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Summary
Summary
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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 full text of the King James Version of the book, 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.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelist Robinson (The Death of Adam) offers a dense yet immersive close reading of the book of Genesis. Employing literary and theological lenses, the author frames the biblical book as an exemplary narrative and the figures within it as characters with agency, motive, and backstory. For example, Jacob is a trickster who schemes with his mother to steal his brother's blessing, while his "young, bright, and self-infatuated" son, Joseph, proves "blind or indifferent to the resentment that is stirring around him... in literary terms, a great character." Writing that "the text perfected very early the art of showing rather than telling," Robinson skillfully melds her literary interpretation with her theological one, offering a Christian Calvinist reading that centers God's goodness and grace ("Grace modifies law. Law cannot limit grace"). From that theological stance, she explores God's willingness to form a covenant--and generally put up--with imperfect humans, his "too-brilliant creatures." Like the biblical book it explicates, Robinson's offering is demanding, intense, and best read slowly. Patient readers will be rewarded. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Mar.)
Guardian Review
In an extended dialogue between Marilynne Robinson and Barack Obama, published a few years ago in the New York Review of Books, Obama homes in on the dimension of Robinson's writing that makes her so unusual as a 21st-century literary figure. "You're a novelist," he observes, "but you're also - can I call you a theologian? Does that sound, like, too stuffy? You care a lot about Christian thought." This could be described as something of an understatement. Robinson wears her faith on the sleeves of most of her books. In the epic Gilead series, which brought her a Pulitzer prize and worldwide renown, she probes with gentle but forensic subtlety into the religious preoccupations - and doubts - of two fictional midwest pastors. More recently, in collections of essays such as What Are We Doing Here?, she combines theology with cultural commentary to explore what her vision of a Christian humanism might contribute to a politically polarised, divided, 21st-century west. In her latest religious study, Robinson pursues this project by going back to the very beginning - to Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Most of us have at least a hazy idea of the contents of this ancient text, from God's creation of the world in six days to the dramatic exiling of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the subsequent two-by-two salvage operation of Noah's ark. Robinson takes it to have been written as a kind of origin story for a liberated nation, after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt. In luminous prose she challenges a modern reader to understand just how unusual a book Genesis is, pregnant with meaning that stretches to our own day. Robinson illustrates how the ancient Hebrew authors borrowed liberally from the Babylonian mythologies created by their near-east neighbours. But with a crucial distinction. Great narratives such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish feature fickle, rivalrous deities who turn their ruthless gaze on mortals only when it serves their interest. In stark contrast, Genesis portrays a troubled love story between humanity and a divine creator who is described as, extraordinarily, "having created man in his own image". More than two millennia later, beyond the poetic and literary fascination of the text, can this narrative say anything meaningful to a secular mind? The vision of a single omniscient and benevolent God is a staggering new departure in ancient literature, with implications all the way down to design details. In the Garden of Eden, Robinson points out, "the beauty of the trees is noted before the fact that they yield food". Here is a world packed with signs of a divine desire that the first humans feel at home. Compared with the surrounding myths on offer, this vision "is from the beginning an immeasurable elevation of status". It all goes wrong, of course, as a highly ill-advised decision to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil leads to disaster and banishment. Robinson deftly guides the reader through Genesis's account of how human history proper, red in tooth and claw, gets under way as God tries to keep faith with his errant creations. Seminal episodes such as Cain's murder of Abel, the razing of Sodom and Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac - the son the old patriarch waited so long to see - are interpreted with a novelist's eye for drama. The sections dealing with Joseph's treacherous brothers are a psychological tour de force, as this guilt-ridden crew descend into a spiral of angst after selling their father's favourite son into Egyptian slavery. But the point is that God works in mysterious ways. The brothers' heinous act later proves providential when Joseph, having become one of the most powerful men in Egypt, is able to rescue the Israelites from famine. By refusing to leave the really ugly human stuff out, Robinson suggests, the ancient scribes produced a book "not primarily meant to offer examples of virtue or heroism¿ but meant instead to trace the workings of God's loyalty to humankind through disgrace and failure and even crime". In the face of contemporary atrocities, geopolitical strife and the threat of human-made environmental catastrophe, a work championing the goodness of creation and the infinite value of human life can offer a salutary read, calling us to our responsibilities. And in the ancient rabbis' account of a merciful God who refuses to write his people off in spite of everything, Robinson finds a way to produce a powerful meditation on hope at a time when that virtue is generally in short supply. For many fans of Robinson's novels, such ruminations may fall outside their conceptual comfort zone. But for devotees of the Gilead series, Reading Genesis also serves as one of the best primers they will get for the theological world of its protagonists, the Reverends John Ames and Robert Boughton. In Gilead, as he senses death approaching, Ames vainly tries to imagine heaven but can't get past the first base of feeling simple awe for the world he is still in. "Each morning," he writes in a letter intended to be read one day by his young son, "I'm like Adam waking up in Eden, amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind through my eyes." In this rich and provoking study, Robinson has masterfully traced that sense of wonder back to its ancient, remarkable source.
Kirkus Review
A deeply thoughtful exploration of the first book of the Bible. 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. Robinson approaches Genesis with a reverence and level of faith uncommon to modern mainstream writers, yet she's also equipped with the appropriate tools for cogent criticism. Throughout this luminous exegesis, which will appeal to all practicing Christians, the author discusses overarching themes in Genesis. First is the benevolence of God. Robinson points out that "to say that God is the good creator of a good creation" sets the God of Genesis in opposition to the gods of other ancient creation stories, who range from indifferent to evil. This goodness carries through the entirety of Genesis, demonstrated through grace. "Grace tempers judgment," writes the author, noting that despite well-deserved instances of wrath or punishment, God relents time after time. Another overarching theme is the interplay between God's providence and humanity's independence. Across the Book of Genesis, otherwise ordinary people make decisions that will affect the future in significant ways, yet events are consistently steered by God's omnipotence. For instance, Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, and that action has reverberated throughout the history of all Jewish people. Robinson indirectly asks readers to consider where the line is between the actions of God and the actions of creation. "He chose to let us be," she concludes, "to let time yield what it will--within the vast latitude granted by providence." In this highly learned yet accessible book, Robinson offers believers fresh insight into a well-studied text. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Robinson, of Gilead trilogy renown, offers a literary, scholarly, and personal reading of Genesis. It is also holistic in that she considers the opening book of the Hebrew Bible in its entirety (the complete text is included) and in contrast to the beliefs of surrounding contemporaneous cultures. Drawing on her experience as a novelist, Robinson explores the use of repetition and parallel stories and traces the core themes, from the (then) wholly new statement that "God is the good creator of a good creation" to the desire for and love of children and the contrariness of humankind. Robinson marvels over "the remarkable realism" in depictions of the emotional turmoil catalyzed by family conflicts and shocking acts of deceit, betrayal, and revenge. She considers the women in Genesis, the relationship between God and Abraham, tales of righteousness and forgiveness, how God "decided to accept humanity as it is," and the Hebrew writers' "willingness to record and to ponder the most painful passages in their history." Throughout this deeply involving and enlightening exegesis, Robinson links Genesis to the profound dilemmas of our time.