Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave

In our review of Genesis thus far, the men (Noah, Abraham, Isaac) have received most of the attention. The women? Not so much. For example, the Bible doesn’t even tell us the name of Noah’s wife. We hear a little bit of Sarah and Hagar but Rebekah is the first woman in Genesis who takes charge of a situation and turns it to her advantage.

Before we get to her story in Gen 27, let’s rewind to Gen 25:19-34. The storyteller recounts that Rebekah was one more in a long line of OT women who had difficulty conceiving. Eventually she became pregnant with twins and received an oracle that the elder will serve the younger.

Jacob, the younger son (if only by a few minutes) became her favorite and she no doubt indoctrinated him in the prophecy so that, when the time was ripe, he took advantage of the situation to purchase the birthright from Esau for a bowl of lentil stew. The birthright entitled the firstborn to a double share of his father’s inheritance (Deut 21:17), so that may have been the most-lopsided financial deal prior to the Dutch purchase of Manhattan Island from Native Americans.

Mother’s Little Helper

Back to Gen 27. The story begins with Isaac, blind and at death’s door, wishing to impart his blessing to Esau, his favorite son. Rebekah overhears their conversation and fashions a plan for Jacob to steal the blessing. He offers a couple of objections which Rebekah easily swats away.

Why does she try to deceive Isaac in this fashion? While it might be the custom that the elder gets both birthright and blessing, perhaps she rebels at the injustice of the practice in the case of twins. Or maybe she argues that birthright and blessing go together. Having purchased the birthright for a mess of pottage, Jacob is also entitled to the blessing that goes with it.

Whatever her reasoning, Rebekah does most of the advance work of preparing a couple of goats and dressing Jacob in Esau’s best garments. All Jacob needs to do is play the part and is rewarded with a blessing of an abundance of grain and wine and dominance over his brother.

Then, in what is one of the most pathetic scenes in the OT, Esau arrives to find that Jacob has once again usurped him of his inheritance. He pleads with Isaac to scrounge up one last blessing and gets a promise that one day his descendants will throw off the yoke of Jacob’s descendants.

Esau vows that once Isaac is dead and the time of mourning is past, he will kill Jacob. Learning of this, Rebekah tells Jacob to flee to her brother Laban’s home in Haran and lay low until Esau cools down. She’ll then send for him to return. Little does she know that Jacob will be away for twenty years and she’ll never see him again. Moralists would say this is her punishment for deceiving Isaac.

Isaac Blessing Jacob (1638) by Dutch artist Govert Flinck, a pupil of Rembrandt who borrowed from his style.

Some Girls

Then, as a coda to this story (Gen 27:46-28:9) Rebekah complains to Isaac that Esau has married two of the local girls and she doesn’t want the same to happen to Jacob. Isaac calls for Jacob and sends him off to Laban’s home in Paddan-aram with a blessing. What? Another blessing? I thought he was all blessed out. Seeing this, Esau tries to please his parents by marrying within the family, taking one of Ishmael’s daughters as a wife.

Critical biblical scholars point out that the reference to Esau’s Hittite wives (Gen 26:34-35) and the coda belong together and both come from the P source. One of the giveaways is the P source always refers to Laban’s homeland as Paddan-aram while the J source calls it Haran. The P source provides a completely different motivation – finding a suitable wife – for Jacob’s travel outside the promised land. It is in the P source that the blessing of Abraham for offspring and possession of the land is passed on to Jacob.

Other than the final v. 46, the obvious signs of multiple sources such as contradictions, parenthetical comments, resumptive phrases (such as “and he said again”), and so on are lacking in Gen 27. The awkward etymology of the name Jacob in v. 36 may indicate an interpolation. And the content of the blessings to Jacob and Esau could very well have been composed by a later redactor. Other than those quibbles, the bulk appears to me to be a unified piece.

Not everyone agrees. Some biblical scholars see four, five, or ten different layers in Gen 27. For example, they claim Rebekah’s part in the story was added by a later redactor, perhaps in an effort to shift blame for the deception away from Jacob. Other layers would have heightened the rivalry of the brothers or played up the hairiness of Esau. The result is a convoluted explanation for the composition of the passage that does not appear to need it (unlike Gen 14, for example, that reads like a jumble).

Papa Was a Rolling Stone

An intriguing analysis of this chapter from Adrien Bledstein [1] turns the traditional explanation on its head. Instead of Isaac being duped into bestowing his blessing upon the wrong son, Bledstein proposes that Isaac engineered the entire episode to make sure the right son received the blessing. Her interpretation requires one to read the canonical text as a whole instead of treating the J and P strands separately.

In this telling, Isaac had his doubts whether Esau deserved a blessing after he foolishly sold his birthright and married Canaanite women. Yet he was bound by custom to give Esau the blessing. He purposely let Rebekah overhear his instructions to Esau; she took matters into her hands and Jacob played his part.

Isaac was not fooled for a moment, but before bestowing his blessing, he had to test Jacob. Eight times Isaac questions Jacob’s identity and each time Jacob either has a ready answer or had prepared his ruse (wore Esau’s clothes that smelled of the field and goat hide to make his neck and arms feel hairy). Satisfied that Jacob seemed to have thought of everything, Isaac blessed him with an abundance of grain and wine (items that wouldn’t have been very useful to the hunter Esau anyway) but held back the most-important blessing of possession of the land.

When Esau arrives, Isaac pretends to be shocked and tells Esau the content of Jacob’s blessing. It is at this point that Esau should have asked for the Abrahamic blessing of the land that was withheld from Jacob but he does not, thus failing his test and confirming Isaac’s suspicion that Esau is not worthy it. He leaves Esau with the consolation prize that one day he will break his brother’s yoke from his neck.

Now assured that Jacob is indeed the worthy successor, Isaac is able to send him off to Paddan-aram with the Abrahamic blessing of numerous descendants and possession of the land. Through plausible deniability, Isaac was able to ensure the appropriate son received the Abrahamic blessing, not merely the eldest son as custom would have dictated.

Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?

While highly entertaining, this interpretation only makes sense within the canonical text. It simply doesn’t work if you isolate the J and P versions of the story. But the most obvious interpretation of the canonical text is that Rebekah is controlling the events. Portraying Isaac as the master manipulator takes away the dominance Rebekah has been given in the story. Bledstein’s interpretation is just too clever by half.

I believe emphasizing Rebekah’s dominance is the point of the narrative. The entire episode is very reminiscent of the first chapter of 1 Kings where Adonijah, the eldest surviving son of David, has assumed the throne because the dying King has not named a successor. The prophet Nathan and Bathsheba cook up a plan to “remind” David that he had once promised to name Solomon as his successor. David pulls himself together long enough to make his announcement and Adonijah is out. Just as in Gen 27, we see a mother deceive her elderly husband to ensure the fortunes of her younger son over the rival claim of an elder son.

The theme of the younger son being favored over the elder (Abel over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Judah over Reuben, Ephraim over Manasseh) is a continuing motif in Genesis and one we will need to explore in more detail in a future article.

[1] Adrien Bledstein "Binder, Trickster, Heel and Hairy-man: Rereading Genesis 27 as a Trickster Tale Told by a Woman" Genesis, A Feminist Companion to the Bible, ed. A. Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993) 2:282-295

The Evolution of Abraham

Every superhero has an origin story that explains how they got their superpowers or what motivates them. Nations also have origin stories. Israel has more than one origin story.

This seems like a curious claim. Isn’t the Bible the origin story of Israel? Yes, but as we have seen, the Bible has preserved competing traditions.

Competing Origins

The oldest origin story for Israel is the cycle of narratives surrounding Jacob in Gen 25-35. Judging by the historical context, the substance of the Jacob cycle appears to have been written down at the end of the 8th or the beginning of the 7th century BCE. After cheating his older brother of birthright and blessing, Jacob flees to the land of the Arameans, acquires wives and children and livestock, and obtains recognition as his own tribe (Gen 31). The final chapters have Jacob reconciling with his brother and connect him to sacred sites such as Peniel, Shechem and Bethel.

The Jacob cycle is a complete legend of Israel’s origin. On its own, it explains the existence of the twelve tribes and which are the most important, proves their rights to the hill country of central Palestine, recounts the founding of the main sanctuary at Bethel, and so on. But this Israel is not the one we know from other traditions in the Bible. This Israel is not a community of believers nor a warring nation, but a tribe struggling for recognition.

Compare the origin story of Jacob with the better-known origin story of Moses and the Exodus. Moses, too, had to flee to a foreign land where he married the daughter of a desert sheikh, only to finally return to his homeland with a mission. But Moses is not a patriarch, his sons play no role in the formation of Israel. According to the Exodus story, one is not a son of Israel through genealogy but by hearing the call from YHWH through his prophet Moses. Israel’s origins lie not in the tents of Laban, but in Egypt and the desert.

If this theory of competing origin stories sounds highly speculative to you, there is some hard evidence to support it. In chapter 12 of the Book of Hosea (end of 8^th century BCE), the prophet invites his audience to choose between the competing and conflicting legends of origins. Hosea’s challenge closes with this:

Jacob fled to the land of Aram,
there Israel served for a wife,
and for a wife he guarded sheep.

By a prophet YHWH brought Israel up from Egypt,
and by a prophet he was guarded.

Hosea seems to be asking his audience: Who do you want to be? Biological descendants of a scoundrel or a people called by God? He hoped to persuade his audience to choose Moses but, in the end, Israel refused to choose one origin story over the other and kept both.

Abraham: The Promise by Israeli artist Zvi Leonhard (https://zviandariane.com/). God uses the dust of the earth and stars of the heavens as metaphors for descendants beyond measure (Gen 13:16; 15:5)

Growth of the Abraham Legend

Is the Abraham cycle yet another origin story?

First of all, the Abraham cycle is not as old as the Jacob cycle. References to Abraham don’t appear outside Genesis until Ezek 33:23-29 and Is 51:1-3 (both 6^th century). The Ezekiel reference says Abraham came to possess the land. The reference from Isaiah says YHWH blessed Abraham and Sarah and made them parents of multitudes. In both citations we see expressed the dual theme of the Abraham cycle: the land and offspring.

Despite the fact that the references are 6^th century, biblical scholars believe that the origins of the Abraham legend were formed around the same time as the Jacob cycle (8^th-7^th centuries BCE). The core set of narratives (Gen 13; 16; 18-19; and 21:1-4) is centered on Hebron and the sacred oak of Mamre. Abraham (under his original name of “Abram”) has two sons, but only one belongs to Israel. Through Lot, Abraham is also related to the Moabite and Ammonite people. If the Abraham cycle is an origin story, it is not just an origin story of Israel.

Based on the core narratives, Abraham is an indigenous hero of the south. Isaac, too, is a legendary hero of the south, centered around Beersheba. Early on, Isaac was joined to the Abraham cycle as Abraham’s son. What remains of Isaac’s story (Gen 26) and was recast as narratives involving Abraham (Gen 20 and 21:22-34). Outside of Gen 26, Isaac only appears as either a son of Abraham or a father of Jacob.

After the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians in 721 BCE, the survivors brought their national origin story (the Jacob cycle) to the southern kingdom of Judah where it was merged with the combined Abraham-Isaac cycle. During the Babylonian exile, the conjoined Abraham/Jacob cycle of stories was modified to reflect a promise of land because the Israelites were no longer in possession of the land. A Babylonian backstory was provided for Abraham. The divine command that came to Abraham in Ur to go forth to Canaan was a call for the exiles to leave Babylon and return to the promised land.

With the addition of the primeval history and Joseph narrative, Genesis became a prequel to the Exodus story.

The Ecumenical Patriarch

While it may have started as legends of a southern hero, the Abraham cycle evolved into something else. What is his ultimate role in the OT?

One clue can be found in  a curious note (Gen 15:9) made upon the death of Abraham:

His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites.

We thought we had seen the last of Ishmael back in Gen 21:8-21 when he and his mother Hagar had been expelled to the desert. At a story level, the purpose of Ishmael's exile was leave Abraham only one remaining son when God called for a sacrifice (Gen 22). Yet the P source brings Ishmael back into the story as a reminder that Abraham is not only the father of Israel or Judah or the Jews, but is the ancestor of many nations.

According to an interesting article by Albert de Pury, Professor for OT studies at the University of Geneva, Abraham was ultimately seen as an “ecumenical patriarch.” In contrast to other traditions that found their way into the Bible insisting the promised land must be taken from the Canaanites in a war of conquest that ends in the extermination of all the land’s former inhabitants, Abraham is seen as peacefully co-existing with the various Canaanite clans. He is the father of or is closely related to neighboring nations such as the Arabs (Ishmael is the ancestor of the twelve tribes of the Arab federation), the twelve tribes of Israel (through his grandson Jacob), Edomites (through his grandson Esau), Midianites (through his second wife Keturah), and Ammonites and Moabites (through Lot).

De Pury uses the adjective “ecumenical” in the sense of “worldwide or general in extent, influence, or application.” As the father of many nations (Gen 17:5), perhaps a better adjective – although more technical – for Abraham’s role in Genesis would be “transethnic” or “transnational” patriarch.

The more commonly-used meaning of the word “ecumenical” is “of, relating to, or representing the whole of a body of churches.” It is in this sense that the term “ecumenical patriarch” is appropriate for how Abraham is viewed today.  Abraham is venerated by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. If the children of Abraham can focus on him as a symbol of what we have in common rather than what divides us, the world will be a better place.

Paying a Lot to Buy a Plot

I had originally intended to skip over Gen 23 because Abraham’s negotiations to acquire a burial plot for Sarah didn’t seem terribly interesting. Yes, in the grand scheme of things the biblical author wanted to make the point that the death of Sarah resulted in Abraham purchasing land of his own, an incremental step in the fulfilment of God’s promise of the land to Abraham. But I didn’t think I could write 1000 words on it.

Then I read the transcript of a lecture on Gen 23 Meir Sternberg delivered in 2011 that changed my mind. Meir Sternberg is Professor of Poetics and Comparative Literature at Tel Aviv University. Along with Robert Alter (mentioned in my previous article), he is one of the most prominent proponents of a literary approach to understanding the Bible.

Sternberg points out that Sarah’s burial site, the cave of Machpelah, is only mentioned in Genesis and nowhere else. The Bible is not interested in establishing a cult of the dead as in Egypt. So why does the biblical author spend twenty verses discussing a real estate deal?

Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. A wall built by Herod the Great surrounds the courtyard built over the cave of Machpelah. It is one of the holiest sites for both Jews and Muslims. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, 2010)

They didn’t say “yes”, but they didn’t say “no”

The first couple of verses in Gen 23 inform us that Sarah died in Hebron at the age of 127. Abraham needs a place to bury his wife, so he approaches the town’s Hittite leaders. As negotiations begin (vv. 3-6), Abraham acknowledges that, as a resident alien (“stranger and sojourner among you”), he has no citizenship rights. Therefore, he petitions the Hittites to give him property for a burial place. The word “give” in Biblical Hebrew is ambiguous. It could mean “give” as a gift and it can also mean “give” me to purchase.

The Hittites answer him with flattery (“you are a great prince among us”) as a way of politely pointing out that Abraham is a wealthy man and not merely a poor sojourner. They also offer the use of any of their grave sites (“none of us will refuse you his grave”). Perhaps because they do not know if Abraham is asking for a gift or for a purchase, they do not say they will “give”, only that “no one will refuse”.

On the one hand, it sounds great. If Abraham needs a grave, they can provide a grave. But Abraham wants a burial site (“landed property”) and all they are offering is his choice of tombs.

“I give it to you”

A second round of negotiations (vv. 7-11) is in order. Abraham has his eye on a particular cave owned by a Hittite named Ephron. We learn later this double cave (“Machpelah” means “double”) faces Mamre, which was one of the first places where Abraham settled in Canaan (Gen 13:18). He was still residing there when he received a visit from three strangers announcing the future birth of Isaac (Gen 18:1). The spot certainly must have held a sentimental meaning for Abraham.

Abraham asks the leaders of the Hittites if they can approach Ephron on his behalf. The cave is at the end, on the boundary of his field. It’s not like the cave is in the center of Ephron’s field and he will have to work around it. Abraham is saying, “Sell me the cave and I will be out of your way. I will pay full price. I’m not asking for a gift.”

As it so happened, Ephron is sitting among the men at the city gates where business is done. “You want to buy the cave? I’ll give you the field as well.” He literally says “I give it to you” three times. Sounds generous, right?

Ephron does not want to sell just the cave. Selling the land to Abraham would grant him citizenship rights, it would set a precedence, it would break the status quo. Who knows? Maybe it will lower property values and he’d never be able to sell his field in the future. No, if Abraham wants the cave, he has to make it worth Ephron’s while. He needs to buy the entire field.

What’s a million dollars between friends?

We now enter the third and final round of negotiations (vv. 12-18). Abraham only wanted to purchase the cave, but if he can only get it by purchasing the field, then that is what he will do: “I will give you the price of the field.” If Ephron is making an offer in good faith, he will name his price. But if he has no intention of selling Abraham land at any price, then he will have to withdraw his offer in the eyes of the entire community.

Ephron shows his true colors and names his price: four hundred shekels of silver. “What is that between me and you?” To give you some idea of the price Ephron is asking, King David paid fifty shekels (2 Sam 24:24) for the site of the future Jerusalem Temple. That was hundreds of years later for prime real estate in the heart of Jerusalem and here Ephron is asking eight times that for a field on the outskirts of Hebron. What’s a million dollars between friends?

Did Ephron name an outrageous price to call Abraham’s bluff, so he will fold and go home? Or is Ephron price gouging? We don’t know, but Abraham doesn’t try to bargain down to a fair price. He weighs out 400 shekels (about 4.5 kg or almost 10 pounds) of silver and gets the title deed to Ephron’s field. (Interestingly, the purchase price of 400 shekels is one shekel for each of the four hundred years God told him Abraham it would be before his descendants would finally inherit the land of Canaan).

The meaning of it all

Why does the Bible spend all this time telling us this story of a real estate deal?

A running theme throughout the entire Abraham cycle is the dual promise of the land of Canaan and descendants to inherit it. After a long time, God finally came through on his promise to provide Abraham with a son, Isaac. And then God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice this long-promised son.

And while God has promised Abraham that the entire land of Canaan will one day belong to his descendants, when Sarah dies and he needs a place to bury her, a promise of land in the distant future doesn’t help at all. He needs a place to bury his wife now. And to get it, he has to go hat in hand and demean himself playing a game the Hittites have rigged against him.

The moral of the story is that God will deliver on his promises, but don’t expect Amazon next-day delivery. And there will be suffering involved.

Hail and Well Met

One of the books that became a major influence on how I approach the Bible is The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter. A professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, Alter sees the OT with the eyes of a literary critic, subjecting the biblical texts to the kind of critical analysis one might apply to the works of Shakespeare. The texts display literary artistry and are not simply cobbled together from various sources.

In chapter 3 of the book, Alter speaks of something I’ve written about in previous articles, how the same story gets told two or three times, sometimes with the same characters:

Three times a patriarch is driven by famine to a southern region where he pretends that his wife is his sister, narrowly avoids a violation of the conjugal bond by the local ruler, and is sent away with gifts. Twice Hagar flees into the wilderness from Sarah’s hostility and discovers a miraculous well and that story itself seems only a special variation of the recurrent story of bitter rivalry between a barren, favored wife and a fertile co-wife or concubine. That situation, in turn, suggests another oft-told tale in the Bible, of a woman long barren who is vouchsafed a divine promise of progeny, whether by God himself or through a divine messenger or oracle, and who then gives birth to a hero. (p. 49)

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear

Alter provides a modern-day example that particularly stuck with me over the years. Think of the gun-slinging hero in Westerns, able to draw and outshoot the bad guys before they can even pull their triggers. In a similar analogy I used way back when I began my blog five years ago, suppose that centuries from now, only a dozen Western movies have been preserved. In all but one, the hero has such a “hyperreflexive arm”. In the one exception, the hero has a withered arm and has taught himself to shoot from a rifle slung over his back.

Alter imagines that, having studied the surviving samples of 20^th-century Western cinema, future scholars might hypothesize these are all derivations of one original story of a hero with lightning reflexes. The oddball story of the rifleman with a withered arm would be a variant from a different source tradition.

Unlike these imaginary scholars of Western cinema studies, we who have seen untold number of Westerns from the Lone Ranger to Matt Dillon know that the image of the quick-on-the-draw gunfighter is a convention in that genre. When you have a major departure from the convention, the uniqueness tells you something about the character or story. In this case, it might be the hero’s determination to overcome a physical handicap or the rifle provides some advantage over the typical six-shooter.

Alter calls these conventions “type-scenes” and identifies several in the Bible: “the annunciation … of the birth of the hero to his barren mother; the encounter with the future betrothed at a well; the epiphany in the field; the initiatory trial; danger in the desert and the discovery of a well or other form of sustenance; the testament of the dying hero” (p. 51).

Betrothal type-scenes

Alter spends the rest of the chapter discussing a particular convention he calls the “betrothal type-scene” in which the hero of the story meets his future bride at a well in a foreign land. He draws water for the “girl” (how she is usually referenced) who then rushes home bringing news of the stranger. The stranger is invited to a meal, after which the betrothal between the stranger and the girl is finalized. 

I’ll skip over the first betrothal type-scene in Genesis for now and return to it later. In the second example (Gen 29:1-20), Jacob, escaping from his brother’s wrath, arrives at a well in a foreign land. Rachel arrives to water her flock but a large stone covers the well’s mouth. Jacob moves the massive stone and waters her flock. After Jacob informs Rachel that he is her kinsman, she runs to tell her father, Laban. The closed well is a metaphor for Rachel’s closed womb and Jacob’s labor in moving the stone foreshadows the various obstacles he will need to overcome in securing his bride and making his fortune. Stones also feature prominently in the Jacob cycle of stories.

The third example comes from Exodus (2:15b-21) where Moses, escaping from Pharaoh’s wrath in Egypt, arrives by a well in Midian. Zipporah and her six sisters come to water their flock but are driven off from the well by shepherds. Faced not just with an inanimate obstacle but with enemies, Moses drives off the hostile shepherds and waters the flock of Zipporah and her sisters. How Moses rises to the challenge is entirely appropriate for someone who has killed an Egyptian taskmaster, will later face off with Pharaoh to liberate his people, and become Israel’s military commander for the next forty years. That the tale is briefly told is typical of how the Torah doesn’t dwell on Moses’ personal life.

Elizarus and Rebekah at the Well (1670s) byJohann Carl Loth. The name of Abraham's oldest and most-trusted servant isn't given in Gen 24, but earlier in Gen 15:2 Abram laments that without a son, "Eliezer of Damascus" will be his heir.

Rebekah takes charge

Now that we have reviewed a couple of examples, let’s return to the first betrothal type-scene (Gen 24:10-61) and see how it differs from the simpler stories we just examined.

The main difference is that it is Abraham’s servant – instead of Isaac – who travels to the foreign land. The servant showers Rebekah with gifts that her brother is quick to notice. This is revealing of Laban’s grasping nature and why he will later become one of Jacob’s obstacles.

Alter says this is the only example in the Bible of a surrogate meeting the future bride. This is fitting because Isaac is a passive and shadowy figure in Genesis. We last saw him about to be sacrificed at God’s request. He’s not mentioned again until this betrothal episode, and then he only appears at the end to take Rebekah as his wife. Isaac appears in Gen 26 but these are recycled stories (wife-sister, treaty with Abimelech, dispute over wells, and origin of the name of Beersheba) from the Abraham cycle. Isaac plays a part in Gen 27 in which Jacob steals his blessing from Esau, but by then Isaac is old and blind.

The other major departure is that Rebekah draws water for the stranger (= the servant) instead of the other way around. The number of actions (11 verbs in the four verses of vv. 16-20) Rebekah takes (drawing water, filling her jar, pouring, giving drink, etc.) are emblematic of the dominant role she later plays (taking, cooking, dressing, giving) in the story of securing the blessing for her favored son, Jacob (Gen 27). As the most-controlling of all the matriarchs, it is appropriate that she dominates her betrothal scene.

Jesus the Bridegroom

Being a professor of Hebrew literature, Robert Alter limits his analysis to the OT. But if we include the NT, we see something that looks like a betrothal type-scene in the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:1-42. Once again we have a stranger (Jesus) in a foreign land (Samaria) who is sitting beside Jacob’s well about noon when a Samaritan woman arrives to draw water. A conversation ensues, after which the woman leaves her water jar behind and returns to the city to inform its citizens of the stranger she just met. Moved by her testimony, they invite Jesus to stay with them for a couple of days.

A major difference in this version is that, instead of a maiden, we have a five-times married woman. There is no actual exchange of water, although the subject of water is the lynchpin of the dialogue that ensues in which Jesus contrasts the stagnant water of the well with his living water (the gift he has to offer). The episode ends not with a betrothal contract but with the townsfolk coming to believe in Jesus.

Understanding the literary conventions puts the modern reader of the Bible in the mind of the originally intended audience. When we watch a Western and see the hero face off with the bad guy on a dusty street in front of a saloon, we expect a shootout. Similarly, when the ancient audience saw the hero arrive at a well in a foreign land, they expected he would meet his future wife there. Knowing how the scene is supposed to play out, the audience – modern or ancient – revels in any twists from the standard convention. As the saying goes, “God is in the details.”

The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene

About a year ago I read a movie review of Mary Magdalene, directed by Garth Davis (Lion). I was busy that weekend but thought I’d check it out the following weekend. After a one-week run at theaters in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, the closest theater still showing it was in San Antonio. A five-hour road trip was not in cards, so I resolved to catch it on cable and finally had that opportunity when it recently appeared on Showtime.

My impressions were that it is an amazingly quiet movie, hushed tones, very understated. As would be expected of a movie focused on a female character, it is a feminist movie in that Mary defies cultural rules imposed on women and is treated as an equal to the male disciples. The movie is a little revisionist because Mary is not presented as a reformed prostitute (how she is typically portrayed in popular media) or the wife of Jesus (a major theme of Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code). But mostly the movie is a re-envisioning of the gospel story as seen through the eyes of one of Jesus’ female disciples.

What do we know about Mary Magdalene?

The NT sources don’t tell us a whole lot about Mary Magdalene:

• Had seven demons driven from her (Lk 8:2)
• Among the women who travelled with Jesus and financially supported his ministry (Lk 8:1-3)
• Among the women who witnessed the crucifixion (Mt 27:55f; Mk 15:40f; Jn 19:25)
• Went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body and found the tomb empty (Mt 28:1-8; Mk 16:1-8; Lk 24:1-11; Jn 20:1-3)
• Witnessed the risen Jesus and told the apostles about it (Mt 28:9-10; Jn 20:14-18) 

Obviously, filling out a 2-hour movie will require some creative license.

While implied in her name, the NT does not explicitly state Mary comes from the city of Magdala in Galilee. This was a fairly large city of some 40,000 people, most of them Gentile, and was a main fishing and export center in the region.

Also, you will note that nowhere in the gospels is Mary referred to as a prostitute. That was a later invention of Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604), conflating stories of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears (Lk 7:36-50) and Mary of Bethany who anointed his feet with perfume (Jn 12:1-8).

Outside the NT, Mary appears prominently in some Gnostic gospels. In these, she symbolizes the Gnostic church and is opposed by Peter who represents the apostolic church. As one whom Jesus loved more than any other, she was given secret knowledge directly by Jesus that was not handed down through the apostles.

Poster from the 2018 UK release of Mary Magdalene

The portrait of Mary in Mary Magdalene

The movie begins with Mary (Rooney Mara) working hard in the family’s fishing business and unhappy with the idea of an arranged marriage to a local widower. Her strong opposition to the union convinces her family she has a demon. After traditional exorcisms almost kill her, one of her brothers calls in Jesus (Joaquin Phoenix), who happens to be passing through town, to heal her. After a brief chat with Mary, Jesus declares, “There are no demons here.”

Mary is captivated by Jesus’ preaching and healings. She abandons her family to be baptized by him and becomes his first female disciple. When she tells Jesus that the women of Magdala were too afraid to be baptized by the male disciples, Jesus begins to preach to women as well and Mary baptizes the women who come forward to follow Jesus.

When Mary hears Jesus speak of the kingdom of God, she instinctively understands it is something we bring about through our actions while the male disciples believe that Jesus will overthrow Roman domination in order to bring about a new world. Jesus pairs up Mary with Simon Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and sends them out to preach. They arrive in a village in Samaria where the Romans have massacred most of the populace. Peter is ready to leave the starving survivors to their fate but Mary cares for them in their dying moments and Peter realizes the power of mercy.

After Jesus initiates a riot in the Temple, all the male disciples expect Jesus will inaugurate a revolt against the Romans. But when Jesus fails to carry forward the expected revolution, Judas (Tahar Rahm) tries to force his hand with disastrous consequences.

Mary holds a lonely vigil outside Jesus’ tomb and, in the morning speaks to the risen Jesus. She tells the male disciples that Jesus appeared to her and told her the kingdom they all worked for is here already, within us. While Peter believes she had an experience of the risen Lord, he sees it as a sign that Jesus will return some day, bringing the true kingdom. Peter cannot accept that Jesus chose her as the recipient of a “special message” when all the men were chosen to build the one church, with one message. Rejected by the men, Mary will not remain and stay silent, so she goes off on her own.

How does the movie compare to what we know about Mary?

Portrayed as a poor fisher woman, Mary is not a woman of means capable of providing for Jesus and his disciples out of her own resources. Wealthy women did exist in that time. For an example of this, I think of Paul’s first known Christian convert in Europe, Lydia of Thyatira (Acts 16:11-15), a financially independent woman with a business, house, servants, and so on. A large cosmopolitan city like Magdala would have provided more opportunities for a Jewish businesswoman than the small village depicted in the film.

The movie gives short shrift to Mary’s role in Jesus’ crucifixion and burial. Knocked out at Jesus’ arrest, she arrives in time to see him carrying his cross, but is too overwhelmed with grief to follow. She eventually makes it to the foot of the cross as Jesus breathes his last and helps with the burial. Given these are the moments when Mary first appears in the gospels, this choice of the writers or director here is rather surprising. Perhaps they felt this was well-trod ground quite sufficiently covered in other movies about Jesus?

There is a Gnostic flavor to Mary’s claim to the male disciples that she received a special revelation from the risen Jesus, but the message she presents in the movie is a completely orthodox one. We, the audience, should know that in time Peter and the others will receive their own vision of the risen Lord and will eventually come around to understand the gospel as Mary presents it to them. But for the less biblically literate among us, the movie’s presentation could be seen as elevating Mary at the expense of the male disciples.

The movie ends with a postscript stating that in 2016, the Vatican formally identified Mary of Magdala as “apostle of the apostles”. This is a reference to a proclamation that elevated her July 22 memorial day to that of feast day, the same as the other apostles in the Church calendar.

In closing, I offer the opening prayer for the Feast Day of St. Mary Magdalene:

In the garden He appeared to Mary Magdalene, who loved him in life, who witnessed his death on the cross, who sought him as he lay in the tomb, who was the first to adore him when he rose from the dead, and whose apostolic duty was honored by the apostles so that the good news of life might reach the ends of the earth.

Abraham Unbound

In the Jewish tradition, Genesis 22:1-19 is referred to as the Akedah (ah-kay-DAH), or “binding” of Isaac. Christians will usually refer to it as the sacrifice of Isaac or even the testing of Abraham.

In this powerful story, God orders Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac as a burnt offering. Along with servants, they travel three days from Beersheba to the land of Moriah, the place of sacrifice. At the moment Abraham is ready to plunge a knife into Isaac, an angel calls out to him to stay his hand and a ram caught by its horns in a nearby thicket is substituted for Isaac. Jews remember this story on Rosh Hashanah when the ram’s horn (shofar) is blown. The shofar represents the ram substituted for Isaac and reminds God of his promise to bestow blessings upon Abraham and his descendants.

Christians view the story as a foreshadowing of the Passion narratives. Isaac is a precursor to Christ, the beloved Son offered as a sacrifice by the Father. The story was allegorized: Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice just as Jesus carried his cross, the journey to Moriah took three days and Jesus spent three days in the tomb, etc. In this accounting, Jesus was the perfect sacrifice because he actually suffered and died, whereas Isaac was released and a ram substituted.

The Land or Hill of Moriah?

Where is the place of sacrifice, “the land of Moriah”? Moriah is only mentioned in one other place in the Bible. In 2 Chr 3:1, Solomon built the Temple on “Mount Moriah”. The same verse identifies Mount Moriah as the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite (called Araunah the Jebusite in 2 Sam 24). Connecting these two references to “Moriah”, Jewish tradition saw the sacrifice of Isaac as a precursor of all the sacrifices to come later once the Temple was built.

Scholars are dubious that the two references to “Moriah” identify the same place. Gen 22 refers to a general area – the “land of Moriah” – but Chronicles refers to a specific hill called “Mount Moriah” which became known as the Temple Mount. Furthermore, Jerusalem is in a wooded area and it would have been unnecessary to load firewood on Isaac’s back since it could be acquired on-site.

There are two theories to explain the mismatch. The first theory is that the reference to the land of Moriah in Gen 22 was original and the Chronicler appropriated the name to associate the Temple Mount with the site of Isaac’s aborted sacrifice. But if this were the case, one suspects that the Chronicler would have made the connection more obvious. The second theory is that the Temple Mount was originally called Mount Moriah and the actual location in Gen 22 was suppressed and replaced with the name Moriah to link Abraham with the future site of the temple. This theory appears more likely to me.

Sacrifice of Isaac (1635) by Rembrandt (1606-1669) captures the dramatic moment when an angel stays Abraham’s hand. Note how Abraham’s left hand covers Isaac’s face and the look of amazement on Abraham’s face bordering on madness.

Would God Order the Sacrifice of Isaac?

The traditional understanding of the Akedah is that God never intended for Abraham to slaughter Isaac but was testing his faith. By trusting in God and not withholding his son, Abraham demonstrated his fear of God. Abraham is praised for being prepared to do whatever God asks, even at great personal cost. Some interpreters take it further and claim the story is a polemic against child sacrifice: God is demonstrating to Abraham that he will never ask a parent to murder their own child as an offering.

I don’t agree that the narrative is intended as a condemnation of the idea of child sacrifice. Even if God never intended for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, when asked to do it Abraham didn’t argue with God over the justice of killing an innocent the way he did when told about the impending destruction of Sodom. Any interpretation of Abraham’s actions needs to begin with the understanding that a deity’s demand for a child sacrifice was not an absurd or unusual request in ancient times. It is not surprising that Abraham accepted God’s command without question.

Certainly, from our vantage point, it seems unusually cruel for God to put Abraham through the mental anguish of preparing to sacrifice his own son, only to stop him at the last moment. But the biblical authors didn’t think in those terms. If they weren’t bothered by physical torture (see the instruction to Hagar to return to beatings at the hand of Sarah), the idea of psychological torture certainly wouldn’t have crossed their minds.

Divine Intervention?

Some commentators have suggested that, in the original telling of the story, Abraham completed his sacrifice of Isaac. They point to v. 19 which reads that Abraham – and not Abraham and Isaac – returned to his servants and they then journeyed home to Beersheba. Could this be a clue to how the original story went? According to this theory, later editors subsequently covered this up by the introduction of the angelic messenger who stayed Abraham’s hand in vv. 11-12. Evidence these verses might be a later addition is how they refer to “the angel of YHWH” while the rest of the narrative (except for v. 14 which might be another addition) uses God (= Elohim) as the name of the deity. The ram caught in the thicket in v. 13 would also have been invented as a replacement for Isaac’s aborted sacrifice.

The main problem I have with this theory is that Isaac would then be dead. What happens to the promise then? As we have seen, up to this point the promise of land and descendants to inherit the land are major running themes in the Abraham cycle. Praising Abraham for sacrificing his son while promising to make his offspring as numerous as the stars would really be rubbing salt in the wound. Killing off Isaac would necessitate the introduction of a new heir to fulfill the promise.

A third interpretation keeps the ram as part of the original story but rejects the idea Abraham completed the sacrifice. Following the logic above, YHWH’s messenger in vv. 11-12 is still considered a later interpolation. The text would then have flowed from v. 10 to v. 13: “Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son, but then he looked up and saw a ram…and offered it up instead of his son.” If this preserves the original narrative, then Abraham would have considered the trapped ram a sign that God wanted him to sacrifice it instead of his son. Later redactors, possibly bothered by the idea that Abraham would disobey a divine order, introduced YHWH’s messenger to provide divine sanction for the substitution.

Troubling Questions for Today

What difference does it make how we understand the Akedah? I’ll answer that with a question: If Abraham had completed the sacrifice of Isaac, would he still be considered the exemplar of a righteous man, the father of faith? After all, he was just following orders. Orders from God, in this case. Aren’t we supposed to follow the divine will, not our own?

This train of thought is not assuaged by the intervention of YHWH’s messenger because that still implies Abraham was ready to kill Isaac following God’s mandate until he was stopped in the act. Yes, God stayed his hand once Abraham had proved that he was prepared to go through with the sacrifice. But is Abraham a righteous man simply because he was stopped a moment before slaughtering his own innocent son? 

It is only in the scenario where there was no divine messenger do we have some glimmer that maybe Abraham was looking for a way out of his predicament, that he wasn’t really fully prepared to slaughter his son. In this scenario, we could consider Abraham to be a human being with parental affections similar to our own and not a mindless robot carrying out divine instructions. A man who, in the final analysis, chose the life of his son over blindly following the dictates of what he perceived to be God’s will is someone we might find worthy of emulating today.

The Ages of Man

Among the many unbelievable aspects of Genesis (creation in six days, talking snakes, global flood, etc.) are the incredible lifespans. Prior to the flood, the lifespans are just shy of 1000 years. In Gen 6:3, YHWH sets a limit of 120 years but that seems more of a goal than a limit because descendants of Noah continued to live for hundreds of years, although the lifespans decreased with every pasing generation (see Gen 11:10-32). The genealogies document a devolution from the golden age of God’s original creation.

In Genesis, the genealogies and chronologies come from the P source. The non-P sources rarely provide any sort of genealogy and never mention ages. But when you combine the two sources together, the combination raises some narrative oddities.

Putting the Sexy in Sexagenarian

I’ve already discussed the stories (Gen 12 and Gen 20) of Abraham passing off his wife Sarah as his sister. When these stories are given context by the P chronology, it casts them in a different light.

Gen 12 takes place some time after Abraham arrives in Canaan. According to the P source, this happened when he was 75 years old and Sarah is 10 years younger than Abraham. This means that when Abraham feared that pharaoh would kill him to take Sarah as his wife because of her great beauty, he was talking about a woman in her late 60s.

Gen 20 takes place in the year before Isaac’s birth. Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old (Gen 21:5). Abimelech of Gerar, therefore, is supposed to have taken a pregnant 90-year-old woman into his harem. She must really have been a beauty for Abimelech to ignore the obvious drawbacks.

The Expelled Handmaid

Hagar’s story in Gen 21:8-20 is a parallel narrative to her story in Gen 16, previously discussed. In both stories, the deity finds Hagar wandering in the wilderness and announces her son will become a great nation. Because the deity is referred to as YHWH in Gen 16 and Elohim in Gen 21, the Gen 16 version is attributed to the J source and the Gen 21 parallel is attributed to the E source.

Gen 21:8-20 takes place after Sarah has given birth to Isaac. At the feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Sarah sees Ishmael playing with Isaac and grows jealous thinking that Ishmael will inherit alongside Isaac. She demands that Abraham get rid of the boy and his mother.

In Gen 16:16 we are told that Abram was 86 years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Since Abraham was 100 years old at the birth to Isaac, by simple arithmetic Ishmael is 14 years at the time of Isaac’s birth. He’s well into his teenage years by the time of Isaac’s weaning feast.

Abraham is reluctant to expel Ishmael because he is his son after all, but God tells him it will be okay. With the divine reassurance, Abraham gives Hagar some bread and water and sends her off into the desert with Ishmael. In no time, the water is gone and she and the boy prepare to die. God hears their cry, gives Hagar the encouragement that Ishmael will become a great nation, and she sees a life-saving well of water.

Reading this narrative in isolation, Ishmael does not appear to be a teenager of 16 or more years. At that age, he should be able to fend for himself yet he is completely passive, totally dependent on Hagar. In the isolated story, Ishmael is treated as a small child and that is how artists through the centuries have portrayed him. Only when you marry the story to P’s chronology do you get the cognitive dissonance of a teenager in the role of a small child.

Hagar in the Wilderness by Camille Corot (1796-1875). This represents about 1/12 of the entire painting which is more of a landscape study.

Repeats and Reboots

In case you haven’t noticed, at this point Genesis is well into the rerun season. The wife/sister story of Gen 20 is another version of the one in Gen 12 and Hagar’s encounter with God in Gen 21 is an alternate version of Gen 16. The only portion of these two chapters that isn’t recycled is Gen 21:22-34 which provides an origin story for the site of Beersheba. The Hebrew word sheba’ sounds similar to shwebaa’ (= “seven”) and shebu’ah (= “swear”), so the story describes an oath between Abraham and Abimelech involving seven ewe lambs.

An alternative origin story for Beersheba will be told in Gen 26:17-33.  This narrative involves digging multiple wells and ends with an oath between Isaac and Abimelech of Gerar. If Gen 20 and 21 are reruns of the wife/sister and Hagar stories associated with Abraham, then Gen 26 (wife/sister and Beersheba origin) is more like a reboot featuring Isaac as the protagonist in the same situations that Abraham faced.

Isaac’s version of the wife/sister narrative in Gen 26:1-11 supposedly takes place after death of Abraham at age 175 (recounted in Gen 25:7-11) and the birth of Esau and Jacob when Isaac was 60 (Gen 25:19-26). Which would mean that when Isaac passes off Rebekah as his sister, he must have also passed off Esau and Jacob as his nephews.

Live Long and Prosper

Now, according to the P chronology, Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 and Isaac was 60 when his twins were born. This would mean that Abraham died when his grandsons Esau and Jacob were teenagers.

But in Gen 24, the aged Abraham sends off his servant to find a bride for Isaac. You are led to think that Abraham is at death’s door and wants to see Isaac married to someone from the “old country” before he dies. But according to the P chronology, Abraham is “only” 140 years old and has another 35 years ahead of him. Thirty-five years in which he will take another wife named Keturah and have six more sons (Gen 25:1-6). Seems like Abraham is still pretty spry for an old guy.

Something similar happens with Isaac. Old and blind, he wishes to impart his blessing to his Esau before he dies (Gen 27:1-4). When Jacob cheats Esau out of the birthright, Esau plans to kill Jacob once Isaac has died and the period of mourning is over (Gen 27:41). He’s going to have a long wait, because P’s chronology has Isaac living another 80 years (Gen 35:27-29). Using this chronology, Isaac would still have been alive at the time Jacob’s son Joseph was sold into Egypt. That’s wild!

The phenomenal ages given in the P source play havoc with the narrative arc. Much like a monarch, the patriarch is the tribal leader for life. Abraham has to die before Isaac can become the patriarch and Isaac must die before Jacob can take over. And this is exactly how the J narrative plays out. It’s only when you combine the J narratives with the P chronology that you end up with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as contemporaries.