Book Review: Reading Genesis

Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024).

I’ll tell you right up front that I was in over my head for at least some of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis. I’m not a theologian, and so some of her theological references and assumptions were beyond me. In fact, for quite a while I went back and forth over whether to review the book here, because I just wasn’t sure I was equipped to handle it.

Not that Robinson herself is primarily a theologian—she’s best known as a novelist, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead and a handful of other acclaimed novels. But she is, as the Los Angeles Review of Books puts it, “a theologian at heart,” her love of theology infusing all her writings.

Her exploration of Genesis, then, blends theological and literary approaches in a way that—for me—was sometimes confusing and sometimes enlightening. She kept me a little off balance, making this or that assertion about the text and then moving right along while I was still grappling with what she’d said. I understand that she was weaving together a narrative, not writing an academic book, and wasn’t required to explain her reasoning or provide citations for her sources, but at times she took her own views so for granted that it left me wanting to know a lot more about where she was coming from.

But the further I got into the book, the more I found myself appreciating its broader themes and ideas.

Fairly early, Robinson begins making a strong case for the uniqueness of the Hebrew Scriptures and their view of God. If she holds to a more humanistic view of the Bible’s origins than many of her fellow Christians, she nevertheless makes it plain that something beyond humanity had to have been involved. All its differences point in that direction.

In Genesis, she demonstrates, God’s goodness and the goodness of His creation contrast starkly with the more pessimistic views of Babylonian mythology. More than that, His kindness and patience endure regardless of the frequent misbehavior of His creatures.

“The covenant would be in continuous peril if it depended for its survival on human loyalty rather than on God’s steadfastness,” Robinson writes at one point. “From a scriptural point of view, this could be said of everything that matters.”

It’s the very ordinariness and flaws of the story’s human heroes, Robinson explains, that really make Genesis stand out among ancient stories. There’s also the value it places upon the most insignificant, non-heroic lives. For instance, she notes,

Hagar says she has seen God and lived. More to be noted, God has seen her. Abraham is a prince among pastoralists while Hagar is a slave sick of mistreatment. The Lord and the text create an equivalency between them that is unique in the Hebrew Bible.

Implicitly countering the common idea that grace and forgiveness only enter the picture in the New Testament, Robinson shows how pervasive they are in the first book of the Old Testament. (She’s reportedly working on a book about Exodus now, and I’m eager to see how she continues to follow this thread.) She also shows just how valuable and how costly forgiveness can be.

At her best, Robinson writes with a perception and a skill that makes these old stories new again, discovering patterns, probing depths, bringing striking insights to bear on well-worn and often puzzling passages. While I may have been in over my head sometimes, I learned so much that in the end, I was very glad I had decided to dive in.

(Cover image copyright Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

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Goodreads Links:

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The delightful children’s picture book Joan of Art by Lesa Engelthaler is now available to purchase. I edited an early version of this book about a spunky girl with an artistic gift, and I recommend it highly!