Genesis 1-5 and Chocolate biscuit cake

As part of doing Relay we get the exciting choice of an elective study component. I decided to do a read-through of the Old Testament. Partly because I feel I'm pretty sketchy when it comes to a lot of it, and partly because the idea of 'reading' the Bible more like a novel, chunks at a time, appealed to me.

(see http://www.theologynetwork.org/bible-reading/starting-out/make-this-the-year.htm for more details on reading the Bible).


I’m writing this as if sharing my thoughts with a student. It’s a mixture of ‘ah ha’ moments when I see echoes of the Gospel, key themes that emerge, and Jim Walford’s favourite: “shockers and blockers”.

My first point is simply that we see Adam and Eve choose self-determining knowledge, rather than life, in chapter 3 of Genesis. Chapter two tells us that the tree of life was ‘in the midst of the garden’ – surely they would have noticed it? Maybe they did, but the serpent points them towards the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead. In any case, it’s with this tree of life in mind that God removes them from Eden. The tree that once could have been theirs to feast on, is now the reason they are removed.

Along come Cain and Abel, and with them murder in the family. It’s only as Adam and Eve produce another son, Seth, that people begin to ‘call upon the name of the LORD’. So as the line of the seed begins again, people are turning back to God.

The only two in the next section who ‘walk with God’ are Enoch and Noah. The first is taken by God at the relatively young age of 365. Lamech, Noah’s father, predicts that he’ll bring “relief...from the painful toil of our hands”. Sounds remarkable like the opposite of the curse in chapter 3, where Adam is cursed to toil painfully. So already when Noah is born, we have a preview that his birth means something special.




This week’s recipe - chocolate biscuit cake

With the added addition of fresh ginger this recipe hits the spot, yum. For any budding bakers out there who are afraid of making ‘real’ cakes, this is one that is very easy but sure to impress.

Chocolate Biscuit Cake


150g plain chocolate chopped
150g butter
2tbsp golden syrup
225g semisweet biscuits – e.g. digestives, crushed
thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and diced very small (like garlic)

1. melt the chocolate with butter and golden syrup in a large bowl over a saucepan of water. Add the ginger and stir well.
2. When all is melted, removed from the heat and stir in crushed biscuits. Add any dried fruit (cherries, raisins, apricots) now if you so desire.
3. Spread into 23cm tin, lined with paper, flattening with the back of a wooden spoon.
4. Refrigerate for a couple of hours till set or freezer for 45 minutes. Cuts into 16 pieces