Jacob in the Book of Genesis

As the first book of the Bible, Genesis belongs to the Pentateuch, which comprises the Bible's first five books. According to Senior, Genesis was composed around 1000 B.C. and gives an account of events and personalities flourishing from 1850 to 1250 B.C. However, the written record corresponds to a strong and highly consistent oral tradition among the Hebrew generations. As the first book of the Bible, Genesis contains the Hebrew account of the creation of the universe and of human beings. In fact, Genesis contains two creation accounts. The first account describes the creation of the physical universe, culminating in the creation of man as having authority to "fill the earth and subdue it." The second account starts with the creation of the Garden of Eden and includes the injunction against eating of the tree of knowledge.

The creation accounts in Genesis must be presumed to predate by many centuries the narrative of events estimated to take place 1850-1250 B.C. In any case, the ma

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nciliation between Jacob and Esau after many years (and after the encounter between Jacob and the angel), between Jacob and Laban when Laban pursues Jacob and the household (and just before Jacob's deliberate rejection of the old idols), and between Joseph and his brothers (just at the point that Israel prophesies the fate of each of his sons' tribes). Another aspect of the use of poetic passages as well as prose passages is connected to the importance of ideas, and it also suggests how the text forms should be interpreted in general. The use of verse forms implies that metaphor and symbols are keys to composition of ideas. In other words, the events of Genesis are not meant to be taken literally but stand for development of the relationship of the people of Israel to God. Jacob's dream of the stairway (ladder) to heaven is an exercise in imagination about the meaning of the connection between Israel and God; in this dream, God promises not to leave Jacob until the people are brought to the land promised by God. But the dream need not be interpreted as an accurate image of what goes on in heaven or what heaven looks like. The dream should be interpreted as Jacob's acceptance of the Lord as his only God. Since Jacob stands for all
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Approximate Word count = 2746
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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