Part I: A history of interpretation -- Part II: The Jacob cycle and Canaanite epic -- 1. The forms of tradition -- The birth story -- Revelation at Bethel -- 2. Epic and cult -- Aqhat and Anat -- The deception of Isaac -- 3. A literary interlude -- Pughat and Rachel -- Part III: The Jacob cycle and Israelite epic -- 1. The hero and the other -- Encounter at Penuel -- Jacob and Esau -- 2. The life of the hero -- Jacob and Moses -- Conclusions.

Genesis is a book of beginnings. It introduces us to several biblical themes, including God's authorship of life. In a world that blames the Creator for disasters and credits luck or karma for life's blessings, God's people need reminding that he is crafting a wondrous story of redemption and grace. Within Genesis, we are called to play the part of faithful children so that we might overcome this world and inherit the one to come. In God's story, we discover how to live out our own. The Epic of God will guide you passage-by-passage through the book of Genesis in hopes of deepening your trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. -- cover of book

Throughout his life, Isaac remained a passive tent dweller. He did not go to find a wife; his servant brought a wife to him. He did not go to war; and when conflict arose, he withdrew. In the story of his binding, he was passive, and it appears as though he was bound forever on the altar. Isaac was dominated by his father Abraham, his wife Rebecca, Abimelech king of Gerar, and his sons Jacob and Esau. For most of his life, he is led by others, and his actions are reactions to the developing situations. He appears to have little personality and is better known as the son of his father Abraham, or the father of his sons Jacob and Esau.

In this book Warren Motley offers an original interpretation of James Fenimore Cooper's career. Whereas most studies of Cooper have centered on the figure of the Leatherstocking - that solitary model of the self-sufficient American hero untrammeled by civilization - this book examines Cooper's interest in the pioneer patriarchs who built new societies in the wilderness. Throughout his career Cooper explored an essential American problem: how to achieve the right balance between freedom and authority. He did this by retelling the story of the frontier settlement and thereby assessing its successes and failures. Like other writers in the decades before the Civil War, Cooper struggled with the legacy of the Revolutionary fathers - a legacy made more personal in Cooper's case by his father's role as a frontier land developer, judge, and Federalist politician. This book breaks new ground by relating Cooper's artistic development, and his ideas about authority in society, to his efforts to become independent of his father.

Each of the four chapters of the book focuses on a different aspect of the division between Judah and Israel: between the Northern and Southern prophets, between the Jacob and Abraham narratives, between the Exodus and the Zion traditions and the circumstances of unification.