Several folks at Christ Church Cathedral (downtown Cincinnati) want to take The Bible Challenge, a one-year commitment to read the whole Bible plus commentaries as presented in the book of that name.
But go to meetings? Forget it. But talk about it? Well, sure. Therefore, this blog -- and this first post.
So, the first thing I learned is that I can't read in little chunks. Start me on Genesis, I'm going to finish Genesis. The second thing I learned (actually it was a reminder not a learning) is I don't like commentaries that assume I'm reading the Bible literally. So I veered off.
I love creation stories in general because they tell me how important it was for the earliest humans to explain their world and their place in it.
They also tell me that human nature has been human nature from the very beginning. Take the two creation stories in Genesis. Scholars think the second one is older than the first one (as published). They also think the first one was written by priests who had political motivations, but the older one was written by a lay person, perhaps a lay person who was recording stories that had been told for centuries. So the establishment's political correctness gets first place over authenticity. How human is that?
But take a look at some other creation stories:
The Maori tradition says the sons and grandsons of the creator got into such a fight, the heaven and the earth got separated and the grandson in charge of wind got so alienated, he's been paying us back ever since with tornadoes and blizzards. Know any families like that?
Many stories blame women for messing things up. (Ours, for instance.)
And most of them say the owners of the story are better than other people and have the best (or only) god, who will open a can of celestial whup-ass on anybody who bothers them. Uh, huh. Who says religion and politics don't mix?
But Genesis doesn't stop with creation as it explores human nature. Who can read the Joseph story without getting sick and tired of this manipulative, even creepy fellow who keeps coming up smelling like a rose and only does the right thing for his victimized brother because he fears the brother's large force of armed men?
The story's very length emphasizes the importance in which the biblical scribes held it. The street-smart 21st Century interpretation might be that exploiters only respect their victims when the victims have acquired more soldiers (or high-priced lawyers) than the exploiter. A good example is playing itself out in the battle between Western & Southern Co. and the Anna Louise Inn, just two blocks from our church -- so it's hard not to accept the cynical reading.
But I tell myself another interpretation might be that our creator is a spirit of such unimaginable love that even the creeps and the bullies are loved. And thank goodness -- because aren't we all at least a little bit like Joseph at least part of the time?
Now it's somebody else's turn to post.
