Subversion 2

Allow me to build a little on what I said in my last post. Again, try to imagine yourself as an exiled Jew, struggling in a culture very different and largely opposed to your own. As I said in the last post, Scripture emerges in this context as a theological means of subverting the dominant culture. I wanted to focus this post on the first 11 chapters of Genesis to show how truly subversive they are.

First, let's remember as Paul Heibert has pointed out, behavior is a result of the values a society holds, and values arise from their worldview. This is very important in understanding the purposes of the opening chapters of the Bible. Like I said in the last post, the biblical writers are not merely attempting a report of historical fact concerning the world's origins. It's more complex than that. The important thing to remember is that with all cultures 'origin stories' are indicative of their worldview.

Babylon's stories held a view that the gods had created the world and people, and in the end had decided that in doing so they had made a mistake. This is common to most ancient Near Eastern religions. The ultimate idea is that ultimately the gods were disappointed in one way or another with humankind. There were a few gods that loved, but not consistently. There were a few that helped, but demanded much in return. There were malicious gods who sought to inflict as much harm and suffering on humans as they could. Sometimes this lead to fatalism. Sometimes it lead to vain attempts at manipulating or bargaining with the gods to benefit oneself. And, deeper than that, imagine how this would effect ones attitude toward life. Ultimately, you as a human are a mistake. At best, you just know that the divine powers of the world are certainly not proud of your existence. The ultimate explanation for you is that you, as a race, are the bastard children of some gods who were too drunk or ignorant to really know what they were doing.

In this view the rest of creation, too, was not considered to be a success. The world on the whole, with humans included, served to divide the gods. Imagine being a child in the middle of divorce of cosmic proportions. How would that shape your identity? or the way you live? Babylon was a very immoral society. But, then again, why should they not have been? Ultimately they lived their lives attempting to appease gods who didn't really like them, and who were all trying to deny their own responsibility for the world they had created.

And now we find ourselves in a small gathering of exiled Jews. Everywhere you go you are reminded of this worldview so different to the one you have believed. In this setting you continue to meet together as you have done for as long as your people can remember. In this setting you here the elders speak. In this context you first here the declaration, "God said let there be light, and there was, and God saw it was good!" Still, there was more: God created the sky, and the sea; the land and all the plants on it, and this was good! It was God who created night and day, the stars and the seasons, and he saw it was good. God is the one who created the animals of the world, and he called them good. Then God made humankind for the purpose of ruling over all of creation. God was not disappointed in this. For only at the end with humans ruling over the rest of the earth, all of which God created and called good, does God see the whole of his work and said it was very good!

This is a statement made against what Babylon was proclaiming so loudly. This is the Jews' way, as a people, of saying, "We know what we are, and we are not a mistake. Nor is the God of Creation disappointed with us." God did not screw up. He created it all, and in all of it what he saw was good. Imagine reading this chapter out loud in front of an assembly of Jews. Each passage building up the created world and culminating with a declaration that what God saw was good. Each time it is said the congregation affirms with amens and hallelujahs that would fit in perfectly with the black congregations of our time. As an assembly they experience an emphatic alternative to the hostile claims of Babylon. And it gets better . . . .

The rest of the stories in Genesis 2-11 are not necessarily even intended to fit in with chapter 1. The Jews were not attempting a comprehensive account of the earth's origins. They were simply making contradictory statements to the Babylonian worldview that was being shoved down their throat. In the story of the Garden we see a proclamation of what life with the One God was intended to be. In the story of the Fall we see profound statements of what had gone wrong with the world, the consequences resulting, and most importantly we see God's first inclinations towards grace. With Cain and Abel we are given an observation of the conflict between the righteous and the wicked, and again reminded of God's grace to us, even in our wickedness. And then it gets really good . . .

While the stories of chapters 2-5 contain some paralells to Babylonian literature, chapters 6-11 can be considered direct rip-offs of Babylon. Especially the story of the Flood. One of the oldest works of literature in the world is the story of Gilgamesh: a Sumerian king who would be the ancient forefather of the Babylonians. No doubt, the Babylonians took considerable pride in that story. If you read Gilgamesh you will come to one part where the gods decided to flood the entire world so as to wipe it out, and king Gilgamesh escapes in a large box (which is what 'ark' means). Now I've heard it argued that the Babylonians/Sumerians stole the story from the Jews. Yet, all evidence seems to point to the Babylonian story being siginificantly older than the biblical. I think if we concede that it is, a really cool possibility opens up. Considering what the Jews were claiming in chapters 1-5, we can say that they were being quite bold in going against the Babylonian culture. Yet in chapters 6-11 they step it up a notch. They actually steal some of Bablylon's own stories and edit them according to their own Jewish, monotheistic worldview. They use Babylon's stories to boldly declare YHWH's purposes. God flooded the world not because of an arbitrary dislike for humankind, but because of humankind's wickedness. He saved Noah not because Noah was partially divine or just the 'teacher's pet' to the gods, but because Noah was righteous. The ark ends up being a means of salvation of Noah and all of the creation which God had declared good. From this God begins his history of covenants with the people he chooses. Noah marks the relational beginning of God's interaction with men.

Lastly in the story of the Tower of Babel we find many similarities to Babylonian stories, and a story that playfully criticizes the dominant culture. As a Jew in the world's largest commercial center for that time could not the story of the Tower represent the whole city of Babylon? A city representing human endevor to build a society, but building it out of the wrong material. Notice that the Tower is being built in Shinar which is another word for Babylonia. Notice also that the word Babel sound much like Babylon which many think comes from the Hebrew word for confused.

In all the opening chapters of the Judeo-Christian Bible are bold attempts at offering a monotheistic alternative to the dominant stories that helped compose the Babylonian worldview. The claims they make are just as valid today. We live in a world that is obnoxious in boasting its worldview. Whether eliminating all purpose, or telling us the impossibility of truly knowing God, our world has many hostile claims toward what Christian faith is called to be. We claim one God, who created purposefully, and did not screw up (ch.1). We believe that there is life with God, that is what he intended (ch.2). We understand that it is due to our breaking of relational vows (sin) that the world is messed up. We see in spite of this, that God always has and always will provide grace to fix these circumstances(ch.3). We see that the righteous will suffer from the selfishness of others. We know that in our own selfishness there are consequences as well as grace (ch. 4). And, whatever the claims the world makes against us, we know that the origin of humanity is God. He is central to every story whether people know it or not. His grace is also sufficient enough that he will never allow us as a race to achieve self-divinity. When we attempt it he will strike us so as to save us. (ch.6-11)

In all I have little doubt that most Jews believed these to be factual accounts. There was not competition with science, only with other mythological explanations for the world. The purpose of these stories though is deeper than mere explanation. They are intended to make profound theological claims that are unquestionably unique to the Jewish faith. They are claims that are never outdated or superceded. They are indeed at the core of our faith, but not as history. They are the beginning of God's self-revelation. God first reveals himself by contrasting his nature with Babylon. This is where our knowledge begins, and in the 66 books that follow, God never ceases to amaze us with the depth of his being.