A Contemporary Introduction to the Bible - Colleen M. Conway

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lentil stew. Then, in Genesis 27, Rebekah, Jacob’s mother, develops a tricky ruse to get Jacob’s father, Isaac, to give Jacob the superior blessing that he meant to give to Esau. At Rebekah’s urging, Jacob flees to escape Esau’s plan to murder him, and he gets a taste of his own medicine in Haran, where his father-in-law, Laban, gets him to work seven years to marry Rachel, but then slips Leah into Jacob’s marriage bed instead (Genesis 29). Soon Jacob turns the tables on Laban, using magical means to outwit Laban’s plan to deprive Jacob of his wages in livestock (Genesis 30) and later escaping with Laban’s daughters without Laban’s knowledge (Genesis 31). In the process, Rachel shows her own capacity for trickery, stealing her father’s household gods and then preventing him from finding them by sitting on them and then telling her father that she cannot get up because she has her period (“the way of woman is on me”; Gen 31:35). In these ways and others, the story depicts Jacob and his closest family as crafty tricksters, able to survive and flourish in the face of difficult odds. Not only is he himself a trickster, but his mother helped get him started, and he worked 14 years to marry a woman, Rachel, who continues the tradition.

      These traditions of trickery are not the sort of thing typically focused on in sermons and Sunday school lessons. Many within dominant cultures are not used to celebrations of such culture heroes – figures who trick and even lie to get their way. Nevertheless, such stories can be encouraging to people who feel that they will inevitably perish if they play by “the rules” of their social context. Whether Native American or ancient Israelite, vulnerable people often gain empowerment through celebrating ancestors who made their way in the world through using cleverness to overcome impossible odds. For people on the top, such trickster stories can appear to be embarrassing elements in an otherwise tidy Bible. For people on the bottom, such stories can be a major way of gaining hope and resisting domination.

      That said, none of the texts in the Bible, including Genesis, are transcripts of early oral traditions. Rather these are later literary texts where earlier oral traditions have been radically reshaped to fit into a broader narrative. This means that we must distinguish between the present written level of the biblical text and faint outlines of oral traditions standing behind that text. The written text develops a new picture of Abraham as a recipient of God’s promises and even adds the idea of God making a covenant with him. This picture of Abraham and focus on God’s promise to him and his descendants developed as a response to Israel’s trauma under later empires. Meanwhile, another set of stories about Israel’s ancestors looms behind this picture: older oral stories of how some of Israel’s ancestors successfully fended for themselves.

(Echoes of) earlier oral traditions in Genesis Elements specific to the present written text of Genesis 12–50
A focus on how both men (e.g. Abraham, Jacob) and women (e.g. Rebekah, Rachel) survived and flourished through their wits A focus on how God promised the patriarchs of Israel (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) to make them a great people, bless them, and give them the land of Canaan
Traditions about these figures circulate in one or more cycles of stories about each figure (e.g. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Hagar), with some of the same stories told about different figures (e.g. wife endangerment by Abraham in Gen 20:1–18 and 21:22–34; Isaac in Gen 26:6–33) The reshaping and connection of originally separate traditions so that they are linked with new themes of blessing and promise that spoke to the despair of later Israelites
A celebration of deception if it ensures the success of the underdog trickster Introduction of divine speeches to early ancestors (Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, and also Hagar) and focus on their need to trust in God’s covenant with them and provision for them

      Though this chapter focuses on reconstructing ancient Israel’s oral traditions, it can be helpful to contrast such speculation about now-lost oral traditions with a look at the written text that we actually have. In the case of Israel’s ancestors, we start with the written text of Genesis 12–50, one that is thoroughly shaped by the above-noted, later written themes of promise and covenant.

       Outline: the three major parts of Genesis 12–50

      1 Abraham: God’s promises of blessing and land to Abraham and his descendants 11:27–25:11[Interlude: Genealogy of the descendants of Ishmael 25:12–18]

      2 Jacob: Transfer of promises to Isaac and Jacob; also stories of Rebekah, Esau, Rachel 25:19–35:29[Interlude: Genealogy of the descendants of Esau 36:1–43]

      3 Joseph and other sons of Jacob: division among brothers and eventual reconciliation 37–50

       Key themes

      An overarching theme for this section is God’s gift of promises of blessing and land to Abraham (Gen 12:1–7) and covenant with him (Genesis 15 and 17), promises that are then passed on to his heirs Isaac (Gen 26:2–5, 24) and Jacob (Gen 28:13–14; 35:9–15).

      Much of the Abraham story is particularly oriented toward these promises. It tells of how Abraham is protected by God in Egypt and in Gerar when he leaves Israel because of famine (Gen 12:10–20; 20:1–18), how God eventually makes covenants with him sealed by sacrifice (Genesis 15) and the sign of male circumcision (Genesis 17), and how God provides him a son through Sarah to inherit the promise, Isaac (Genesis 18; 21:1–7), alongside his son, Ishmael, whom he fathers through Sarah’s slave, Hagar (Gen 16; 21:8–21).

      The theme of promise continues in the Jacob story (Genesis 25–35), especially in an initial digression focused on Isaac (Gen 26:1–33). Nevertheless, most of this part of Genesis focuses on Jacob’s journey away from home, fleeing the wrath of his brother, Esau, caused by Jacob’s trickery (Gen 25:29–34; 27:1–45). Jacob travels to stay with Abraham’s relatives in Haran and acquires family and flocks there, including fathering the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel (Genesis 28–30). The story concludes with Jacob’s return to the land, wrestling with God (Gen 32:22–32) just before reconciling with his brother Esau (Genesis 33).

      The Joseph story in Genesis 37–50 is even more focused on the theme of division among brothers. Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery at the outset (Genesis 37), but he rises to power in Egypt (Genesis 39–41), and he is then able to provide for his father and brothers when they flee to Egypt because of another famine in Israel (42–50).

       Women in Israel’s ancestral stories

      There are some important stories focusing on women among Israel’s ancestors. On the one hand, we see biblical matriarchs exerting a limited form of power in the household sphere, whether through using slaves as sexual surrogates (Sarah using Hagar in Genesis 16; Rachel and Leah using Bilhah and Zilpah in Gen 30:3–13) or using their wits to promote their favored son (Rebekah in Genesis 27) or protect their husband from a vengeful father-in-law (Rachel in Gen 31:26–35). On the other hand, the stories of Dinah and Tamar show the extreme vulnerability of women in the Israelite world. Tamar exposes her body and risks death in the process of trying to secure a lineage for her father-in-law Judah (Genesis 38), and Dinah is raped and revenged amidst a power struggle between her brothers and the inhabitants of Shechem (Genesis 34).

       Further reading

      Your reading of texts like Genesis becomes more nuanced when you are attuned to the fact that it contains such earlier oral traditions. Rather than trying to explain away or excuse strategies like Jacob’s

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