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List Price: $34.95 | | Publisher: Random House Audio
Salesrank: 1171467
Released: February 27, 1997 |
| Our Price: $9.88 |
| Used Price: $0.79 |
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| Media: Audio Cassette |
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Editorial Review:
The stories in the Book of Genesis captured our ancestors' imagination thousands of years ago--and they speak to us today. In Genesis, acclaimed television journalist Bill Moyers explores the contemporary relevance of the ageless wisdom from the Bible's epic first book.
Creation, temptation, murder, exile, and family strife--these themes emerge from every page of Genesis as fresh as the morning headlines or the evening news. Genesis invites readers into a lively and accessible discussion of the manifold meanings of these stories, and engages us in a fascinating exploration of the relationship between interpreter and text. Among the four dozen writers, theologians, artists, and thinkers in the series are Mary Gordon, John Barth, Faye Kellerman, Samuel D. Proctor, Phyllis Trible, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Walter Brueggemann, Robert Alter, Oscar Hijuelos, Leon R. Kass, Elaine H. Pagels, Charles Johnson, Stephen Mitchell, Bharati Mukherjee, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Elizabeth Swados, Burton L. Visotzky, and Renita J. Weems--a dazzling, multilayered chorus of voices.
Description of Genesis: A living Coversation (Pbs Series):
In all honesty, when I first tuned into Genesis the PBS series, I wasn't really in the mood to hear a cabal of hyper-intellectual critics enlighten me with their interpretations of an already widely familiar religious text. Within seconds of watching, however, I was completely engrossed in a conversation unlike any I'd experienced before--lively, intelligent, generous, illuminating, exciting. If you didn't catch the series, or even if you did and you still want more, pick up this book. It expands in places where the program had to be cut and is just as riveting. The commentary and the "already familiar text" prove as multidimensional and visceral as life itself.
Genesis: A living Coversation (Pbs Series) Reviews:
Unfortunate interpretations 
2008-08-01 - Another reviewer reports correctly that "the people in Genesis are all exposed as being very human, with fractured families." So far, so good. That is true, and it is precisely the point of all the stories in the Torah: people are human, and God has given them free will. They often make mistakes, from which mankind is supposed to learn.
But the discussions of Genesis in Moyers' book, are otherwise hopelessly inconsistent with Jewish thinking. And since Genesis is, after all, the first book in the Jewish Torah, or Five Books of Moses, it's somewhat incomprehensible that Bill Moyers would consult just one Jewish authority, Rabbi Burton Visotzky. Then again, I once heard Moyers dismiss Judaism as the product of an "angry God," which was repaired by the coming of Christ. So it's not surprising that Moyers' presents by and large extremely negative views of the Genesis stories, making all those people sound devilish.
Consider for example Moyers' take on the story of Abraham and Isaac.
According to him, God is angry and unforgiving. Moyers furthermore condemns Abraham as a mere trickster hiding "behind his wife's skirts" and resorting to cunning.
There are, however, many other rabbinical interpretations of Abraham and Isaac story in Genesis, Chapter 22. One of the best, to my mind, is offered by W. Gunther Plaut in his 1981 English-opening edition of The Torah: A Modern Commentary and The Torah: Genesis.
Plaut correctly notes that the first command to Abraham "issued by Elohim---the generic term for God or gods---and the command is one that other elohim could and did make" during Abraham's era.
However, when Abraham is about to perform the sacrifice, "it is Abraham's God, Adonai, who stays his hand. In other words, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob "not only rejects the sacrifice of a son by a father, but rejects, as well, its use as a theological theme. This is in stark contrast to Eastern religions...in which a father's sacrificial gift of his son plays an important role."
Thus, Plaut concludes that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob rejected the contemporary norms of Biblical times, together with any and all acts of child sacrifice.
Plaut's interpretation makes eminent sense, whereas Moyers attempts to discredit the lessons embedded in Genesis, particularly that of Abraham and Isaac.
It's a real shame that Rabbi Visotzky let him get away with it.
The book has nice art work, though.
Rabid, lying, paganism, RUN AMOK 
2007-08-27 - Listen to Chris Wallace's closing remarks on Bill Moyers on Fox News Sunday (8/26/07) and you will understand who and what we are dealing with in Bill Moyers - a radical, pagan, left wing, bomb throwing LOON!!!
A true conversation 
2006-10-21 - Bill is an extraordinary visionary. What a thought to bring together scholars from multiple religions to talk about Genesis. This is a must read. The conversation is insightful and enlightening. No wonder Fundamentalists dislike Bill. He is fully inclusive and working to build bridges across the chasm of beliefs. Understanding will only be built through learning conversations, not by intolerance.
I was mesmerized with the audiotape
2005-11-10 - I cannot add more to the previous posts except to repeat for emphasis how very interesting it is that Jews, Christians and Muslims share this story. There is so much to contemplate and so much common ground.
Illuminating conversation
2004-12-16 - When I watched the PBS series, I locked myself in the room each week so I wouldn't be disturbed. Imagine several bright, articulate folks who weren't arguing over the historicity of the Gensis accounts, but simply looking for their meaning. Moreover, all weren't Biblical scholars. Their ranks included novelists and playwrights who understand the narrative elements far better than I. As I watched I developed favorites who I looked forward to hearing from again and others who drove me batty.
When I bought the book, I found it to be incredibly helpful for me as a preacher to identify the questions that might be asked of the Genesis text that I would fail to ask because of my own biases or my own fear of asking a sacreligious question. The book is especially good in it's examination of the image of God and the wrestling Jacob stories, but perhaps my favorite is the discussion of call and promise, particularly because of strength of the scholars-Robert Alter, Burt Visotzky and my favorite, Lew Smedes.
This book can help us answer the questions people are really asking, instead of the ones we want them to ask. Highly recomended
