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Genesis (, Greek: Γένεσις, meaning "birth", "creation", "cause", "beginning", "source" or "origin") is the first book of the Torah, the Tanakh, and the Old Testament. In Hebrew, it is called בראשית (B'reshit or Bərêšîth),[1] after the first word of the text in Hebrew (meaning "in the beginning"). This is in line with the pattern of naming the other four books of the Pentateuch. As Jewish tradition considers it to have been written by Moses, it is sometimes also called The First Book of Moses.
Genesis contains the historical presupposition and basis of the national religious ideas and institutions of Israel, and serves as an introduction to its history, laws, and customs. It is the composition of a writer (or set of writers, see documentary hypothesis), who has recounted the traditions of the Israelites, combining them into a uniform work, while preserving the textual and formal peculiarities incident to their difference in origin and mode of transmission.
"In the beginning God[2] created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters."[3] God makes the first day and night; the "firmament" separating "the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament;" dry land and seas and plants and trees which grew fruit with seed; the sun, moon and stars in the firmament give light upon the earth; creates air-breathing sea creatures and birds; and on the sixth day, makes "the beasts of the earth according to their kinds." "Then God said, Let us make man[4] in our image ... in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."[5] On the Sabbath (or seventh) day God rests from the task of completing the heavens and the earth: "So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation."[6]
God forms a man "of dust from the ground,"[7] and breathes into the man's nostrils, "and man became a living being." God sets the man in the Garden of Eden and permits him to eat of all the fruit within it, except that of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, "for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."[8] God decides to make him a helper for the man, and makes "every beast of the field and every bird of the air, ...whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name... but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him." God makes a woman from one of the man's ribs, and the man awakes and names his companion Woman, "because she was taken out of Man."[9] "And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed." The serpent tells the woman that she will not die if she eats the fruit of the tree: "When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."[10] So the woman eats, and gives to the man who also eats. "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." God curses the serpent: "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life;" the woman he punishes with pain in childbirth, and with subordination to man: "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you;" and the man he punishes with a life of toil: "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground." The man names his wife Eve,[11] "because she was the mother of all living." "Behold," says God, "the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil," and expels the couple from Eden, "lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever," and the gate of Eden is sealed by a cherub and a flaming sword "to guard the way to the tree of life."
Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel, the first a farmer, the second a shepherd.[12] Both bring offerings to God, but God accepts only Abel's, "the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions." Cain murders his brother, and, asked by God what has become of Abel, replies, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God then curses Cain: "When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength; you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth." Cain fears that whoever meets him will kill him, but God places a mark on Cain, with the promise that "if any slays Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." Cain settles in the land of Nod,[13] "away from the presence of the , where "he knew his wife".
Genesis 4:16-24 lists Cain's descendants: Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, and Lamech. Seth is born to replace Abel. Adam's descendants through the line of Seth are listed: Enosh, Kennan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, (of whom it is said that he "walked with God...Then he was no more, for God took him"),[14] Methuselah, Lamech and Noah. All the ante-diluvian Patriarchs are notable for their extreme longevity, with Methuselah living 969 years. The list ends with the birth of Noah's sons, from whom all humanity would be descended.[15]
The "sons of God" take wives from among the daughters of men. God sets the days of man at 120 years.[16] "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown."[17]
Angered by the wickedness of mankind, God selects Noah,[18] "a righteous man, blameless in his generation,"[19] and commands him to build an Ark, and to take on it his family and representatives of the animals.[20] God destroys the world with a Flood,[21] and enters into a covenant with Noah and his descendants, the entire human race, promising never again to destroy mankind in this way.[22]
Noah plants a vineyard, drinks wine, and falls into a drunken sleep. Ham, son of Noah, sees his father naked; when Noah awakes he places a curse on Ham's son Canaan, saying that he and all his descendants shall henceforth be slaves to Ham's brothers Shem and Japheth.[23]
The Table of Nations reviews "the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth", a total of seventy names, "and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood."[24]
The peoples of the earth decide to build "a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens" in the land of Shinar, "lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."[25] God fears the ambition of mankind: "This is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us[26] go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." And so mankind was scattered over the face of the earth, and the city "was called Babel, because there the confused the language of all the earth."[27]
Genesis 11 reviews the descendants of Shem to the generation of Terah, who leaves Ur of the Chaldees with his son Abram,[28] Abram's wife Sarai, and his grandson Lot, the son of Abram's brother Haran, towards the land of Canaan. They settle in the city of Haran, where Terah dies.[29] God commands Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." So Abram and his people and flocks journey to the land of Canaan, where God appears to Abram and says, "To your descendants I will give this land.[30]
Abram is forced by famine to go into Egypt, where Pharaoh takes possession of his wife, the beautiful Sarai, whom Abram has misrepresented as his sister. God strikes the king and his house with plagues, so that he returns Sarai and expels Abram and all his people from Egypt.[31]
Abram returns to Canaan, and separates from Lot in order to put an end to disputes about pasturage. He gives Lot the valley of the Jordan, as far as Sodom, whose people "were wicked, great sinners against the ." To Abram God says, "Lift up your eyes, and look ... for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you."[32]
Lot is taken prisoner during a war between the King of Shinar[33] and the King of Sodom and their allies, "four kings against five." Abram rescues Lot and is blessed by Melchizedek, king of Salem (the future Jerusalem) and "priest of God Most High". Abram refuses the King of Sodom's offer of the spoils of victory, saying: "I have sworn to the God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal-thong or anything that is yours, lest you should say, `I have made Abram rich.'"[34]
God makes a covenant with Abram, promising that Abram's descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the heavens, that they shall suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, but that they shall inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates."[35]
Sarai, being childless, tells Abram to take his Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, as wife. Hagar falls pregnant with Ishmael,[36] and God appears to her to promise that the child will be "a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him," whose descendants "cannot be numbered."[37]
God makes a covenant with Abram: Abram will have a numerous progeny and the possession of the land of Canaan, and Abram's name is changed to "Abraham"[38] and that of Sarai to "Sarah," and circumcision of all males is instituted as an eternal sign of the covenant. Abraham asks of God that Ishmael "might live in Thy sight," but God replies that Sarah will bear a son, who will be named Isaac,[39] and that it is with Isaac and his descendants that the covenant will be established. "As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him and make him fruitful and multiply him exceedingly; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac."[40]
God appears again to Abraham. Three strangers[41] appear, and Abraham receives them hospitably. God tells him that Sarah will shortly bear a son, and Sarah, overhearing, laughs: "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?"[42] God tells Abraham that he will punish Sodom, "because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave." The strangers depart. Abraham protests that it is not just "to slay the righteous with the wicked," and asks if the whole city can be spared if even ten righteous men are found there. God replies: "For the sake of ten I will not destroy it."[43]
The two[44] messengers are hospitably received by Lot. The men of Sodom surround the house and demand to have sexual relations with the strangers; Lot offers his two virgin daughters in place of the messengers, but the men refuse. Lot and his family are led out of Sodom, and Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by fire-and-brimstone; but Lot's wife, looking back, is turned to a pillar of salt. Lot's daughters, fearing that they will not find husbands and that their line (Lot's line) will die out, make their father drunk and lie with him; their children become the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.[45]
Abraham represents Sarah as his sister before Abimelech,[46] king of Gerar. God visits a curse of barrenness upon Abimelech and his household, and warns the king that Sarah is Abraham's wife, not his sister. Abimelech restores Sarah to Abraham, loads them both with gifts, and sends them away.[47]
Sarah gives birth to Isaac, saying, "God has made laughter for me, everyone who hears will laugh over me." At Sarah's insistence Ishmael and his mother Hagar are driven out into the wilderness. While Ishmael is near dying, an angel speaks to Hagar and promises that God will not forget them, but will make of Ishmael a great nation; "Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the skin with water, ... And God was with the lad, and he grew up..." Abraham enters into a covenant with Abimelech, who confirms his right to the well of Beer-sheba.[48]
God puts Abraham to the test by demanding the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham obeys; but, as he is about to lay the knife upon his son, God restrains him, promising him numberless descendants.[49] On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah for a family tomb[50] and sends his servant to Mesopotamia, Nahor's home, to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; and Rebekah, Nahor's granddaughter, is chosen.[51] Other children are born to Abraham by another wife, Keturah, among whose descendants are the Midianites; and he dies in a prosperous old age and is buried in his tomb at Hebron.[52]
Rebekah is barren, but Isaac prays to God and she gives birth to the twins Esau,[53] and Jacob.[54] While the twins were still in the womb God predicted that the two would be forever divided, and that the elder would serve the younger; and so it comes about that Esau the hunter sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of red porridge, and "therefore his name was called Edom."[55]
Isaac represents Rebekah as his sister before Abimelech, king of Gerar. Abimelech learns of the deception and is angered. Isaac is fortunate in all his undertakings in that country. His prosperity excites the jealousy of Abimelech, who sends him away; but the king sees that Isaac is blessed by God and makes a covenant with him at the well of Beer-sheba.[56]
Jacob deceives his father Isaac and obtains the blessing of prosperity[57] which should have been Esau's. Fearing Esau's anger he flees to Haran, the home of his mother's brother Laban.[58] Isaac, prohibiting Jacob from marrying a Canaanite woman, tells him to go and marry one of Laban's daughters. On the way, Jacob falls asleep on a stone and dreams of a ladder stretching from Heaven to Earth and thronged with angels, and God promises him prosperity and many descendants; and when he awakes Jacob sets the stone as a pillar[59] and names the place Bethel.[60]
Jacob hires himself to Laban on condition that, after having served for seven years as a herdsman, he shall marry the younger daughter, Rachel, with whom he is in love. At the end of this period Laban gives him the elder daughter, Leah, explaining that it is the custom to marry the elder before the younger; Jacob serves another seven years for Rachel, and has sons by his two wives and their two handmaidens, the ancestors of the tribes of Israel. Jacob then works another six years, deceiving Laban to increase his flocks at his uncle's expense, and gains great wealth in sheep, goats, camels, donkeys and slave-girls.
Jacob flees with his family and flocks from Laban; Laban pursues and catches him, but God warns Laban not to harm Jacob, and they are reconciled.[61] On approaching his home he is in fear of Esau, to whom he sends presents under the care of his servants, and then sends his wives and children away. "And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day."[62] Neither Jacob nor the stranger can prevail, but the man touches Jacob's thigh and puts it out of joint, and pleads to be released before daybreak, but Jacob refuses to release the being until he agrees to give a blessing; the stranger then announces to Jacob that he shall bear the name "Israel", "for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed."[63] and is freed. "The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel,[64] limping because of his thigh."[65]
The meeting with Esau proves friendly, and the brothers are reconciled: "to see your face is like seeing the face of God," is Jacob's greeting. The brothers part, and Jacob settles near the city of Shechem.[66] Jacob's daughter Dinah goes out, and "Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humbled her".[67] Shechem asks Jacob for Dinah's hand in marriage, but the sons of Jacob deceive the men of Shechem and slaughter them and take captive their wives and children and loot the city. Jacob is angered that his sons have brought upon him the enmity of the Canaanites, but his sons say, "Should he treat our sister as a harlot?"[68]
Jacob goes up to Bethel; there "God said to him, Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. So his name was called Israel"; and Jacob sets up a stone pillar at the place, and names it Bethel. He goes up to his father Isaac at Hebron, and there Isaac dies, "and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him."[69]
Genesis 36 is the Edomite King-list, describing the tribes and rulers of Edom, the nation of Esau.[70]
Jacob's son Judah takes a Canaanite wife and has two sons, Er and Onan; Er dies, and his widow Tamar, disguised as a prositute, tricks Judah into having a child by her (Er's brother Onan, who should have fathered the child, refused). She gives birth to twins, the elder of whom is Pharez, ancestor of the future royal house of David.
Jacob makes a coat of many colours[71] for his favourite son, Joseph. Joseph's jealous brothers sell him to some Ishmaelites and show Jacob the coat, dipped in goat's blood, as proof that Joseph is dead. Meanwhile the Midianites[72] sell Joseph to Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard,[73] but Potiphar's wife, unable to seduce Joseph, accuses him falsely and he is cast into prison.[74] Here he correctly interprets the dreams of two of his fellow prisoners, the king's butler and baker.[75] Joseph next interprets the dream of Pharaoh, of seven fat cattle and seven lean cattle, as meaning seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, and advises Pharaoh to store grain during the good years. He is appointed second in the kingdom, and, in the ensuing famine, "all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth."[76]
Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy grain. The brothers appear before Joseph, who recognizes them, but does not reveal himself. After having proved them on this and on a second journey, and they having shown themselves so fearful and penitent that Judah even offers himself as a slave, Joseph reveals his identity, forgives his brothers the wrong they did him, and promises to settle in Egypt both them and his father[77] Jacob brings his whole family to Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them the land of Goshen.[78] Jacob receives Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh among his own sons,[79] then calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future to them.[80] Jacob dies and is interred in the family tomb at Machpelah (Hebron). Joseph lives to see his great-grandchildren, and on his death-bed he exhorts his brethren, if God should remember them and lead them out of the country, to take his bones with them. The book ends with Joseph's remains being "put in a coffin in Egypt."[81]
The oldest extant Masoretic (i.e. Hebrew) manuscripts of Genesis are the Aleppo Codex dated to ca. 920 AD, and the Westminster Leningrad Codex dated to 1008 AD. There are also fragments of unvocalized Hebrew Genesis texts preserved in some Dead Sea scrolls (2nd century BC to 1st century AD). According to tradition the Torah was translated into Greek (the Septuagint, or 70, from the traditional number of translators) in the 3rd century BC. The oldest Greek manuscripts include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BC fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). Relatively complete manuscripts of the LXX (i.e.e, the Septuagint) include the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century and the Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th century - these are the oldest surviving nearly-complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language. There are minor variations between the Greek and Hebrew texts, and between the three oldest Greek texts.
Although the text of Genesis makes no claim about authorship, the traditional Jewish, and later Christian, belief was that the five books of the Torah were dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. For a number of reasons this is no longer accepted by the majority of modern biblical scholars, and contemporary academic debate centres instead on the proposal known as the documentary hypothesis. This postulates that Genesis, together with the other four books, is a composite work assembled from various sources. These sources are:[82]
Genesis is said to be structured around the Book of Generations, hypothetically an originally independent text not traceable to any of the JEPD authors. Ten occurrences of the toledot (Hebrew "generations") formula introduce what the redactor presumably saw as ten units of the book:
The early Church, with its Jewish roots, assumed an authoritative nature for Genesis and based its own emerging theology on this and other Jewish holy texts. The author of the gospel of John paraphrased Genesis 1 to personify the eternal logos (Greek λογος, "reason", "word", "speech"): "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." This passage marks the first definitive emergence of the distinctive Christian concept of the Trinity, and thus of Christianity's emerging break with Judaism in the late 1st century. Jesus was interpreted as the "new Adam" who would redeem mankind from the sin of Eden, and the Ark of Noah became symbolic of the Church itself, offering salvation through the waters of baptism. The Abrahamic covenant was reinterpreted by the early Church to further underline the separation from Judaism: God's promise of a chosen people had passed from the children of Abraham, who had rejected Jesus, and was bestowed upon all those who accepted the new Covenant between God, in the divine person of his Son, and his Church.
Not only the general theology of Christianity but also specific narrative details of the new faith drew on the authority of Genesis: thus the three angelic strangers who visit Abraham to announce the birth of Isaac are paralleled by the (inferred) three magi who visit the infant Jesus; and the tale of Joseph in Egypt is echoed by the Holy Family's flight into Egypt.
Many of the stories from Genesis are retold in the Qur'an, with frequent variations. The Qur'an emphasises the moral stature of the Prophets; stories such as the drunkenness of Lot therefore find no place in it. While Islam accepts the Torah in principle, the view of Islamic scholarship is that the revelation given to earlier times had become corrupted, and that the only valid text is that revealed by Allah to His Prophet Mohammed. The Qur'an, the final revelation, contains the essence of all previous revelations, including the Torah.
Genesis begins with a creation narrative, or narratives. Because a literal reading of Genesis can be seen to conflict with widely accepted scientific theories such as the Big Bang and common descent, many believers view the creation narratives presented in Genesis as an allegory; however, the non-literal view of creation did not begin with Charles Darwin, but rather predated him by hundreds of years.[85]
Those who believe that the first eleven chapters are literal argue that the style of writing shares a literary style with other biblical writing often considered to be historical in nature and the text nowhere indicates that it is meant as anything other than a literal account.[86] Such analysis, along with a strong tradition of Biblical inerrancy, has led a significant number of religious individuals and organizations to rejecting theoretical accounts of the origin of life and the universe in favor of Young-Earth creationism or YEC. Those holding to the view of YEC use the Genesis account of creation to provide alternative explanations to those of modern science on subjects including the origin of the universe, life and humankind.
There are also growing number of Christians and Jews who argue that the beginning of Genesis is not an account of the physical creation of the world; but, in keeping with how they think ancient Hebrews would have viewed this text, believe it is an account of God's dissemination of order on a physical plane that was there before the narrative begins. Some even decry any attempt as inaccurate that interprets the text as anything other than a bestowment of order on the physical universe. Saint Augustine took this view in The Literal Meaning of Genesis, but strongly rejected the suggestion that it represented an allegory; he took, instead, the position that in the Bible, "light" is continually used to mean order, enlightenment, or a higher plane of existence, and that similarly, "day" means an indeterminate interval of time defined by some central paradigm, as in the expression "dawn of a new day". From this point of view, he could reject as irrelevant the question of what was meant by the first three "days of Creation", when the sun and moon were not created until the fourth day, in favor of a "literal" interpretation that the universe was created all at once and then progressed from chaos through a "day when light was created", with light meaning understanding, order, etc. rather than electromagnetic radiation, followed by "a day when heaven was created", etc.[45] Examining Gen 1:6-8 we see that 'day two is the only day not called good' -- not because of some scribal error, but because it conveys the deeper meaning that division, is a necessary evil. Water is symbolic of a level of consciousness, thus dividing water represents the choice we have in chosing to be aware. As stated by Origen: "What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second and third days in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars, and the first day without a heaven. What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in paradise in Eden, like a husbandman, and planted therein the tree of life, perceptible to the eyes and senses, which gave life to the eater thereof; and another tree which gave to the eater thereof a knowledge of good and evil? I believe that every man must hold these things for images, under which the hidden sense lies concealed." (Origen - Huet., Prigeniana, 167 Franck, p. 142).
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