Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains Ancient Hebrew history and the lives of the Patriarchs, set in motion a chronology and genealogy in which Christian writers over the centuries, and still in the seventeenth century, sought to position their own histories and those of the other peoples they encountered. It is a story that effectively has two beginnings: with Adam and Eve, first parents; and with Noah and his family, the sole human survivors of the destruction of the Flood. Then the book discusses the start of the whole Christian canon in which the Old Testament is a precursor to the New, to Christ's birth, passion and resurrection and in which the account of Creation and Fall in Genesis is the beginning of a story that ends with the visions and eschatology of Revelation.