Genesis

Genesis is pretty much a succession of stories (Creation -> Fall -> Flood -> Babel) that eventually converges onto the story of the ancestors of the Israelites - the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel). Some of the stories are fairly straightforward and are of the kind that most people would learn about from Sunday School or in general. That said, some come across as a little more morally problematic if you consider them under today's standards:

- the Fall (with regard to the origin of sin, you could have a full debate about it)
- Noah's Ark (to what extent were the deaths justifiable? even the potential babies?)
- the command to sacrifice Isaac (regardless of the fact that God stopped Abraham at the last minute... he was about to do it)
- Jacob deceiving Isaac to usurp his brother's blessing... and getting away with it.
- the rape of Dinah and the revenge her brothers take out on the city of Shechem.

and then some stories are just... what?

- Noah getting naked and drunk in his tent, discovered by his son Ham, and then proceeding to curse Ham's son Canaan.
- when the angels are trying to rescue Lot's family from Sodom and the locals are trying to... "sodomize" them, Lot basically responds, "No! You can take my daughters and do anything with them, but don't do anything to these guys!"
- Lot's daughters getting him drunk and having his babies. Although incest pretty much happens all over Genesis anyway.
- Abraham pretending that his wife Sarah is his sister (although it turns out later that she's actually his half-sister) in order to save himself from the kings that want her. Isaac pulls off the same stunt a generation later.
- Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for a meal, because he was that hungry.
- Laban pulling the wife-switcheroo on Jacob's wedding night. (Genesis 29:25 - "And in the morning, behold, it was Leah!") Moreso because Jacob doesn't even realize that he "went in to" the wrong sister.
- The back and forth between Leah and Rachel and their maidservants all having Jacob's kids. Rachel lets Leah sleep with Jacob for a night in exchange for her son's mandrakes, which made no sense to me the first time I read it until finding out that mandrakes apparently were supposed to help with getting one pregnant.
- Rachel stealing her father's household gods during the family escape.
- Judah's daughter-in-law, Tamar, tricking him into having kids after she fails with two of his sons.
- Jacob's final dying words to his sons, in which he apparently curses a good chunk of them.

If anything, the history of the lineage that eventually leads to the Israelites is incredibly messy. It's full of lies and deception on the part of multiple parties, polygamy and incest and rape and murder, family drama and sibling conflicts that go unresolved for decades, and then random dream-visions and visitations from God and men or angels or anthropomorphic beings out of whom one may or may not be God. God doesn't say or do anything, nor does the text provide any commentary, regarding most of the moral ambiguities and issues mentioned in the stories above. Whenever he does appear after the creation, it's either to rain down judgment because of how bad a particular situation's gotten (Flood, Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Onan, etc.), or to make promises or covenants with individuals (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel... the last of whom he physically wrestles with) who don't generally see those promises fulfilled in their lifetimes, and even by end of Genesis, it's hard to see what the point of all these stories is.

Genesis by itself just feels incomplete... which ought to be the case, considering that it's meant to be considered as just one part of a bigger work, the Torah (Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy), and not really as a standalone. The first several verses of Exodus even look as though they could have ended Genesis instead. I get the feeling that considering the fact that Moses's story dominates the latter four books, whatever it is that comes with Moses (say... the law and the actual foundations of Judaism) is meant to answer or act as the culmination of all of the problems and issues we've seen up to this point. Which is to say that that foreknowledge of what happens in the rest of the Bible helps a lot more in understanding Genesis, even though it's the first book.

Even aside from the moral issues, it's easy enough to get hung up over the factual details of the accounts and how they apparently seem to contradict reality, as well as each other in many cases. Given that Genesis was likely written much later than the events it transcribes (conservative accounts would attribute it to Moses; over the last century the documentary hypothesis has gotten popular and is supported by my NISB; I tend to lean towards some combination of the two plus even more edits/revisions), I think it's much harder to accept literally compared with the rest of the Bible, and it makes more sense to read from the perspective of the Israelites living in the later Kingdom/Exile years prior to Jesus. It's less about the historical fact of the events (although some aspects such as the Cave of the Patriarchs are worth looking into) and more about introducing the big ideas, like the nature of God's relationship with creation and humans and how it evolved over time. It's about explaining the basis for what would lead to their belief-system, and providing an explanation for how things got to be the way they were, things that would allow the Israelites to remember their culture and their identity even after their kingdoms were conquered and their peoples scattered during the Exile era.

One facet of the documentary hypothesis that my NISB likes to bring up is how many of the conflicting accounts- the two Creation stories, the two times that Abraham makes the same covenant but the person responding differs, the same lines or leadership being attributed to either Reuben or Judah, and so on- seem to arise from differing perspectives of its perceived different authors or editors. The Yahwist and Elohist share a perspective coming from the time of the monarchy, although they differ in how they prefer to address God (YHWH vs. 'elohim), one being from south kingdom of Judah and the other the north kingdom of Israel, whereas the Priestly author seems to come from a later period closer to the exile/restoration eras and is more concerned with religious ritual and genealogical details. Most of the conflicting accounts of the same or similar sounding incidents get attributed to one author or another. I find it more telling that the final redactor or whoever last worked on the Torah decided to keep all of the conflicts intact; and from an orthodox Jewish perspective it may even have been intended that way. For what reason, though, I don't know... although it's pretty reflective of how perspectives change with time and location.

A number of the odder stories in that respect seem designed to explain the geographical or cultural reality of the writer. Like the cursing of Canaan explaining Israel's subjugation of the Canaanites; the whole incident with Lot's daughters leading to the ancestors of two of Israel's neighbors, Moab and Ammon, and explaining the complicated nature of their relationship; likewise with Esau and his descendants, the Edomites, being subservient to the Israelites until their rebellion. And in Jacob's case, his speech to his sons seems to speak more to the situation of the tribes named after his sons rather than the sons themselves (for instance, arbitrarily blessing Ephraim over Manasseh- considering that the future tribe of Ephraim wound up standing in for the entire Northern kingdom of Israel). It seems like much of Genesis was meant to address or explain the present day reality of the Israel at the time it was written as much as it was to explain its past.

Given all of this focus on Israel, I find it odd that there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for why God chooses Abraham (or "Abram") of all people to start a covenant with. I know in the NT that Abraham's called a man of faith, for what it's worth, and you could use the sacrifice incident with Isaac to support that, but outside of that Abraham and his first descendants don't seem particularly special or even decent at the time that God reaches out to them, considering all the incidents of lies and deceit I mentioned earlier. It just happens that God chooses these people to enact his plan for a future nation, and they end up going along with it, and as such this is the legacy that the Israelites have been tasked with. I've heard a Jew phrase it as like being given the responsibility of an older sibling, in this case to the other nations of the world. The older sibling isn't really given the choice whether or not to have that responsibility... they're just born into that position and have to deal with it.

other random thoughts:

- So there's also the Oral Torah in Judaism, which is meant to complement the written Torah by providing more explicit interpretation and explanation (kind of like lecture notes) but generally gets ignored in Christianity. It supposedly came about around the same time as or perhaps even before the written Torah and was considered equally as important as the written Torah, but was forbidden from being written and had to be passed down orally. This tradition continued up until the destruction of the Second Temple (after Jesus), at which point it became apparent that the only way to preserve it was to transcribe it, resulting in the Talmud. I would look more into the Talmud if I had the time, since it does feel like there's some things missing from just reading the written books by themselves, but that'll probably have to wait till later.

- In the garden of Eden, there's two trees: the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. It's the eating of the fruit of the first tree that brings about the fall of man; and it's the possibility that man would then eat of the tree of life and thus continue living forever that prompts God's decision to banish from the garden. I'm guessing that it would've been a bad thing to have continued living immortally in whatever state man was after.

- Jews actually don't seem to generally interpret the Fall as a fall in the way that Christians do (consider also that original sin is a doctrine associated with Augustine and Western Christianity, whereas the Eastern Orthodox only believe in ancestral sin). Sin can be attributed as a cause of death somehow, but for Jews it was never really formalized into a dogma in the sense that Christians have it today - least, from what I'm reading, there's mostly just speculation on the meaning.