More Bible stuff: Genesis
Raised nominally Catholic so I got the Princess Bride version of the Bible - an elder figure reading us the Good Parts Version.
Did actually read it myself once before, in like 3rd grade, book by book to earn Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizzas. Gave up somewhere before the New Testament.
So rereading it’s been a blast, really. It’s better and weirder than I remember and I’m picking up on all sorts of stuff.
Like the creation of Eve and the temptation reads as a mythologizing not of gender but of language and metacognizance - man’s said to name the animals in Gen 2:20 but doesn’t clearly speak until 2:23 now that he has someone to talk to (and be heard by).
And then Genesis 3, that the snake’s temptation is the first actual conversation in the bible, speech up to now being proclamative - the forbidden fruit is eaten because people can talk.
And the first-order reading is “language introduces corruption and deceit”, but more interesting is language introduces the self. It’s because of language that they recognize their nudity - which is to say, they’re able to model how they’re seen by others. And the episode dramatizes how language, and thus persuasion, require the cultivation of a sense of self with enough “mass” to resist argumentation - this whole conflict coming from the way man and woman had simply done the will of whoever spoke to them last.
The snake totally isn’t the rebel Lucifer or the adversary Satan, he seems more like an abortive trickster figure. He’s useful to add a third party to the temptation (language also means your kin are vectors for invasive memes), and also my headcanon is he’s the same figure who tempts Jesus during his 40 years in the desert, and possibly the reason for the 40 years in the desert when he steps in after God exhausted himself with the plagues and Red Sea and stuff.
Genesis 3:22-24, woah I missed this. God’s like “now man’s aware like us(!), nothing stopping him from eating the immortality fruit, better gate it with a boss fight”. How has that plot thread not paid off somewhere? You’ve got grail romances and the fountain of youth and the philosopher’s stone, how have I not read an immortality quest that uses the hook in the opening of our culture’s foundational text?
Is Genesis 4:1 implying that Cain’s conception was an act of God (but in 4:2 Abel’s just happens)? That’s one of those Old Testament precedents I don’t remember hearing.
Genesis 6 is ridiculous. After a page of begats it’s all “And there were all these hot chicks, and these superhumans, and the superhumans banged the hot chicks, and their kids were all badass warrior heroes”, and then God’s like “UGH, this is too grimdark, I regret making it.”
THE FLOOD WAS GOD REBOOTING HIS EMBARRASSING T&A HACK & SLASH WEBCOMIC TO MAKE A SRS BZNS FANTASY EPIC
You’d think the whole “create women” thing backfired on God, but by Noah’s ark when he goes for a do-over he doubles down on the sexual complimentary thing, sons and wives and even the animals paired.
But that’s God for you, eventually he comes around. That’s what I’m picking up, his character doesn’t really read as an essence of perfection or really as a tyrant - he’s distant, a little pompous, a little out of touch but ultimately seems to want good things and eventually comes around in the end.
And my mind’s like “you mean, like some sort of… patriarch?”
And I’m like “yes, exactly like an… oh. Huh.”
Saying “the Bible is a love letter to patriarchy” sounds so banal but it really is, it really really is. The Old Testament is in a lot of ways a narrative about the triumphs and frustrations of a first-time father, one of those photomosaics composed of lots of little explorations of fathers and fatherhood.
I’m looking forward to reading the Book of Job imagining Calvin’s Dad as God.