Who can give the best "Cliff Notes" version of Genesis?

Question

Be sure and cover more than creation. The Big Huge Flood™, Tower of Babel, Onan, etc.

Answer 1

I will attempt it!
Ok, God got bored so he decided to create the universe. He made the earth, then the plants, then he realized that he had screwed up because he forgot to make the sun for the plants to grow, so he made the sun and threw in a lot of other stuff in the sky. He made the animals, and finally made a man named Adam out of dirt. Adam was lonely and started eyeing the camel, so God knocked him out, yanked out a rib and made a hot woman named Eve. Unfortunately Eve ran into this walking, talking snake. The snake convinced her to eat the one fruit God told them not too. Then she got Adam to eat it too. (some people think this is a metaphor for sex)

Sooooo....
God got p***ed and threw them out. Things got ugly for them. Eve got a hell of a case of PMS and nothing went right. Since they didn't have the garden to goof around in they got bored and guess what? Cain came along. Then Abel. Abel p***ed off Cain and on top of it, God liked Abel and turned his nose up at Cain. Cain had enough and popped a cap in Abel's a**. Mom and dad and God all got into it with him and tossed him out. So he found a wife, which is interesting since there were no other people around at this point, maybe it was the camel that Adam had been eyeing earlier in the story.

Time went on. People were just like they are today, no damn good, so God decided to take care of it by flooding the world. There was one guy named Noah that was ok, so God told him to build a big boat and get pairs of all the animal species in the world and put them in the boat. He did, it started to rain, and everyone else was SOL, including babies, children, old ladies, puppies and kittens etc.

After the flood Noah and his kids started over. They bred like rabbits and pretty soon people started to get smart. Or at least thats the story. They decided to build a tower up to heaven. Goodness knows God couldnt allow that, so he made them all speak different languages to confuse them. They all wandered off and this is why people were spread around the world and didn't stay put.

After this there was this guy named Lot. He lived in a rocking town named San Francisco, oops, I mean Sodom. There was a sister city next door named Gomorrah. The guys in these towns swung both ways, so God had to get rid of them. He sent some angels to town and they were so pretty the men of the town wanted to party with them. Lot knew this would p*** off God, so he offered his virgin daughters to the mob. Of course his daughters being raped was just fine with God. God got so upset he told Lot to get the hell out of Dodge (or Sodom to be more precise) and BAM! That was the end of the party. Unfortunately Lot's wife heard the noise and said "WTF was that???" turned around and BAM! she was a pillar of salt.

Lot had this relative named Abram. God took a shine to him and renamed him Abraham. He put the word ham in his name then told him that would be the only ham he would ever get!. Abraham had a kid named Isaac. God told Abraham to kill him. Abraham wasn't too keen on this idea, but said, "What the hell, ok" He took Isaac out and then he found a sheep caught in a bush. God said, "Ok, kill the sheep instead. Its cool". Abraham took Isaac home. Isaac never went anywhere with his dad again without his mom around.

Isaac had some kids, they had kids and it went on and on. Whew. That is pretty much it. This is the longest answer I have ever done! And NO CUT AND PASTE!

Answer 2

Genesis Cliff Notes

Answer 3

The beginning,The creation,Eden,Adam and Eve in Gods likeness,Sin,Cain and Abel,Brother killing brother,The mark of Cain,his marriage in another land,The oldest man,First man to go to Heaven without death,Ark,Angels breeding with women,The flood,The tower of Babel,The different languages.And much,much more.

Answer 4

First came the creation
then God wanted a creation he could talk to he made man
God saw the man was lonely he made a woman
told them not to eat forbidden fruit
The devil however who had gotten kicked out of heaven disguised his self as a snake told the woman to eat the fruit
she talked hubby into eating fruit
both got kicked out of garden
they had 2 kids
the older bacame jealous of younger and killed him
God made him leave
first man and woman had son named seth more kids
adam knew Methusla methusla knew Noah
All of man kind became wicked (just like today)
God told Noah to build big boat
God flooded earth saved noah's family
After flood noah got drunk and one of noahs sons saw him naked
Noah was mad when he found out and cursed son's son
Later all of man spoke one language and decided to build a tower to the heavens Gog god mad knocked tower down and scrambled their speach and scattered them all over earth
Later god found a friend named Abram
God made him change his name to Abraham and found him a wife named Sarah
Their who life they did not have kids
Sarah became old and barren told Abraham to have a child with slave girl named Hagar his name was Ishmael
Then finally Sarah had a child she named Isaac
Ishmael made fun of Isaac so Sarah told Abraham to kick hagar and Ishmael out
God had Abraham to offer Isaac up as sacrifice but did not make him go thru with it
Later Abraham sent a servant to get Isaac a wife
The servant found Rebekah
her and Isaac had twin sons not identical
Esaul and Jacob
Jacob purchased Esauls birth right for bowl of stew
Jacob had to leave home to stay with uncle
half way there god showed jacob a dream and blessed jacob and changed his name to Isreal
Isreal had 12 sons he only had 11 at the time he loved Joseph and made him a coat of many colors
joseph had a dream that his father and brothers would bow to him
his brothers sold joseph as a slave to a passing caravan to egypt and poured goats blood on coat and told there dad that joseph was eaten by wild beast
joseph served a house and the woman of the house tried to seduce him but he wouldnt so she falsely accused joseph and he went to prison
he was good at telling what dreams meant and had helped a prisoner that had a dream
the pharoah of egypt kept having a dream and joseph interpreted the dream as meaning 7 good years followed by 7 bad years of famine joseph suggested storing food during good years to have during bad years
when famine came josephs brothers went to egypt for food and ended up bowing down to joseph like he said in dream only this time they had a younger brother named benjamen
the family moved to egypt when they found out joseph their brother was govenor the end of Genesis

Answer 5

Lillith

Answer 6

Barnes Notes on the Bible

Genesis -
Introduction to Genesis
The Book of Genesis can be separated into eleven documents or pieces of composition most of which contain additional subordinate divisions. The first of these has no introductory phrase; the third begins with ספר זה תּולדת tôledâh zeh sēpher, “this is the book of the generations”; and the others with תולדות אלה tôledâh ̀ēleh, “these are the generations.”

However, the subordinate pieces of which these primary documents consist are as distinct from each other as they are complete in themselves. And, each portion of the composer is as separate as the wholes which they go to constitute. The history of the fall Gen. 3, the family of Adam Gen. 4, the description of the vices of the antediluvians Gen_6:1-8, and the confusion of tongues Gen_11:1-9 are as distinct efforts of composition and as perfect in themselves as any of the primary divisions. The same holds true throughout the entire Book of Genesis. Even these subordinate pieces contain still smaller passages, having an exact and self-contained finish which enables the critic to lift them out and examine them and makes him wonder if they have not been inserted in the document as in a mold which was previously fitted for their reception. The memoranda of each day’s creative work, of the locality of Paradise, of each link in the genealogy of Noah, and the genealogy of Abraham are striking examples of this. They sit, each in the narrative, like a gem in its setting.

Whether these primary documents were originally composed by Moses, or whether they came into his hands from earlier sacred writers and were revised by him and combined into his great work, we are not informed. By revising a sacred writing, we mean replacing obsolete or otherwise unknown words or modes of expressing as were in common use at the time of the reviser, and then putting in an explanatory clause or passage when necessary for people of a later day. The latter of the above suppositions is not inconsistent with Moses being reckoned as the responsible “author” of the whole collection. We think that such a position is more natural, satisfactory, and consistent with the phenomena of all Scripture. It is satisfactory to have the recorder (if not an eye-witness) to be as near as possible to the events recorded. And it seems to have been a part of the method of the Divine Author of the Scripture to have a constant collector, conservator, authenticator, reviser, and continuator of that book which He designed for the spiritual instruction of successive ages. We may disapprove of one writer tampering with the work of another, but we must allow the Divine Author to adapt His own work from time to time to the necessities of coming generations. However, this implies writing was in use from the origin of man.

We are not able to say when writing of any kind was invented or when syllabic or alphabetic writing came into use. But we meet with the word ספר sêpher, “a writing,” from which we have our English “cipher,” as early as Gen. 5. And many things encourage us to presume a very early invention of writing. It is, after all, only another form of speech, another effort of the signing faculty in man. Why may not the hand gesticulate to the eye, as well as the tongue articulate to the ear? We believe that the former was concurrent with the latter in early speech as it is in the speech of all nations to the present day. Only one more step is needed for the writing mode. Let the gestures of the hand take a permanent form by being carved in lines on a smooth surface and we have a written character.

This leads us to the previous question of human speech. Was it a gradual acquisition after a period of brute silence? Apart from history, we argue that it was not! We conceive that speech leaped at once from the brain of man as a perfect thing - as perfect as the newborn infant - yet capable of growth and development. This has been the case with all inventions and discoveries. The pressing necessity has come upon the fitting man, and he has given forth a complete idea which can only develop after ages. The Bible record confirms this theory. Adam comes to be, and then by the force of his native genius speaks. And in primitive times we have no doubt that the hand moved as well as the tongue. Hence, we hear so soon of “the book.”

On the supposition that writing was known to Adam Gen. 1–4, containing the first two of these documents, it formed the “Bible” of Adam’s descendants (the antediluvians). Gen. 1:1–11:9, being the sum of these two documents and the following three documents, constitutes the “Bible” of the descendants of Noah. The whole of Genesis may be called the “Bible” of the posterity of Jacob; and, we may add, that the five books of the Law, of which the last four books (at least) are immediately due to Moses. The Pentateuch was the first “Bible” of Israel as a nation.

Genesis is purely a historical work. It serves as the narrative preamble to the legislation of Moses. It possesses, however, a much higher and broader interest than this. It is the first volume of the history of man in relation with God. It consists of a main line of narrative, and one or more collateral lines. The main line is continuous and relates to the portion of the human race that remains in communication with God. Side by side with this is a broken line, rather, several successive lines, which are linked not to one another but to the main line. Of these, two lines come out in the primary documents of Genesis; namely, Gen_25:12-18 and Gen. 36, containing the respective records of Ishmael and Esau. When these are placed side by side with those of Isaac and Jacob, the stages in the main line of narrative are found to be nine, that is, two less than the primitive documents.

These great lines of narrative, in like manner, include minor lines, whenever the history falls into several threads which must all be taken up one after another in order to carry on the whole concatenation of events. These come out in paragraphs and even shorter passages which necessarily overlap one another in point of time. The striking uniqueness of Hebrew composition is aptly illustrated by the successive links in the genealogy of Gen. 5, where the life of one patriarch is brought to a close before that of the next is taken up, though they actually run parallel for the greater part of the predecessor’s life. It furnishes a key to much that is difficult in the narrative.

This book is naturally divided into two great parts - the first which narrates the creation; the second which narrates the development of the things created from the beginning to the deaths of Jacob and Joseph.

The first part is equal in value to the whole record of what may take place to the end of time, and therefore to the whole of the Bible, not only in its historical part, but in its prophetic aspect. A created system of things contains in its bosom the whole of what may be unfolded from it.

The second great part of Genesis consists of two main divisions - the one detailing the course of events before the deluge, the other recounting the history after the flood. These divisions may be distributed into sections in the following way: The stages of the narrative marked off in the primary documents are nine in number. However, in consequence of the transcendent importance of the primeval events, we have broken up the second document into three sections, and the fourth document into two sections and have thus divided the contents of the book into twelve great sections. All these matters of arrangement are shown in the following chart:

Table of Contents
I. CREATION:
A. Creation Gen. 1:1–2:3
II. DEVELOPMENT:
A. Before the Deluge
II. The Man Gen. 2:4-25
III. The Fall Gen. 3:1-24
IV. The Race Gen. 4:1-26
V. Line to Noah Gen. 5:1–6:8
B. Deluge
VI. The Deluge Gen. 6:9–8:22
C. After the Deluge
VII. The Covenant Gen. 9:1-29
VII. The Nations Gen. 10:1–11:9
IX. Line to Abram Gen. 11:10-26
X. Abraham Gen. 11:27–25:11
XI. Isaac Gen. 25:19–36:34
XII. Jacob Gen. 37:10–50:26