Genesis, God, and Humanity

Austin Stone

Humanities 1

Dr. Akman

Throughout most of the assigned section of Genesis the text seems to follow a particular structural pattern. First, a story is narrated and characters are introduced; then, a genealogy often comes after. What is the effect of this pattern, both on understanding the themes of the text and as a critical reading of this specific section?   

To begin I found this pattern to be easily noticeable, if not obvious, in my reading of these chapters. It begins shortly after Cain and Abel are introduced, as shortly after learning of Cain’s crimes the reader learns of his offspring. Also worth noting is the type of story placed in between this seemingly out-of-place family trees. Many of these stories are larger-than-life stories: Cain killing Abel, Noah and his Arc, the Tower of Babel, and the Abram’s relationship with God. There are multiple instances in the chapters discussing Abram where the story actually stops to explain where some of the characters and their extended families end up. This pattern, then, was influential in my analysis of this text. When it comes to the themes of the text, the breaks to discuss family lines made it more difficult to see the different stories as pieces of a whole. While these different tales are not meant to line up perfectly with each other, it would be easier to see the connections between them without the lists of names that follow each one. Also most of the names are not even mentioned in the preceding stories, and in the cases where the names might be familiar with the reader, the genealogy goes into much deeper detail than necessary to offer background information. It causes the text to lose the sense of fluidity. Looking at Genesis from a critical perspective, these genealogies make it difficult to take the text serious. Unless the reader is familiar with the people mentioned in these lists, and I certainly am not, they appear unrelated and basically nonsensical. It is very difficult to pull some meaning out of these portions of Genesis, and therefore they are useless when looking from a critical perspective.     

Early in Genesis, God establishes interaction with humanity. This changes throughout the text, however, as it seems that God treats each group/generation differently. What are some of the qualities of God’s relationship with humanity?

Throughout God’s interactions with specific people in the text, one thing stays constant: God is always treated as an all-powerful, all-knowing individual that must be feared. God even tests Abraham to make sure he fears him, requiring him to sacrifice his son. Before Abraham is successful an angel steps in, stating, “…now I know that you fear God.” (Genesis 22.12) While the people’s perspective of God stays constant, God seems to change his mind frequently when dealing with humanity. Beginning with Adam and Eve and the tree of knowledge, God creates this idea of limiting humanity. This continues with the Tower of Babel as God states, “Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” (Genesis 11.7) In between these two narratives, God destroys all of humanity with a giant flood. But, as the reader sees after the flood with Noah and later on with Abraham and Isaac, God is also willing to make covenants with individuals. At times it seems God is almost hasty to do so, promising many ancestors and great nations to some men. The bottom line is that I found God’s treatment of humanity to be inconsistent. I had never questioned it before because, in my previous readings of Genesis, I held the assumption that God was omnipotent and unquestionable. But, when God is understood as another character in the story, this inconsistency becomes harder to justify.