Genesis is itself the work of profound theologians, and it has been used as the source text for many more. But as well as providing inspiration and insight, it does also raise some knotty questions about the nature of God.
Genesis – and, indeed, other parts of the Bible – ascribe to God some very strange and questionable actions. For example, it does seem unfair and disproportionate that the whole of creation and all successive generations of human beings should be made to suffer for Adam and Eve's fairly inoffensive bad choice. Whole tomes have, for centuries, been written about "the problem of evil", and most of them use Genesis as, at the very least, a dialogue partner. But the drawback with that is that Genesis is not really interested in "the problem of evil". It is not exploring the question, as it is classically stated, of how a good God can permit the outrage of innocent suffering. There is no attempt in Genesis 2 to explain where the serpent, with its insidious suggestions, came from. Later writers have assumed that the serpent is the devil, and so set up the problem of how the devil can exist in an unfallen world. But this is not obvious in the text at all.
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