How is the Bible's Book of Genesis interpreted today? What does it mean to the modern interpreter or community?

Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament, was traditionally thought to have been authored by Moses, but most modern scholars now believe it was written between the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. There are countless perspectives on the book of Genesis, but we can identify some common modern interpretations.

Modern Christians diverge widely in their readings of Genesis—from those who take understand it as a literal account to those who view the book as allegory. Even within a faith, the interpretation can be left to individuals. Catholics, for example, “are at liberty to believe that creation took a few days or a much longer period, according to how they see the evidence” (http://www.catholic.com/tracts/creation-and-genesis). Another way Christians have interpreted Biblical texts is the historical-grammatical method, which seeks to uncover the authors’ original intended meanings and how its original readers would have understood the text.

Scholarly interpretations of Genesis vary according to the critical context used. For example, many university Bible scholars use a historical-critical method (sometimes called higher criticism), a branch of literary criticism. This mode of interpretation seeks to understand the original meaning of the text in its historical context and views ancient texts as artifacts that can help reconstruct interpretations of the past. Another form of literary criticism is an allegorical interpretation, which views the stories of Genesis as symbolic myths rather than historical events. This is not an exclusively modern idea, however. As early as the first century CE, the Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria questioned the literal interpretation of the six creative days from the first chapters of Genesis.