Intro to Genesis

Introduction to Genesis 

Genesis (lat. : beginning, after בראשית: bereshit: in the beginning) is the first of the five books of Moses (Pentateuch = Five Book). The 5 books of Moses were originally a single book and as Torah (law) are the basis of the faith of the Jewish people. The Torah is, so to speak, the basic law of God’s holy covenant with his people and as such a gift of God to Israel (and the world). Through Jesus’ argument with the Pharisees about the law and also through Paul’s letters, it has often become associated with a rather negative connotation among Christians. We should free ourselves from this. The Jews, at any rate, rightly celebrate the “joy of the law.” For the laws are not meant to patronize or to restrain man by God, but the conditions of his being made in the image of God and of  his freedom. The Ten Commandments are the “fence of freedom” that  surrounds the inhabitable terrain and warns against falling into  endangered territory. The experience of salvation at the Reed Sea,  which is constitutive for the people of Israel, and the revelation of God at  Sinai are the high points of the Pentateuch and are only reported in the  Book of Exodus. With the prehistory of all mankind and the stories of the  individual fathers, Genesis is, so to speak, the overture to this. But what  an overture!