In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679450890 ISBN 13: 9780679450894

Publisher: Knopf, 1996

In this fascinating book by the author of A History of God and Jerusalem, one of the best-known and least-understood books of the Bible is clarified for modern readers. Armstrong shows readers how the ancient tales of the Creation, the Fall, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph illuminate our most profound and impenetrable problems.

Review:

Karen Armstrong makes reading the Bible a smooth and liberating experience. The brilliance of Armstrong's analysis of Genesis lies in her ability to draw together the story, the contemporaneous situations of the characters and the writers, and the relevance of themes amid multifarious contradictions, then hold them up for us to contemplate. Edifying and engaging, this short but impressive book comes complete with the entire Genesis text.

About the Author:

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous books on religion, including The Case for God, A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and Fields of Blood, as well as a memoir, The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into 45 languages. In 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and began working with TED on the Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public, crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. It was launched globally in the fall of 2009. Also in 2008, she was awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal. In 2013, she received the British Academy’s inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding.