GENESEO, a village in Henry co., Ill., on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific railroad, 159 m. w. by s. of Chicago and 23 rn. e. of Rock Island. It is an important grain and stock-shipping point. It contains a national and a private bank, an iron foundry, agricultural implement, tub and pail, furniture,wagon and carriage, cigar, and other manufactories; and two flour-mills. Besides a flourishing high school, there are several select schools, 3 newspapers, 11 churches, 3 hotels, and a large number of stores, saloons, etc. It is a thrifty, enterprising town. Pop. of v. 3,042.
GtNESIS, or more fully GENESIS liosmou (origin, generation of the world), is the name first given by the Septuagint to the opening book of the Pentateuch. In the Hebrew canon it is called Bereshith (in the beginning), from the initial word; in the Talmud, it is sometimes referred to its " the book of creation," or " the book of Abra ham, Isaac, and Jacob." Its Masoretic division into fifty chapters, followed in the English Bible, or into 12 large and 43 small encyclical sections (Sedarim Parshioth), has been grounded rather on convenience than on any corresponding division of the sub ject-matter. The book seems of itself to fall most naturally into two totally distinct parts: the first of which would extend from the beginning to the call of Abraham (c. i.–xii.), and embrace the account of the creation, paradise, fall, the generations between Adam and Noah, together with their religion, arts, settlements, and genealogy, the deluge, the repeopling of the earth, the tctver of Babel, the dispersion of the human race, and the generations between Noah and Abraham; thus forming an introduction to the second part (c. xii.-1.), or the history of the patriarchs (Abraham, Lot, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, and Joseph); the whole concluding with the settlement of Jacob's family in Egypt. Another division seems indicated by the inscription Toledo% (origin, generation), which occurs ten times in the course of the book, introducing at each repe tition a new cycle of the narrative. and which would thus split the whole (from c. ii. 4) into ten distinct sections of disproportionate length.
The period of time over which the book of Genesis extends has been variously com puted; the number of years commonly assigned to it is about 2,300, the variations in calculation seldom exceeding units or tens of years; bishop Hales alone, following the Septuagint, reckons 3,619 years.
Being a portion, and the introductory portion of the Pentateuch—at the same time that it forms a complete whole in itself—it cannot but be considered as laying down the basis for that theocracy of which the development is recorded in the succeeding books.
While the design and plan of the Pentateuch is thus also that of Genesis, the latter, however discordant its constituent parts may seem, does not lack the necessary unity. Beginning with the cosmogony, or rather geogony, i.e., the generation of the earth with its animate and inanimate products, and all created things which bear upon and influ ence it visibly, the record gradually narrows into the history of man, and with the dis tinct aim of tracing the fate of the one chosen family and people, it singles out Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. The narrative dwells with careful minuteness upon their for tunes, laying especial stress on their intimate communion with God, and, with the three last, on the reiterated promises of the land which they should inherit: " they and their seed after them." The remainder of the human race is summarily treated of; the vari ous founders of tribes and peoples that represent it being generally but briefly named. It is only in the case of brothers, or very near relations of the elect, that certain inci dents of their lives are more fully recorded; plainly with the intention of proving the inferiority of their claims to divine consideration, or even of representing them as meet, objects of the displeasure of the Almighty:—Ham, Ishmael, Esau. From e. xxxvii. to the end of the book, we have exclusively the one chosen family of Jacob and his chil dren before our eyes; and the strictly national character, which the narrative now assumes, excludes everything but the fortunes of this particular house. Here, also, an unbroken, style takes the place of the former apparently sketchy and sometimes abrupt manner. With the occupation by Jacob's rapidly developing tribe•of the land of Goshen, this first great patriarchal period is brought to a fitting close, and the second ushered in, when the tribe reappears, after a lapse of time, as a people. The Maker of all things, having by the creation of one man and one woman placed all mankind on an ecinal footing, by his sovereign will, subsequently elected one righteous from out the mass of human corruption, and through this man's progeny—whose history is told at length—manicind is in the end to be reclaimed :—this seems the pith of the book, consid ered as a religions history of man.