Structure and content
The history contains some of the best-known stories in the Bible plus a number of genealogies, structured around the five-fold repetition of the toledot formula ("These are the generations of..."):[3]
- The toledot of heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1–4:26)
- The Genesis creation narrative (the combined Hexameron or six-day cosmic creation-story of Genesis 1 and the human-focused creation-story of Genesis 2)
- The Eden narrative (the story of Adam and Eve and how they came to be expelled from God's presence)
- Cain and Abel and the first murder
- The book of the toledot of Adam (5:1–6:8) (The Hebrew includes the word "book")
- the first of two genealogies of Genesis, the Kenites, descendants of Cain, who invent various aspects of civilised life
- the second genealogy, the descendants of Seth the third son of Adam, whose line leads to Noah and to Abraham
- the Sons of God who couple with the "daughters of men"; the Nephilim, "men of renown"; God's reasons for destroying the world (first account)
- The toledot of Noah (6–9:28)
- God's reasons for bringing the Flood (second account), his warning to Noah, and the construction of the Ark
- the Genesis flood narrative in which the world is destroyed and re-created
- God's covenant with Noah, in which God promises never again to destroy the world by water
- Noah the husbandman (the invention of wine), his drunkenness, his three sons, and the Curse of Canaan
- The toledot of the sons of Noah (10:1–11:9)
- the Table of Nations (the sons of Noah and the origins of the nations of the world) and how they came to be scattered across the Earth through the Tower of Babel)
- The toledot of Shem (11:10–26)