Biblical Stories — Genesis
A preliminary assessment
Genesis is the first book in the Bible, which is also known as the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Scriptures, ‘Old Testament’ or, perhaps, First Testament. It appears first in both Jewish and Christian orderings and introduces the Biblical text(s) as a book of stories, both good and bad, encouraging and downright disturbing. I hope to God that it is largely the words of man, rather than the word of God. I will be engaging in critique and make no excuses for doing so.
This is a preliminary review, long overdue given that I have been reading the Bible since the mid-1970s, and only some of those years within the fundamentalist community. A fuller critique, which I have had in mind for some time — The Ten Biggest Moral Failings of the Book of Genesis — will (God willing?) be another piece of work. And yes, we all have moral failings (even big ones), but we are not offered as foundational materials for others to follow …
Of course ‘moral failings’ sounds fairly harmless, it is rather polite shorthand for blaming, murder, hatred, violence, genocide and slavery. Let’s not be polite about any of these. I am wary of caveats but some people appreciate them (or know not to read any further!), and I will therefore say that I write against a background of respect for the text and of a wide understanding of the (sometimes problematic) respect that many believers have for it. As this is a preliminary assessment I am going straight for the punchlines, so there may be spoilers if you haven’t read Genesis. However, the most important caveat is — don’t blame God for what happens next, I don’t think God did it, whatever the authors/editors say.
Story 1 — Creation v 1.0 (Genesis 1)
In the story God creates the earth (apparently) followed by the rest of the cosmos (yes, this is a human rather than divine story). And everything is good, or very good, rather better than what we see around us, especially at difficult times. Unsurprisingly, someone came up with a darker origin story for humanity …
Story 2 — Creation v 2.0 (Genesis 2, 3) — a troubling tale
I usually describe this story, being polite again, as ‘tricky’, as in trickster, trickery. ‘You may eat from any tree except [this one!]’, followed by God’s first appeal to mortal consequences (a death threat from God). What could possibly go wrong?! But that isn’t the point, we have to ask why God poses this hopeless test. Theology tries but I don’t think there are any answers, this is a human story, not a divine one. There is a whole lot of gender and patriarchy bound up in various takes on the story, also not good stories (stories which led to fatal reality).
The trickery of the forbidden tree is built on by the (narrative-blamed) figure of the ‘serpent’ (a serpent but not as we know it) who, bizarrely, begins to unwind the earlier trickery of the test with some true statements. Truth is not especially a concern in the telling of the story, nobody dies after eating the fruit. God’s first reaction, after some rather brave acknowledgement of so-called transgression, is to curse the protagonists, though (unusually) not the woman. Of course, these ‘curses’ are further elements of origin story. This is not a good story, it ends in cursing and banishment.
Story 3— the first murder (Genesis 4)
Cain and Abel were farmers, one agrarian and one livestock. At the appropriate time, they brought produce offerings. Thinking of farming in this country, crops and animals are generally not producing at the same time, Cain is likely to have brought a harvest, i.e. autumn, offering (recommended later in the Torah). The narrative suggests that he offered first, taking an initiative and creating the whole idea of sacrifice to the divine (though of course he didn’t, it is read back by the writers into their imagined narrative). I don’t buy it, he offered his best, maybe God didn’t like the dirt on the turnips! But the message is, as elsewhere in Genesis, that God prefers animal sacrifice, due to the significance of the blood (life). There is little appeal in the idea that he should have given his crops to Abel so that he could offer an animal too.
God decided, for whatever reason (or is written as doing so), not to accept Cain’s offering graciously, there would have been no drama in this! Cain’s response to baffling proto-religious rejection is to murder his brother. Of course, if he was a real person in a real situation he would have to take responsibility for his actions, but we don’t have this information. Perhaps the only good thing to come out of this is God’s surprisingly vigorous objection to capital punishment, though there was no legal system. Conclusion — not a good story, a leading candidate for Moral Failings of Genesis.
Story 4 — The ‘Flood’ (Genesis 6–9)
Everyone, including children and the unborn are killed in a global flood (of course there wasn’t a global flood, there isn’t enough water, amongst many other rational reasons for why this wasn’t a literal global event). Plus, it’s extremely hard to see what was achieved, apart from the creation of the rainbow (there had been many other rainbows), a problematic covenant and the introduction of capital punishment (why?). A very bad story, told well though …
Story 5 — The Tower of Babel, i.e. Babylon (Genesis 11)
Or God interferes in ‘global’ collaborative building project … This is a mixture of anti-Babylonian propaganda and language diversity origin story. It can be taken as a bad story (God’s judgment) or more neutrally as a divine shake-up resulting in less uniformity. I tend towards the latter.
Story 6 — God promises to Abraham (Genesis 12)
It’s good to be chosen, Abraham is later called ‘God’s friend’. However, every blessing has a dark side — ‘I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.’ Agreed, it’s not great that anyone should curse anybody else, being cursed by God is a different order of magnitude though! Also, as we will see, the promise of land has consequences for those already living there … A mixed story, leading into the next one.
Story 7 (v. 1) — That’s my wife! (Genesis 12)
I’m not planning to write any more Biblical blogs, or complete this one, as I’ve recently converted to Islam and am going to leave this kind of critique to those who have more skin in the game. Never be afraid to argue with God though, or those who write on God’s behalf (maybe the Biblical writers didn’t think they were …). Feel free to leave comments, and look out for any other writing projects, insha’allah.
