Book of Genesis

Book of Genesis

The Book of Genesis (Greek: , "birth", "origin")

Bereshith (Hebrew: , "in the beginning")

is the first book of the Hebrew Bible, and the first of five books of the Torah, called the Pentateuch in the Christian Old Testament.

GenesisThe narrative runs from the creation of the world to the descent of the children of Israel into Egypt and culminates with the death of Joseph, and it contains some of the best-known biblical stories, including Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, and the patriarchs of the Jewish peopleFor the JewsFor Jews the theological importance of Genesis centers on the Covenants linking Yahweh (God) to his Chosen People and the people to the Promised Land.

For the ChristiansChristianity has interpreted Genesis as the prefiguration of Christian beliefs, specifically the Christian view of Christ as the fulfillment of covenant promises as the Son of God.

Whats in Genesis?Genesis consists of the "primeval history" (chapters 111) and cycles of Patriarchal stories - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel.The narrative of Joseph stands apart from these. Scholars believe that it reached its final form in the 5th century BC, with a previous history of composition reaching back possibly to the 10th century.In the BeginningIn Hebrew the book is called Bereshit, meaning "in the beginning", from the first word of the Hebrew text, in line with the other four books of the Torah.

How we got to GenesisWhen the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC to produce the Septuagint, the name given was 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 book, and most other languagesTextThe oldest extant Biblical manuscripts (mss) of Genesis are the 24 fragments found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from the few centuries immediately prior to the Birth of Christ.

Text The next oldest manuscripts are the Greek Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus based on the Septuagint and produced by the early Christian church in the 4th century AD.

TextThe Masoretic Text which forms the basis of Jewish worship today, is also the youngest of these manuscripts, dating from around 1000 AD. Also worthy of note are the Samaritan and Syriac translations, whose manuscripts are not as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, but preserve noteworthy differences which are pointers to the history both of the text and of the communities which produced them.

StructureScholars generally accept the division of Genesis into the Primeval History of Genesis 1-11, the Patriarchal cycles of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the story of Joseph.

The "primeval history" consists of three narrative units separated by two genealogies and an ethnography (or ethno-geography). StructureThe first narrative is that of Creation-Eden and the descendants of Cain and Seth.

StructureThe second narrative is the "Sons of God", Noah and the Curse of Ham and ethnography, the Table of Nations.

StructureThe third narrative is that of the Tower of Babel and the dispersal of peoples and the descendants of Seth to Abraham

CompositionFor much of the 20th century, academic scholarship on the origins of Genesis was dominated by the documentary hypothesis. This sees Genesis as a composite work assembled from originally independent sources: the J text, named for its use of the term YHWH (JHWH in German) as the name of God; the E text, named for its characteristic usage of the term "Elohim" for God; the P, or Priestly source, named for its preoccupation with the Aaronid priesthood. These texts were composed independently between 950 BC and 500 BC and underwent numerous processes of redaction, emerging in their current form in around 450 BC. CompositionFor centuries, Moses had been believed to have been the author of Genesis, and any other hypothesis was thus received by traditionally-minded Jews and Christians as an attack on one of their central beliefs.

CompositionBut in the first half of the 20th century the science of Biblical archaeology, developed by William F. Albright and his followers, combined with the new methods of biblical scholarship known as source criticism and tradition history, developed by Hermann Gunkel, Robert Alter and Martin Noth, seemed to demonstrate that the stories of Genesis (or, at least, the stories of the Patriarchs; the early part of Genesisfrom the Creation to the Tower of Babelwhich were already regarded as legendary by mainstream scholarship) were based in genuinely ancient oral tradition grounded in the material culture of the 2nd millennium BC. Thus by the middle of the 20th century it seemed that archaeology and scholarship had reconciled Wellhausen with a modified version of authorship by Moses

CompositionThis consensus was challenged in the 1970s by the publication of two books, Thomas L. Thompson's "The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives" (1974), and John Van Seters's "Abraham in History and Tradition" (1975), both of which pointed out that the archaeological evidence connecting the author of Genesis to the 2nd millennium BC could equally well apply to the 1st millennium, and that oral traditions were not nearly so easily recoverable as Gunkel and others had said. A third influential work, R. N. Whybray's "The Making of the Pentateuch" (1987), analysed the assumptions underlying Wellhausen's work and found them illogical and unconvincing, and William G. Dever attacked the philosophical foundations of Albrightean biblical archaeology, arguing that it was neither desirable nor possible to use the Bible to interpret the archaeological record.

Some ProblemsHow do you explain the meaning of the Pentateuch to evangelicals who revere these foundational books but do not see their relevance?

Experience has taught me that we really have to want to understand the meaning of the Pentateuch before we see its relevance for our lives. I've been fortunate to have students who have kept me looking for answers about the meaning and relevance of this book. The old theologians used to speak of "the love for Scripture" as a sign of true faith in Christ. They would say, "We should read the Old Testament as if it were written with the blood of Christ." For them, the Old Testament and the Pentateuch in particular was a Christian book, a book about Christ. For most evangelical Christians today it is a book about archaeology and ancient history.

Here we have to be careful because, to be sure, the Old Testament is about ancient history. But that is not its meaning. Its meaning is Christ. Saying that also calls for a great deal of caution. In my book, I take the view that the whole of the Pentateuch is about Christ, but that doesn't mean that Christ is in the whole Pentateuch. Finding Christ in the Pentateuch means learning to see him when he is there rather than trying to see when he is not there. I like to tell my students that we don't need to spiritualize the Old Testament to find Christ, but we do need to read it with spiritual eyes.

have a good friend who likes to chide me by saying you don't need "exegesis" to find Christ in the Old Testament. All we need is some "extra Jesus." I wrote my book in part to show my friend and others like him that serious scholarship leads one to find Christ in the Old Testament because he is really there. The author of the Pentateuch put him there when he wrote the book. I've found that if you show someone that Christ is really there in the Pentateuch and the Old Testament, they will come back to see morenot merely because they have come to revere the Pentateuch as a foundational book, but more importantly because they want to see more of Jesus.

What is the trickiest problem with discerning the meaning of the Pentateuch?

The problem can be a simple one. Christians just don't really believe the Old Testament is their Bible in the same way the New Testament is. For them the Old Testament teaches the law and the New Testament the gospel. The Old Testament is about Israel and the New Testament is about the church. They may not say it in so many words, but it's there, especially on those rare occasions when the preacher asks them to turn to an Old Testament passage. For them it's like reading someone else's mail. They feel they need to ask permission to obey its laws. Remember this: What we call the "Old Testament" today was the only "New Testament" Jesus and Paul ever had. All the evangelism we read about in the book of Acts was the result of the gospel they proclaimed from the pages of the "Old Testament."Orthodox Approach

St. John ChrysostomKnown as "the greatest preacher in the early church", John's sermons have been one of his greatest lasting legacies.

Chrysostom's extant homiletical works are vast, including many hundreds of exegetical sermons on both the New Testament (especially the works of Saint Paul) and the Old Testament (particularly on Genesis). Among his extant exegetical works are sixty-seven homilies on Genesis, fifty-nine on the Psalms, ninety on the Gospel of Matthew, eighty-eight on the Gospel of John, and fifty-five on the Acts of the ApostlesBasil of CaesareaBasil of Caesarea, also called Saint Basil the Great, He was an influential 4th century Christian theologian and monastic. Theologically, Basil was a supporter of the Nicene faction of the church, in opposition to Arianism on one side and the followers of Apollinaris of Laodicea on the other. His ability to balance his theological convictions with his political connections made Basil a powerful advocate for the Nicene position.

Basil of CaesareaHe was a famous preacher, and many of his homilies, including a series of Lenten lectures on the Hexameron (the Six Days of Creation), and an exposition of the psalter, have been preserved. Some, like that against usury and that on the famine in 368, are valuable for the history of morals; others illustrate the honor paid to martyrs and relics; the address to young men on the study of classical literature shows that Basil was lastingly influenced by his own education, which taught him to appreciate the propaedeutic importance of the classicsHexameronThe term Hexaemeron (Greek ) refers either to the genre of theological treatise that describes God's work on the six days of creation or to the six days of creation themselves.

HexameronMost often these theological works take the form of commentaries on Genesis 1. As a genre, hexameral literature was popular in the early church and medieval periods. The word derives its name from the Greek roots hexa-, meaning "six", and (h)emer(a), meaning "day".HexameronUsing the Genesis account as a template, the days of creation are claimed as follows:Light The firmament of Heaven Separation of water and land, created plant life; Sun, moon, and stars Marine life and birds Land animals, and man and woman. The seventh day is reserved for rest (Sabbath), and so is not counted

HexameronSaint Basil wrote an early and influential series of homilies around 370 AD which figure as the earliest extant Hexameron. Basil originally performed the work as a series of sermons, and later collected them into a written work which was influential amongst early church leaders. Through Hexaemeron, we get many clues about the scientific knowledge of 4th century AD (Spheric Earth, Atmosphere, Stars and Suns, a primitive form of the theory of Evolution) and we can understand that science and religion was harmonically blended in the early church.HexameronBasil originally performed the work as a series of sermons, and later collected them into a written work which was influential amongst early church leader

HexameronThrough Hexaemeron, we get many clues about the scientific knowledge of 4th century AD (Spheric Earth, Atmosphere, Stars and Suns, a primitive form of the theory of Evolution) and we can understand that science and religion was harmonically blended in the early church.

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