Leaves from the author's notebook: character sketches

The conceit behind the first part of this week's post's title is that the hypothetical author of Genesis (or was it Moses?), in the persona of a modern novelist, set apart a couple of pages in a notebook to sketch out the main features of each of the important characters in this saga: God, Adam, Eve and their sons, Noah and his sons, Abram, Sarai, Lot, Hagar and her son Ishmael, Isaac, Laban, Rebecca, Esau, Jacob, Leah, Rachel and Joseph.

Whether we choose to think of the book of Genesis (the literary entity) as if it were a novel, a TV series or just an ancient saga, it has a cast of important characters which are an essential part of the story. Today, I thought it would be interesting to review the cast. I will try to state in a simple and straightforward manner what we all know about each character as presented in the book, basing my information on what the text itself tells us about them, how they are portrayed or what their actions appear to intend to suggest about them. Many if not all of these characters have entered into world culture and practically become entities in their own right; consider, for example, the fact that they each have a whole Wikipedia article devoted to them (below I have given links to those articles for anyone interested in comparing notes)! However, here what most interests me is not the place they occupy in world culture but their place in the story that unfolds in the book of Genesis.