Raised nominally Catholic so I got the Princess Bride version of the Bible - an elder figure reading us the Good Parts Version.
\n\nDid actually read it myself once before, in like 3rd grade, book by book to earn Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizzas. Gave up somewhere before the New Testament.
\n\nSo rereading it\u2019s been a blast, really. It\u2019s better and weirder than I remember and I\u2019m picking up on all sorts of stuff.
\n\nLike the creation of Eve and the temptation reads as a mythologizing not of gender but of language and metacognizance - man\u2019s said to name the animals in Gen 2:20 but doesn\u2019t clearly speak until 2:23 now that he has someone to talk to (and be heard by).
\n\nAnd then Genesis 3, that the snake\u2019s temptation is the first actual conversation in the bible, speech up to now being proclamative - the forbidden fruit is eaten because people can talk.
\n\nAnd the first-order reading is \u201clanguage introduces corruption and deceit\u201d, but more interesting is language introduces the self. It\u2019s because of language that they recognize their nudity - which is to say, they\u2019re able to model how they\u2019re seen by others. And the episode dramatizes how language, and thus persuasion, require the cultivation of a sense of self with enough \u201cmass\u201d to resist argumentation - this whole conflict coming from the way man and woman had simply done the will of whoever spoke to them last.
\n\nThe snake totally isn\u2019t the rebel Lucifer or the adversary Satan, he seems more like an abortive trickster figure. He\u2019s useful to add a third party to the temptation (language also means your kin are vectors for invasive memes), and also my headcanon is he\u2019s the same figure who tempts Jesus during his 40 days in the desert, and possibly the reason for the 40 years in the desert when he steps in after God exhausted himself with the plagues and Red Sea and stuff.
\n\nGenesis 3:22-24, woah I missed this. God\u2019s like \u201cnow man\u2019s aware like us(!), nothing stopping him from eating the immortality fruit, better gate it with a boss fight\u201d. How has that plot thread not paid off somewhere? You\u2019ve got grail romances and the fountain of youth and the philosopher\u2019s stone, how have I not read an immortality quest that uses the hook in the opening of our culture\u2019s foundational text?
\n\nIs Genesis 4:1 implying that Cain\u2019s conception was an act of God (but in 4:2 Abel\u2019s just happens)? That\u2019s one of those Old Testament precedents I don\u2019t remember hearing.
\n\nGenesis 6 is ridiculous. After a page of begats it\u2019s all \u201cAnd there were all these hot chicks, and these superhumans, and the superhumans banged the hot chicks, and their kids were all badass warrior heroes\u201d, and then God\u2019s like \u201cUGH, this is too grimdark, I regret making it.\u201d
\n\nTHE FLOOD WAS GOD REBOOTING HIS EMBARRASSING T&A HACK & SLASH WEBCOMIC TO MAKE A SRS BZNS FANTASY EPIC
\n\nYou\u2019d think the whole \u201ccreate women\u201d thing backfired on God, but by Noah\u2019s ark when he goes for a do-over he doubles down on the sexual complimentary thing, sons and wives and even the animals paired.
\n\nBut that\u2019s God for you, eventually he comes around. That\u2019s what I\u2019m picking up, his character doesn\u2019t really read as an essence of perfection or really as a tyrant - he\u2019s distant, a little pompous, a little out of touch but ultimately seems to want good things and eventually comes around in the end.
\n\nAnd my mind\u2019s like \u201cyou mean, like some sort of\u2026 patriarch?\u201d
\n\nAnd I\u2019m like \u201cyes, exactly like an\u2026 oh. Huh.\u201d
\n\nSaying \u201cthe Bible is a love letter to patriarchy\u201d sounds so banal but it really is, it really really is. The Old Testament is in a lot of ways a narrative about the triumphs and frustrations of a first-time father, one of those photomosaics composed of lots of little explorations of fathers and fatherhood.
\n\nI\u2019m looking forward to reading the Book of Job imagining Calvin\u2019s Dad as God.
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