Genesis 29

[dreamer_easy]

Careful exegesis reveals that I skipped a whole chapter! No wonder I found chapter 30 slightly puzzling. *facepalm* Anyway, I haven't got much to say about Chapter 29, except to note with interest the complex sort of fairytale sort of Taming of the Shrew business about the older sister marrying first. No probs, marry 'em both! :-)

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Feverish brane -> Ace's posting above -> the Bible is pr0n!!!111!! -> Jesus is a Mary Sue! -> Kate goes to hell -> you're all coming with her

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[erinbow.livejournal.com]

What I think is interesting is how many times the favoured/unfavoured barren/fertile wife comes up in Genesis.

By the way the *Genesis* translation and commentary by Hebrew scholar Robert Alter is a great eye-opener. And so is the *Genesis* by poetry translator Stephen Mitchell -- in a different direction.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I often have the impression I'm reading different versions of the same story which have been compiled together and reconciled, not always perfectly. It also reminds me of the use of repetition as a device in stuff like the Iliad, only whole events are being repeated rather than just stock descriptions. (The funniest example of this is in Gilgamesh where we're told about seven hundred times "He went forward another league, and it was dark before and dark behind." So the tunnel was LONG already!!! :-)

I'll keep an eye open for those two translations. Ta!

[erinbow.livejournal.com]

>I often have the impression I'm reading different versions of the same story which have been compiled together and reconciled, not always perfectly.

I think sometimes that's actually the case. I'm not a scholar, mind you, and can't cite transtextual thingamugigs. But my writer's ear makes me think that, say, the two Hagar-in-the-Desert stories, or the three Wife-and-Sister stories (in 12, 20, and 26) are efforts by the various Sources to cope with the same oral tradition. (The wife-and-sister one especially is squicky and needs much coping with.) And the Redactor for some reason decided to keep all of them.

But there are also stock situations that come into different stories over and over. They interest me. I can't quite decide if they are simply conventions of a pretty alien style of storytelling, or if they add up to something bigger, or if they are each developments of a theme, or what.