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121-560: The surviving text is part of the Book of Genesis in the Greek Septuagint translation. The text is frequently abbreviated. There are twenty-four surviving folios each with miniatures at the bottom of both sides. It is thought that there were originally about ninety-six folios and 192 illustrations. It is written in uncials with silver ink on calfskin vellum (on page 36 of "The Vienna Genesis. Material analysis and conservation of

242-503: A Canaanite myth in which God creates the world by vanquishing the water deities: "Awake, awake! ... It was you that hacked Rahab in pieces, that pierced the Dragon! It was you that dried up the Sea, the waters of the great Deep, that made the abysses of the Sea a road that the redeemed might walk..." The first creation account is divided into seven days during which God creates light (day 1);

363-404: A genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is in contrast to more vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the veracity of a myth is not a defining criterion. Although Orthodox Jews and "fundamentalist Christians" attribute the authorship of Book of Genesis to Moses "as

484-464: A great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises he will never destroy the world with water again, making a rainbow as a symbol of his promise . God sees humankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel , and divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion. Then, a generation line from Shem to Abram is described. Abram,

605-461: A bowl of stew. His mother, Rebekah, ensures Jacob rightly gains his father's blessing as the firstborn son and inheritor. At 77 years of age, Jacob leaves his parents and later seeks a wife and meets Rachel at a well. He goes to her father, his uncle , where he works for a total of 14 years to earn his wives, Rachel and Leah . Jacob's name is changed to Israel after his wrestle with an angel , and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons,

726-459: A firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. On day two, God creates the firmament ( rāqîa ), which is named šamayim ( ' sky ' or ' heaven ' ), to divide

847-709: A king, God has merely to speak for things to happen. On day one, God creates light and separates the light from the darkness. Then he names them. God therefore creates time. Creation by speech is not found in Mesopotamian mythology, but it is present in some ancient Egyptian creation myths . While some Egyptian accounts have a god creating the world by sneezing or masturbating, the Memphite Theology has Ptah create by speech. In Genesis, creative acts begin with speech and are finalized with naming. This has parallels in other ancient Near Eastern cultures. In

968-438: A late antique illuminated manuscript on purple parchment" states "The parchment of Late Antique manuscripts, which date from the 4th–7th century, is made from sheepskin" despite the fact it is called vellum. Its being called vellum is misleading as it would have been lambskin not calfskin, to which vellum specifically applies) dyed a rich purple , placing it very firmly in the category of luxury manuscripts. This shade of purple dye

1089-561: A long period of time. The involvement of multiple authors is suggested by internal contradictions within the text. For example, Genesis includes two creation narratives . By the early 1860s, the leading theory for the Pentateuch's composition was the old supplementary hypothesis. This theory held that the earliest portions, the so-called Book of Origins (containing Genesis 1 and most of the priestly laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers),

1210-500: A male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother— Sarah , Rebekah and Rachel —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 chosen Israelites . Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfilment, until through Joseph "all

1331-479: A man descended from Noah, is instructed by God to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan . 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 the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates ". Abram's name

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1452-733: A matter of faith," the Mosaic authorship has been questioned since the 11th century, and has been rejected in scholarship since the 17th century. Scholars of biblical criticism conclude that it, together with the following four books (making up what Jews call the Torah and biblical scholars call the Pentateuch), is "a composite work, the product of many hands and periods." The creation narrative consists of two separate accounts, drawn from different sources. The first account, in Genesis 1:1–2:3,

1573-486: A monotheistic creation in opposition to the polytheistic creation myth of ancient Israel's neighbors. Genesis 1 bears striking similarities and differences with Enuma Elish , the Babylonian creation myth . The myth begins with two primeval entities: Apsu , the male freshwater deity, and Tiamat , the female saltwater deity. The first gods were born from their sexual union. Both Apsu and Tiamat were killed by

1694-506: A more "scientific" model as imagined by Greek philosophers, according to which the Earth was a sphere at the centre of concentric shells of celestial spheres containing the Sun, Moon, stars and planets. The idea that God created the world out of nothing ( creatio ex nihilo ) has become central today to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism – indeed, the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides felt it

1815-470: A number of variations and revisions of the documentary hypothesis have been proposed. The new supplementary hypothesis posits three main sources for the Pentateuch: J, D, and P. 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. More recent thinking

1936-560: A pillar of salt for going against his word. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get Lot drunk so they can become pregnant by him, and give birth to the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites . Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town of Gerar , pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her (as she

2057-514: A single God whose power is uncontested and who brings order out of chaos. Creation takes place over six days. The creative acts are arranged so that the first three days set up the environments necessary for the creations of the last three days to thrive. For example, God creates light on the first day and the light-producing heavenly bodies on the fourth day. Each day follows a similar literary pattern: Verse 31 sums up all of creation with, "God saw every thing that He had made, and, indeed, it

2178-509: A single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Second Temple and who traced 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,

2299-405: A single page. However, within a single illustration, two or more episodes from a story may be included, so that the same person may be represented multiple times within a single illustration. There are both framed and unframed illustrations. The illustrations contain incidents and people not mentioned in the text of Genesis. These incidents are thought to have been derived from popular elaborations of

2420-608: A special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob). In Judaism , the theological importance of Genesis centres on the covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land . 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'. Genesis

2541-516: A work much alike to Genesis as known today. The authors of the text were influenced by Mesopotamian mythology and ancient near eastern cosmology , and borrowed several themes from them, adapting and integrating them with their unique belief in one God . The combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism . Scholarly writings frequently refer to Genesis as myth,

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2662-537: Is circumcision ; and the last, which does not appear until the Book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign is Sabbath . 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). Throughout Genesis, various figures engage in deception or trickery to survive or prosper. Biblical scholar David M. Carr notes that such stories reflect

2783-561: Is about to lay the knife upon his son, "the Angel of the Lord" restrains him, promising him again innumerable descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron ) 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

2904-566: Is also known as a Sidra (or Sedra / s ɛ d r ə / ). The parashah is a section of the Torah (Five Books of Moses) used in Jewish liturgy during a particular week. There are 54 weekly parshas, or parashiyot 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: Genesis creation narrative The Genesis creation narrative

3025-482: Is also seen in the Genesis flood narrative , where God uses wind to make the waters subside in Genesis 8:1. In Enuma Elish , the storm god Marduk defeats Tiamat with his wind. While stories of a cosmic battle prior to creation were familiar to ancient Israelites (see above ) , there is no such battle in Genesis 1 though the text includes the primeval ocean and references to God's wind. Instead, Genesis 1 depicts

3146-417: Is ambiguous and can be translated in other ways. The NRSV translates verses 1 and 2 as, "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void   ..." This translation suggests that earth, in some way, already existed when God began his creative activity. Biblical scholars John Day and David Toshio Tsumura argue that Genesis 1:1 describes the initial creation of

3267-544: 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

3388-399: 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). Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael . God then plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for

3509-432: Is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). 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

3630-570: 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. 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

3751-542: Is from what scholars call the Priestly source (P), largely dated to the 6th century BCE. The second account, which is older and takes up the rest of Genesis 2, is largely from the Jahwist source (J), commonly dated to the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. The two stories were combined, but there is currently no scholarly consensus on when the narrative reached its final form. A common hypothesis among biblical scholars today

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3872-418: Is given dominion over the animals. Eve , the first woman, is created from Adam's rib as his companion. The primary accounts in each chapter are joined by a literary bridge at Genesis 2:4 , "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created." This echoes the first line of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth", and is reversed in the next phrase, "...in

3993-416: 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, and Cain ends up murdering him. God then curses Cain . Eve bears another son, Seth , to take Abel's place in accordance to

4114-605: Is mentioned 35 times, "heaven/firmament" and "earth" 21 times each, and the phrases "and it was so" and "God saw that it was good" occur 7 times each. The cosmos created in Genesis 1 bears a striking resemblance to the Tabernacle in Exodus 35–40 , which was the prototype of the Temple in Jerusalem and the focus of priestly worship of Yahweh ; for this reason, and because other Middle Eastern creation stories also climax with

4235-546: Is no complete combat myth preserved in the Bible. However, there are fragmentary allusions to such a myth in Isaiah 27:1 , Isaiah 51:9–10 , Job 26:12–13 . These passages describe how God defeated the forces of chaos. These forces are personified as sea monsters . These monsters are variously named Yam (Sea), Nahar (River), Leviathan (Coiled One), Rahab (Arrogant One), and Tannin (Dragon). Psalm 74 and Isaiah 51 recall

4356-476: Is normally excluded). Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations. (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. God tells

4477-441: Is really Abraham's wife) and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son and tells her she should name him Isaac ; through him will be the establishment of the covenant (promise). Sarah then drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into the wilderness (because Ishmael is not her real son and Hagar is a slave), but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation. Then, God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac . As Abraham

4598-653: Is 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. The almost complete absence of all the characters and incidents mentioned in primeval history from the rest of the Hebrew Bible has led a sizeable minority of scholars to conclude that these chapters were composed much later than those that follow, possibly in

4719-553: Is that the first major comprehensive narrative of the Pentateuch was composed in the 7th or 6th centuries BCE. A sizeable minority of scholars believe that the first eleven chapters of Genesis, also known as the primeval history , can be dated to the 3rd century BCE, based on discontinuities between the contents of the work and other parts of the Hebrew Bible . The "Persian imperial authorisation," which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, proposes that

4840-440: Is the creation myth of both Judaism and Christianity , told in the Book of Genesis ch. 1–2. While the Jewish and Christian tradition is that the account is one comprehensive story modern scholars of biblical criticism identify the account as a composite work made up of two stories drawn from different sources. The first account, in Genesis 1:1–2:3, is from what scholars call the Priestly source (P), largely dated to

4961-488: Is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament . Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word , Bereshit ( 'In the beginning' ). Genesis purports to be an account of the creation of the world , the early history of humanity, and the origins of the Jewish people . Genesis is part of the Torah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Tradition credits Moses as

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5082-552: Is used to describe the desert wilderness. Bohu has no known meaning, although it appears to be related to the Arabic word bahiya ("to be empty"), and was apparently coined to rhyme with and reinforce tohu . The phrase appears also in Jeremiah 4:23 where the prophet warns Israel that rebellion against God will lead to the return of darkness and chaos, "as if the earth had been 'uncreated'". Verse 2 continues, " darkness

5203-515: The ruach of God [Elohim] moved upon the face of the waters." There are several options for translating the Hebrew word ruach ( רוּחַ ). It could mean "breath", "wind", or "spirit" in different contexts. The traditional translation is "spirit of God". In the Hebrew Bible, the spirit of God is understood to be an extension of God's power. The term is analogous to saying the "hand of the Lord" ( 2 Kings 3:15 ). Historically, Christian theologians supported "spirit" as it provided biblical support for

5324-640: The Babylonian Exile ( c.  598 BC  – c.   538 BC ). At the end of the 19th century, most scholars adopted the documentary hypothesis . This theory held that the five books of the Pentateuch came from four sources: the Yahwist (abbreviated as J), the Elohist (E), the Deuteronomist (D) and the Priestly source (P). Each source was held to tell the same basic story, with

5445-550: The Garden of Eden . In the second chapter, God commanded the man that he is free to eat from any tree, including the tree of life, except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . Later, in chapter 3, a serpent , portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster , convinces Eve to eat the fruit. She then convinces Adam to eat it, whereupon God throws them out and punishes them—Adam was punished with getting what he needs only by sweat and work, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This

5566-602: The Midianites . Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron (Machpelah). Isaac's wife Rebekah gives birth to the twins Esau (meaning 'velvet'), father of the Edomites , and Jacob (meaning 'supplanter' or 'follower'). 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

5687-512: The Persians , after their conquest of Babylon in 538 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. According to this theory, there were two powerful groups in the community, the priestly families who controlled the Temple, and the landowning families who made up

5808-413: The Torah's author . It was probably composed around the 5th century BC , although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BC. Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological , genetic , and linguistic evidence, some mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical . It

5929-593: The Victorian crisis of faith as evidence mounted that the Earth was far older than six thousand years. It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for a weekly Torah portion , popularly referred to as a parashah , to be read during Jewish prayer services on Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays. The full name, פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ , Parashat ha-Shavua , is popularly abbreviated to parashah (also parshah / p ɑː r ʃ ə / or parsha ), and

6050-457: The creative word : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" ( John 1:1 ). When the Jews came into contact with Greek thought, there followed a major reinterpretation of the underlying cosmology of the Genesis narrative. The biblical authors conceived the cosmos as a flat disc-shaped Earth in the centre, an underworld for the dead below, and heaven above. Below

6171-420: The land of Goshen . Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals 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 published The Theme of the Pentateuch . Considered influential as one of the first authors to take up the question of the overarching theme of

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6292-519: The pharaoh 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 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

6413-501: The "elders," which were in conflict over many issues. Each had its own "history of origins," but the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. The creation narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the two first chapters of the Book of Genesis (there are no chapter divisions in the original Hebrew text; see " chapters and verses of

6534-425: The "waters below", and day three the sea from the land. In each of the next three days these divisions are populated: day four populates the darkness and light with Sun, Moon and stars; day five populates seas and skies with fish and fowl; and finally land-based creatures and mankind populate the land. In the second story Yahweh creates Adam , the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden . There he

6655-448: The 16th to the 19th century treated the book of Genesis as factual. As evidence in the fields of paleontology , geology and other sciences was uncovered, scholars tried to fit these discoveries into the Genesis creation account. For example, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in the 18th century believed that fossils were the remains of creatures killed during the flood. This literal understanding of Genesis fell out of favor with scholars during

6776-533: The 3rd century BC. 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 the Achaemenid Empire , after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce

6897-469: The 6th century BCE. In this story, Elohim (the Hebrew generic word for " god ") creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, then rests on, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh (i.e. the Biblical Sabbath ). The second account, which takes up the rest of Genesis 2, is largely from the Jahwist source (J), commonly dated to the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. In this story, God (now referred to by

7018-485: The Bible "). In the first story, the Creator deity is referred to as " Elohim " (the Hebrew generic word for " god "), whereas in the second story, he is referred to with a composite divine name; " L ORD God". Traditional or evangelical scholars such as Collins explain this as a single author's variation in style in order to, for example, emphasize the unity and transcendence of "God" in the first narrative, who created

7139-527: The Creation to the Flood and its aftermath. The two share numerous plot-details (e.g. the divine garden and the role of the first man in the garden, the creation of the man from a mixture of earth and divine substance, the chance of immortality , etc.), and have a similar overall theme: the gradual clarification of man's relationship with God(s) and animals. Genesis 1–2 reflects ancient ideas about science: in

7260-470: The Earth were the "waters of chaos", the cosmic sea, home to mythic monsters defeated and slain by God; in Exodus 20:4, God warns against making an image "of anything that is in the waters under the earth". There were also waters above the Earth, and so the raqia ( firmament ), a solid bowl, was necessary to keep them from flooding the world. During the Hellenistic period , this was largely replaced by

7381-437: The Hebrew bara' , a word used only for God's creative activity; people do not engage in bara' . Walton argues that bara' does not necessarily refer to the creation of matter. In the ancient Near East , "to create" meant assigning roles and functions. The bara' which God performs in Genesis 1 concerns bringing "heaven and earth" from chaos into ordered existence. Day disputes Walton's functional interpretation of

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7502-475: The Jewish version has drastically changed its Babylonian model: Eve, for example, seems to fill the role of a mother goddess when, in Genesis 4:1 , she says that she has "created a man with Yahweh", but she is not a divine being like her Babylonian counterpart. Genesis 2 has close parallels with a second Mesopotamian myth, the Atra-Hasis epic – parallels that in fact extend throughout Genesis 2–11 , from

7623-473: The Memphite Theology, the creator god names everything. Similarly, Enuma Elish begins when heaven, earth, and the gods were unnamed. Walton writes, "In this way of thinking, things did not exist unless they were named." According to biblical scholar Nahum Sarna , this similarity is "wholly superficial" because in other ancient narratives creation by speech involves magic : The pronouncement of

7744-486: The Mesopotamian creation accounts. The gods in Enuma Elish are amoral , they have limited powers, and they create humans to be their slaves . In Genesis 1, however, God is all powerful. He creates humans in the divine image, and cares for their wellbeing, and gives them dominion over every living thing. Enuma Elish has also left traces on Genesis 2. Both begin with a series of statements of what did not exist at

7865-491: 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.) The patriarchs , or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph

7986-472: The Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. 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. Notable examples are found in

8107-630: The age of the world since creation. This Anno Mundi system of counting years is the basis of the Hebrew calendar and Byzantine calendar . Counts differ somewhat, but they generally place the age of the Earth at about six thousand years. During the Protestant 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

8228-574: The analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and the Yahwist and Priestly sources . The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of the divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (the primeval history ) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature. One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from humankind: God creates

8349-489: The ancestors of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah . Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, rapes Dinah and asks his father to get Dinah for him as his wife, according to Chapter 34. Jacob agrees to the marriage but requires that all the males of Hamor's tribe be circumcised, including Hamor and Shechem. After this was performed and all the men were still weak, Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi murdered all

8470-595: The blood of the god Kingu . The grateful gods build a temple for Marduk in Babylon . This is similar to the Baal Cycle , in which the Canaanite god Baal builds himself a cosmic temple over seven days. In both Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish , creation consists of bringing order out of chaos . Before creation, there was nothing but a cosmic ocean . During creation, a dome-shaped firmament is put in place to hold back

8591-400: The book into the following sections: 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). While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding

8712-413: The coming J stories, which use only the name YHWH." The first account ( Genesis 1:1–2:3 ) employs a repetitious structure of divine fiat and fulfillment, then the statement "And there was evening and there was morning, the [ n ] day," for each of the six days of creation. In each of the first three days there is an act of division: day one divides the darkness from light , day two the "waters above" from

8833-502: The construction of a temple/house for the creator god , Genesis 1 can be interpreted as a description of the construction of the cosmos as God's house, for which the Temple in Jerusalem served as the earthly representative. The opening phrase of Genesis 1:1 is traditionally translated in English as " in the beginning God created". This translation suggests creatio ex nihilo ( ' creation from nothing ' ). The Hebrew, however,

8954-430: The continued narrative. She wears a pink dress and is depicted walking from a city in the background, holding a water jug on her shoulder, towards a body of water, next to which lounges a classically inspired female personification . Rebecca is illustrated a second time at the well with Eliezer. The illustration of Jacob Wrestling The Angel depicts a scene from Genesis 32, where Jacob wrestles with an angel all night. In

9075-467: The creation narrative. Day argues that material creation is the "only natural way of taking the text" and that this interpretation was the only one for most of history. Most interpreters consider the phrase "heaven and earth" to be a merism meaning the entire cosmos. Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as "formless and void". This phrase is a translation of the Hebrew tohu wa-bohu ( תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ ). Tohu by itself means "emptiness, futility". It

9196-459: The creation of the material universe. Even so, the doctrine had not yet been fully developed in the early 2nd century AD, although early Christian scholars were beginning to see a tension between the idea of world-formation and the omnipotence of God; by the beginning of the 3rd century this tension was resolved, world-formation was overcome, and creation ex nihilo had become a fundamental tenet of Christian theology. The Genesis narratives are not

9317-476: The day that the L ORD God made the earth and the heavens". This verse is one of ten "generations" ( Hebrew : תולדות toledot ) phrases used throughout Genesis, which provide a literary structure to the book. They normally function as headings to what comes after, but the position of this, the first of the series, has been the subject of much debate. The overlapping stories of Genesis 1 and 2 are usually regarded as contradictory but also complementary, with

9438-492: The divine word acted creatively. Its presence or absence is of no importance, for there is no tie between it and God. "Let there be!" or, as the Psalmist echoed it, "He spoke and it was so," [Psalm 33:9] refers not to the utterance of the magic word, but to the expression of the omnipotent, sovereign, unchallengeable will of the absolute, transcendent God to whom all nature is completely subservient. 6 And God said: 'Let there be

9559-418: The earth is a flat disc surrounded by the waters above and the waters below. The firmament is a solid dome that rests on mountains at the edges of the earth. It is transparent, allowing men to see the blue of the waters above with "windows" to allow rain to fall. The sun, moon and stars are underneath the firmament. Deep within the earth is the underworld or Sheol . The earth is supported by pillars sunk into

9680-472: The entire book. 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. The ancestral history is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. 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. The Genesis creation narrative comprises two different stories;

9801-486: The first (the Priestly story) concerned with the creation of the entire cosmos while the second (the Jahwist story) focuses on man as moral agent and cultivator of his environment. Comparative mythology provides historical and cross-cultural perspectives for Jewish mythology . Both sources behind the Genesis creation narrative were influenced by Mesopotamian mythology , borrowing several themes from them but adapting them to their belief in one God , establishing

9922-406: The first two chapters roughly correspond to these. 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 . In the second, God, now referred to as " Yahweh Elohim" (rendered as "the L ORD God" in English translations), creates two individuals, Adam and Eve , as the first man and woman, and places them in

10043-426: The generations", with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals. The toledot formula, occurring eleven times in the book of Genesis, serves as a heading which marks a transition to a new subject. The creation account of Genesis 1 functions as a prologue for the whole book and is not introduced with a toledot . The toledot divide

10164-510: The heavens and the earth by himself. Critical scholars such as Richard Elliot Friedman , on the contrary, take this as evidence of multiple authorship. Friedman states that the Jahwist source originally only used the "L ORD " (Yahweh) title, but a later editor added "God" to form the composite name: "It therefore appears to be an effort by the Redactor (R) to soften the transition from the P creation, which uses only 'God' (thirty-five times), to

10285-505: The illustration, Jacob is shown holding onto the angel's cloak while the angel reaches out to touch him. Similar to Rebecca at the Well , the figures are painted in profile, with elongated bodies and exaggerated facial features. The use of gold and silver paint, as well as intricate detailing in the clothing and hair, adds to the richness of the image. The story follows Jacob, in the brown and reddish tunic, who wakes up and leads his family across

10406-687: The males. Jacob complained that their act would mean retribution by others, namely the Canaanites and Perizzites. Jacob and his tribe took all the Hivite women and children as well as livestock and other property for themselves. Joseph , Jacob's favourite son of the twelve, makes his brothers jealous (especially because of special gifts Jacob gave him) and because of that jealousy they sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt . Joseph endures many trials including being innocently sentenced to jail but he stays faithful to God. After several years, he prospers there after

10527-401: The moment when creation began; Enuma Elish has a spring (in the sea) as the point where creation begins, paralleling the spring (on the land – Genesis 2 is notable for being a "dry" creation story) in Genesis 2:6 that "watered the whole face of the ground"; in both myths, Yahweh/the gods first create a man to serve him/them, then animals and vegetation. At the same time, and as with Genesis 1,

10648-413: The only biblical creation accounts. The Bible preserves two contrasting models of creation. The first is the " logos " (speech) model, where a supreme God "speaks" dormant matter into existence. Genesis 1 is an example of creation by speech. The second is the " agon " (struggle or combat) model, in which it is God's victory in battle over the monsters of the sea that mark his sovereignty and might. There

10769-409: 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.) The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land. The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having

10890-503: The personal name Yahweh ) creates Adam , the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden . There he is given dominion over the animals. Eve , the first woman, is created from Adam's rib as his companion. The first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch is thought to have been composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the Jahwist source) and was later expanded by other authors (the Priestly source ) into

11011-587: The presence of the Holy Spirit , the third person of the Trinity , at creation. Other interpreters argue for translating ruach as "wind". For example, the NRSV renders it "wind from God". Likewise, the word elohim can sometimes function as a superlative adjective (such as "mighty" or "great"). The phrase ruach elohim may therefore mean "great wind". The connection between wind and watery chaos

11132-497: The promises given at 3:15, 20. After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth, the world becomes corrupted by human sin and Nephilim , and God wants to wipe out humanity for their wickedness. However, Noah is righteous and blameless. So first, he instructs the Noah to build an ark and put examples of all the animals on it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends

11253-579: The relationship between man and God. The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel , God's chosen people . 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

11374-472: The rest of his life. The bridge's architectural forms include a colonnade with Roman columns which references classical architecture as it adapts to the scroll perspective. The initial iota and upsilon have the diaeresis . Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek Γένεσις , Génesis ; Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית ‎ , romanized:  Bərēʾšīṯ , lit.   'In [the] beginning'; Latin : Liber Genesis )

11495-421: The right word, like the performance of the right magical actions, is able to, or rather, inevitably must, actualize the potentialities which are inherent in the inert matter. In other words, it implies a mystic bond uniting matter to its manipulator   ... Worlds apart is the Genesis concept of creation by divine fiat. Notice how the Bible passes over in absolute silence the nature of the matter—if any—upon which

11616-399: The river. In his trail following him are his wives on donkeys and many servants. After crossing the river Jacob is then seen meeting an angel, seen wrestling the angel, and then the angel blesses him. There are multiple depictions of Jacob shown here to show multiple points of the story. From this story, as read in Genesis the book, Jacob is therefore blessed as Israel, and is blessed by God for

11737-415: The sins of their people. Abraham protests, but fails to get God to agree not to destroy the cities (reasoning with Abraham that not even ten righteous persons were found there; and among the righteous was Abraham's nephew Lot ). 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

11858-617: The sky (day 2); the earth, seas, and vegetation (day 3); the sun and moon (day 4); animals of the air and sea (day 5); and land animals and humans (day 6). God rested from his work on the seventh day of creation, the Sabbath . The use of numbers in ancient texts was often numerological rather than factual – that is, the numbers were used because they held some symbolic value to the author. The number seven, denoting divine completion, permeates Genesis 1: verse 1:1 consists of seven words, verse 1:2 has fourteen, and 2:1–3 has 35 words (5×7); Elohim

11979-512: The sources later combined by various editors. 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. Scholars also use repeated and duplicate stories to identify separate sources. In Genesis, these include the two creation stories, three different wife–sister narratives , and

12100-498: The stars, the " sons of God ", sang when the corner-stone of creation was laid. 3 And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. The process of creation illustrates God's sovereignty and omnipotence . God creates by fiat; things come into existence by divine decree. Like

12221-428: The story or from Jewish commentaries on the text. Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well shows the story of Genesis 24, in which Abraham's servant, Eliezer, goes to look for a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac. As he travels with ten of Abraham's camels, he stops to give them water, prays that Isaac's future wife will assist him with watering his camels, and Rebecca shows up to help Eliezer. Rebecca is depicted twice to illustrate

12342-761: The text of surviving copies varies. There are four major groupings of surviving manuscripts: the Masoretic Text , the Samaritan Pentateuch (in Samaritan script ), the Septuagint (a Greek translation), and fragments of Genesis found in the Dead Sea Scrolls . The Dead Sea Scrolls are oldest but cover only a small proportion of the book. Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phrase elleh toledot , meaning "these are

12463-515: The two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert. 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. E was written in the northern Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC. D was written in Judah in the 7th century BC and associated with the religious reforms of King Josiah c.  625 BC . The latest source

12584-543: The universe, the former writing: "Since the inchoate earth and the heavens in the sense of the air/wind were already in existence in Gen. 1:2, it is most natural to assume that Gen. 1:1 refers to God's creative act in making them." Other scholars such as R. N. Whybray , Christine Hayes , Michael Coogan , Cynthia Chapman, and John H. Walton argue that Genesis 1:1 describes the creation of an ordered universe out of preexisting, chaotic material. The word "created" translates

12705-463: 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." 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". The original manuscripts are lost, and

12826-503: The vulnerability felt by ancient Israelites and that "such stories can be a major way of gaining hope and resisting domination". Examples include: In both Judaism and Christianity , a genre of literature emerged dedicated to interpreting and commenting on the Genesis creation narrative, known as the Hexaemeron . By totaling the spans of time in the genealogies of Genesis, religious authorities have calculated what they consider to be

12947-428: The water and make Earth habitable. Both conclude with the creation of a human called "man" and the building of a temple for the god (in Genesis 1, this temple is the entire cosmos). In contrast to Enuma Elish , Genesis 1 is monotheistic. There is no theogony (account of God's origins), and there is no trace of the resistance to the reduction of chaos to order (Greek: theomachy , lit. "God-fighting"), all of which mark

13068-439: The waters. Water was a "primal generative force" in pagan mythologies. In Genesis, however, the primeval ocean possesses no powers and is completely at God's command. Rāqîa is derived from rāqa' , the verb used for the act of beating metal into thin plates. Ancient people throughout the world believed the sky was solid, and the firmament in Genesis 1 was understood to be a solid dome. In ancient near eastern cosmology ,

13189-585: The words of E.A. Speiser , "on the subject of creation biblical tradition aligned itself with the traditional tenets of Babylonian science." The opening words of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", sum up the belief of the author(s) that Yahweh , the god of Israel, was solely responsible for creation and had no rivals. Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from Greek philosophy , concluded that God's Wisdom , Word and Spirit penetrated all things and gave them unity. Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and identified Jesus with

13310-485: 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. 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

13431-515: The world and humans, humans rebel, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham. 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". The first 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 ( Ishmaelites and others as well as Israelites), and its sign

13552-401: The world" attains salvation from famine, and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled. 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

13673-453: The younger gods. Marduk , the leader of the gods, builds the world with Tiamat's body, which he splits in two. With one half, he builds a dome-shaped firmament in the sky to hold back Tiamat's upper waters. With the other half, Marduk forms dry land to hold back her lower waters. Marduk then organises the heavenly bodies and assigns tasks to the gods in maintaining the cosmos. When the gods complain about their work, Marduk creates humans out of

13794-413: Was P, which was written during the 5th century in Babylon . 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 of Ezra . Ezra 7 :14 records that Ezra traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem in 458 BC with God's law in his hand. Wellhausen argued that this

13915-534: Was also used to dye imperial cloth. The Vienna Genesis relates to the Rossano Gospels and the Sinope Gospels , from roughly the same period. The illustrations are done in a naturalistic style typical of Late Antique painting. The manuscript's illustrations are, in format, transitional between those found in scrolls and later images found in codices. Each illustration is painted at the bottom of

14036-425: Was composed in the time of King Solomon by a priest or Levite . This author used the Hebrew word elohim for God. This original work was expanded in the 8th century BC, with the name Yahweh used for God. In the 7th century BC, during the time of Jeremiah , the final parts of the Pentateuch were added, specifically the main parts of Deuteronomy. This would mean the Pentateuch achieved its final form before

14157-403: Was the newly compiled Pentateuch. Nehemiah 8 – 10 , according to Wellhausen, describes the publication and public acceptance of this new law code c.  444 BC . There was now a large gap between the earliest sources of the Pentateuch and the period they claimed to describe, which ended c.  1200 BC . Most scholars held to the documentary hypothesis until the 1980s. Since then,

14278-479: Was the only concept that the three religions shared – yet it is not found directly in Genesis, nor in the entire Hebrew Bible. According to Walton, the Priestly authors of Genesis 1 were concerned not with the origins of matter (the material which God formed into the habitable cosmos), but with assigning roles so that the Cosmos should function. John Day, however, considers that Genesis 1 clearly provides an account of

14399-500: Was upon the face of the deep ". The word deep translates the Hebrew təhôm ( תְהוֹם ), a primordial ocean . Darkness and təhôm are two further elements of chaos in addition to tohu wa-bohu . In Enuma Elish , the watery deep is personified as the goddess Tiamat , the enemy of Marduk . In Genesis, however, there is no such personification. The elements of chaos are not seen as evil but as indications that God has not begun his creative work. Verse 2 concludes with, "And

14520-471: Was very good". According to biblical scholar R. N. Whybray , "This is the craftsman's assessment of his own work   ... It does not necessarily have an ethical connotation: it is not mankind that is said to be 'good', but God's work as craftsman." At the end of the sixth day, when creation is complete, the world is a cosmic temple in which the role of humanity is the worship of God. This parallels Enuma Elish and also echoes Job 38 , where God recalls how

14641-462: Was written anonymously, but both Jewish and Christian religious tradition attributes the entire Pentateuch —Genesis, Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy —to Moses . During the Enlightenment , the philosophers Benedict Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes questioned Mosaic authorship . In the 17th century, Richard Simon proposed that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors over

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