Book of Genesis
The Book of Genesis (from Greek Γένεσις, Génesis; Biblical Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית, romanized: Bərēʾšīṯ, lit. 'In [the] beginning'; Latin: Liber Genesis) is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament.[1] Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, Bereshit ('In the beginning'). Genesis is an account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, and the origins of the Jewish people.[2]
"The Book of Genesis" redirects here. For the comic, see The Book of Genesis (comic).
Genesis is part of the Torah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Tradition credits Moses as the Torah's author. It was probably composed around the 5th century BC,[3] although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BC.[4] Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence, most mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical.
It is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50).[5] The primeval history sets out the author's concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for humans, but when man corrupts it with sin, God decides to destroy his creation, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family to re-establish the relationship between man and God.[6] The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel, God's chosen people.[7] At God's command, Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his birthplace (described as Ur of the Chaldeans and whose identification with Sumerian Ur is tentative in modern scholarship) into the God-given land of Canaan, where he dwells as a sojourner, as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Jacob's name is changed to "Israel", and through the agency of his son Joseph, the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus (departure). The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all humankind (the covenant with Noah) to a special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob).[8]
In Judaism, the theological importance of Genesis centres on the covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land. In both Judaism and Christianity, a genre of literature emerged dedicated to interpreting and commenting on the Genesis creation narrative, known as the Hexaemeron.
Genre[edit]
Genesis is an example of a work in the "antiquities" genre, as the Romans knew it, a popular genre telling of the appearance of humans and their ancestors and heroes, with elaborate genealogies and chronologies fleshed out with stories and anecdotes.[24] Notable examples are found in the work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and heroic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth, legend, and facts.[25] Professor Jean-Louis Ska of the Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing is eliminated. This antiquity was needed to prove the worth of Israel's traditions to the nations (the neighbours of the Jews in the early Persian province of Judea), and to reconcile and unite the various factions within Israel itself.[26]
Describing the work of the biblical authors, John Van Seters wrote that lacking many historical traditions and none from the distant past, "They had to use myths and legends for earlier periods. In order to make sense out of the variety of different and often conflicting versions of stories, and to relate the stories to each other, they fitted them into a genealogical chronology."[27] Tremper Longman describes Genesis as theological history: "the fact that these events took place is assumed, and not argued. The concern of the text is not to prove the history but rather to impress the reader with the theological significance of these acts".[28]
