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Book of Genesis course no. 6234
Taught By Professor Gary A. Rendsburg, Ph.D., New York University, Rutgers University.
The Book of Genesis, regardless of our faith, is something with which almost all of us in the Western world are familiar—a foundational work of our culture we have read and, we believe, understood.
After all, its language, despite its remarkable elegance, is simple. Its powerful sentences are short. And its messages glisten with clarity.
Or do they?
Is it possible that the understanding of the Book of Genesis we've all grown up with isn't as complete as we'd like to believe? That its deceptively simple sentences and surface appearance hide from contemporary readers a purposeful and intricate structure designed to let its depth and detail and implication resonate with the readers and listeners of its own time? That we are overlooking, despite all of our modern sensibilities as readers, many of the astonishingly sophisticated literary devices and techniques used by the author—or, indeed, authors—of this beautiful work?
Professor Gary A. Rendsburg, who chairs the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, thinks so. And in the 24 lectures of The Book of Genesis he offers the tools needed to change our perceptions, showing us how we might read, hear, think about—and feel—its words as an ancient Hebrew would have, allowing us to gain a new appreciation of "one of the most remarkable literary compositions from the ancient world," as Professor Rendsburg says, the book with which both Jews and Christians alike begin their Bible.
Uncover New Meanings in Familiar Language
His approach to the Book of Genesis is one you may never have experienced before—a detailed, line-by-line literary parsing that gently probes its language, exploring how and why its effects were achieved; what its author—or authors—was saying; and revealing, between those lines, more information than most of us have ever dreamed was there.
As a noted scholar whose major interests include the literature of the Bible, the history of ancient Israel, the development of the Hebrew language, and the relationship between ancient Egypt and ancient Israel, Professor Rendsburg is an ideal choice for introducing what will be, for many, a new way of reading, as well as a wealth of fresh insights.
Among those insights, you'll learn:
* The reasons the Book of Genesis has not one but two creation stories, and the very different messages they contain
* The many contradictions (real or apparent) that appear in the book's pages, and the hints they offer about the book's authorship
* The repeated appearances of barren women and younger sons in its stories and what these motifs stand for
* The remarkably ordered large-scale narrative structure devised by the author (or authors) of the Book of Genesis to embody and convey its theological meaning.
Although this is clearly a course whose emphasis is literary, with detailed analysis dominating, Professor Rendsburg is ever mindful that the Book of Genesis remains, for many, a theological pillar underpinning religious faith. And he is both respectful of that reality and aware of it in an even broader context.
"In [the] first 11 chapters of Genesis, we see a universal story, a universal perspective, describing the relationship between God and humanity in general. Characters like Adam and Noah are not Israelites, per se; they represent all of humankind. ...
"This perhaps is the greatest lesson that we should learn from our course. The Bible is the record of the relationship between God and man—but the focus remains tenaciously on man.
"We follow mankind, through the early heroes of the Book of Genesis, in their attempt to find meaning in life; and we, as readers of the Bible, gain from that experience, extracting the lessons of their lives, and hopefully, finding meaning in our own lives."
The World of Genesis
And literary analysis is far from the only perspective Professor Rendsburg draws on. Throughout the lectures he surrounds his intense attention to the text with historical, social, and archeological context, always conveying the world in which Genesis was read and listened to, so that each journey into the deepest subtleties of language enables us to look outward as well, shaping what might have been "only" a literature course into much more.
Our close reading into this masterpiece of Hebraic literature becomes our gateway to a deeper understanding of the literatures of Babylon, Egypt, and Ugarit to which it is compared.
Our understanding of historical context allows us to follow conjectures as to where and when Abraham, the first of Israel's three great patriarchs—along with Isaac and Jacob—lived.
The lines of Joseph carry us into the world of Egypt, its royal courts, and even its funerary rituals of mummification.
Again and again, this course will surprise you as it shifts its focus from the nuance of language to educate, surprise, and sometimes even shock:
You’ll learn the attractions and pitfalls of the "JEDP" theory—the name given to the standard or documentary hypothesis of how the five books of the Torah, or Pentateuch, were compiled from four separate sources, J, E, D, and P—a theory developed by a German scholar named Julius Wellhausen in the second half of the 19th century.
Earlier beliefs had seen this grouping as the revealed word of God before biblical scholars in the Enlightenment began a new effort to explain its many textual difficulties as a product of divergent sources. Professor Rendsburg takes the scholarly debate another step, by highlighting textual difficulties for the JEDP theory itself, and endeavors instead to read the Book of Genesis as a literary whole.
An Amateur Makes a Discovery for the Ages
You'll learn how the parallels between the Biblical story of the Flood and the version presented in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh were discovered in the late 19th century by a gifted amateur, a banknote engraver named George Smith. He had learned to read the Akkadian language of ancient Babylon and had volunteered to translate the cuneiform tablets being unearthed in Iraq and sent to the British Museum in London. It was there that Smith discovered the epic's Tablet XI and its account of the Flood.
And you'll learn about the extraordinary and difficult history of translating the Bible—which was originally written, of course, in Hebrew—into other languages.
Professor Rendsburg explains that the first translation of the Bible was a Greek translation produced in the 3rd century B.C.E. in Alexandria, Egypt. Known as the Septuagint, and abbreviated as "LXX," it enabled many Jews of the Diaspora (their dispersal into lands outside of Israel), who had lost fluency in their ancient language, to read and understand the Scriptures.
According to legend, the name of the translation derives from rounding off the number of Jewish scholars—six each from the original 12 tribes of Israel, for a total of 72—gathered in Alexandria by King Ptolemy II to provide the translation for the Great Library of Alexandria.
But other translation efforts did not go as smoothly.
Translating the Bible into English, for example, was opposed by the Church, which insisted on using only the Vulgate, or Latin translation, and forbade any translations into the vernacular. When Englishman John Wycliff produced such a forbidden translation in the 14th century, he was condemned by the Church and his books ordered burned. When another Englishman, William Tyndale, produced another English translation in the early part of the 16th century, he was condemned as a heretic by both the Catholic Church and the newly established Church of England and forced to flee to Germany. He was eventually captured by the authorities in Belgium and burned at the stake in 1536.
Yet even disturbing stories like this one never overshadow the impression left by the course's attention to the words of Genesis, which, even in translation, continually offer us fascinating glimpses of authorial mastery.
Thoughtful, engaging, and often deeply moving, The Book of Genesis offers a wonderful opportunity to experience this foundational work—not only of theology, but of literature —as never before. No matter how many times you may have read its lines, or the perspective from which you have approached them, you will almost certainly never experience them the same way again.
Should I Buy Audio or Video?
This course works well in both audio and video formats.
Course Lecture Titles
24 Lectures
30 minutes / lecture
1. On Reading the Book of Genesis
This lecture introduces the course's ground rules—a holistic (rather than separate-source) treatment that approaches the text as literature, history, and theological treatise that must be read with, and understood from, the world-view of its original readers.
2. Genesis 1, The First Creation Story
We plunge immediately into the biblical text, with the goal of learning how to read the literature of ancient Israel, so greatly removed from our own world in both time and place.
3. Genesis 2–3, The Second Creation Story
This lecture highlights the four major differences between the first and second creation accounts and discusses the main reason why Genesis, and hence the Bible, begins with two divergent narratives.
4. An Overview of Ancient Israelite History
This lecture presents historical background necessary for any study of the Bible, including the history of ancient Israel from Abraham, c. 1400 B.C.E., to the conquest of Alexander the Great, c. 330 B.C.E., and the development of the biblical canon.
5. The Ancient Near East
We survey the broad context of ancient Israel and its world—the ancient Near East divided into the three major geographical regions of Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia.
6. The JEDP Theory and Alternative Approaches
The unified approach to the two creation accounts presented in Lecture 3 is one most scholars debate, citing many contradictions. This lecture introduces their four-source hypothesis, and discusses its good points and its problems.
7. Genesis 6–8, The Flood Story
We compare the Bible's account of the flood to the story incorporated in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the literary classic of ancient Mesopotamia, and also use the biblical version as a way of comparing the contrasting methods of the JEDP and unified-whole theories.
8. Genesis 9, Covenant
This lecture focuses on a crucial concept in biblical studies and how this idea of a bond between God and humanity, in general, and the people of Israel, in particular, distinguished ancient Israel from other cultures and religions of the ancient Near East.
9. Genesis 12–22, The Abraham Story
This lecture presents an overview of the Abraham narrative, focusing on the interrelated themes of God granting the land of Canaan to Abraham and Abraham's quest for an heir.
10. When and Where Did Abraham Live?
This question gives rise to considerable scholarly debate. We examine the arguments and also discuss the insights into Genesis provided by the archives and epic compositions, respectively, of two ancient cities.
11. Genesis 21–22, Abraham Put to the Test
We look in detail at the last two chapters of Abraham's story—including the Aqedah, or binding, of Isaac—giving a close reading to the text that focuses on the different literary techniques used by the author.
12. Women in the Bible—Sarah and Hagar
A relatively new avenue of biblical scholarship is an increased awareness of the many important female characters in the story. We illustrate the point by examining the roles of Sarah and Hagar in the Abraham narrative.
13. Genesis 24, A Bride for Isaac
We look at the longest prose narrative in the Torah—made so by the unusual method of its literary construction—and also explore the reasons for its focus on a minor, and anonymous, character.
14. The Barren Woman and the Younger Son
This lecture looks at the literary and theological reasons for the persistence of two key themes throughout Genesis—the woman unable to bear a child and the superseding of an older brother by a younger one.
15. The Literary Structure of Genesis
In this lecture we look systematically at the way individual stories are assembled to create a literary whole. We look at literary and theological reasons for mirroring structures within the stories of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, as well as parallel structures within the creation stories.
16. Different Bible Translations
We pause from our close reading of Genesis to examine the issue of different translations of the Bible—including the possible approaches and the reasons for them—illustrating the differences with several passages.
17. Genesis 27, Jacob and Esau
The well-known story of Jacob and Esau allows us to see the literary device of repetition at work, as well as Rebekah's role as instigator of the deception of Isaac and the punishment she receives for her actions.
18. Genesis 29, Jacob and Rachel
We discuss several literary devices available to ancient Israelite writers, including the use of "typescene"—the repeated narration of a theme or story using different characters or circumstances—in the tale of Jacob and Rachel meeting at the well.
19. The Date of the Book of Genesis
When was Genesis written? Previous lectures have dated it, in passing, to the 10th century. This lecture defends that conclusion, starting with the tendency of many authors to reveal and reflect the present when writing about the past.
20. Genesis 37, Joseph and His Brothers
This lecture focuses on the final main section of the Book of Genesis—the Joseph narrative—including a look at the difficult question of who actually transported Joseph to Egypt and the author's reasons for making this question so difficult.
21. Genesis 38, The Story of Judah and Tamar
We look at the links of theme and vocabulary between the stories of Judah and Tamar, and Joseph being taken to Egypt, and we explore the moral lesson Tamar's story was meant to convey to ancient Israelite readers.
22. Genesis 39, The Story of Potiphar’s Wife
This lecture examines a motif also present in ancient Greek and Egyptian texts—the handsome young man resisting seduction by his master's wife. We discuss the similarities and differences.
23. The Egyptian Background of the Joseph Story
There are many points of contact between the Joseph story and ancient Egypt. They show the author's intimate knowledge of Egyptian culture and his expectations that his Israelite audience would absorb many of the details.
24. One Last Text—and the Text as a Whole
The concluding lecture offers an opportunity to look ahead to the succeeding Book of Exodus, re-examines a key part of Genesis in light of what we discover, and reaches a major conclusion concerning what the Book of Genesis is really about.
More info: _http://www.teach12.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=6234

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