The Book of Genesis: A Biography by Ronald Hendel (review)

The Book of Genesis: A Biography, by Ronald Hendel, appears in “a new series of short volumes” from Princeton University Press that intends to “recount the complex and fascinating histories of important religious texts from around the world” for “general readers” (back flap of cover jacket). Hendel’s volume admirably fulfills this goal. Hendel’s book, composed in an engaging prose and constructing a fascinating narrative of the “life” of Genesis, is indeed accessible to non-specialists. Yet lest scholars and advanced students stop reading this review at this point, Hendel’s text is significantly more than this. It is also a kind of primer in the history of the reception of the Bible (not just Genesis), which argues a compelling thesis and draws evidence not merely from the “usual suspects”—the rabbis and patristic literature, Rashi and Luther, and the historical critics of the modern age—but from the likes of Rabelais, Dickenson, and Auerbach.

Hendel begins his story of the life of Genesis by reminding readers that the story is on going and that Genesis is in many ways alive and well. It is “all around us” (p. 1) and not only in the narrow confines of religious studies and seminary faculties, but in literature, politics, and popular culture. Hendel structures his biography of Genesis through “three interwoven themes” (p. 3): 1. The “interplay” between the original meanings, or better its “plain senses,” and other forms of interpretation—especially figurative readings of the book; 2. The “relationship between truth and error” and the struggles by social actors and institutions to control “truth”; and 3. The persistent manner in which understandings of Genesis have historically corresponded to the ways in which “reality generally” (p. 3) has been understood. For Hendel, the waxing and waning of figural forms of interpretation of Genesis is especially important. Figural interpretation of Genesis has, for Hendel, taken two forms—an apocalyptic stream in which interpretations are looking toward “a return to the Garden of Eden at the End of Days” and a Platonic direction, in which Genesis is interpreted in terms of “an invisible ‘higher’ world, which one can attain through wisdom and spiritual discipline” (p. 9).

In the first chapter of his biography, Hendel recounts the “birth” of Genesis in its ancient Near Eastern milieu. Focus here is on the creation and flood narratives, whose literary peculiarities—for example, repetitions, contradictions, incongruities, and so forth—have led scholars to posit that Genesis (and the Pentateuch as a whole) was composed from distinct sources—JEDP. The peculiarities or problems of the text in part fed the rise of figurative interpretations of Genesis, which Hendel sketches in chapter 2. These figurative forms of interpretation began early on in the life of Genesis. Hendel adopts James Kugel’s “four assumptions” about the Bible, which make possible early biblical interpretation in a figurative vein: The Bible is “cryptic, relevant, perfect, and divine” (p. 49). On these assumptions, interpreters were able to move beyond the mundane, plain sense of the text to construct figurative readings in an apocalyptic or platonic vein. In chapter 3, Hendel sketches the apocalyptic thread in figurative interpretations, within the Bible itself (e.g., Ezek 40–48), at Qumran, and among the early Christians. For these interpreters, the early chapters of Genesis especially point toward a future Eden like existence for humanity and a restoration of “all the glory of Adam” (p. 72). Chapter 4 focuses on platonic figurative interpretations of Genesis—in Philo especially but also Paul (who also belongs to the Apocalyptic stream of figurative interpretation), and the Christian Gnostics. For example, Philo reckons the two accounts of the creation of humans in terms of the platonic distinction between the material world and the world of ideal forms, while Paul allegorically understands Sarah and Hagar in a similar vein (pp. 90–97). “Hagar corresponds to the present Jerusalem” while “Sarah corresponds to the Jerusalem above” (Gal 4:24–26).

In chapter 5...