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Bible Reading Project: Genesis

Genesis

By Adrian Peetoom

Here is a way of getting a grip on this first Bible book, a possible (even likely?) scenario of its origin as a more or less complete book. That scenario may help you deal with the niggling question our modern minds always seem to ask, “Did it all really happen as described?”

Think of the people of Israel dwelling in exile in Babylon (in the sixth century before the birth of Jesus). With the help of prophets (e.g. Ezekiel) and other leaders they had come to realize that their disregard of Yahweh over many generations had brought them to this undesired and undesirable place (read Psalm 137!). But those prophets and leaders are also told the Jewish people that their return to the Promised Land was sure. But then what? Fall into the same trap again, the trap of living not as God’s Chosen People, but like all the other nations? But who are they as Chosen People? What does it mean to be God’s Chosen People? Their leaders (prophets, priests, scribes) fretted over these questions.  And a group (we don’t know their names) got together to pull together the stories they knew of their ancestors and kept telling each other, and combined them with already existing writing fragments, to shape the bits into a more or less cohesive account. That account (the bulk of what we now call the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures) gave them a picture of who they were.

But they faced an immediate decision. Their own memories, those old stories about being a chosen people destined for a chosen piece of real estate, began with Abraham, their first patriarch. But while in Exile they had also heard Babylonian tales that reached much further back into history, right back to the very beginning of universe and humanity. Here was the dilemma. If in their own tradition God only began to figure with Abraham, did that mean that he only came into being then? The very thought was offensive for a people for whom Yahweh was not only their God, but truly the only God. So they borrowed Mesopotamian tales (Creation, the giants and ancients of old, the Flood), and transformed them. Thereby proclaiming: The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is also the God of Creation, the God of the Flood, and of all the strange creatures embedded in old tales. But they retold those tales in ways that distinguished them. For instance, Mesopotamian stories told that Creation was born of violence. But these old scribes said, no, no. Not violence, but order out of chaos.  And Yahweh is not a god among many, nor is he to be found within what we know. This God is separate from what he created. He is the Other, the eternal Mystery, the One so different from his creatures (with only men and men and women created in his image) that we must never worship sun, moon, earth and fertility, for these are God’s creatures, not God himself.

The point is important for another reason. For under the influence of the Enlightenment and developing science, we easily fall into the trap of thinking that these old stories are about the past in some reliable descriptive way. They are not. The Creation story is not a competitor to Evolution science.  Both Creation and Flood story reveal not what might have happened before, but what our relationship is (should be) to God and to Creation.  And the language of Genesis is not scientific and historical language, but the language of meaning. More like poetry. And it is evocative language, that is, it asks for a response to the God whose story it is primarily. Many sincere Christians have dug in Mid-Eastern soil and Mid-Eastern writings for evidence of the lives of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph.  They will never find any, for these are not figures of history as much as they are characters of sacred imagination. Not that there could not have been figures like them, even with their names.  But they are in our presence only because they provided the inspiration for the stories we find in Genesis.

But you don’t have to tell all that to your children. Let those characters be taken for granted as real historical characters. In fact, even as adults treat them in reading and writing as if you see them traveling through and residing in Mid-Eastern territory.  Simply sit back and let the stories wash over you.

So what’s in Genesis?

It’s a collection of many stories. But as you read it, keep this in mind. Beyond the obvious of a flawed humanity, Genesis has been understood by the Church of all ages to be the book of God’s covenantal faithfulness. The human characters in it are a cross section of humanity. They do good things. They do bad things. But they realize that, more or less, and in their trust in Yahweh they confess, that of themselves they are more or less powerless to fix their own problems. They need “miracles,” no, not the kind that get headlines, but the miracle of God’s love made manifest in their circumstances. Hear Jacob, that liar and cheat. “I trust in your salvation, Yahweh.” And here is Joseph addressing his brothers who are afraid that he will now take revenge, seeing that their Dad is dead. “The evil you planned to do to me has by God’s design been turned to good, that he might bring about, as indeed he has, the deliverance of numerous people.” It’s a summary of the whole book, and for all of Scripture for that matter.

Chapters 1-3: Creation and the immediate aftermath.

Clearly there are two different accounts of creation, and it’s likely that Genesis 2 was rooted in an older version than Genesis 1.  In spite of what some Christians believe, these stories provide no basis for men holding down women. Both are created in the image of God. Neither does chapter 3. It does “explain” why men and woman are engaged in a constant struggle between being good and being bad. Also why farm work is so hard. And snakes have never been popular anywhere. Beyond those points, this chapter has to be digested in every generation as it sets evil in whatever “garden” we set out to dwell in. And what is evil?

Chapter 4: Cain and Abel

No one has yet explained why God rejected the offering of Cain.  But He did. Even so, Cain’s anger killed his brother. His question has been quoted ever since, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Sometimes translated “guardian.”) To which the whole of the Bible replies, “You’re darn right you are.”

Chapters 5 – 6:5: The earliest patriarchs and their long lives (you may want to skip this part. Actually, it’s fun to play with the numbers and names, which reveal that Methuselah, the oldest of the lot and Noah’s grandfather, lived in the year of the Flood. So why had he not entered the Ark, pray tell?)

Chapters 6:5 – 9 the end: Noah and the Flood

This story is also rooted in two different oral traditions. Then again, I once read that there are no fewer than 54 different flood stories in antiquity!  In passing we note that the post-Flood story of Ham (9:18-27) has often been cited as justification for racism, especially towards black people. Sheer nonsense!

Chapter 10: Too many names! Don’t bother.

Chapter 11: 1-9: The Tower of Babel

This chapter also reveals that the writers (redactors, compliers) of Genesis used materials at hand, in this case the architecture of Babylon, which they imaginatively stretched to heaven!

Chapters 11:27 – 25: 18 (Abraham and son Ishmael, the patriarch of the Arabs)

I find it utterly remarkable that no prominent figure in the Bible is described as a paragon of virtue. Even Abraham is shown to have had clay feet, even though he has been called “the father of all believers.” Why that honour? Because when God told him to travel, he did. When God promised him an heir, he trusted. But he lied in Egypt about Sarah being his sister. And the birth of Ishmael was a bit shady, while his giving in to Sarah in sending Ishmael’s mother away seems inappropriate as well.  But what a moving story is Abraham’s intercession on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah! (By the way, when Ezekiel and Isaiah name Sodom as a city of evil, they do not mention homosexuality! but violence and inhospitality).  And how strange, how inexplicable really, the story of Isaac’s almost sacrifice. The story of Abraham haggling for Sarah’s grave is also a moving one…and funny!

Chapters 25: 19 – 35 end: Isaac, Esau and Jacob

Isaac seems a much more minor figure. In a book I read, the (Jewish) author maintains that this section is not really about Isaac, but about his manager wife Rebekah, who fights for her son Jacob. Once again, Jacob is not much of an admirable character either, and Esau seems far less un-virtuous than his reputation among many Christians.

Chapter 36; Lots more names (skip)

Chapter 37 – end of the book: Joseph

Joseph seems a good person, clever, patient, trusting, powerful, and in the end forgiving. Yet when he was a teenager he drove his brothers up the wall, and even his father “scolded him.”

Chapter 38 seems in interlude in the Joseph story, a strange tale in which (once again) a key biblical figure (David and Judah would come from the tribe of Judah!) behaves in an abominable way. But the story has a point .

Have fun reading!

Invitation -  How to read the Bible - Genesis