In the Beginning...

Rereading Genesis, a book I once took 100% literally

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Genesis is a weird book for me to read. I had a grandfather who specialized specifically in creation “science” at my Christian alma mater — yes, he was educated, up to a PhD, from a secular school — and was passionate about a literal reading of Genesis all the way through, all of it. I loved my grandfather, and he passed away in 2020 after several years of Alzheimer’s. He was not a dumb man. He challenged mainstream views on other issues, and in some ways was even (er, kinda) progressive compared to other more conservative streams of thought in the extremely regressive Church of God.

One thing I like to point out to people when I say I was “raised conservative” is that no, my relatives actually aren’t just dumb, ignorant rednecks — they are educated, they read “intellectual” conservative sources, and many of them have higher education degrees in specialty fields. Discussions about science, theology, philosophy, and politics were always occurring in my family. There were even disagreements on minor theological issues (and many more disagreements on uh, general life issues, lol) that made my family a minor debate club. I actually contribute this to why my family has not simply rejected me and stopped talking to me; I think and hope we all respect that we have come to drastically different conclusions but still care for each other in spite of major, major disagreements.

(btw, I think I’m going to have to have at LEAST a week for Genesis and Exodus — which means this list will go a bit into 2023, maybe more if I run into family emergencies. These annotations and notes are extensive, and despite being a book I read often and had to memorize growing up, I am immersed in the Bible right now like it’s some trendy New York Times bestseller or something.)

Reading Genesis now, I had some trepidation, but I found it beautiful. I love it more than when I was a literalist — when the Bible was merely a list of impossible standards to follow, stories I had to suspend belief for, and God seemingly doing horrible things to people for twisted “lessons.” I also believe I love it more than I would if I were a bitter antitheist, pointing to all the verses and laughing gleefully at every contradiction and awful passage. In both cases, I believe, the people are reading the words literally, taking them out of context, and applying things that aren’t there. In both cases, they perhaps fail to see what the point by assuming it’s the literal word of God.

I can’t blame them. Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not Jewish!) but lifelong, intensive study of scriptures in the original languages is something that religious leaders in Judaism spend their whole life doing. Christians tend to ignore academic annotations and translations of the Bible if they don’t align with their beliefs. I’m sure you’ve all met a Christian who was able to jump through hoops to explain why God didn’t really mean the whole “camel through the eye of a needle” thing while also saying people can’t be gay because the Bible says so.

There’s also an element I dislike from newly deconstructing Christians in their translation of the Bible as well — where they stick with a literalist mindset and try to justify as if the Bible was super radical and progressive, pointing to clobber verses and various translations in order to feel like the book they loved so much is on their side, and most importantly, NOT on fundamentalists’ side. This is often an important stepping stone, and many of us don’t want to lose grips with the Bible and want to use it to justify our beliefs/identities to our literalist families. But, it’s not a good theological argument — it’s a different flavor of Biblical illiteracy.

This is why I love the Oxford Annotated Bible so much. It isn’t disrespectful of the words, it doesn’t project an opinion — it just presents the truth.

Genesis, in particular, is a beautiful book of the Bible. The last version of the Bible I really delved into a few years back was NLT, but I really like this NRSV. There are things that happen in the Bible stories that I don’t like — the entire “punish and murder the world via the flood” narrative, Lot and his daughters, Isaac as a sacrifice, the general treatment of ignorance of women. But, it’s like watching a movie you used to love, but now you notice some problematic moments in it. Do you turn the movie off and never watch it again? Some people do this, and I can’t say that’s not a valid choice. For me, however, I like to watch the movie, acknowledge that it’s problematic and why, ask myself why the director/writers made that choice for that time, and continue watching the movie. Maybe not with the same amount of awe and reverence, maybe with a more even-keeled eyes, but you can find things in it that you still love and appreciate, with a different kind of context.

And that is how I’m rereading the Bible. Genesis is the book that shows how an ancient tribe made sense of themselves and the potential of a higher power, the beginnings of monotheism, and how they tried to establish their own identities as they moved toward civilization and agriculture. And believe it or not, if you read the annotations, it really ISN’T as literal or as direct as it seems to be, and so many sermons and morals derived from it ARE being taken out of context by evangelicals.

For instance, the point of the creation story wasn’t sin. “Sin” isn’t mentioned at all. It was about knowledge. Humans once lived animalistic lives, focused on their basic needs, food and shelter, and instead we turned toward higher consciousness, and all the pain and misery that comes with it. That defined our humanity, and perhaps we didn’t have to be like that. Perhaps we would have been happier the other way, but we’ll never know. Whatever it is, I highly identify with Adam and Eve here — in fact, it’s sort of how I’m rereading the Bible: after having taken a bite of the fruit (not necessarily an apple!) from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. By the way, snakes weren’t considered evil animals in ancient times — they were considered animals that represented wisdom. And wisdom is what I’m looking for as I continue rereading the Bible. I wonder if my grandfather ever read those stories with that kind of context.

Stay tuned next week for when I delve into Exodus.