{"id":70,"date":"2010-08-13T09:40:39","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T13:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stlydias.org\/blog\/?p=70"},"modified":"2010-08-14T10:38:47","modified_gmt":"2010-08-14T14:38:47","slug":"reading-the-book-of-genesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/reading-the-book-of-genesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading the Book of Genesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

During August at St. Lydia\u2019s, we\u2019re reading the creation accounts found in Genesis chapters 1-3.\u00a0 Here\u2019s some contextual information that will help you in your reading.<\/em><\/p>\n

The bible is, in many ways, like a quilt.\u00a0 Spread on a bed, it\u2019s beautiful, functional, and cohesive.\u00a0 But when you step closer and begin to investigate more, you\u2019ll realize that skilled and knowing hands have stitched it together from a variety of different sources. Looking at the quilt, we might recognize that fabric from the same source (an old dress or dishtowel we\u2019ve seen before) are used again and again in the quilt.\u00a0 But we also might find pieces that we\u2019re not sure what to do with.\u00a0 We can\u2019t tell where they came from.<\/p>\n

In the same way, biblical narrative has been stitched together by authors and editors drawing from a variety of sources of literature.\u00a0 The stories that the writers of the bible are drawing from are ancient, and may be written down elsewhere, look a whole like something else that\u2019s written down elsewhere, and were probably transmitted for many years orally before they were ever written down.\u00a0 The fact that the texts in the bible have been stitched together doesn\u2019t make the bible \u201ctrue\u201d or \u201cnot true.\u201d\u00a0 It makes it alive.<\/p>\n

Further, many of the stories we find in the bible are myths.\u00a0 They are stories that are told about who we are and how we got here.\u00a0 Again, the measure for these stories is not \u201ctruth\u201d or \u201cfact\u201d as we understand it.\u00a0 The measure is their effectiveness in helping us know who we are as a people and how we relate to God.\u00a0 Scholar John J. Collins writes, \u201cAncient myths are serious but imaginative attempts to explain life in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking more closely at the quilt that is the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible which convey the story of the prehistory of Israel) scholars have identified four different sources of material that\u2019s being used.\u00a0 JEPD are a shorthand way of referring to the four sources: the Yahwist (J), the Elohist (E), the Priestly writer (P) and the Deuteronomist (D).\u00a0 The whole theory is called the Documentary Hypothesis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scholars go on for a long time about the way this different source material ended up in the from we found in the bible, but suffice it to say, it was a long and winding road, and the delineations between different sources are not always clear or clean cut.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like they had a cut and paste button or something.\u00a0 But the different sources have different styles, and tend to name God in different ways (J calls God Yahweh, E calls God Elohim, for instance)\u00a0 so this gives us some clues.<\/p>\n

Throughout the Pentateuch, you\u2019ll notice that there are often two stories interwoven into one account.\u00a0 For instance, there are two versions of the creation story which we\u2019ll explore, and two versions of the flood story that have been intertwined.\u00a0 The mountain where God is revealed to Moses is sometimes called Sinai or Horeb, depending.\u00a0 Just as in a quilt, these repetitions and variations are not inaccuracies or mistakes, but acknowledgment of the diversity of traditions of the stories we tell to make sense of our existence.<\/p>\n

-Emily M D Scott
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Sources: <\/em><\/p>\n

Blenkinsopp, Joseph. The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible.<\/em> New York: Doubleday, 1992.<\/p>\n

Collins, John J.\u00a0 Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. <\/em>Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During August at St. Lydia\u2019s, we\u2019re reading the creation accounts found in Genesis chapters 1-3.\u00a0 Here\u2019s some contextual information that will help you in your reading. The bible is, in many ways, like a quilt.\u00a0 Spread on a bed, it\u2019s beautiful, functional, and cohesive.\u00a0 But when you step closer and begin to investigate more, you\u2019ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}