Reading Genesis

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.

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

Time is implicated in the idea of covenant or promise. Destiny will be fulfilled, loyalty will be maintained, into a future unlike all the misery and happiness that must intervene between now and then. Within this great certainty little can be assumed.

All this is related to the fact that the Bible does not exist to explain away mysteries and complexities but to reveal and explore them with a respect and restraint that resists conclusion.

Something happened, once, so far as we can tell, that eventuated and continues to eventuate in Being as we know it and do not know it, as we will and will not know it, all its consequences borne along in time, which may be, as Einstein said, our most persistent illusion. The vast cosmos was infinitesimal at its origins, presumably a particle, but t

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.

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

The Bible is a theodicy, a meditation on the problem of evil. This being true, it must take account of things as they are. It must acknowledge in a meaningful way the darkest aspects of the reality we experience, and it must reconcile them with the goodness of God and of Being itself against which this darkness stands out so sharply.

Why do human beings exist? To make offerings to Marduk and the gods. Why do human beings exist? The God of Genesis is unique in His having not a use but instead a mysterious, benign intention for them.