Reading Genesis

The speaker is discussing a book called "Reading Genesis" by Marilynne Robinson, which offers a theologian's perspective on the biblical book of Genesis. The speaker appreciates the book's insights and common sense tactics for understanding the scriptures. They mention that the book also includes the King James Bible version of Genesis for easy reference. The speaker has just started reading the book and shares their initial thoughts, including the themes of human nature, sin, and evil that are explored in Genesis. They find it interesting how grace modifies law and that law cannot limit grace. Overall, they find the book complex but meaningful in understanding the creation, human nature, sin, and evil as portrayed in Genesis. Good afternoon everybody and welcome back to Faith and Common Sense with your friendly youth director in the DMV, Tempest, and today we get to go start the process of the book Reading Genesis that I spoke of last time and this great book is by Marilynne Robinson and she is offering a sort of very theologian's way of looking at Genesis and clearly as a person who is Christian and as you guys know I've said this multiple times, I've always wanted to find a way to like look at the scriptures from a different angle, clearly I have read the scriptures, but it's always helpful to have someone else sort of like exegete it for you and go through it and kind of give you common sense tactics to look at them and to like really understand what it is you're reading and so that's kind of what I'm doing with this book. And so I will be reading parts of it and sort of digesting it for you all and if you guys are reading it as well or if you want to start reading it perhaps you know you can leave me your comments about what you saw and what you read so but today we're just getting into the meat of it. So I'll be explaining this book in essence, again it is a book by Marilynne Robinson, she is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and she wrote this book called Gilead last year that won the prize and so she is very awarded and she gives a really great understanding of our biblical texts and that's what I was really looking for and so I'm starting her series and I'm starting reading this book and she's supposed to next year or two years go to Exodus which is the second book of the Bible and so I think that will be really interesting and really fun. So I am so far, some of the stuff is kind of going over my head, I have to read it a couple of times but I appreciate someone else sort of coming at it and giving me angles of the stories of the Bible, specifically of Genesis that are ones that I have read but like not fully understood and so for instance, Ms. Robinson goes through and sort of literally starts at the beginning, I mean the beginning is the beginning and Genesis is the very beginning and also just the breakdown of the book itself, the first kind of 200 pages or so are the book, are the book of Genesis, her interpretations, her exegetical work, just everything that she's talking about as far as the readings are concerned but then in the latter half of the book after page 200 or so, she gives us the King James Bible version of Genesis and so you have the entire Bible in the back of this book that's very helpful for you to sort of like, you know, if you wanted to sort of think about, oh, what is that reading again? Like you can just literally go back and it's there for you and so that's kind of fun. So that's really helpful actually and just a really cool thing to have in your, in a novel that you're trying to read. The Bible is kind of like right there interspersed in between and betwixt and that's really helpful, especially if you're really wanting to get a good semblance of what it is you're reading and try to remember the stories so you don't have to like go through and be like, oh, what is this reading again? I can't remember. Again, you just kind of flip back in the back a little bit and it's like, oh, there it is. There's Genesis 4. There's the story of that Cain and Abel. There's the story of the garden. You know, there's the story of everything I needed and so that's kind of helpful. So some things that I kind of gathered in reading the book for the first couple of pages. I'm literally just up to page 40. So I've just really scratched the surface to start because I just wanted to get an idea of where she's going and how she's choosing to do this exegetical work. And I wondered if she would tackle the idea of things that I've heard sometimes most of the part of my life which is that like creation, you know, God created the days. We know it's very good for the humans and good for the other days, right? This is the story we've been told. This is the story we know. So I wondered if she would delve into that and talk about like how some people believe those stories don't be true, like it didn't happen that way. The creation doesn't come that quickly. It didn't happen that quickly and that it's somehow not the story. And I wondered if she would tackle that. And in a lesson, she does not. I don't think she really goes there. But she does give an understanding from her angle of things about the creation story. And kind of this idea that like, yeah, it can kind of be a little bit inconceivable. But I think that the whole point, the nuance of it is that the world is created. We're living in it right now, current day. It's happening. Like every day, the sun rises and the sun sets. And the night falls and we can see water that's separated from the land. And we can see the stars in the sky. And we can see the two great stars of the moon and the sun. And they're there. So whether or not they were created in seven days, like Genesis tells us, they're here. So there's no way to like dispute it. They're in the sky. Water is water. Earth is earth. And so there it is. Not separatable. So I think that's kind of interesting. Then, so I didn't really put a lot of stock in that part. I felt like, okay, well, you know, it's here and I understand that. The other pieces that I really focused on and that she kind of exemplifies throughout, some themes that kind of come out, are about our human nature, our sinfulness, and our evil. So, and I want to say our, I mean, human, our human, our human sin, our human evil, our human nature. And that, that is how we were created. In essence, there's one piece here that says, on page four, kind of towards the bottom of the paragraph. It says, excuse me, this construction of reality, absolute good overlays, but never diminished or changed by temporal accommodations to human nature, allows for faithfulness to desire good. Grace modifies law and law cannot limit grace. And so I was like, okay, well, that's interesting. The idea that grace modifies laws, but law cannot limit grace. And this is something that as a person who's, you know, becoming a connoisseur or a appreciator, that's the word I'm looking for, of the Hebrew Bible of the Old Testament. I know that very well, as we keep going on in the Old Testament, there's Jeremiah, and Jeremiah is one of my favorite major prophets. And it's because Jeremiah changed God's mind. And it's a really good exemplary fact of grace modifying law, that God was the law and God said, these are the things that are going to happen. But Jeremiah had issues with that. He had real issues with that. And he expressed those issues to God and God modifies the law for Jeremiah because of the feelings that he had. And so I've read that and I've seen that played out in the Bible, but that law cannot limit grace. And I think that's really interesting that even with the laws that we have, it doesn't limit the grace and mercy that we believe that our God shows to us. So that's really interesting. So let me go through those three areas that I just spoke of. So human nature. In the book, the book talks a lot about humans and our nature. Clearly the stories from the first part of the Bible are about our creating and our naming of the animals, of Adam and Eve, of the fall from Adam and Eve, of the eating of the forbidden fruit, of Noah and the flood. And the fact that the flood was God's way of kind of wiping clean the earth and starting anew. And so our human nature was to not really be good listeners and can't say that that has really changed over time. We don't really listen to the God who is our creator and who gave us this, you know, if you're a believer of that, gave us this being. And so there is a nature that we have that is like always going to come up against, always going to buttress up against authority forever and ever amen. So that is how we are. And God knows that. And God tries to get us to reconcile that within ourselves multiple times and on multiple occasions. And specifically in Genesis, he tries to get us to, or they try to get us to reconcile that through the flood and then starting it over, making a covenant with Abraham and Abraham's people. From the first family, one might think of the Bible. And God sort of making that, making us reconcile ourselves to that. So that's, it's really interesting and super complex. Very much so. Speaking of complexities, sin. And so sin is like kind of the terminology around sin is the idea that it's sort of a turning away. It's a turning away from something that we, from God's law. In essence, it's a transgression, any way or any nonconformity or any transgression against the law, a serious fault or an error. And kind of taking sin on, taking it into ourselves, our very nature and enacting it onto something. That is sin. And again, that's part of our nature. So you really can't separate sin from our nature because it's in us. And that's kind of what I came up against in these first couple of pages is that this is the creation that God made for us. We're not a perfect creation. But God knew that when God made us, but we are beloved, even though we know we're going to mess up, even though we're going to come up against it. And we're going to take that nature that God has given us and do things with it that are not, you know, the best at all times. But that God's love is His grace. God's grace is over and above what it is that we personally possess. And so that's that within itself is a pretty interesting thing. So and then that goes into evil, the evil that we enact, specifically for the Genesis stories, Cain and Abel, you know, brother against brother and the slaughtering of said brother. It's a lot of slaughtering in the Old Testament, but like whether it's the flood that slaughters the people who are not saved because of their transgressions or it's the Cain and Abel story of family against family. There's Joseph and his brothers who threw him in the, you know, in a pit and basically like sold him into slavery. And families against families is really it's a continuity of a story that happens throughout the Bible. And so that is where our evil, our sinful nature really kind of exemplifies itself. And I think of evil as the enacting. So like nature and sin are things we possess. We already kind of have it inherent in our DNA. But that evil is the enacting of those things. It's the way it plays itself out with us as a people onto others or onto creation or onto other people that we say we support. Now, she does get very nerdy, which I appreciate. She goes into the theological pieces of the readings of the Bibles and like who's being spoken about when we read about these things. And she goes into sort of the Elohim nature and the scholars that are E, J, P, and D. Lord, mercy brings me right on back to seminary. But these are sort of these these writings or these writers who sort of like take pieces of the Bible and sort of canonically are spoken about. The way that they speak is either the E way, the J way, the P way or the D way. And it doesn't matter. But in any case, the biblical text in general may seem to exist in the shadow of a demystification that happens not to have touched them yet. But they are really far too tough minded to be the products of ordinary, this worldly calculation. This quality of mind is carried forward through the whole of the Bible as of page six. So, again, we have theologians, Kant and Helgel and current day ones of, not Will Willimon, I like Will Willimon, but that's not what I'm thinking of. Oh, gosh, why can I, I can see his face, but I cannot think of his name. That's eluding me. It will come to me. But that we have these people who write these commentaries about the Bible and they think critically about it. They really go in and interpret the scriptures as far as they can. And so they've, over time, have sort of become this little council, contemporary council, who did what the council did back when, when they created and canonized this particular set of Bibles that we have at Nicaea around sort of the stories that were selected to be placed into and make up the canon that is our scripture. So, it's, it's really interesting that she focuses a lot on this particular area and, again, some of it goes right on over my head, but I find it fascinating to read about the way, again, that someone else understands and interprets what it is that God is writing about. Now, it's almost like a little bit of a history lesson, this first half, because there's a lot of like Levites and Jebedites and Canaan and all these areas and like places, Egyptian princesses and like other things, Moses, you know, you hear about Moses in this story. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of history and a lot of locations that are talked about a lot in the first half of Genesis. And it's fascinating to think about where those places are common in current day and like what they might look like right now versus when they were back then. Another interesting piece that really intrigued me personally, and that I kind of gained some interesting thoughts from, is, again, these, these first couple of books are called the Pentateuch, they are the, essentially the five books of the Bible, the first five books of the Bible, and they are the Hebrew scriptures. So they are what our Jewish brothers and sisters, you know, know as the Bible, like this is their Bible. And a lot of rabbinical scholars have talked about a lot of historical pieces that get sort of argued and kind of get debated about, and they call it Midrash. And Midrash is the way to sort of get into a story and really dissect it, take it apart. Think about like, what is this? And why would this happen? And why does it say this versus this? And why is this location mentioned but not this location? It's a very interesting thing. And that's basically Midrash. And Midrash is just asking questions and not expecting to get massive answers, but like just asking the questions for questions sake. And I love that. I appreciate that. And so, but to get back to it in the first half, she speaks about this comparison in literature, biblical literature, and she talks about two Babylonian narratives, which again, old timing, places of Babylonia and places that we, you know, know of or might not have ever known of, but that are really inherent about our, about our current Bible and about Genesis specifically. And she talks about these two particular things, which are the narrative of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Elam Elesh, which are two particular stories that are kind of almost myths, they're almost myth stories. I think I've been like Canterbury Tales for the English set, after all, I'm Anglican, so that's what I do. But kind of like these, these stories, these myths making stories that have a moral, a fable kind of a situation. But the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I was like, I think I've heard of this story. I think I might have read this maybe back in college or somewhere. But it is a, it's known as like a Mesopotamian hero, like, so we're going, we're going history lesson on this one. And it is an odyssey, it's described as an odyssey, an odyssey of a king who did not want to die. Right. And so the idea around this, this story, this epic of Gilgamesh, one thinks of an epic as a very big story. But it's about kings, and it's about a king who didn't want to die. And the idea here is, it describes a trial between two men in which Gilgamesh was the victor. And the other person in this story was clearly not. But these two people set out on a quest, again, a hero's journey has always got a quest to it. There's always a quest, there's always a winner, there's always a loser. And something happens. And so that is what the story of the Epic of Gilgamesh was about. But it sounded to me really fascinating, because it was like, wait a minute. And I was trying to figure out why she was bringing that forward. Why would we bring forward literature? But again, as stated, the Bible is a lot of history, it's a lot of wisdom stories, it's a lot of poetry. It's a lot of a lot of things. And it encompasses a great deal of things in its writings. And so it's not foreign to think that a literature story, liturgical story could essentially get mixed up into the stories of the Bible. That's not unheard of, that's not an unknown tale to tell. And so that's okay, that's perfectly fine. So again, the flood is where this Epic of Gilgamesh comes in. And again, we've talked about the flood around Noah and that story. A young king, Merduk, gives an ideal friend, a wild man, kind of like John the Baptist, his equal in strength. And the two share journeys and adventures. They struggle together with mythic beasts until this friend dies. And of course, Gilgamesh is heartbroken, and he's terrified of death, despite some, what, consoling mentions in our text about another world and other things going on. So he hears that there is one man who has not died. And he goes off to find this man and figure out how he himself can become immortal. And so it's a very, again, it's a very epic kind of fantasy quest that kind of gives you a little bit of a Lord of the Rings vibe, right? And I just found that really interesting that, like, these stories, these details from these stories kind of combine a lot of pieces of characters that we've heard about in the stories of the Bible, which are just fascinating. And then Ilumesh, I mean, Ilum-Elemesh is a theogory, the tale of the emergence of the kings and the rise of one king, Merduk, dominant among them. An attempt is made to describe him, this Merduk person. And so Merduk doesn't look like a person, like the descriptions are very much so like animal-like. And the gods of this Ilumesh suffer hunger and terror and loss of sleep. And there are generations of them born to a mother who is a serpent monster who provoked by the noise the younger gods made determined to kill them. And so she's like terrifying, like a Medusa-like figure. So, again, there's just very ancient, mythic, almost, you know, very mythology sort of ideas of Medusa, I just said her name. Just like these characters of old, ancient stories that scare people, that are like half man, half horse, or like half fish, half human, just very interesting things. And the fact that these are parts of stories that could have been woven in to the first part of our Bible is just, it's just really interesting. This is really, really fascinating. And so it kind of leads me in my conclusionary and my thinking thus far, again, we still have more to read. But it kind of brings me to this place where it's like, I wonder, I wonder for myself, like, does this mean that like, if I don't think that these stories are real, let's just go with that thought processes right now, let's just go down that line. If I don't think these stories are real stories, and I think that somehow, they have been created, so that they're faithful, and they're fantasy, but they teach a moral, they always have a moral to the story, an idea about a king who doesn't want to die and looks for kind of like the ability to kind of be mortal, you could really wrap that up into like the Adam and Eve story of like how they wanted to be the God and therefore they ate the apple because they saw that they could be the God. And I can see how many of these stories could really be translated and changed over time into something biblical, in a way. And I don't say that as a heretic, and I don't think I am a heretic. But I think that it is somehow hard to believe sometimes that, that these things happen in the order that they happen. And that these stories of a man named Noah, who built an ark and a boat because of the flood coming, and he was given the dimensions, and then he had to go get the all the animals two by two, trust me, told the story many times to many children, they love the story, they love the boat. But if it's not real, and it has a moral to the story that is more real for us personally that we need to grasp on to, and take with us more than just that Noah was a man chosen by God to be saved from this first flood, and why, you know, why him, why this, why, why a flood, you know, I think those are more interesting questions. I think there's more interesting midrash than just memorizing the King James Version of said Genesis Bible book. And, you know, being able to recite that, I think, for me, and for my God, and the ways that I think about scripture and the ways that I hope to interpret it along my very long journey of life, from, you know, from now, from then till now. I think it's more important that we grasp the morals as we go along. And of course, they're going to change because we change, we get older, we get more information, we live more life, we see what happens and how something like this, maybe not specifically, but how lusting and yearning for something out of our control can cause us folly. You know, like, let's take the common sense of this podcast, let's take that into account. Like some of these stories really do help us see that striving for something that is not to come to us is folly, and that it really might waste our time and our energy and our efforts when we could just be living. And just be excited about the things that we do have, and the life that we get to lead, and the age that we get to become. And just all of those things that I think our God is trying to get us to see that is different than the human nature, the sin, and the evil that is a part of us all. So that's what I grasped so far. And there's so much more to read. So I look forward to coming back to you and just getting into it even further as we go on. So thanks for listening to my ramblings. And I'll be back with you soon. Take care.