I am finally getting around to reading this Ishmael book (by Daniel Quinn) that Beth recommended to me like a year ago. I could see how it might completely change the way you think about the world and human history and such, or at least how it might nag at you for a few months, and maybe it’ll do that for me, and maybe I’ll write about that another time, but right now I’d just like to make an observation: I don’t understand why so many Christians are so bent on reading the Bible as factual history. What a stupid way to read. There is no surer way to miss the point, when it comes to the Bible. A good chunk of this book is just a re-interpretation of Genesis 3-4, and it’s so fascinating. I have heard at least a hundred different ways of thinking about the “fall” narrative, and at least 73 of them have totally blown my mind. There is soo much blood and symbolism stitched into these stories. They are whispers from the past, calling out a warning to us, and we make them billboards for our preferences. Story is so much better than treatise at driving a point home, at making you feel the weight of things. They are puzzles to be pieced together, coded messages to be deciphered, and when the experience of reading is punctuated by so many moments of discovery, it’s gonna stick with you, and it’s gonna change you.
Like in this book, the story’s big wise guy, Ishmael, thinks that the story of Cain and Abel is about the conflicts that arose between an agricultural and a pastoral way of life. That’s sort of this book in a nutshell. And I bet he’s right. And that changes everything. What is the moral of Genesis 4 without that piece of thinking? Don’t kill your brother?? Give your firstfruits to the Lord?? Thanks, I really needed a Bible story to tell me that. We hijack these stories and make them about personal piety, when that could not be further from the point. There’s something so much more fundamental being said. It makes me love the Bible.
