A reboot is a new release of a story in comic, film, television series, or other form that discards continuity with previous versions to start afresh, unburdened by plot decisions in any previous release.

The Bible is a book whose storyline spans over a thousand years, so perhaps it’s not surprising that it also has reboots.

The Bible, take one (the Noah story)

God creates the world (twice), and then Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. Their son Cain kills his brother Abel, then there’s a long genealogy ending in Noah. God’s annoyed with how humanity turned out, so he hits the Reset button, and everyone drowns. But don’t be sad—Noah and his ark full of animals weather the storm.

Everyone in the world (by which I mean “eight people”) are once again safe on land. God as Elohim blesses Noah’s family with authority over all living things. He lays down a few rules, and in return he promises, “I establish my covenant with you: never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood” (Genesis 9:11). The rainbow (think: the kind of bow that shoots arrows) will appear in the clouds and remind everyone (God included) of this “everlasting covenant.”

So there you have it, God’s covenant with humanity.

The Bible, take two (Abraham)

But there’s more, as the story trundles along. Noah’s descendants populate the earth, there’s that whole Tower of Babel thing, and then we’re introduced to Abraham. For some unexplained reason, Abraham (né Abram) isn’t already in Israel but lives in Ur, an ancient city on the coast of the Persian Gulf, now in southern Iraq. God (now Yahweh) guides him to Canaan.

God must be forgetful, because he keeps making the same promise to Abraham. The promise is (1) you will have many descendants, (2) you get land, and (3) this covenant is perpetual.

• In Genesis 12, Yahweh says, “I will make you into a great nation. . . . To your offspring I will give this land” (that is, Canaan).
• Other stories intervene, and then in Genesis 13, God does it again: “All the land that you see [Canaan] I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth.”
• In Genesis 15, guess what God does. He gives Canaan to Abraham. Actually, he gives a lot more than that, listing ten tribes whose land will be the property of Abraham’s descendants. He gives as boundaries the Euphrates River to the east and Egypt to the west.
• In Genesis 17, God was feeling generous, so he gave Canaan to Abraham. “I will make you very fruitful. . . . I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you.” This is the first time we see Abraham’s contribution to the covenant: he and his male descendants must now be circumcised. (If you’re familiar with the documentary hypothesis, this came from the P source. The previous three were from the J source.)
• Elohim from the E source is feeling generous, too, so in Genesis 22, he rewards Abraham for (almost) sacrificing Isaac with another gift of Canaan. “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies.”

God (in his several forms) has stuttered out many bequests of Canaan and promises of many descendants. It was a bit clumsy and contradictory, but we kind of get the message.

The End.

Just kidding. There’s more. This is concluded in part 2.

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Image via Randy Jenkins, CC license