Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis after Losing Faith in the Bible

Essayist Grant aims in her evocative debut to “read life” into a text long limited by rigid evangelical notions of biblical inerrancy. Drawing on a broad range of sources—including writings from theologians, philologists, artists, and Jewish biblical scholars—she unpacks the first 32 chapters of Genesis, revisiting, among other topics, the creation story (one Jewish myth theorizes that God created “a thousand worlds, which preceded this one,” to model a kind of repentance—a “starting over (and over)”—for humanity) and Jacob’s wrestling match with God (which Black theologian James H. Cone links to “Black people’s struggle with God in white America” over “the deeply felt contradictions that slavery created for their faith”). Grant’s prose is often poetic (a biblical palimpsest is “a topography of memory, the ghost of past writings”), and despite a few belabored parallels—as when she cites fiber artist Judith Scott’s self-taught method to argue that biblical stories should be analyzed through similarly unconventional frameworks—she constructs a convincing and impassioned case for the value of creative interpretation, suggesting that “curiosity is the most reverent stance a human can take.” It’s a must-read for progressive Christians eager to see the Bible through a new lens. (July)