Leaves from the author's notebook: character sketches

The conceit behind the first part of this week's post's title is that the hypothetical author of Genesis (or was it Moses?), in the persona of a modern novelist, set apart a couple of pages in a notebook to sketch out the main features of each of the important characters in this saga: God, Adam, Eve and their sons, Noah and his sons, Abram, Sarai, Lot, Hagar and her son Ishmael, Isaac, Laban, Rebecca, Esau, Jacob, Leah, Rachel and Joseph.

Whether we choose to think of the book of Genesis (the literary entity) as if it were a novel, a TV series or just an ancient saga, it has a cast of important characters which are an essential part of the story. Today, I thought it would be interesting to review the cast. I will try to state in a simple and straightforward manner what we all know about each character as presented in the book, basing my information on what the text itself tells us about them, how they are portrayed or what their actions appear to intend to suggest about them. Many if not all of these characters have entered into world culture and practically become entities in their own right; consider, for example, the fact that they each have a whole Wikipedia article devoted to them (below I have given links to those articles for anyone interested in comparing notes)! However, here what most interests me is not the place they occupy in world culture but their place in the story that unfolds in the book of Genesis.

Between documentary hypothesis and textual fact

IN the Middle Ages, the Bible was widely believed to have been written down in exactly its present form and to be infallible because it was the word of God.

We are no longer in the Middle Ages.

The belief that the Bible (however defined and delimited) was written by people has many far-reaching consequences since it implies that the same things that are usually true of most things written by people, by many people rather than a single man, by people living at different times, with different backgrounds, indeed in different languages, making different assumptions, pursuing different agendas and knowing different things, are also applicable to the Holy Scriptures.

It means recognition that the biblical text is heterogeneous in content, style and genre; brings together elements composed in different periods and contexts; and has reached its present form (which in the case of the Hebrew Bible of which Genesis forms part was fixed and codified in writing by the mediaeval Masoretes) through a prior process of written and oral transmission in the course of which changes occurred, either deliberately or unwittingly.

The evidence of all these things is everywhere to be seen in the existing text, as irrefutable as the unearthed bones which prove the existence of dinosaurs on the face of the earth many millions of years ago. Bible scholars of today, whether they be Jewish or Christian, Protestant or Catholic, religious or secular, accept these basic facts, and the study of biblical texts is so much more fascinating because of it!