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Genesis Through Ruth: A Survey of the Oldest Portions of Salvation
History
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Readings for Daily Masses in Weeks 12 - 20 of Ordinary Time, Year I
Over the course of nine weeks, we work our way through the highlights of the first eight books of the Bible, starting in Chapter 12 of Genesis. We will spend 3 weeks on Genesis 12 - 50 and nearly as long on Exodus, but then we will spend only a days each on Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. This is not to say that any part of the Bible is unimportant, but this variation in emphasis demonstrates that the Church holds some parts of the Bible to be more important than others.
Joseph Reveals Himself to His Brothers - Peter von Cornelius
To jump ahead to the content of a specific book, please use the links below:
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Genesis, Weeks 12 - 14
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Exodus, Monday of Week 15 - Thursday of Week 17
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Leviticus, Friday & Saturday of Week 17
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Numbers, Monday - Thursday of Week 18
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Deuteronomy, Friday of Week 18 - Wedesneday of Week 19
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Joshua, Thursday - Saturday of Week 19
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Judges, Monday - Thursday of Week 20
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Ruth, Friday & Saturday of Week 20
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Authorship
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Are These Stories True?
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A Summer Syllabus
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If you would like to go deeper into studying the scriptures, we encourage you to re-read the designated passage after each day’s Mass and then skim through all the material until you reach the end of the next day’s passage. In Weeks 12 and 13, this will often involve skimming less than a chapter each day, but on Thursday of Week 17, this will involve skimming 23 chapters! Nevertheless, we recommend dedicating the same amount of time each day to the task, but skimming at different speeds.
If you are interested in learning more about the Bible in a comprehensive way, we encourage you to start by reading this other guide on the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
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The Genres of the First Eight Books of the Bible
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God promises to make ABraham's descendants as numerous as the stars
(Genesis 15:5) - artist unknownThe first five books of the Bible are often called the Pentateuch (Greek: five books) by Christians and the Torah (Hebrew: the Law) by Jews. Judaism holds that the Torah is the most important part of the scriptures: it is the foundation on which God created the world.
The next two books, Joshua and Judges, are designated by Christians as the first in the series of historical books. They are not categorized this way because they reach any standard of verifiable factual accuracy. The term “historical” refers to the content and scope of the books.
The eighth book, Ruth, is much shorter than the first seven books. It is often categorized as a historical novella, but we will discuss its genre further below.
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GENESIS (Weeks 12 - 14)
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Genesis 1 - 11: Pre-History
Genesis 7:17-23
Genesis is the second-longest book in the Old Testament. Outside of the Book of Psalms, the lectionary contains more passages from Genesis than from any other Old Testament book. Genesis can be divided into four major sections. Genesis 1 - 11—detailed on this other page—covers the events before recorded history. The rest of the book is about the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the male leaders of one family who related personally with God over four generations.
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Genesis 12 - 25: Abraham and Isaac
Abraham Embraces His Son Isaac After Receiving Him Back from God - Otto Adolph Stemler
God calls Abram from the land of Ur (modern-day Iraq), vaguely promising to give him a land of his own and to build a great nation from his descendants. Even though the 75-year-old Abram has no children and has never heard God's voice before, he chooses to trust God. He travels with his 65-year-old wife Sarai and his entire retinue, following wherever God leads. Over the next 25 years, God repeats his promises. Abram continues to follow God’s directions, although his trust occasionally wavers (12:10 - 20, 16:1 - 4).
Finally, when Abram (now called Abraham) is 100 years old, Sarai (Sarah) gives birth to Isaac. The pivotal moment occurs a few years later, when God asks Abraham to kill Isaac. Once Abraham demonstrates that he is willing to make this ultimate, seemingly senseless sacrifice for God, an angel stops Abraham at the last moment (22:1 - 18). By the end of Abraham’s life, Isaac has two sons of his own named Esau and Jacob, but the only portion of the land of Canaan that Abraham owns is the cave in which he buried Sarah. There are short stories about Isaac in chapters 24 and 26. -
Genesis 27 - 36: Jacob the Trickster
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel - Alexander Louis Leloir
With the help of his mother Rebekah, Jacob deceives Isaac into giving him Esau’s portion of the inheritance. Esau threatens to kill Jacob, so Jacob runs away to Haran to work for his uncle Laban. Jacob and Laban deceive each other multiple times over 14 years, eventually forcing Jacob to flee Haran quickly with his wives Leah and Rachel (Laban’s daughters), his many children, and the flocks he has stolen from Laban. Jacob has no choice but to return home to face Esau. On the night before the inevitable confrontation between the brothers, Jacob wrestles a mysterious person—an angel?—to a draw (32:23 - 33). The person renames Jacob “Israel,” meaning “wrestles with God.” Jacob reconciles with Esau and lives a long life, with many descendants. -
Genesis 37 - 50: The Saga of Joseph
Joseph's Coat of Many Colors - Lonnie Woodruff
Genesis 37 - 50 is about Jacob’s twelve sons, especially his most beloved son Joseph. Whereas the stories about Abraham and Jacob seem to be small, independent pericopes passed down through generations of oral storytelling, collected together with only a minimal effort to make a coherent narrative, the saga of Joseph is a complex, well-organized tale.The other sons are jealous that Joseph is Jacob’s favorite, as demonstrated by Jacob making Joseph “a long ornamental tunic” (37:3, New American Bible translation; translated as “a coat of many colors” in the King James version). The brothers sell Jospeh into slavery, and he eventually ends up in an Egyptian prison.
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Joseph Reveals Himself to His Brothers and Embraces Benjamin - Richard GilmourJoseph comes to the attention of Pharaoh through his ability to interpret dreams. Pharaoh puts Joseph in charge of leading Egypt through a worldwide 7-year famine. When the famine strikes the Land of Canaan, Jacob’s other sons come to Joseph—not recognizing that he is their brother—seeking his help. After putting his brothers through elaborate tests of their virtue and honesty, Joseph reveals his identity to them. The entire family—including Jacob himself—settles in Egypt, surviving the famine and prospering afterwards for many generations.
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The Enriching - and Challenging - Paradoxes of Genesis
The ancient stories of Genesis 12 - 50 are deliberately filled with paradoxes that invite us to a lifetime of contemplating both the challenges and richness of the journey of faith.
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What does it mean for Abraham to be asked to sacrifice the child through whom God has promised to give Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars? This is an act that Jews, Christians, and Muslims—nearly half the world’s population—hold as the epitome of religious belief and obedience.* *See the section at the bottom of this page for notes on the centrality of this act to Judaism and Islam.
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What does it mean for the Jewish people to name their nation—in both ancient times and in modern times—Israel, "Wrestles with God"? To this day, Judaism encourages its adherents to speak bluntly (wrestle) with God in their prayer.
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What is the nature of suffering? Joseph’s life reaches an abysmal point by 39:20, but by the time of his triumphant reunification with his brothers in 45:5 - 7, Joseph concludes that the tragedies that befell him were an integral part of God’s plan to fulfill the promises made to Abraham and his descendants back in chapter 12.
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EXODUS (Monday of Week 15 - Thursday of Week 17)
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Moses parts the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21 - 22) - artist unknown
The Book of Exodus is arguably the most important book in the Jewish scriptures. Chapters 14, 15, and 19 relate the key stories forming the disparate Semitic tribes into a people of one identity, one nation, under the protection of the one true God. It picks up the story 400 years after the conclusion of Genesis. While Jacob and his sons originally moved to Egypt voluntarily to survive a famine, their descendants have now been enslaved by a Pharaoh “who knew nothing of Joseph.” Moses, an Israelite man who is raised in the household of Pharaoh, is eventually called by God at the burning bush to lead the Israelite people from slavery (chapters 1 - 6). After God sends ten plagues on the Egyptians, the Israelites escape Egypt by passing through the Red Sea (chapters 7 - 15).
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Soon after that, God establishes a covenant with the Israelites through Moses on Mt. Sinai. God promises to be the Israelites’ god if they keep the Law (Torah) that God will give them (chapters 16 - 19). Moses stays on the mountaintop for 40 days as God dictates the Law to him (chapters 20 - 31), but the Israelites rebel by building a golden calf to worship instead. When Moses comes returns from the mountaintop in disgust at their sinfulness, the Israelites repent (chapters 32 - 34). Moses directs the people—according to God’s extremely detailed instructions—to build all the necessary items to conduct the rituals of the Law, including the ark to house the tablets on which the Law is written (chapters 35 - 39). A year after the escape from Egypt, the work is completed. God descends in the cloud to direct the journey of the Israelites through the desert (chapter 40).
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LEVITICUS (Friday & Saturday of Week 17)
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The Book of Leviticus, while extremely important to the Jewish people, is not as central to the tenets of Christianity. It lists most of the mitzvot (precepts or commandments) of the Law not included in Exodus. While the commandments are mostly concerned with rituals, feasts, and purity, they also cover rules governing economics, ethics, and behavior. Consider chapter 19 as a representative sample of the variety of the precepts. The Torah is best understood not as legislation, but as the establishment of a moral society with a unified identity. As with the second half of Exodus, there is little narrative content in Leviticus, stymieing many Christians who attempt to read the Bible from cover to cover.
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NUMBERS (Monday - Thursday of Week 18)
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The Book of Numbers covers the events of the Israelites while wandering in the desert wilderness—years filled with a remarkable amount of complaining by the chosen people of God. The most significant sequence of events is found in chapters 13 - 14, when shortly after the end of chapter 40 of Exodus, God commands the Israelites to invade the Land of Canaan that had been promised to them since the time of Abraham. When the advanced scouts question the Israelites’ ability to conquer the Canaanites and all the people despair, God condemns the doubting generation to wander the rest of their lives in the desert before allowing their progeny to enter the Promised Land.
The book takes its name from the two censuses in it, one conducted at the beginning of the second year after the exodus from Egypt (chapter 1), the other conducted near the end of the 40 years of wandering (chapter 26). However, like the second half of Exodus and most of Leviticus, there are long stretches of Numbers that list various precepts in the Law.
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DEUTERONOMY
(Friday of Week 18 - Wednesday of Week 19)-
Taking its name from words “second law,” the Book of Deuteronomy is primarily comprised of three speeches given by Moses shortly before the Israelites enter the Holy Land. It is a truly liminal moment, as the people prepare to enter the Promised Land as a unified nation after decades wandering the wilderness as refugees. Seizing the moment, Moses reiterates the whole of the Law and the history that has brought the people to this momentous occasion.
With its sweeping, majestic language, Deuteronomy is one of the most frequently quoted books of the Jewish Scriptures. For example, when Jesus is tempted in the desert in Matthew 4:1 - 11 and Luke 4:1 - 13, both Jesus AND Satan quote Deuteronomy.
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JOSHUA (Thursday - Saturday of Week 19)
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After Moses dies on Mt. Nebo, Joshua leads the Israelites into the Holy Land, with the waters of the Jordan River parting in chapter 3 in a way similar to how the Red Sea parted in Exodus 14. As told by the Book of Joshua, the conquest of the Holy Land is relatively quick and easy whenever the Israelites have faith in God’s instructions. The most notable moment of the conquest is the fall of the walls of Jericho in chapter 6. The Book of Joshua should not be understood as a history of how the Israelites became the dominant power in the Holy Land. Rather, it is cautionary tale for the nation to faithfully obey the exact orders of God. Chapter 7 is the exception that proves the rule: the Israelites are defeated at Ai because of the warrior Achan’s disobedience. -
The conquest of Canaan is completed by chapter 12. The modern reader may be shocked by the level of carnage described. One must remember that such massacres were carried out by all contemporary Middle Eastern cultures. While the Bible may present such violence as ordered by God, we should consider that perhaps the bloodthirsty desires were not traits of God, but rather human failings wrongly attributed to God. -
Chapters 13 - 24 describe in detail how the land was divided among the twelve tribes of Israel. One may recall from Genesis that Jacob—later called Israel—had twelve sons. Ten of the tribes are the descendants of 10 of Jacob’s sons (Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Isaachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin). The descendants of Jacob’s son Levi (which included Moses, Aaron, and Miriam) are the priests of the nation, not given a share of the land. The last two tribes are the descendants of Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. Before the tribes depart for their respective regions of the Promised Land, Joshua gives the people the opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to the LORD. As one, the people of all the tribes loudly assent to continue to serve the LORD.
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JUDGES (Monday - Thursday of Week 20)
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Whereas the Book of Joshua presents the conquest of the Land of Canaan as a quick and clean accomplishment, the Book of Judges presents a much more complicated situation.
Many of the previous inhabitants of Canaan still reside in the land, and the Israelites fail to uphold their pledges at the end of the Book of Joshua to serve the LORD. Throughout the 12th and 11th centuries BC, according to Judges, the Israelites repeatedly fall into worshipping foreign gods, which causes the LORD to give the enemies of Israel the upper hand in military battles.
Each time, the LORD rescues the Israelites by raising up a “judge,” someone who serves as a general leader—not necessarily a judicial figure—who brings the people back to the worship of the LORD and leads them to military victory. But upon the death of each judge, the Israelites return to their pagan ways. Judges tells stories of six great judges (Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson) and briefly mentions six other good judges (Shamgar, Tola, Jair, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon).
It also tells of Abimalech in chapter 9, whose desire to become king of Israel led to his downfall. -
Judges is one of the most violent and disturbing books of the Bible. The violence is clearly presented as examples of the depravity of the Israelites when they turned from God. Nevertheless, the authors and redactors of Judges show shockingly little compassion for the victims of the violence, especially the women. In her 1984 book, Texts of Terror, Phyllis Trible argues that we must not ignore these “sad stories.” We need to continue to grapple with them in our quest to understand who God calls us to be. -
At the conclusion of the Book of Judges, roughly 700 years since God first made his promises to Abraham in Genesis 12, those promises are still only partially fulfilled. Abraham’s descendants are numerous as the stars visible to the naked eye, and they reside in the Promised Land. However, they are not in full possession of the land, and they are not yet a great nation. The promise will be fulfilled in a few more generations.
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RUTH (Friday & Saturday of Week 20)
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Compared to the first seven books of the Bible, the Book of Ruth is quite short. The story in chapter 1 is most familiar to Christians. Because of a famine in Bethlehem during the time of the Judges, an Israelite family of a husband, wife, and two sons move to the Moabite plain. The two sons marry Moabite women. (Moabites do not worship the LORD.) After a period of ten years, the husband and both sons die. The wife, Naomi, decides to return to her kinfolk in Bethlehem. One of her Moabite daughters-in-law, Ruth, insists on traveling with the Israelite Naomi, pledging that “Your people shall be my people and your God, my God.” Chapters 2 - 4 tell of Ruth meeting and marrying Naomi’s kinsman Boaz. In the final verses, we learn that Ruth and Boaz become the great-grandparents of David.
What genre is the Book of Ruth? Christians place this book between Judges and Samuel, implying that it is a historical account of the great-grandmother of King David. Jews place it immediately after the Book of Proverbs, perhaps suggesting that Ruth is a historical novella, as an illustration of the “woman of great worth” described in Proverbs 31:10 - 31. Some scholars have suggested it is a corrective to the Book of Nehemiah when the scribe Ezra forbids Jewish men from marrying Moabite women.
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Authorship
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The leading theory of how the first seven books of the Bible were composed, edited, and transmitted is related on a separate page of this Lectionary Guide, entitled Old Testament Authorship. Please check out this fascinating, if complex, theory!
The authorship of the Book of Ruth is unclear. If it was written as history, it may have been written during the reign of David in the early 10th century BC. If it was written as an illustration of Proverbs, it may have been written centuries later. If it is written in reaction to Ezra and Nehemiah’s prohibition of Israelite men marrying Moabite and other non-Jewish women, it would have been written no earlier than the late 6th century BC.
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Are These Stories True?
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How much of the first eight books of the Bible is historically accurate? The only extra-biblical source for the time period between Genesis 12 (18th century BC) and Judges (11th century BC) is the limited archaeological record. Archaeologist William G. Dever argues that the biases of biblical authors and the biases of biblical archaeologists make it difficult to determine the facts.
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Nevertheless, there is relative consensus about the following:
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At the time of Genesis 12, people from Ur followed a similar migration pattern as Abraham.
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There are records at the time of Genesis 45 of Egyptian rulers with Semitic names.
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Moses is an Egyptian name.
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The Egyptian ruler referred to as “Pharoah” in Exodus is likely Ramses II, who ruled at the proper time period and engaged in massive building projects that required large numbers of slaves.
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While there are no known instances of the Red Sea parting, a nearby smaller body of water, the Reed Sea, regularly parted when a steady wind blew over it for several hours.
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Many of the laws of Leviticus are strikingly similar to the Code of Hammurabi, an extensive set of laws that Hammurabi, an 18th-century Babylonian king, claimed to have receive from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice.
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There is no record that some of the towns that the Bible claims were destroyed by Joshua’s forces—including Jericho, Ai, Hesbon, and Dibhan—were occupied at the time.
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There is evidence of a population explosion in the hill country west of the Jordan River in the 12th century.
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There are a number of details in these early books that seem to defy scientific feasibility, including the incredibly long lifespans of some central characters (Genesis 25:7, for example), their ability to produce progeny at extremely advanced ages, and the logistics of the entire proto-nation of Israel escaping Egypt on foot. (According to Numbers 1:46, one year after crossing through the Red Sea, there were 603,550 Israelite males over the age of 20 fit for military service.)
The fact of the matter is: faith must be reasonable, but we cannot reach faith by reason alone. Every person who ponders and researches the factual accuracy of the earliest books of the Bible may form a different set of theories about which details are literary fiction and which details are true due to God contravening the laws of science.
Even Dever, who criticizes the biases of other biblical archaeologists, has shown inconsistencies in his conclusions. In his very entertaining 1991 talk to the Biblical Archaeological Society, “How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite,” Dever claims that there are no discernible archaeological features in the 13th-century Holy Land ruins that distinguish Canaanite homes from Israelite homes. In his 2005 book on the pagan gods worshipped by various peoples in the ancient Middle East, Did God Have a Wife?, however, Dever argues that the difference in features among 3,000+ female figurines found at digs throughout Palestine shows a distinction between Canaanite and Israelite religious practices -
What are we to make of such a confusing mix of fact and fiction in these first eight books of the Bible? These books are still the record of salvation history. The Bible speaks great truths about God, God’s creation, and how human beings relate to both. For Jews and Christians, the truths are there, whether or not every detail in the lives of the patriarchs, the judges, Moses, Joshua, and Ruth is based on fact. Even if the Bible were a literal historical record, the believer would still need to make an act of faith in order for it to become a document of faith. As we stated earlier, faith must be reasonable, but we cannot reach faith by reason alone.
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The response to the first reading during these weeks is usually from the Book of Psalms, with occasional selections from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Daniel, and Luke. The gospel reading is taken from the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 7 - 23.
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*Both Judaism and Islam hold the location of Abraham's sacrifice to be the holiest place in the world, although they disgree on where that location is.
Jewish tradition says that the holy of holies of the Jerusalem temple was built directly over the place on Mount Moriah where Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac. Since the holy of holies was destroyed, the Western Wall of the Temple Mount—the wall closest to where the holy of holies was—is the holiest site in Judaism.
Islamic tradition holds it was not Isaac, but Ishmael, Abraham's son born to Hagar (detailed in Genesis 16:1 - 16 and 21:9 - 21) whom Abraham attempted to sacrifice. The Qaaba in the city of Mecca is built over the place where Islamic tradition says that the sacrifice took place. Every Muslim with financial means to do so is expected to make the hajj to Mecca on least in once in their lifetime. The highlight of the hajj is circling the Qaaba seven times.
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This concludes page 5 of 40 in our Lectionary Guide. For a comprehensive reading of the entire guide, we suggest going next to God's Promises Fulfilled: the Unified Kingdom.
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