Genesis Marks the Spot

Joshua Sherman joins the podcast to talk about the image of Christ.  We discuss how we can trace the image of God through the Bible forward into its ultimate picture in the incarnation of Jesus and how we ought to think of both the image of God and the image of Christ in relationship to who we are and how we live our lives. “You are called to this purpose because of who God created you to be. And...

This episode takes a bit of a diversion from biblical theology into the question of “What is the image of God?” Does God have a physical aspect that we copy (could the LDS church be right about us becoming gods)? Is the image of God proof against evolution? Is the image of God the soul of man? What about relationality or rationality or consciousness or morality, are any of those the image of God?...

Several views of creation are introduced and in particular John Walton’s “functional” or “identity” view of creation is discussed. We look at how that fits into the Bible and explore whether or not this is the likeliest way the ancient person would have thought regarding the creation of the cosmos by looking at some ancient Near Eastern creation accounts. Main podcast site with bonus files: https:...

Who is Graham Hancock and is his Netflix show, Ancient Apocalypse supposed to mirror the History Channel show, Ancient Aliens? Do his ideas have any basis in reality or the Bible? What does his work have to do with the study of the ancient Near East? And who are the apkallu and why should we care? These questions and more will be discussed in this episode of Genesis Marks the Spot. Bonus material:...

Reading ancient literature can help us understand the Bible.  Following on from the conversation in episode 7 about how to read myth in relation to the Bible, this episode includes a reading of the Babylonian creation account known as Enuma Elish . A bonus question at the beginning of the episode: did God really only have 70 “sons of God”? Bonus material: https://genesis-marks-the-spot.castos.com/...

What is mythology and why should the student of the Bible be interested in it? Isn’t mythology just a bunch of made up stories? Or, can mythology actually relate directly to history? In this episode, the concept of mythology is explored along with the field of form criticism, which is a fancy of way of talking about genre. As life-long listeners of stories, we are all capable of looking at a text...

Did the Bible steal all its ideas from its neighbors? Was Israelite religion merely an off-shoot of Canaanite religion? How do we understand ancient literature that is similar to the Bible? These questions and more are explored, focusing in on how the Bible describes God having a divine council that seems in some respects eerily similar to pagan pantheons. Have a listen to find out how we can read...

As Christians, we may have a difficult time in seeing the connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament and early Christian belief, especially when it comes to understanding the divinity of Christ. How would a Jew of the first century understand a man living amongst them as God? Many Christians have understood appearances of YHWH in the Old Testament as Jesus pre-incarnate, but surely...

Most Christians have an image of the heavenly realm that contains more than just God. We believe in angels and we might even have an idea that there are strange creatures with a lot of eyes and wings and heads...well, once we get that far, maybe we get a little freaked out so we stop looking too closely. But the inhabitants of the spiritual realm are no small part of the Bible’s narrative, and onc...

Who is Jonathan Cahn and what is the “explosive mystery” that he reveals in his book The Return of the Gods ? Though he suggests that you need to read the entire book to uncover the mystery because it can’t be pared down to a short description, I actually found it quite easy to summarize the mystery…and I’m not even going to make you listen to this whole episode to “reveal” it. (Stop reading here...

How do we understand the days of creation in Genesis 1? That question can only be answered after exploring what the Bible is and how it is a book written by ancient people in a specific time and place. The Bible, science, cosmic temples, a flat earth, and would an ancient person have used a DeLorean to look back at the creation of the world? All this and more in this episode of Genesis Marks the S...

An introduction to the show, discussing why critical thinking is essential to our pursuit of the study of the Bible and how questioning our assumptions about the text doesn’t need to break our faith. A “scientific” reading of Genesis chapter one is compared and contrasted with a more contextual reading. Music credit: "Marble Machine" by Wintergatan

A brief introduction to the podcast's focus.