Season 1: Dawn of Time
Eve, Part 1
She was brought forth into a beautiful world full of love, but then something went terribly awry
Eve’s story is perhaps the most iconic for all women, as she is the first of us, the one from whom all of us have come, and her story becomes, in a certain sense, the source of our stories as well.
First, we will lift back the mists of time and watch as God brought forth humanity as the Lord’s crowning act of all creation. Then we will enter into paradise, as it were, the birthplace of Eve, see the Serpent’s seduction, watch how the whole world changes, and conclude with Eve’s great losses and yet also her hope in God’s promised future Deliverer.
Eve’s story is iconic, it is epic, and to tell it well, needs two talks, following this outline of six divisions.
I Created in the Image of God, Genesis 1
God created people with a purpose to love and glorify the Lord
II Communing in the Light of God, Genesis 2
God is glorified when God’s purpose for human union is followed
III Calamity in the Garden of God, Genesis 3
Part of the process of maturing includes willing cooperation with God and the free choice of love and commitment to God.
Eve, Part 2
With only one bite of a luscious fruit, her world imploded. From loved to ruled, her hope now lay in a mysterious Seed who would one day crush the enemy of humankind
As the narrative of her creation, union with Adam, the disastrous circumstances of the Serpent’s deception, and the breakdown of all that Eve held dear is translated and interpreted down through the millennia, our own stories today are shaped. To get Eve’s story right is to lay a firm foundation for all the other stories of women—and men—in the scriptures.
There is some very new teaching in here–for me. I have been learning a lot from Bruce and Joy Fleming, and their most recent book, The Book of Eden.
Jesus has freed us, we are no longer enslaved to sin and corruption, to the fear of death or the fear of each other, either. Women have been rightfully restored to the blessing and commission God has given to all humanity. Let us now reflect that truth, and live as equals in the liberty of love Jesus holds out to us.
IV Cast Out from the Garden of God, Genesis 3
God answers those who call upon the Lord
V Cain and the Children of Eve, Genesis 4
Though sin carries lasting consequences, God provides hope in the Savior
VI Christ and the Course of Eve’s Story, Gospel of John
Jesus has fully restored women and men from the rupture in Genesis 3
Wife of Job
Did she really say, “Curse God and die!”? Or have her words been mistranslated? It all depends on who you ask.
Was she a villainess or a heroine? It is one of those questions theologians, Hebrew scholars, and Bible commentators have lined up for on both sides.
When I first taught the book of Job, I was squarely on one side of this question. But, over the years, learning Hebrew, reading a wider selection of scholarly works, my positioned has been changed, and I share all that research in this twenty minute talk.
As an aside, the week I was to prepare this multimedia presentation, I also experienced a string of unfortunate incidents. The recording of the talk has noise issues I had to dampen, my computer then had a sudden and catastrophic event–probably the hard drive, it is still in the shop. My files, which I had arranged to be protected in the cloud, have continued to be unavailable, with the cloud providers servers down. My husband and I both drove a significant distance, two days in a row, to receive the first of our COVID vaccinations and I had an adverse reaction.
None of these things compare with the ordeal Job and his wife endured. However, there are echoes there, for me, and each of the lessons I saw in their story are truths I found I needed to immediately apply to my own life of faith. All of a sudden, Job’s wife was becoming a personal friend.
May it be you gain as much as I did from her story!
I Blessings and Bitter Blows, Job 1
Earthly ordeals can have heavenly purposes
II Blaspheme and Berate? Job 2
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer (Romans 12:12)
III Beseech and Embolden? Job 2
Draw near to God and God will draw near to you (James 4:8)
IV Rebirth, Job 40-42
Mature faith is found in intimacy with God
Wife of Noah
Though she is mentioned several times, her name is never given. Yet she was responsible for the care and feeding of every kind of animal and bird, as well as the other seven people on this voyage.
Imaginations have been gripped for thousands of years by the story of Noah. How long ago did this neolithic family live? What was the scope of the cataclysmic deluge described in their story? Was the building of the ark, the gathering of animals two-by-two, the repopulation of earth with only eight people allegory?
Metaphor?
Was it literal?
Tribes in New Guinea, India, Brazil, China, Norway, Mexico, and North American First Nation peoples all have a flood story. Each story tells of a favored family (several stories mention eight people specifically) who survived on a boat, two-thirds of the stories attribute the disaster to humankind’s wickedness, and over half end with the survivors landing on a mountain.
To date, anthropologists have collected between 250 to 300 such flood stories from various cultures. (“World Flood Myths,” Ark Encounter),
What is God teaching through such an iconic story?
What are we to come away with, regardless of how we interpret the ancient evidence for a world-wide or more regional flood?
The story of Noah is unsurprisingly centered around the man Noah.
But who was Noah’s wife?
A shadowy figure, she is never mentioned by name, though she is spoken of five times throughout the Flood account and specifically included in God’s instructions to Noah.
There is an epilogue to this epic. And though Noah’s wife is not mentioned, it doesn’t mean she was absent. It is the sad but inevitable story of Noah’s decline, of dissension in his family that ended in a curse of which repercussions would be felt for a thousand of years and more in Israel’s history.
I God’s Covenant, Genesis 6
II God’s Conservation, Genesis 7
III God’s Re-Creation, Genesis 8
IV Consecution, Genesis 9-10
Season 2
Coming up next is Season 2: The Time of the Matriarchs. Standing tall in faith beside the patriarchs, are their wives, the matriarchs who were called of God to birth nations. May their stories be told and retold for thousands of years to come.
Each podcast is designed to offer background scholarship on the topic, including setting, culture, original language, and archaeology, as well as a theological study.
