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A review by kalliegrace
Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I wasn't sure what to expect here, but in the end I'm pleasantly surprised, or at least not disappointed.
I grew up taking the Bible literally, and have moved far away from that view at least as far as the old testament is concerned. I'm intimately familiar with Genesis, and it's clear Robinson is as well. Through decades of sermons, I've never heard anyone point out the obvious familial parallels in the patriarchs' stories, from sibling rivalries to father's favoritism. It was an angle that brought a little more humanity to the stories that are so familiar.
The last part of this is just Genesis, and I can't recall what translation she uses but I love that every time someone dies it says they "gave up the ghost".
There's no deep reading of the text here, no "the Hebrew or Greek is actually such as such", but themes of grace and mercy and teased from the text in a way that I think any person could accomplish without the scholarly background of some.
I grew up taking the Bible literally, and have moved far away from that view at least as far as the old testament is concerned. I'm intimately familiar with Genesis, and it's clear Robinson is as well. Through decades of sermons, I've never heard anyone point out the obvious familial parallels in the patriarchs' stories, from sibling rivalries to father's favoritism. It was an angle that brought a little more humanity to the stories that are so familiar.
The last part of this is just Genesis, and I can't recall what translation she uses but I love that every time someone dies it says they "gave up the ghost".
There's no deep reading of the text here, no "the Hebrew or Greek is actually such as such", but themes of grace and mercy and teased from the text in a way that I think any person could accomplish without the scholarly background of some.