Genesis

[bibliogramma]

In The Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis, by Karen Armstrong

In addition to the great sweeping texts exploring aspects of religious thought throughout history and around the world that she has become deservedly known for, Karen Armstrong has also written a number of narrowly focused books on religious issues, such as this slim volume in which she undertakes a close examination of the events of the Biblical book of Genesis.

Perhaps the central tenet of all of Armstrong’s writing about religion is that as she says in the first chapter of this book, "the true meaning of scripture can never be wholly comprised in a literal reading of the text, since that text points beyond itself to a reality which cannot adequately be expressed in words and concepts."

For Armstrong, scripture – any scripture, not just that of the Judeo-Christian tradition – is not a matter of fact but a path to a transcendent experience:

In almost all cultures, scripture has been one of the tools that men and women have used to apprehend a dimension that transcends their normal lives. People have turned to their holy books not to acquire information but to have an experience. They have encountered a reality there that goes beyond their normal existence but endows it with ultimate significance. They have given this transcendence different names – Brahman, Dharma, Nirvana, or God – but, however we choose to describe or interpret it, it has been a fact of human life. We are constantly aware of an ideal level that contrasts with the world around us. We may not regard this realm as supernatural; we may prefer to find it in art, music or poetry rather than in a church. But human beings have persistently sought a dimension of experience that seems close to our normal lives and yet far from them.

The aspect of human experience that is addressed in Genesis, according to Armstrong, is beginnings – the beginnings of the relationship between the divine and the world of material existence, between human beings and the experience of the divine, between human beings in that nexus of personal beginnings, the family, and between human beings and their interior lives – their fears, desires, flaws, needs, shadows.

Armstrong sees the great stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel as a lesson that as human beings, we are constantly choosing how we will engage in all of these relationships, and that we cannot cut ourselves off from relationships without damaging ourselves. The stories of Genesis are stories of separation, rejection, denial, distance and division. In the actions of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, we see occasional examples of how openness to relationships and self-knowledge can bring transcendence, but far more often, we watch as cutting one’s self off from others and seeking only to serve one’s self leads to fear, pain, resentment, and grief.