(Re)Reading #3

Sorry this has taken a little time to post. Linda is in England with her Mom who is very ill. Next study to follow soon.

Genesis Part I  04/15/11

Genesis is a rich field for re-reading the bible. In fact the book of Genesis--if you look at it attentively--announces itself as a re-reading, and shows itself all the way through as re-reading. 
 

Thinking about the construction of the Torah (the first five books of the bible) we should ask why the scribes put Genesis before Exodus. Of course, yes, it's about beginnings, what comes first. But what are the themes at work? In Exodus and following books there is no question that God uses violence and that the violence is righteous. But Genesis from the get-go sees violence as human and intensely problematic. The initial creation work of God is entirely without violence and when God resorts to violence (cursing the ground/sending the flood) he decides afterward never to do that stuff again! (8: 21) God re-reads Godself! And the reader is put on alert that the violence in subsequent books of the bible is seriously open to question (needing to be re-read, from "the beginning".)

"Genesis" means beginning, but also "generation". It is about the "generations" of the earth, the various ways in which the human space and human beings get put in place. The seven days are "generations" (2:4) just the same as Cain and Seth born of Adam and Eve, and their descendants, are "generations" (5:1, same word). The book is talking about generativity (the way things get put in place), as much as the fact of their beginning. In short there are two broad concepts or styles of generation: the one described by the "Priestly writer" (the text using the name God/El and picturing the divine as "other" to violence) and the one described by the "Yahwist writer" (text using Yahweh/Lord as name and picturing the divine in very human terms, prepared to use violence, and yet open to change). 

 

If we fail to read these very evident concerns and tensions in the text--the way it is struggling hugely with the question of violence--then we are not really reading it intelligently, with its own intelligence. Instead we read it like a fairy tale, with no meaning except "weird stuff happens".

Genesis chapters 1-11 consists of the prologue (seven day creation) and five prehistories (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Sons of God and the Daughters of Men, the Flood, Tower of Babel), along with genealogies, lists of generations). It all sets up the introduction of Abraham, the single individual who would trust God completely and in whom "all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (12:3), the one who promises a solution to the human situation. The question then is always "What is the nature of the human situation to which Abraham offers a solution?"

In church teaching from Ambrose and Augustine onward the problem has been strictly legal in nature. Our first parents disobeyed a rule given by God and now they and their descendants must suffer the consequent punishment. In time, however, Christ came and offered a way out, a legal satisfaction or compensation for sin for the sake of "salvation"... But this is a very narrow reading of the book of Genesis. Certainly the Lord makes rules in the Garden of Eden but the key issue is not the rule but the rivalry-with-God that underlies rule-breaking. And even more crucially this rivalry with God cannot be read in distinction from rivalry between human beings. The story of the Garden of Eden cannot be read in isolation from the other prehistories, especially the one immediately after, that of Cain and Abel. (The old legal reading sees these other stories as simply subsequent effects of a "fallen nature" and not first-hand descriptions of primordial human condition.) 

 

Reading carefully the story of Cain and Abel we can see at once it is crafted as a doublet of the Garden story. In other words it is the selfsame story told over from a slightly different perspective, one that illuminates the first. The evidence of this is overwhelming and once it is accepted it throws a startling new light on the basic issue with which Genesis is dealing. Here are at least eight points in which the two stories repeat the same motifs and features, and in ways that are not duplicated elsewhere in Genesis

1. These are the only stories in the Bible where God speaks so familiarly with human characters (with exception perhaps of the book of Jonah). "Who told you you were naked?" "Where is your brother?" Both stories share a sensation that God is a protagonist only a little removed in life-setting and character from his human creatures who in some measure appear as his counterparts.
   
   
2. In both stories there is a sequence of individual crime and punishment (eating fruit/killing brother, expulsion from Eden/from ground and the face of God). As evident in both cases the core of the punishment is a double alienation: from blessings of the earth/from assured company of God.
   
   
3. In both stories there is mitigation: God softens the punishment and gets newly involved.. He clothes Adam and Eve at 3:21. Even more significantly he puts a protective mark on Cain 4:15. God in fact is seen as caught up in human culture, in ways that seek to soften and control the violence that has entered human life. 
    
4. In both cases desire is a pivotal element, mentioned by name (3:6, 16; 4:7).
   
   
5. In both cases the desire is plainly mediated, i.e. it is provoked by a third party. The serpent (the most cunning of the beasts created by God) suggests to Eve the desirability of the fruit (the opening of her eyes, 3:5). In 4:4-5 it is God who is the agent of desire, arbitrarily preferring Abel's offering to Cain's, setting up the jealousy between them. Even God's words at 4:6-7 could be construed as provocative, challenging Cain rather than offering him a concrete way out.
   
   
6. In both cases the actual object of desire is possession of what might be called "divine rights". With Eve and Adam it is equality with God, through moral freedom. With Cain it is God's preferential favor (which in fact Cain then obtains for all practical purposes).
   
   
7. Rivalry with God for God is therefore the central motif of both stories. Rivalry between humans is shown to be an aspect of the former. Cain kills Abel in order to have exclusive rights to God!
   
   
8. Death is the result of the rivalry with God. God threatens it at 3:3, but in fact Adam and Eve do not die. (Rather Adam lives an extremely long time, almost a thousand years--5:5!) It is Cain who introduces the first death, uniting the two stories in an outcome that is systemic--desire, rivalry, violence--rather than legal.

Far from Genesis showing the legal consequence of "original sin" God reverses key aspects of the punishment. As we see he continues to accompany humanity, reaching toward the intimate relationship with Abraham, and he promises never again to curse the ground (8:21). The real picture of our human condition that emerges from Genesis is systemic than legal. And the picture of God is of a figure both provoking desire in his creatures and seeking to undo the violence this precipitates among them.