Week 4: Ancestral Narratives: Genesis 12-50 Flashcards Preview

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Flashcards in Week 4: Ancestral Narratives: Genesis 12-50 Deck (27)
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1
Q

The 3 Ancestral Narratives

A
  1. Abraham (Gen 12-22)
  2. Jacob (Gen 25, 27-33, 35)
  3. Joseph (Gen 37, 39-50)
2
Q

Themes in the Ancestral Narratives

A

Barrenness

Younger Sibling Favoured

Obedience, Testing, Transformation

3
Q

Themes in the Ancestral Narratives: Barrenness

A

Child bearing is a gift of God. Barrenness becomes symbolic for disobedience, lack of faith, punishment.
God controls the fertility and the wombs of Israel.

This theme continues throughout Bible.

4
Q

Themes in the Ancestral Narratives: Younger Sibling

A
Younger sibling tends to be favoured:
Cain over Abel
Isaac over Ishmael
Jacob over Esau
Joseph over everybody

These stories may have a kernel of history, since it is odd to establish history in these kind of irregularities.

These stories are Eponymous Narratives: (story of an individual, like Jacob, that functions on the level of his family, and is also a national narrative).

5
Q

Themes in the Ancestral Narratives: Obedience, Testing and Transformation

A

Question of obedience and testing leading to transformation.

Abraham, Joseph, Jacob, Sarah, Hagar

6
Q

Eponymous Narratives:

A

A story of an individual, like Jacob, that functions on the level of his family, and is also a national narrative.

Jacob is renamed Israel, and his brother is Esau (code for Edom). Uses ancestry to explain why things are the way they are between these two peoples politically.

7
Q

Family and Social Structure in Ancient Israel

A

Tribes
Clan
Father’s House

8
Q

Family and Social Structure in Ancient Israel: Tribes

A

The tribe was the primary unit of social and territorial organization in Israel.

The tribe would have been named after one of the sons or grandsons of Jacob. Traditionally there are 12 tribes. 12 is a number of wholeness (12 months, hours in a day).

Tribes would unite for mutual defence and in war time there would be a levi on each tribe, meaning each tribe would be obligated to send supplies and help (small tribes would have been more open to intertribal alliances).

Some scholars think that a coordinated worship of a kind of God/Yahweh began at the tribal level. Why? Tribes had to have something that unified them (perhaps something stronger than their patriarch, Jacob).

No intermarriages across tribes (except for alliances).

9
Q

Family and Social Structure in Ancient Israel: The Clan

A

The tribe would contain, within itself, several clans. All of these would be named after an individual, who is related to the name of the tribe. Clans comprised a large number of households.

The clan is a unit of recognizable kinship that was more immediate to a person’s life than the Tribe.

Characteristics of the Clan:
( 1 ) Endogamous
( 2 ) Territorial Identity
( 3 ) Preliminary Justice System

10
Q

Family and Social Structure in Ancient Israel:

Characteristics of the Clan

A

( 1 ) Endogamous
You must marry within the clan (only marry relatives) so that the land, and all of the assets and holdings, will stay in the family. The family was the social security network. Marrying within the clan helped to ensure survival.

( 2 ) Territorial Identity
People would know how to find you based on your name.

( 3 ) Preliminary Justice System
Some things had to be brought to the representatives of each clan. They were brought to the gate of the village. The gate was the liminal (threshold). The ultimate punishment was to be banished. If you were banished or sent into the wilderness, it was symbolic of a person’s death (the wilderness is very dangerous and chaotic, but in the biblical stories, wilderness is also a place for encounters with God).

11
Q

Family and Social Structure in Ancient Israel: Father’s House

A

The most immediate level: what you are born into.

It is headed by a living patriarch. It includes the patriarch (the Father) and his wife, and their sons and daughters.

When a daughter marries outside of her family (father’s house), she would become a part of another father’s house.

12
Q

When did the worship of Yahweh begin?

A

Some scholars think that a coordinated worship of a kind of God/Yahweh began at the tribal level.

These tribes had to have something that unified them (perhaps something stronger than their patriarch, Jacob).

13
Q

Family and Social Structure in Ancient Israel:

Characteristics of this System

A

Patriarchal, Patrilocal, Patrilineal

( 1 ) PATRIARCHAL
Oldest living man is the head of the household. If the father were to die, the patriarch of the family would become the oldest living son.

Men were responsible for hunting and tilling the ground. Women were responsible for feeding and clothing the household.

( 2 ) PATRILOCAL
A woman leaves her household and goes to her husband’s father’s house.

( 3 ) PATRILINEAL
Descent is traced through the father’s line; ancestry is reckoned through the fathers.

14
Q

Covenant (berit)

A

A treaty or agreement between two (or more) parties. The parties become bound by obligations and responsibilities, and there are rewards/punishments for obeying/disobeying covenant.

The ultimate guarantor between the agreement between two people were the gods. This would be signified with a pile of stones established as a “witness” to the covenant.

Covenants were ratified by blessings and insured by curses. Covenants could be solidifies (set in stone) through ritual meals and series of gestures.

Example: the curses that would come upon you if you disobeyed the covenant would be symbolized by dismembered animals, and then those in the agreement would walk between dismembered animals.

Gives rise to the expression: to cut a covenant.

15
Q

3 Types of Covenants

A

Parity Covenant: covenant between two equals.

Grant Covenant: covenant between a superior and inferior, without needing anything in exchange from inferior (simply a grant).

Suzerainty Treaty: covenant between a suzerain (powerful person/overlord), and a vassal, with stipulations and conditions.

16
Q

Theophany

A

God showing himself; the manifestation of God (when someone experience a theophany, it completely changes the direction of their lives).

17
Q

The Hagar Story

Genesis 16

A

The Hagar story anticipates the Exodus in the reverse direction. Hagar is an Egyptian fleeing from slavery, stopping at Shur (where Moses stops after the Exodus) and she has an encounter with God. Hagar receives the same promise that Abraham received, but she is an Egyptian.

Hagar means “the foreigner”;”the outsider.”

The first one to call Hagar by name is the angel of the Lord
She names his God. El-roi (“the God who sees” [me]). What does God see? Hagar’s humanity. Note: Hagar is the only person in the whole Bible who gives God a name.

The name of her son is Ishamel (“God hears”). Abraham’s oldest son is Ishmael, and it bothers Abraham that Ishmael is not favoured.

18
Q

What is at stake if God sacrifices Isaac?

A

Abraham’s lineage.

19
Q

What is the story about the sacrificing of Isaac about?

A

God threatens His promise of descendants to Abraham.

Abraham is bound. Abraham is told, again, to “take and go” as he was before when he was told to leave his tribe.

God is the ultimate moral authority, so the moral thing to do is to listen to him. This story is a question of what it really means to be obedient to God, and how far we should go.

20
Q

What happens after Abraham obeys God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, and God stops him and lets him sacrifice a goat instead?

A

After this story, Abraham never talks to God again, Abarahm and Isaac never talk to each other again, and Sarah dies in the next chapter. Human relationships are shattered by the cost of faith. After Sarah dies, Abraham remarries and has 6 more sons.

21
Q

The Jacob Story:

Jacob’s Birth

A

Rebekkah is barren and Isaac is the one who prays for her to have a child. This is odd because usually it is the barren woman who prays for herself.

She has twins, and they are so painful and moving around inside of her so much, and so she goes and inquires of the Lord.

Divine prophecy about their furtures: ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.’

22
Q

The Jacob Story:

Compare Jacob and Esau

A

Divine prophecy about their furtures: ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.’

The first is a red, hairy mantle and he is named Esau (the Bible is poking fun at its neighbours).

  • Red means admoni (which sounds like Edom)
  • Hairy means se-ar (which sounds like Seir, the capital of Edom)

The second comes out gripping the heel of Jacob, so they are not even born separately.
- Jacob means the supplanter (one who takes the place of another)

  • Jacob is a smooth, quiet man living in tents
  • Jacob is a refined, educated homebody
  • Esau is a skillful hunter and man of the field
    Isaac loves Esau
  • Esau is a redneck, rough around the edges, bore
23
Q

The Jacob Story:

Handing over birth rites

A

Jacob is cooking a stew (Bible using gender roles to make Jacob more feminine), and Esau comes in from the fields hungry asking “give me some of that red stuff.”

What is at stake?
Jacob will get more land, and Esau will lose his birth rites

Esau says that he is so hungry he could die, so what use is a birth right to him (a birth rite is everything). And Esau gives Jacob his birth rite for some stew.

24
Q

The Jacob Story:

Father’s Blessing (Genesis 27)

A

In order to receive your inheritance, it requires a blessing from the father.

Once this blessing happens, it is official (e.g. baptism)

Jacob receives the blessing from Isaac as first born. Esau asks for the blessing to be reversed

25
Q

The Jacob Story:

Jacob’s Coming of Age Story

(Genesis 28)

A

Bildungsroman: coming of age story

Jacob is transformed. He is out of the clan, in the wilderness.

God reveals himself to Jacob and gives him a promise (I will be with you and you will have descendents that will be like the dust, and I will not leave you).

Jacob is worried that Esau will destroy his entire family and lineage. But wouldn’t that be fair, considering that Jacob stole Esay’s lineage?

Jacob sends peace offering to Esau (goats, cattle, etc.).

26
Q

The Jacob Story:

Jacob’s Transformation

(Genesis 32)

A

Jacob has a strange encounter in the night with a man and wrestles with him. No one is winning, and Jacob asks for his blessing (but he has already asked for a blessing from his father) and asks for his name.

The man changes Jacob’s name to Israel.
32:30 Jacob sees the face of God

27
Q

The Jacob Story:

Jacob and Esau Embrace

(Genesis 33)

A

Esau runs to meet Jacob and they embrace. Esau is happy to receive the gifts from Jacob, but says that he has enough.

Jacob says that seeing Esau is like seeing the face of God.

In both encounters, with God and his brother, Jacob expected death but he survived, and it’s like his life is restored.