wolfbiblemoon

Genesis ends with Jacob's and Joseph's deaths.

* Jacob and Joseph both live over 100 years, and Joseph somehow dies before all his (older) brothers aged 110 years

Not much else to say about these two chapters, there's a slightly bizarre moment when Jacob blesses Joseph's two sons back to front or something. And Jacob gets to curse and/or bless each of his 12 sons for their past actions before passing away peacefully.

At the end of my Illustrated Book of Genesis, the illustrator, R. Crumb, talks about the research he did while making this book. Interestingly, the current incarnation of the bible stories come off as pretty patriarchal and anti-feminist, but a lot of the stories were originally matriarchal, as the society at the time would have been.

So references to Sarah (and others) being barren may have originally been because high priestesses were not allowed to bare children until they have finished their duties. Also a few wives seem to easily get their way over their husbands, and despite Abraham having a second wife, only the children he had with Sarah continue to be mentioned (suggesting that her lineage was the important one rather than his).

That's the end of Genesis, tomorrow I start on Exodus.

Joseph tricks his brothers to find out if they've reformed

* The Calypso in the musical in which the brothers beg and plead with Joseph to let their youngest brother, Benjamin, go when he is found with the cup that was planted on him is my favourite song in the whole show.

Though having now read the original story in the bible, I'm not sure that offering to go to jail themselves for a minor crime in the place of their brother is enough to redeem these men who a few chapters ago were slaughtering a whole city for their sister's honour (someone who's been entirely forgotten about since) and then tried to kill Joseph for being the favourite of their father.

But they are forgiven, I guess because their attempts at ridding themselves of Joseph led to him becoming very well off and important so they were just playing their part in the big plan.

Also the brothers now don't seem to have any problem with Benjamin being the new favourite of their father, he's the other son of Jacob's favourite wife, favouritism is a big thing in the bible.

More of Joseph's story, with a short interlude for a tale of one of his brothers, Judah.

* Judah has 3 children with a woman he's not married to and the first two get killed because God doesn't like them. Judah also has twin boys with the widow of his two sons.

* A rather big innacuracy in the Joseph musical, when he's sent to jail because Potiphah's wife says Joseph tried to sleep with her (when it was actually the other way round) he sings the moving song 'Close Every Door' but in the bible he actually has a pretty good time in jail, being put in charge of the other prisoners rather than kept alone in the dark as the song implies!

Jacob makes up with his brother and the first killings to defend a family's honour take place.

* Jacob's only daughter, Dinah, is forgotten about until the verse in which she is 'defiled' and the man who defiles her wants to marry her. This leads to her brothers tricking the men of the city into circumcising themselves (otherwise the man isn't allowed to marry Dinah) and while they are still sore from their operations a bunch of Jacob's sons come and kill every man in the city, loot everything of value and take the women with them. They are really nice guys these children of Israel. At least they didn't kill their sister for getting 'defiled'...

Jacob starts building his family in rather convoluted way.

* Jacob deceives his father in order to receive a blessing promised to his twin brother. His brother is then angry and gets a less-good blessing. Because there aren't enough well wishes to go around apparently.

* Jacob then gets deceived by the father of the woman he wants to marry (after he worked for him for 7 years to pay for her) and ends up bedding her older sister. But then he ends up marrying both of them (after working for another 7 years for their father). See, marriage is a sacred institution...

* Despite the fact that God always has favourites, Jacob's favouritism for the woman he originally wanted to marry means that God decides to make her barren and bless the other one with lots of sons.

(When they start listing the children's names I feel like singing Jacob & Sons from Joseph, I guess that story will be in tomorrow's reading!)

Abraham's son Isaac, almost a human sacrifice and married to his cousin.

* I think much has been said about the barbarity of the Lord's test of Abraham's faith. The fact that he has to test someone's limits shows he's definitely not all-knowing and Abraham carries on being the most easily led man ever. To actually get to the point of raising the knife above your child's heart, another fine example of the family values in this book.

* After the death of his very old wife, Abraham sends a servant to find a wife for Isaac in his homeland, because he can't have his son marrying within the place they reside, because they aren't part of the chosen people I suppose. The servant finds Abraham's brother and procures his daughter, and Isaac therefore marries his cousin. It's nice that Abraham decided to do something nice for his son, well nicer than sacrificing him to the Lord anyway...

Polygamy, circumcision and old people may have children.

* This Abraham fellow does anything the Lord tells him just because he's been promised lots of descendants and that they'll all be very important. Even cutting off the foreskins of anyone involved with his family.

* The Lord is not the only schizo character, Abraham's wife tells him to lie with her handmaid because she herself cannot bear children and then is jealous when the handmaid conceives! The Lord seems pretty happy with the whole deal, polygamy and extra marital affairs obviously not a problem at this point.

* His previously barren wife will now be conceiving at the age of 90, and even she is pretty sceptical that this will happen.

* Abraham tries to convince the Lord not to wipe out the city of Sodom in case there are innocents residing amongst all the debauchery, yet the Lord has already wiped the Earth clean in a flood so I doubt he's worried about a few innocents in a city. But that's for tomorrow.

The flood clears up and Noah has lots of descendants...

* Apparently the flood story is actually two different stories merged together, badly. So it switches between the rain lasting 40 days or 150 days and Noah randomly sends a Raven out before the Dove and the Raven just flies about a bit. Not that it would make any more sense if that hadn't been the case!!

Oh and I don't know how the story of Noah's Ark is suitable as a story for children to adore, sure the idea of animals going two by two is nice but what about all the ones that are wiped out because of the sins of a few humans. Though I suppose scaring children into conforming is a big part of indoctrination.

* God doesn't seem to be particularly omnipotent, he puts a rainbow in the sky to mark the fact that he won't wipe all humans and animals out again and he says that it will remind him of that when he sees it as well.

* Far too much begatting, whoever wrote this is obsessed with pointless lineages.

* Tower of Babel in this section, supposedly the advent of diverse languages, despite the mention in a previous chapter of all the different tongues that are spoken on Earth.

Only thought I've had so far (beyond the whole literal creationism=crazy thing) is that Adam just suddenly has that name after being known as 'Man' for much of Chapter 1 and 2, although it depends on the version you read, as my book doesn't mention the name until 3:17 but the SAB starts using Adam at 2:19. Adam then bestows his 'Woman' with the name Eve (3:20), wasn't that nice of him.

Not sure that this is the sort of thing to be noticing, but it's what jumped out at me as I already know the creation story and the fact that chapter 2 starts all over again with God creating everything in a different order from chapter 1!

Actually in a way the first version is better as Man and Woman are created at the same time rather than Woman being created as an after-thought to provide companionship to Adam.