The Encyclopedia of World Religions

172 S Genesis

a result, God expelled them from the garden and cursed them ( see F ALL , THE ). Other famous stories in this part of Genesis include the F LOOD , which only N OAH and his family survived, and the Tower of B ABEL . At Babel God created confusion among people by creating different languages. The second part of Genesis tells the story of four generations of the same family: A BRAHAM and S ARAH , I SAAC and R EBEKAH , and J ACOB (also known as Israel) and his wives and sons. Abraham’s fam ily originally lived in the city of Ur, now in south ern Iraq. He migrated to Canaan, now Israel and Palestine. There he had two sons: Ishmael, who is the ancestor of the Arabs, and Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews. The Bible emphasizes Abraham’s trust in God’s promise that he would have a son by his wife Sarah, even though both were very old. It also tells of a sign of the special relationship between Abraham and God: CIRCUMCISION . Other well-known stories from this part of Genesis include God’s com mand to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the destruc tion of Sodom and Gomorrah, Jacob’s dream at Bethel (“Jacob’s ladder”), and the saga of J OSEPH . Joseph’s brothers were jealous of the special atten tion that Jacob gave Joseph, so they sold him into slavery. But Joseph became a high official in Egypt and saved his family from starvation. COMPOSITION Tradition says that M OSES wrote the first five books of the Bible, including Genesis. Modern scholars tend to disagree. In the last 200 years they have dis covered and learned to read ancient writings from Egypt and the Middle East. Some of these writings resemble Genesis, but they are older. For example, the story of Atrahasis from Iraq tells about the flood, which Atrahasis survived with the help of the god Enki. The Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers is much like the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. At times, then, the writers of Genesis seem to have used well-known traditional stories in their book. Furthermore, Genesis seems to have been assembled from several writings. Scholars have tentatively identified three sets of these writings. They call one account J, because it always refers to God as YHWH (“the Lord”; sometimes written

Bengal in the east. Hindus WORSHIP it as the GODDESS Ganga ( see H INDUISM ). According to well-known myths, the Earth was polluted and needed Ganga’s waters to be made pure. But Ganga was reluctant to drop from HEAVEN . So the god S IVA agreed to break her fall. In the mountains, where Siva meditates, Ganga drops onto his head, flows down his body, and spills onto the Earth. The Ganges is a powerful religious force. Wor shippers make offerings to it. Typical offerings include milk and flowers. Worshippers also bathe in its purifying waters. Because the Ganges puri fies, Indians cremate corpses on its banks and dis pose of the ashes in the river. Today several sites along the Ganges are par ticularly auspicious as places of PILGRIMAGE : Hard war where the river meets the plain; Allahabad or Prayag where the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the mythical river Saraswati flow together; and above all the holy city of B ANARAS (Varanasi). Genesis The first book of the B IBLE . Genesis, meaning “origin” or “birth,” is the Greek name for the book. The Hebrew name is Bereshith, “in [the] beginning,” which is the book’s first word. Genesis contains some of the best-known stories in the entire Bible. CONTENT Genesis has two parts. The first part, chapters 1 through 11, deals with universal prehistory or mythology. It contains stories and genealogies that purport to relate to all people. The second part, chapters 12 through 50, contains prehistory or mythology that relates specifically to the children of Israel. The first part opens with a famous story of creation: a hymn celebrating the creation of the world by G OD in seven days. A second story tells of the creation of A DAM , the animals, and E VE , all of whom lived in the Garden of Eden. This story leads directly into the story of the first SIN . Eve and Adam violated God’s command by eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As