<p>It’s Father’s Day, and we’re in the thick of studying through the book of Genesis together. Remember there was no reading assignment this week, we finished the first eleven chapters of Genesis last week, the sort of pre-history part of the story, and this week, we’re going to be introduced to Abram, whose name gets changed to Abraham.</p><p>We didn’t have reading assignments, and we’re not going to read any passages today, either. We’re going to start with a recounting of some of the major events in the last thirty-nine chapters of the book of Genesis and the book of Exodus, and we’ll sort of gloss over some of the parts we’ve covered previously.</p><p>You may recall that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This is another etiology, “where did we come from” sort of story. There’s a table of nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis, and it’s sort of a “hey, all the people we bothered to mention are descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth in this way.” When I was a kid, I used to wonder, where are the Chinese people in this story? But I digress. Shem has kids, and their kids have kids, and after ten or so generations, Abram is born in Ur of the Chaleans, and marries Sarai.</p><p>Ur of the Chaldeans is in modern day Iraq, near the mouth of the Euphrates River, and there was a big ziggurat there too, maybe that was the Tower of Babel. Who knows!?</p><p>We’re going to dive into a few stories of Abram, but not this week. This week, we’re going for character arcs. Abram calls on Yahweh, though according to the earlier stories he’s not the first, but he calls on Yahweh, and eventually Yahweh makes a covenant with him and changes his name to Abraham, and changes Sarai’s name to Sarah. Abraham is ninety nine years old when this all goes down, and we learned earlier in the story that Sarah isn’t able to conceive, but she does, and they have a son named Isaac.</p><p>I will also note that Abraham has two sons, and God promises to bless both of them. One is his son with Hagar, and one is his son with Sarah. Notably, there are some differences in how Jews and Muslims tell this part of the story, but the canonical telling in the Bible is that God’s covenant is established with Isaac. Isaac marries Rebekah, and I will mention here that there’s quite a bit of the telling of this part of the story that involves this family being in Canaan, which is the land that their descendants will later take over, but not marrying Canaanites. Again, a bit of etiology going there.</p><p>So Abraham and Sarah’s Son Isaac marries Rebekah. Rebekah and Isaac’s son is named Jacob, though he also gets a new name later, Israel, hmm, wonder where I’ve heard that name? Jacob slash Israel marries two sisters named Rachel and Leah, and he eventually has a bunch of kids with the two of them and with Bilhah and Zilpah, who are handmaidens to the two sisters.</p><p>In some tellings of the stories, they’re half-sisters to the two wives, but that’s not in the Bible. Anyway, the five of them, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah, have twelve sons, and the second-youngest is a dreamer named Joseph.</p><p>Pausing for a moment here, I just want to observe that what we’re talking about is really the living memory of one person. Meaning, the story describes characters that would have literally known each other. It’s much further zoomed in than the last eleven chapters we read, it’s thirty-nine chapters for just four generations.</p><p>Okay, so who remembers what happens at the end of the story of Joseph?</p><p>That’s right, the whole gang goes on down to Egypt. And they stay there until Moses is born, Moses is a direct descendant of Jacob slash Israel through his son Levi, but we’re not talking about living memory now. The story, as it goes in the book of Exodus, is that they were in Egypt for four hundred thirty years. Then we dive deep again.</p><p>Moses leads the Children of Israel out of Egypt. This is the Exodus, which is famously depicted in the book of Exodus. So Genesis, the beginning, Exodus, the Exodus, and then on to Leviticus, which is where we get a real deep dive into the law they got during Exodus. We’re not going to spend a whole bunch of time in Leviticus, but it’s got some good, meaty bits in it.</p><p>Moses is sort of present throughout the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, as a character. He’s got numerous sidekicks, but the important one who emerges at the end is Joshua, who leads the Children of Israel into the Promised Land. Since you all remember the Lyle Lovett album from 1992, Joshua Judges Ruth, does anyone care to guess about the period just after the Children of Israel enter the Land of Canaan?</p><p>That’s right, Judges, the next part is the period of the Judges. We’re going to read parts of all of this, but after the Judges there are Kings, the Kings build the first temple, it’s eventually destroyed and the second temple is built, we’ve covered that part of the narrative, and on through the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, when our own Christian religion was becoming an offshoot of Judaism.</p><p>I will note that Jews and Christians do not have separate stories for this period, our religion literally forked off of theirs, so prior to that, our spiritual ancestors were Jews, Like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We do, however, have lots of separate interpretations.</p><p>When people talk about Abrahamic religions, they’re talking about Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but also some other, smaller religions. Druze have been in the news recently, and there are actually still Samaritans, as in the Good Samaritan, in the world.</p><p>Okay, so that’s the character arcs, and next week, we’re reading one story about Abram and Hagar and Sarai, everyone read Genesis chapter 16. Until then, I love you all so much, and let’s light our candles.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://notesformeeting.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">notesformeeting.substack.com</a>