Genesis 11-12
Getting started is always the most difficult part of any project. I imagine that after this week we'll already have a clearer idea of what particular kinds of questions and issues interest us as a group. For now, in order to get the ball rolling, I'd like to raise a specific question about Genesis 11-12. However, especially this week, we should feel free to let the discussion roam in a variety of directions including general questions about the reading, the project, technical questions, etc.
Also, Rosalynde previously asked about what translation we'd be using. I suggest that we begin with the KJV but freely draw upon any other translations we find useful and upon the Hebrew itself where possible or profitable. I've found Robert Alter's very literal and literary translation of and commentary on Genesis to be especially helpful and may often come back to it (Alter's famous The Art of Biblical Narrative is well worth taking a look at if you're unfamiliar with it).
I'd like to begin, then, with a question that I hope will not be trivial and that I hope will open in several directions at once.
Discussion Question
Why are God's first words to Abraham/Abram (12.1 - "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house") aimed precisely at puncturing the security and harmony of Abraham's connection to his family and homeland? And, is this a fair way to pose the question?
Notes and Additional Questions
Genesis 11.1-9, It's useful to include all of chapter 11 in our reading for this week (even though it does not directly concern Abraham) because the story of the tower of Babel functions as a useful foil for the opening of chapter 12 and the question I pose above. Just as the builders of the tower were scattered and their language was confounded, Abraham is also scattered by God from his native land (and his native tongue?) and is mute in response to his scattering (he makes no reply to God). However, where in the first instance this scattering is experienced as a curse and as what ruins the attempt of the tower-builders to "make a name" (11.4) for themselves, for Abraham the dislocation comes as a blessing by means of which he is blessed and his "name will be made great" (12.2). Abraham is here promised the very thing the tower-builders wanted (a name that would last), but he is promised it by the very means that denied it to the tower-builders. Or, we could say, the tower-builders want a name so that they won't be scattered, but this is the very thing that prompts God to scatter them.
Genesis 11.32-12.1, We should also note that God speaks to Abraham immediately following Abraham's father's death. ". . . Terah died in Haran. And the Lord said to Abraham . . ." This connection doesn't strike me as accidental (God speaking to Abraham out of the void of the father's death) and seems connected to the way that God is dislocating Abraham from hearth and home (though we perhaps need to be careful in talking about Abraham in this way due his relatively nomadic lifestyle - he certainly doesn't have a mortgage).
Genesis 12.4, As I've already noted, Abraham, living in a world that has seen its language broken (as Alter translates 11.1, what has been lost is "one set of words" or the possibility of univocity), is mute in response to the blessing. He simply "departs." Does this loss of univocity, the dislocation of home and language, spell the end of theology (so that we must be mute), or does the possibility of a relation to God (and perhaps the possibility of theology) open only in the light of plurivocity and the loss of general equivalence?
Genesis 12.7, Abraham goes without knowing where he is going: the place is specified only when he arrives there without knowing it. Does this also say something about the im/possibility of theology?
12.10-20, Alter notes that this pericope has long been interpreted as a miniature version of the exodus (going down into Egypt because of a famine, the plagues on Pharaoh's house because he splits a family, his cry for Abraham and Sarah to "get out!"). Can we milk this tale of tangled family relationships for any useful information in addressing the general question I pose above?
12.19, Pharaoh's words "Get out!" echo God's opening words to Abraham (12.1) of "get thee out of the land," so that Abraham is reunited with Sarah only at the price of being dislocated once again.
Connections to More General Questions
My discussion question relates most clearly to our third key question: "How do our family relationships shape our fidelity to God and, potentially, the kind of theology we pursue?" It is clear, I think, that Mormon theology requires us to think the family as central to religious experience as such. The difficulty is that Abraham's story (at least thus far) is no story about protecting the sanctity of hearth and home. There does not seem to be a straightforward way of finding in Abraham a paradigm for our everyday conservative Christian discourse about the theological centrality of families. Abraham is, I think, central to trying to think about the way in which God, family, and individual are essentially tied to together in a religious knot, but I suspect that these relationships may get knotted together in a way that is, at least at first, somewhat surprising and (perhaps) not at all conservative.
In addition, the function of language in these two chapters, highlighted by the inclusion of the story of the tower of Babel and its parallels in the opening of Abraham's story, offer some material for thinking about the possibility of theology in general as indicated in the second key question: "What can Abraham's relationship with God tell us about the nature and possibility of theology?" However, they don't appear to be encouraging.
Also, Rosalynde previously asked about what translation we'd be using. I suggest that we begin with the KJV but freely draw upon any other translations we find useful and upon the Hebrew itself where possible or profitable. I've found Robert Alter's very literal and literary translation of and commentary on Genesis to be especially helpful and may often come back to it (Alter's famous The Art of Biblical Narrative is well worth taking a look at if you're unfamiliar with it).
I'd like to begin, then, with a question that I hope will not be trivial and that I hope will open in several directions at once.
Discussion Question
Why are God's first words to Abraham/Abram (12.1 - "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house") aimed precisely at puncturing the security and harmony of Abraham's connection to his family and homeland? And, is this a fair way to pose the question?
Notes and Additional Questions
Genesis 11.1-9, It's useful to include all of chapter 11 in our reading for this week (even though it does not directly concern Abraham) because the story of the tower of Babel functions as a useful foil for the opening of chapter 12 and the question I pose above. Just as the builders of the tower were scattered and their language was confounded, Abraham is also scattered by God from his native land (and his native tongue?) and is mute in response to his scattering (he makes no reply to God). However, where in the first instance this scattering is experienced as a curse and as what ruins the attempt of the tower-builders to "make a name" (11.4) for themselves, for Abraham the dislocation comes as a blessing by means of which he is blessed and his "name will be made great" (12.2). Abraham is here promised the very thing the tower-builders wanted (a name that would last), but he is promised it by the very means that denied it to the tower-builders. Or, we could say, the tower-builders want a name so that they won't be scattered, but this is the very thing that prompts God to scatter them.
Genesis 11.32-12.1, We should also note that God speaks to Abraham immediately following Abraham's father's death. ". . . Terah died in Haran. And the Lord said to Abraham . . ." This connection doesn't strike me as accidental (God speaking to Abraham out of the void of the father's death) and seems connected to the way that God is dislocating Abraham from hearth and home (though we perhaps need to be careful in talking about Abraham in this way due his relatively nomadic lifestyle - he certainly doesn't have a mortgage).
Genesis 12.4, As I've already noted, Abraham, living in a world that has seen its language broken (as Alter translates 11.1, what has been lost is "one set of words" or the possibility of univocity), is mute in response to the blessing. He simply "departs." Does this loss of univocity, the dislocation of home and language, spell the end of theology (so that we must be mute), or does the possibility of a relation to God (and perhaps the possibility of theology) open only in the light of plurivocity and the loss of general equivalence?
Genesis 12.7, Abraham goes without knowing where he is going: the place is specified only when he arrives there without knowing it. Does this also say something about the im/possibility of theology?
12.10-20, Alter notes that this pericope has long been interpreted as a miniature version of the exodus (going down into Egypt because of a famine, the plagues on Pharaoh's house because he splits a family, his cry for Abraham and Sarah to "get out!"). Can we milk this tale of tangled family relationships for any useful information in addressing the general question I pose above?
12.19, Pharaoh's words "Get out!" echo God's opening words to Abraham (12.1) of "get thee out of the land," so that Abraham is reunited with Sarah only at the price of being dislocated once again.
Connections to More General Questions
My discussion question relates most clearly to our third key question: "How do our family relationships shape our fidelity to God and, potentially, the kind of theology we pursue?" It is clear, I think, that Mormon theology requires us to think the family as central to religious experience as such. The difficulty is that Abraham's story (at least thus far) is no story about protecting the sanctity of hearth and home. There does not seem to be a straightforward way of finding in Abraham a paradigm for our everyday conservative Christian discourse about the theological centrality of families. Abraham is, I think, central to trying to think about the way in which God, family, and individual are essentially tied to together in a religious knot, but I suspect that these relationships may get knotted together in a way that is, at least at first, somewhat surprising and (perhaps) not at all conservative.
In addition, the function of language in these two chapters, highlighted by the inclusion of the story of the tower of Babel and its parallels in the opening of Abraham's story, offer some material for thinking about the possibility of theology in general as indicated in the second key question: "What can Abraham's relationship with God tell us about the nature and possibility of theology?" However, they don't appear to be encouraging.
posted by Adam Miller at 3:36 AM
6 Comments:
Joe,
The deep connection between name (shem) and place (sham) is nicely stated - and it nicely ties together our questions about theology (language/names) and family (place/home). Maybe we could say: Abraham is promised a name by becoming anonymous and a place by becoming homeless.
I'm interested to hear what other's think about the voice of God "speaking out of the void of the father's death," but I think that you are right to say that whichever direction we go in reading it, what is at stake is a fundamental revision of the familial/patriarchal structure into something else altogether. Lacan is, of course, not far from my thoughts here, but let's see where this goes for now.
My best,
Adam
In response to Adam's primary discussion question, perhaps it's worth noting the several textual suggestions of disruption to Terah's household and lineage prior to Abram's call. According to the recounting of Shem's lineage in 11.10-26, Terah was 70 years old at the birth of his first son, roughly twice the age of his progenitors at the same occasion; Abraham was, of course, 100 years old at the birth of Isaac. Was Terah's tent barren for a season, as well? A little more mining of the genealogy brings up another disruption to Terah's lineage: in 11.28, Terah's third son Haran dies "while his father was still alive," a most painful and unnatural genealogical reversal, as Abram will of course discover. Finally, Terah has himself already "scattered" his lineage by leaving Ur for Canaan with Abram, Sarai and Lot for Canaan; the migration is interrupted, however, and the group settles in Haran (named for the dead son?), where Terah dies and, presumably, whence Abram departs. The orderly patrilineal succession of 11.10-24 has already begun to sputter and veer when Abram receives his call.
And about the timing of that call: it does follow textually on the death of Terah, as Adam has so elegantly drawn out. In both the KJV and the NIV, the only two versions I've looked at, though, Genesis 12.1 begins in the past perfect: "The Lord had said to Abram," etc; again in 12.4, "So Abram left, as the Lord had told him," at which point the simple past tense resumes. Is this grammatical distinction meaningful in the Hebrew? If it is, it may be meant to suggest that Abram's call occurred sometime earlier, though the textual sequence is significant, and perhaps the discrepant historical (or narrative, I suppose) sequence fruitfully informs the reading in some other way.
Other thoughts and questions:
I’m virtually certain that a scholar---or several dozen---much smarter than I and of whom I am embarrassingly ignorant has already noted the following with far more clarity, but it seems to me that the first ten chapters of Genesis comprise several cycles of cosmogony: a couple of creations to begin with, a reversal of creation in the great flood, and yet another physical revelation of the world as the waters recede. In Genesis 11, we’re on to a different kind of creation, the establishment of a political world of nation(s) and people(s)---what we might call, if we were feeling particularly fustian, an ethnogony. This is what Babel is about, and this is very much what God’s call to Abram is about, as well.
Chapters 11 and 12 are bracketed by a pair of tricks or deceptions, the first carried out by the Lord and the second by Abram, both of which turn on a kind of wordplay and both of which are made to bear on---here’s that horrible pretend word again---ethnogony. In Genesis 11.5-10, the Lord plays a malicious little trick in Babel (or is this the wrong reading?), and scatters the striving tower-builders to pay off, one tries not to suspect, an ethnic pun. The agonistic relationship here between Lord and man sets off the remarkable poem-promise to Abram in 12.2-3. Later, Abram very profitably tricks Pharaoh on the basis of his casuist’s interpretation of “sister”; here the agon obtains between man and man. I’ll be interested in future readings to see what other tricks---including, of course, the greatest trick of all, culminating on an altar on Moriah---turn up in the course of Abram’s (wait for it) ethnagony. (Hey, if the Lord can pun with in impunity---in scripture no less---…!)
Rosalynde - I was hoping that someone else would do the hard work of sorting through the genealogical material and I agree with Joe that the results are important. Also, I love the neologism "ethnagony" (I promise to use it at every available opportunity) and I think it nicely captures precisely the transition in Genesis from the kind of proto-historicity proper to the narratives about Adam & Noah to the kind of "genuinely" historical narratives regarding Abram. Perhaps in this way, the tower of Babel (and the steady decrease in life-expectancy) indicates this transition: history begins when univocity is definitively lost. The loss of a univocal language and increasingly proximity of death are, of course, I think, connected here.
As for Lacan - I'll need a bit of a running start. More later.
As for Sarai - maybe the biggest hurdle in wrapping our heads around even the un-transformed conception of family/marriage/patriarchy is that our notion of romantic love as central to marriage is profoundly foreign to "traditional" marriages. Can we even think about marriage as being fundamentally about something other than romantic love? This doesn't directly address the importance of Gen. 12.10-20, but Joe's comments about it reminded me of this point.
My best,
Adam
Pardon the changing of horses mid-race; I'm not sure what to add at the present moment to the proceeding discussion, so I hope that my own, hopefully not too tangential comments will suffice.
What strikes me at the moment is that Sarai seems to be completely outside of the kinship and geographic relations of Abram. It even appears that God sees it this way, as His injunction that Abram leave his "kindred" obviously does not include Sarai. But why? (Strong's, my only and limited Hebrew source, has "kindred" as "mo-leh'-deth," meaning place of birth and by implication kindred and surroundings. Interestingly, the word comes from "yalad," which means "to bear young; causatively, to beget." Thus Abram, despite the command to leave all begotten ones of his past, stays with the only woman (at the time) with whom he is to beget. Another irony?)
It seems then that either Abram is violating God's command by remaining with Sarai (at least until Egypt) or that, in some important sense, Sarai is not part of Abram's community. This latter view draws obvious support from the view that Abram is continually righteous, but I think it also draws interesting support from the lack of biographic information regarding Sarai. It doesn't seem to be just a result of patriarchal prejudice; Nahor's wife Milcah, who is much less important historically, is described as "the daughter of Haran" (Gen. 11:29–31). Even the servant Hagar is described as "an Egyptian" (Gen. 16:1). Why is it that we know nothing of Sarai?
Obviously Sarai status as someone outside of Abram's community creates as many (theological) problems as it solves. While it may explain in some sense why we learn nothing of Sarai's past, why Abram treats her instrumentally, and why God speaks and promises specifically to Abram and not to both of them, it leaves me wondering about the possibility of inclusive communities. Is Abram simply unable to recognize that Sarai has become a part of his family? ("Family" does not occur in Genesis or Exodus; I'm not sure what implications this has on a possible kindred/family distinction that allows Sarai to be the latter while not being the former, but they don't seem promising.) Is the Lord unwilling to recognize Sarai in his injunction because she does not belong to the "nation" or "kindred" which he has become concerned with? Is Abram's sometimes questionable treatment of Sarai justified by her excluded status?
Jeff,
I think that at the very least we might say that the primary axis of the family here appears to run from father to son rather than from husband to wife (so that Abram's relation to Sarai is, as you well point out, apparently secondary).
Further, it may be important that it is precisely into the father-son axis of the family that God inserts himself: (1) by promising a blessing to Abram out the void of his father's death, and (2) (as we'll see) by requiring Abram to depend entirely on God's grace for his own heir.
Perhaps the question, then, is about what God's insertion into the father-son familial axis promises for the husband-wife axis that you and I might be tempted take as more eternally central?
My best,
Adam
This is mostly just to say that I am here, I have logged in, and I have appreciated many thoughtful, intriguing, venturesome suggestions. My life and my limitations have not favored the kind of sustained attention I would have hoped to give to the beginning of this joint reflection, but let me see if I can just indicate the angle from which I connect with certain issues you have raised.
I had learned from Leon Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom) to see the Babel story as an answer before the fact to the Greek claims of reason. In beautifully compact fashion, this story points up the connection between speech and pride; it is the perfect counterpart to Aristotle’s understanding of human beings as political animals, as beings who find fulfillment in taking up and directing their lives through the medium of discourse about the good and bad, the advantageous and the disadvantageous, the just and the unjust.
So the confounding of languages clears the ground for some other understanding of fulfillment – or shall we say, of transcendence, or of meaning. How this understanding will relate to the capacity, certainly central to our humanity (I think the Greeks are right at least this far), to order our lives through the medium of speech and reason – the capacity that may claim to culminate in “theology” – is indeed something we must continue to consider.
Thomas Pangle’s magisterial and erudite High-Straussian attempt to refute the Bible in Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham includes the clearest statement I know of the connection, cemented at the core of the Western philosophical tradition, between the polis (the aspiration to articulate self-government) and the philosophical ideal of self-sufficiency.
Just as Biblical piety is rooted in the patriarchal family, Pangle argues, so, philosophy springs from the city’s “radical subordination of many or most individual goods that are ordinarily associated with happiness,” a purification of “preoccupation with corporeal, familial, and mundane needs.” The call beyond family introduces the prospect of “passionate” male friendship, which itself “is ultimately transcended, in and by an ascent toward the divine spiritual self-sufficiency that is the dimly beheld highest aspiration of the life of the city.” (62-3)
What Pangle then chooses not sufficiently to notice is that the very idea of divine self-sufficiency appears then to be an extension of the city’s virtue and of virtuous friendship, and thus an inherently politically conditioned interpretation of transcendence or of human possibility. One implication is that the Greek understanding of reason at the outset elevates the experience of the polis above that of the family in framing an understanding of transcendence, or of that which gives meaning to our sacrifices.
I see that I have fallen back excessively on secondary sources, not being able to add anything to the nice exegetical efforts already made. But I wanted at least, before this first week was over, to start to put a few cards on the table and to solicit some help in connection my angle of interest with those of others.
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