Genesis is truth as story

Genesis is Judaism's foundational work, a philosophy of the human condition under the sovereignty of God.

This is a difficult point to understand, because there is no other book quite like it. It is not myth. It is not history in the conventional sense, a mere recording of events. Nor is it theology. Genesis is less about God than about human beings and their relationship with god. the theology is almost always implicit rather than explicit. What Genesis is, in fact, is philosophy written in a deliberately non-philosophical way. ... To put it at its simplest: philosophy is truth as system. Genesis is truth as story. It is a unique work, philosophy in the narrative mode ...

Judaism is about the democratization of holiness, the creation of a whole society in which everyone will have access to religious knowledge. Hence the importance of stories which everyone can understand.

Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Genesis