Genesis by John Goldingay, and: Genesis 25B–50 by Kathleen M. O'Connor

Abstract

Reviewed by: Genesisby John Goldingay, and: Genesis 25B–50by Kathleen M. O'Connor Bradley C. Gregory john goldingay, Genesis( Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Pentateuch; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020). Pp. xix + 808. $59.99. kathleen m. o'connor, Genesis 25B–50( Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2020). Pp. xxvi + 306. $55. These two commentaries on Genesis, written by highly regarded scholars, both aim at making the results of biblical scholarship accessible and relevant to educated laypeople and scholars alike. O'Connor's commentary on the first half of Genesis appeared in 2018 and was reviewed previously in this journal (by Michael S. Moore, CBQ82 [2020] 123–24). O'Connor's introduction, although the same as that in the first volume, is succinct but effective. She agrees with the majority view that Genesis should be dated to the Persian period, and she adeptly articulates the need to balance an appreciation for the compositional history of Genesis with the coherence of its final literary form. Her discussion of the concept of authorship in the ancient world will be particularly helpful for nonspecialists. By placing the book in its Persian context, O'C. views the experience of war, disaster, and trauma as a key both for why Genesis was written and for the interpretation of its individual passages. Genesis, then, is a book written to help traumatized people process their experiences and survive. O'C. argues there are three ways the book does this: (1) through "disaster stories" that encode and mirror the experience of the nation's collapse; (2) through themes related to impossibility, such as barrenness, famine, and landlessness; and (3) through the divine promises of children, land, and blessing. Using this interpretive grid, each section of the commentary deals with the exegetical issues in the passage, keeping technical language to a minimum, and then in a section called "Connections" she sets the passage in a wider context, the canon and/or Christian theology. Throughout there are a number of sidebars on issues of historical context, cultural issues, pictures, and famous works of art. The result is an inviting and accessible commentary that would be especially good for classroom use. The introduction in Goldingay's commentary is also brief but helpful. He begins by discussing the narrative shape and structure of Genesis before turning to the fraught question of the relationship between narrative and history. He argues that Genesis is somewhere between history and pure fiction, likening it to something akin to Greek histories or modern movies that are "based on fact" (p. 5). G. does not wish to dispute the consensus that the [End Page 675]final form of Genesis should be dated to the Persian period and accepts that the book had a long prehistory, but, unlike O'C., he does not see this recognition as particularly helpful for interpretation. Instead, he is mainly interested in the text as it stands and argues that one cannot base an understanding of Genesis on knowing the date of its stories or on seeing it as the expression of the ideology of a particular group or period in Israel's history. I seek to understand [Genesis] as it stands against the broad context of the life of Israel, as a repository of Israel's collective memory or a reflective reworking of that memory that so commended itself to the community that the community held on to it when it let other memories fall away. (p. 9) Each section of the commentary, then, begins with an introduction and G.'s translation of the passage along with notes on philological and text-critical issues; these are followed by a verse-by-verse exegesis. For some passages, a section is included at the end called "Implications," which takes up in greater depth theological issues or problems raised by the passage. One particularly notable feature of G.'s commentary is that throughout, not just in the "Implications" section, he often engages the history of interpretation. For example, on Gen 1:1–2:4a, in addition to contemporary scholars he also interacts with Jubilees, Philo, Origen, Ephrem, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Ibn Ezra, Luther, and Calvin...