Concise, student-friendly introduction to Genesis
Iain Provan here offers readers a compact, up-to-date, and student-friendly introduction to the book of Genesis, focusing on its structure, content, theological concerns, key interpretive debates, and historical reception.
Drawing on a range of methodological approaches (author-, text-, and reader-centered) as complementary rather than mutually exclusive ways of understanding, Discovering Genesis encourages students to dig deeply into the theological and historical questions raised by the text. It provides a critical assessment of key interpreters and interpretive debates, focusing especially on the reception history of the biblical text, a subject of growing interest to students and scholars of the Bible.

Iain Provan was the Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada, from 1997 until 2022, when he retired and founded The Cuckoos Consultancy. He and his wife Lynette have four grown-up children, and numerous grandchildren. Iain was born and educated in the U.K., completing his final degree (PhD) at the University of Cambridge in 1987. His subsequent academic teaching career prior to emigrating to Canada took him to King's College London, the University of Wales, and the University of Edinburgh. Iain has written numerous books, essays and articles. He is an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland; a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge (since 1993); and the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship in Germany (ongoing since 1996). He is also a qualified Provincial B Licence soccer coach (in British Columbia) and an ARA rowing coach (in the UK). His main hobby is fly-fishing. You can find out more about him - and also about the Cuckoos Consultancy - at his website, iainprovan.ca.