GENESIS: The Dissensus Bible Group.

[IdleRich]

From very early on, it's clear that Adam/Eve and their descendants aren't the only human beings around, that once they're out of Eden they're in an already-populated world. The notion that all human beings are supposed to be descended from this original couple has very little support in the bible as written. It's what you might think must be true, on the basis of their being the first-created human beings, but the story doesn't actually adhere to that logic at all.

The bit with Abraham sacrificing his son is one of the worst bits for me. For starters God asks him to kill his son which is pretty cuntish right off the bat... then Abraham is all "Well, I don't really want to... I mean, you promised I was gonna father a race and he's my only son and my wife is menopaused now. Oh, and I like him too. But, yeah, you're God ok fuck it I suppose I did say I would obey you in all things, I guess I'll do it". And then he goes to do it but God stops him at the last minute - and then, the real kicker, the really pathetic and tawdry thing about is when people say "Well God metaphorically brought him back to life by stopping the sacrifice". Really? We're right near the start of the first fucking book (the fire and brimstone one) and already they're falling back on this soft shite. The same kind of thing that your CofE vicar said in assembly about how something about how someone, I dunno, surviving a car crash was a miracle - God caused a miracle by letting someone survive. And you're asking "but there was no flash, no magic, nothing beyond normal happened, why was it a miracle?" and the vicar says that him surviving was a miracle and that's what we get now. But it's so disappointing to find out things were watered down to that extent so early. Am I making sense.

 

[IdleRich]

The bit about how there are more than just Adam and Eve around early doors is explored imaginatively in the excellent film Year One with Jack Black and Michael Cera.

 

[luka]

Shameful but im only up to Babel. I do find the names magical and evocative though, the place names in particular

 

[luka]

Im having a pint in the pub and reading it very devoutly

 

[luka]

"And the uncircumcised man-child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people: he hath broken my covenant"

 

[luka]

Abraham is bartering with The Lord over the fate of Sodom and Gomarrah now. 50? 40? 30? 20? 10?

 

[luka]

Lot's daughters (who he had previously offered up to a mob to be raped but they were saved by angels) have just got him drunk so they can commit incest with him

 

[luka]

Spirited girls.

 

[luka]

'Take now thy son, thy only son Issac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah: and offer him there for a burnt offering"

 

[IdleRich]

It's difficult to get to the heart of the meaning with that story. I do like the bit when the people of Sodom hear there's some new people in town so they round up a posse and go to gang rape them. Is this just what they did as a matter of course?

 

[luka]

Well as my mate said Issac probably masturbated too much

 

[IdleRich]

Well as my mate said Issac probably masturbated too much

That was Onan wasn't it?
Though actually I think that Onan's sin was actually pulling out and "spilling his seed on the ground" rather than what it has come to mean over mean.

 

[poetix]

"...Abe said 'man, you must be puttin' me on'"

Except that Abe emphatically does not say this, because that would have ruined the gesture.

Derrida talks about the whole Abraham/Isaac sacrificial scenario at length in The Gift of Death. I don't remember what exactly he says about it, though. The gist may have been that the "gift" has to lie outside of all game-theoretic calculation - if Abraham undertakes to kill Isaac on the expectation that God doesn't really mean it, in anticipation of being rewarded for his show of faithfulness, then of course the gesture is hollow. The last-minute reprieve has to be entirely unpredictable (by Abraham, at least) for the story to work. But for any reader of the story, it's kind of a predictable outcome, because we know how this sort of divine gambit is supposed to work. So there's a split between Abraham's diegetic (lack of) understanding of what's going on, and our exegetic understanding that this is a certain kind of story and is going to go a certain sort of way.

 

[craner]

Sit down, Jacques.

 

[luka]

My dad was brought up in a fearsomely strict Plymouth Brethren family and that story always stuck in his craw. I remember him talking to me about it. I think if you are indoctrinated into this stuff (I wasn t obviously) it assumes a horror it's impossible for the rest of us to access. For us it's just quaint.

 

[Corpsey]

I wondered if that story was supposed to show the Jewish God's distinction from false idols that do demand human sacrifice, carried through. Essentially, this God demands faith and obedience, but is also merciful (and is opposed to human-on-human bloodshed, hence the mark of Caine, the post-flood covenant). But I have no knowledge of if such other religions existed at the time.

It could also just be a variation on the 'honor thy father' principle - which after all is an important one for the maintenance of social order (and still presumably figures in many modern stories).

Hopefully going to reume my Bible studies this week, just had a heavy weekend and feeling appropriately guilty. Not read up to Abraham and Isaac.

 

[Corpsey]

I don't want to clog up this thread with paintings, but this story inspired a particularly good one which I saw recently in the Uffizi.

 

[luka]

I wondered if that story was supposed to show the Jewish God's distinction from false idols that do demand human sacrifice, carried through. Essentially, this God demands faith and obedience, but is also merciful (and is opposed to human-on-human bloodshed, hence the mark of Caine, the post-flood covenant). But I have no knowledge of if such other religions existed at the time.

It could also just be a variation on the 'honor thy father' principle - which after all is an important one for the maintenance of social order (and still presumably figures in many modern stories).

Hopefully going to reume my Bible studies this week, just had a heavy weekend and feeling appropriately guilty. Not read up to Abraham and Isaac.

That's a clever way to read it. That hadn't occurred to me.

 

[craner]

Good post, Corpse. Perfect timing too.

 

[poetix]

There's a long sequence of adjustments from "burnt sacrifices are good, obviously" through "but not children! Sheesh!" to "burnt sacrifices without keeping the Law are hypocritical and bad, actually", to "you know what, just forget about the burnt sacrifices"