THREE NEW BOOKS ON GENESIS are reviewed by Walter Brueggemann in Christianity Today. All of this long review is interesting and it's hard to decide what to excerpt. My main interest is in the third book:

Gary Anderson offers a discussion that is limited to Genesis 1-3, a study that is remarkable in its reach�not least in its recovery of early readings of the text. In The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination, Anderson, recently gone to Notre Dame, takes up these chapters by reference to the Life of Adam and Eve, an ancient post-biblical document much used by Christians in the early centuries of the church. (Anderson offers a translation of the document in an appendix.) Anderson's concern is to study the way in which early Christian interpreters made use of the Genesis text "in conformity with an evolving interpretive tradition." That interpretive tradition was rooted in Judaism, as Anderson respectfully acknowledges; his focus, however, is upon the Christian practice of interpretation, which moves in quite distinctive and imaginative directions.

It is a primary thrust of the book to insist that the Genesis narratives are too terse and underdeveloped to be taken by themselves; they require ongoing work in an interpretive community. Given that premise, Anderson then proposes that taken canonically, the Genesis narratives must be read in terms of their ending, a culmination�in Christian practice�in Christology and with particular reference to Mary, who is the new Eve. The assumption of the book then is "canonical" in a most expansive sense, an insistence that the text must be read in a faith community and with respect for "the domain of the Creed as much as the territory of the dispassionate literary historian." The outcome is a canonical reading through the imagination of the early church, a reading that is so daring as to make even the erudite canonical approach of Brevard Childs seem timid and anemic.

Brueggemann concludes:

It strikes this reviewer as most important that these books move quickly beyond the characteristic categories of 20th century-criticism. Borgman, in his centrist approach, is less explicit about context. Kass yields a quite Jewish reading that culminates in appreciation of a community committed to holiness. Anderson's reading is powerfully Christian (Catholic!) in his comprehension of the old and deep tradition. The sum of these books invites critical reflection on the older presuppositions of scholarship, especially concerning (a) source analysis and the question of authority and (b) cultural parallels and the issue of distinctiveness, issues that became a huge battleground over the relation of faith and criticism. The new directions suggest an important unlearning in the field. Critical scholars may unlearn the deep focus on criticism for the sake of the text itself. Resisters to criticism may unlearn the vigorous energy used to defeat criticism. Both critics and resisters might rather turn to the text itself and find common ground there.

These books are especially important in Old Testament studies at a moment when the mostly British "minimalists" have exhaustingly sought to dismiss the text as "historically" unreliable. As these books make clear, such an obsession with "history" as propels the "minimalists" is hardly worth the effort. The text does not depend upon "history" nearly as much as it depends upon serious readers who both take the reading tradition of faith seriously and move on imaginatively. It is a splendid time to be a serious, imaginative reader!

It is indeed.