Crumb's GENESIS: Jacob and Esau

[jlroberson]

From Robert Crumb's absolutely excellent GENESIS(which is, btw, over 300 pages), a short excerpt from the story of Jacob and Esau, one portion from the start of the tale and one jumping to much later, when they are both old. Some who might not be familiar with this story might find it striking that (a) Jacob is such a dick, (b) God rewards the undeserving, and (c) Isaac sure gets it coming & going, doesn't he? (he's the same Isaac with that crazy dad with the voices telling him to sacrifice his son). It's not really so strange if, instead of looking at it as a religious text, you look at it as a typical Bronze Age mythology. And in those? People are very, very tricky and deceitful, and the concept of "justice" really has no bearing on any of the gods. This is nothing; try the House of Atreus sometime.












(c)2009 R. Crumb.

Comments

[sherkahn]

So all along it was the mother's fault. Hmm....

[halialkers]

Of course it's worth noting that the most archaic part of the Bible in terms of the language just so happens to be the Song of Deborah, about a brave warrior woman who unites the squabbling tribes of Israel......

[icon_uk]

So working backwards we have Batdickery, general dickery, old school dickery and Old TESTAMENT dickery...

The more things chhange....

[darkblade]

Dickery shalt outlast us all.

[halialkers]

Gilgamesh-dickery is oldest.

[darkblade]

I'd say single cell dickery but thats a mite hard to prove.

[jlroberson]

How do you think sex began?

[stig]

You'll notice that the most important core message behind it is that cunning can be used to defy god-given laws such as the natural succession of birthright, as long as it is coupled with humility and repentance - trickery being the work of the devil. Ultimately, the legacies of Isaac which have most survived are his descendants and his name Israel - both of which having been obtained through his physical and sexual prowess rather than his cunning.

[jlroberson]

I think it's interesting that the Hebrews looked at God as something you could negotiate with and even use cunning to thwart, when you compare that to, say, the Greek angle that defying the gods only brings about the result you're trying to defy in the first place. (of course, ancient Greek even lacks a word for free will, and that concept is certainly not present at all in their mythology)

[halialkers]

Yes, that's the point of the name Isra-El.

Judaism has never been as groveling towards the Jewish God as the Christians and Muslims were to their updated versions of same.

[box_in_the_box]

I never got this part:

Why does the dad only have one blessing to give?

Then again, I could never really wrap my head around Old Testament anyway.

If I wanted storytelling in which supposedly nigh-omnipotent beings are hamstrung in contrived plots by nonsensical, pointless rules that they themselves invented, I'd watch one of Russell T. Davies' season finales for Doctor Who.

[box_in_the_box]

And don't even get me started on the Marty Stu who became the star of the New Testament ...

[halialkers]

Paul?

[box_in_the_box]

Heh. No, Paul is more to Christianity what Quesada is to Marvel. ;)

[jlroberson]

I thought that was Disco Stu. Oh wait, that's just that Robert Stigwood film...

[jlroberson]

Note Esau himself asks that, in tears. (Poor dude. He doesn't seem so bad) I'm not sure about that though, and it's an interesting question. It's true though that a lot of the OT, and a lot of myth developed at this time, is about consistency and seemingly arbitrary but binding rules on a Gaiman-SANDMAN kind of level; for instance, the dietary laws are not in fact about health, as they did not understand the connection between bad food and disease as we do. It's just lucky that helped. It was really about a different kind of internal consistency(I wish I could summarize what I learned in scripture class but that was 20 years ago and it took all my notes to wrap my head around it then--it's complicated).

There is a lot in myths of that time to suggest that the way something is done for the first time sets it in stone, like the kid that Demeter in Greek myth is interrupted while making immortal, and not only does she stop but she cannot finish the process. These are strict things in that world, oaths and blessings and curses, and the manner of doing them cannot be broken. I wonder if this custom might be along similar lines in some way.

[halialkers]

Well, there's also that myth of that time was never to be taken literally to start with. In ancient times myths had their place, and an accurate representation of the Universe was not that place, that was the place of the philosophers or their analogues like the Daoists or Wayfinders.

[geoffsebesta]

I was wondering if there was some health reason not to eat the sinew of the thigh.

[halialkers]

Because it was a different time. In the general culture of the Ancient Near East, fathers were obligated to bless their eldest children. It was a kind of pagan soothsaying ritual, and its survival in the Bible is a sign that someone didn't edit very well. Jacob cannot give more than one blessing thanks to primogeniture.

And the Tanach is actually more fun than the New Testament, it gives us such gems as "With the jawbone of an ass heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of an ass have I slain 10,000 men" and Saul's request for 100 foreskins and "If Cain be avenged sevenfold than Lamech seventy-sevenfold" and God's demanding male foreskins be cut off and Solomon the Man-Slut and Biblegod's obsession with foreskins. And did I mention Biblegod is obsessed with foreskins?

[jlroberson]

Well, humans like pork rinds, and I've never understood that.

[box_in_the_box]

Maybe they wanted to bind the original texts of what would become the Bible in foreskins, ala' the Necronomicon?

It'd be economical, because all you'd have to do to expand the volume for more pages would be to rub the cover.

[box_in_the_box]

And this is very useful, thanks.

My parents are both ex-Roman Catholics, and trying to get them to explain this shit to me in any way that made sense was like swimming through Jell-O.

[thehefner]

This entire post--comments and all--has been utterly fascinating. :)

[halialkers]

Indeed. Scans_Daily can have civilized discussions of both politics and religion. A very good testament to the people on the Comm, I think....

[halloweenjack]

And the moral of the story is: Furries win.