The Genesis of Ethics

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Amazon.com Review
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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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