Читать книгу Genesis 1-11 - David M. Carr - Страница 8

The first eleven chapters of Genesis offer a picture of the origins of their audience’s present world—e.g., their agricultural way of life, family relationships, distinction from and relation to animals, and the backgrounds of social groups (e.g., Kenites, Canaanites) and famous foreign loci (e.g., Babylon, Nineveh). The general lack of focus in these chapters on specifically Israelite figures and explicitly Israelite places distinguishes these chapters from the rest of the book of Genesis, indeed from Exodus and other historical books that follow.¹ At the most, the figure of Shem among Noah’s sons is identified here as Abraham’s direct ancestor (Gen 11:10–26), and he is particularly connected in Gen 10:21 with a group—“all the sons of Eber”—that seems specially related to, though not identical to the “Hebrews” with which Israel is later identified.

This primeval history is split by the great divide of the flood narrative. Indeed, the Jewish liturgical calendar separates Gen 1–11 into two liturgical portions that are read in the first two weeks of the annual Torah-reading cycle: an initial pre-flood portion labeled “in the beginning” from Gen 1:1–6:8 and then a subsequent liturgical reading labeled “Noah” that covers Gen 6:9–11:32.

The text of Gen 1–11 itself contains explicit structuring elements: a series of labels, starting in Gen 2:4a, that designate the following text as concerning the “descendants” (תולד]ו[ת)—or, by extension, “generations” for Gen 2:4a—of figures featured in the preceding text. Here again the flood features prominently, with both post-flood labels (Gen 10:1; 11:10) stressing the post-flood character of the descendants that they focalize. As indicated in the following overview, most of these labeled subsections feature an element toward their conclusion that anticipates the focus of the following one:²

In the beginning (Gen 1:1–6:8)

[God’s seven-day creation of heaven, earth and living beings in them (Gen 1:1–2:3)]

“These are the generations of heaven and earth” (Gen 2:4a): first humans along with animals (2:4b–4:26)

Anticipation of the first parts of the following Adam-to-Noah genealogy (Gen 4:25–26)

“This is the book of the descendants of Adam” (Gen 5:1a): Adam-to-Noah genealogy (5:1–32), demigods (6:1–4)

Anticipation of flood destruction/Noah rescue (6:5–8)

Noah (Gen 6:8–11:32)

“These are the descendants of Noah” (Gen 6:9a): Story of Noah/flood (6:9–9:17), Noah and his sons (Gen 9:20–27)

Anticipation of post-flood humanity from Noah’s sons (Gen 9:18–19)

“These are the descendants of Noah’s sons … after the flood” (10:1a): The expansion and spreading of post-flood humanity (Gen 10:1–11:9)

“These are the descendants of Shem” (Gen 11:10aα): From Shem to Israel’s ancestor, Abraham (11:10–26)

Anticipation of the Abraham story (Gen 11:26)

Though the beginning of the “descendants of Terah” section in Gen 11:27–32 is included in the “Noah” liturgical reading, these verses are not actually part of the primeval history. Instead, they begin the story about Abraham and his family that extends into the following chapters. Therefore this commentary will not cover this section, reserving its treatment for the IECOT volume on the Gen 12–50 ancestral materials.

The orientation of the primeval history around creation and flood means that the story of primeval origins clearly distinguishes the present, experienced world of the audience from the world as God initially created and intended it. Thus, Gen 1–11 does not just present contemporary realities as an immutable, divinely-created order. Instead, these chapters depict present reality as the result of a complex process leading from 1) God’s creation of an initial “very good” order (Gen 1:1–2:3, also 2:4–25) that was then compromised by human actions (Gen 3:1–4:24) to 2) a flood destruction and partial revision of the initial creation order (Gen 6:5–9:17). This depiction starts with an account of God’s ideal creation in Gen 1:1–2:3 and the initial story of Yhwh’s creation of an initial human, the first animals, and the first woman as the human’s true counterpart and helper (Gen 2:4–24). These two texts, complexly related and distinguished in numerous respects, both explain some aspects of present reality (e.g., distinct components of the present cosmos [Gen 1], the strong bond of a young man to his wife [Gen 2:24]) and also present ideal “counterworlds” (German Gegenwelten) to the audience’s present, where, e.g., humans peacefully dominate animals (Gen 1:26, 28–30; 2:18–20) and survive on plant life (1:29–30; 2:8–9, 15–16).

Starting in Gen 3, however, human disobedience and violence disrupts this ideal picture, and subsequent narratives show other ways that humans act and God must react. In this way, the primeval narratives of Genesis explain non-ideal elements of human life—such as animosity with animals (Gen 3:14–15), hard labor for food (Gen 3:17–19, 23), and violence (Gen 4:8)—as the result of primeval events involving the first humans. Nevertheless, the stories of Adam and Eve in Eden and Cain and Abel are much more complex than the simple “crime and punishment” model that is often applied to them.³ These pre-flood stories depict the gradual emergence of the first humans from a state of childlike [and animal-like] lack of shame (Gen 2:25), gullibility, and naivete (Gen 3:1–6) into the hard work and hard choices of life outside the garden. This certainly involves human mistakes and misdeeds, partly instigated by other non-human powers—disobedience prompted in part by the snake Gen 3:1–6 and fratricide associated with sin lurking as a demon in Gen 4:7–8. Nevertheless, humans also gain important adult capabilities along the way, such as godlike “knowledge of good and evil” (3:7, 22), and God does not only respond to their actions with anger, but also with compassion (Gen 3:8–24; 4:9–15). We see this mix of divine responses also in the divine response to marriages between the sons of god and human daughters in Gen 6:1–2. There Yhwh imposes a 120-year lifespan limit to humanity (6:3), one that both a) allows the potentially immortal children produced by such marriages to live unusually long lives and yet b) reinforces the mortality of such divine-human offspring. Amidst all this, there is little to indicate that God will impose a world-destroying flood on all life. At most, there are subtle anticipations of the coming of diluvian destruction in the names for the last five primeval ancestors in Gen 5 and their age notices.

The following flood narrative echoes and reverses aspects of the Gen 1 and 2 creation stories. To start, Gen 6:5–6 echoes Gen 2 in describing God’s regret at having made (עשה) humans whose formation (יצר) is thoroughly evil (cf. יצר in 2:7) and then Gen 6:11–12 echoes and contrasts with Gen 1 in describing the corruption of the “very good” earth that was created at the outset (cf. Gen 1:31~6:13). God then goes on to destroy all of humanity except Noah (7:6–8:19) before promising not to bring another flood (8:20–9:17). The status of the flood as an uncreation of God’s initial creation is highlighted by parallels between God’s creation of the heavenly plate in Gen 1:6–8, God’s opening of its windows to create the flood in 7:11, and God’s closing of them in 8:2.

The text in Gen 9:18–11:9 then continues the meditation on human possibilities and limits seen in Gen 3:1–6:4. For example, much as the Eden story in Gen 2–3 presented a fundamentally ambivalent picture of human acquisition of wisdom (3:7, 22) and concomitant condemnation to hard labor (Gen 3:17–19, 23–24), the story of Noah combines a picture of him discovering comfort from that hard labor through farming grapes from the ground (Gen 5:29; 9:20–21a) and his accidental descent into a drunken nakedness reminiscent of nakedness in Eden (Gen 9:21b; cf. 2:25; 3:7) and subsequent imposition of a curse (ארר) on his grandson (Gen 9:21–25; cf. Gen 3:17–19). And, as partially indicated in the table below, various other aspects of the post-flood stories in Gen 9:20–11:9 resume themes of human division (e.g., Gen 4:1–26 // Gen 9:25–10:32) and threat to the divine-human boundary (e.g., Gen 3:22; 6:1–2 // 11:1–4) that were seen in the stories leading up to the flood:⁴

General (un)creation, three pairings of the nuclear family, divine-human boundary, peoples

Initial Divine Creation of Humans and the Biome that They Rule (Gen 1:1–2:3)

First Human Couple: End of Nakedness, Start of Farming, Reproduction (Gen 2–3)

Establishment of firm divine-human boundary (of mortality)

First Sibling Pair: Echoes of Eden (Gen 4:1–16)

Kenite Peoples (tents, pastroralists, metalurgists) (Gen 4:20–22)

Sethite Substitute for Abel—Calling on Yhwh’s Name (4:25–26)

Reinforcement of Divine-Human Boundary (Gen 6:1–4)

Divine Uncreation and Recreation of the Cosmos (6:5–9:17)

Parent-Children Pairing: Echoes of Eden—Farming, Nakedness, and Curse (Gen 9:20–27)

Population of Earth from Noah’s Sons (Gen 10)

Spatial Reinforcement of the Divine-Human Boundary (Gen 11:1–9)

(11:1–9 provides background to spread of earth’s population in Gen 10)

The flood and post-flood stories (Gen 6:5–11:9) thus unfold themes from the pre-flood section (Gen 1:1–6:4) in two main ways. First, they echo specific elements of Gen 2:1–6:4, describing the continuing development of human farming, unfolding of ethnic divisions, and featuring themes of nakedness, curse, and God’s concerns about preserving the divine-human boundary. Second, the flood narrative represents a temporary interruption in the emergence of the current world order, echoing elements of Gen 1–2 in the process of describing God’s undoing and revision of God’s initial creation work.