The Book of
Genesis, a curious volume of fifty
brief chapters. It opens
with a myth of creation and some brief detours into the dangers of
kindling divine wrath; The remainder of Genesis
(XII-L) reads like an
annotated four generation genogram, an expository family-therapy
casebook.
It tracks the travels and family
intaglios of a nomadic herdsman of the
Judaean Desert, the uncolorful life
of his favorite son, the struggles between the two
sons of a third generation,
and the chaotic entanglementsof the fourth generation children of the physically weaker of these two
sons. These thirty eight later chapters, collectively, present the
congeries of madnesses that, under the worst of imaginable conditions, may
attend family life, including: envy, gratuitous murder, infanticide, incest,
lying, paranoiac preoccupations, rivalry, and spite. Curiously, these
madnesses are presented by the author without significant recourse to
moralistic judgement or theological homiletics.
Genesis is different, in this respect, than other books of the Bible. The
final four volumes of the Pentateuch,
focusing as they do on the life of Moses
the Liberator from Bondage and Moses the Lawgiver, outline a
prescriptive and proscriptive life replete with prophetic curses and blessings
for sinners and saints, coupled with not infrequent moralizing. These later
volumes decry a reliance on graven images and, stylistically, move away from
the pictorial presentations of family life across the generations that are
essential ingredients of the earlier saga in Genesis. And Moses and God almost seem to form a pair … dance a pas
de deux.
The
Prophets that fill in much of the
remainder of Torah continue in this manner: the People and their Kings sin, the
prophets preach against their hedonism and prophesy doom, and the sinning nation
is punished with societal havoc, cultural decay and foreign invasions. Some
notable exceptions are available in
the writings of the visceral and fleshy King David and his son, Solomon. These
poems are, however, oddities and — even thus considered — they (Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs) fail to capture the
richness of family life as presented in Genesis
and focus, instead, on Man’s relation to the Deity or to his Heavenly and
Earthly Loves. The New Testament, on the other hand, in large a collection of teaching
parables, does not highlight the foibles of family life. In removing their
central character, Jesus of Nazareth, from the inherent strands of descent and begats, these writings move the reader to
transcend interest in Earthly and,
therefore, familial affiliations, and to substitute for them fealty to and
interest in God or, somewhat later in Christendom, to the expanded Trinity.
Curious, too, is the literary longevity of the stories of Genesis or the religious follower’s
capacity to tolerate endless repetitions of these tales in their religious
services! We may take as an extreme example, the story of Abraham’s attempt to
offer-up his second son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to the God who appeared to him (Genesis: XXII). This story is read in
Protestant churches on selected occasions (e.g., Good Friday and during the
triennial cycle). It is, also, offered up in Catechism and Bible study classes
as a fine example of obeisance to the Deity,
with the Church Fathers
frequently referring to Isaac as the first
lamb, the harbinger of the Nazarene. More surprising, though, is its
ubiquity in the Jewish liturgy. It is read twice on the fourth Sabbath of each
year’s Biblical reading cycle, twice on the second day of the Jewish New Year, and
every other day of the year once in
morning prayers.
And while Jewish tradition scorns concrete symbolic representations,
such as statuary, these verbally represented pictures of family life,
collectively constituting a psychic
iconography of sorts, must remain, if only due to repetition, emblazoned in
the mind of the believer no less so than concrete statuary might. Those who
have had direct exposure to these themes and other who have been exposed to
them through the character of their caretakers may be assumed to carry residues of such images.
Genesis in Several Pages
• • •
God creates a world. Two
(possibly contradictory) accounts are offered with each apparently culminating
in the creation of an original couple, Adam and Eve; they are housed in a lush
garden. They fail to abide by God’s one proscription, a dietary one, lose their
original innocence, and are punished.
They initially have two children, with the one killing the
other in a rage of envy. Other children are born and, presumably, through
unavoidably incestuous mating, a race proliferates.
Mankind becomes corrupt and God decides to destroy-by-flood all
but a boatful of animals, together with one righteous man, Noah, and his
family. God’s wrath is quieted and humanity is given a fresh start. Some generations later, the descendants
gather and attempt to erect a prideful skyscraper; God scrambles their
languages, thus putting a temporary end to their hubris. This leads to a renewed distribution of men over the face
of the Earth. So much for the first eleven chapters.
The scenes depicting the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs
are cast in the oases of the inhospitable badlands that are the Judaean desert
and span some three hundred Biblical years. A variety of family themes appear
in stories of the first Patriarch, Abraham. These themes, particularly envy,
fear, and barrenness, will be repeated in the life of his son, Isaac, and,
thereafter, in the life of his grandson, Jacob; these themes will resonate in
overt acting out among Abraham’s great-grandchildren. Abraham is afraid of
neighboring Chieftains and cannot live with his nephew, Lot, who is often in
considerable trouble. Lot becomes entangled in sinning Sodom and is saved by
his uncle who argues passionately with God, in a failed attempt, to save the
city. During the period following the devastation, Lot is incested unwittingly
by his daughters. Thereafter, Abraham claims that the erstwhile barren Sarah is
his sister and, pointedly not his wife, in order to protect himself from
several desert potentates. He has a child, Ishmael, with his concubine, Chagar,
and, somewhat later, Isaac is born to Sarah. Sarah orders Abraham to expel
Chagar and Ishmael after she sees Ishmael playing with Isaac; God concurs with
Sarah and Abraham cooperates in the deed with some reluctance. In the next
chapter, God tells Abraham to kill Isaac; Abraham scrupulously follows God’s
directives, this time with speed, if not alacrity, and perseveres until divine
intervention stills his hand.
Isaac appears to have never recovered from this ordeal; he is
given but several lines of script with a total of seven words until his
marriage, from which time on he remains under the control of his barren wife,
Rebekah. Apparently in identification with his father, Isaac lies to a local
chieftain fearfully claiming that his wife is his sister. Rebekah gives birth
to twin sons, Jacob and Esau; they fight and are lost in envy from the womb and
through their youth. Jacob purloins Esau’s birthright and, later, Rebekah
hoodwinks Isaac into arranging for her favorite son, Jacob, to receive his
befuddled father’s blessings. Jacob runs away fearing for his life.
Jacob passes much of his life in paranoid-like concerns that Esau
will retaliate while Esau appears, after the initial shock passes, curiously nonplused by the matter. Jacob has two
wives; each chooses a concubine in a competition for favor (from their
husband); this envy is quite openly portrayed as directly related to fecundity.
The favored wife, Rachel, is initially barren, like her mother-in-law and hers
before her. Thirteen children are born: Leah gives birth to the first four
children; Rachel’s handmaiden, Bilha, to the fifth and sixth; Zilpa, Leah’s
handmaiden, produces numbers seven and eight; Leah the ninth through the
eleventh child; and Rachel, at long-last, mothers the two youngest sons,
including Joseph, the favorite and twelfth child.
Things are not well in this family whose troubles would cross the eyes of the most seasoned of
family practitioners working in one of today’s violent inner cities. We see,
for instance, the following:
• Jacob and Leah’s
daughter, Dinah, falls in love with a local. His male clansmen are convinced by
Dinah’s brothers to circumcise themselves so that a marriage might receive
their blessings. They do so; nonetheless, her full-brothers, Shimeon and Levi,
slaughter the entire village while the men are recovering from their surgeries.
• Another of Leah’s
sons, Reuven, in the meantime, incests one of his father’s concubines.
• Rachel’s firstborn, Joseph,
is busy gossiping and telling his dreams; he ends up in Egypt after the
brothers nearly kill the brother they dub: This
Master of Dreams.
• Judah, another of
Leah’s children, has three sons. The eldest, Er, is killed by God for an
unspecified reason related by the text to divine disfavor. The second, Onan,
receives the same punishment after utilizing coitus interruptus in order not to impregnate his brother’s widow
as was expected of him according to the Law of the Levirate. Judah ends up
unwittingly having twins with his now twice-widowed ex-daughter-in-law.
Meanwhile back in Egypt, Joseph rises to power after extricating
himself from a seduction-gone-sour; his boss’s wife had falsely accused him of
instigating an erotic chase. Joseph’s political elevation, just as his previous
fall, occurs due to his facility with dreams. A famine breaks out in Canaan
leading Jacob to send his sons down to Egypt to purchase grain. Joseph, now
second to Pharaoh, conceals his identity, toys with his brothers, torments
them, and eventually puts his old father at some risk to depression for several
months at the thought of losing yet another son. A rapprochement occurs
followed by a family move to Egypt. Jacob and his tribe, despite their foreign
ways and practices, are treated like
royalty by the Pharaoh.
Jacob effusively blesses Joseph, his successful son, gathers all
his clan together, sparingly blesses the lot and, once again, bestows wondrous
prophecies on Joseph, his favorite. Jacob finishes his blessings and curses ...
and dies. The sons escort Jacob’s body back to Canaan, as he requested. Genesis closes with Joseph asking that
the same be done with him and assuring his brothers that he harbors no ill-will
towards them. So ends this brief history of the world from creation to the
soon-to-come bondage in Egypt that began after Joseph’s death, perchance some
3600 years ago.
• • •
Here are my questions for me for this year’s reading in torah:
Q1: What does a fair reading of the text say about when our God is
ired? What gets the divined muster mussed?
Q2: What is the good life,
as portrayed by Genesis or
Q3: Is there a possible notion of a good life?
Q4:
If there is such a Good Life, does it come along with any good
relationships … marital, filial, or peer. Hard to find even one in the Book of Genesis.
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