I can't read Genesis without recognizing bits and pieces of my own life and the lives of people I know. No surprise, really, given how the biblical characters are nothing like the cardboard saints I learned about in Sunday school. Their lives, like mine, like yours, like all great drama, are driven in large part by folly, by moments of tragedy, comedy, and rich irony. Below you will find nothing about religion, only observations about people. Whether you regard them as historical or entirely fictional, and however you regard the mythical-supernatural elements in their stories, their DNA, embedded in the foundations of Western civilization, has given shape to who we are as a people and as individuals, the religious and unreligious alike.
Lesson 1: Nursing anger is a fool's game: Cain
If you've ever offered an idea that was snubbed, or given a gift that was ignored, then you and Cain share something in common, even if you didn't kill anybody.
In the story, Cain, a farmer, and Abel, a sheepherder, each present an offering to Yahweh. Abel's offering is acknowledged, Cain's ignored. Family systems theory might interpret what happens next as part of a pattern of alienation. Imagine Cain in that moment: angry, hurt, and confused, he stands there, watching, listening, his mood shifting, darkening, familiar, a silent scream building, wanting release, to shout, "What is this? Am I invisible?" And yet, what could he do about it? Take a swing at Yahweh? Probably not. But Abel, his little brother -- now, he was another matter.
We've all done it. With too much frustration at work, at school, too much traffic, too much heat, we share our darker side with whomever is down the food chain and handy -- subordinates, the kids, younger siblings, the dog, the cat. Why? Because in that moment, beneath all the reasons, like Cain, we'd rather behave like that than not behave like that. Cain's anger, nursed and self-justified over time, had become a character in his life and, no doubt, in the life of his family. Vibrating just below critical mass, unable to absorb another real or perceived slight, it erupts, which, ironically, gives a forensic framework for making sense of Cain's actions while making Abel no less dead.
Lesson 2: You reap what you sow, and that thing you want more than anything might arrive with more than you bargained for: Jacob
The Jacob we first meet in the narrative wants, and is determined to have, the blessing that would make him patriarch. But he is the second-born son, and such blessings go to the first-born. No worries, he'll steal it. Being ethically challenged, he could avoid the angst others might feel about absconding with a brother's life and focus on the door of opportunity. When it opened, with his mother's help, he fooled his old, nearly blind father into thinking that he was Esau. Suddenly, the goal that had defined and energized his imagination was realized! What a moment! And what a bummer when his mother came to say that Esau, his brother, a tough, dangerous individual "is consoling himself by planning to kill you." Oops.
So he goes to live with his mother's brother, Laban, where he is smitten with Rachel, Laban's daughter. He wants her, she wants him, and since Jacob is broke and can't pay the bride-price, "How about I work for you for seven years, after which Rachael and I will marry?" Done. After seven celibate years, a few days of wedding celebration -- What a night! And what a bummer when he wakes up to discover that it had been Leah under that heavy veil! Jacob was outraged, but Uncle Laban reminded him that tradition required that the oldest daughter be married first. The irony, of course, is that Laban had pulled the same bait and switch that Jacob had pulled on his father. A man could have multiple wives, so Laban tells Jacob that he can still have Rachael -- in exchange for another seven years.
He wanted the blessing, he got the blessing, plus his brother's hatred and twenty years of exile. He wanted Rachel, he got Rachel, and her sister, and their handmaidens (surrogate wives), eleven sons, a daughter, and a sleazy father-in-law.
Lesson 3: There are people who just don't get it (and never will): Laban
Biblical sleaze par excellence, even the sages of the Midrash didn't like Laban.
First he tricks Jacob into marrying his oldest daughter. Then, he tries it a second time. After years of indentured servitude, Jacob is owed a substantial severance package. When he tells Laban how little he wants, Laban, surprised, had only to hold up his end of the bargain, and that would have been the end of it. But Laban wants more. Like Jacob, he is greedy, deceitful, and clever. Unlike Jacob, he does not evolve. All those years before, when he'd substituted Leah for Rachel, Jacob had been starry-eyed with love and lust. Now clear-headed, wary, and watchful, he sees Laban coming, and turning the game back on him, leaves him and his family in a state of near financial ruin. The last we see of Laban is an attempt at saving face, a confrontation with Jacob in which he proves himself to be a dedicated fool.
Lesson 4. Even if Mommy and Daddy say it's not you, if everyone else hates your guts, it's probably you: Joseph
Either you know him, knew him, or you are him -- I mean the self-absorbed little creep at whom everyone has wanted to scream, "Who the hell do you think you are?" If pop psychology is anywhere near the mark, and such outrage is evidence of projection onto another of some despised, denied part of the self, then Joseph's brothers harbored some serious self-hatred, given how they despised the ground he walked on and the air he breathed. He ratted on them every chance he got, then told them of the dreams in which they'd all bowed down to him. But he was daddy's favorite, and no brotherly beatings or threats were allowed. Moreover, none of the nonverbal hostilities beamed his way could penetrate his certainty that everyone loved him more than they loved themselves.
In time, Joseph, the gifted, self-absorbed boy, will morph into the gifted, consciously aware grown-up who saves the known world from starvation. The crisis that sets it all in motion is his showing up in that gorgeous, expensive coat. That being the proverbial straw, they jumped him, stripped him, tossed him into a pit -- and broke for lunch. As they were eating, they spotted a caravan and, deciding it would be less traumatic for them to sell him into slavery than kill him, they made a deal for 20 pieces of silver.
Lesson 5: There are certain experiences that we humans are not designed for: Post-flood Noah and his family
First of all, follow the dimensions given for the ark and what you'll build is not a boat but a huge cargo container-like structure with one smallish opening in the roof and a door on the side. Second, what the people inside that thing endured was not a slow filling up of the world. The notion of 40 days and nights of rain is from a single sentence inserted into a larger narrative in which, as scholar Richard Eliot Freedman writes, Yahweh unleashes "a cosmic crisis in which the very structure of the universe is endangered."
In other words, stuffed into a huge box, the whole of what remained of life now finds itself in the midst of a catastrophe of such violence that existence itself is threatened with non-existence.
Physically, they survive, but they are not the same, and their world is not the same. A slow deterioration sets in, the sort we see time and again in survivors of airline, train, and car crashes, in the victims of natural disasters, in combat veterans -- the dazed countenance, the depression, the quick anger, and the unutterable sadness of our fellow human beings who've seen, done, experienced things for which we humans are not designed to endure.
Example: The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Before the Fruit was eaten, two different stories were told about what would happen if the Fruit were eaten. The Fruit was eaten. One of those two things happened. The one who accurately described the immediate consequences is now known as the great deceiver.
Look it up. Really. It probably does not say what you thought it did.
Let them put some metaphysical spin on the fact that, according to the book of Genesis, god made it light and dark on the earth before he got around to creating the sun. Of course, according to contemporary apologists, that means that gods first light was really all about the big bang. Sure, that was easy!
made up lessons from fractured fairy tales!
The timeline for Genesis is a joke. Mankind = 1 days work. The ENTIRE UNIVERSE = 1 days work. God the same amout of time to make a single flawed creature as he did to make the Universe and its contents - Ridiculous
God runs out of resources and has to borrow a rib to make Eve - Humorous.
God's first flawed creations were his own flawed angels. He cant control these self-serving creatures who then corrupt God's new production model - mankind. Before mankind actually gets started they are already ruined by God's own angels. Basically two bad products right off the assembly line. And who is to blame? The bible says MAN is to blame. From a production perspective MANAGEMENT is to blame for the series of flawed products it continues to produce. Flawed humans are merely the result of a flawed production line, poor leadership and management and a lack of any good family support. God is a crappy parent and a bad manager.
The story of Genesis is a ridiculous fairy tale but it does prove that God is NOT perfect and that all of his most intelligent creations are flawed. The real issue is that God must then use fear, intimidation, genocide, and attacks on innocents to control his own flawed products that are running amok. Rather silly really.
God is far from prefect by his own words and
God creates Humans AFTER angels and AGAIN they FAIL right out of the starting gate while still in their infancy in th garden of Eden. You cant claim that God is the master of ALL creation and then say he is somehow not responsible for those flawed products or for the evil they are capable of choosing - again that is your ridiculous religion being inconsistent.
Where does the evil come from? God seems to use plenty of it himself in the bible. why does God feel he needs to create flawed products then THREATEN Them and TERRORIZE them into the behavior he desires?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6YyCkMq_KM
:)
1) That it stands biology on its head. A woman born out of a man?? No wonder we have to fight to keep Creationism and "Intelligent Design" out of biology classes.
2) That no matter what men do, women will take the blame. Didn't Adam eat that apple, too? As punishment, he gets to go to work. The woman gets to suffer pain in childbirth and become a domestic servant.
3) That we will not be judged by our own conduct but will be subjected to group punishment. Why should I suffer for something an ancestor did 1000's of years ago? Sounds like the Nazis killing the entire village because one member fired a shot at them.
4) Terrifying a child by threatening to kill it is just fine if some sky-daddy patriarch told you to. Not exactly redeemed by the "Oh wait! Just kidding!" ending.
Enough of paying attention to this 3000 year old tribal survivial guide for hard-scrabble desert dwellers. Can we please move on to REAL morality??
1) While the second creation story says Eve was made from one of Adam’s ribs, geneticist Bryan Sykes writes that, in nature, “the female [is] the fall-back developmental pathway for any fetus,†that each of us boys is a “genetically modified†girl—a she made a he by the same Y chromosome now disappearing.
2) I think you’ll like my upcoming article on Adam and Eve.
3) This is about the flood? Like other biblical stories, it’s archetypal, never meant to be taken literally. In fact, literalism is relatively recent historic development. See Bill Moyer’s interview with Karen Armstrong at http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_armstrong.html.
4) The “Sacrifice of Isaac†is an pre-biblical story. In my book I observe that, afterward, Isaac becomes an ancient poster-boy for PTSD.
Having been on and off the front lines of this “debate†for more than forty years, I can assure you that the Bible is not going away. You can try to ignore it, rail against it, or find a way to make it your own. Taking this third way, I and others approach it as allegory and metaphor, a sort of populist approach that neither requires nor discourages belief. Pull back the religious and historical overlays and most of what you’ve got with Genesis is stories about people—some sleazy, a few psychopathic, the rest caught up in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances, trying to make sense of things.
And whereas I respect the bible as good literature and my own tradition is that of a Christian foundation, I find the God of the Bible to be so elusive and untangible when I need him the most that I do not comprehend when others speak of him like their best friend/father/whatever Christian analogy you want to insert. He hasn't been those things to me.
But good article never the less. Many parts of the bible are applicable to everyone, not just those who hold it literally or those who are religious. Thanks for reminding me of this.
That quote about resentment is powerful stuff. It points straight to the irony at the heart of resentment, that it's the one doing the resenting who gets hollowed out. More than once I’ve been where you are now with all the hatred and rage—and grief. The way out of all that misery, of course, is forgiveness, which is one of the most misunderstood concepts in human history. Forgiving is an act of will, of personal survival, something you do for yourself, not for the person or persons who did the deed. To forgive is not to say that what he or she did is okay with you now or ever will be, but to relieve you of the all the personal cost that goes hand in hand with resenting. It’s easier said than done, but worth it.
About the last part, consider the possibility that your uncertainty and lack of comprehension is a gift that leaves you free to not “know†(which has always struck me as a rather dull retirement).
And thanks for the kind words about the piece.