Against this background of ambient myth, to say that God is the good creator of a good creation is not a trivial statement. The insistence of Genesis on this point, even the mention of goodness as an attribute of the Creation, is unique to Genesis.

When I think there was a day when a human hand first wrote those words, I am filled with awe. This sentence is a masterpiece of compression. It approximates as closely as words allow the instantaneous realization of an intent, the bringing into being of the diversity of things that make up the world of fundamental human experience.

The very great tact with which God enters the human world through Abraham, respecting its expectations, is entirely consistent with the centrality He has given humankind in His Creation.

In Genesis, from the first, good is intrinsic to the whole of Creation. So in this very important respect the literatures are conceptually unlike. The Hebrew writers were not simply appropriating prevailing myths. They had weighty, human-centered concerns of their own, concerns entirely unique to them.

Abraham’s conception of God is limited by his having lived in a world of multitudes of gods with special and limited powers—nature, tribal, and household gods. But the conception of God in the text, in the telling, understands Him as the God of history.

Large assertions are made in the text, for example, that the reality we experience had a beginning, an idea disputed by major scientists into the twentieth century. An emergent universe brings innumerable mysteries, scientific as well as theological—Why did it happen? How will it end?—which the ancients both anticipated and variously addressed in l

The narrative introduces the idea of divine purpose, relative to humankind, its intention to be realized over vast stretches of time.

Genesis acknowledges a crucial variable that is not present in the Babylonian epics—human culpability.

Adam and Eve disobeyed, doubted, tried to deceive. These are all complex acts of will. The old Christian theologies spoke of felix culpa, the fortunate fall. This is in effect another name for human agency, responsibility, even freedom. If we could do only those things God wills, we would not be truly free, though to discern the will of God and act