Read the Introduction
by Aaron Theophilus
COUNTER-ROLL PUBLISHING
The first volume of this work set down the record of the beginning: the establishment of the original trust in the seven days, the planting of the garden and the forming of the steward, and the severance of title when the first pair ate and the seats of the house were torn apart. That volume closed at the eastern gate of the garden, with the coats of skin upon the exiled heirs and the Cherubim keeping the way of the tree of life. The present volume takes up the record where the gate closed, and it follows the two seeds of the woman through the first fields of the fallen world.
Its span is the second great movement of Genesis, the generations that run from the sentence upon the serpent to the threshold of Abraham. Here the reader of the record will find the story of Cain and Abel, the first offering and the first murder, and the word of the marked man who spoke his own punishment into the record and went out to build the first city under the sign of the covenant's protection. Here stands the line of Seth, the appointed seed, the generations that called upon the name of the LORD. Here the roll of the generations of Adam tolls its refrain, and here the corruption of the earth brings the judgment of the flood, the building of the ark to the given measure, and the shutting in of the door by the hand of the LORD himself. The waters rise and fall; the dove returns with the olive leaf; the rainbow is set in the cloud as the sign of the everlasting covenant; and the sons of Noah go forth to replenish the earth. The table of the nations spreads the seventy families abroad, the tower of Babel is scattered upon the plain of Shinar, and the record narrows at last to the line of Shem, the generations that lead to the door of Terah's house in Ur of the Chaldees, where the calling of Abram is at hand.
The method of this volume is the method of the first: the sacred text is honored as the primary and authoritative witness, read whole and without elision, and the legal architecture of the record is drawn out plainly as the prose unfolds. The trust that was established in the beginning is here administered in the fallen world: the stewardship passes through the hands of marked men and faithful men alike, the covenant is narrowed and preserved through the judgment of the flood, and the promise of the seed of the woman, first spoken at the gate of the garden, is carried forward through the generations toward the man with whom the LORD will make the covenant that blesses all the families of the earth. The reader who has come through the first volume will find here the same voice and the same exactness. The reader who opens this volume first will find that the record carries its own witness: every chapter opens with the whole of its scripture, and the story of the book is told so that it may be entered at any gate and followed to the appointed end.
Volume the Third will take up the generations of Terah and the calling of Abram, when the LORD speaks again to a man of the line of Shem and the covenant of the blessing of all nations is made.