In the Beginning: The Roots of the Faith: The Expanded Biblical Narrative Book I

I love stories, and I love the Bible. I have been reading Scripture for more than 35 years and have struggled to make sense of it at various points in my life. In time, I grew to understand them better. When I had children of my own, I read them stories from a children's Bible to help give them a foundation for faith. They have inspired me to write this book, the first in a series of books that I call the Expanded Biblical Narrative.This is the first book in this series, and it is a recrafting of the Book of Genesis and the events during that time period. It covers the creation of the Universe and the lives of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job. While the Book of Job does not appear in the Bible near the Book of Genesis, it covers the story of one of Abraham's contemporaries. These stories form the foundation for the Christian faith.This text is based on another work I've written; the Reorganized Concise Paraphrased Bible. That project is a paraphrase of the original Scriptural text to make it more accessible to the modern reader. If you're interested, you should check it out. You can find more information about all my projects at www.rcpbible.com.I've opted to expand the paraphrase even further to make it a narrative. To do this, I've taken liberties to help it easier to understand. I've opted to add numerous details to help paint a clearer picture of these events. For example, the biblical account of Noah building the ark only covers a couple of lines, and I have expanded it to occupy multiple chapters in this book. The Bible does not include many details about Abraham's visit to Egypt, but I've spread it out to numerous chapters. I have no idea if my recreation is precisely how it happened, but it is possible. Plus, I think it helps bring the story home. I've performed this expansion with each life story in this volume. There are also anachronous elements, but these are to help connect it to modern readers.Additionally, I made interpretations about the personalities of the men and women in this text. Each of the people in these pages had good and bad traits. Sometimes, we face the temptation to lionize the characters in Scripture. However, they were ordinary people that God chose to help tell his story. I've tried to paint pictures of our ancestors that are more relatable than previous hagiographies of these heroes. I have no idea if they are 100% accurate, but I think they help paint a better picture of the events.Everything I've added has been to make it a better story without introducing doctrine or changing the meaning of the text. I confess that I had a lot of fun playing with the personalities of these men and women. I pray that my attempts are close to the way they actually were. If not, I suppose we will all find out when we reunite in heaven. Some will not like what I've done; my apologies. In all of this, my goal is to help us better understand the gospel and the original Scriptures.Before diving into the book, I must apologize for some of the initial chapters. In order to set up the narratives surrounding these stories, it's necessary to lay out some pretty heavy theology. I've attempted to do this through conversations without getting too far into the weeds or turning this book into a systematic theology. Theologians have written entire libraries on Creation, God's nature, the Trinity, Satan, and sin. However, that is not the purpose of this book. I have included the briefest synopses of the concepts to accomplish this purpose. If you have further questions about any of these topics, I suggest further study.