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

[jlroberson]

The relation between who these people later became and the Hebrews is, I think, akin to the relation between Periclean Greeks and the people of Mycenae, and I say that because of the Babylonian Captivity, where most of these texts, many from oral tradition, were first put into any formal shape(as far as can be known) was where "Judaism" was constructed, at least in the form, more or less, that we would recognize it.

One thing a lot of people forget is that the construction of myth, deliberately, by people to define their "nationhood" is not at all a new thing. Especially civilizations that had some Dark Age gap of literacy and therefore a period about which things can be made up. The Iliad, the stories of Theseus, and the like were used that way by the Greek powers that were, and the story of the Trojan War was used as well as a means of debating the morality of the Peloponnesian War, among other things. Rome, very consciously, constructed its own myths and adapted those of others, and all peoples of the Mediterranean justified their existence by referring back to origins in the Trojan War, in Rome's case via Aeneas. (Even the Brits had, they claimed, a Trojan founder, one Brutus) The truth is that we have always constructed our own myth structures for the same reasons through time.

[halialkers]

I would put that the Israelites themselves were simply a group of Canaanites, who as you put it are a testament to the power of ethnogenesis. There is absolutely no historical evidence for the Exodus, any exodus, and there is a pittance of evidence for the United Monarchy.

And you forget as well, and this strengthens your argument, that Islam also represents an example of this, as do the various historiographical myths created by the likes of the Franks and the Burgundians.

[jlroberson]

Oh no, I know Exodus has no evidence. I mean in terms of the books, that's the first time law as such comes into it as a concept. Till then it's all command voices (including via dreams), literally wrestling God, and craftiness.

I find Julian Jaynes' hypothesis about the breakdown of the bicameral mind particularly interesting, and more plausible, the more I learn about that time.

I can't comment on Islam, because i admit that's still a big gap in my historical knowledge, except their relation to Middle Ages Europe and the basics of Mohammed's life. I will say this: the concept postmodernism holds so dear, that of, rather than creating something new as a goal, instead creating from combinations of beliefs, concepts and such already extant, while holding no particular one as more "belief-worthy" than another--that is in fact a regression to the exact same thinking the pagan and early monotheistic world had, of USING beliefs and allying yourself with them, but not so much believing them as such. The zenith of this would of course be the Roman ease of creating new gods by law, and almost treating godhood as a kind of posthumous public office. We think of this as cynical and indeed, it is, but we forget that the kind of earnestness we associate with "faith" was a Christian innovation, one reason Christianity de-emphasized most formal rituals. It was about emotion, not system, and I suppose, for both it and Islam, the reason they were so successful was precisely their detachability from nationhood. Even Islam tying itself so strongly to Arabic didn't change that--all things were equal for a long time, because till the Reformation, Catholicism had a similar tie to Latin, if the fact that vernacular translation of the Bible was a heresy is anything to go by. And they both furthered their religions' reach by conquest, but also by attaching themselves to more than one nation at a time.

[halialkers]

Eh.....it's less Mediterranean (which Roman culture was one part of a broader whole) than the general pre-Christian/non-Abrahamic attitude. I mean, there are Natives in the USA which had what we'd consider vastly different ethnic backgrounds from their neighbors who adopted their ways. It's not so much a different thing ther.

And Islam does not center around belief, the Five Pillars are much more important than the Five Beliefs.

[jlroberson]

Another question: not too long before this Jacob gets Esau to sell his "birthright" mentioned here for some stew. (It must be admitted, Esau isn't the brightest bulb in the box) So, was that birthright essentially the same as whatever he'd have gotten from this blessing("when Dad blesses you, remember, you then sign it all over to me, all for delicious stew"), and if so, why the shenanigans? Unless it's yet another example of doubling of plot points via bad compilation and editing.

I also get the feeling, reading it, that the audience was meant to be impressed at Jacob's resourcefulness and to see Esau as a figure of fun, and laugh at how Jacob continually tricks him as we would such a figure in a comedy. Jacob shows some heavy Trickster-figure characteristics.

[halialkers]

True. There's some Values Dissonance as well, as the values acceptable to the nomadic ancestors of at least part of the Israelite tribes are not exactly going to be the values acceptable to a 21st Century urbanized post-industrial society. Would that more people bothered to understand that.

[jlroberson]

And now for some reason I can't help but see them as Reggie and Moose. Or Tom and Spike.

However, though craftiness is valued in some in Genesis, we also have the example at the end of Joseph, whose very lack of guile is presented as one of his signature exemplary qualities. Frequently, at least as a youngster, being fooled and taken advantage of. But rather than laughing at how often he's everyone's bitch like with Esau, we feel badly for him; first his brothers and then the pharoah's wife, who, rejected by Joseph, simply claims Joseph assaulted her and gets him put in jail--where he has the chance to interpret his first dreams, however, which gets him out and propels him to glory. But Joseph doesn't even lie when it's to his advantage. The only time he does, when he delays letting his family understand it's him, it's to teach them a lesson. Not out of revenge, though he is having a little bit of fun with them. More in fact to force them to consider their love as a family, and thus preventing bitterness when he does his reveal. He's a very rare character for the OT.

And then of course, there's Job, just as saintly but a far simpler character. And the victim of a bet.