The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

by Michael D. Coogan

In addition to the information that had become available in the late 1940s from the Dead Sea texts of Isaiah and Habakkuk, subsequent acquisitions from the same area brought to light many other early copies of all the books of the Hebrew Scriptures (except Esther), though most of these copies are fragmentary.

Septuagint, the pre–Common Era translation of the Bible into Greek,

In the ancient Near East, most literary compositions, including Genesis, were anonymous. Only during the Greco‐Roman period do we start to see statements in early Jewish texts that Moses wrote Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. By this time Judaism had been influenced by Greek culture, where author attributions were important and the writings attributed to Homer enjoyed the highest prestige.

Genesis was written over many centuries, using oral and written traditions.

Most scholars agree that the texts now found in Genesis began to be written down sometime after the establishment of the monarchy in Israel in the tenth century bce or later.

Many important parts of Genesis, however, were not written until after the monarchy had fallen in 586 bce and Judean leaders were living in exile in Babylon.

7then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,a and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

“You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

“I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.

Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old,

22When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. 23If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

“If a man dies, and has no son, then you shall pass his inheritance on to his daughter.

15Since you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take

care and watch yourselves closely, 16so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure— the likeness of male or female,

one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.a

19You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.

21Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.