The award-winning novelist and social critic Marilynne Robinson has turned the focus of her literary intelligence on to the first book of the Bible. Genesis, the foundational imaginative text of western culture, has permeated our art and literature, as well as shaping a whole understanding of life, including politics. Its stories remain at once compelling and mystifying. Some of the stories, most obviously that of a great flood, resemble others from Mesopotamia, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish, but Robinson shows how differently Genesis treats them. There was, she says, no deluge – but the story is a parable to show that although we human beings have made a terrible mess of the world, so much so that we might be tempted to destroy the lot and start again, this is not what God does. He wants life to continue and, despite everything, it remains a blessing.
Although Genesis makes it clear that God desires moral rectitude from human beings, the main characters often reveal themselves to be deeply flawed. Cain is a killer. Abraham tolerates cruelty, Jacob is a liar and twister. The point is that, despite these failings, there is a primal purpose in creation that does not give up on humanity. One of the aspects of Genesis which Robinson brings out strongly is its universality. The descendants of Abraham are to be as numerous as the stars in the sky and in him all the families of the Earth are to be blessed. It is a remarkable fact that today billions of Jews, Christians and Muslims, in their different ways, do regard themselves as children of Abraham.
