Hey all, I’m going to skip some of the old Indian and Chinese texts and go straight into the Old Testament, which I’ve been excited about. We will start with Genesis, and I will write an essay on a book each week, which carries us through 39 weeks (lol) and some books I may want to give extra attention, and maybe I’ll do some interregnums to mix it up. So that’s basically the next year…
This Friday will be the first essay on the Book of Genesis. I’m going to try and spice this up with links to academic examinations of the text as well as short works of fiction or poetry related to the book. To start us off, please read this lovely Yiddish short story My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner. This story is about the conflict between faith and the material world, and I think will put people in the right frame of mind for further Biblical literature. I heard about this story because it was discussed on the Manifesto! podcast, and here is the link to that episode.
https://tikvahfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Grade-Chaim-My-Quarrel-with-Hersh-Rasseyner.pdf
For stuff to consume before Friday’s essay, here are two videos that helped me with reading of the Book of Genesis. Some of you may have heard of Jonathan Pageau through Jordan Peterson. He is an Orthodox Christian, and his whole YouTube channel is wonderful. Here he discusses symbolism in the Book of Genesis.
I also got a lot out of the video below, which focuses more on structure and story elements in the Book of Genesis.
For the record, for my own reading I’m using a rather random translation that was recommended by @martyrmade on Twitter. It is The Holy Bible in Modern English by Ferrar Fenton. There are a lot of reasons why this is an interesting translation, but I don’t imagine anyone can get their hands on it by Friday, so for the purpose of examining specific passages, I’ll just type out what I’m referring to. Any old Bible should do for the purpose of following along.
If you want to go really hard with the prep, you can read each chapter of An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament by SR Driver which is available in its entirety online (link below). Genesis is covered on pages 4-22.
https://archive.org/details/introductiontoli00drivrich/page/4/mode/1up
See you Friday.