Genesis is a book about origins: the origins of the world, the origins of humanity, the origins of God's people. As the first book of both the Jewish and Christian Bibles, Genesis has played an enormous role in biblical interpretation and theology through the centuries, hence making the study of its reception history particularly important as well as illuminating. The proposed title brings together ancient Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources to combine standard as well as unusual or idiosyncratic interpretations, while also examining a variety of mediums in which each interpretation occurred (for example, commentaries, homilies, poetry, visual art/iconography, music, and literature). Contemporary historical-critical treatment of the Genesis will also be surveyed to show how the questions posed by this book (and, reflexively, their corresponding answers given by its readers) reflect the contexts of each interpreter as well as the intellectual and cultural history of different societies through the centuries. Given the large amount of source material and secondary literature, the content is expected to be divided into two volumes: volume 1 includes a lengthy introduction on the reception history of Genesis and a commentary on Genesis 1-11 (the Primeval History); volume 2 comments on the stories of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Genesis 12-50. This division reflects the structure followed by the redactors of Genesis. Each chapter of the two volumes (31 in total, see 'Content' section below) is organized around key interpretive issues rather than by chronological sequence, and it presents a fixed structure. The author begins by articulating a topic from antiquity to the present day, to then discuss its interpretive questions and the answers given to them through the centuries.

This will show the readers the tremendous generative power of the Genesis narrative across different times and places.