Book of Genesis
Genesis purports to be an account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, and the origins of the Jewish people.
[4] Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence, some mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical.
The name Genesis is from the Latin Vulgate, in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek Γένεσις, meaning 'origin'; Biblical Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית, romanized: Bərēʾšīṯ, 'In [the] beginning'.
[9] Genesis was written anonymously, but both Jewish and Christian religious tradition attributes the entire Pentateuch—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—to Moses.
In the 17th century, Richard Simon proposed that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors over a long period of time.
In Genesis, these include the two creation stories, three different wife–sister narratives, and the two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert.
[15][page needed] According to the documentary hypothesis, J was produced during the 9th century BC in the southern Kingdom of Judah and was believed to be the earliest source.
Based on these dates, Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch did not reach its final, present-day form until after the Babylonian Exile.
[20] Russell Gmirkin argues that Genesis was composed in the late 270s BC, drawing on Greek sources like Berossus’ Babyloniaca and reflecting the political context of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic realms.
However, the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text.
[24] 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.
[25] 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.
"[26] Tremper Longman describes Genesis as theological history: "the fact that these events took place is assumed, and not argued.
[29] The toledot formula, occurring eleven times in the book of Genesis, serves as a heading which marks a transition to a new subject.
[33][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.
[b] In the first, Elohim, the generic Hebrew word for God, creates the heavens and the earth including humankind, in six days, and rests on the seventh.
Abram's name is changed to 'Abraham' and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah (meaning 'princess'), and God says that all males should be circumcised 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 (to bear a child).
Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot (who was living there at the same time) and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction, (even though God commanded not to) and turns into a pillar of salt for going against his word.
Esau was a couple of seconds older as he had come out of the womb first, and was going to become the heir; however, through carelessness, he sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew.
His mother, Rebekah, ensures Jacob rightly gains his father's blessing as the firstborn son and inheritor.
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 had reached Canaan as well.
After much manipulation to see if they still hate him, Joseph reveals himself, forgives them for their actions, and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them the land of Goshen.
(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.
("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 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 and Rachel—is barren.
[8] To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist), the Priestly source has added a series of covenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign".
Examples include:[51] 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.
As evidence in the fields of paleontology, geology and other sciences was uncovered, scholars tried to fit these discoveries into the Genesis creation account.
This literal understanding of Genesis fell out of favor with scholars during the Victorian crisis of faith as evidence mounted that the Earth was far older than six thousand years.
