Genesis

Background

Genesis is the first of the five books of the Pentateuch, or Torah. Jewish and Christian tradition long held that Moses wrote all five, and Jesus refers to the Law as what “Moses wrote” (John 5:46). The book itself names no author, and it describes events centuries before Moses.

Modern criticism took a different view. Julius Wellhausen’s Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1878) gave classic form to the documentary hypothesis: Genesis woven from older sources, usually labelled J, E and P, edited into one book after the exile (overview, secondary). Scholars still argue over how many sources there were and when they were written, but most agree the book has a long history of composition. Many evangelicals hold to Mosaic authorship with some later editing. The Catholic Church leaves the question open, and Dei Verbum (1965, §12) tells readers to attend to the “literary forms” of each text.

Genesis was written for a people who knew the creation and flood stories of their neighbours, such as Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh. Read beside them, Genesis stands out: one God, no rival gods, a creation by word and not by battle, and humans made to rule as God’s image rather than to serve the gods as slaves. John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One (2009) argues from this background that Genesis 1 describes God giving the cosmos its functions as his temple, not the origin of its matter.

The book is built around ten headings, “these are the generations of…” (2:4), which move the story from the whole world down to one family.

Outline and key ideas

Creation (1–2). Two accounts. In the first, God speaks the world into being over six days and rests on the seventh, and makes humanity “in our image” to rule (1:26–28). In the second, God forms the man from dust, plants a garden, and makes the woman from his side (2:7–25).

The fall and its spread (3–11). The serpent tempts, the man and woman eat, and are driven from the garden (3). Sin spreads: Cain kills Abel, violence fills the earth, God sends the flood and makes a covenant with Noah never to destroy the earth by flood again (9:8–17). The section ends with the tower of Babel and the scattering of the nations.

Abraham (12–25). God calls Abram to leave his country and promises land, offspring and blessing: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (12:1–3). Abram believes God, and it is “counted to him as righteousness” (15:6). Circumcision becomes the sign of the covenant (17). The story peaks when God tests Abraham by telling him to sacrifice Isaac (22).

Isaac and Jacob (25–36). The promise passes, against custom, to the younger son. Jacob cheats his brother Esau, wrestles with God and is renamed Israel (32:22–32).

Joseph (37–50). Sold by his brothers into Egypt, Joseph rises to rule and saves his family from famine. His words to his brothers sum up the book’s view of providence: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (50:20).

The classic older commentaries are Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis (early 5th century), John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis (late 4th century), Martin Luther’s Lectures on Genesis (1535–45), and John Calvin’s commentary (1554). Standard modern ones are Gordon Wenham’s two volumes in the Word Biblical Commentary (1987, 1994) and Victor Hamilton’s in the NICOT series (1990, 1995).

How the traditions read it

Genesis supplies the starting point for the doctrines of creation, humanity, sin and covenant, and much of the New Testament argues from it. The passages below are where the traditions part ways.

The days of creation (1:1–2:3)

The fight over Genesis 1 is about what kind of text it is. Each Creation and Evolution view reads the same six days differently.

Early church. The fathers did not agree. Many read the days as ordinary days, but Augustine doubted it. In City of God 11.6–7 he writes that “what kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive,” and in The Literal Meaning of Genesis he argued that God created everything at once and the days are a way of teaching it.
Young-earth creationism. Young Earth Creationism reads the days as six ordinary days a few thousand years ago, with a global flood. Henry Morris and John Whitcomb’s The Genesis Flood (1961) revived the view. Its holders point to “evening and morning” and to Exodus 20:11, which grounds the Sabbath in six days of creation.
Old-earth creationism. Old Earth Creationism accepts the scientific age of the universe. The “day-age” view, argued by Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe, reads each yom as a long era in the same order as the scientific record.
Literary readings. The framework view, set out by Meredith Kline in “Because It Had Not Rained” (1958) and “Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony” (1996), reads the days as a topical arrangement: days 1–3 form realms and days 4–6 fill them. Walton’s cosmic temple reading, above, is another literary view. Both leave the age of the earth to science.
Evolutionary creation. Evolutionary Creation, argued by Francis Collins and BioLogos, accepts common descent and reads Genesis 1–2 as theology rather than science. The Roman Catholic Church allows this. Pius XII’s Humani Generis (1950, §36) permitted research into “the doctrine of evolution” as far as the human body goes, while holding that souls are created directly by God; §37 rejected polygenism, the idea that humanity does not descend from one first pair.

The image of God (1:26–27)

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Every tradition holds that humans bear God’s image; they differ on what it is and what the fall did to it.

Image and likeness. Irenaeus distinguished the two words. In Against Heresies 5.6.1 the man “made in the image and likeness of God” is the one in whom the Spirit dwells. Without the Spirit he keeps the image but lacks the likeness. Eastern Orthodox theology builds on this: the image is given, the likeness is a goal, reached by growth into God (Theosis).
Reason. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I q. 93) placed the image chiefly in the rational mind, by which humans can know and love God. Catholic teaching holds that the image was wounded but not lost at the fall.
Righteousness lost. John Calvin (Institutes 1.15) held the image to be seated in the soul and seen in the original uprightness of the whole person. After the fall it was not wiped out but “so corrupted, that any thing which remains is fearful deformity,” and is renewed only in Christ.
Relation and rule. Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics III/1) read the image as relationship, pointing to “male and female he created them.” Many Old Testament scholars, Walton and Wenham among them, read it as a role: humans are God’s royal representatives over creation, as ancient kings set up statues of themselves.

Male and female (2:18–24; 3:16)

God makes the woman as “a helper fit for him” (2:18), and after the fall says to her, “your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (3:16).

Complementarianism holds that the man’s leadership is part of creation itself. The Danvers Statement (1987) affirms that “Adam’s headship in marriage was established by God before the Fall, and was not a result of sin,” citing Genesis 2, and that the fall “introduced distortions” into the relationship. Wayne Grudem points to the man being formed first and naming the woman. Egalitarianism answers that ezer, “helper,” is used of God himself in the Old Testament and implies no rank, and that the rule of 3:16 is a result of the fall, which redemption undoes. Both sides read 1:27 as teaching the equal dignity of man and woman.

The fall and original sin (3)

Genesis never uses the words “original sin.” The doctrine comes from reading Genesis 3 with Paul: “sin came into the world through one man” (Romans 5:12).

Augustine and the West. Augustine wrote that “we all were in that one man, since we all were that one man” (City of God 13.14), so every person inherits both guilt and a corrupted nature. Pelagius held that Adam harmed his descendants by bad example, not by passing on a fallen nature (Pelagianism).
Roman Catholic. The Council of Trent (session 5, 1546) defined that Adam’s sin is passed to all “by propagation, not by imitation,” and is removed by baptism. The Catechism (§404) calls its transmission “a mystery that we cannot fully understand” and describes it as a sin “contracted,” not committed.
Lutheran and Reformed. The Augsburg Confession (art. 2) teaches that all are born “without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence,” and that this is truly sin. Reformed covenant theology frames it legally. The Westminster Confession (ch. 7) reads Genesis 2–3 as a “covenant of works” in which “life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity,” so Adam’s guilt is counted to all he represented.
Eastern Orthodox. Orthodox writers usually speak of “ancestral sin.” Adam’s descendants inherit death and corruption, which make sin all but certain, but not Adam’s personal guilt. The Greek of Romans 5:12, eph’ hō, read as “because all sinned” rather than Augustine’s Latin “in whom all sinned,” carries much of this reading.

The first gospel (3:15)

God tells the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (3:15). The church called it the protoevangelium, the first gospel.

Irenaeus already read the offspring as Christ, who “trampled upon his head” (Against Heresies 5.21.1). Most Protestant traditions read it the same way, as a promise of Christ’s victory over Satan at the cost of suffering. The Latin Vulgate has ipsa, “she shall crush,” which led to a strong Marian reading in the West. Pius IX’s Ineffabilis Deus (1854), which defined the Immaculate Conception, cites the verse and sees Mary, the new Eve, sharing in her Son’s enmity against the serpent. Modern Catholic Bibles translate the Hebrew as “he” or “they,” and keep the Marian reading as typology. Many critical scholars read the verse in its first sense as an explanation of why people and snakes are enemies.

Abraham’s faith and the covenant sign (15:6; 17; 22)

Paul builds his case for justification by faith on 15:6: Abraham was counted righteous before he was circumcised (Romans 4:1–12; Galatians 3:6–9). James quotes the same verse and adds that Abraham was “justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac” (James 2:21–23). Lutheran and Reformed readers hold that James means faith shown to be real by its works; Catholic readers see justification as including the growth of faith working through love.

The covenant sign in chapter 17 divides the churches on baptism. The Westminster Confession (28.4) teaches that “the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized,” citing Genesis 17:7 and Colossians 2:11–12: baptism replaces circumcision as the sign given to believers and their children (Infant Baptism). Baptist theology answers that the new covenant is made only with those who know the Lord, so its sign belongs only to those who believe (Believer’s Baptism).

The land promise divides readers of prophecy. Dispensationalists, following John Nelson Darby, hold that the promise of land to Abraham’s offspring is unconditional and still to be fulfilled for ethnic Israel (Premillennialism). Covenant theologians read it as fulfilled in Christ, the single “offspring” of Galatians 3:16, and widened to the whole renewed earth.

The binding of Isaac in chapter 22 is read by Christians as a picture of the Father giving up the Son, and by Hebrews 11:17–19 as faith in resurrection. Jewish tradition reads it as the Akedah, the model of faithful obedience.

The sin of Sodom (19)

The men of Sodom demand that Lot bring out his guests “that we may know them” (19:4–11). The Traditional Marriage Ethic reads this, with Jude 7 (“sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire”), as including same-sex acts among Sodom’s sins. Affirming Theology answers that the story is about gang rape and the violation of hospitality, not loving relationships, and points to Ezekiel 16:49, which names pride, plenty and neglect of the poor. Derrick Sherwin Bailey’s Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (1955) first made this case at length. Many traditional scholars grant that the passage is mainly about violence and inhospitality, and rest their sexual ethic on other texts. See Sexuality and Marriage.