Genesis is the work of several different hands, all of them from very long ago. It gathers up stories and traditions that circulated by word of mouth in a world extraordinarily different from ours. Why do we still read it? Why this particular story?
It is a story that has deeply shaped the world's culture, and continues to do so. Poets, playwrights, painters, musicians have all been influenced by Genesis, and passed their engagement with it on to those who don't necessarily even recognise the origins of the ideas. Its theology has affected political ideology and shaped the actual world we live in, for good and ill. Through the influence of people of faith, engaging with the ideas in Genesis, our understanding of good and bad, and of human flourishing has been formed, again with mixed results.
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