It doesn't tell the stories of the different tribes--those they probably already knew (within their own tribes), but it does tell the stories of how the tribes came to be--the uniting story that they may or may not have considered more important than their own separate tribal stories.
The pastor focused on Genesis 1, and how that would be viewed. An aspect of that occurred to me that I hadn't thought of before. There's quite a contrast between one God and the sea of gods in Egypt. (Their natures and roles seem to blur together at this distance, but it may be that at any given time the distinctions were clear and the blurring comes from seeing an overlay of many different snapshots.)
In Genesis chapter 1 one god creates the heavens and the earth. Then:
| Second day | sky (Nut), waters (Tefnut) |
| Third day | water (Nile: Hapi) and land (Geb) |
| Fourth day | day/night, stars: Ra (sun), Nut again, Chons and Jah and Thoth (moon) |
| Fifth day | fish (Hatmehyt; also Ipet for hippos, etc), Horus etc (bird-headed) |
| Sixth day | animals (Bastet, Apis, and a whole raft of half-animals: Ra, Hathor, Sekhmet, Horus, Thoth, Anubis, Amun...) Chepre (beetle) |
And of course God creates man at the end, and gives him dominion over the rest. So instead of Apis having dominion over man, man has dominion over cows. Everything, even what were in Egypt called gods, are made by one God. (A not entirely alien concept to the Egyptians, but I can't date the story.)
The only thing in the world described as being in the image of God is man. Goodbye hawk-heads.
All of which is familiar to us, but it would be dramatic to people who grew up in such as thoroughly polytheistic world as ancient Egypt. (I gather Akhenaten was some years after Moses, though I hear there's lots of argument.)
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