Genesis
Pages
452
Publisher
Westminster John Knox
Published
8/19/2025
ISBN-13
9780664220792
Unraveling creation, covenant, and family in a foundational biblical narrative.
In this thought-provoking addition to the Old Testament Library, David L. Petersen offers a fresh reading of the book of Genesis, understanding it to address the creation of the universe, the beginnings of human culture, and the origins of Israel, all of which are anchored in the central motif of family. Petersen traces the intricate lives and relationships of the ancestral families—from the story of Adam and Eve to the captivating narrative of Joseph. Accordingly, he illuminates the ways in which the stories and genealogies in Genesis portray diverse familial structures, values, conflicts, and religious behaviors.
Employing a rich array of critical approaches—source, form, and redaction criticism, along with literary and social-scientific analysis—Petersen explores the cultural and theological dimensions of Genesis. He highlights the way in which the book’s narrative arc transforms Abraham and Sarah’s family into a people, a foundational identity that shapes Israel’s self-understanding. This volume also engages contemporary scholarship on the formation of the Pentateuch, reassessing traditional theories about the origins of Genesis. Petersen reveals how the book emerged out of theological debates, integrating originally distinct literary traditions into a narrative through the unifying motif of family.
Both accessible and rich with scholarly insight, Genesis: A Commentary provides readers with a fresh translation and a comprehensive lens to understand the book of Genesis as a literary and religious masterpiece. This book is an essential resource for students, scholars, and others seeking to explore the profound themes of creation, covenant, family, identity, and theological dynamics in this foundational biblical text.
In this thought-provoking addition to the Old Testament Library, David L. Petersen offers a fresh reading of the book of Genesis, understanding it to address the creation of the universe, the beginnings of human culture, and the origins of Israel, all of which are anchored in the central motif of family. Petersen traces the intricate lives and relationships of the ancestral families—from the story of Adam and Eve to the captivating narrative of Joseph. Accordingly, he illuminates the ways in which the stories and genealogies in Genesis portray diverse familial structures, values, conflicts, and religious behaviors.
Employing a rich array of critical approaches—source, form, and redaction criticism, along with literary and social-scientific analysis—Petersen explores the cultural and theological dimensions of Genesis. He highlights the way in which the book’s narrative arc transforms Abraham and Sarah’s family into a people, a foundational identity that shapes Israel’s self-understanding. This volume also engages contemporary scholarship on the formation of the Pentateuch, reassessing traditional theories about the origins of Genesis. Petersen reveals how the book emerged out of theological debates, integrating originally distinct literary traditions into a narrative through the unifying motif of family.
Both accessible and rich with scholarly insight, Genesis: A Commentary provides readers with a fresh translation and a comprehensive lens to understand the book of Genesis as a literary and religious masterpiece. This book is an essential resource for students, scholars, and others seeking to explore the profound themes of creation, covenant, family, identity, and theological dynamics in this foundational biblical text.
Reviews
DavidH
June 28, 2026
June 28, 2026
David L. Petersen’s Genesis is readable, learned, and often valuable for refusing to hide the book’s violence, exclusion, family cruelty, and moral difficulty. Yet it is too often governed by suspicion and speculative source reconstruction rather than by the final narrative. Petersen makes the concrete error of treating both Eden trees as originally forbidden, though Genesis prohibits only the tree of knowledge; he then compounds this by portraying God as anxious about human development and by imagining lethal divine pursuit where the text says only that access to the tree of life is guarded. His reading of human dominion imports ideas of coercion and exploitation into a creation vocation framed by God’s image, blessing, and accountable stewardship. Likewise, he turns the flood covenant—a universal promise of preservation—into a possible loophole for other forms of annihilation, and Babel from a judgement on fearful, self-exalting autonomy into God’s suppression of human potential. Petersen is right to protest Abraham and Sarah’s treatment of Hagar and Ishmael, but calling their expulsion a “distancing strategy” euphemizes a near-fatal abandonment answered by God’s rescue and blessing. He rightly preserves the terror of Isaac’s near-sacrifice, yet “domestic violence” becomes misleading when it sidelines the explicit test, divine interruption, and ram provided in Isaac’s place. Finally, his reduction of Jacob and Esau’s meeting, and of Joseph’s response to his brothers, to mere accommodation understates genuine forgiveness, restitution, protection, and provision, even though trust remains incomplete. Petersen does not directly insult God, but his commentary repeatedly supplies motives of rivalry, insecurity, latent violence, or self-interest where Genesis itself joins judgement to mercy, covenant restraint, rescue, and promise. Provocative and often stimulating, but too tendentiously negative to serve as a dependable primary guide to Genesis.