It's 586 BC. The Babylonian army has just burned the Temple to the ground. And a devastated scribe picks up a pen and writes the most politically dangerous sentence ever recorded.

In this episode, of The Daily Word part 1 of our four part series, we go back to where the Bible begins , and discover that Genesis Chapter One was never just a creation story. It was a direct counter-attack against the most powerful empire on earth, designed to dismantle a worldview. By the end, you'll understand not just what Genesis One says — but what it was built to destroy.

From the opening sentence of the Bible which wasn't written to comfort believers, but to wage war against an empire, to exploring who wrote it, who they were writing for, and the ancient Babylonian creation myth the Enuma Elish.

We break down the first two verses word by word: why God doesn't argue for his own existence, what the Hebrew word bara (created) means that no English translation fully captures, why the name Elohim is grammatically plural — and what that might mean — and what it means that the Spirit of God was hovering over the chaos before the first day even began.

This episode is for anyone who has read Genesis their whole life and never been told what it was actually doing.

In this episode:

• The Enuma Elish — the Babylonian creation myth Genesis One is fighting
• Why "In the beginning, God created" is a declaration, not an argument
• Bara, Elohim, tohu vavohu — what the original Hebrew reveals
• Why Genesis One was written as resistance literature
• What this means for the powers that demand authority over your life today

Next episode: The six days of creation — and how Genesis handles the sun, moon, and sea monsters that entire Babylonian religions were built around.

The Daily Word | Episode 1 of 4: In the Beginning Series Hosted by Marvins Jayriley Boma-Dienyefa