Kinship studies are central for interpreting the ancestral narratives of Genesis. These studies are integral to understanding institutions such as marriage, as well as customary and traditional backgrounds to adoption, bartering, children, and many others, and provide a context for a close reading of this book in the texts of Genesis 12–50. In what follows, I rely on the Hebrew contextual application of the terms for family, clan, and tribe – the kinship units of ancient Israel – and define kinship as a culturally determined emphasis on blood and marriage as the preferred method for constructing the Israelite family, rather than solely on blood line.1

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the book of Genesis has increasingly come to be studied in terms of form and genre as well as of the history of tradition. One of the reasons was Hermann Gunkel’s epochal commentary on Genesis, published in 1901, which was soon to become authoritative.1 Gunkel’s often-quoted statement that “Genesis is a collection of legends”2 (“Die Genesis ist eine Sammlung von Sagen”) determined the path future research would take, though he had not meant to say that Genesis was only that.

Christians have been reading the book of Genesis for a very long time now, because from the beginning of the Christian movement they have believed that “all Scripture is God-breathed and … useful” in one way or another (2 Tim 3:16, NIV) – and they have held this to be true, first and foremost, of what they have regarded as the Old Testament (OT). They have read Genesis, then, in pursuit of what they should believe and how they should live.

“The Torah speaks a human language” – the saying, accredited to Rabbi Ishmael (90–135 CE) and found in the Midrashic treatise Sifre to Numbers 112, is at the root of a critical reading of the Scriptures. It underscores that Scriptures, considered divine revelation, are formulated in a language that follows the rules of any language and the conventions of human communication. R. Ishmael had his opponents, obviously, who belonged to the school of Rabbi Aqiba (40–137 CE) and affirmed that every detail in the Scripture is divinely inspired and therefore meaningful, a tendency for which recent scholarship coined the term “omnisignificance.”1 On the one hand, the school of R. Ishmael thinks of the Bible as having divine origin, but also as being a book like many other books and, on the other hand, R. Aqiba affirms the uniqueness of the Bible and detects a deeper, theological, meaning in every peculiarity of the biblical text.2 For R. Ishmael’s disciples, we may perceive errors, inconsistencies, differences, and imperfections in Holy Scriptures as in other human work.

The book of Genesis is replete with philosophical issues. Some include the nature of the human condition (e.g., the propensity for evil and goodness), freedom, contingency and necessity, ecological responsibility, and the contours of human interaction and flourishing.1 However, a perennial philosophical issue focuses on the relationship between divine commands and ethical evaluation. An important and related question is whether what God says and does is fitting if judged by a more developed concept of the divine nature. What, for example, is befitting of the divine? What is involved in determining whether the actions of the divine are befitting?

The study of the rhetorical features and characteristics in Genesis was started by Hermann Gunkel at the beginning of the twentieth century.1 He demonstrated how the narratives originated in the folklore of Israelite and pre-Israelite cultures, and how they were transformed into larger collections and finally into the literary documents which formed the book of Genesis. Although today few believe we can illuminate the history of pre-literary traditions and identify any orally based subunits of minor literature (Kleinliteratur) according to their initial setting of genre (Sitz im Leben), we can focus on the setting of the primary readership of the final written form.2 In addition, Gunkel’s observations on formal criteria and comparisons with other ancient Near Eastern literature are still a valuable foundation for contemporary exegesis.

Biblical ethics reflects upon maxims of moral behavior from the perspective of normative good and examines its legitimations and justifications, as well as the consequences of what can be called a morally positive or negative behavior. If maxims of good behavior are to be derived from historical narrative traditions, such an undertaking is confronted with the problem that implicit maxims of moral behavior are entangled with a number of other motifs and can never be isolated purely. The narratives of the Bible are subject to this challenge for any reconstruction of a historical ethos and its ethics. Their moral maxims were also anchored in the cultural contexts and ideals of their time. Although biblical narratives, including some in the book of Genesis, were ethically self-reflecting, they participated in the historicity of the cultural ideal motifs of their time.1 The solution for the resulting hermeneutical problem for any historical ethics due to the “nasty gap of history” (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing) – the tensions between modern ethical maxims and those of the Bible – is the main problem for any biblical ethics of the Torah or more specifically, the book of Genesis.

The image of God (Latin imago Dei) is a familiar, even fraught, biblical notion because it has served as something of an empty cipher that countless interpreters have sought to fill.1 Despite a great deal of spilled ink, what, exactly, the imago Dei is remains no small mystery because the notion goes largely undeveloped and underdeveloped in the Bible.2 References to the imago Dei appear almost exclusively in Genesis – “almost” because interpreters often find traces of the concept elsewhere, including in the New Testament.

Already in antiquity Jewish interpreters commented upon the oddity that the Torah, a book centered upon and preoccupied with the laws given at Sinai, contains such an extended prologue. Thus, the following reflection from the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, an anthology of legal midrashim from second/third-century CE Palestine, comments on why the Ten Commandments are not given in Genesis:

In the book of Genesis, we find stories about beginnings. We read of God’s creation of the universe, the origin of man, the fall into sin, the first murder, the father of faith, the birth of Israel, and more. It is a world strangely unfamiliar to modern readers, yet familiarly strange. When it comes to the origin, nature, and explanation of evil, discussions among analytic philosophers usually focus on the relationship between propositions, found within arguments, that aim to show God’s existence is either compatible or incompatible with the reality of evil, or probable or improbable given the reality of evil. God, in the analytic mode, is understood as a personal being worthy of worship. This conception of God is common to the great monotheistic traditions found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Much progress can be – and has been – made on the problem of evil at the level of “mere theism.”1 Yet, as we shall see, there is much more that can – and should – be incorporated into a full-blown account of God and evil.

There are very few books in the Hebrew Bible – Judges, Ruth, and Esther may be the only others – that contain such an abundance of women characters as does Genesis. This fact, coupled with the role of the creation narrative in women’s status over the centuries, has resulted in a nearly endless body of feminist analysis of the book. This scholarship is diverse in its approaches and in its conclusions, reflecting multiple types of feminism. Indeed, the question of what constitutes feminist analysis is a sticky one: Is it any analysis that focuses on women? Is it analysis that seeks to make an argument about women’s political empowerment? Must it proceed from a particular philosophical standpoint, incorporating works of feminist theory? Is a work feminist simply because it says it is – or can it be feminist even if it claims it is not?

Discussions of religious faith and science have proceeded along four tracks: science, philosophy, systematic theology, and scriptural interpretation. The dominant dialogue between theology and science is mediated by philosophical categories. While less prominent, the engagement of science and Scripture has been addressed in several intersecting classifications each with a specific focus. James P. Hurd sketches three scenarios seeking to harmonize the paleontological record of humans origins with Scripture.1 Nicolaas Rupke surveys five discourses about Scripture and science in their social context from 1750 to 2000.2 Gijsbert van den Brink describes five types of interpretation of Genesis 2–3, addressing the historicity of Adam and the Fall.3 Deborah Haarsma and Loren Haarsma as well as Denis Alexander distinguish attempts at creating consistency between science and Scripture (scenarios, models).4 Mark Harris addresses the “neglect of the Bible by the science-religion field” more broadly.5 All aim at conflict resolution.

The Book of Genesis never seems to go away. Whether we roam the corridors of human philosophies and theological speculations, or walk among the literary giants of past generations, we always seem to find Genesis. It is, in fact, inescapable, given a name like “Genesis” or “Beginnings.” Its position as the first book of the Bible, and the one that establishes so many of the themes to follow, gives Genesis a unique position in world literature and in the history of religions. Indeed, Genesis addresses the most profound questions of life. Who are we? Where are we? Why are we here? And it has answers. Whether we are believers or skeptics, Genesis answers questions about who God is, what God’s nature is like, and how God relates to humankind. Since the beginning of civilization, most societies have speculated about these or similar philosophical questions, but none has left such an impact on world history and thought as Genesis. Besides addressing the beginnings of the cosmos, of humanity, and of human civilization, the book is also about the origins of God’s chosen people, the Israelites, who produced the traditions that came to be preserved in the Hebrew Bible, traditionally known as the Old Testament. As such, the Book of Genesis is one of the first steps one must take along the path to understanding the world religions we now know as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the variety of theologies and philosophical principles related to them.