I've become a big fan of the unconventional bible reading plans. They make me focus a lot more on areas that I'd previously become familiar with. "Reading Genesis 50 Times" is almost the opposite to the 30 Day Bible Shred. If the Shred is a sprint to review the whole tree of the bible, this is a slow stroll inspecting the roots of the tree.
To understand why someone would want to read Genesis 50 times, it's worth finding out the background of this concept.
On 2nd July 2018 the BibleProject hosts Tim Mackie and Jon Collins released the 22nd episode of their "How to Read the Bible" series with a biblical poetry question and response session. One of the questions came from Jackson asking if there were any resources that summarised the metaphors, patterns and repetition found in the Psalms (at the 21:55 point):
"I wonder if you guys could provide maybe a short list of other commonly used metaphor schemes throughout the scriptures? You know, sort of the base layer metaphors? To have those in my mind as I'm reading through scripture I think would be really beneficial. Thanks so much for all you guys do."
This was Tim Mackie and Jon Collins' response:
Tim tells Jackson to read the book of Genesis 50 times and keep a list of every repeated word and theme. Jon responds by saying 50 times is a bit too much, so Tim reverts to 12 readings.
Like many people, I laughed at the idea of 50 readings, and found the concept of 12 readings amusing. But it turns out there were audience listeners who decided to take that literally and marinate in the book of Genesis:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/535422957315490
The point being that Genesis is a text that the ancient Israelites would've grown up reading and be very familiar with it, and there is a cultural language created in those chapters that future books of the bible utilise. But if we're not as familiar with Genesis as the ancient Israelites were, then there are a lot of design patterns we'd miss throughout the bible. Reading Genesis 50 Times is intended to be a much longer project that will make me significantly more familiar with Genesis than ever before.
As Tim Mackie says (at 22:34) "The book of Genesis is providing you with the core base set of visual images and their meaning for the whole rest of the biblical story.". The more you really get to know Genesis, the more you'll understand the base language that the biblical authors use to communicate their ideas.
So here is my current plan of attack when it comes to building my own bible roadmap of Genesis.
At this stage there isn't a strict structure to the readings. I'll be combining paper, digital and audio bibles. My initial readings will stick with the same translations, but I'll highlight repeated words and themes. After 10 or so rounds, I'll branch our to other translations to compare terminology. On top of this, there are numerous texts, books, commentaries and articles I'm planning on reading to help discover more pathways to navigating Genesis.
The goal is NOT to be a theological expert of Genesis, but to become much more familiar with the language, themes, patterns and structure of it so that other uses of those themes become a lot more evident in the rest of the bible. By the end of it I'm hoping to have a comprehensive list of words, themes and ideas that I can refer to - but I doubt it'll be something I can share with others as it'll be formed by my own experience.
Is this something you should do?
Absolutely! But at your own pacing and in a way that works for you. There is no time pressure or competition here, in fact it seems that the longer you meditate on this book the better the results. This reading plan wouldn't be my primary plan or study focus, but something constantly simmering away in the back of my mind.
If this is something you're interested in, I'd encourage you to join the Facebook group. The members have already shared some great insights and documentation that will show you the incredible structure of Genesis.