Genesis, 1st book of the Bible, first of the five books of the Law (the Pentateuch or Torah) ascribed by tradition to Moses. Beginning with two accounts of the creation and of humankind, the narrative relates the initial disobedience of the man and the woman and their consequent expulsion from God's garden. Next is an account of the ongoing effects of human sin. The narrative then focuses on the fortunes of Abraham and his immediate descendants Isaac and Jacob. The author of Genesis perceives God's call of Abraham and God's commitment to Abraham's descendants as the divine response to the disasters that have befallen the world earlier in Genesis. It is clear that the reader is dealing with stories that were originally unconnected and have a lengthy oral history. The stories preserve memories of ancient clan migrations. In these, mythic elements from the ancient Middle East can still be felt despite ubiquitous devotion to Yahweh, the God of Israel. In the Jacob cycle, the 12 patriarchs are presented as ancestors of the tribes of the later Israeli establishment; it is likely that this represents an importation of the later notion that Israel was one people of God, with a common heritage and ancestry. During the period of the tribal confederacy (12th-11th cent. B.C.), these stories coalesced to tell the story of one people. Moreover, the patriarchal cycles are not biographies. These characters personify Israel's historical experience (e.g., the Jacob/Esau cycle) and its venture in faith (e.g., the Abraham cycle). For views regarding its composition see Old Testament and higher criticism.

In Buddhism, the chain of causation that leads from rebirth to death. Existence is seen as an interrelated flux of transient events that occur in a series, one producing another, usually described as a chain of 12 links: (1) ignorance, which leads to (2) faulty perceptions of reality, which provide the structure of (3) knowledge, which addresses (4) name and form, or the principle of individual identity and the sensory perception of an object, experienced through (5) the six domains (the five senses and their object, along with the mind), whose presence leads to (6) contact (between objects and the senses), followed by (7) sensation, which, being pleasant, leads to (8) thirst and then (9) grasping (as of sex partners), which leads to (10) the process of becoming, culminating in (11) birth, and at last (12) old age and death.

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First book of the Bible. Its name, taken from its first verse, means “beginning.” Genesis provides the creation story for Judaism and Christianity and begins the history of the Israelite people. In addition to God's creation of the universe, it includes the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and God's covenant with the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, concluding with the story of Jacob's son Joseph. It is traditionally ascribed to Moses, but modern scholarship has identified at least three literary strains in it, dating from 950 BC to the 5th century BC, though incorporating material from much earlier. It is one of the five books that make up the Pentateuch (see Torah).

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