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RBL 05/2006
Longman, Tremper, III
How To Read Genesis
Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2005. Pp. 192.
Paper. $15.00. ISBN 0877849439.
George C. Heider
Valparaiso University
Valparaiso, IN 46383
Nowhere have the “culture wars” that have wracked America in recent years been more
vociferously waged than on the subject of cosmic and human origins. At the heart of the
issue, especially for evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, has been the testimony of
the Bible’s opening book. It is particularly to this audience that Professor Longman
directs How to Read Genesis. In essence, he seeks to redirect attention and energy away
from issues that he believes Genesis addresses tangentially at most to what he argues is a
more defensible and fruitful approach to the book—all the while assuring his readers that
he shares their view of the authority of the Scriptures and, above all, of the Scriptures’
ultimate origin in God as Author.
To these ends, Longman has clearly structured the book to facilitate its use either by
individuals or by discussion groups or classes. Longman’s stated concern is to articulate
appropriate hermeneutical principles that he either derives from or illustrates with longdebated issues in the study of Genesis. This pedagogical purpose is confirmed as most
chapters conclude with a “Summary of the Interpretive Questions” that have been
addressed in the preceding material, plus recommendations “For Further Reading” on
these hermeneutical issues or on topics that have been discussed in the chapter. The book
This review was published by RBL 2006 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
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concludes with an annotated bibliography of ten commentaries on Genesis, plus endnotes
and indices for both names (including subjects) and Scripture references.
His introductory chapter emphasizes the importance of Genesis within the Torah, Old
Testament, and (Christian) Bible and posits his essential interpretive principles: his
objective is to discern the “intention of the human author,” so as to avoid importing
foreign ideas and questions into the text (such as those of modern science), while
allowing for this original meaning to be “transcended” by the ultimate Author, as
witnessed by later scriptural texts (such as those in the New Testament).
He then examines Genesis from the perspectives of literature, history, and theology.
Under literature he addresses questions of authorship and “shape.” He pays particular
attention to the relative merits of some form of Mosaic authorship versus some variation
of the Documentary Hypothesis, noting the strengths and weaknesses of each and
concluding that “it seems best to affirm Moses’ central role in the production of Genesis,
while ultimately affirming its composite nature” (56). Under “shape” he addresses
questions of Genesis’s genre and structure (and, indeed, argues that these are the two
essential issues in literary study [65]). As with authorship, he seeks to appropriate the
insights of modern and postmodern scholarship by conceding that “all history is
ideological” (62) while insisting with a more traditional reading that “[t]he book of
Genesis is not a history-like story but rather a story-like history” (28). As for structure, he
adopts the common tripartite division among the primeval history (Gen 1–11), patriarchal
narratives (Gen 12–36), and the Joseph story (Gen 37–50).
Longman then turns to questions of “history,” by which he means comparison with
ancient Near Eastern texts: the Enuma Elish (and the Genesis account of creation),
Gilgamesh (and the flood story), and the Nuzi tablets (vis-à-vis a variety of patriarchal
acts). In the cases of the two Mesopotamian epics, his emphasis is upon the differences
with the biblical text (indeed, in terms of his agenda noted at the outset, he is at pains to
assert repeatedly that Gen 1-2 was written to counter the worldview of the Enuma Elish,
not Darwin). By contrast, it is the similarities with the Nuzi tablets that are significant,
such that the customs reflected therein argue for historical verisimilitude in the
patriarchal accounts (although he concedes that parallels were overdrawn by earlier
scholars, such as Speiser).
The author then turns to “Reading Genesis as God’s Story,” that is, theologically. His
discussion moves quickly past questions that, in his view, are not the interest of the text,
its author, or its Author, as he had articulated earlier on:
This review was published by RBL 2006 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
We will later see that some of the most vociferous debates about Genesis (for
instance, the length of the creation days) are based on fairly tenuous
interpretations. It’s a good principle to operate with the belief that what God
considers essential for our relationship with him is taught clearly and in many
places; in other words we can’t miss it if we tried. (34)
Quickly, he shifts his attention to a repeated pattern that (unidentified) scholars have seen
in the primeval history: sin, judgment speech, token of grace, and judgment. He proceeds
to identify this pattern as it plays out in the fall, Cain and Abel, flood, and tower of Babel
accounts (although in the latter he focuses more on a literary chiasm identified by
Fokkelman). Following brief comments on the function of genealogies (i.e., toledoth
passages) in Genesis, he summarizes first the Abraham and Jacob narratives (noting the
liminal role of Isaac) and then the Joseph story. Finally, he turns explicitly to “Reading
Genesis as Christians,” presenting four examples of passages or persons in Genesis that,
he argues, are anticipatory of Jesus Christ: the protoevangelium in Gen 3:15; Abraham’s
“seed” in Gen 12:1–3 (cited in Gal 3:15–16); Melchizedek in Gen 14:17–20 (cited in
Hebrews; cf. Ps 110); and Joseph as an analogy (i.e., what others would call a “type”) of
Jesus, in that in both cases their suffering could be seen, at least in retrospect, as
constitutive of God’s plan of redemption.
Any book, but especially a textbook, deserves to be evaluated in terms of its stated
objectives and audience. Thus, from the outset, those who do not share Christian
evangelical or fundamentalist faith commitments should consider themselves fairly
warned that this book will have little to offer them. This is not a groundbreaking
monograph that advances a new hermeneutical model or fresh exegetical insights. Rather,
it is intended to assist those who have tried to make of Genesis something that it does not
claim or intend to be or do to appropriate the book in a more responsible and, ultimately,
more theologically fruitful way.
With this caveat plainly stated, there is much to commend in Longman’s effort. His
writing is irenic, lucid, free of jargon, intellectually humble, and clear as to its
presuppositions. Further, to say that his efforts are directed at a particular audience is by
no means to suggest that he is not conversant with the broad range of scholarship on
Genesis. While his notes tend to cite works of like-minded scholars, his horizon is by no
means parochial, and he is well aware of the views and contributions of Jewish and more
critical Christian scholars.
The author is clearly most comfortable in the historical section, in which he deals with
ancient Near Eastern documents. His views on the applicability of the Nuzi tablets to the
patriarchal narratives, for example, certainly fall within the scholarly mainstream, albeit
This review was published by RBL 2006 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
strongly toward the “maximalist” end of the spectrum (vis-à-vis, say, the Anchor Bible
Dictionary article by Martha Morrison).
By contrast, his treatment of literature and theology may not prove as helpful, even to his
intended audience. I suspect that those who wish to read Genesis as a scientific text will
not be satisfied with his relatively brief dismissal of their concerns as beside the point of
the text (however much one agrees with him here). Given the extensive debate on the
subject, it may have been useful, for example, to note that the issue of the meaning of
yôm (“day”) in Gen 1 has been discussed since long before the Enlightenment and that no
less an authority than Saint Augustine was inclined against a literalistic interpretation. On
the other hand, with respect to the authorship of Genesis, Longman passes very quickly
over a century-plus worth of nontraditionalist critiques and alternatives to Wellhausen,
such that his argument for a “central role” for Moses (56) may appear to be a reasonable
compromise but is in fact grounded in specific assumptions regarding attributed
authorship and truth-value (53). Not articulated, but certainly very much in the
background, are the obvious complications that authorship spread among many persons
across the better part of a millennium would introduce into the search for original
authorial intent (however much the value of that search is relativized by the identification
of God’s intent as of ultimate significance).
More serious, to my mind, are the shortcomings of the theological chapters. As his
presentation continues into the patriarchs and then Joseph, the book increasingly offers
not theological insight but simply a summary of the biblical narrative itself. Even in the
discussion of the primeval history, where he offers the most theological reflection, there
is available, in my view, a superior articulation of the “pattern” in, for example, Walter
Wegner’s “Creation and Salvation: A Study of Genesis 1 and 2” (CTM 37 [1966]: 520–
42). Wegner argues that the pattern consists of only three parts: sin, judgment, and grace.
The result is that, when one gets to the tower of Babel account, one is not compelled to
reach back to the genealogy in chapter 10 for a “token of grace” (as does Longman) but
can see it as absent within the account itself, so that the grace consists in God’s move to a
“plan B” that narrows the focus from humanity as a whole to Abraham and his
descendents (for the Christian, ultimately Jesus Christ).
The concluding chapter on “The Christological Difference” is also subject to mixed
reviews. Particularly the claim that the protoevangelium is explicitly reflected in the New
Testament is problematic. The passages cited from Romans and Revelation do arguably
establish a connection between the serpent in the garden and the devil, but they do not
connect Gen 3:15 with Christ; that association awaited the theological acumen of the
second-century church father Irenaeus. This does not invalidate the Christian usage of the
verse as the protoevangelium; it simply requires that what Walter Brueggemann helpfully
This review was published by RBL 2006 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
terms the “faith trajectory” of the passage be extended beyond the bounds of the New
Testament canon. Nevertheless, Longman’s overall point stands: from a Christian
canonical perspective (rather than a more strictly historical or intra–Old Testament
viewpoint), there is no doubt that, as Gunkel might have put it, Genesis is the Urzeit for
which Revelation represents the Endzeit.
The volume is well edited: I found but one error (“Mesopotamian gods depended on
human sacrifice as a form of nourishment” for “sacrifice by humans” [85]).
In sum, to write both learnedly and accessibly on a topic of clear and present significance
is no mean feat, and Longman deserves praise for his accomplishment of that goal in this
work.
This review was published by RBL 2006 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.