Genesis: the beginning of all things

About the book

Genesis means ‘origin’, the book's name in the ancient Greek Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible names it by its first word, bereshit (בְּרֵאשִׁית), ‘In the beginning’.

Genesis does not name its author, but Jews and Christians have long received it and the next four books as the books of Moses. Exodus records that Moses wrote down the LORD's words (Exodus 24:4); Jesus called these books "the Law of Moses" (Luke 24:44) and said of Moses, "he wrote about Me" (John 5:46). A few notes seem to look back from a later time, such as the kings of Edom who reigned "before any king reigned over the Israelites" (Genesis 36:31).

Since the eighteenth century many scholars have seen in these books several sources woven together. They point to the two names for God, the LORD and God (Elohim), used in turn; to stories told twice, such as creation in chapters 1 and 2; and to changes of style and concern. The documentary hypothesis, long the leading account, holds that documents from different ages (in Genesis usually labelled J, E and P) were combined around the exile or after; many scholars today think instead of blocks of tradition that grew over a long time. Many other scholars, among them evangelicals, who stress the authority of Scripture and the telling of the gospel, hold that Genesis comes from Moses, who drew on older records and traditions, and that some notes and place names were added later.

The map under the Jesus tab sets the patriarchs about 2000–1800 BC. On the traditional view Moses wrote it in the era of the exodus and the wilderness (the fifteenth or thirteenth century BC), for Israel on its way from Egypt to the promised land: it told them who they were, and who had called them.

How it unfolds

Genesis falls into two parts: humankind's beginnings (1–11) and the family God called (12–50).

Key passages

Everything begins with God: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). By his word he made all things, and human beings in his image:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27

The Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches says that the triune God made the world ‘of nothing … in the space of six days, and all very good’ ch. 4.1. But humankind turned from God, and sin spread: Cain's murder, the violence before the flood, the pride of Babel (The fall, in the doctrine course). God judges, yet he begins again. He called Abram with a promise:

I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you … and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.

Genesis 12:2-3

Abraham trusted this covenant promise: "Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). The promise passes through Isaac and Jacob to Joseph, sold by his brothers, who tells them at the end, "As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good" (Genesis 50:20). God's providence, working even through human evil to keep his promise, runs through the book.

Christians read the six days of creation in Genesis 1 in more than one way. Some read them as ordinary days, noting the numbered days and the refrain of evening and morning; some as long ages, since the Hebrew word for ‘day’ can mean a period; some as a literary frame, noting how days one to three form realms that days four to six fill. These views run through most churches rather than between them (all three are held among Presbyterians who confess Westminster), and all confess that God made all things good. Creation, in the doctrine course, sets them out.

The book and Christ

The risen Jesus explained what was written about himself "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets" (Luke 24:27), and Moses begins with Genesis.

The first promise comes straight after the fall. God tells the serpent that the woman's seed "will crush your head, and you will strike his heel" (Genesis 3:15), and the church has long called this the first gospel. Matthew Henry writes, "Here was the dawn of the gospel day" Matthew Henry.

Paul says that in promising blessing for all nations, Scripture "foretold the gospel to Abraham" (Galatians 3:8), and that the promised seed is "One, who is Christ" (Galatians 3:16). On a mountain in Moriah, Abraham told Isaac, "God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son" (Genesis 22:8), and Hebrews says, "in a sense, he did receive Isaac back from death" (Hebrews 11:19).

The New Testament does not call Joseph a picture of Christ, but the church has long seen in him the shape of Christ's way: rejected and sold by his brothers, raised up, and the saviour of those who wronged him. Evil meant and good intended meet most deeply at the cross, where Jesus "was delivered up by God's set plan and foreknowledge" (Acts 2:23) and killed by lawless hands.

Reading it

Three chapters a day takes about seventeen days; begin with Genesis 1. It is one long story, best read several chapters at a sitting.

The heading "This is the account of" (Genesis 6:9) comes about ten times, opening each stage. Read the genealogies of chapters 5, 10–11 and 36 quickly, but notice where the names lead: they follow the line of the promise. Afterwards, read Hebrews 11 on the patriarchs' faith, then go on to Exodus.

Practice