Book of Genesis

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The Book of Genesis (Greek: Γένεσις, "birth", "origin," from Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית, B'reishit (Biblical: B'reshiyth), "in the beginning")[1] is the first book of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament).

Genesis contains some of the best known biblical stories, including the Hebrew account of the creation of the world, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, the Call of Abraham, Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, the marriage of Jacob, Jacob and Laban, Sarah and Pharaoh, Sarah and Abimelech, the battle of the Vale of Siddim, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jacob's wrestling with the angel at Peniel, Joseph and his coat of many colours, Joseph and the interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams, Onan and his sin, the seduction of Lot by his daughters, the Blessing of Jacob, the purchase of the cave of Machpelah, and others. Structurally, it consists of the "primeval history" (chapters 1–11) and cycles of Patriarchal stories (chapters 12–50)—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (renamed, Israel), and concluding with Joseph. While it contains traditions that developed during the monarchy and some poetry that may be even earlier, its basic shape and message come from the Exilic and Persian periods (6th and 5th centuries BCE).[2]

For Jews and Christians alike, the theological importance of Genesis centers on the Covenants linking Yahweh (God) to his Chosen People and the people to the Promised Land. Christianity has interpreted Genesis as the prefiguration of certain cardinal Christian beliefs, primarily the need for salvation (the hope of all Christians) and the redemptive act of Christ on the Cross as the fulfillment of covenant promises as the Son of God. [3]

Contents

Name

In Hebrew the book is called Bereishit, meaning "in the beginning." This title is the first word of the Hebrew text - a method by which all five books of the Torah are named. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC to produce the Septuagint, the name given was Γένεσις Genesis, meaning "birth" or "origin." This was in line with the Septuagint use of subject themes as book names. The Greek title has continued to be used in all subsequent Latin and English versions of the Bible, and most other languages.

Synopsis

God calls the world into being through his divine word and appoints man as his regent, but man proves corrupt and God destroys his world through the Flood. The new world after the Flood is equally corrupt, but God does not destroy it, instead calling one man, Abraham, to be the seed of its salvation. At God's command Abraham descends from his home into the land of Canaan, given to him by God. Abraham dwells in the land as a sojourner, as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel. Jacob and his twelve sons descend into Egypt, 70 persons in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness.

Summary

For convenience in organizing the summary, the body of this article uses divisions put forth by Rolf Rendtorff, wherein Genesis is separated by primeval history and then the Patriarchal cycles—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

Primeval history

God creates the world in six days and rests on the seventh. The world God creates is good, but it becomes corrupted by the sin of man, God waits, and sees all that he has made and it is no longer good, so God sends a Deluge (a great flood) to destroy it, saving only a man who is righteous (Noah) his wife, his sons and his daughters in law, from whose seed the world is repopulated ("be fruitful and multiply").[Gen 8:17] Mankind falls back into rebelliousness, but God selects Abraham to be the seed of his chosen people, Israel.

Patriarchal history

Abram/Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel

God reveals himself to Abram, tenth in descent from Noah and twentieth from Adam, and instructs him to travel to the land which Canaan's descendants had settled. "Lift up your eyes, and look ... for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you."[Gen 13] God makes a covenant with Abraham,[4] promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the heavens, but that they shall suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they shall inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates."[Gen 15] [5] Abram's name is changed to "Abraham" and that of his wife Sarai to "Sarah," and circumcision of all males is instituted as an external sign of the covenant.

Sarah is barren, and tells Abram to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, as a concubine. Through Hagar Abraham becomes the father of Ishmael,[6] Abraham asks God that Ishmael "might live in Thy sight," (that is, be favoured), but God replies that Sarah will bear a son, who will be named Isaac,[7] through whom the covenant will be established.[Gen 17] At Sarah's insistence Ishmael and his mother Hagar are driven out into the wilderness, but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael also a great nation.

God resolves to destroy the city of Sodom for the sins of its people. Abraham protests that it is not just "to slay the righteous with the wicked," and asks if the whole city can be spared if even ten righteous men are found there. God replies: "For the sake of ten I will not destroy it."[Gen 18] [8] Abraham's nephew Lot is saved from the destruction of Sodom, and through incest with his daughters becomes the ancestor of the Moabites and Ammonites.[Gen 19]

God tests Abraham by commanding that he sacrifice Isaac. Abraham obeys; but, as he is about to lay the knife upon his son, God restrains him, promising him numberless descendants.[Gen 22] On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah for a family tomb[Gen 2] and sends his servant to Mesopotamia, Nahor's home, to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; and Rebekah, Nahor's granddaughter, is chosen.[Gen 24] Other children are born to Abraham by another wife, Keturah, among whose descendants are the Midianites; and he dies in a prosperous old age and is buried in his tomb at Hebron.[Gen 25]

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Alexander Louis Leloir.

Isaac's wife Rebekah is barren, but Isaac prays to God, and she gives birth to the twins Esau, father of the Edomites,[9] and Jacob.[10] Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and by his wives Rachel and Leah and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the Children of Israel.

Joseph

Jacob's son Judah takes a Canaanite wife. She gives birth to twins, the elder of whom is Pharez, ancestor of the future royal house of David. Jacob's favourite son, Joseph, is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, who resent the favouritism shown him. But Joseph prospers, and when famine comes he brings his father and his brothers and their households, seventy persons in all, to Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them the land of Goshen.[Gen 46-47] Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future to them[Gen 49] before he dies and is interred in the family tomb at Machpelah (Hebron). Joseph lives to see his great-grandchildren, and on his death-bed he exhorts his brethren, if God should remember them and lead them out of the country, to take his bones with them. The book ends with Joseph's remains being "put in a coffin in Egypt."[Gen 50]

Text and composition

Bereshit aleph, or the first chapter of Genesis, written on an egg, which is kept in the Israel Museum.

Text

The oldest extant manuscripts of Genesis are the twenty-four fragments found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from between 150 BC and AD 70. The next oldest are the Greek Septuagint manuscripts of the Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, produced by the early Christian church in the 4th century AD. The oldest manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, which forms the basis of Jewish worship and many Western Christian bibles, date from around AD 1000. Also worthy of note are the Samaritan and Syriac translations. Modern scholarly translations rely on all these manuscripts, attempting to find the best possible version through critical examination of the texts.

Composition

Traditionally, both Jews and Christians accepted that the five books of the Pentateuch were the work of Moses at the time of the Exodus, c.1440 BCE. The problems with this have long been recognised - notably there is the question of how Moses could describe the events of Genesis, which he had not witnessed. Various suggestions were put forward, including direct revelation by God or, alternatively, the idea that the various Patriarchs, beginning with Adam, had kept records which they had passed on. By the 19th century, however, these explanations no longer seemed convincing to biblical scholars, and in its place the idea of the documentary hypothesis gained wide acceptance. This proposed that four separate narrative histories of Israel's origins had been composed between the time of David (9th century BC) and the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians (6th century BC), and subsequently combined around 450 BC. This hypothesis enjoyed wide support for much of the 20th century, but since around 1970 it came under increasing scrutiny and today, while it still has defenders, it no longer enjoys the status it once had. In the 21st century most biblical scholars see Genesis and the other books as composite works derived from many sources, and primarily a product of the Exilic and Persian periods (6th and 5th centuries BC).[11]

Alongside these new approaches to the history of the text has come an increasing interest in the way the narratives tell their stories, concentrating not on the origins of Genesis but on its meaning, both for the society which produced it and for the modern day, placing "a new emphasis on the narrative's purpose to shape audiences' perceptions of the world around them and to instruct them in how to live in this world and relate to its God."[12]

Themes

Religion of the Patriarchs

Alt's "Religion of the Patriarchs"

In 1929 Albrecht Alt proposed that the Hebrews arrived in Canaan at different times and as different groups, each with its nameless "gods of the fathers." In time these gods were assimilated with the Canaanite El, and names such as "El, God of Israel" emerged. The "God of Abraham" then became identified with the "God of Isaac" and so on. Finally "Yahweh" was introduced in the Mosaic period. The authors of Genesis, living in a later period when Yahweh had become the only God, partly obscured and partly preserved this history in their attempt to demonstrate that the patriarchs shared their own monotheistic worship of Yahweh. According to Alt, the theology of the earliest period and of later fully developed monotheistic Judaism were nevertheless identical: both Yahweh and the tribal gods revealed himself/themselves to the patriarchs, promised them descendants, and protected them in their wanderings; they in turn enjoyed a special relationship with their god, worshiped him, and established holy places in his honor.

In 1934 Julius Lewy, drawing on the recently discovered Ugarit texts, argued that the "God of Abraham" was not anonymous, but was probably El Shaddai, "El of the Mountain" (El being identified with a mythical holy mountain). The name Shaddai, however, remains mysterious, and has also been identified with both a specific city and with a Hebrew root meaning "breast".[13] In 1962 Frank Moore Cross concluded that the name Yahweh developed as one of the many epithets of El: "El the creator, he who causes to be." For Cross the continuity between El and Yahweh explained how the other El-names could continue to be used in Genesis, and why Baal (in Canaanite mythology a rival to El) was regarded with such hostility.[14] More recently, Mark S. Smith has returned to the Ugarit texts to show how polytheism "was a feature of Israelite religion down through the end of the Iron Age and how monotheism emerged in the seventh and sixth centuries."[15]

Conservative views

In contrast to this picture of a Canaanite background to Genesis, Lloyd R. Bailey (1968) and E.L. Abel (1973) have suggested that Abraham worshiped Sin the Amorite moon-god of Harran. To support their theory, Bailey and Abel point (1) to Abraham's association with Harran and Ur, both centers of the cult of Sin, (2) to the epithet "Father of the gods" applied to Sin (comparable to Abram's name, "Exalted Father") and, (3) to the close similarity between names associated with Abraham and with Sin: Sarah/Sarratu (Sin's wife); Milcah/Malkatu (Sin's daughter); and Terah/Ter (a name of Sin).[16] M. Haran has also distinguished between Canaanite and Patriarchal religion, pointing out that the Patriarchs never worship at existing shrines but rather build their own shrines, something fitting to a semi-nomadic lifestyle. He also points to the invocation of Shaddai by Baalam and the identification of the Patriarchal God with the "sons of Eber" in Genesis 10:21 as evidence that their god was not originally Canaanite. Gordon Wenham has pointed out that El (or "Il") is a well-known member of the third-millennium Mesopotamian pantheon, adding: "Whether El was ever identified with the moon god is uncertain. To judge from the names of Abraham's relations and the cult of his home town, his ancestors at least were moon-god worshippers. Whether he continued to honour this gods [sic] identifying him with El, or converted to El, is unclear."[17]

Covenants

The covenants are integral to the understanding not only of Genesis but also of the entire Bible.[18] Otto Eissfeldt, an early scholar of the Ugarit texts, recognised that in Ugarit the promise of a son was given to kings together with promises of blessing and numerous descendants, a clear parallel to the pattern of Genesis. Claus Westermann, (1964 and 1976), analysing the Genesis covenants in the light of Ugarit and Icelandic sagas, came to the conclusion that the Patriarchal stories were usually lacking any promises in their original form. Westermann saw the promise of a son in Genesis 16:11 and 18:1-15 as genuine, as well as the promise of land behind 15:7-21 and 28:13-15; the rest he saw as representing later editors.[19] Rolf Rendtorff accepts Westermann's thesis that the Patriarchal stories were originally independent, and suggests that the promises were added to link the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob into cycles which grew through a process of gradual accretion into the final book. John Van Seters, in contrast, sees Genesis as a late and unified composition, from which it is impossible to excise the Covenants without doing damage to the overall narrative.[20]

Early covenants

Biblical tradition mentions two covenants contracted between God and Noah (Genesis 6:18; Genesis 9:8-17). It is clearly called a covenant, with a certain obligation on Noah and certain promises from the Lord.[21] This is a prelude to biblical covenants where the promise plays an important role.[22]

Patriarchal covenants

This transmitted to us in two traditions, viz. Genesis 15 and Genesis 17. The Lord has contracted this covenant with Abraham with strong emphasis on the promise (especially in Gen. 17). Two promises were made, viz. the multiplication of Abraham’s offspring and the inheritance of the Promised Land. It is obvious, e.g. from the book of Exodus, that the promise of a large offspring is regarded as fulfilled (cf. Exodus 1:7-22). The description of the conquering of the Promised Land in Joshua points to the fulfillment of the promise of inheritance. The patriarchal covenant is thus mainly promissory. This covenant is seen as significant throughout the entire Old Testament.[22]

See also

Books of the Torah
  1. Genesis
  2. Exodus
  3. Leviticus
  4. Numbers
  5. Deuteronomy

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Hebrew word #7225 in Strong's
  2. ↑ John McDermott, "Historical Issues in the Pentateuch", Bible and Interpretation
  3. ↑ "Art in the Catacombs of Rome─the Old Testament." Web: 28 Feb 2010. Adam and Eve prefiguration
  4. ↑ See Fire pot#Early Jewish Symbol of God
  5. ↑ The "river of Egypt", traditionally identified not with the Nile but with Wadi el Arish in the Sinai, and the Euphrates, represent the supposed bounds of Israel at its height under Solomon.
  6. ↑ Hebrew Yishmael, "God will hear".
  7. ↑ Hebrew Yitzhak, "he laughed," sometimes rendered as "he rejoiced" - three explanations of the name are given, the first in this chapter where Abraham laughs when told that Sarah will bear a son
  8. ↑ Abraham's intercession on behalf of the people of Sodom is the foundation of the important Jewish tradition of righteousness.
  9. ↑ Hebrew Esau, "made" or "completed". Genesis 36.
  10. ↑ Hebrew Yaakov, from a root meaning "crooked, bent", usually interpreted as meaning "heel" - according to the narrative he was born second, holding Esau's heel.
  11. ↑ John McDermott, "Historical Issues in the Pentateuch", Bible and Interpretation
  12. ↑ "What's New in Interpreting Genesis", 1995
  13. ↑ See Biblical Studies Org. and David Biale, "The God With Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible, 1982.
  14. ↑ Frank Moore Cross, "Yahweh and the God of the Patriarchs, 1962 and 1973.
  15. ↑ Mark S. Smith, "The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts", 2002. "Origins of Biblical Monotheism", Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Vol.).
  16. ↑ Lloyd Bailey, "Israelite El Sadday and Amorite Bel Sade" and E.L. Abel, "The Nature of the Patriarchal God El Sadday".
  17. ↑ Gordon J. Wenham, "The Religion of the Patriarchs" (accessed April 7, 2010)
  18. ↑ Robertson, O. Palmer, The Christ of the Covenants"
  19. ↑ Westermann distinguished four types of promise: a son; descendents; blessing; land. He regarded promises as early if they were not combined and if they were intrinsic to the narrative.
  20. ↑ Summarised from "The Patriarchs: History and Religion".
  21. ↑ William Smith, Smith's Bible Dictionary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997).
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 D. R. W. Wood and I. Howard Marshall, New Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 235–236.

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