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.

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Comments

[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.

[jlroberson]

This is true, which would tend to cast doubt on Genesis as being meant as moral teaching or law or anything like that, apart from establishing the Covenant. (Sodom & Gomorrah are not so much destroyed for moral decadence as because they violate hospitality--a common evil in myth then--and do harm to travellers, and the story of the men at what is, there, Lot's house is retold, by the way, near-verbatim in Judges, only with a nastier end)That doesn't really occur till Exodus, and quite explicitly. These are more "why so" stories, and I'd also argue that stories like this--I mean specifically like this one here, not so much Adam and Eve perhaps--in those days might have had the same functions as soaps do now.

It was also only now it hit me that, in EAST OF EDEN, it's the story of Jacob & Esau that Steinbeck is largely referencing with Adam Trask and his brother, not Adam & Eve and Cain & Abel, though those are part of it too.

[halialkers]

Precisely.

For that matter, both Judaism and Islam have tended to be much more pragmatic than Christianity has tended to be. The Jews and Muslims in fact have long-standing trends to rationalism where that is seldom if ever a factor in Christianity which has always amounted to a big doomsday cult.

[halialkers]

And by that I mean that the Christians began as a cult which expected their Zevi figure to return in 100 years, at least some of them did. When Christ did not come back things went haywire, and the Bar Kochba Revolt piled unleaded gasoline on the fire.

[jlroberson]

Yeah, but in this case, literalism is sensible within the story itself; there's a specific custom being referenced, whose audience would understand the proper way to do and therefore understand the violation that has happened here. (which also shows this story is not prescriptive, i.e. "This is how you do the blessing," except in a very negative way, as a warning of how it can be messed up maybe)

[halialkers]

True.

[geoffsebesta]

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