. He would have had all of their resources.

And then when he goes to Midian, he has all of those resources, it makes sense that he would be very familiar with all these things. Now, here's some additional evidences of Moses as the author of Job and an early date. I have a map here. Again, please go to the video.

The geographical evidence for his authorship, biblical archaeology and geography, places us where the book takes place, near Midian. Again, where Moses spent 40 years after he fled from Egypt. Now, it was not an accident.

When you look again at the sovereignty of God and how he organized all these things, it's so incredible. He sent Moses to the specific place where he would have heard the oral history of Job and perhaps had access to written documents of Job's story.

Remember, his father in law, Jethro, was a priest of Midian, and presumably of the learned class. As writing and record keeping was extensive at this time, Jethro would have had access to these records.

Historical evidence too, on dating the book from the book itself. For Moses to be the author, the book needs to take place prior to the time of the Exodus, during the time of the patriarchs.

And that is what the book shows through historical details of internal evidence. Because it describes a time that was first of all very similar to the patriarchal society described elsewhere in the Bible.

It was a nomadic lifestyle, living in tents, wealth measured in herds of various kinds. It was pre law. Obviously the law had not been given, as evidenced by Job's personal sacrifices for his family if they sinned.

It was a time without any formal priesthood or temple structure, again not referred to in any way. It was a time without strong overall central government. None is mentioned.

Our overall picture of Job is similar to how we would picture the world of Abraham, which would be consistent with the world presented in the accounts of both their lives.

More important though, than historical trivia, reading Job out of Historical context or reading it as part of a poetical book has a very dangerous potential result.

And that is for people, not only biblical critics, but casual readers, to perhaps without thinking, make Job into just a fictional character who represents unjust suffering. That is not how the Bible presents Job, and to think of him in that way robs the book of much of its power.

And the Bible as a whole is a true source for how to deal with difficult times. Now here is some Here are some additional ways on how the Bible itself confirms Job as a real individual.

The Old Testament biblical confirmation that Job was a real person is first found in Ezekiel, who is a priest and an exile from Israel who is deported from baby from Israel to Babylon prior to the fall of Jerusalem.

In a passage where God is giving him a message about coming judgment, he writes, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness, declares the sovereign Lord. Now God speaks, and Ezekiel repeats his words with a clear sense that these three are real persons. Because first of all, Daniel was his contemporary.

He was a fellow exile to Babylon.

Now, not only does Ezekiel consider Noah a real person, but the historical reality of Noah is verified by Jesus when he used him to illustrate how the world would be prior to his second coming.

In Matthew 24, 37 and 38, Ezekiel places Job as a real individual alongside these other two, clearly taking him out of the realm of just being a fictional character.

In addition, on dating, the quote about Job from Ezekiel also refutes a common falsehood about Job that it was written along with many of the prophetic books according to anti supernaturalist critics and all their stuff is just stupid.

But anyway, after the Babylonian exile, however, this couldn't be the case because Ezekiel, as it is unambiguously clear and undisputed, was written during the Babylonian exile. So how could he mention Job if it was written after him? I mean, you know, a lot of their stuff just doesn't make sense.

Job had to be written before the book of Ezekiel, and it had to be accepted as part of the written history of the Jewish people for Ezekiel to cite him in the way that he did. This is not a trivial issue.

Proper dating is a key factor that distinguishes between our view of the books of the Bible as true and history of God's dealings with people and fanciful musings on spiritual questions. Ezekiel isn't the only biblical author who verifies that Job was a real person.

The New Testament adds biblical confirmation that Job was a real person in James, where it says, as you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You've heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

James cites Job in a way that assumes he's talking about a real person.

His assertion here as a key argument in the teaching of how God comforts his people would not have any meaning if Job was simply a Jewish folktale written by an unknown person at some indistinct time. In addition to this specific example, please note the Bible is always the best commentary on itself.

Because of that, we should expect that the various parts of the Bible agree with and comment on each other as these varied passages that talk about Job do. Now.

Summary and review of what we know so far about Job Based on tradition, biblical confirmation, and the historical and geographical evidence we have, we will read Job believing that he was a real person who lived about the time of the patriarch. What took place in the Job and what took place in the book were true events experienced by Job.

The finished book was supernaturally revealed to and perhaps using other records, was finally compiled into its final form by Moses for us.

It follows then that Job, as with all the Bible, was given to us by inspiration from God and is useful to teach us what is true and make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and helps us do what is right. 2Nd Timothy 3:16 now we've talked about Job. What about the basis of Genesis?

Traditionally, Jewish and Christian sources have attributed the authorship of Genesis along with the other four books of the Pentateuch, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to Moses. It refers to itself in this way and relates how Moses wrote it in the Pentateuch. We see again and again and again passages like this in Exodus.

Moses then wrote down everything the Lord said in Deuteronomy. Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the Levitical priests. The New Testament cites Moses as the author of the Pentateuch along with Jesus.

He mentions it in many places. He's always talking about the law of Moses. Moses said this, that, and the other. Just many, many places in the New Testament.

Peter refers to Moses authorship as he quotes it in Acts 3. 2. That Moses was the author of Genesis is a foundational underlying truth of biblical study throughout all of Jewish and Christian history.

Until I've got to bring this up because some of you may be familiar with it. If you haven't heard of it, I want to tell you about it. So you've heard it from me, you. And you've heard it refuted from me.

And so this is what people thought for almost all of church history until the documentary hypotheses came along. Now, I am greatly simp close to a couple hundred years of malarkey.

But anyway, the documentary hypothesis is one of the models used by, and I say I use this term very lightly, biblical scholars to explain the origins and compositions of the Pentateuch, the first five books. A version of the documentary hypothesis is identified with the German scholar Julius Wellenhaus.

Now, it was almost universally accepted for much of the 20th century. Some of you who are younger may have never heard of this. I know when I was in college about a million years ago, oh, it was still a big deal.

And all this doubt on the Bible. What they came up with was the idea that the Pentateuch was a compilation of four originally independent documents.

The Yahwist, elohist, Deuteronomist and priestly sources.

And I have this funny little diagram here again on the video where you can see all the different things and how this fed into this and this fit into that. And these words came from this and other other words came from that. The first of these j it was sometimes called the jdep of theory.

Also, the first one was dated to the Solomonic period. The second one was just before the reign of King Josiah. Then another one was just before the time of Ezra.

And you know, all of these different datings and then the sources were jo at various points by certain editors or redactors. Now, it sounds so scholarly and so scary and so serious when you first hear it and you see it.

But a lot what it did, though, is it sowed a lot of doubt, uncertainty in the minds of many. My conclusions, though, it's unsubstantiated and inconsistent. I hesitated to put this in the notes, but I'm going to say it here.

You look at it and it's just flat out goofy. Now, how in the world did all that come about? Thousands of years of Jewish history and scholarly study and tradition and everything else.

And then these guys come along and they think, oh, this word sounds like it came from this group, and then this word from this one and this word. Because there is absolutely no evidence of this. We do not have these separate documents. We don't have any record of them. Who are these redactors?

We don't know they just supposed that they existed, but people believed it and there's still just so much damage. You see how different.

Even some good scholars today that I'll listen to, they'll go, well, this might have been written much later or put together, whatever. Where did you get that idea? There is no historical traditional document support for these different things.

It's just so much easier to believe what the church, Jewish and Christian history has believed for so long. We would rather trust Jesus for his evaluation of these things, as briefly shown earlier and many more verses could be cited.

Jesus repeatedly referred to Moses as the author of Genesis and his teachings.

In it, he validated not only the authorship, but he also quotes many of the, what you might call controversial passages in Genesis where he talks about creation and the first humans. In Matthew 19, he just says, you know, this is how God created a male and female right from the start.

You know, they didn't even into this, you know, he just says this is what happened. The story of Noah and the flood. He talks about this again as a record of people's actions, the consequences of them.

He talks about God's blessing of Abraham in Luke. And in summary, Jesus clearly believed and taught that Moses was the human author of Genesis. And the teachings in it has the authority of God.

Which is why, along with the book of Job, we are using them to answer our foundational questions of life, which are again, what are the big foundational questions we're referring to? One, how did we get here? Two, what went wrong? And the sub question, who is Satan and what power does he have? Three, is there life after death?

Four, what about people who've never heard about Jesus? Number five, why do innocent people suffer? Number six, how can we help people who are suffering?

We'll cover the first three in part two and then the second three in part three of this series. One thing to remember though, as we start these books give us answers.

But we must acknowledge, and I want to forewarn you, that not every answer will be the answer we want. It won't be for the questions we ask and answer in Genesis and Job and.

And it won't be for many of the remaining books we look at in remaining lessons. And it isn't for our lives, but what we do get and what Job got at the end of the book.

Remember, God never specifically answered his questions isn't perhaps the answers we think we want or need, but it's better than that. God shows up. He did for Job and he will for us in every step we take in life and forever. That's all for now. Please check out the show notes, a.

Complete downloadable transcript, graphics mention and related materials at www.bible805.com. Until next time, I'm Yvonne Prynn, your fellow pilgrim, writer and teacher for Jesus, and I'd like to close with this benediction.

May you know the invitation of God to move from confusion to clarity, from wandering to rest, from loneliness to knowing you are loved, from turmoil to peace, from wherever you are in your spiritual journey to a growing knowledge of God's word and in your personal relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.