Father Richard describes why the book of Genesis was so important to the people of ancient Israel:
Although many of the stories found in Genesis were passed down from generation to generation among the Israelites, they were not collected and put into their final form until after the Babylonian exile, around the mid-5th century BCE. In the aftermath of their national calamity, the Jewish people realized that their heritage might indeed be lost if it were not written down, and their religious leaders were inspired to gather together many strands of their oral tradition and weave them into a continuous narrative. They attributed the authorship to Moses, meaning that the authority for the wisdom of this tradition goes back at least as far as Moses’s time. We don’t know the actual names of the scribes who wrote it in the form we have today. They were less concerned with putting their names on their work than with preserving the wisdom of their religious heritage.
The religious questions they were wrestling with are questions that thoughtful people ask in every age: What is the meaning of life? Where does it come from? Where does it go? What is the relationship between God and humanity? Why is there evil in the world? Why do good people have to suffer? These questions were especially disturbing for the Jews after their return from exile. They thought they had known who they were and what God’s purpose was for them, but the shattering of their dreams forced them to think again and to think more deeply.
Perhaps the most important thing to bear in mind when reading the first eleven chapters of Genesis is that it is written not only about the past but about the present— the perennial present that is always with us. The authors of Genesis wrote down the Word that came to them in their time, but in doing so they were putting into human words the eternal Word which speaks the truth for every generation. They were writing what is always true about God and human beings, about the goodness of the world, and about “sin” which causes suffering.
Put in theological terminology, the story is saying that everything is grace, everything is gift, everything comes from God. God is the one who makes something out of nothing and gives it to us, not only then, but now. God created both the natural universe and our own human nature, and all of it is good. All of it is to be enjoyed, if we can receive it as a gift.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos, The Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1987), 85–86, 87.
Image credit and inspiration: Sergey Kvint, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. A single green shoot rising from the forest floor tells a quiet story of the earth’s own generative imagination.
Story from Our Community:
When I bless myself with the sign of the cross, I take my time to sit with who the Trinity is and who I am. “I bless myself in the name of the Father and receive anew the original blessing of unconditional love, divinity, and dignity, and I accept it in my faithful foolishness. I bless myself in the name of the Son, and I receive anew the original blessing of passionate love, insight, and creative freedom, and I accept it in my holy weakness. I bless myself in the name of the Holy Spirit and I receive anew the original blessing of Trinitarian love and communitarian living and I accept it in my loving lowliness. Amen.”
—Jean S.
