GENESIS

Reading Notes and Class Notes--Adam Kissel
(from course taught by Leon Kass at the University of Chicago, 1997 version)

Summary | Husbands and Wives

Secondary Sources | Chronology up to a point

Adam and Eve, below. | Cain and so on | Noah and so on | Babel and Abram (before Hagar) |
Abram and his sons

Lecture Notes (lots of my notes are stuck in my copy of Genesis and not reprinted here)

Wisdom: philosophy: knowl. for its own sake rather than for practical use [cf. Ward's comment on Franklin], on the one hand, vs. biblical thought: awe and reverence--a righteous and holy life. Contemporary thought/science seems to downplay or even have no use for wisdom: nature has no moral force in itself. Indeed the scientific worldview damages morality! But this is why revelation becomes necessary.

Ch. 1: earth-centered, while God is the actor. God addresses us through sight. 1:1 Creation by God. What does all this mean? Denies eternality of the universe, thus its divinity. Denies multiple Gods. Denies the generativeness of the universe. 1:2: pre-creation is made of primordial stuff which needs a Separator and Distinguisher (see handout): is creation created out of nothing or of God's stuff? Note: light before lights, time/days before the sun (concept of time in question); vegetation before the sun: these out-of-order things challenge the role and place of the sun. Temporal order suggests a hierarchic, ontological order (with God at the top). Strauss on "what is creation?" (vs. making): see 2:3. The trees also make/create their fruit - out of their own substance. Man created in and as an image of God - ask, what is God like, then? Man has a kind of subset of powers that God has. The beasts multiply in the earth; but people shall fill it, 28, and conquer it.

See handout: two sets of three days; parallels. The no-movement things first, then things with increasing locomotion, till man, who is free and highest. Principles: Place, Separation, Motion, Life. Life - awareness (of God), needs food, thus has appetites, thus has feeling. Place - necessary background. Separation: rational, fundamental bringing of order out of chaos. BDL = to separate, "after its kind" [cf. Platonic Forms]. Diaresis (sp.?): dualisms: distinctness (locomotion, esp.). This fits creation by speech esp. when speech is considered as distinction of sounds, etc, - articulation. Note: some things are named, others created according to their kinds. Demotion of the dignity of cosmos and man, compared to God (to prevent man from deifying nature, esp. the sun, or himself)--against idolatry (usu. sight-related, not hearing) -- cf. Deut. 4:15, no likeness, nor the sun, is GOD.
G. is a mystery that inspires awe, though we can still approach with reason. The temporal reading, of order, leads to the ontological reading, or intelligible principles of distinction, combination, and hierarchy with man above the rest of creation. The moral = to place God over nature and over man [but cf. Aristotle's Metaphysics]. God = good; nature = neutral; man = incomplete. [why incomplete?]

Boundaries - day, evening, night, morning, day - boundaries naturally have temptation to resist and undo order.

Good: what does this mean? Fit to its kind, to do its work, therefore perfect in these senses. But man is incomplete, indeterminate, b/c of his freedom--we shall see about whether man can be completed. The whole, once man is added, is Very Good.

The Hebrew plural: for real plurals but also for collective or indeterminate nouns: Elohim, mayim, shemayim.

Ch. 2: Day 7: rest, hallowing of Sabbath. Work vs. rest. HALLOWING: sanctifies the principle of separation as holy itself. (Though not to unsanctify the principle of union.) God also blesses creation in Ch. 1: animals for life, man for life & rule, and Sabbath here for sacredness. BLESSING accepts potentiality (future-oriented); it's also definitional. REPRODUCTION as in some sense self-sacrificial--therefore beings must be encouraged to do it? (why does Isaac marry so late, ahead? Cf. Noah.)

The "second creation story" (that there are two encourages a continued nonliteral reading--esp. b/c everything is in a different order!)--how to reconcile Ch. 1 w/ Chs. 2-3? Differences: naming, goodness, man's likeness to God, fecundity, freedom.

Chs. 2-3. God's closer relation to man. Man's hard life. Stages of the story = aspects of man. 2:5 - earth's shrubs need both rain and toil = man is to work.

EDEN: Man's original principles: low (earth) and high (imago Dei). Desire equals fulfillment, therefore no separation from self [cf. 2:18]; this because Eden is plentiful. Nostalgic condition of the noble savage [cf. Franklin], in our psychology.

DISTURBANCES: special trees: LIFE and KNOWLEDGE (of Good and Bad; "bad" includes non-moral meanings; therefore so does "good"). But after tasting of the second, one ought not live forever--there may be a certain kindness in banishment away from eternal life of dealing with the knowledge of good and bad. [cf. Milton] Self-consciousness opens the concept of the Not-I (esp. regarding life/death). ** An inherent possibility of man, being free, is that he is free to go against the will of God. [cf. Milton] ** ALONENESS of man, soon introduction of sexuality.

TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: autonomous awareness of Good/Bad: permits incorrectness about Good/Bad (and hence the prohibition), but also revelation about the truth of Good/Bad (see ahead).

1. "tree" as symbol: seems independent (though hierarchically low). Knowledge: both moral and practical?
2. Prohibition: a free being must be given a choice in the first place, therefore a command and call to obedience. The first prohibition must involve free choice: obey or disobey; decide whether or not you'll have the power to err again. Disobedience: autonomous, independent choice, involving knowledge of good and bad (after first decision to know it); i.e. knowledge at least of the possibility of good and bad. (In this sense as soon as Adam knows what the tree is for, it's the beginning of the end.) There is a certain pride in making any choice based on one's supposed knowledge of good and bad--though not necessarily pride in other kinds of choices; e.g. naming the animals.

Speech-Reason-Self-Awareness all go together. Reason/philosophy: pride--the error is the pretension to being able to make good choices based on reason. The man is not self-conscious enough to understand death. Death, i.e. mortality, i.e. the end of innocence (if not also much more), even may not be understood. But awareness of death will come with the gain of self-consciousness and the knowl. of good and bad.

[cf. Rousseau on Origin of Languages, Ch. 3]: distinction and collection; otherness and sameness. Naming stirs both reason and self-awareness--self is, at least, a naming being--starting then to recognize self and not-self, i.e. the need for a counterpart. Logos. But once one becomes a speaker (after silence), there is a chance to misspeak.

In any case the man names himself in relation to woman (ish -- ishshah), woman derivative of man.

Why is it that Adam also eats, before together their eyes are opened? What does it mean that Eve has known good & bad first--she knows good first, in the good qualities of the fruit [cf. Milton] (even though it has dire consequences; not knowing them, she nevertheless gives it to Adam). Once they BOTH know about each other's nakedness and shame can enter, they are opened TOGETHER to the bad.

THE EVILS OF SPEECH AND REASON. Explicit negation happening. Snake as smooth [cf. naked], shrewd, as incarnated autonomous reason (if not incarnated worse). The snake calls God's authority and law into question (unfairly)--it challenges the woman to think for herself. He esp. challenges the goodness of God--as though God would prevent them from eating anything! Eve's answer: the consequence, death, is said to be the reason for the commandment (while God did not say why). She adds "touch it"--'building a fence around the law.' God's speech has been distorted. The snake's reply: you won't die--he answers Eve's distortion with a truth: you will know good and bad--once Eve has made the mistake, the snake can use the truth to make God seem to be a liar, and jealous. The snake's distortion: he implies that knowledge grants immortality--though Eve probably doesn't really know either, what this means yet--but temptation has struck. The imagination is liberated in moving from plain experience to the "not" of it. [results: shame, art, fear]

DESIRES/MOTIVES lead to UNDERSTANDINGS (independency of thought) leading to NAMING and SAYING.
What is said then affects others' understandings and desires.

Love: soul-longing for companionship (2:18: (1) alone; (2) needing help); also a bodily aspect. Note that the term LOVE is not used till Isaac and Rebekah. Counterpart: Eve is a necessary duality produced from within Adam--he is 'no longer whole' as Eve presumably is [partitive sense of Heb. min]. ADM [Heb. "man"]--gender-indifferent.

Adam's speech, 2:23: after the God-directed naming process, which has taken a long time, we get "FINALLY"--but it also has the emotive sense of Adam seeing himself now in Eve: similarity after all that otherness. He defines himself as man, at the same time defining woman. But it is love of his own flesh, perhaps already with sexual connotation (Kass: this is the quintessential male speech upon seeing woman)--(cf. Isaac and Rebekah, but Isaac doesn't cleave from parents, Rebekah does, cf. 2:24 to 24:6); it is selfish and in this asexual sense, lustful. There may already be desire to merge back again, to become one flesh (2:24). 2:24--specter of incest overcome by the spouse. Marriage separates you from parents, and even more so from siblings. Here (2:25) is nakedness without shame: lack of the sexual self-consciousness and certainly of sexual morality.

Desire: male, certainly, for the female. Is this the only desire mentioned? Female sexual desire left unsaid. Female desire has to do with "what's on that tree" [Litvin]--whether knowledge, or beauty, or good food. How does this compare with biological differences in evolutionary sexuality? [see later] Together with this is some more self-discovery, some more judgment. [Specter of mortality; see ahead.]

Smoothness: unguardedness; vulnerability.
Regarding sexuality:

• discovering distance from God: permanent incompleteness (and perishability comes in here, too)
• we are both partial and dependent--we cannot command our other parts/counterparts
• fusion never fully happens [cf. EA]
• recognizing a (seemingly) ungovernable, disobedient element [though not clear yet]
• knowing sexuality: having double motives (for self and for other) increases a sense of self-separateness
• knowing one's own weakness
• most important, KNOWING THAT OTHERS KNOW YOUR OWN WEAKNESS [cf. Franklin on appearances] (cf. the sequence of coming to know good and bad and what happens in 3:6-7)

THESE CONTRIBUTE TO TWO KINDS OF SHAME, related to falling short in the pride of self-expectation of wholeness and independency. "eyes opened"--knowing good and bad, and seeing nakedness now in that context as something not rational (Ewa). Knowing and "carnal knowing" starting to fuse a little here.

SHAME: corresponds to the two kinds of hiding (cf. the two kinds of sin)

1. Shame from each other, leading to the artificial [fig leaves] and adornment, hiding both for the sake of the self (embarrassment, desire to recover pride) and, in mercy, for the sake of the other (preventing them from having to know your weakness). See veils, ahead.
2. Shame from God ("cosmic shame"), leading to awe: a new attention to God as venerable and complete and independent, and hiding from God in humility and fear. Cosmic shame is warranted and related to the cosmic curse (3:8 ff.). We are especially able to recognize perfection once we have seen our own imperfection. (Abraham's lessons ahead, however, seem different.) God later makes the skins for the couple (3:21), as though implying that we must depend on the Lord to do the making and the covering.

Results: seeking approval, fear of rejection, possible jealousy of the other or of God, comparative and judgmental self-love, pride, envy, even ambition. These are new complications of knowing one's incompleteness--further desire for completeness. Thus the bar is raised for LOVE: the quality of submission is raised; intimacy as a free choice (cf. Rebekah). Hiding opens up the chance of uncovering by choice.

Life without the Law (Eden) vs. life knowing good and bad (out of Eden).

PROCREATION (curse as prophecy/destiny)

Division of labor (also implicit in human biology; cf. Cain and Abel, ahead, et al.). The woman becomes Eve, the mother. Domestication and new social relations; the man bound to the woman as her urge is to be for him to remain nearby (esp. for the sake of the children), while the man also takes on rule and authority, necessary in that relationship. She to return to him; he to return to the earth.

CURSE:

• Division of labor: rule, authority, other social relations
• Estrangement between man and the earth
• Difficulty in work, esp. in childbirth
• Awareness of death and self-division
• Agriculture, manufacturing, etc. etc. -- CIVILIZATION: the curse/prophecy/destiny is that now man knows his insufficiency and has a desire to hide and to become complete anyway, he "civilizes" himself. Punishment fits the crime: consciousness of their new situation.

Mortality is important now [no access to tree of life] partly because knowledge of good and bad, coupled with insufficiency, is intolerable if forever. Man is "like one of us" in the knowing, but not the being. (Also death enters as a chance to understand the quality of the whole of life--but cf. what the Nephilim do with this knowledge.)

Putting the Two Creation Stories Together (are the truths here really so disjoint?)

(1) God - existential; creating; independent will; multiplicity; generals; general moral goodness; metaphysicals.
(2) Man - as instrument; man's actions and human free will; particulars; morality and sorrowful content.
Knowing [1] in itself may be used to help understand [2]. God's metaphysicals affecting man's morals.
True contemplation of the nature of things leads to goodness--but the nature of things is mysterious, and not necessarily accessible to us. We seek then to find our own way of wisdom by our own power, but this is not what man's morals are supposed to be about--rather, OBEDIENCE to God is the key to our morals. (cf. binding of Isaac.)

Continue with Cain and so on | Noah | Babel, and Abram before Hagar | Abram and his sons