The Bible: Introductory Notes:
The Canon of the Tanakh, or the Jewish Bible, is created, probably in reaction to the Christian incursion in the first century, sometime around 70 A.D.
The Tanakh is made up of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy); the Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, etc); and the Scriptues (Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomen, Etc).
The Tanakh is written in Hebrew. According to Jewish tradition, the written version – the text – is only a fraction of the truth. Along with the written Torah, there is an Oral Torah, which has been taught and passed down through generations of Rabbis.
Some of this is also written down in the Midrash – started being written down in the third century, when persecution of the Jews caused Rabbis to begin to worry that the oral Torah might fail to be transmitted.
Studying the written Torah without also studying the oral Torah, according to those who study the Midrash, is like reading the class notes without hearing the lecture. According to tradition, Moses on Sinai was given both the written and the oral Torah.
In the fourth century A.D., various synods (church councils), put together lists of books that were accepted into the canon for the Christian Bible – the Synod of Hippo was the most influential of these – and then Jerome wrote a Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, using this list, which pretty much set these as the canon. (The texts used were written texts, the OT in Hebrew, mainly – bits of it are in Aramaic – and the NT in Koine Greek, mainly. None of the oral tradition was consulted.)
This Latin text made the Bible available to a wider audience, since nearly all educated people at that point in time could read Latin.
The Latin Vulgate text would be available for the next thousand years, until texts in the languages of various countries – English, German, Spanish – begin to be published, starting a whole new bundle of trouble.
The Text: Textual Criticism of the Bible / Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics was invented by those studying the Bible. First, those who were doing line by line study of the text itself – Midrash, for instance – were doing the kind of intense close reading that we learn to do as English scholars. But also, around sixteen hundred, textual critics turn their tools on the Bible.
Previous to that point, assuming that the text was God’s truth was the thing to do – scholars were to take it as given that what was in the text was unquestionable. If the text said there had been a flood, then there had been a flood. If the text said the sun stood still, it stood still.
But after the Black Death (14th Century), and after the Reformation (early 16th century), and after the scientific revolution (early 17th century), scholars turn their light onto the text of the Christian bible as well. They had been using their scholarly tools on other ancient manuscripts, proving whether they are really as old as they say they are, whether those manuscripts contain the truth they say they do. Let’s see whether this one does, the scholars say. So they turn their tools on the manuscripts and the text of the Bible.
This led to the scholarly agreement that neither the Torah nor the Bible was, as some Orthodox Jews and some Christians had believed, written by Moses while on Mount Sinai, or a unified perfect whole, divinely inspired or otherwise. Rather, the text appears to be an agglomeration or a redaction of several sources, combined and altered (somewhat) to fit into a narrative whole.
A theory favored until recently was called the Document Hypothesis. This saw four separate sources, called the J,E, P, and D sources, which an unknown redactor then brought together into a unified (mostly unified) text.
 |
| Document Hypothesis |
The Document Hypothesis is a theory that says that the text of the Old Testament (or the Tanakh) is created from four different sources:
J = Yahweh, the name God is called in this source (singular, and it is a NAME, not a noun)
E = Elohim, the name God is called in this Source (plural, gods, generic, the noun for gods)
P = Priestly – this source is concerned with rituals, rules, order, boundaries, what should be done, when it should be done, what to sacrifice, when to wash – the OCD part of the Torah
D = Deuteronomy – this source is also concerned with rules, but mostly with ethical rules, and with consequences; with caring for those in the community, and the doom that follows if the rules are broken.
Previously it was believed that sometime around the tenth century BCE the earliest of these texts (the J text) were written down; others followed, until finally the Redactor, around 400 BCE, stitched them all together.
Now, however, due to various textual problems with this theory, it’s falling into disfavor.
The latest theory (still being argued about) is that JE were probably stitched together early on, and that P and D were separate texts for a long time; and that someone (or maybe a committee of someones) put the whole thing together into one text, quite deliberately, during the Babylonian exile (6th century BC) in order to give the Jewish people a reason to have faith in their own destiny.
If this latter theory is correct, the purpose, then, of the Torah (which does emerge historically as a canonical text during the Babylonian exile) would have been to create a shared history for the Jewish people which would convince them of their importance in God’s eyes; to give them a reason to remain apart and whole during their exile, rather than assimilating, as they would otherwise have been tempted to do; and to convince them of their destiny – that they were promised that they would win this land as their own.
Genesis
The first book of the Torah or the Tanakh or the Old Testament, has four sections:
· Chapters 1-11 Creation
· Chapters 12-24 Abraham & Isaac
· Chapters 25-36 Jacob
· Chapters 37-50 Joseph
Torah means a couple of things: “teachings,” “instructions,” or “to instruct,” “to explain.” It also means “to tell a story.” It also means “to show the best way.” Sometimes it is also translated as “the law,” but this, the rabbis tell us, is not a useful translation.
As with Exodus, the main theme in Genesis is captured in this understanding of the Torah – we are being exhorted to understand the best way, to study these stories in order to see the best way. Laws are not really the issue, and if we think they are we are missing the point.
The story starts with Adam and Eve, who make their own choices; continues on through Abraham, who argues with God about whether Sodom should be destroyed; it continues with Jacob, who wrestles with God all night long, and doesn’t lose. And it finishes with Moses, who never sees the Promised Land. Whatever this story is about, it is not a story about learning to follow the rules.
Chapter One:
God does not create out of nothing -- the earth exists already; it is just unformed. He brings light to it, and boundaries. Note also that though he creates stars and the sun and the moon, as well as sea monsters, these are not (as they are in other mythic systems) gods or supernatural beings, but only part of nature.
Also, note that God himself is not represented (here or elsewhere in the Torah) as being the only God. He is just the most important God: the one that must be primary to the people.
Creation is good, or very good -- the Midrash, the oral Torah, notes that very good is not perfect, and that this is important. God did not make the world perfect. Man is put into the garden to keep it and till it -- it is our job to make the world better, to make it perfect. (Cf the later query about circumcision: if God wants man circumcised, why didn’t he create Adam circumcised? Because it is man’s job to make himself perfect, not God’s.)
Also: we are all made in the image of God, yet none of us looks like anyone else.
Also: Genesis 1.29: Until the flood, everyone and everything was vegetarian, apparently.
Chapter Two:
The curse / the Tree of knowledge à Adam and Eve eat from the Tree and are given what is often seen as a curse. Something certainly results. Note that each curse has two parts.
The serpent is told he will crawl from now on, and that "enmity" will be between him and the woman and her seed for all eternity.
Adam is told that the ground is curse because of what he has done; that he will have to toil now (whereas before the ground gave him fruit freely) but that the ground will feed him if he does toil. Also, he will return to dust, from which he came.
Eve is told she will have increased pangs in childbearing, and that she will greatly desire her husband, and that he will rule over her. (Is her desire, and his dominance, a curse?)
What are we to make of these curses?
What exactly does the Tree of Knowledge mean?
(1) Ethical: Exactly what it sounds like. They gained the wisdom to understand the difference between good and bad. Instead of being, like puppies or very young children, incapable of understanding the difference between right action and wrong, after they eat of the fruit, Adam and Eve, once they have eaten, now are capable of moral understanding. Once they are moral adults, they can no longer live in moral innocence, and so must leave Eden. Does this make them evil? Well, it makes them capable of evil, clearly. (To understand what this means, think of puppies again, and three year olds. Are puppies capable of evil? Are three year olds? Clearly not. Even if a puppy or a three year old did something really bad, like starting a fire [don’t ask me how a puppy wouldn’t start a fire -- maybe it knocks over a candle!] or killing a kitten, we would not hold it morally culpable, because it’s not able to make moral decisions. It’s morally innocent.) However, this story has often been interpreted as Adam and Eve becoming evil because they made this choice -- they engendered original sin upon themselves by eating the fruit of the Tree. Milton says it is because they choose to disobey God: that the sin was disobedience; that the fruit itself was powerless, and gave them no special knowledge. Jewish tradition, OTOH, argues that mankind gained the power to choose when we made this choice; and that although we remain open to corruption, we are not corrupt creatures, and we can, through mitzvoth (good works) gain salvation. There’s a story about this, in fact: how when God was creating the universe, he poured himself into great jars, and used those jars to fill the molds of creation. But he dropped one of the jars, and it smashed, and bits of God-light fell everywhere. When people do mitzvoh, good acts, they are gathering up these bits of light, missing bits of God, and putting them back in place --mending the world, tikkun olam. When all the light is back together, when the jar is mended, then the messiah will come.
(2) Intellectual: Maybe it is not ethical, but intellectual. Maybe mankind wanted to be as smart as God, knowing, as he did, the difference between good and bad -- maybe Adam and Eve were committing hubris, in other words. This fits with what happens next, how they get ejected from the garden before they can eat of the Tree of Life and become immortal: become actual Gods, IOW.
(3) Sexual: Many Interpreters see a sexual reading. “Know” in Hebrew sometimes does mean “have sex with,” so a Tree of Knowledge could have something to do with sex. When mankind chooses sex over God, he chooses earthly immortality (kids) over God’s immortality (whatever that would have been). Plus, there’s a metaphoric sense here as well à we all, theoretically at least, recapitulate this journey, going from a sexless childhood immortality to a mortal and sexual adulthood.
All of these interpretations work, notice; and notice in all of them, Adam is left free. His job, as Abraham’s job, is to be free of God, to do as his will (or Eve’s will, maybe) suggests. What does God want from Adam? It probably isn’t to stay in the Garden.
Notice also the verses about the Tree of Life (Genesis 2:9, 3:22) -- God is worried that man will eat from the Tree of Life, and become like God. These verses are often overlooked.
Immortality: Most mythic systems have this story, how we had, or might have had, immortality, if only -- in Gilgamesh, he was given a special plant that would give him, and by extension, all mankind, eternal youth/life: except he stops to bathe at a beautiful pool, and a snake comes up from the lake and eats the plant.
A Chinese story tells of a king who sacrifices his kingdom and all his wealth in order to learn the secret of immortality, fasting and praying for months; but when a sage of heaven shows up to give him the secret, he mocks his elderly appears, so the sage, annoyed, returns to heaven in a puff of mist, taking the secret with him.
Other mythic systems have the belief that if certain rules are followed or certain foods are eaten or certain chants or words are said, immortality will follow -- the Dionysian Cult, in Ancient Greece, believed drinking wine and dancing and following Dionysius would make you immortal; the Eleusian mystery religion, out of Athens, which we don’t know very much about, seems to have taught that first bathing, and then fasting, and then drinking blood (or maybe wine? There was also something to do with a piglet), would grant immortality.
Another cult granted immortality through the eating of special bread and water.
In general, though, all of these cults/religions stress the surrender of knowledge and the reversion to innocence, or the loss of immortality as we gain knowledge. The point seems to be that one can have knowledge or one can have immortality: not both.
Genesis Four: Cain and Abel
Note that no reason is given for God to prefer Abel’s offering over Cain’s.
Note that God counsels Cain -- he can defeat sin if he wants to. (This is the first mention of sin in the Torah.)
Note that Cain doesn’t attempt that defeat. Note also Cain’s argument back to God. God says “Where is your brother?” and Cain counter-argues, saying, basically, “Why should I know? Isn’t that your job, to look after mankind?”
According to the Midrash, the answer to this, BTW, is no, it is not God’s job to look after us. It is our job to look after each other. How could God let Cain kill Abel? Well, he did not. Cain let Cain kill Abel. The answer to the question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is yes indeed.
Notice also that God does not kill or actively harm Cain for what he does to Abel; in fact, the mark he puts on Cain is a mark of protection.
Does God share some blame for what Cain does? By giving mankind free will, is he responsible, to some extent, for what we do with that free will? This question occupies the rabbis who create the Midrash.
Genesis Five: Nephilim
Nephilim comes from the root nafal, which means fall. They’re the fallen ones. Make of that what you will. No one has a clue what this passage means.
Genesis Six: Noah
Noah is blameless/righteous in his generation.
The rabbis aren’t sure what this means. Either he is just righteous for his time -- in some other time he would have been no big deal -- or he’s righteous and would have been righteous whenever he lived.
What exactly is upsetting God is also subject to debate. Most translators think the word means violence à God’s upset because everyone is too violent. But others think the word means lawless, as in people have stopped obeying the law. Well, what laws? We really don’t have any yet, except that one law we got in Genesis, be fruitful and multiple. (And don’t eat of the tree. Except we already did that, and now we can’t anymore, because the angel’s guarding the gate.)
So some readers argue that that’s the law being broken -- that people stopped having kids, and God is mad about that. Such readers point out that Noah himself was 500 years old before he had babies. See? (So don’t use birth control, y’all, or else!)
The birds being sent out -- these are common to several flood myths, including Gilgamesh and Coyote’s floods myths (both Gilgamesh and Coyote use ravens, not doves).
The bit with the vineyard and the uncovering -- some interpreters see Ham as having castrated or otherwise sexually offended his father. Think of Cronos castrating Ouranos in Greek mythology. Another interpretation is Ham sexually molesting his father, which would allow the then-contemporary (400 BCE) readers justification for considering the descendents of Ham (the Egyptians and the Canaanites) sexual deviants and therefore fit to be conquered and enslaved.
Note the new rules: Be fruitful & multiple is not one, but now we can eat meat. Not blood, though! And now anyone who kills will be himself killed, not just banished, as before.
No comments:
Post a Comment