Genesis: The beginning Part I

⁃ First part — the story of God and the whole world

⁃ Second part — the story of God and Abram’s family

⁃ God creates everything starting with a beautiful garden where humans can flourish

⁃ First human characters — Adam and Eve are responsible for reproducing and building the world

⁃ God gives them a moral choice about how they are going to build this world

⁃ A tree was placed in the garden that is known as the tree of “Knowledge of good and evil”

⁃ God tells them not to eat the fruit of the tree or they will die

⁃ Adam and Eve decide to eat the fruit (the introduction of “sin”)

⁃ Adam and Eve lose trust in each other, confused about the definition of what’s good and evil

⁃ Brothers Cain and Abel are introduced

⁃ Cain is jealous of his brother Abel

⁃ Cain eventually kills Abel out of jealousy

⁃ Lamech is introduced

⁃ Lamech accumulates several wives and is a violent person, a trait he is known to be proud of

⁃ Things get so bad with the human race that God decides to wipe out the world with a flood

⁃ Noah is introduced

⁃ God chooses Noah and his family and saves them in a boat during the flood

⁃ Noah and his family (and the animals) are given the responsibility/chance to re-create humanity

⁃ Noah plants a vineyard and gets totally drunk

⁃ Noah tragically loses his son

⁃ Humanity grows again but things are as bad as before

⁃ The Tower of Babel is introduced

⁃ All nations are united and want to build a huge tower that will reach the Gods

⁃ God knows the city the nations have created will be a nightmare

⁃ God then decides to scatter the rebellious humanity

Genesis: The beginning Part II

⁃ The second part of Genesis follows the story of Abram (AKA Abraham)

⁃ God makes a bunch of promises to Abram like he will bless him, give him lots of kids and through Abram, humanity will be restored

⁃ Sarah is introduced (Abram’s wife)

⁃ For most part, the family is actually dysfunctional — Sarah is twice given to other men and also becomes impatient about having a son so insists Abram to sleep with her servant which causes other problems within their family

⁃ Abram and Sarah get old with the worried that they won’t get any children

⁃ Eventually Abram and Sarah have a child and Isaac is introduced and has two sons: Jacob and Esau

⁃ Jacob and Esau are introduced

⁃ Jacob wants the family inheritance which belongs to his elder brother Esau so comes up with a plan to steal it from his father who at this point is now old and blind

⁃ Jacob goes on to have 12 sons but has a favorite son in Joseph (the 11th son) which makes the 11 other sons dislike Joseph

⁃ The brothers of Joseph plan on killing him but instead decide to sell him as a slave in Egypt

⁃ Joseph ends up in a cell then later becomes the second command in Egypt

⁃ Later on, the Middle East falls into a food shortage

⁃ Joseph’s brothers come down to Egypt in search of food

⁃ The brothers discover that the ruler of the whole land in Egypt is their brother, Joseph

⁃ Joseph saves his brothers from starving to death