Reflections

The presentation that stuck with me the most was Cameron's.  It stuck with me because my experience with the class was the opposite of his.  I distrust the church, and I was eager to come to class and learn about the Bible in a non-ideological way.  But I did not come to class with an open mind.  I came hoping to find tangible proof through my own reading of the Bible that all religion was bullshit.  Indeed, I came believing that the Bible was nothing more than a bunch of bullshit.  I came thinking I would find something to gloat about to all those blind sheep who think they know the Bible without having read it; and I came just as blind and bound up in ideology as those whom I condescended.  If Cameron has enough sand to stand in front of the class room and say what he did, that he realized he was being close minded, then I ought to have enough sand to at least admit to myself that I have been close minded as well.  The Bible is not what I thought it was, and I have no other way to say what I just said because I still don't know what the Bible is.  So that is what I know now that I didn't know before, and I really don't know how to articulate why it's important.  It is like the Book of Kells.  Though I did not know the the book in the movie was specifically the Four Gospels, I knew it had to be the New Testament.  What I got out of the movie is exactly what Dr. Sexson got out of it:  "It does not matter so much what the book says, only that the book is beautiful. Yes?"(Dr. Sexson's words from class)  I feel that the writing which I have produced in this class is sub par to work I have done in the past, but the writing is not what was most important to me for this class.  For me, the most important aspect of this class was comprehension of the material, and I don't mean for the purposes of doing well on tests.  I mean actually understanding what is being read, which is subtly different from understanding what has been written. 

Term Paper

The last sentence of the prefatory note leading into the second half of Words with Power reads:  "Out of this I hope that some indication of how coherent lifestyles, connected with primary concerns and the kerygmatic mode, will emerge from the infinite possibilities of myth (Frye 143).  The second variation, the garden, is most closely associated with the primary human concern of sex--both the sex act and the distinguishing of the masculine and feminine in a symbolic sense.  For the purposes of this paper, I will be focusing on the symbolic aspects of masculine and feminine imagery in the Bible with specific attention to how this imagery connects the Old Testament with the New.

It is a commonly held belief by some who claim to have read the Bible that God gave men the supreme right to rule over the earth, the animals, and women.  The support, they claim, lies right there, in black and white, in the words of the Biblical creation myth; however, this is an unfortunate misreading of Biblical text that has spawned an apathetic cultural attitude toward exploitation.  God planted a beautiful garden and put the man in it it to tend it.  Then God decided the man should not be alone, so He created animals for the man to name.  Last of all God put the man to sleep and took a rib and made it into a woman, a "help meet" in the words of the J writer.  The term "help meet" implies a partner of equal stature, though the rest of that particular passage clearly defines two different symbolic representations of human kind.  One is man, the masculine representation, and the other is his wife, woman, the feminine representation.  Here begins the arduous task of differentiating between the literal and symbolic roles assigned to the notions of masculinity and femininity in the Bible, and how these notions coalesce to form a coherent pattern of myth to live by.  Frye believes that the original adam is most likely androgynous and is the first masculine symbol, though not yet an actual man; and the garden, in all its beauty and fertility, is the feminine symbol.  Frye describes the creation of Eve as an afterthought, "a rectifying of an original deficiency"(190).  Though deficiency has a negative connotation, Frye does not mean it in a misogynistic context.  It simply implies that the God of the J creation account is a great experimenter, and realizing His original creation needs a little tweaking, He divides the masculine and feminine traits into two distinct human entities.

This is where we first see the theme of rejuvenation as it pertains specifically to feminine symbolism.  The garden, the feminine symbol, is now objectified through Eve, who has become not only woman, but the man's wife.  The original feminine symbolism contained within the garden is implicitly maternal, but is transformed to become a bride figure in Eve.  The purpose of rejuvenation, according to Frye, is to eradicate any previously existing undesirable qualities; presumably, this is how God rectifies the deficiency contained within His original creation.  Eve is not given to be subservient to Adam; she is given as a companion, where one does not preclude the other.

This balance is disrupted when Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil; this is also probably the most erroneously interpreted event in all of Biblical myth.  Patriarchy is not given out as a reward to man for what seems to be perceived as his innocuous involvement in the Fall; rather, patriarchy is given to woman as castigation for her initiation in the events which culminate in the Fall.  Man, along with the serpent, is given his own set of punishments for his involvement in the unfortunate event.  Misogynists have long held to this weak interpretation as justification to denigrate women, and feminists have long proclaimed it evidence that the Bible is biased against women.  The efferent expansion of feminine Biblical symbolism has also served to reinforce this weak misinterpretation of the garden myth.  It has spawned a tradition of weak, ideological misreading which has resulted in the validation of exploitation of all that is symbolically female.  The earth, nature in general, women, children, and slaves of all ages and both genders are all viewed as chattel; they are goods to be bought and sold as seen fit by a specially appointed few who represent a symbolic patriarchal minority.

The themes of exploitation and rejuvenation as they pertain to feminine symbolism are clearly demonstrated in the story of Ruth.  Ruth, being a Moabite woman, is cleansed of her undesirable heritage when she lies down on the field with Boaz in what is presumably a ritual of fertility.  In so doing she becomes a rejuvenated version of her mother-in-law, Naomi, and becomes a true daughter of Israel.  Indeed, when she bears Boaz a son the event is hailed as a son born unto Naomi.  This transformation allows her to take her place as a direct ancestor of Jesus.  Also prominent in the rejuvenation theme is the cycle of what Frye describes as "affliction, exile, redemption."  On page 215 he writes that the image of woman "expands into a kind of proletariat, enduring, continuous, exploited humanity, awaiting emancipation in a hostile world...."  He ascribes this metaphor specifically to the Israelites' bondage in Egypt, but this can also be seen on a grander Biblical scale as humanity's redemption through Jesus.  On pages 140-141, Frye states:  "Myth, concentrating as it does on the primary concerns that human beings share with animals and even plants, is more closely linked to man's genuine kinship with nature.  The Bible speaks continually of the alienation of man from God and of man's eventual redemption or reconciliation with God.  This latter movement, if we are right about primary concern, cannot be achieved without a corresponding redemption and reconciliation of nature, something that moves in the direction of restoring the original paradisal environment."  Frye contends that the mythical pattern dictates that humanity must be redeemed through woman.  Jesus, the masculine symbol of the New Testament is begotten through the body of a woman, and rather than being a father/bridegroom figure like Adam, he is representative of a Son/bridegroom figure.  That is, he is the Son of God and the bridegroom to humanity as a whole, where Jesus symbolizes the masculine and the Church symbolizes the feminine.  Even though Jesus may be the patriarch of all patriarchs, being the literal Son of God, he is still begotten through the body of a female.  Mary can be considered a rejuvenated Eve, and Jesus a second Adam.  This is a reversal of the garden myth, where Eve, a rejuvenated version of the original matronly feminine symbol (the garden), is taken from the adam's body to become a daughter/bride, and inevitably initiates the Fall of humanity.  On page 216, Frye states that patriarchy will eventually be reversed; not into a matriarchy, but into the equality that existed before the Fall.  This happens through the power of love, which seems to be the main tenant of Jesus' teachings.  He bucks all the norms of typical patriarchal behavior.  He loves little children, he does not denigrate slaves, lepers, or other "undesirables," nor does he subordinate women or shun Gentiles.  Both humanity and nature are symbolically feminine, and redemption is attained by creating a loving union with Jesus, the masculine symbol.  Thus, this union represents the simultaneous reconciliation of nature and humanity with God.

Flawed, ideological interpretations of the functions of masculine and feminine symbolism in the Bible have falsely rendered it a misogynistic text, and given rise to the secondary human concerns of mastery and possession.  The purpose of Biblical mythology is not to subordinate one individual to another, nor is it to ordain one specific group supreme over all others; its emphasis is on the importance of the equality of love and mutual respect between men and women, parents and children, the individual and his or her community, and humanity and the world in which it is sustained.  The objective, therefore, of Biblical myth is to demonstrate how life can be most abundantly lived.

Garden 1: Sex in the Garden State

In "Northrop Frye's Bible," Steven Marx identifies sex as the primary human concern associated with the Garden of Eden creation myth in Genesis (4).  He writes:  "The sexual union of male and female is an analogy for the human union with God" (4).  The garden is centered about two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  "And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:9).  God, as we all know, forbids Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  As noted by Frazer on page 16 of Folklore in the Old Testament, the fruit of the tree of life is not forbidden until after the man and woman eat of the tree of knowledge.  Frazer states that God does not want the humans to attain god-like qualities through immortality and possession of the special knowledge.  This notion is backed up by Frye who writes on page 194 of Words With Power, "...God seems to be addressing other gods in a spirit of something very much like panic (GC 109), we seem to be back to this fear, associated this time with the mysterious 'knowledge of good and evil,' and, still more, with the fact that humanity may now reach for the tree of life.  As the tree of life was not forbidden to Adam and Eve before, it seems to be only the possession of the new knowledge that makes it dangerous."  Frye describes the fear of which he speaks as a common theme found in pre-Biblical Near Eastern Religions, in which the gods feel "threatened by man's rapid advance, with a particular fear of his becoming immortal" (194).  Frye then proceeds to examine the "nature of the knowledge acquired."  He describes it as "a repressive morality founded on a sexual neurosis."  He goes on to say:  "The moral knowledge was disastrous when attached to a sense of shame and concealment about sex, and was forbidden because in that situation it ceases to be a genuine knowledge of anything, even of good and evil."  This is what caused the loss of sexual innocence which is essentially what constitutes the Fall.

Previously in the chapter, Frye says that the original adam may have been androgynous, so it stands to reason that the monotheistic God of Genesis is also androgynous.  That is, He contains both masculine and feminine traits.  God is creative as well as androgynous and monotheistic and wants to infuse these traits in His adam; but the adam is not God and is unable to express creativity in the same way.  To rectify this, God, leaving the masculine traits in the adam, draws out the feminine traits and imparts them onto His new creation, the isshah.  The act of sex is for enjoyment (Marx), expression of love, and creation.  The fruit of the tree of life was not forbidden because it functions as the axis mundi in the Garden of Eden myth.  It represents a bod between God and Adam and Eve which is withdrawn when they betray God's trust and strive for that which is forbidden them.  On page 155 Frye writes:  "This tree is not said to reach heaven, but it obviously is linked to a connection between earth and heaven broken at the Fall." 

"The real issue involved here," Frye writes on page 198, "is not one of simple prudery, but of the difference between a poetic and metaphorical structure, founded among other things on the primary concern of sex, and the transformation of this structure into a form of ideological authority."  In other words, a weak reading of the Garden myth not only literally assigns men a more esteemed status to lord over women, but also renders the Bible a misogynistic text.  Woman, or that which symbolizes the feminine attributes of monotheism, initiated the Fall and patriarchy was meted out as one of her punishments.  Man, or that which symbolizes the masculine, received his own set of punishments, as he was not blameless in the fiasco.  "The sexual bias, however frequent, is certainly reversible, even if the history of literary imagery is not" (Frye 201).  The point is not that woman caused expulsion from Eden; the myth very well could have been written with man taking the lead in the events which culminated in the Fall.  The point is that Adam and Eve disrupted the balance of God's creation, their paradise, when they partook of the forbidden fruit and fell from God's grace.  The result is not only (supposedly) our life on earth outside of the Garden, but also the "perversion of sex at the Fall."  That perversion includes both the sexual act, condemned as impure, but also the way in which  the male and female sexes relate to one another.

On Epiphanies Gained while Arguing about the Bible

I unintentionally had this argument with an old friend just before we were given the assignment to start one.  He is a friend from my past with whom I had fallen out of contact.  We bumped into each other on campus last year and wound up in technical writing together this semester.  I said that I believed there were parallels between Biblical mythology and the mythologies of other religions.  Christianity, I said, shared many similarities with other religions.
"Not really," he responded.
"But how can you say that," I countered, "when Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all derive from the Old Testament?  And did you know the story of the 'Great Flood' is a common theme in many cultural mythologies?  It's not peculiar to the Bible.  In fact, there are Native American stories describing how Creator had become angry with humanity for living wickedly, and destroyed them with a flood; all but one pious man and his family, who weathered many days in a vessel which Creator explained how to make.  And these stories existed in their cultures before whites came and forced Christianity on them."
"I don't want to talk about it!" he snapped.
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said.  "I'm not religious, so--"
"Well I am."  As if only those who are religious have any right to voice opinions on the Bible.
"Well I'm not.  I don't think we should base our lives on a text written thousands of years ago by one small culture.  However, I think the Bible is important because it basically invented literature as we know it."
"That's fine," he says, trying to be authoritative, "as long as you respect it."
"Well, I do respect it, but not for the reasons you think I should.  It's a Semitic cultural accounting.  It's the story of ancient people who are not my ancestors.  It bears very little meaning for me."
"I'm sorry," I said without knowing why I was apologizing.  "I can't force myself to believe something I don't."

And that was it.  That's where I had my epiphany.  The stories contained in the Bible are not the accounts of my people.  I don't have lineage dating back to the Mayflower, or concrete accounts of noble ancestors contained in dusty, old archives in the Old Country; but I know where many of my ancestors lived before coming to America:  Wales, England, and Sweden.  Now, it can certainly be argued that my ancestors living in the British Isles were most definitely Christians.  Indeed they were, and some still are today.  It can also be argued that without the Old Testament, there would not be a New Testament; which is where Christianity derives most of its dogma.  Though Christians may cleave more adamantly to the teachings of the New Testament, they still claim the Old Testament's mythology as their own.  I have always balked at blindly accepting the Christian faith as the only way to believe without fully realizing why; but then, in that epiphytic moment, I did realize why:  It is not the story of my people; therefore it has no legitimate claim to my spirit.
I did not grow up religious, but I did attend a few church services with various friends and joined a youth group for a short period of time in middle school.  Never, not once, have I ever felt any sense of comfort in church.  I left the youth group because I came to realize what a crock it was.  A flimsy sham attempting to brainwash impressionable young people while out of their parents' presence.  I didn't like the way they countered what my parents had taught me (for I did pose questions of faith to the pastors) with how they thought  things ought to be.  I remember being told on one occasion that my parents were straight up wrong, and being a good person is not enough to redeem oneself from the horrors of Hell.  A statement I took to be a deliberate, meditated act of undermining parental authority.  As Dr. Sexson has pointed out, most of the beliefs associated with the Bible are not contained therein; they are interpretations formulated in the minds of individuals whose capacity to understand is no greater than mine.  What hegemonic rule makes one ancient culture's mythological history more legitimate than that of  another?  I want to learn more about the stories that were being told by the people who would become my ancestors, for they also walked the face of the earth during "Biblical Times."  That is where I will find myself; not in the pages of the Old Testament.  Nor do I believe it to be contained within the pages of the New Testament.  For me, it is unfathomable that there is not something beyond this life on Earth, but it is equally unfathomable that that something can be summed up on one small library of books called the Bible.  Last winter, a girl I had know since she was a child passed away.  She was only seventeen, but she was about to give birth to her first child.  A little girl.  She and the baby's father lived out in Three Forks and on their way to the hospital to give birth, she died in a car accident.  They were not able to save the baby.  It was an accident; one coalescent moment in time that resulted in a horrible tragedy.  She died, her baby died, but the baby's father and the other driver lived.  And why?  Why did it happen that way on that day?  I don't accept the answer that God's ways are mysterious, yet I do not begrudge God.  I do not angrily rebuke the sky, demanding to know why, if He's so just and great, God would permit such a horrible thing to happen.  I do not do these things because I feel that any answers given, whether by laymen or priests, would be hollow.  There is no answer; it just happened.  What if it had not been icy and foggy that day?  What if they had left the house just five minutes earlier or later?  What if they had taken the interstate into Bozeman instead of the frontage road?  What if the other driver had taken the interstate instead?  Who suffered the bigger injustice?  The young girl and her baby, or the young man who survived his family?  I find more comfort in accepting that life is unfair at times.  It's terrifying to realize the truth that bad things can and do befall anybody at any given moment in time; but these things are not resultant of cosmic vendettas, and we cannot stop their happenings.  That is the common thread which connects humanity.  We're all in this crazy world together, and we can feel empathy for the plights of others--even if they're not God's chosen people.  And that, I think, is the true beauty of the human spirit.  It is our want to ease the pain of others because we know, that at any unpredictable time, it could be us.

Believing that, in spite of the murmurings of the callous and the self-righteous, lends me more strength and integrity than can be found in the pages of any book.

Stevens: A Mythological Modern Poet

When speaking in terms of "modernism" and the "modernist movement," it is important to recognize that these phrases are not synonymous with the English word "modern', which defines something contemporary in nature.  The modernist movement was not solely literary, for it embodied all aspects of creative art.  Its coming into existence was partially due to mass cultural uprising against Victorian rigidity, but was more profoundly fueled by Western society's extreme disillusionment resulting from the horrific experiences witnessed during the Great War.  Many modernist thinkers came to view the world as fragmented; there existed not just one, cohesive reality in which all of society was enveloped, but multiple realities all operating within their own dogmatic parameters.  This fragmentation was further compounded by the increasing feeling of isolation many people developed in response to the rapid technological advancements of their time.



Picasso's 1903 The Old Guitarist.  Many academics believe
this painting inspired Stevens to write "The Man
with the Blue Guitar."

 Perhaps these feeling of alienation and fragmentation are best represented by the visual arts, and among these representations the painter Pablo Picasso is probably the most recognizable.  Picasso once said:  "The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"  Many modernist writers echoed this sentiment by experimenting with a variety of new writing techniques such as stream of consciousness, or by focusing on unconventional subject matter.  Others attempted to make sense of their chaotic world by incorporating the patterns of myth into their work to create new and unique literary styles.  These elements can be seen in the work of Modern American poet Wallace Stevens.  In his poem, "The Man with the Blue Guitar"(which many academics assert was inspired by Picasso's 1903 painting, The Old Guitarist), Stevens refers to the guitarist as "a shearsman of sorts."  According to my Oxford American Pocket Dictionary, shear can mean:  to distort or be distorted, or break, from a structural strain.    The man with the blue guitar "does not play things as they are," for "Things as they are/ Are changed upon the blue guitar."  But the people implore him to play "A tune beyond us, yet ourselves."  The amorphous term "they" characterized in the poem is a reference to society at large.  The poem's speaker and the man with the blue guitar may be consciously aware of the fragmented, alienated state of society, but the common masses are only subconsciously aware of it.  Thus they are unable to articulate that for which they yearn.  They are caught between cleaving to what  they had traditionally understood themselves to be, and striving to understand the state of their disillusionment. Later, in part XV of the poem, the speaker asks:  "Is this a picture of Picasso's, this 'hoard/ Of distractions,' a picture of ourselves,/ Now, an image of our society?"  In so doing, Stevens deftly depicts the complexities of human emotion by analogizing music and art. 


Picasso's 1937 Guernica.  Perhaps this is the "hoard of destructions" Stevens references in "The Man with the Blue Guitar."



Stevens further demonstrates his willingness to utilize mythology in "Peter Quince at the Clavier."  In this poem he again represents emotion through musical images.  Also present in the poem are alternate realities to what society has conventionally perceived.  Peter Quince, being an unsophisticated rube, would not normally be sitting at a clavier, plucking melodic chords and exploring the complicated emotions invoked by an unattainable mistress.  The poem is incredibly erotic.  In the Biblical story Susanna is renowned for her beauty and piety; in Stevens' poem, although demure, she is a sexually empowered woman.  In the privacy of her garden (a mythological symbol of eroticism), "She searched/ The torch of Springs,/ And found/ Concealed imaginings./ She sighed/ For so much melody./ / Upon the bank, she stood/ In the cool/ Of spent emotions./ She felt, among the leaves,/ the dew/ Of old devotions."  These lines are clearly depicting the act of masturbation.  "The torch of Springs" symbolizes her female genitalia, and concealed imaginings her sexual fantasies.  (It may be of interest to note here that modernist writers often attempted to break the societal barriers of prudery prevalent during the Victorian Era).  She stands on the bank "in the cool of spent emotions" and remembers "old devotions." Her sexual desires fulfilled, she pauses to remember her maidenhood; to remember the first stirrings of sexual awakening.  The elders have witnessed the entire event, and now their lust is kindled.  Susanna is ashamed of having been caught in such a private and vulnerable moment.  In the Biblical story the only explanation for her shame is having been seen naked by men to whom she is not married.  Stevens attempts to fill the lacunae of the Biblical version by presenting an alternate reality in which Susanna does more than just bathe in her garden, and in which the one imagining such a scene is a rough around the edges, blue collar guy fantasizing about catching a sophisticated, sexually unavailable woman in the act of pleasuring herself. 

But a fantasy is just that. It is "momentary in the mind."  The sexually charged fantasy of the virginal maiden dies when the maiden is deflowered.  She is replaced by a sexually aware, unattainable woman.  The latter fantasy being no less momentary than the first.  Peter Quince well remembers the lesson learned through the elders' mistake.  How could they have foreseen Daniel's meddling in the matter?  Peter Quince is also well aware of his shortcomings, and knows that he, too, will probably be foiled if he dares to act upon his fantasy.  So he sits, isolated, dejectedly plucking at his clavier, refusing to give his Susanna the satisfaction of gloating over herself for all of eternity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w32XfBVWFqw   

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/blueguitar.html

I have finally made it through Numbers, and perhaps I should now retire my humor lense.

Neith

Today's key lecture question for me was:  "Who has seen the face of God?"  I had assumed that Moses had seen the face of God, because he speaks to Him in what I had interpreted as several face to face encounters.  I had attributed the discrepancy found in the short, lovely narrative in which Moses glimpses God's "back parts" to the patching of redactors, but perhaps I did not read the text closely enough.  This made me think of an inscription apparently found on a statue of Isis ( I have read these words before, but never took the time to really think about them until now):  I am all that is, that was, and that shall be, and no mortal has lifted my veil.  I did know these words were associated with Isis, and that Isis was an ancient Egyptian Goddess, so I wondered if there was any more intertextuality to be explored--especially since these two religions presumably existed around the same time, and in close proximity to one another.  While researching the phrase I discovered that Isis was not the first to utter it.  She had a predecessor named Neith.  Neith was a war goddess in Egyptian religion before the epochs of the pharaohs.  It was said that she made weapons, and that she kept a death watch over the bodies of slain warriors.  Apparently her name can also translate to "water" and "weaver."  She is the mother of Ra.  In later times, because of the interpretation of the word "weaver," she was believed to be the creator of all the universe; for she had woven everything into being on her loom.  She is also famous for arbitrating the bitter feud between Horus and Seth.  I am just as ignorant about Egyptian religion as the Bible, so I did a little research into this feud.

Apparently there were once two predominant gods in the land of Egypt; Horus ruled the northern part of the land, and Seth ruled the southern end.  At some point the two lands became one, and this is where the trouble starts.  Seth is brother to Osiris, Isis, and Nephtys.  Nephtys is Seth's wife and Isis is married to Osiris.  Horus is their son.  Seth is very well known for killing his brother, Osiris, and attempting to murder his nephew Horus.  Horus is awarded full reign over all of the now united land, and Seth is banished to wander the desert forever.  This myth sounds hauntingly familiar.  The same themes of fratricide and banishment and incestuous treachery ( Nephtys slept with her other brother and bore him a son, yet Seth never sired any offspring).  However, some interpretations say that Seth was not all bad.  According to Wikipedia, he came to be viewed as a protector who kept the dangers of the desert at bay.  He is quite often pictured alongside Horus bequeathing the power of divine rule upon the infamous pharaohs. 

Seth was also given the Semite goddesses Astarte and Asat in an attempt to soften any hard feelings incurred after the pantheon's ruling.  This stopped me in my tracks; then led me on another line of research.  I always thought the term "Semite" was a synonym for "Jew" or "Hebrew."  This is how Wikipedia defines the word:  "The term Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern Semitic-speaking peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Ethiopian Semites."  It further states that "the word Semitic is an adjective derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah."  It should also be noted that the Semitic family of languages and peoples does not include the Egyptians.  I found a very interesting learning module at wsu.edu/~dee/HEBREWS/WANDER.HTM.  The author admits that virtually nothing is known about the Hebrew occupation in Egypt beyond what is recorded in the Old Testament, but asserts that several educated guesses can be made about the events leading up to migration out of Egypt.  The Hebrews weren't the only Semitic peoples living in ancient Egypt; in fact, for a time, the foreigners were so populous that they ruled over the Egyptians.  Once the Egyptians regained dominance, they either expelled or punished the Semitic peoples residing within their kingdom.  The Egyptians also made several militaristic changes within  their society.  The author believes that "garrisoned" cities cropped up during this time, and taxation in the form of labor was extolled from the Semitic peoples.  This could explain why an Egyptian was beating a Hebrew on that fateful day after Moses was grown, and why Moses, in turn, killed that Egyptian.  That day, generations of bad blood finally came to a boil, and for Moses there was no turning back.  The author even goes so far as to speculate that Moses learned of the religion of Yahweh from the Midianites, and that the Exodus consisted of a mixed band of Semitic people.  I find this very fascinating because this amalgam of beliefs appears to be the rudimentary beginning of Hebrew religion.  "I AM THAT I AM" is not so far removed from "I am all that is, that was, and that shall be...."  Perhaps the pages upon pages of the tedious hashing out of laws and punishments in the book of Leviticus is a testament to the blending of several diverse cultures into one new, complex society.

The Cursed, Cursed Book of Numbers

I am currently bogged down in the Book of Numbers.  My husband's slightly Bible thumping boss(he's a Bible freak, but not one who's over the top), upon learning that I was taking this course, issued a good natured warning about the Book of Numbers.  I pushed the thought to the back of my mind, knowing there would be moments of wading through  doldrums while reading the Bible.  I thought maybe he was referring to another one of those long lists of who begat whom, but with the even more boring task of numbering the masses of Israelites.  Well, I was somewhat correct--there are lists of "begattings" along with a head count, but my husband's boss was actually referring to the pages and pages of redundancy.  Paragraph after paragraph repeating almost the exact same words.  In fact all of the words are identical except for the names and numbers contained therein.  Unfortunately, I have not yet uncovered the "mysterious mental maneuver" that Dr. Sexson urges us to attain.  Surely, this mind trick varies from person to person.  I have tried a few different lenses to avoid auto-pilot reading, all to no avail.  During Genesis I was able to view it as just another creation myth, which made me want to turn the pages and absorb more info to file away for comparison during future readings.  The stories revealing the short-comings of the likes of Abraham and Jacob made me feel better about being human in general.  I always thought that the one thing religious people had over me was the superiority of their scruples, but these stories, which are important, even sacred to many people who keep faith with the three biggest religions, brought the fact that we are all just human, each as imperfect as another, into context for me.  Even God exhibits very human flaws.  He is quick-tempered, and even admittedly jealous.  He regretted drowning the world in the great flood, even though His children had angered Him through their wickedness, and He actually vowed never to do such a thing again.

I was able to use a lens of humor to get through the mind numbing pages of crazily nit-picky laws of Leviticus--case in point, the stoning of murderous oxen in my last blog.  Also, one the most unintentionally hilarious texts I've ever read in my life is located in Leviticus, Chapter 13, verses 40 through 44.  Laws pertaining specifically to bald lepers, need I say more?  But Numbers!  The cursed, cursed Book of Numbers.  This goes beyond boring.  It's not the same as reading receipts.  I actually get the receipt thing because I do pick up pieces of paper and read them, though I always attributed this to just plain nosiness.  Sometimes, when I'm going through my millions of plastic grocery store bags(terrible, I know, but I always forget to throw my reusable shopping bags in the care before I go to the store), I find a receipt still floating around in one.  I always, always fish it out and read the items purchased and look at the date, and try and remember that day.  The strange thing is, I can almost always remember that particular shopping trip.

So I guess the only thing to do is to keep going, and wait patiently for the more juicy parts of the story.  I suppose I could skip ahead to the more exciting parts when my mind is dulled, but I know that I will not return to those sections of text.  This is simply not an option; not only am I taking the endeavor of reading the entire Bible seriously, but my concrete random personality forces me to read texts in chronological order. There exists little to no organization to my life in general, but I must read books from front to back.  Period. 

How's that for redundancy?