Reading the book of Genesis for all it’s worth

    The best way to study a book of the Bible is to read it in a language that is not your mother tongue. It will make a familiar book strange and wonderful again. It will increase the chances that you read it with new eyes. The effect is reinforced by reading commentary thereto in the same language. In the case of the book of Genesis, an excellent path consists of working through it in Hebrew alongside commentary in Hebrew. Another path: think Genesis through in Greek with Greek commentary and French super-commentary. Another: read it in Latin side by side with Latin commentary.

    The advantages are enormous. Languages are gateways to worlds of meaning. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin open cognitive doors to the symbols and semantic structures of the Jewish and Christian faiths. Each language beckons, to the one who has ears to hear: “I can open your eyes / Take you wonder by wonder / Over, sideways and under / On a magic carpet ride.” [Disingenuous explanation for my quotation of this song: I have a 7 year old daughter who loves to belt it out.]

    Another avenue of study: read the book of Genesis in one of the languages of modern scholarship along with commentary produced in that language. Unless your mother tongue is German, the obvious choice is to read Genesis in German along with commentary in German. Modern Hebrew, Spanish, French, and Italian, however, are also excellent choices. If you are looking for ways to improve your German, go here; your French, go here; your Italian, go here.

    There is much to be said for pursuing the above paths. But if you desire to read the book of Genesis for all it’s worth, apart from and even in tension with its history of reception in Judaism and Christianity, you cannot do better than approach it through literary and historical methods. Historical methods are plural; they include text criticism, source criticism, form or genre criticism, and tradition criticism; they have in common a commitment to uncovering the meaning the text would have had, at the intersection of author and reader, relative to a trajectory extending into the past and toward the future from the standpoint of the “present” of the text.

    Literary methods involve giving the text a close reading, (1) blinkered or (2) intertextual in terms of larger textual corpora. That is difficult to do without reading the texts in the languages in which they were written.

    It is typical of interpreters attuned to the melody of the text as it stands to downplay elements of dissonance in that melody. Literary critics often content themselves with a diplomatic gesture of recognition that dissonant elements exist, only to move on and concentrate on concordant features alone. It is not unusual for final-form enthusiasts to speak ill of research that has sought to recover the history of composition of what almost everyone understands, in the case of the book of Genesis, to be a multi-stranded composition.

    In symmetrical fashion, source critics have tended to regard the final form of the text as little more than a disheveled heap of ruins beneath which they discover gold and diamonds.

    The best historical critics do not reduce the text as it stands to a means for reconstructing its precursors. The best literary critics do not ignore the multi-stranded profile of the text as we know it, any more than a fair description of a historical monument would fail to point out monumental features that evidence phases and renovations.

    Even so, the field of Hebrew Bible remains dominated by unilateral scholarship of one kind or the other. Von Rad on the other hand is the foremost example of a multi-disciplinary interpreter of the final form of Genesis. He combined historical, literary, and theological sensibilities in the act of interpretation.

    Even though their scholarship suffers from the shortcomings outlined above to varying degrees, from a literary point of view, I recommend Alonso-Schökel, Alter, Cassuto, Fokkelman, Perry and Sternberg, and Wenham. Perry and Sternberg combine literary and theological sensibilities; for that very reason some appreciate their work, and others steer away from it. From the point of view of straight-up historical methods, I recommend Skinner, Westermann, and Hendel. From a sachliche, theological point of view, I recommend Crüsemann, Ebach, and Levenson. [I have not yet read Moberly, so I cannot yet recommend his work.] The book of Genesis is shot through with God-speak. Any treatment of it that does not seek to grasp the sense in which the good, the true, and the beautiful come together but also part company in its pages, can hope to do it justice,

    Many people are looking for a biblical theology which bears a close resemblance to the systematic theology of the tradition they espouse. There is no such thing. A truly biblical theology / soteriology / anthropology looks quite different from – I cite three examples for which I have great respect – traditional Jewish theology, traditional Eastern Christian theology, and Reformation theology. If someone tells you differently, they are feeding you a line. In my next post, a select list of commentaries and monographs in the languages mentioned above, with scholarship in English thrown in for good measure.

Comments

[Jamie]

Do you have any suggestions for a good MIH commentary to read alongside Genesis?

[Hal Jorden]

That's an interesting idea.. now all I have to do is learn another language!

[JohnFH]

Hi Jamie,

Watch for my next post.

Hi Hal,

You will be glad you did.

I see your site touts international mission trips. If you know the language spoken of your destination, I am confident that God will make use of that knowledge for good.

[John Anderson]

Hi John,

I noticed one glaring ommission as you discuss literary approaches to Genesis. My forthcoming book! C'mon, it's available for preorder . . . buy buy buy! (wink). But in all seriousness, my book is an example of what you see lacking (and I agree): scholarship that tethers the literary and theological. We may not be talking about these things in the same ways, but it is what I aim to do.

I am always intrigued at what folk suggest others take a peek at re: Genesis scholarship. As for literary approaches, I would draw your attention to two phenomenal works by my friend Laurence Turner. His 'Announcements of Plot in Genesis' and more recent commentary on Genesis in the Readings series (Sheffield Phoenix, 2009) are superb and thoughtful. There are few who argue as persuasively as he does (though I have an entire chapter in my book devoted to taking him to task!) and notice the things he does. I have learned a great deal from him and his work. I would rank it in my top five works on Genesis period, if pressed.

Historical/critical work on Genesis is always interesting to me, usually because of my general annoyance with such methodologies. I would add to your list, though--despite the age of the work--Gunkel's magisterial commentary, now reprinted by Mercer. I have been delighted to find that at a few crucial junctures the ONLY scholar to have picked up on a particular point I was developing was Gunkel. He had a keen, keen eye, and while I don't agree with him on much, it is an old volume that is still very much worth reading and from which others will surely benefit. Also check out W. Lee Humphreys 'The Character of God in the Book of Genesis: A Narrative Appraisal.' I agree with Humphreys on very little, starting with his method, but it is a most worthwhile book; there are truly few others like it.

On the theological front, I must confess to my disappointment at Moberly's most recent Cambridge volume Theology of Genesis. Had it been titled differently I could have been on board, but the title makes one think the book will fill a gap that desperately needs filling. While there are some good things in the book, it is better described as a theology of PARTS OF Genesis. But on theological readings of Genesis, I don't think one can get much better than what Brueggemann has done in his Interpretation volume (WJK 1982). Loaded with theological insights, stimulating and challenging, on page after page. I would also add to this category my colleague in the Genesis program unit at SBL, Tammi Schneider's, recent book, Mothers of Promise (Baker 2008). Schneider has expressed to me, and she is absolutely right on this matter, that the topic of gender and feminism in Genesis is NOT an issue separate from theology. She will be doing a paper at SBL this year in the new Genesis section dealing with this topic more explicitly.

For whatever it is worth, in terms of commentaries on Genesis, I rank the following the highest for their keen insights, careful interaction with the text arguments of others, and unique contributions to study of the book of Genesis:

-Hamilton's NICOT
-Wenham's WBC
-Brueggemann's Interpretation
-von Rad's OTL (a bit dated, but von Rad is another timeless scholar from whom I have learned a great deal).

[JohnFH]

Hi John,

Thanks for your comments here. I'm convinced others will find them helpful. I know I have.

As you will see from my next post, I will be offering unfashionable recommendations that will supplement your very up-to-date ones.

[Josh Honeycutt]

I just found your blog and it is awesome! I love reading Hebrew, especially poetry. Keep up the good work.

[Alice Linsley]

Very interesting!

As Genesis is foundational to the whole of the Bible it is very important that we understand what it is telling us about Abraham's Horite people. This has been the focus of my research for 30+ years. I'm convinced that the Genesis material is best understood when we are aware of the unique kinship and ascendency of Abraham's people. I've written about this here:
http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2008/06/biblical-kinship-symmetrical-pattern.html

[JohnFH]

Alice,

I'm glad you found this introduction helpful.

You will discover that many of the authors I recommend are interested in the same broad questions you are, but choose not to treat the biblical data as if it were a harmonizable, self-consistent whole. Biblical literature does not conform to that expectation.

Biblical literature contains a large number of parallel data-streams - more precisely; narratives and instructional materials - which treat the same subject but differ in details large and small. The details cannot be reconciled without doing violence to, or suppressing, some of the macro- and micro-details contained in one or more of the textual blocs.

If you have ever wondered why your research does not receive much attention from accredited biblical scholars - that's the reason: you bring to the Bible an assumption about it that does not correspond to its observable characteristics.

[Alice C. Linsley]

Harmonization or concordism is not my approach. I am a biblical anthropologist and I look for patterns such as two drunken fathers (Noah and Lot), two passovers (Lamb's blood on doorposts and scarlet cord from window), and binary structure. See for example:

http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2012/04/levi-strauss-and-derrida-on-binary.html

[John Hobbins]

Thanks, Alice, for dropping by.