Month: September 2020

One thing has become increasingly clear as I’ve grown up: no one is telling the full truth. In fact, there’s rarely a complete, agreed-upon truth in any situation. Everyone is biased by the things that they’ve experienced, their own motivations, or what they think their audience wants to hear. This is what Bible translations have turned into in my head. Everyone has different experiences or research that would cause them to translate the Bible a certain way, and they often feel strongly enough to spark another denomination. As someone who always went to “nondenominational” church (it was likely watered-down Baptist), this is really my first experience with any Bible that isn’t ESV or NIV. Who knew that slight word changes could alter how we view an entire book? 

I am enjoying reading my academic NRSV bible and my NIV side by side, using whatever context clues I can to make sense of the giant book in front of me. Commentary has been extremely helpful for me, both in an academic and personal sense. So many people have tried to make sense of this work, finding value in it from all kinds of directions. To me, this adds to the overall meaning of the book in my life and in a literature sense.

Class on Tuesday begun by discussing the flood story. When you take a closer look at the flood story, you notice and question things that you don’t when you first read it. It is interesting that God doesn’t punish human beings by sending them to Hell. I feel like that is the common conception; that if you are bad, God punishes you by sending you to Hell and not allowing you to enter Heaven. Instead, he just released the floodwaters and thought they deserved to die. Hayes also mentioned in her lecture that God is not threatened by these floodwaters at all, but actually ends up being surprised/terrified of them.

Next, we discussed the story of Hagar the slave. I found it interesting that Hagar despises Sarai, but it seems as though she only starts despising Sarai once she gets pregnant. I obviously understand despising her because she is forcing her to have sex and get pregnant with her husband. However, to me, I would despise the woman from the beginning, not only until I get pregnant. Dr. McGrath made a good point that Hagar could now be jealous of Sarai since Abram is her husband. Hagar could be having feelings for Abram and want him to herself. Also, why does Sarai care that Hagar despises her? Hagar is just her slave that she forced to have sex with her husband and carry her baby. Lastly, I find it interesting that this story touches on the struggles of infertility. I feel as though infertility is actually a common struggle experienced by a multitude of people, but it is something that is not talked about much.

In the 18th chapter of Genesis, Abraham is met by three angels, the day after the institution of circumcision as an observance of the law of the covenant made with God. According to St. Ambrose of Milan, since Abraham was uncircumcised when he was called by God and on the day he  passed away, this establishes him as the “Progenitor” of all believers and not explicitly the father of the Jews. With this, God appears to Abraham at the Oak of Mamre as three men, a premonition to the Trinity, and yet in the form of those with faces like us. Knowing this, Abraham falls before them calling them “O Lord,” signifying the unity of three persons in one, singular essence. Abraham quickly makes three loaves for the angels before they make their way towards Sodom and Gomorrah.

In Gen. 18:2, Origen makes the juxtaposition of how Abraham has three men stand “before him” whereas Lot only receives two men which sit “in the street.” Origen then claims that this is a fair and just dispensation for Abraham as the Progenitor. Abraham’s hospitality acts as a symbolic representation of his understanding of the dispensation and his pious obedience to God. In the 7th pericope, Abraham fashions a calf for the three men to eat. Once finished, the Lord asks where Sarah is to bestow upon her the news that upon their return, her son will be born. Sarah asks “Am I, who am old, to bear a child?,” and denies this as a true sign from God given to her specifically. Sarah’s laughter expresses her doubt in this sign because she was afraid, this doesn’t rid herself of the sin of cowardice however when explained by Ephrem of Syria.

For this topic, I have been aware of the indifference that some men in the Bible have shown to women and how women were not really viewed as people at this time. Or how important it was to produce offspring at this time. It was just the culture that was prevalent. When Abraham was told by God that he was to be the father of many nations, he was shocked and wanted to take matters into his own hands because, at the time, Sarah and Abraham were not reproducing. It came to the point where Sarah believed that Hagar would be better suited to reproduce and fulfill the blessing that God had brought on Abraham. However, Hagar, the slave, was not consulted on this or asked her opinion about how she felt. This is an example of how the culture shaped their opinion. First, there is a part of slavery, they had people to do their work for them without pay. Then it is how they treat the slaves, basically like they aren’t even people, telling them what to do, and the slave has to follow no matter how they feel about the action they were told to do. Between Abraham and Hagar, they were able to bear a son, but soon after Sarah had a son with Abraham too. Now the question was, who is the first son of Abraham?
An interesting aspect of Reimagining Hagar is the visualization of how she looks. We know that she is the slave of Abraham and Sarah, but many people might have visualized her as black, but nowhere in any source of Biblical significance is she physically described as black. Is this a misconception of our culture, or inferred by some aspect of knowledge of slaves at this time?

Something that came up in our class discussion today was the dynamic relationship between Hagar and Sarai, Abraham’s servant (or slave) and his wife. Sarai didn’t give birth to Isaac until Abraham was said to be 100 years old in Genesis 17:17-19: long after Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Since Hagar had a child long before Sarai, Sarai worried that Hagar would gain favor with Abraham. In Genesis 16-20, we don’t see much evidence that Abraham’s wife was treated any different than his servant, Hagar. Sarai demanded to Abraham that he send Hagar and Ishmael way, to which Abraham only did because the Lord told him to do so. When God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham plans to do so, but we have no account of him speaking or telling Sarai about this encounter with God, implying that her two-cents is of now concern on major issues. The role of women in the Genesis stories seems to be of little concern for people like Abraham. I wonder if the treatment women will be consistent in the rest of the Bible as it is in Genesis.

Having not read the Bible before, Genesis 12-23 was very bizarre to read. There are many questions I have from reading these sections. Since I had not read this part of the Bible before, I had no prior notion of believing Hagar was a black woman until reading Reimagining Hagar. It is odd that Sarai was so adamant on having a child that she allowed her husband to have sex with another woman to have a child. It is also interesting that Sarah not only gave Hagar to Abram as a slave, she gave Hagar to him as a wife. Reimagining Hagar discusses how Hagar is only referred to as Abram’s wife when they are talking about sex. In all other instances, Hagar is a “slave-woman”, or another similar term. The Bible does not explicitly say that Hagar is black, it only mentions that she is from Egypt, which is a different area than where Sarai and Abram are from. I am curious as to how the interpretations have made Hagar a black woman instead of just an Egyptian woman. I also wonder why the divine messenger tells Hagar to go back after being “dealt with” by Sarai. Why would the messenger want Hagar to return to a place she was abused at? I have many more questions as to why certain things are said in this section of the Bible.

I found the stories of Hagar in the Bible quite interesting, and the way Reimagining Hagar gives insight also fascinated me. When I first learned that she was the slave of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, and that Sarah allowed her to conceive a child with Abraham because was not able to, I was very surprised. I would not expect a woman to allow another woman who is viewed as inferior to have sex with and conceive a child with her husband, and I would not expect the husband to want have a child with anyone else but his wife. What the article showed me was how they were using Hagar’s body as a source for having a child, and Abraham wasn’t necessarily making an emotional connection, but instead he raped her in order to have a child because his wife wasn’t able to. Sarah had a similar mindset, where she saw Hagar’s body as a place where her husband could have a child.

I also found it fascinating how the author connects Hagar as being Black, even though this was not her skin color or ethnicity. Hagar was Egyptian, but the author was comparing how Egyptians in the days when these parts of the Bible were written were viewed similarly to how Blacks have been viewed in American history. They both are seen as inferior, looked down upon, and possibly even less than human.

I really enjoyed exploring the take of Adam and Eve being figurative story about the transition from childhood to adulthood. It makes perfect sense to me. We see so much metaphorical writing in the Bible, with stories like Jonah that are also outlandish to the modern mind, which make this story seem manufactured to tell humans a story. I also don’t think that this new meaning nullifies the creation story aspect of it either as double entendres exist for a reason, to make you think. I think there are things to learn for humans both ways you perceive it.

In regards to the Pentateuch and its writers, I think there is no way that it is not multiple writers. All the inconsistencies in the writing styles proves that it wasn’t Moses solely. There is no real reason for Moses to have this inconsistencies, that he must’ve consciously chosen to make. Even if at one point in time Moses did “write” all the stories, there was most certainly somethings that were lost in translation as the Pentateuch was formed after his death. Therefore even if it did originate from his mind it has been warped into something else, shown by the inconsistencies in his writing.

In the Enuma Elish, one of the first things that stuck out to me was all of the different people to keep track of.  Knowing the creation story for as long as I can remember, this story had me a little confused.  I had to continually read and reread to try and better understand it, and to be honest, a lot of it still isn’t super clear.  However, when reading the creation story I have known for so long, I put myself in the shoes of never reading it before to see how my perspective changed (if at all).  I found it so much easier to understand and follow along with.  I thought it was interesting how the Enuma Elish reminded me of Greek mythology.

In Christine Hayes Lecture, I thought it was interesting that Genesis 1 doesn’t literally mean that God created everything from nothing.  Particularly in the first verse, often times we take it literally.  When we are taught the creation story, we are often told that everything was created by God at the beginning of time.  However, when you take a look at the Hebrew, it talks about when God created everything.  This difference of creation at the beginning of time vs. using creation as a benchmark in time is very interesting to me.  The timeline thought never really occurred to me.  I also remember talking about how the story of Adam and Eve was just placed after creation because it made the most sense chronologically, but before taking this course I never really thought of the two stories as independent of each other. The discussions have really allowed me to dig deeper into the scriptures, and I really enjoy thinking through things from a different perspective.

In class we had an interesting discussion on the differences and similarities of the beginning Chapters of Genesis.  It was interesting to see that some words were translated differently between the two translations, however some key phrases didn’t vary.  We discussed how this could be a sign that there is little room for variance in meaning.  It seemed that the emphasis was put on the differences however, because the translations seemed to be a little controversial.  I also thought it was interesting thinking about how many different genres are actually present in the bible.  The thought never really occurred to me that any of it could be fiction, especially because its what I have been taught to be The Word since I can remember.

In the reading of “Valiant Or Virtuous,” they go into detail of how the same word can be translated to mean two different things when used in the context of male vs. female.  I thought that this was very interesting.  My initial thought was that there is some gender biases, however it is made clear that there aren’t any; it was simply a translation difference in Greek.  Despite this only being a small difference, I think that some of the other differences between translations simply come down to different people can interpret and translate one word to mean different things.  I found this article to be helpful in understanding why there may be discrepancies between different translations of the Bible.