Lost in translation #2: Cultural memory and the Fallen Angel

May 24, 2013

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I’ve mentioned before how my perceptions of some of the Bible’s stories are much longer, and more detailed, than the stories themselves. This is because the Bible’s stories are – despite the sola scriptura posturing of many protestant denominations – largely transmitted culturally rather than textually, and that means that details, associations, and references all get added and mixed in with the pure text versions (though, even here, the textual variations between manuscripts and, especially, between translations make things even more complicated).

The example of what I mean that most people would be familiar with is the harmonization of the New Testament gospel stories. When we build a nativity scene, we have a little crèche, three wise men, the shepherds, and a star overhead – but how many people know that the shepherds are only found in Luke and that the star and wise men are only found in Matthew? The fact that these are details of two separate stories has been entirely lost in the cultural tradition.

But what I wanted to talk about today specifically is a text called Genesis B or “The Later Genesis.” This text is found in the “Codex Junius 11,” spliced into an entirely different version of Genesis known as Genesis A, despite being very different in style and repeating some of the same story-lines. We don’t know why someone thought it would be a good idea to just stick the one into the middle of the other, but it makes for an interesting reflection of what happened with the Bible’s own two creation stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

The version of the story that I will be quoting from is Charles W. Kennedy’s translation, found in Early English Christian Poetry Translated into Alliterative Verse (Hollis & Carter: London, 1952), but I found another translation online if you would like to read the whole thing for yourself.

In the Bible

From 'The Garden of Eden' by Jacob de Backer, 16th cent

From ‘The Garden of Eden’ by Jacob de Backer, 16th cent

To recap the Bible’s version of this story, Genesis 1 has God creating the heavens and the earth, including a blow-by-blow account of his daily To Do list, culminating in his handing over of the earth to Adam for “dominion.” Genesis 2 repeats the same portion of the story.

In Genesis 3, a serpent (not identified as Satan, Lucifer, or anything other than simply a snake) chats with Eve with convinces her to eat a piece of fruit from a special tree, and Eve then convinces Adam to do the same. The two humans suddenly realize that they are naked, are caught by God, punishments are dolled out, and the couple is expelled from Eden.

It’s a pretty bare bones version of the story that most people are familiar with. But, as you will see, much of what many who haven’t directly read the Genesis account (and even some who have!) think is part of the Biblical story is actually missing, but can be found in Genesis B.

In Genesis B

Genesis B picks up with a description of God’s favourite angel, whom he has made especially strong and “mighty of mind,” making him his right-hand and “next unto God.” But this angel was “ungrateful and bold”:

By his own strength only     he thought to construct
A mightier throne     and a higher heaven.

(Curious about the odd spacing? It’s called a Caesura.)

So the angel convinces a group of his fellow angels to join him and they rebel against God. Understandably, God is not pleased, and he banishes the rebel angels to Hell, changing them into “fiends” and giving the lead angel the name Satan.

Satan is upset and feels like he and his companions have been treated unfairly:

He has wrought us wrong,
In hurling us down     to the fiery depths of hell,
Deprived of heaven.     He has marked those heights
For man to settle.     ‘Tis my greatest sorrow
That Adam, fashioned     and formed of earth,
Should hold my high seat     and abide in bliss
While we suffer this torture,     this torment in hell.

So Satan concocts a plan to get revenge. He isn’t powerful enough to attack God directly, as his earlier rebellion showed, but he can attack God’s “thralls” – Adam and Eve:

Let us wrest heaven’s realm     from the sons of men,
Make them forfeit His favour,     break His command.
Then His rage will be kindled.     He will cast them from grace;
They shall be banished     to hell’s grim abyss.
We shall have them to serve us,     the sons of men,
As slaves fast-bound     in these fettering bonds.

As in the pagan Germanic war stories that Genesis B copies, Satan asks for volunteers from among his thanes to conduct an attack against God’s thanes.

When the two trees of the garden are introduced, Genesis B tells us that God had put them there so that the sons of men “might choose of good or evil,     weal or woe.”

So Satan “put[s] on     the form of the serpent” and approaches Adam. He tells Adam that he is a messenger, sent by God to tell Adam to eat the fruit. This, he claims, would increase Adam’s strength, attractiveness, and mental might as a reward for having obeyed God so well.

But Adam isn’t fooled. God had warned him not to be “beguiled / Or ever tempted” into eating from the “tree of death,” and Satan hasn’t brought a token of faith to prove that he was sent by God.

Satan then appeals to Eve and tells her that God will be so mad that they aren’t listening to His messenger. Not only can she spare her future children God’s wrath if she obeys, she’ll also get a few perks: “Over Adam thereafter     you shall have sway.”

Eve, convinced, bites the fruit.

You’ll note that this account makes Eve’s culpability far more clear than the Biblical account (in which Eve may have been the one to succumb simply because she was the first to be approached). The added detail of a failed temptation involving Adam reflects the evolution of thought about Eve, and the desire to make her special guilt in the story absolutely clear.

To get her to agree to convince Adam to eat the apples as well, Satan changes Eve’s vision so that everything seems even more beautiful. Thinking the change comes from eating the fruit, Eve goes to Adam and tells him about her wonderful new powers of vision, arguing that such a cool power could only have come from God.

Eve is successful in seducing Adam on Satan’s behalf, and Adam eats the apple. Satan gloats, Adam and Eve are ashamed. Adam gets the last speech and uses it to yell at Eve.

The Fallen Angel

So where does all that stuff about Satan being a “Fallen Angel” come from? It certainly doesn’t come from Genesis 1-3, despite what our cultural instruction might tell us. In the canonical Bible, we have the following references:

Genesis 6:1-4 – In this passage, we’re told that the “sons of God” (assumed to refer to members of God’s heavenly court, i.e.: angels) descended to earth of their own accord in order to mate with human women.

Isaiah 14:1-17 – This is where we get a reference to someone nicknamed “the morning star” who has “fallen from heaven” (Isaiah 14:12). But within the context of the text, this refers to the king of Babylon, not to an angel and certainly not to Satan.

Revelation 12:3-14 – This is our closest match, in which a dragon with angels on his side fights against Michael and his angels. The dragon loses the fight and, therefore, his “place in heaven.” The dragon is called “ancient serpent,” “devil,” and “Satan.” The whole story of the battle is given in a single paragraph and lacks all detail as to the possible motives for the battle.

(There’s a bit more extra-canonical stuff, particularly Enoch 7-8, which expands on Genesis 6:1-4 story. Though in this case, the beings of God’s court are called “the Watchers.”)

And that’s it – such a well-known part of the Genesis story is not part of the biblical Genesis story at all. The fact that the Bible is a written text gives it the aura of unchangeability, but the fact is that the stories of the Bible are still part of a living tradition. The stories that children are taught in Sunday School, or that we use to construct our holiday decorations, or that we imagine when given prompts from the text are imbued with details and associations that are extra-biblical.

So when we talk about the immutability of the Words of God as set forth in the Scriptures (capitalisation conveys authority, didntcha know!), we’d do well to remember that they aren’t quite so immutable as we may think.

 

NOTE: The story of Genesis B may sound a little familiar to anyone who has read, heard of, or studied Milton’s Paradise Lost. Certainly, the general details of the story are eerily similar.

Franciscus Junius, who published the first edition of the manuscript containing Genesis B in 1655, was a contemporary of Milton’s and, apparently, the two seem to have been acquainted. This has led some to speculate that Milton drew at least some of his inspiration from the Genesis B text.

Exodus 37-39: Bezalel gets ‘er done

May 20, 2013

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Exodus37These three chapters are literally a rehashing of Exodus 25-31. The only substantial difference is that all the “you shalls” have been replaced with “he dids.” These are pretty much among the top most boring things I’ve ever read, even worse than the begats in Genesis (which I think get so much attention because too few people get through them enough to reach the tail end of Exodus).

So rather than just making a bunch of posts about how boooooored I am, I decided to just combine Exodus 37-39 and knock them all out in one go. If you’re following at home and worried that I’m messing up your reading rhythm, don’t worry. You’ve already read these chapters back when we were doing Exodus 25-31. Take a vacation instead. Maybe find some Sabbath breakers to kill.

If I were really dedicated, I might do a line by line comparison between the instructions and the execution. But I won’t.

The only thing of note is that Exodus 38:24-26 gives us the results of the census we heard about in Exodus 30. The results? We have 603,550 men over the age of 30. So let’s take this opportunity to do a little math!

  1. Let’s assume that there is a roughly equal number of men and women over the age of 20. This gives us 1,207,100 adult Hebrews.
  2. Let’s be generous and say that each of these couples has only one child. Some may not be married or have had kids yet, while some undoubtedly have more than just one, so I think that an average of 1 child per 2 adults is a pretty generous assumption. This gives us 1,810,650 Hebrews.
  3. We know that there were 70 Hebrews who entered Egypt with Jacob (Gen. 46:27).
  4. God told Abraham that the Hebrews would spend 400 years in Egypt (Gen. 15:13), but after the fact, we’re told that they were there for 430 years (Exod. 12:40). I’m inclined to assume that God was rounding when he spoke to Abraham, but that the Exodus number is the exact one.
  5. Let’s assume that the Hebrews typically started having kids at 15. Again, I think we’re being generous, but let’s just go with that.
  6. Next, we need to Google “How to calculate exponential population growth.”
  7. Realize that you don’t understand the explanation at all.
  8. Give up.
  9. Cheat and simply conclude that the birth rate would have to be pretty incredible for the population to grow by that much in so few years.

Exodus 2.0

May 17, 2013

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I love this modern take on the Exodus story!

Exodus 36: Bezalel and Oholiab get to work

May 13, 2013

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If you remember, collecting the materials for God’s little building project is a “freewill offering” (Exod. 36:3) to be collected from “every man whose heart makes him willing” (Exod. 25:2), and Moses has no trouble whatsoever getting all the stuff together.

Exodus36In fact, the Hebrews are so excited about God’s Extreme Makeover: Tabernacle Edition (h/t: David Plotz for that joke) that they just keep bringing stuff, way more stuff than could actually be used on this project. In a move the Vatican might learn from, Moses says to his people: “Let neither man nor woman do anything more for the offering for the sanctuary” (Exod. 36:6). A “thank you” would have been good, but I’m just glad that he didn’t threaten to kill anyone who tries to give him more linen or gold earrings.

After that, we just get a really long description of Bezalel and Oholiab working (though, for some reason, the text completely neglects to make a joke about Bezalel using his BeDazzler, but whatever).

Book Review: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, annotated by Steve Wells

May 10, 2013

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I’ve been linking back to The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible quite a bit and, apparently, my track back spamming has succeeded in getting the attention of the site’s author, Steve Wells. He was nice enough to send my a physical copy of the SAB book to review.

(So, obviously, full disclosure, I did get a freebie, but I’ll try to be as honest as I can be in the face of free stuff.)

But first, some thoughts on the site:

My process when I’m reading a chapter in the Bible is first to read through it once quickly. This is just to give me an idea of the angle I want to take with my post. My next step is to read through more slowly as I take notes on more specific things that I want to say. Then I hit the external sources.

Image Credit: SAB

Image Credit: SAB

I have a number of websites and books that I consult on a regular basis – I’ve linked to many of the websites at one time or another, and the books can mostly be found on the Texts page (the one-offs only get in-post mentions). These sources help me flesh out my own impressions, or give me new issues to consider. Some of them also help me answer the questions that I’ve been asking. This is where the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible comes in.

The site is a very broad net, and that can be dangerous. I find myself having to think quite hard (and check the verses in their context), because I feel like the site’s author was, in a sense, trying to find problems. Often, he does find legitimate problems, but just as often he seems to be creating them by ignoring connotations of words, ignoring context, or accepting the problematic translation choices of the King James Bible (which makes complete sense for his purposes, but isn’t so useful for me), etc. I find myself disagreeing with his assessments just as often as I agree.

But I still find the site to be an invaluable resource. It is hands down the best concordance that I’ve found. When I read something that I kinda feel contradicts something I saw earlier – maybe months earlier – I could easily waste hours reading back trying to find a passage. But the SAB just gives it right to me. I don’t credit the site in these instances because that would make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but I really do want to acknowledge just how useful I’ve found it in writing for this blog.

It has, like all such resources, its own biases and agendas. But it’s such a thorough tool that it more than makes up for them.

And now for the book:

The book is a very good attempt to cram all the information from the website onto paper. The King James Bible is reprinted in its entirely with SAB‘s annotations in the margins, just as they appear on the site.

In addition, each book of the Bible is prefaced with a list of highlights – which I imagine would be very useful for an atheist who needs to look up a particular passage quickly while in the middle of engaging with a believer. The inside covers are used in the same way, listing a few of the more theologically troubling stories of the Bible for easy reference.

There are also two appendices: one is a list of all the apparently contradictions in the Bible, and the other is a list of every time God kills someone.

All in all, I found the hard copy version of the SAB very well organized for easy referencing, and the edition is quite aesthetically pleasing. If you are a fan of the website and want a version you can carry around with you, put on your shelf, or give as a gift, it’s a good buy.

If you’re interested, you can buy the book here.

Exodus 35: Gathering resources

May 6, 2013

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We had a brief respite of interesting chapters, but now we’re back – neck deep – in the priestly tradition. Yaaarrgh.

We start off with yet another reminder to keep the Sabbath and a warning that anyone who fails to do so “shall be put to death” (Exod. 35:2).

Freewill Offering for the Tabernacle Exodus 35:22-29Let’s reflect for a moment on the Walton family, John Schnatter, and other explicitly Christian business owners who have been in the news recently for complaining that the U.S. government isn’t respecting their piousness, and let’s thank them for taking their faith so profoundly to heart that they are willing to reduce their market competitiveness by making sure that all their employees have the Sabbath off from work.

With the warning about honouring the Sabbath over with, we jump right into a really long-winded way of saying that the Hebrews are following the instructions from Exodus 25-31. Buckle up, ’cause it’s gonna be a wild ride!

The Tabernacle

As we covered in our reading about the design for the tabernacle, this thing would be terribly impractical for a nomadic/travelling group of people. So while Collins points out that tent-shrines for deities were A Thing in the Semitic world, this one is just way too big and elaborate and “may reflect a later, settled shrine, possibly at Shiloh, where the tabernacle is set up in Josh 18:1 [...] Alternatively, it may be an ideal construction, imagined by later Priestly writers. It does not correspond to what we know of the Jerusalem temple, although it incorporates some of its features, notably the statues of winged cherubim guarding the mercy seat (Exod. 25:21)” (p.75).

A real burning bush

May 1, 2013

MrPopularSentiment Aside , Leave a comment

File this one under “you learn something new every day.” Apparently, there’s a bush called Dictamnus albus that, at certain times during the year, produces an oily substance that, in the summer eat, occasionally spontaneously sparks. The flame burns off rapidly enough that the plant is generally left unscathed.

This is not an attempt to provide a scientific explanation for the Moses story, in parts because I don’t, as a rule, go there, but also because the plant is native to Europe and Asia but not North Africa or the Middle East.

Exodus 34: The Ten Commandments, redux

April 29, 2013

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To renew their covenant after the Hebrews cheated on God with golden calf, God decides to re-write the ten commandments on a new set of tablets. But first, he wants to renew his vows.

Which translates to just talking about himself and how wonderful he is for a while.

During this little speech, God describes himself as “slow to anger” (Exod. 34:6). Seriously. Slow to anger. As David Plotz points out: “God certainly doesn’t have self-esteem issues, but I’m not sure He has perfect insight about Himself.”

On this passage, Collins writes in A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible:

It does not negate the “jealous” character of God, but it qualifies it. The biblical portrayal of God is not unique in the ancient world. A Babylonian prayer to Marduk addresses him as “warrior Marduk, whose anger is the deluge, whose relenting is that of a merciful father” (p.73).

But, says God, that doesn’t mean that he’s just going to be going around overlooking sins or anything! In fact, he’s so anti-sin that he will be “visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation” (Exod. 34:7). So yeah, God thinks it’s a-okay to punish someone for something his great-great-grandfather did. Even if God is slow to anger, he sure as heck isn’t quick to calm down afterwards!

A little of the old ultraviolence

Once again, God promises to drive out the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Generally, I’d say this is a bad thing. However, I, too, try to get rid of Perizzites, particularly of the intestinal variety.

God writing upon the tables of the covenant by William Blake, c. 1805

God writing upon the tables of the covenant by William Blake, c. 1805

The next bit is a bit speech from God about how the Hebrews shouldn’t become friends with non-Hebrews. In particular, he warns against making any agreements – or covenants – with the people God claims that he will be driving out.

But that’s not enough. The Hebrews should also go around and “tear down their altars, and break their pillars, and cut down their Asherim” (Exod. 34:13). I don’t think I need to say how gross these kinds of passages are.

A note on Asherim: These are, according to my Study Bible, sacred poles that symbolized Asherah, “the mother goddess of Canaanite religion” (p.113). There’s also some interesting theories about her and her possible dalliance with God, but that’s a subject for another post.

To finish up, our “jealous god” (Exod. 34:14) forbids taking “of their daughters for your sons” (Exod. 34:16), lest they lead the sons towards the worship of their gods. As David Plotz points out: “This suggests a lack of confidence in our God and faith [...] Given God’s greatness, wouldn’t intermarriage do the opposite and attract more people to him?”

Someone really should tell Joseph, since he had no trouble marrying the Egyptian Asenath (Gen. 46:20).

The new Ten Commandments

Despite telling us that he “will write upon the tables the words that were on the first tables” (Exod. 34:1), God decides to give us a totally different set of Ten Commandments, one that should surprise most of the Christian Right proponents of courthouse/schoolroom monuments. Check Exodus 20 for a quick refresher on what the first Ten Commandments looked like. Now here’s the new ones:

  1. Worship no other god.
  2. Make no molten gods (but feel free to decorate stuff with cherubim, ’cause those look neat-o).
  3. Keep the Passover, or feast of unleavened bread.
  4. “All that opens the womb is mine” (Exod. 34:19). Okay, so this one needs a little looksy. In Biblespeak, what “opens the womb” is the first born child. So God starts off by saying that the Hebrews should “redeem” all firstlings among the cattle. This rule also applies to human children: “All the first-born of your sons you shall redeem” (Exod. 34:20). This is, quite clearly, a call to human sacrifice. However, this is moderated by offering the possibility of making a substitution. “Underlying this commandment is the conviction that all life is from God, and that God’s right to the firstborn must be acknowledged in order to ensure future fertility” (Collins, Hebrew Bible, p.51).
  5. Keep the Sabbath.
  6. Keep the feast of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end. At each of these times during the year, all males must “appear before the Lord God” (Exod. 34:23).
  7. Do not offer blood sacrifice with leavened bread.
  8. Don’t keep leftovers after Passover.
  9. The first fruits of the ground should be given to God.
  10. Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

As you can see, there’s very few similarities between these commandments and the ones from Exodus 20. The old commandments touched on cultic stuff, but also had a few rules about behaviour (no killing, no stealing, that sort of thing). These ones – the actual, final ten commandments that will be carried around by the Hebrews for the next few thousand years until they are discovered by Indiana Jones – are entirely devoted to cultic issues.

There’s also some question about who actually does the writing onto the stone. Before getting started, God tells Moses that “I will write upon the tables” (Exod. 34:1). However, once he’s done dictating, he tells Moses to “write these words: (Exod. 34:27). In the end, it’s Moses who “wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” (Exod. 34:28), which explains a little better why it took 40 days to do so.

Maybe it’s Maybelline

Of course, it wasn’t all about engraving stone. All that time spent in the presence of God also gave Moses some lovely glowing skin. When he descends from the mountain, everyone keeps commenting on how fantastic his skin looks. Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that Moses “neither ate bread nor drank water” (Exod. 34:28) the entire time he was up there.

On a more serious note, Joseph Campbell argues that the hero, Moses, having been “blessed by the father returns to represent the father among men [...] Since he is now centered in the source, he makes visible the repose and harmony of the central place” (Hero With A Thousand Faces, p.347). If this is the case, we can interpret Moses’ facial sparkles as a visible manifestation of this transformation.

Finally, not one for all that attention, Moses takes to wearing a veil that he removes only to chat with God.

Sundial Hunting in Switzerland (and France)

April 25, 2013

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I have many hobbies, and one of them is sundial hunting. A few years ago, I spent about a month in Switzerland visiting as many historic sites as I could and, as a fun little side project, I photographed as many sundials as I could fine. Here are some nice ones:

Sundial1

Our first sundial is a fairly classic example spotted in Geneva. This was found on the corner pillar of a building in the historic part of town, with a Geneva flag fluttering nearby. This Old Faithful will tell you the time, but it certainly won’t wow any passing tourists.

Sundial2

Our second example was spotted above a fountain, also in Geneva.This one is a little more artistic and reminds the viewer of what awaits when time has finally run its course. It’s a beautiful use of a modern artistic style mixed with a medieval subject that is very common in Switzerland. Have you ever wondered why Eeyore is always so depressed?

Sundial3

Confession time: I cheated a little bit. Our third sundial was actually spotted in France, in the Chateau de Joux. Europe’s a small place and borders are easily hopped, so I think it should still count. This simple yet effective design helpfully reminds us that the sun rules all (at least in our little neck of the universe, I suppose).

Sundial4

Number four is also from the Chateau de Joux. Sorry about the terrible picture, but this sundial was painted on to the outer wall of the fortress, which was modified at some point by Vauban. If you’re familiar at all with Vauban’s work, you’ll understand that I couldn’t get close enough to get a good picture because no one gets close to one of Vauban’s walls.

Sundial5

The modern art aficionados over at Gruyère decided to take a whole new artistic approach to the sundial concept by placing it on an inner wall and omitting the gnomon. In this case, function is sacrificed for form.

Sundial6

Number six was found on the wall of a church build next to Schloss Thun, in the German (ptui) side of Switzerland. Thun, by the way, is a great place to go if you’ve ever wanted a really good illustration of the role terrain plays in the castle defence. The schloss is built at the top of a hill that’ll definitely test the mettle of even the bravest knight. In any case, this sundial features a dual gnomon, one to tell the time and the other to do something involving the zodiac – I assume it tracks the seasons?

Sundial7

Chateau Chillon, on the other hand, doesn’t need a sundial. That’s because Chillon boasts an extremely badass mechanical clock originally built in 1543! You can see that giant bad boy on the larger tower in the photo above. If you visit the castle, one part of the tour takes you into that tower and you can actually see the mechanism that powers the clock (rebuilt in the 19th century).

Exodus 33: Check out the back on that deity!

April 22, 2013

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In this chapter, God tells Moses to stop lollygagging around and start legging it towards the land of milk and honey so that God can start driving out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Not my idea of fun, but hey, to each their own.

However, from now on, the Hebrews are going to have to be led by an angel rather than God himself because he’s still peeved about the whole calf thing and might just lose control and “consume” the Hebrews if he spends too much time around them (Exod. 33:3).

Everyone was so upset when they heard that God was struggling not to eat them that none of the men put on ornaments (a sign of mourning). God, apparently not seeing this, tells Moses to tell the Hebrews to take their ornaments off.

A Tale of Two Tents

Exodus33_Moses seeing GodSo Moses apparently has his own tent that he also calls the “tent of meeting.” This one is pitched “far from the camp” (Exod. 33:7), as opposed to the centrally-located tent we just finished building. Another difference is that Joshua, son of Nun, is the caretaker of this one, while the other is cared for by the priests.

Once again, I think we’re seeing evidence of two different traditions being cobbled together – one in which Aaron is a Big Man Hero, and another in which Joshua is Big Man Hero. In both traditions, the Big Man Hero is given legitimacy through his closeness to and association with Moses and, then, the tent.

Anyways, this is where Moses and God like to chill.

So Moses is in his tent chatting with God and trying to make sure that they’re still besties despite the whole calf thing, and God reassures him. As a token of his ongoing friendship, God repeats his name to Moses, and I assume that they hug, though the text suspiciously neglects to mention this.

Can you look on the face of God?

While Moses and God are chatting, we are told that they are speaking “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exod. 33:11). But just a few versus later, God tells us that Moses “cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live” (Exod. 33:20). This leads to a hilarious exchange in which God shields Moses with his hands as he passes by him, and then moves his hand away so that Moses “shall see my back” (Exod. 33:23), which sounds an awful lot like God just mooned Moses.

But back to the bit about seeing God, what’s going on there? Well, first of all, we get a very anthropomorphized God in this chapter. He has a face, he has a “back,” he has a hand. From this, we can understand that there is an actual discrete God-object that can be seen. So is seeing it deadly or not?

  • Genesis 12:7 – We’re told twice that God appeared to Abram.
  • Genesis 17:1 – God appears to Abram.
  • Genesis 18:1 – God appears to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre.
  • Genesis 26:2 – God appears to Isaac to tell him not to go to Egypt.
  • Genesis 26:24 – God appears to Isaac at Beersheba.
  • Genesis 35:9 – God appears to Jacob at Paddanaram.
  • Exodus 24:9-11 – Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 elders climb up Mt. Sinai, where they “saw” and “beheld” God.

But, okay, in all  of these examples, it just says that God “appeared” to someone. It doesn’t say, necessarily, that he let them see his face. That’s why we turn to these verses:

  • Genesis 32:30 – Jacob names Peniel, saying “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
  • Exodus 33:11 – Moses and God speak “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”

I suspect that we’ll be coming back to this subject a few times in our reading. In the meantime, Jared Calaway of Antiquitopia has a nifty little meditation on the subject.

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