One of the oldest mirrors in the world is the book of Genesis a story which echoes the best and worst of life. It is sometimes frightening – so much disappointment and death – but it does not yield to fear. This article examines one of the key features of Genesis.

Introducing a classic
The most decisive invention in history was writing, and one of the greatest writings is the book which has been placed at the beginning of the Bible – Genesis. Completed perhaps around 400 BC, it is not the oldest book in the world nor even the oldest in the Bible, but it absorbs the essence of many previous works, especially Jewish prophecy, Egyptian wisdom, and Mesopotamian legendary history; and it synthesizes them into a classic.

Almost too much of a classic. Its portrayal, for instance, of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, is so clear in many minds that it tends to set the tone for all man-woman relationships.

Genesis does in fact have limitations, but so do recent bestsellers. And while most recent books soon lose their appeal, Genesis does not. Despite its limitations, it has enduring insight.

Museum and meditation
Genesis is two things: a museum of the external world and a meditation. It is a museum insofar as it combs through ancient culture, especially ancient literature, and makes a dense collection of things past, an encyclopedia of antiquity. Then, with supreme freedom and artistry, it proceeds to its decisive goal: to synthesize those elements of antiquity so that they constitute a meditation on the present, a mirror of the heart.

Genesis' greatest insight therefore is not about the past and the external world; it is about the way people are made. Freud too had insight about people – on some aspects. And Somerset Maugham had insight on what is worst in people ("men are pigs"). But Genesis, as well as knowing about the evil within, has a sense of the larger reality, a sense of the nature of the cosmos and of the ultimate nature of people.

The danger for commentators is to become lost in the museum, to spend so long tracing the individual pieces and their possible backgrounds that the overall artistry is missed. If this approach were applied to Picasso or James Joyce it would tear their work to shreds.

One of the reasons commentators break up Genesis is a presupposition, built up especially in the nineteenth century, that the writer was simply an editor, and not very skilled. The ultimate implication – rarely stated explicitly – is that ancient artists were bunglers, primitive. The prejudice appears most clearly in the trend-setting commentary of Hermann Gunkel (1901). But recent discoveries of cave paintings near Avignon indicate otherwise about ancient artists: the paintings show consummate artistry. They are more than a hundred centuries older than Genesis.

Historylike art
Since the purpose of Genesis in using antiquity is to build art, to form a meditation, its presentation of history is not scientific. Nothing in the stories of creation and of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can be connected clearly to any specific date or to any specific historical event. Genesis is interested in life – life at its deepest level – not the superficial details of the past.

But real life is historical. People live in specific times and places. And so Genesis gives an artist's impression of what it is like to live in history. It juggles people and places to suit its purpose – like an Italian painter placing gospel scenes in Italian settings. It uses scattered historical details to build a story that is like history ("historylike" – complete with an impression of dates), and so it is more down to earth than Greek mythology, more lifelike.

Two ways of intrepretation
Since Genesis has two levels – museum and meditation – the interpreter has a choice as to where to put the emphasis. Both levels are interesting.

These articles emphasize the second - the meditation or broad theological purpose. In Genesis 11, for instance, where there are two diverse museum pieces – the tower of Babel, and a genealogy – the emphasis is not on their diverse backgrounds but on their shared purpose.

The primeval prism: Genesis 1-11
Genesis 1-11 summarizes the external world and it does so by presenting a prism of primeval history. Its many details, however, are built around just two basic ideas: Creation is good (Genesis 1-5); Creation needs help (needs salvation/grace, Genesis 6-11).

To some degree the two parts overlap. In Genesis 1-5, where the emphasis is on goodness, there is also evil and a need for help.

The two parts correspond broadly to two fundamental theological ideas – creation (Genesis 1-5) and redemption (6-11). In Genesis 1-5, the world is created. In Genesis 6-11, when sin has virtually killed the world (in the deluge), humanity is brought back.

The careful arrangement of these two ideas – creation and redemption gives fair warning about the nature of Genesis. This book, especially chapters 1-11, may seem primeval. But it is not primitive. While evoking the primeval, it is depicting what is permanent: basic truths about humanity and God. The shadow of evil is strong, but the sense of goodness is stronger still. When all seems lost, especially in the deluge, grace is greater. Already the gospel is present.

Harmony and murder
The story begins (Genesis 1-5) by going to the heart of reality and of life: two accounts of harmonious creation (Genesis 1-2), two of increasing disharmony, including murder (3: 1-4: 16), and finally two sketches of the development of history (4:17-26; and chap. 5).

The arrangement of passages in twos – like two-part paintings or diptychs – is one of the features of Genesis. These dense chapters (1-5) emphasize that humanity is the image of God, and they cry out a central truth: the human heart is made for total harmony (realistic mysticism), but it can break that harmony and descend even to murder. Disharmony, in its endless shades and grades, is often called "sin," but the word "disharmony" can be more expressive.

Genesis is not just talking about long ago or about a few people. It is depicting the beginnings, the roots, which exist now, in everybody. Many people see themselves as bland, capable neither of mysticism nor of murder. Genesis wants to wake people into knowing that they are quite capable of both.

Often it seems preferable not to know these things. It is easier to sleep one's way through life. Or one simply does not believe them. We do not believe we would kill. And, above all, we do not believe that we can recover a full sense of harmony with things. Paradise is lost. It is hard to accept that within us, in our deepest heart, there is a quiet paradise waiting to be regained – now.

To talk of murder is frightening, even scandalous. But Genesis talks of it and is not frightened. It is by being unafraid of what is worst within the heart that we will discover also what is best. Part of the path to harmony is about quietly facing the disharmony.

Generally speaking, Catholics tends to emphasize the harmony or goodness, and Protestants the disharmony or sin. Both emphases are necessary.

Harmonious differences
The two-sidedness of the scenes creates a pleasant puzzle like a variation on the well-known game of spotting the differences between two similar drawings. But Genesis is much more challenging, and as well as differences there are complex complementarities.

Some complementarities between the two creation accounts are especially noteworthy. The first, for example, emphasizes time (the passage of days), the second, space (the four rivers and the tree at the center). In the man-woman relationship, the first emphasizes procreation ("increase and multiply"), the second, companionship ("a helpmate"). At the end of the first account God rested, and at the end of the second the naked couple are completely at peace. God's rest and the couple's peace are complementary pictures of harmony: harmony in God and harmony in humanity.

Because of the differences between the two accounts, some commentators have imagined that they came from two diverse sources. But that hypothesis is based on an unsubstantiated reconstruction of ancient history and especially on a failure to appreciate the sophisticated artistry of the finished text – the way it gives first one emphasis, then another. With that kind of logic the differences between man and woman would require two Creators.

The man-woman difference is instructive. Just as the divergence of the sexes expands the sense of what it is to be human, so the two creation accounts expand the sense of reality. These accounts counteract oversimplification, counteract the idea that God and creation can be expressed in one name or image or story. Instead, the diversity helps to open the understanding, to create in the mind a sense of space. Such space makes way for wonder.

This is the world, therefore – a place of harmony and wonder.

Having it all
The harmony is shattered when the couple, despite their wonderful world, refuse to accept its limits. They decide they can have it all, and, when they do not get it all, they feel excluded, alienated, exiled. In Cain's case the sense of exclusion leads to murder.

These two episodes of deep-seated disharmony – the eating and the killing – are not limited to the past. In varying ways they are played out in ourselves, often in a way that is unacknowledged. But bad as they are, bad as are their consequences, they are known to God. While punishment is inevitable, God seeks to protect: "God made clothing for the man and his wife... And God put a [protective] mark on Cain". There may be deep-seated sin, but there are suggestions that God's original blessing is deeper still.

In the two final pictures – those of emerging history (4: 17-26; and chap. 5) – the emphasis on the original blessing is explicit (5:1-2). These episodes are intriguing – first a sketch of life’s culture or quality (town and country; music and work; 4:17-26) and then a complementary sketch of life's quantity (the number of years for generating and for dying; chap. 5).

Both accounts of emerging history are shadowed by murder and death ("died...died...died"), but, as well as evoking music and blessing (4:21; 5:2), they conclude with the complementary figures of Enosh and Enoch (4:26; 5:24), two characters who in diverse ways sought God and, in Enoch's case, broke the cycle of death: "Enoch walked with God. And [instead of 'he died'] he was not, because God took him." At the end of the dense drama of Genesis 1-5, the mention of Enoch stands out like a hope-filled riddle.

Challenge
Genesis 1-5 implies a challenge: even if life is complex, even if there is a shadow of murder in one's heart, the heart's deepest call is to harmony. God's creation is good, and – problems notwithstanding (problems in oneself and in others) – it is possible to regain harmony and, like Enoch, to walk with God.

This does not mean running from reality. On the contrary, it means being all the more attentive to reality, all the more receptive.

Three diptych scenes
Within Genesis' primeval drama, chapters 1-5 and 6-11 are like two acts, each containing three scenes. The scenes are twofold – diptychs in which the second panel complements the first. The creation scene, for instance, has two accounts. The first emphasizes God, the second, humanity. Act II sometimes echoes Act I or varies it. In outline:

Act I
Creation is good (Genesis 1-5)
God's creation (1: 1-2:4a)
Creation for humanity (2:4b25)
Tree – undue eating, knowledge (ch 3)
Sequence: two sons; murder (4:1-16)
History: Building a town (4:1726)
History: Culminating genealogy (ch 5)

Act II
Creation needs saving grace (Genesis 6-11)
Creation undone (chs 6-7)
Creation remade (8: 1-9: 17)
Vine – undue drink, sight (9:18-29)
Sequence: sons propagate (ch 10)
Building a tower – which fails (11:1-9)
Culminating genealogy which fades (11:10-32)