Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard

by Paul Borgman

Publisher:

IVP Academic

, 2001

Overview

Unfortunately, most of us overlook the dramatic story of God’s work in early time because we read Scripture in disjointed pieces. We miss the suspenseful, sweeping narrative of interconnected events. We miss the nuances of emotion and relationship between the characters. Now in Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard, Paul Borgman fits the pieces back together—revealing God’s story as if it had never been read before.

In the Logos edition, this volume is enhanced by amazing functionality. Important terms link to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a wealth of other resources in your digital library. Perform powerful searches to find exactly what you’re looking for. Take the discussion with you using tablet and mobile apps. With Logos Bible Software, the most efficient and comprehensive research tools are in one place, so you get the most out of your study.

Key Features

• Provides fresh insight into the book of Genesis
• Explores the nuances of emotion and relationship between the characters in Genesis
• Presents God’s story in a new way

Contents

• I Want a Name for Myself: Genesis 1—11
• Ordinary Choices of the Worst Sort
• Let Go, Don’t Be Afraid: Visits 1-4
• Walk with Me—and Speak Up! Visits 5 & 6
• Coming to Trust in Each Other: Visit 7
• What’s Love—and Fear—Got to Do with It?
• The Point: Abraham Brings Triple Blessing
• Jacob Wrestles for His Blessings with Esau, with God
• Three Mirrors for Jacob
• Three Breakthroughs—and Disaster
• Three Descents for Joseph, One for Judah
• Older Brothers Bow: Does Joseph Tease or Test?
• All Peoples, Including the Little Ones of Egypt

Top Highlights

“God visits Abraham seven times, for example: the same thing, over and over, God challenging and promising, and Abraham responding. But this repetition makes change possible. What is never the same can’t change, since there’s nothing to change from. The challenges in each successive visit, for example, become more difficult, and at one point, in fact, become interior, presenting monumental challenges for change to the inner spirit. Of course, what this change suggests is a change in Abraham, a spirit-change that must inform external action but is not itself that action, and that’s what the Genesis story is all about. How does Abraham change, and why must he change?” (Page 20)

“Human being for human being, a friendship based on reciprocity and complete mutuality. This dramatic focus of the second creation account is its ‘point’—a focus on what it means to be most fully human. Such a focus couldn’t possibly have registered with such power if included within one comprehensive creation account. What does it mean to be human, then, to be created ‘in God’s image?’ The second account gets to the fundamentals: to be human, in God’s image, is to not be alone. To be most fully human is to find as mutual a companion-spirit as possible.” (Pages 26–27)

“The God of the second account has a different name and wears a different face. This is Yahweh Elohim—a more personal God. Yahweh comes down from on high to fashion the human and animals from mud, and then finds ways to accommodate human need. The one God in two aspects couldn’t have been dramatized any more succinctly and powerfully than by having these two accounts of creation side by side.” (Page 27)

Praise for the Print Edition

Paul Borgman is an exciting and experienced teacher, and this book on Genesis—not your standard biblical commentary—comes from many years of dialogue in the classroom. It is a work that will prove interesting and useful both to laypersons and to college students. I highly recommend it.

—James S. Ackerman, coauthor, Teaching the Bible in English Classes

Borgman has read widely and is well rooted in the scholarly literature. His goal, however, is to make sense of the text by asking the kinds of questions that are raised by readers who have not been tamed away from the shock and puzzlement of the text. The book will interest those who have a literary sensitivity and face a literature that is theologically thick but unfamiliar. Borgman gives easy access but does not compromise the unfamiliarity and does not ‘explain’ the thickness in an easy way. Readers are invited to hear as for the first time.

—Walter Brueggemann, author, Theology of the Old Testament

This book I shared right away with my rabbi, my Jewish friends and colleagues. It is at once creative, enlightening and psychologically sophisticated. Borgman’s enjoyable commentary offers astonishingly compelling narrative truths to unlock the giant riddles of Genesis. No longer is God ‘inscrutable,’ being a ‘chosen people’ an entitlement of indelible righteousness, or God’s ‘plan’ mere arbitrary triumphal tribalism. And so, it illuminates an intrinsic coherence between contemporary Christian theology and the ethical relational striving informed by precursor truths known to the historical Jew Jesus.

—Steve Nisenbaum, department of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Product Details

• Title: Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard
• Author: Paul Borgman
• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2001
• Logos Release Date: 2014
• Pages: 252
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Bible. O.T. Genesis › Criticism, interpretation, etc
• ISBNs: 9780830889594, 0830889590
• Resource ID: LLS:GNSSSTRYHVNTHRD
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:18:10Z

About Paul Borgman

Paul Borgman is professor of English at Gordon College, in Wenham, Massachusetts. A specialist in biblical narrative, he is also the author of The Way according to Luke: Hearing the Whole Story of Luke-Acts.