Name: Reading Genesis
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)
Author: Marilynne Robinson

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Summary

Book Summary

One of our greatest novelists and thinkers presents a radiant, thrilling interpretation of the book of Genesis.

For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents, by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherency, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally true.

Both of these approaches preclude an appreciation of its greatness as literature, its rich articulation and exploration of themes that resonate through the whole of Scripture. Marilynne Robinson's Reading Genesis, which includes the original text, is a powerful consideration of the profound meanings and promise of God's enduring covenant with humanity. This magisterial book radiates gratitude for the constancy and benevolence of God's abiding faith in Creation.

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Media Reviews

"In this illuminating work of biblical analysis, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Robinson, whose Gilead series contains a variety of Christian themes, takes readers on a dedicated layperson's journey through the Book of Genesis. The author meanders delightfully through the text, ruminating on one tale after another while searching for themes and mining for universal truths ... [A] luminous exegesis." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Robinson skillfully melds her literary interpretation with her theological one ... Like the biblical book it explicates, Robinson's offering is demanding, intense, and best read slowly." ―Publishers Weekly

This information about Reading Genesis was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Reader Reviews

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Cathryn Conroy

Examining Genesis as Literature: Not an Easy Read but a Profound One
What this book is: Literary criticism of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
What this book is not: A theological or religious analysis of the Book of Genesis.

Every student of literature, no matter that person's religion or lack thereof, should read the Bible—as a great work of literature, not necessarily as religion. And it should be read more than once. So many prized works of literature—from Shakespeare to Steinbeck—reference passages and people in the Bible. If you haven't read the Bible as a piece of literature, you probably won't understand those references.

In this profound book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson, has written what is essentially a long essay of literary criticism, analyzing the Book of Genesis for its plot, characters, themes, and symbolism. Most important, she analyzes the big stories (and some of the smaller ones) in terms of their political and historical context and importance, delving into their meaning and perspective—as literature.

For example, she demonstrates how much of the book Genesis is what is called a "pastiche" in literature; that is, it imitates and reinvents similar stories from other ancient traditions, such as the two Creation narratives and the Flood, which were also part of the myths of Canaan and Babylonia. She views the Flood as a parable about how we humans ruined the world so much that God may have been tempted to fully destroy it, but He didn't. She shows how the main characters, such as Cain and Abraham, are deeply flawed but still beloved by God. Robinson insists that Abraham following God's word to sacrifice Isaac was actually an admonition against child sacrifice, a common practice in some ancient cultures. Forgiveness and grace are the predominant themes of Genesis. Other literary devices she explores include literary structure, parallelism, repetition, framing devices, and paradox.

All 50 chapters of the Book of Genesis, published in the traditional King James Version, follow the essay. I read the essay over five days, and during each of those days, I also read 10 chapters of Genesis, which more or less allowed me to keep current with the essay's topics.

If you're looking for a more religious analysis of Genesis, move on. This isn't your book. But if you want to better understand the first book of the Bible as literature—and, therefore, references from Genesis in major literary works—dive right in. Just know this. It's not an easy read. Instead, it's an erudite study, worthy of graduate school study in English, not theology.

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Author Information

Biography
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Marilynne Robinson Author Biography

Photo: Alec Soth / Magnum Photos

Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home (2008), winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila (2014), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack (2020), a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson's nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things (2015), When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012), Absence of Mind (2010), The Death of Adam (1998), and Mother Country (1989). She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for "her grace and intelligence in writing." Robinson lives in California.