Ten major themes (1): migration and name games

Now I'm going to look at ten themes which pervade the book of Genesis and will indicate where, within the book, these themes appear. This is a purely literary exercise with no philosophical or theological ambitions; I am simply following the oft-repeated motto of this blog and letting the text speak for itself. From this viewpoint, a major theme is a major theme if it shows up repeatedly and if (according to my analysis) it is not merely there as a background assumption, part of the landscape or setting, in which case it was listed in last week's post.

My list of the top ten themes of Genesis, then, is as follows: migration, name games, sibling rivalry, God's covenants, deception, neighbourly relations, sterility and continuity, dreams, not messing with the locals and God's names. Some of these may seem closely related, and undoubtedly they are, but in the discussion below I shall try to establish a definition of each "theme" that is clearcut enough to warrant treating these as separate items. I actually found more than these ten themes, so I will add some further ones at the end, calling them secondary themes: all that means is that they are not brought up quite so often, but still often enough to be noticed. The five runner-up themes I have identified are name changes, crimes, sin-and-destruction stories, sins against God generally and tests.