![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Genesis 12 Abraham
And the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your land and your birthplace and your father’s house to the land I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and those who damn you I will curse, and all the clans of the earth through you shall be blessed.”
-- Genesis 12: 1-3
Things have finally settled down on the planet. We have been expelled from paradise, corrupted in sin, and we have been wiped out in a global flood, save for one seafaring family, and we have been made estranged from each other and dispersed over all the earth for building a great skyscraper (great by ancient standards).
With Abraham, the story becomes more standard, more like a soap opera, the story of a God-fearing clan through whom God will work out His destiny for humankind. Alter points out a textual indicator of this narrative shift:
-- Genesis 12: 1-3
Things have finally settled down on the planet. We have been expelled from paradise, corrupted in sin, and we have been wiped out in a global flood, save for one seafaring family, and we have been made estranged from each other and dispersed over all the earth for building a great skyscraper (great by ancient standards).
With Abraham, the story becomes more standard, more like a soap opera, the story of a God-fearing clan through whom God will work out His destiny for humankind. Alter points out a textual indicator of this narrative shift:
The Israeli biblical scholar Moshe Weinfeld has aptly noted that after the string of curses that begins with Adam and Eve, human history reaches a turning point with Abraham, as blessings instead of curses are emphatically promised.On a personal note, for such a key, holy text of Western civilization, I find much of the upcoming story on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be a bit flat and underwhelming, this extended family drama of nomadic shepherds. It is no “Iliad” as far as reading pleasure is concerned. Nevertheless, it does have its moments and charms, and it is at the foundation of our cultural heritage, and I am hoping that Alter’s commentary will enrich the matter.