Genesis Overview

Last week I explained how to do an overview of a Bible book. Let’s say you’d like to study the book of Genesis. You might begin with the following overview.

Author. Though Christians commonly teach that Moses wrote Genesis, the Bible doesn’t explicitly attribute Genesis to Moses. However, since biblical authors universally treat the first five books of the Bible as “the Book of the Law of Moses” (Josh 23:6, Neh 8:1), we are justified in doing the same. Whether Moses penned the words of Genesis or not, he certainly saw fit to include the book in his collection of laws for Israel.

Audience. According to the ESV Study Bible, “it is reasonable to consider the first audience of the Pentateuch [Genesis through Deuteronomy] to be Israel in the wilderness (either the generation that left Egypt or their children).”[1]

Occasion and Purpose. After reading the book a few times, we can recognize significant themes. To understand the book’s purpose, we take the major themes and ask why this author wrote these things to this audience at this time. For Genesis, I agree with the ESV Study Bible’s assessment that “the theme of Genesis is creation, sin, and re-creation,” involving both “how God created the world” and “the call of Abraham.”[2] When we ask why Moses would give this book to these people at this time, we can identify the book’s purpose as follows: to establish Israel’s national identity by explaining the history of God’s creation and his promises to Abraham and his offspring.

Note that a book’s purpose is similar to its main point. The difference is that the “purpose” is closely tied to the original audience, while the “main point” may be more timeless. I’d state the main point of Genesis like this: to establish the identity of all God’s people by explaining the history of God’s creation and his promises to Abraham and his offspring.

Structure. Genesis 1:1-2:3 opens the book by introducing God, his creative power, and his gracious delegation of authority to humanity. The book then proceeds in two main sections: Early history (Gen 2-11) and the history of Israel’s forefathers (Gen 12-50). Furthermore, the book is structured by ten “These are the generations” statements (Gen 2:4, 5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 11:11, 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, 36:1, 37:2), which outline cycles of creation-fall-redemption-new creation. Humanity repeatedly fails to submit to God’s gracious rule, and God begins again with new generations.