Bereshit – Torah with Joseph

Bereshit [Part 1] – The Foundation of Faith

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

The Jewish synagogues have, from the earliest days of the construction of synagogues during the Babylonian exile, read the Five Books of Moses and the counterpart texts in the Prophets. And of course, as disciples of Yeshua, we’re going to add also the New Testament texts.

This is the first lesson, starting with Genesis chapter 1, verse 1.

The Bible starts with seven words in Hebrew. Seven words. Do you think it’s an accident? I don’t think it’s an accident.

This is the most important verse in the whole Bible. Everything in our Bible and our faith in God hinges on this one verse:

If this verse is not true, nothing in the Bible is true. Because if we don’t live on a planet Earth, and in this galaxy with the sun and the moon and the stars in our galaxy, who were created by God, then the Bible is fake news and nothing in it is trustworthy.

I’m repeating this point because I believe it’s a central point. If this verse is not true, then everything in our Bible is not to be trusted. It’s a serious thing.

But how do we know that something is true? It has to have evidence.

Stephen Hawking Affirms Two Basic Truths

Sometimes it’s very complex and difficult to find evidence for such a big claim. A few years back I read Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time. Stephen Hawking is an atheist. He is not a believer in God. But in his book he affirms two basic truths that come from the Bible:

There was a time in which the Earth and our galaxy did not exist.

I’m going to repeat that statement. There was a time, according to the most honored and renowned physicist in our generation, when the Earth and our galaxy did not exist.

And there will be a time in which we don’t know when or how long, maybe hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions of years, when stars and galaxies die, and our galaxy and our Earth will cease to exist.

Well, Stephen Hawking is not exactly evidence, but it’s an interesting kind of sliver of evidence.

However, I think that there is evidence. Where does this evidence come from? It comes from more ancient literature than our Bible. Sumerian, Babylonian, South American Indians, North American Indians, Indian Indians from India, and from other ancient sources as well, most of them older than our Bible, like Egyptian sources.

Read Your Bible From Beginning to End

Of course, I am not teaching now in the university. I want to inspire you. First of all, I want to encourage you to read your Bible from the beginning to the end, not a verse here, a verse there, like pastors in churches who pick from here and pick from there. It’s seldom done in order, from Genesis on to Revelation.

The Apostles and the Gentiles in Acts 15

But the apostles in Acts chapter 15, when they gathered together in Jerusalem to discuss what to do with the Gentiles, and we Jewish disciples of Yeshua, of Jesus, were very kind. We said we don’t need to circumcise them. They don’t need to be circumcised. But they need to do what God commanded Noah, long before Abraham and long before Moses.

They were commanded to abstain from sexual immorality. Where did they get that from? Genesis chapter 9. To abstain from general sexual immorality, because there it says they should multiply and fill the earth with children.

Then to abstain from eating blood, and to abstain from shedding blood.

These three commands are from Noah, chapter 9 of the Book of Genesis, and we’ll get to it soon.

The apostles said to the Gentiles in Acts 15 that they need to keep these commandments. They added another one, interpreting another based on the eating issue, and that is not to eat meat strangled, meat which is not slaughtered properly by cutting the throat so the heart is still pumping and the blood is spewed out.

We shouldn’t eat blood. We shouldn’t shed blood. And we shouldn’t participate in porneia in Greek, which is immoral sex. We get the word pornography from there.

The next thing that the apostles commanded the Gentiles who became believers in Jesus and believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is to go to the synagogue, where every Sabbath the Word of God is being read.

Reading the Bible Publicly

That custom of reading the Bible publicly originated in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. We have it in Nehemiah chapter 8. The people came back from the exile having forgotten the Bible and the Word of God.

Seventy years, more than a generation, they stayed in Babylon, the New York of the ancient world, and they forgot some of the language and forgot the Bible.

Ezra and Nehemiah gathered the Levites, and they read the Bible publicly, the whole Five Books of Moses, all morning long until late afternoon. The people gathered around a big wooden platform and pulpit that they built so everyone could hear.

So the apostles recommended the Gentiles go to the synagogue. Why? Not everybody had an iPhone or an iPad or a Bible. Bibles were very rare. Even the Five Books of Moses were rare, copied by hand on leather, just like our Torah scrolls today.

The Enuma Elish – The Babylonian Creation Myth

So back to Genesis.

Stephen Hawking’s opinion is not evidence, but what is evidence? We have ancient creation stories, like the Enuma Elish from Babylon, which includes the flood, Noah’s flood, and predates our Bible by nearly a thousand years.

Let me read to you from what is called the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian-Sumerian creation myth.

This predates the written Bible that we have today.

Very great similarities, and great differences as well.

The similarities are important, but the differences are even more important.

The Bible speaks of one God, not many gods, not idols. One God who created the heavens and the earth.

What Happened Between Verse 1 and Verse 2?

The next verse in the Bible says the earth was in chaos, darkness on the face of the abyss, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

I know from the rest of the Bible that when God does something, He does it right. He doesn’t start with a mess and then straighten it up. God creates perfectly.

So what happened between verse 1 and verse 2 of Genesis?

We have physical evidence: bones, skeletons, footprints of huge animals, dinosaurs, mammoths, found all over the world, including Israel. Is there room between verse 1 and verse 2 for a period in which the earth was different?

I don’t know. But I see room.

God Spoke Light Into Existence

Verse 3 of Genesis says,

But the sun, moon, and stars weren’t created until the fourth day.

God spoke light into existence.

Isaiah 60 tells us of a time when there will be no sun, because God Himself will be the light, pointing us to the end of Revelation.

God spoke, and there was light.

For now, I will end this lesson with the first verses of Genesis. I hope to do a second session on this portion, and then we will go into the story of Noah and the flood, which is also found in the Sumerian-Babylonian Enuma Elish.

God bless you all.

Bereshit [Part 2] – Rest and Responsibility

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Because this is a long portion of reading, and one of the most important portions in the whole Bible, it starts with the creation of the world and ends with the casting out of Adam and Eve from the garden, and then with God disappointed with humanity in chapter 6, and the beginning of the story of the flood.

I decided to do a double lesson for this week, and this is the second lesson on Genesis. I hope to cover most of the important things in this Torah portion, the first Torah portion of the year.

I am in Genesis chapter 2, verse 1.

God finished the work of His creation, and on the seventh day, after ending His work, He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

This is a very, very interesting and important text.

The first thing we learn from this text is that God finished the work of His creation. What does that mean for us? We are living on this earth, in this galaxy, with the sun, the stars, and the moon. When it says God finished the work of His creation, it means everything that was supposed to be created was created.

The act of creation established the galaxy, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all of nature. Everything that was supposed to be was created.

God Rested on the Seventh Day

And the first thing God does when He finishes creation is that He rests on the seventh day.

Does God need rest? Do angels need rest? I don’t know. But clearly, God is setting a pattern. A pattern for His sake and for the sake of humanity.

God created a day that is given from heaven, for you and for me, so that we are not slaves to work. We have the privilege, as God’s creation, to be like God and to have a time of rest.

This is a very important part of the story of creation. After God finished creating the physical world, on the seventh day God rested.

And not only did He rest, but verse 3 of chapter 2 says that He blessed it and sanctified the seventh day. He made it a special day.

This is an act of creation. It’s not a Jewish thing. It’s not an Israeli thing. It’s for all of humanity, because we are all children of Adam and Eve.

When God sanctified the seventh day, He wasn’t thinking of Israel. There were no Jews yet. Abraham was not born. Isaac was not born. Jacob was not born. God sanctified the seventh day for all humanity.

The History of the Heavens and the Earth

Verse 4 of chapter 2 starts with a groundbreaking text:

"Before any plant of the field was in the earth, before herbs had grown, the Lord had not caused it to rain, and there was no man to till the ground. But mist came up from the ground to water the plants and provide the necessary humidity for growth."

This opening gives us a hint of what is going to happen later in chapter 6, when rain comes for the first time and the flood covers the earth.

This kind of hint appears throughout the Bible. We must pay attention to them, because they are keys to understanding the story.

There was no rain, only mist from the ground.

God Formed Man From the Dust of the Ground

God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

There are two stages here. First, the form of man was created. But only when God breathed life into that form did man become alive.

Man has a physical body, a living spirit, and a divine soul given by God. Together, these make a human being.

The Garden of Eden and the Snake

Next, we learn that God made a garden, the Garden of Eden. It has geography, rivers, and boundaries, though we don’t know how to locate it today. We live thousands of years after creation. The Bible does not tell us the date of creation.

Science has theories, but they are conjectures, because evidence is limited. When science is science, it does not contradict the Bible. And when we read the Bible properly, it does not contradict science either. The two can dovetail together.

In the garden, there were two forbidden trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And there was a snake in the garden.

The Book of Revelation identifies that snake as Satan. Satan is not an independent being. He is part of God’s creation and appears in God’s council, as in Job chapter 1 and in 1 Kings.

There is only one God. And that God created both good and evil. If you don’t believe me, read Isaiah 45:5–7.

The snake deceived Eve, and Eve deceived Adam. The sin was not the fruit. The sin was believing the snake more than believing God.

From Genesis 2:15, Adam was put in the garden to work it and to protect it. Man was not placed in the garden to rest in comfort. Work existed before sin.

Cain and Abel

After sin, Adam and Eve were cast out. Eve bore two sons, Cain and Abel. One was a farmer, the other a shepherd. This tension between farmers and shepherds runs throughout history.

Cain killed Abel. God warned Cain beforehand that sin was crouching at the door, but that he could master it. Sin is not more powerful than the human will empowered by God.

The blood of Abel cried out from the ground. Every innocent bloodshed cries out for repentance. Nations that do not repent will eventually pay for the innocent blood they have shed.

The Most Important Question Ever Asked

Finally, Adam and Eve tried to hide from God. God asked the most important question ever asked of humanity:

Not because God didn’t know, but because when we sin, we lose awareness of where we stand in relationship to God.

The Word of God walked in the garden. That Word later became flesh in Yeshua, as described in the Gospel of John.

All these things are found in this portion of Genesis.

There is much more, but I encourage you to read the text yourself. I am open to answering questions.

God bless you all.