So we’re now turning back to the Christian tradition and going deeper with it. We’re going to start with the creation narratives that we find at the beginning of the Bible so that we can begin to get a sense of what it means to be human for Christians (remember we talked about what it means to be human in Islam last week!). We’ll talk about all the tricky issues with these chapters on Tuesday, such as its relationship to the theory of evolution!

Please read the first 3 chapters of Genesis for Friday. Here’s a link that starts you on the first chapter: http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/1

As you read, try to treat the story as a narrative (like we did with the Gospel of Mark) that’s trying to communicate deeper truths rather than as a literal science textbook. The vast majority of Christian traditions do not read this in a strictly literal manner, so I’m not asking you to do anything too wild here… we’ll discuss this more on Friday.

Question:

1.Tell me 3 things that you think these three chapters are trying to communicate about what it means to be human. Link each of the 3 things to something specific from the stories in these chapters!