Ha’Arets
March 1, 2010
A response to The Last Rainbow, an apocalyptic poem for lent by James Stambaugh.
The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:12
Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord.
Leviticus 25:2
The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
Isaiah 24:5
O land, land, land,
hear the word of the Lord!
Jeremiah 22:29
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God,
when I will send a famine on the land;
not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
Amos 8:11
The Last Rainbow — An Apocalyptic
February 22, 2010
NOTE: It’s Lent, people; it’s supposed to be depressing.
No one remembers
When the last rainbow appeared.
Was it after that last oil spill?
The one that finally did the ocean in?
Was it after the last mountain was leveled?
Or when the last hill was slit open?
When the last of the mineral wealth was stolen?
Was it after the last forest was paved over?
After the last marsh was converted to overflow parking?
Or was it just before that delicate, unknown moment
When the scales were tipped ever so slightly,
And the air became so pregnant with poison
That that very last persistent little bird
Could not lift her petrol-slick wings in flight?
When did we break that age-old treaty
Between God and all humankind–
When God promised not to destroy the earth?
When did we take it upon ourselves
To do that which God would not do?
The last rainbow happened decades ago.
Born Alone. Die Alone.
November 29, 2009
He brought him outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Night Sky at Petra, Jordan
Adapting a prominent cliché, Orson Wells famously said, “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” While impressively stoic, the faith community behind Genesis 15 would likely find Wells’ statement absurd.
In Abraham’s world—a less individualistic, less literal place—such a sentiment would be unthinkable. It could be argued that the very goal of life was to insure one did not die alone, and that those for whom one was responsible were not born alone. These relationships could never be illusions, for they were the very means by which one survived in a harsh world especially cruel to loners. Communities did not exist to create a bubble of happiness. They existed to make existence possible. Thus, the irony of ancestor and descendant was one of origin and legacy: A son found his identity in his father. The father lived forever through his son.
This ancient vision of community should give readers in our radically individualistic culture pause when considering the nature of God’s promises in the Abraham cycle. The guarantee of an heir was an offer of eternal significance and the prospect of land was an offer of elected provision. The significance of showing Abraham stars is not merely to showcase their number, but their permanence. The intimacy of 15:6 should not be missed. What is happening between God and Abraham is not something that can be described in a series of steps or in dialogue as in the first five verses, but only observed from a theological distance. It would seem Abraham’s faith and subsequent righteousness is neither the result of an obedient act nor a pious prayer but a feat accomplished while stargazing.
From his son, Abraham would discover his place within community. From the stars he would discover his place in creation. New Testament communities would later locate his place within salvation history. Christians today are called to discern no less. By faith we explore these three relationships—God, community and creation. They are not illusions, nor the byproduct of our selfish ambitions. They are the reality that we’re never alone.
Origins Revisited
November 25, 2008
An impromptu curiosity seized me this morning as I woke with an odd urge to read a bit of commentary on the primeval stories in Genesis. While sipping coffee and interspersedly checking my blogs, I absorbed the series of articles that dealt with the topic in my Anchor Bible Dictionary. The whole activity reminded me of our sustenance topic and I thought I might revisit it here with a few observations I learned about Genesis 1-3.
1. Myth, History, or Story?
In what language can we discuss this epic literature? Certainly it captures elements of all three of these vague ‘genres.’ John J. Scullion (the writer of “The Narrative of Genesis” article in the ABD) prefers to speak of it in terms of Story. History, he says, is “still much under the influence of the fathers of modern scholarly and documented history—[...] and rightly so.” Additionally, only myth fails to capture the gravity of meaning that this literature carries for communities throughout history and today. As he explains;
“For the people of Israel, the book of Genesis, and the whole of Pentateuch, is their tradition; this is their past, this has made them what they are, this is what happened.”
2. God Created Order, NOT matter
Despite what a fundamentalist may tell you, Genesis 1 is not a scientific, event by event essay on the creation of the space-time Universe. Rather it is the story of God bringing order to chaos, and the outline of mankind’s role in that intended order. The Hebrew word for create, bara inescapably implies ordering. Much confusion came when the Hebrew idea of creation as order collided with the Hellenistic idea of creatio ex nihilio. You can see this tension of interpretation played in the scriptures. Compare Isaiah 45:18: “[God] did not create [the Universe] a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited” and the much later 2 Maccabees 7:28 “Son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing.”
3. The Full Meaning of Genesis is Best Understood in the Context of Other Primeval Cultural Stories
The Genesis account is to designed to make distinctions in light of other creation accounts. For example the sun and moon are created and not to be worshipped, light is created and is in no way identified with or as God (as in the Egyptian account), and it is through God’s (not Baal’s) own natural blessing that humans and animals are fertile.
4. Man is Made
Among many other things, Adam is not some dude named Adam but is in fact mankind, ha’adam. He is made from the dust and is limited and will one day return to dust. But despite this, he is made in the image of God and exists in communion with the creator. In this way there is a distinction between ha’adam and the animals. He is given work and he is held accountable for his will.
5. The Prohibition is an Essential, Thematic Detail
Both the Garden and The Tree of Life are common themes in ancient Near Eastern creation stories. Their significance is not so much their presence as the way that (ha’adam) interact with them. In Genesis, the creator’s prohibiting the Tree from humanity implies certain theological certainties. Among them;
1. It emphasizes the will of the creator, and ha’adam‘s responsibility to obey a will outside of his or her own.
2. There is the opportunity for disobedience
3. Work and toil is not punishment for disobedience. It is given before the prohibition is disobeyed.
6. Woman In Complete Oneness
God did not forget at first to create woman. Nor did man survey the animals and find none of them suitable to mate with so God had to make him something else instead. Man surveyed the animals and found none that could be his equal. In fact, woman is the counterpart of man and made of the same stuff. The author of Genesis “is expressing the complete oneness of man and woman: their physical and spiritual unity, their mutual belongs as equals, their mutual joy in each other.”
7. The Serpent Is Not a Character
The Serpent is a significant symbol in the Ancient Near Eastern world (the brass serpent in Numbers 21, the serpent as a symbol in the Canaanite fertility cult, etc…) The question should not be “what does the serpent represent?” (i.e. the devil, temptation, man’s selfishness, etc…) but “how does the serpent function in the story?”
The serpent functions to exaggerate the prohibition. He addresses the woman, you always in the plural. Knowledge here is not a theoretical, smarts kind of thing, but a practical and experiential thing. It is the knowledge to know what is right and wrong for ha’adam. It is dethroning God of his role as creator and attempting to function in his stead.
When the disobedience is discovered the serpent’s role is finished. It is not interrogated, nor cursed, nor are its motives explained.
8. The Riddle of Existence
“The writer [of Genesis] faces that unfathomable riddle which is part of the human race so long as and wherever it exists. There is in the human being that drive to transcend the self by overstepping or bursting the limits within which it is set. There is nothing wrong in the desire itself. The fruit is “good to eat and pleasing to look at.” Two normal and good reactions are described. The fruit is also “desirable so as to make one wise.” It is here that the drive to overstep the limits is introduced. The relationship of the man and the woman to God is changed by the transgression; hence too their relationship to each other.”
—John J. Scullion in ABD “Genesis, Narrative of”
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