Creation and the Patriarchal Histories: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Genesis

The Book of Genesis is foundational reading for the Christian. Its opening pages provide the theological suppositions of the entire biblical story: creation, the structure of time, man’s relationship to God, the entrance of sin into the world, and God’s selection of a specific line of revelation that gives structure to history. This text argues that early Christian writers like St. Paul saw no dichotomy between the writings of the law, of which Genesis is the beginning, and the Gospel. Rather, the Gospel is the key to understanding the law. In Creation and the Patriarchal Histories, Reardon shows how the proper understanding of creation and the fall informs all of Christian doctrine, and how the narratives of the patriarchs from Noah to Joseph pave the way for the salvation history that continues in Exodus.