Just as the first three chapters of Genesis provide the initial taste of the cosmic setting of the Biblical metanarrative, these same chapters also provide the prototype for the characters to follow. And similar to the way the named characters in a modern novel fit into our larger storytelling categories of protagonist, antagonist, and others, Genesis 1-3 provides Scripture’s own unique character categories that subsequent characters often fall into (more on this in the next post). If the setting wasn’t cosmic enough, the cast of characters introduced in these initial chapters will soon reveal that the story we find ourselves in turns out to be quite the epic narrative.
Yahweh Elohim (the LORD God), God, Creator, King, Judge, Father, Trinity (and more?)
God is clearly the Creator in these opening chapters. The three Persons of the Godhead appear in the first three verses. The Spirit hovers over the waters, and the Father speaks the Word (the Son) to create. The Apostle John tunes into this in the opening of his gospel account.
As Creator, God is also the Father of all. In response to the serpent’s and the humans’ rebellion in Genesis 3, God is also portrayed as the “Judge of all the earth” (Gen. 18:25), as Abraham will later call Him. And although other heavenly creatures appear in these early chapters, God is clearly the one in charge throughout. As such, He is the King of kings and God of gods.
The Divine Council
In modern times, most Christians seem to assume that God is speaking to the three persons of Himself when He suddenly says, “Let us make humankind in our image” (Gen. 1:26 NET). One of the problems with this view is that God is One. As a result, He never speaks of Himself using plural pronouns. God uses this “us” language only four times in Scripture (Gen 1:26, 3:22, 11:7, Is. 6:8), and in all cases, a very strong argument can be made that He is speaking to a group called the Divine Council (getting its name from Psalm 82:1).
Job 38:6-7 indicates that the “sons of God”—angelic creatures (e.g Job 1:6, 2:1)—were present at creation prior to the formation of humans from the dirt. This same cast of characters forms the Divine Council, the rulers above who participate in God’s decision making (e.g. 1 Kings 22:19-23) in the rulership of earth. These rulers above also have overlap with the sun, moon, and stars, who first appear when they are created on the fourth day of creation.
While we know today that the sun, moon, and stars are themselves not heavenly creatures, ancient peoples viewed them as such. And while ontologically this may be viewed as incorrect, Scripture often provides a blurry overlap between the heavenly host (the sun, moon, and stars) and the heavenly host (angelic creatures). In Deuteronomy 4:19, Moses warns the Israelites not to worship the “sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven.” The opening creation narrative of Scripture ends with the fact that the “heavens…were finished, and all the host of them” (Gen. 2:1).
In Acts 7, Stephen proclaims that God gave Israel over to “worship the host of heaven” (v. 42). In verses 41 and 43, Stephen connects this worship to idolatry, the worship of images of pagan gods. Paul later connects this type of idol worship with the worship of demons (1 Cor. 10:20)—in this case, likely fallen members of the Divine Council.
In addition to the Divine Council, plenty of other supernatural creatures show up along the way. For our purposes here, we’ll just stick to the Divine Council for now.
The Divine Council is a deep rabbit trail. If it’s new to you, check out The Unseen Realm or The Epic Gospel We’ve Forgotten.
Humans, Rulers of Earth
Humans were created to be the rulers of earth (Gen. 1:26-28). Since heaven and earth overlapped in the Garden of Eden, and mankind was made to rule this space as the manifestations of God’s divine presence, and heavenly creatures were present, it leaves open the space for Psalm 8 to indicate that all things were placed under the feet of humanity. While this is taken by New Testament writers to be a messianic psalm, Jesus, the new Human, fulfills what Adam and Eve, the original humans, failed to do.
The Serpent/Satan/Accuser/Adversary
While the serpent is only introduced as an extraordinarily wise beast of the field in Genesis 3, the Apostle John later identifies him as the satan (satan is a Hebrew word meaning accuser/adversary) that we find elsewhere in Scripture (Rev. 12:9). By the time of the New Testament, this descriptive role title has so overtaken this character’s persona that it becomes his proper name.
After Genesis 3, the satan is found accusing the brothers (Rev. 12:10) in several Old Testament narratives (Job 1:6, 2:1, Zech. 3). Revelation 12:10 indicates that Satan accused the brothers “day and night” before God. Apparently the brief glances of the satan’s activity in the Old Testament are just a glimpse into a much larger heavenly storyline. Satan also has a key part to play in the Divine Council, something that’s too broad to cover here. It’s also important to note that Satan is the first villain that we find in the Scriptural narrative.
Sin
In modern times, we tend to think of sin as an action, but intriguingly, Sin’s first appearance in Scripture is as a character—Scripture’s second villain. While Sin just misses out on getting named in Genesis 1-3, his entrance in Genesis 4 is notable. God suddenly points to Sin, who is crouching, wishing to rule over Cain, just as the serpent ruled over Cain’s parents in the preceding chapter.
Sin’s character portrayal in Genesis 4 gives him close ties to the serpent in Genesis 3. When sins (actions) occur by humans in the rest of the metanarrative, we are meant to infer that these sins are a repeat of the failure of Adam, Eve, and Cain. Instead of ruling over the serpent and Sin as Yahweh created humans to do, they handed over their rulership to these beasts.
Epic Gospel 