Questions about Genesis, Chapters 11 to 30

Johannes Siedersleben, Oxford, May 2019

Genesis lets us peek into a different world. At the time of writing the world population was less than 100 million, living mostly on agriculture. They had little more than rakes, scythes and ploughs. Writing and counting had been invented but was used only by a tiny minority. This context explains, at least to some extent, the strangeness if not preposterousness of the text when taken at face value. Let us examine some questions which impose themselves upon the reader.

Who, Whence, Why and for Whom?

Who wrote Genesis? How many authors were they? How did they cooperate? How could they know about the thoughts of God, the dreams, fears and hopes of the key people? What is fiction, what isn’t? Where did the story come from? Was it a tale, handed down verbally for generations and finally brought into a written form? How reliable is the version which has happened to survive among presumably many others? How disputed was it? And why did the authors go to such lengths? Was it for the reader’s pleasure, assuming they had any idea about the future readership? Did they describe an existing religion, or did they say: Let’s found a new one, we have a nice story we can start from? Computer-aided text analysis has produced some results as to the authorship, but I am afraid many of these questions will forever remain unanswered. (I deliberately do not discuss any celestial origin of the Bible.)

How mighty is God?

What God is or is not capable of is an intriguing question. If sin is evil, why did God bother to create it? No sin, no sinners, no punishment. Paradise appears to have been a failure, necessitating the eviction and subsequently a complete restart in terms of the Flood. Who failed? God or the people he created? Could God have done better? Why did God choose an impotent old man and a barren old woman as parents of future nations? Would it have been too easy to take a young couple in the prime of life and fertility? Why go the obvious way when a hard one is at hand? Why are there wars? Why did humanity have to wait for millennia to benefit from modern technology?

We are approaching the much disputed, unsolved and, most likely, unsolvable question of theodicy.

The Covenant: Why Abraham?

Abraham and his progeny have been elected by God: My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations (17,4). But why Abraham and his progeny? The choice appears arbitrary. Abraham has no more merits or less demerits than countless contemporaries. Choosing Abraham seems to be arbitrary, good for him, and unjust to everybody else.

All men are created equal, except Abraham and his progeny?

Men, Women and Servants

Genesis describes a three-class society: The story is carried by the big shots such as Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Laban, Jacob plus some kings and pharaohs. All of them have names, live long and are affluent if not rich. They go through numerous adventures, often but not always lucky, and are, after all, self-determined and live a life worth living. Their wives, the second class, also have names but are clearly second to their husbands or bedfellows whom they have to share with other women, wives or handmaids. A wife’s value depends heavily on her fertility, barrenness being a grave deficiency. The servants represent the third class. They remain anonymous and seem to depend completely on their master or mistress. In fact, they are serfs. Not even the meritorious servant who found a wife for Isaac (Chapter 24) is granted a name.

All men are created equal, aren’t they?

Righteousness (or Lack of)

Genesis features examples of strange bargaining, of taking in one’s opponent. Examples include Isaac, Jacob and Laban. These people are not righteous, they are unfair.

What does this teach us? To behave similarly? Where is the idea of fairness?

Obedience, Punishment, Faith and Trial

God gives orders (where to go, whom to marry or not to marry, circumcision), decrees bans (what to eat or not to eat), makes covenants (promises of reward in return for obedience) and punishes cruelly in cases of disobedience, the case being often minor (eating apples from a forbidden tree, looking back to burning Sodom) or obscure: what was Sodom and Gomorrah’s wickedness? The pattern of disobedience followed by severe punishment is ubiquitous throughout the Old Testament. Examples include the eviction from Paradise, the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fate of Lot’s wife and the Babylonian Exile, to name but a few; the Book of the Judges contains many more. Genesis distinguishes believers and non-believers. Believers are subject to God’s rules, are talked to and listened by him. They benefit from God’s deeds while risking severe and disproportionate punishment. Non-believers tend to be less happy, are promised nothing and otherwise left alone, thus escaping an appalling variety of obedience, the trial of faith, inflicted on Abraham and Job. They risk, however, punishment for wickedness, whatever that means.

Could not any terrorist claim (as Abraham) to have received an order from God?

Wealth and Values

It’s these gifts God keeps promising to his proteges: offspring, old age, land and, less often mentioned, cattle, silver and gold. Just a few examples: Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, so shall thy seed be (15,5). Thou shalt be buried in a good old age (15,15). Unto thy seed I have given this land: from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates (15,18). I will multiply thee exceedingly (17,2). Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold (13,2). We are led to believe that offspring, old age, land, cattle, silver and gold was that which made a life worth living at the time of Abraham.

Isn’t this a hedonist view, an early version of our egoistic craving for personal happiness and affluence?

Moral and Promiscuity

A striking element of Genesis is the issue of promiscuity which defies today’s moral standards. Proliferation appears to have been of paramount importance, to be attained by any means including polygamy and incest. Monogamy as a moral rule is not even mentioned. Handmaids (e.g. Zilpah, Bilbah) come as a free add-on, useful in case of but not restricted to barrenness of the mistress. Abraham had offspring from Hagar, Sarai and Keturah; Isaac from Leah, Bilbah, Zilpah and finally Rachel – and that without the least excuse or justification. But the importance of proliferation can hardly justify the variety of incest chosen by Lot’s daughters: They sleep with their drunken father in two consecutive nights, both getting pregnant, for no other reason than that there is not a man in the earth to come into us after the manner of all the earth (19,31).

How do the morals of Genesis match our own?

Impact

Genesis, and not only the chapters considered here, is a strange text, hard to understand, hard to accept, easy to scathe. How could it rise to its ultimate importance?

References

The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford University Press, 1997

Die Bibel nach der Übersetzung Martin Luthers. Deutsche Bibelstiftung Stuttgart, 1972

The SPCK Bible Guide. Henry Wansbrough. 2013