Genesis Secularized I’m delighted that Jon Levenson has good things to say about my book, The Book of Genesis: A Biography in Moment's March/April issue. In fact, several parts of the book bear his imprint, particularly my focus on the reception of Genesis in Judaism and Christianity. Levenson is one of my favorite biblical scholars, even when I disagree with him. In the second part of his review, he raises some important issues where his perspective and mine diverge. I wish to respond to these issues, not that I have any clear answers, but because a conversation about them is potentially illuminating. According to Levenson, the key problem is this: my “handling of modernity reveals a contradiction, or at least a serious weakness, in the overall argument…On the one hand, Hendel seeks to appreciate the afterlife of...

Continue reading