Part of my project to read through the Bible.
Started: December 26, 2021
Finished: January 12, 2022
(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.)
My Read Through the Bible Project: What it is and Why I'm Doing it
I tried to explain this project in my started video (HERE), but since I like these blog posts to stand independently, I should probably briefly write down the purpose behind this project on this blog in addition to the video.
First of all, My History with the Bible.
I grew up in the Christian school system, where every year the Bible was studied as a daily school subject in the same way math or science was studied. From this education, I grew up knowing a lot about the Bible. The school studies focused mostly on the narrative sections of the Bible, so we didn't spend a lot of time on things like the Psalms or the Pauline Epistles. But the historical narrative in the Old Testament I had read many times over by the time I graduated 8th grade.
In addition to this, I tried to read through the Bible on my own starting in 7th grade. I read one chapter every night for my daily devotions. I think I may actually have given up on this project somewhere in the Pauline Epistles. But I did at least read all of the Old Testament on my own, and all of the narrative sections of the New Testament.
Why I Want to Re-Read The Bible
The idea to return to the Bible has been prompted by a few things:
* Recently, I've been becoming more and more aware of the value of re-reading books. In the past, I tried to avoid re-reading books. There were so many classic books I hadn't read, why waste time re-reading books I had already read, I thought. But over time I've come to realize that my memory fades, and classic books need to be refreshed every once and a while. I can't go my whole life based off of my knowledge of the Bible from 8th grade.
* I have it in mind that I want to read through the canon of Western Literature. You know, start at the beginning, and just read through all the canonical works. I'm not sure I'll ever get there. (I'm already middle-aged, and I only read a handful of books a year.) But it can't hurt to try. And even if I only ultimately get around to reading some of the canon, that some should still enrich me.
In this, I'm greatly influenced by Steve Donoghue, who makes the points that (1) it is possible to become well-read (2) you don't need to go back to school to do it, you can do it on your own, (3) you should do it systematically--i.e. start at the beginning of the canon and work your way forward.
And Steve recommends starting with The Bible as the beginning of the Western Canon.
I'll link his video below since this has had a great influence on my thought process here:
How I'll Be Reviewing the Bible
With all that in mind, I'm going to do my best to approach the Bible as literature, and not go all Christopher Hitchens on everything.
In my 30s, I spent a lot of time on this blog pointing out all the problems with the Bible--see HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, ... and more. But I feel like I've worked through all that now, and don't feel the need to be so aggressive about pointing out all the problems with Christianity. It's not that I've changed my mind about it, but I no longer want to spend all my time being so obsessed with proving other people wrong--it's negative energy. Better just to let people believe what they want to believe, and go about my day.
In my reviews of the Bible, I'll of course be using the historical-critical stance, but I'm going to do my best not to be overly critical. (We'll see how I do. It's possible I may slip back into old habits, so I'm reluctant to promise good behavior. But this is what I'll be aiming for.)
I've also decided to treat the Bible as an anthology rather than just one book, and to review each book separately. This is a reflection of the shift in reviewing policy I've made on this blog--in the past, I tried to review compilation - volumes - as - a - whole, now I review each book in the compilation volume separately.
This is also based on the obvious observation that books like Galatians are obviously not in the same category as 2nd Samuel, so it would be ridiculous to try to review them together.
I'll be following the traditional division of books in the Bible. I know this traditional division isn't always how scholars would view the Bible (for example 1st Samuel, 2nd Samuel, 1st Kings and 2nd Kings were all historically just one single book), but it's just going to keep things nice and simple to go with the traditional divisions.
Although this may cause some awkwardness when we get to the really short books .(Can I make a whole review out of a book of the Bible that is just a paragraph long? I guess we'll see.)
In order to avoid getting too bogged down with writing reviews once I get into the smaller books, I may give myself some flexibility on my new rule that reviews have to be published within 24 hours of finishing the book.
The Jerusalem Bible: Reader's Edition
I'm still out in Vietnam over here, which means getting access to books in English is an issue. I went online to see what English Bibles I could order in Vietnam. I grew up on the NIV, so that was the first one I searched for, but I couldn't order it in Vietnam.
The King James Version was available, but I took on Steve Donoghue's advice (see the video linked to above) that the King James Version is not the best choice for your first reading of the Bible. (In my case this isn't my first read, but it's my first re-read in years, so I'm going to treat myself as a new reader.)
I did find The Jerusalem Bible: Reader's Edition available online.
I had never heard of The Jerusalem Bible before, but I looked it up, and it's a Catholic endorsed translation. Because it's Catholic, this means it has the books of the Deuterocanon, which as a young protestant I had heard of, but never read before, as well as expanded versions of The Book of Daniel and The Book of Esther. The idea of reading the complete Bible, with all the extra books, excited me, so I ordered The Jerusalem Bible.
"The Reader's Edition", I discovered once the book arrived, means that this book doesn't contain as much footnotes and commentary as the original edition. Personally I would have preferred the full commentary edition, but again, I'm stuck out here in Vietnam, so I just have to go with what is available here.
Since reading through the whole Bible will likely take me some time, it's possible I might end up changing editions halfway through if this one ever gets lost or damaged. But this is what I'm going for now.
Okay, with all that out of the way, let's get into it. The Book of Genesis:
Background
The first book of the Bible. "Genesis" is Greek for "In the Beginning". (I'm guessing the fact that we use the Greek word for this book rather than the original Hebrew title must be a result of the prominence of the Septuagint during the time of the early church.) Traditionally this book was ascribed to Moses, but modern scholarship has shown that it is composed of 4 sources--the Jawhist source, The Elohist Source, The Priestly Source, and the Deuteronomist.
Summary of the Content
The first 11 chapters cover the origin of the world generally, but from Chapter 12 the story narrows to the Patriarchs. First Abraham, than Isaac, then Jacob and Esau, and then Jacob's 12 children, most notably the story of Joseph.
Genesis is a mixture of stories that everyone knows, and are so familiar that it's hard to even read them without your brain switching off and going into autopilot mode (e.g. Adam and Eve, Noah's ark, etc.) mixed in with stories that are really obscure and that no one talks about nowadays (e.g. the rape of Dinah, Judah and Tamar, etc.)
Links to Previous Posts
* For all the reasons why Moses couldn't possibly have written the books of the Pentateuch, see The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
* The History of World Literature by Professor Grant L. Voth (From The Great Courses Series). Grant Voth includes the Old Testament as part of his foundational texts of World Literature. He makes the point that the editors of the Old Testament apparently had a lot of duplicate versions of the same story, and would often include both versions. He emphasizes that this was not a "mistake", but a conscious editorial choice. He cites this as a unique feature of reading the Old Testament--you, the reader, are presented with both versions, and you, the reader, get to decide which version you want to go with.
Grant Voth gives as one of his examples the two different creation stories in Genesis. Genesis 1 has one version of the creation story, and Genesis 2 has a second version of the creation story.
Genesis 1 is the six day creation story. Genesis 2 is the Adam and Eve story, but, it's actually not a continuation of Genesis 1. It's a complete retelling of the creation account. In Genesis 1, the animals are created first, and then man and woman are created together. In Genesis 2, Adam is created first, then the animals are created as helpmates for Adam, and finally Eve is created at the end.
I remember when I was first listening to this lecture in my early 30s, and having this realization suddenly dawn on me. I don't know how many times I had heard these stories in Sunday School. I knew these stories well, but it had never dawned on me before that these were 2 separate stories about the order of creation. Why had I never realized this before?
I suspect this is a common experience. A lot of us grow up in the church, and never realize there are two separate creation stories. (What was your experience? Let me know in the comments.)
* For more information about what the sources of Genesis are, see The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible by Robin Lane Fox, and Introduction to the Old Testament by Christine Hayes. Both of these experts complement each other. Robin Lane Fox does a good job of describing the characteristics of each source, Christine Hayes does a good job of describing where the source theory comes from and what it's explanatory strengths and weaknesses are.
Christine Hayes also helped me to realize that although sometimes the two different accounts are placed side by side (as in the 2 creations stories) sometimes the two different accounts are mashed together--Christine Hayes uses the various contradictions in the Noah story as an example.
* In her lectures, Christine Hayes also talks about the book The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter (W). I've not read the book (I don't know how I would track it down out here in Vietnam), but based on what Christine Hayes says about it, I'm lead to believe that this book tries to explain the narrative choices made by Biblical writers. As Christine Hayes points out, it's a very minimalist style, in which only the bare bones of a story are evident, but most of the key details are missing. This is different than other ancient texts (Homer and Herodotus, for example, had much more color in their narratives.)
Whether you like it, or hate it, it's a choice that the Biblical writers have made. And it's not just one source, but it's true all the way through all historical sections of the Old Testament, so the Biblical Writers are obviously writing in a narrative tradition.
Extended Quotation
Genesis 22: 1-19
1.It happened some time later that God put Abraham to the test. 'Abraham, Abraham!' he called. 'Here I am,' he replied. 2.God said, 'Take your son, your only son, your beloved Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, where you are to offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall point out to you.' 3.Early next morning Abraham saddled his donkey and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He chopped wood for the burnt offering and started on his journey to the place which God had indicated to him. 4.On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5.Then Abraham said to his servants, 'Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there; we shall worship and then come back to you.' 6.Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering, loaded it on Isaac, and carried in his own hands the fire and the knife. Then the two of them set out together. 7.Isaac spoke to his father Abraham. 'Father?' he said. 'Yes, my son,' he replied. 'Look,' he said, 'here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?' 8.Abraham replied, 'My son, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.' And the two of them went on together. 9.When they arrived at the place which God had indicated to him, Abraham built an altar there, and arranged the wood. Then he bound his son and put him on the altar on top of the wood. 10.Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11.But the angel of Yahweh called to him from heaven. 'Abraham, Abraham!' he said. 'Here I am,' he replied. 12.'Do not raise your hand against the boy,' the angel said. 'Do not harm him, for now I know you fear God. You have not refused me your own beloved son.' 13.Then looking up, Abraham saw a ram caught by its horns in a bush. Abraham took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14.Abraham called this place 'Yahweh provides', and hence the saying today: 'On the mountain Yahweh provides.' 15.The angel of Yahweh called Abraham a second time from heaven. 16.'I swear by my own self, Yahweh declares, that because you have done this, because you have not refused me your own beloved son, 17.I will shower blessings on you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will gain possession of the gates of their enemies. 18.All nations on earth will bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed my command.' 19.Abraham went back to his servants, and together they set out for Beersheba, and Abraham settled in Beersheba."
***END QUOTE***
As Christine Hayes points out in her lectures (using the The Art of Biblical Narrative), a lot of key details are missing from this account.
The ambiguities and the indeterminacy of this story make it one of the most interpreted texts of all time. Why is God testing Abraham? Does God really desire such a sacrifice? What is Abraham thinking and feeling as he walks — for three days, already — walks with his son, bearing the wood and the fire for the sacrifice? Does he fully intend to obey this command, to annul the covenantal promise with his own hand? Or does he trust in God to intervene? Or is this a paradox of faith? Does Abraham intend faithfully to obey, all the while trusting faithfully that God's promise will nevertheless be fulfilled? What's Isaac thinking? Does he understand what is happening? How old is he? Is this a little boy or a grown man? Is he prepared to obey? He sees the wood and the firestone in his father's hand. Clearly a sacrifice is planned. He's got three days to figure that out. He asks his father: Where is the sheep for the burnt offering? Does he know the answer even as he asks? Does he hear the double entendre in his father's very simple and solemn reply, which in the unpunctuated Hebrew might be read, "The lord will provide the sheep for the offering: my son." Does he struggle when he's bound? Does he acquiesce?The beauty of the narrative is its sheer economy. It offers so little that we as readers are forced to imagine the innumerable possibilities. We play out the drama in countless ways, with an Abraham who's reluctant and an Isaac who's ignorant. Or an Abraham who's eager to serve his God to the point of sacrificing his own son, and an Isaac who willingly bares his neck to the knife.
The Reading Experience
So, putting aside any theological axes I may have to grind, and trying to just approach this as a reading experience:
The first thing to note is that reading through The Book of Genesis is not quite as intimidating as I remember it from my youth. It's only 50 pages in my edition.
Now, granted those are 50 pages of tiny print. (You can't get away from tiny print when you're reading the Bible. The trade-off of cramming all that text within one portable volume is a lot of tiny print--unless you've got one of those huge Family Bibles (W)). And I hate to say it, but I'm feeling my age slightly on that tiny print--it strains my eyes more now than it did when I was 12.
Still... tiny print and all, I think you could reasonably finish this off in 2 or 3 afternoons of good reading. I took 2 and a half weeks myself, but that's me reading at a leisurely pace (plus juggling a lot of other books and being busy with other stuff.)
As for the content, there are tons of weird and fascinating stories that make The Book of Genesis a fascinating read. And there's also a glimpse into an ancient exotic time period (the nomads, the camels, the herdsmen, the tents, etc.).
But for all its joys, there's a lot of frustration. As mentioned above, the narration style is not at all what a modern audience is expecting.
But aside from a barebones narration style, there's just a whole lot of stuff that just doesn't make sense. Stuff where you're like, "Huh? Where did that come from? Did I miss a verse somewhere?" I often had to consult online commentaries to try to make sense of what I was reading.
(Thank goodness for all the free online commentaries at Biblehub.com Although admittedly, a lot of the time when you look up a verse, the various commentaries will give some version of "Yeah... we have no idea what this verse is talking about either. But here are a half-dozen guesses about what it could be referring to.")
And that did, at times, make the reading experience feel a bit like swimming upstream. Which is, perhaps, another reason why I only took this book a couple of pages at a time.
Evaluation
None of what is in Genesis is historical in a direct sense ( see The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible by Robin Lane Fox). But there's a lot of indirect history in here in that the authors are attempting to give the origin story for the different nationalities located in the land of Canaan. Where do the Israelites come from? Where do the Moabites come from? Where do the Edomites come from? How come the Edomites were conquered by the Israelites? How come the tribes of Simeon and Levi don't have any land? How come the tribe of Ephraim is most prominent in the North?
The geopolitical landscape of the 9th Century B.C. is read back into these origin stories for the different tribes and nations.
External Links
As mentioned above, I made good use of the commentaries at Biblehub.com .
Also for confusing verses, I found it useful to compare translations, which is so easy nowadays thanks to biblegateway.com.
In the later half of Genesis, I spent a lot of time on Wikipedia seeing if the fate of the 12 tribes of Israel (W) lined up with the prophecies in Genesis.
For example, because Reuben slept with his father's concubine, Jacob denies him his firstborn blessing. According to Wikipedia, possibly this is because by the 9th Century B.C. it looks like the tribe of Reuben no longer has a homeland.
Jacob curses Simeon and Levi (for their attack on the Shechemites in Genesis 34) and says they will be scattered. And according to Wikipedia, it looks like the tribe of Simeon was absorbed by the tribe of Judah. As for Levi, according to Wikipedia, "critics regard this as an aetiological postdiction to explain how a tribe could be so scattered, the simpler solution being that the priesthood was originally open to any tribe, but gradually became seen as a distinct tribe to themselves".
And on it goes. I was using Wikipedia a lot with any references to the tribes of Israel.
I also found the map at Wikipedia useful in seeing how the tribes of Israel would be laid out later. (Some of the visuals--like seeing Simeon completely surrounded by Judah--help to make sense of the prophecies in Genesis.)
The Jerusalem Bible
This is my first encounter with The Jerusalem Bible, and I'm finding the commentary interesting. The back cover of my Jerusalem Bible touts itself as a Bible for conservatives, bragging that "...it still holds to the traditional (noninclusive) language that appeals to conservative Catholic and Protestant Christians." (Parentheses in the original)And yet, despite this the footnotes and commentary in this edition are clearly embracing the Source Theory of the Pentateuch. The introduction to Genesis talks about the 4 different sources that scholars have identified. The two creation accounts are labelled as "The First Account of Creation" and "The Second Account of Creation" whereas the NIV labels them as "The Beginning" and "Adam and Eve". So if you're just casually reading through the NIV, it's possible to miss that these are two different versions of the story, not a continuation of the story.
The footnotes in the Jerusalem Bible will even go so far as to point out the different contradictions in the text. For example, in Genesis 21, when Ishmael is playing with baby Isaac, the footnotes point out that Ishmael should be 16 years old by now, and that different sources are being conflated. The footnotes also point out how two different sources are being conflated in the account of Joseph being sold into slavery (Genesis 37). The footnotes also point out how some folk etymologies described in Genesis are implausible.
The footnotes in the NIV (the Bible I grew up with) would never undercut the Bible text in that way, so I'm finding this all interesting.
I've been flipping ahead a little bit, however, and it looks like the footnotes and commentary in The Jerusalem Bible is much more conservative when we get to the New Testament. Some of the more well-known textual problems with the Gospels are either ignored by the footnotes, or the footnotes are attempting to defend church tradition.
Other Odds and Ends
Oh man, there is so much more to talk about, isn't there? I've barely scratched the surface here when talking about all the stuff that is in Genesis. But, when doing these reviews, I'm going to try really hard to stick to the rules I laid out in my new format for book reviews. Otherwise there would be no end to the amount I'd have to write.
Commonplace Book
Even though these ratings are meant to convey my subjective reading experience (and are not meant to be taken as an objective pronouncement on the book), I still feel like it's going to be courting controversy to rate books that some people consider to be holy scripture. No ratings for the duration of this project.
* January 2, 2022 Chapters 1-19
* January 9, 2022 Chapters 19-41
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
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