Genesis is part of theTorah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Tradition creditsMoses as the Torah's author. However, there is scholarly consensus that the Book of Genesis was composed several centuries later, after theBabylonian captivity, possibly in the fifth century BCE.[3] Based on the scientific interpretation ofarchaeological,genetic, and linguistic evidence, mainstream biblical scholars consider Genesis to be primarilymythological rather thanhistorical.
It is divisible into two parts, theprimeval history (chapters 1–11) and theancestral history (chapters 12–50).[4] The primeval history sets out the author's concepts of the nature of the deity and of humanity's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for humans, but when humanity corrupts it with sin, God decides to destroy his creation, sparing only the righteousNoah and his family to re-establish the relationship between man and God.[5]
The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory ofIsrael, God'schosen people.[6] At God's command, Noah's descendantAbraham journeys from his birthplace (described asUr of the Chaldeans and whose identification withSumerian Ur istentative in modern scholarship) into the God-given land ofCanaan, where he dwells as a sojourner, as does his sonIsaac and his grandsonJacob. Jacob's name is changed to "Israel", and through the agency of his sonJoseph, 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 theExodus (departure). The narrative is punctuated by a series ofcovenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all peoples (thecovenant with Noah) to a special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob).[7]
The nameGenesis is from the LatinVulgate, in turn borrowed or transliterated fromGreekΓένεσις, meaning 'origin';Biblical Hebrew:בְּרֵאשִׁית,romanized: Bərēʾšīṯ, 'In [the] beginning'.[8]
At the end of the 19th century, most scholars adopted thedocumentary hypothesis.[11] This theory held that the five books of the Pentateuch came from four sources: theYahwist (abbreviated as J), theElohist (E), theDeuteronomist (D) and thePriestly source (P). Each source was held to tell the same basic story, with the sources later combined by various editors.[12] Scholars were able to distinguish sources based on the designations for God. For example, the Yahwist source uses Yahweh, while the Elohistic and Priestly sources use Elohim.[13] Scholars also use repeated and duplicate stories to identify separate sources. In Genesis, these include the two creation stories, three differentwife–sister narratives, and the two versions ofAbraham sendingHagar andIshmael into the desert.[14][page needed]
According to the documentary hypothesis, J was produced during the 9th century BCE in the southernKingdom of Judah and was believed to be the earliest source. E was written in thenorthern Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BCE. D was written in Judah in the 7th century BCE and associated with thereligious reforms of King Josiahc. 625 BCE. The latest source was P, which was written during the 5th century inBabylon. Based on these dates, Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch did not reach its final, present-day form until after the Babylonian Exile.Julius Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch was finalized in the time ofEzra.Ezra 7:14 records that Ezra traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem in 458 BCE with God's law in his hand. Wellhausen argued that this was the newly compiled Pentateuch.Nehemiah 8–10, according to Wellhausen, describes the publication and public acceptance of this new law codec. 444 BCE.[11][13] There was now a large gap between the earliest sources of the Pentateuch and the period they claimed to describe, which endedc. 1200 BCE.[15]
Most scholars held to the documentary hypothesis until the 1980s. Since then, a number of variations and revisions of the documentary hypothesis have been proposed.[16] Thenew supplementary hypothesis posits three main sources for the Pentateuch: J, D, and P.[17] The E source is considered no more than a variation of J, and P is considered a body of revisions and expansions to the J (or "non-Priestly") material. The Deuteronomistic source does not appear in Genesis.[18] G.I. Davies argued that J dates from either just before or during the Babylonian Exile, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after.[19]
In the 21st century, there is scholarly consensus that the Book of Genesis was composed after theBabylonian captivity, possibly in the fifth century BCE.[3] In contrast, Ronald Hendel and Aaron Hornkohl have proposed a date prior to thePersian period (before 550 BCE) based on linguistic grounds.[20][21] Russell Gmirkin has argued that Genesis was composed in the late 270s BCE, drawing on Greek sources likeBerossus'Babyloniaca and reflecting the political context of theSeleucid andPtolemaic realms.[22]
As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is that of Persian imperial authorisation. This proposes that the Persians of theAchaemenid Empire, after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled theSecond Temple and whotraced their origin to Moses and the wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins". However, the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text.[23]
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 BCE: 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 betweenmyth,legend, and facts.[25] Professor Jean-Louis Ska of thePontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing is eliminated.[26] 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]
The original manuscripts are lost, and the text of surviving copies varies. There are four major groupings of surviving manuscripts: theMasoretic Text, theSamaritan Pentateuch (inSamaritan script), theSeptuagint (a Greek translation), and fragments of Genesis found in theDead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are oldest but cover only a small portion of the book.[29]
Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phraseelleh toledot, meaning "these are the generations", with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals.[30] Thetoledot formula, occurring eleven times in the book of Genesis, serves as a heading which marks a transition to a new subject.[31] Thetoledot divide the book into the following sections:[32][33]
Genesis 36:9–37:1Toledot of Esau "the father of theEdomites" (genealogy)
Genesis 37:2–50:26Toledot of Jacob (Joseph narrative)
It is not clear, however, what this meant to the original authors, and most modern commentators divide it into two parts based on the subject matter, a primeval history (chapters 1–11) and a patriarchal history (chapters 12–50).[34][a] While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding the entire book.[35] The primeval history has a symmetrical structure hinging on the flood story (chapters 6–9) with the events before the flood mirrored by the events after.[36] The ancestral history is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph.[37] The stories of Isaac arguably do not make up a coherent cycle of stories and function as a bridge between the cycles of Abraham and Jacob.[38]
Noah's Ark (1846), by American folk painterEdward Hicks
TheGenesis creation narrative comprises two different stories; the first two chapters roughly correspond to these.[b] In the first,Elohim, the generic Hebrew word for God, creates the heavens and the earth including man, in six days, andrests on the seventh. In the second, God, now referred to as "Yahweh Elohim" (rendered as "the LORD God" in English translations), creates two individuals,Adam and Eve, as the first man and woman, and places them in theGarden of Eden.
God commands the man that he is free to eat from any tree, including the tree of life, except from thetree of the knowledge of good and evil. Aserpent, portrayed as a deceptive creature ortrickster, convinces Eve to eat the fruit. She then convinces Adam to eat it. Both become ashamed of their nudity, and are discovered by God, who exiles them from Eden and punishes them. Adam is forced to gain his sustenance by difficult toil, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This is interpreted by Christians as the "fall of man"into sin. Eve bears two sons,Cain and Abel. Cain works in the garden, and Abel works with meat; they both offer offerings to God one day, and God does not accept Cain's offering but does accept Abel's. This causes Cain to resent Abel; he takes Abel to a field and murders him. God thencurses Cain. Eve bears another son,Seth, to take Abel's place.[39][40]
After manygenerations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth, the world has become corrupted by humansin andNephilim. God intends to wipe out humanity for their wickedness. However,Noah is righteous and blameless. God instructs Noah toconstruct an ark and store in it all the animals, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends agreat flood to destroy all the world. When the waters recede, God establishesa covenant with Noah, promising he will never destroy the world with water again, and making arainbow as a symbol of his promise. God sees mankind cooperating to build a great tower city, theTower of Babel. He divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion. Then, a generation line fromShem toAbram is described.
Abram, a man descended from Noah, is instructed by God to travel from his home inUr of the Chaldees to the land ofCanaan. There, God makes a promise to Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from theriver of Egypt to the great river, the riverEuphrates". Abram's name is changed to Abraham and that of his wife and half-sibling Sarai toSarah (meaning 'princess'). God institutes that all males should becircumcised as a sign of his promise to Abraham. Due to her old age, Sarah tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden,Hagar, as a second wife. Through Hagar, Abraham fathersIshmael.
God then plans to destroy the cities ofSodom and Gomorrah for the sins of their people. Abraham pleads for the city, that it may not be destroyed if ten righteous people are found there. Angels remove Abraham's nephew,Lot, and his family from Sodom. The cities are destroyed;his wife turns to view them and is turned into a pillar of salt.Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, inebriate Lot so they can become pregnant by him, and give birth to the ancestors of theMoabites andAmmonites.
Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town ofGerar, claiming to be brother and sister. The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son and tells her she should name himIsaac; through him will be the establishment of the covenant. Sarah then drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into the wilderness, but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation.
The Angel Hinders the Offering of Isaac (Rembrandt, 1635)
God tests Abraham by demanding that hesacrifice Isaac. As Abraham is about to lay the knife upon his son, "the Angel of the LORD" restrains him, rewarding his obedience by promising him again innumerable descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchasesMachpelah (believed to be modernHebron) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; after proving herself worthy,Rebekah becomes Isaac's betrothed.Keturah, Abraham's other wife, births more children, among whose descendants are theMidianites. Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron (Machpelah).
Jacob flees Laban (1897) by Charles Foster
Isaac's wifeRebekah gives birth to the twinsEsau, father of theEdomites, andJacob. Esau, being born first, is owed the birthright; however, through carelessness, he sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. Rebekah ensures Jacob rightly gains his father's blessing as the firstborn son and inheritor. At 77 years of age, Jacob seeks a wife and meets Rachel at a well. He goes to her father and his uncle,Laban, where he works for fourteen years to acquireLeah, Laban's first-born daughter, and Rachel. Jacob leads his family out of Laban's household; by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of theTwelve Tribes of Israel, and a daughter,Dinah. Jacob's name is changed to Israel afterwrestling with an angel.
Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, rapes Dinah and asks his father to get Dinah for him as his wife, Jacob agrees to the marriage but requires that all the males of Hamor's tribe be circumcised, including Hamor and Shechem. Jacob's sonsSimeon andLevi murder all the males in Hamor's tribe while they are recuperating from their circumcisions. Jacob warns that their act would mean retribution by others, namely the Canaanites and Perizzites. Jacob and his tribe take all Hivite property.[41]
Joseph, Jacob's favorite son of the twelve, makes his brothers jealous. They covertly sell Joseph into slavery inEgypt. Joseph endures many trials including being innocently sentenced to jail but remains faithful to God. After several years, he prospers there after thepharaoh of Egypt asks him to interpret a dream he had about an upcoming famine, which Joseph does through God. He is then made second in command of Egypt by the grateful pharaoh, and later on, he is reunited with his father and brothers, who fail to recognize him and plead for food as the famine reaches Canaan. After testing their faith, Joseph reveals himself, forgives them for their actions, and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them theland of Goshen. Jacob calls his sons to his bedside andreveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to old age and tells his brothers before his death that if God leads them out of the country, then they should take his bones with them.
In 1978,David Clines publishedThe Theme of the Pentateuch. Considered influential as one of the first authors to take up the question of the overarching theme of the Pentateuch, Clines' conclusion was that the overall theme is "the partial fulfilment—which implies also the partial nonfulfillment—of the promise to or blessing of the Patriarchs". (By calling the fulfilment "partial", Clines was drawing attention to the fact that at the end of Deuteronomy the people of Israel are still outside Canaan.)[42]
Thepatriarchs, or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph is normally excluded).[43] Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations.[44] (It is, however, worth noting that in the Jahwist source, the patriarchs refer to deity by the name YHWH, for example in Genesis 15.) Through the patriarchs, God announces the election of Israel, that is, he chooses Israel to be his special people and commits himself to their future.[45] God tells the patriarchs that he will be faithful to their descendants (i.e. to Israel), and Israel is expected to have faith in God and his promise. ("Faith" in the context of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible means an agreement to the promissory relationship, not a body of a belief.)[46]
The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land.[47] The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having a male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother—Sarah,Rebekah andRachel—is barren. The ancestors, however, retain their faith in God and God in each case gives a son—in Jacob's case, twelve sons, the foundation of the chosenIsraelites. Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfilment, until through Joseph "all the world" attains salvation from famine,[48] and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled.[43]
Scholars generally agree that the theme of divine promise unites the patriarchal cycles, but many would dispute the efficacy of trying to examine Genesis' theology by pursuing a single overarching theme, instead citing as more productive the analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and theYahwist andPriestly sources.[49] The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of the divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (theprimeval history) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature.[50][51] One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from man:[51] God creates the world and humans, humans rebel, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham.[7]
To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist), the Priestly source has added a series ofcovenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign". Thefirst covenant is between God and all living creatures, and is marked by the sign of the rainbow; the second is with the descendants of Abraham (Isaac and Ishmael), and its sign iscircumcision; and the last, which does not appear until the Book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign isSabbath. A great leader mediates each covenant (Noah, Abraham, Moses), and at each stage God progressively reveals himself by his name (Elohim with Noah,El Shaddai with Abraham,Yahweh with Moses).[7]
Throughout Genesis, various figures engage in deception or trickery to survive or prosper. Biblical scholarDavid M. Carr notes that such stories reflect the vulnerability felt by ancient Israelites and that "such stories can be a major way of gaining hope and resisting domination". Examples include:[52]
To avoid being killed, Abraham (in 12:10–20 and 20:1–18) and later Issac (26:6–11) tell a king that their respectivewives are only their sisters.
In chapter 25, Jacob tricks Esau into selling his birthright for a pot of lentil stew.
In chapter 27, Rebekah has Jacob impersonate Esau to trick Issac into giving him a superior blessing.
In chapter 29, Jacob believes he is marrying Rachel but is tricked into marrying her sister.
By totaling the spans of time in the genealogies of Genesis, religious authorities have calculated what they consider to be the age of the world since creation. ThisAnno Mundi system of counting years is the basis of theHebrew calendar andByzantine calendar. Counts differ somewhat, but they generally place the age of the Earth at about six thousand years.
During theProtestant Reformation, rivalry between Catholic and Protestant Christians led to a closer study of the Bible and a competition to take its words more seriously. Thus, scholars in Europe from the 16th to the 19th century treated the book of Genesis as factual. As evidence in the fields ofpaleontology,geology and other sciences was uncovered, scholars tried to fit these discoveries into the Genesis creation account.[53] For example,Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in the 18th century believed thatfossils were the remains of creatures killed during the flood. This literal understanding of Genesis fell out of favor with scholars during theVictorian crisis of faith as evidence mounted that theEarth was far older than six thousand years.
It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for aweekly Torah portion, popularly referred to as aparashah, to be read duringJewish prayer services on Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays. The full name,פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ,Parashat ha-Shavua, is popularly abbreviated toparashah (alsoparshah/pɑːrʃə/ orparsha), and is also known as aSidra (orSedra/sɛdrə/).
Theparashah is a section of theTorah (Five Books of Moses) used in Jewish liturgy during a particular week. There are 54 weekly parshas, orparashiyot in Hebrew, and the full cycle is read over the course of one Jewish year.
The first 12 of the 54 come from the Book of Genesis, and they are:
^Speaking of the disunity of the Pentateuch,Baden (2019, p. 14) writes: "Two creation-stories of Genesis 1 and 2 provide the opening salvo. It is impossible to read them as a single unified narrative, as they disagree on almost every point, from the nature of the pre-creation world to the order of creation to the length of time creation took."
Leithart, Peter (September 5, 2017)."Toledoth and the Structure of Genesis".theopolisinstitute.com. Theopolis Institute.Archived from the original on December 5, 2023. RetrievedMarch 9, 2024.
De La Torre, Miguel (2011).Genesis. Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press.
Fretheim, Terence E. "The Book of Genesis." InThe New Interpreter's Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck, vol. 1, pp. 319–674. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.ISBN0-687-27814-7.
Hirsch, Samson Raphael.The Pentateuch: Genesis. Translated by Isaac Levy. Judaica Press, 2nd edition 1999.ISBN0-910818-12-6. Originally published asDer Pentateuch uebersetzt und erklaert Frankfurt, 1867–1878.
Sarna, Nahum M.The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989.ISBN0-8276-0326-6.
Newman, Murray L. (1999).Genesis(PDF). Forward Movement Publications, Cincinnati, OH. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2013-05-20. Retrieved2016-03-19.
