In this series of studies we will be looking at the Bible as one story. It was written over more than a thousand years time - many more than a thousand when we include the oral traditions of Genesis 2-11. It was written by many different authors who did not know each other and had no idea how the story would proceed after them. Yet, from the perspective of a literature guy like myself who has studied and taught literature since the 1960s, it fits all the criteria of a story, a single unified and coherent story. As such it is the story of mankind and the contest between God and Satan over us, God for our good and Satan for our harm.
We begin at the only place possible, at the beginning:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Thre are two beginnings in Genesis and two more in the Big Story. This first is the beginning of all things and of man.
The second beginning, some 8,000 years after the first, is the beginning of a family who will one day produce the Messiah Savior. It is the familly of Abraham.