Product Description

Burton L. Visotzky, one of America's most respected scholars of religion, guides readers through a close reading of the narratives of the Book of Genesis, exposing their brutal power and revealing how their moral dilemmas apply to ethical issues we face in our lives today.

Rabbi Visotzky has led highly regarded seminars, attended by novelists, poets, editors, filmmakers and critics, Fortune 500 CEOs, bankers, and attorneys. He also was a major participant in Bill Moyers's PBS Genesis series. His reading of Genesis opens the door to moral development for all readers--Christians, Jews, Muslims, and secularists.

As Burton Visotzky says, the Book of Genesis seems to be, at least on first reading, "an ugly little soap opera about a dysfunctional family . . . a story about rape, incest, murder, deception, brute force, sex, and blood lust.  But these stories reveal much about human dilemmas and ethical problems that mirror our own lives. By delving into the lives of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Esau and holding up these characters of Scripture to the light of critical inquiry, Burton Visotzky reveals much that is fresh and useful about ethics and morality.

"He is a rabbi who is earthy, playful, and full of insight, who refuses to draw a veil over the dark side of the Bible or of our own contemporary experience. "
--Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization

"[Visotzky] has a wonderfully earthy, human touch to his commentary, a perspective that can be especially refreshing for Christians who have seen the 'Old Testament' sanitized or ignored by their own tradition."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Thrilling original insights . . . a new way to see and feel these old, old sentences. "
--The New York Times Magazine

"Visotzky delights in turning the gem of each story so that its facets, especially the darkest ones, gleam out at us. . . . The Genesis of Ethics is a unique contribution to Bible discussion. . . . One can only applaud and thank him. "
--Naomi Rosen, Congress Monthly

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1116589 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-23
• Released on: 1997-09-23
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .50" w x 5.50" l, .64 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From Amazon.com
In easy, conversational style, Burton Visotzky plumbs the profound depths of meaning in 25 of the 50 chapters of Genesis. Through a disarming sense of humor that keeps the conversation light and fresh, Visotzky confronts the reader with erudite analysis of the Genesis stories and characters and then relates them to immediate issues in present-day life. He should be applauded in his mission is to provide a ready vehicle for moral development, and for executing the task with such candor and grace.

From Booklist
It's been called the Good Book for centuries, yet it begins with a tangled tale of betrayal, greed, hate, incest, and murder. Still, Visotzky, a prominent rabbi, sees goodness coming out of the Bible if readers are willing to accept it as a challenge to their own moral imagination and not simply as an inspirational story. True, Visotzky offends traditionalist sensibilities by the way he--a sixties liberal and a feminist--puts modern social theorists above God in his reading of the lives of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and the other flawed mortals who populate the middle chapters of Genesis, on which he focuses. Yet Visotzky will also mystify those progressives who see no need to retain this ancient text in the modern canon. For he does insist on the importance of the Genesis story, even as he reinterprets it in ways alien to inherited orthodoxy. Unlike that orthodoxy, which leads to faith and piety, Visotzky's revisionism guides readers toward critical scrutiny of their own moral orientation in a contemporary world as bewildering as Abraham and Sarah's. A good choice for public library religion collections. Bryce Christensen

From Kirkus Reviews
A peculiar attempt to study the book of Genesis as ``an ugly little soap opera about a dysfunctional family.'' Visotzky (Midrash and Interreligious Studies/Jewish Theological Seminary of America), who is known for his Bible study groups for the literati, goes out of his way to be non-Orthodox, unorthodox, and often offensive. He is to the art of biblical exegesis and ethical homiletics what Richard Bey and Jenny Jones are to psychoanalysis. The bad taste begins with boasts about rich seminar students like Ivan Boesky and is capped by his recollection of the time when his elderly grandfather's fourth wife burst into the room to announce to the family that her husband must be dying because he no longer wanted to have sex with her. The author quickly abandons the premise of a discussion of biblical texts to excoriate Abraham as a ``scoundrel'' who pimps for his whorish and servant-beating wife Sarah. In subsequent generations, Isaac, who is almost ``murdered'' by his dad, is traumatized by the ``cruel ritual'' of circumcision and meets his bride when he is ``urinating in the field'' (one of many mistranslations). Jacob, whose dream ladder is termed a phallic symbol, is ``avaricious'' and his ``offspring derive from a slough of despondent amorality and dysfunction.'' Not surprisingly, dangerous Ishmael and Esau are depicted as loving, innocent victims. The most important and neglected character here, God, is called a ``mean son of a bitch'' and a ``disagreeable godfather'' with sinister plans. Visotzky concludes with the admission that readers ``will find my method in this book impudent, even blasphemous,'' but, consistent with his logic here, the author hopes that thrashing the Bible will increase its appeal as a tool of ethical teaching. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.