I'm taking a class this term that involves a close reading of a variety of famous stories in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible). A hint to religious people out there: if you want to stay religious, don't read the Bible -- or at least, for the love of God (heh) don't read it with anything close to a moral eye. The characters are not nice people. Just today we read three(!) stories where various patriarchs offered up their wives (posing them as their sisters) to certain powerful men in order to keep themselves physically safe (how noble). Then God threatened said powerful men for sleeping with another man's wife, and in penance the men then pay off the patriarchs with all sorts of neat parting gifts. It's a neat scam: if it works, massive amount of newly-gained wealth, and if doesn't, well, it's only a woman getting raped, so, no biggie. Meanwhile, one of Noah's sons accidentally sees him naked (after he got drunk and passed out in his tent), so Noah, displaying the sort of temperance and judgment that made him "the only righteous man of his generation," sentences the son and all of his progeny to be slaves forever. Nice. Elsewhere, God commands Joshua to commit vicious, merciless genocide against the people of Canaan. And in general, God kind of comes off as a jealous, fearful, hot-tempered, spoiled brat.
So, yeah. Message of the Bible: All the stories of your youth valorizing these characters are total and utter crock. Read at your own peril.
David,
ReplyDeleteI'd recommend Kass' Beginning of Wisdom to read alongside Genesis. Especially if you're taking the point of view that the point of the text was to "valorize" those involved.
I think the thesis that messages of Genesis undermines and not supports patriarchy is not a hard one to make, actually the opposite is the harder to argue.
I don't think the purpose of the text is necessarily to valorize the characters all the time, although sometimes it is (I think we're supposed to view Joshua as a BAMF, for example, rather than see and and exclaim "Good Lord, this guy makes Genghis Khan look like a pacifist!"), but recalling the stories I was taught in Hebrew School and Sunday School, we were supposed to think of Abraham and Noah and all those dudes (and God!) as pretty good guys, and they're, um, often not.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to pick up Kass's book for my fiance, for whom comparative religion (particularly Judaism and Catholicism) is a hobby, and who was just saying tonight that reading about Moses and the Midianites was where he had to part ways with Judaism, if the rabbis thought Moses had acted rightly. There's plenty of Christian apologetics for it, though, usually under the heading of: you have to trust that God is always just and righteous, even if what He's telling you at the moment sounds an awful lot like genocide.
ReplyDeleteSlate had a series that ended earler this year called Blogging the Bible by David Plotz. He read the Torah over a period of nearly a year and wrote about each chapter. He started the project after a realization similar to yours (I never heard about that part of the story). He tried to read it "fresh" without reading commentary by others first. It is interesting reading. Here is a link to the series if you are interested. http://www.slate.com/id/2150150/
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