The Generous Words of Heredity

摘要

In the beginning was Genesis, theinaugural book of the Scriptural Pentateuch.The first word of the book,bereshith, (Hebrew, meaning “in thebeginning”), was then translated to theGreek, genesis, which had earlier beenderived from the Greek genos, meaningproducing or coming into being, andstill earlier from gignesthai, meaning tobe born. And in the millennia since, therehas been an abundance of words basedupon, gens, the Latin descendant of theGreek, genesis, now meaning a tribe, aclan or a race.