Genesis: The Story We Haven't Heard

Paul Borgman. Genesis: The Story We Haven't Heard. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001. 252 pp. $15.00 (paper), ISBN 0830826556.

In Genesis: The Story We Haven't Heard, Paul Borgman challenges the reader to consider the book of Genesis as story. Borgman, a professor of English at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, admits that he and his students over the last twenty-five years have attempted to read and reread the book of Genesis with the tools applied to other great pieces of literature in an effort to understand the book as a "coherent and unified drama"(12).

Borgman bemoans the traditional approaches that have attempted to read the book "chunk-by-chunk" (12). A close reading of the biblical text, such as that proposed by Borgman, reflects the growing interest in literary approaches over the last three decades in biblical studies. His work resembles similar pursuits by others, most notably Robert Alter (Genesis: Translation and Commentary [New York: Norton, 1996]), David Cotter (Genesis [Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 2003]), and Thomas Mann (The Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1988]). Although Borgman does engage critical works in the discipline (most notably James Ackerman, Walter Brueggemann, and Terence Fretheim), his work remains accessible for the non-specialist. Little attention is given to the more technical aspects of literary theory, and few central issues in the critical study of Genesis are mentioned, thus leaving Borgman to generate a free-flowing narrative about this "unified drama."

Borgman indicates in his preface that he was fortunate enough to receive his Ph.D. in the "art of stories" (Univ. of Chicago) and throughout the book, he emphasizes chief aspects of ancient storytelling, with particular attention given to repetition and change throughout the narrative. Word plays, "double episodes," and longer, complex patterns of repeated features are noted as well. In principle, Borgman suggests that the story of Genesis posits the human condition (post-Fall) as one of self-promotion, jealousy, and revenge desperately in need of transformation and reorientation. Yet, as he aptly demonstrates, the story of Genesis is not a grand movement from the former to the latter. Rather, embedded within the stories are multiple attestations as to the continual struggle of individuals and families in their move from self-absorption to relinquishment.

Although the story of Genesis does...