The Untold Truth Of The Book Of Genesis

The Book of Genesis may sound like it's set in stone, but the truth of the matter is that even the very title of this first book of the Pentateuch and Christian Bible is quite a lot less confirmed than you may think. According to Columbia University, the initial Hebrew title is actually "bereshit," which roughly translates to "beginning" — thus the opening lines in many translations that kick off with "In the beginning." The later title of Genesis is actually the product of subsequent Greek translators, who employed the word for "origin" or "birth" in the place of the first Hebrew word.

Per "Creation, Un-creation, Re-creation," this single-word title is also arguably a reference to "generations." That certainly makes sense for this notoriously lineage-focused book. Anyone who's read through Genesis in any of its translations already knows that the book spends quite a bit of time listing various notable people who begat sons, who themselves begat sons, and then yet more sons, and on and on for many lines. 

Some scholars argue that Genesis is just as much of an accounting of the history of the Jewish people as it is a tale of the beginning of the entire universe. Who's in your family tree ends up being a pretty big deal, as both Genesis and the rest of the Bible make clear.

Like many of the early parts of the Bible, a careful reading  of Genesis often leads back to the Mesopotamians. It makes sense, given the historical context of how some of these Hebrew texts came to be. In the 6th century B.C., a series of battles and conquests meant that quite a few Jewish people were exiled to Babylonia, a period often referred to as the Babylonian Captivity (via Britannica). There might have been some cross-cultural communication during this period that influenced later Hebrew scriptures.

In fact, certain narrative threads in Genesis appear to link back to Mesopotamian legend, including an Akkadian creation myth known as the Enuma Elish. Bible Odyssey notes that both narratives include an all-powerful male deity shaping chaos into order and creating humans for a special purpose on the sixth day of creation. There's also Ziusudra, a Mesopotamian man who was alerted to an incoming divinely sent flood, per Britannica. Ziusudra, widely acknowledged as a good and dutiful man, built a massive boat, survived the deluge, and thanked the gods for his survival — very much like Genesis' Noah.

According to Michael Zank, a professor of religion at Boston University, early Hebrew writers could have encountered the story of Enuma Elish and created their own version.

So, who wrote Genesis? A close reading of the text indicates that more than one group of people had their hands in creating Genesis. How do we know this? In part, because the narrative repeats and sometimes contradicts itself. "The Book of Exodus: A Biography" explains that the very first two chapters of Genesis can't seem to agree with one another. Seemingly important details, like how long it took God to create everything and in what order, simply don't line up. And, later on, a close reading will reveal that there are actually two different flood stories that are rather clumsily woven together.

According to Columbia University, the general consensus is that the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Pentateuch, come from multiple authors and multiple sources. Four are identified as "J", "E", "D", and "P." The letters refer to various hallmarks of an individual source. "P," for instance, is short for "priestly source," which seems to be especially focused on the Jewish priests and their role in the story. And, if that weren't confusing enough, there appears to be a fifth source, "R," that's responsible for taking the four pre-existing narratives and attempting to assemble them into a single book.

Most scholars of religion and faithful Christians agree on the basic facts of Genesis, like the evidence that it came from multiple sources and likely has its roots in oral storytelling traditions. But that doesn't mean the study of the Book of Genesis isn't without controversy. When it comes to talking about the inspiration behind its words and why it was finally written down, things can get kind of heated.

One especially thorny proposal is often known as the Persian imperial authorization. As "The New Cambridge History of the Bible" explains, the theory is that Persian/Babylonian rule of the Hebrew kingdom of Judash in the 6th to 4th centuries B.C. was key to producing local legal codes, like those outlined in Genesis and other Hebrew scriptures like Leviticus. One writer, Peter Frei, went so far as to say that these early law codes could be linked to later, more codified legal systems.

However, few want to go so far as to say that Persian overlords explicitly commanded the production of a semi-unified narrative in Genesis or a Jewish legal code. Yet, as Konrad Schmid at the University of Zurich argues, neither is it entirely fair to dismiss the idea that Persian authorities didn't have some influence here, whether or not they specifically told someone to codify the Book of Genesis or created an environment that led to the same result.

Genesis contains three very similar stories, in which biblical patriarchs travel to foreign lands and pretend that their wife is their sister to avoid violence. Per My Jewish Learning, the first and second instances are both courtesy of Abraham, who pretends that his wife, Sarah, is actually his sister while the pair are traveling in Egypt and elsewhere. His reasoning? Sarah is apparently very, very attractive, to the point where heart-eyed locals might consider doing away with Abraham to get access to his wife.

Isaac, another Biblical patriarch, does pretty much the exact same thing with his own wife, Rebekah, in a later chapter. All in all, it's not an especially good look, with two major figures in Genesis capitulating to their own fears and denying key relationships, all to save their own skins.

What's going on here? There's repetition all over Genesis, sure, but this is arguably more extensive than emphasizing words or themes over and over again. These may be variations on a single story or quasi-manufactured narratives created to make a point about power and will, according to the journal Judaism. It could also be that they were meant as a reflection of complex social and political states in the ancient world. My Jewish Learning notes that it might also reflect "wife-sistership," where a wife could be adopted as her husband's "sister" and given the increased rank of being a blood member of her husband's family.

All of this debate over both the larger and finer points of Genesis may seem like a lot of quibbling, and for the faithful, it may be ultimately more important to focus on the spiritual messages contained within the book rather than sdetails like priestly sources and potential links to Babylonian creation myths. And, for the people who began telling the stories that eventually became the written Hebrew texts, the nature of truth may not have been all that important in the first place.

Though modern readers may focus on the need to separate myth and truth, that wasn't necessarily the point for the original authors of Genesis. The Journal of Biblical Literature notes that terms like "history" and "fiction" are already pretty tricky to nail down. For the text's writers, storytelling may have been used in an attempt to order a narrative in a coherent and spiritually meaningful form. It almost certainly wouldn't have been part of a conscious and malicious attempt to deceive people. And, as "The Oxford Bible Commentary" notes, it's perhaps most useful to see Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch as part of a movement on a grander scale, meant to bolster the shared sense of Hebrew identity and nationhood under an all-powerful and protective God.