Lessons from Genesis

Hello everybody
I'm back on my campus for my final semester (Praise the Lord!), and one of the classes I am taking is Jewish Literature and Civilization. The course is taught by an Orthodox Jew who is absolutely brilliant, if a little arrogant. Anyway, we started the semester by reading through the Torah, beginning, naturally, with Genesis, and we are in Exodus right now. God has used the course to give me some fresh insights into many Scriptural things. So without further ado, here are the lessons that I have learned
1. The Word for God in Genesis 1 is Elohim, which is a plural word. However, In Genesis 1 Elohim is used in the singular. I find this to be an early reference to the Trinity...God is one, and yet is more than one... This pattern continues with the quote, "let us make man in our image." (emphasis mine). The professor termed Genesis 1 to be what he called "The Monotheistic Revolution." Unlike the rest of the creation stories from the Middle East, There is one God who creates the world. The things that man think are gods, (the earth, the sky, the sea monsters, the waters) are not gods-in fact they are created by this God. When Moses wrote this down, this was radical. ONE God?-This was a departure from the polytheism of the neighbors of the Israelites.
2. Significantly, This One God creates man in His image...Man is the climax of His creation. After man is removed from the Garden of Eden, his purpose is to learn how to live in the image of God .
3. "Ethical Monotheism"-The God of the Jews is associated with morality, ethics and the difference between right and wrong. This is why Abraham intercedes on behalf of Sodom and Gommorah in Genesis 18 (more on that episode later) In this chapter, Abraham makes the point that God destroys the cities and there are righteous men there, then He is violating His own sense of ethics.
4. God's sense of right and wrong compels Him to destroy the earth with the Flood. He does not do this for capricious reasons like the gods in other Flood stories from the Middle East, but because the people are wicked, and are not listening to Him
5. Noah and Abraham are both referred to "just and perfect" before the Lord. The word "just" means righteous. Perfect (blameless in the Jewish Publication Society's translation of the TaNaKH (The TaNaKH is the Jewish term for the Old Testament)) means something slightly different. Perfect has the connotation of wholeheartedness. Both Abraham and Noah served God Wholeheartedly.
6. As we were discussing the story of Sodom and Gommorah, the Professor asked and interesting question. When interceding for the cities, why does Abraham stop at 10 men? why not go all the way to one?
The answer to this question was an interesting one. As my professor put it, Abraham stopped at 10 because he knew what the people in Sodom and Gomorrah were like. In fact, if we recall, he rescued the Sodomite king in Genesis 14. Abraham also knew that his nephew Lot, while he was more righteous than the rest of Sodom, he was not blameless the way Abraham and Noah were. First of all, instead of trusting God to provide for him and his family, he chose the easy way out when he decided to move there after the quarrel between his servants and Abraham's servants. Secondly, instead of trusting God to rescue the two angels when they were attacked by the men of Sodom he offered his daughters to be gang raped. Lastly, he and his family had to be dragged out of the city, and his wife looked back. The professor stated that Lot was rescued from Sodom only because of Uncle Abraham's relationship with God.
Lot is a picture of a lukewarm Christian. Although The Bible does refer to him as a "righteous man dwelling among them (the men of Sodom), [who] in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds" (I Peter 2:8), Lot's righteousness only went so far. He did not have the kind of saving faith in God that Abraham had. He was unable or unwilling to trust God all the way.