In this episode, enjoy our exploration of the book of Genesis with one of the most esteemed persons of letters in the United States today. Reading Genesis—Dr. Marilynne Robinson’s 2024 New York Times bestseller—caught our attention for its comprehensive, penetrating look at the Bible’s first book. For The Mary Baker Eddy Library’s namesake, Genesis held critical importance in understanding humanity’s relationship with God, as well as the principles of Christian Science. We hear from Robinson on why she felt compelled to take this deep dive into scripture. And from Bible scholar Dr. Barry Huff, we learn about Eddy’s distinctive interpretation of the creation account in Genesis, as well as her extensive study of all the book’s narratives. The discussion probes the moral rigor of these texts as foundational to Judeo-Christian values—something for which Robinson believes it has not received its due.
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Marilynne Robinson received a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” She is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. In 2021, all four Gilead novels were selected for Oprah’s Book Club. In addition to Reading Genesis, Robinson’s nonfiction books include What Are We Doing Here?, The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country.
Dr. Barry R. Huff is Professor of Religious Studies at Principia College and a researcher at The Mary Baker Eddy Library. In 2022 and 2023 he researched Mary Baker Eddy and nineteenth-century interpretation of chapters 1–3 in Genesis, through fellowships with the Library, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. Huff’s published essays focus on the book of Job, the Torah, the reception history of the Bible, and Eddy’s biblical interpretation. At the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, he presented a paper titled “Eve and the Image of God in Mary Baker Eddy’s Interpretation of Genesis 1–3.”
Collage images (from left): Photo of Marilynne Robinson, used by permission. Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024). The first page of Genesis in the Bishops’ Bible (London: Richarde Jugge, 1573), Historic Bible Collection.
Guest photos used by permission.
