Our God is Different—and We are Different

A new book was released this month. “Reading Genesis” by Marilynne Robinson. [I reviewed the book months ago on Goodreads.com ] Robinson clearly provides the thesis that, while some of the Genesis stories parallel other ancient texts, the motifs in the stories show a clear difference, particularly with the Babylonian narratives. Genesis, and the rest of the Hebrew and Greek Judeo-Christian scriptures, describe a God who loves, protects and serves his people, his creations. They were not “born” out of a divine contest or war with other gods but of his free will and therefore an object of his affection. His disappointment is expressed when they don’t treat each other well, when they don’t live up to his standards. The other main difference is how people are viewed between the other mythologies and the Hebrew text. They are viewed as servants and objects of the gods’ capriciousness. Moses’ text reveals that people are created and deemed ‘good’ and therefore worthy. But this is not a humanistic reading of the scripture; the author points out that our understanding and confusion of the dynamics of these stories is because we forget the foundation laid in the Creation story(ies) that allows for God to show mercy and love, even to Cain who killed his own brother. [The author shares that a non-Western student who exclaimed, “What god would not punish a person who killed his brother?”]

Since these texts were written post-exodus from Egypt, it’s interesting that most of the comparison was not to Egyptian creation myths or divine stories. Certainly Abram/Abraham’s experience with YHWH was different from his Babylonian counterparts, but Moses (and any other post-Exodus scribes) would have been more familiar with the Egyptian mythologies, unless we think Moses became indoctrinated in the Canaanite lore while living in Midian. So I believe this question is unanswered by this volume, yet this book will certainly provide fodder for many, many discussions about what the Genesis stories mean to a person’s faith and their understanding of who YHWH’s character and our nature in relationship to him.

I am thankful for the publisher and NetGalley for providing a pre-publication copy.