Subjective interpretation, a datum of any human being, must be seen as a historically and socially

determined product of the way in which the world should be understood at some point in time and in space.
The author insists upon the historical frame in which the Christian religious creed diverted from its springs
in order to become a phenomenon determined by laws applying to society, history, and human identity.
The text of Genesis has ceased to be a universally definable source of behaviours, as some thinkers of the
past were willing to understand it, in order to transform itself in a social policy!, serving the main stream of
the social wisdom. "e find of a particular interest the way in which the sacred text, while being almost
entirely neglected by #esus, has become a mould in which different springs of understanding flow, filling the
form, but leaving the meaning as widely open as ever. $n this view, the text of Genesis becomes universal
once again, if by universal we understand open to any debate, any translation, any deepening and any
interpretation.
%sed as a tool in enforcing the politics of the &oman 'mpire, Genesis is presented by the author as a
weapon of nullifying any possible unrest against the wealth ine(ualities, the slavery and the sexual customs
of the age. &enouncing the world! and choosing poverty! are selected as means not for fighting the
society and eventually changing it, but a reclusion in an alternate state of mind, in a world proposed only to
the chosen! ones, only to the Christians who had denounced the world as a chimera. This is Saint
)ugustine*s way of reading the sacred texts, Genesis included, but more than this, it is his times* reading of
the +iblical events. ,is view, so cherished by the Christian world, proves to be just a tool, however generous
might be, for enforcing a way of living in his episcopate and for denying his own earlier chosen paths
-.anichaeism and the philosophy of /lotinus0. )nd again, there is Clement*s way of perceiving the
multitude of avenues on which a text such as Genesis could bring an in(uisitive mind construed like one of
us! -Genesis 123302 the political being, the sexual being, the philosopher and the saint.
The interpretation of Genesis* message, in the author*s view, becomes a story of the humankind. $n search of
the infinite truth, the Christian is as humble as Genesis* interpretation could make him4her, but also as great
and self5determined as he4she would desire to be. The rhetoric engaged by the evangelical works will always
reflect the content of the social interest. 'ven if the essence of the message still eludes the modern religious
thinker, the projection of the texts in the mind of the reader draws a social representation, a flexible contour
which adapts itself to any truth is deemed useful at some historical point or other.
+ut the author also cautions us on the complex fabric which comprises the reader*s perception of the world,
a perception which may 6 or may not 6 coincide with the reality perceived by the numerous others. The
(uestion the author presents us with remains the same as the first centuries of the +iblical story2 "hich is the
ultimate, immutable truth the Christian must stand for in order to live the life of the righteous while
remaining the deeply anchored social factor surviving in a universe which eludes it7