Painting Fakes

A few years ago I wrote a series of posts  on the four fall stories in Genesis.  Ever since, I've been thinking about writing a series on the Patriarchs, the cunning tricksters who are the forefathers of the nation of Israel. Before I do I thought I'd write about Abram/Abraham's nephew and foster son Lot and the divine destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The city of Sodom provides the source for our English word "sodomy", meaning anal sex, because of the incident in this tale where the men of Sodom threaten to pack-rape their male visitors.  However, this is not a story about homosexuality, it is a story about hospitality. Our story begins in Genesis 18 with Abraham sitting at the door of his tent, pitched in a shady spot under a grove of oak trees.  It starts by telling the reader that 'the Lord appeared to Abraham'.  However, when Abraham looks up he sees three men.  Does he know that this is the Lord and his two angels?  The story is ambiguous on...

The final fall story in Genesis is the story of the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11:1-9.  Here it is. 1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they...

Sandwiched between the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden and the story of Noah and the flood is a very different kind of fall story - the story of Cain and Abel.  Here's the story as it appears in Genesis 4. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. 6 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” 8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Ab...

Finkelstein and Silberman  suggest that the book of Genesis began life as a series of orally transmitted stories which were turned into literary form relatively late in the piece.  It is possible that the first eleven chapters, in particular, consist of orginally unconnected material, with the genealogies serving as a literary device to tie them together. If this is true, then it is possible to see that there is not one but four stories of the Fall in Genesis.  There is the one we usually associate with it, found in Genesis 2 and 3 .  Then there are the stories of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4), the Great Flood (Genesis 6-8) and the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11).  All four stories feature the same core elements - humans fail to live up to God's standard, God intervenes to punish them or prevent them from doing more harm, and there is a form of redemption at the end.  I'll talk about Cain and Abel and Babel later, but first the Flo...

Speaking of the Fall , my relaxing holiday reading this Saturnalia , has been AJ Mackinnon's lovely travel story The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow .  Mackinnon tells the story of his journey through the waterways of Europe, from Wales to the Black Sea, in a 10 ft sailing dinghy.  It's glorious fun, with the odd hair-raising incident to keep the adrenaline going.  Like to try crossing the English Channel in a dinghy?  Without any larger craft accompanying?  Like to be accosted by pirates in remote Bulgaria?  Like to be stuck in Serbia as NATO is about to begin bombing? Apart from the comedy and high farce, one of his most persistent themes is the kindness of strangers.  Just when he is about to despair, his boat is ready to fall to pieces, he is starving and out of cash in a Visa-less country, or some other disaster strikes, some complete stranger steps up with carpentry tools and expertise, good home cooked food, a towrope, a place of shelter,...

Prompted by reading an essay by Wendell Berry, I've been thinking about the second and third chapters of Genesis and what they have to say about our current environmental predicament. Many scholars think these two chapters represent the earliest Hebrew version of the creation account, with the opening chapter added at a later date.  They record the creation of humanity, and the fall of the first humans from their state of innocence. We are accustomed to think of ourselves as somewhat separate from nature, as shown in the diagram below. We understand that we are, to some extent, natural beings.  We know we need to eat and drink, that we get sick.  However, we see ourselves as fundamentally different from the rest of creation.  Hence, we see "nature" as something to be conserved, managed or exploited by us.  This is why we are able to talk so easily about balancing environmental and economic factors, for instance, as if the economy was something seper...

I've been re-watching Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. One of the aspects of the story that Jackson underlines so clearly is it's setting during the decline of Middle Earth. The films are littered with telling images - the elves in procession to the Grey Havens, the ruins of Moriah, the Fellowship looking in awe in the giant statues of the sons of Elendil. The first movie begins with the tale of the Last Alliance of Men and Elves, where Isildur cuts the ring finger from Sauron's hand and appropriates the ring for himself. Elves and men together face their foe in open battle and win. In the Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, such a battle is impossible. Men and elves are too weak for anything but a skirmish. Nor is Sauron what he used to be. Perhaps literally disembodied, he sits in Barad Dur directing his fractious minions from afar, unaware of the hobbits carrying the ring right through his own country. Our heroes may be victorious, the power of Sauron ov...