Traumas Teach

I think it's important to know the traumas in Abram's life. Auden wrote, "we all know a great crime has been committed in our life -- but we don't know who the criminal was or what exactly the crime was."

So I think when the Bible's words are that a son dies before the face of his father we readers are encouraged to investigate what is going on.

Investigating Abraham's father can help us understand the urges Abraham had to kill his two sons. We may then be moved to understand how Abraham is able to transform murderous impulses.

God And His Writers

I wonder what the relationship is between God and the biblical writer.

The writer of the Bible has the chutzpah to tell us that the Lord Yahway is commanding Abram [12:1]-- even if Abram does not know who is speaking to him.

Scholars now know there were many writers who contributed to Genesis.
Some scholars call the last writer the Redactor or "R".
"R" could also stand for "Rabbi."

God springs out of R's psyche the way beings spring through our dreams.

So is humanity, represented by our editing Rabbi, greater than God because our God is created by us?

Here is a similar idea from the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai:

Prayer creates God
who creates humanity
whose prayers
re-create God
re-creating humanity.

The Bible As Murder Mystery

I wonder why Abram's brother, “Haran, dies before the face of his father” [11:28]. We have only one hint: We are told the names of Haran's daughters: Milcah (which means "Queen") and Yiscah (which means "see") [11:29].

For nine generations after the Flood woman were invisible. Even Noah's wife is just called "Noah's wife" [7:13].

Does  the patriach kill his son because Haran dares to give his daughters names-- especially names that said together mean "see the queen"?

How does Abraham successfully wrestle with the impulse he may have inherited from his father: to kill sons?

What is Abram's life before he hears a divine call?

1. His brother, Haran, dies "before the face of his father" [11:28].
2. Abram is then married to Sarai: We eventually learn she's his half-sister-- daughter of Abram's father [20:12].
3. This half-sister and brother have no children: Sarai is blamed for "being barren" [11:30].
4. Their father, Terach, plans to take his barren children to the wild west of Canaan.
5. But on the way to Canaan, Terach gives up this dream and settles in Charan.


***** Is Abram Reverberating With Multiple Traumas?

A. Did the father of Abram and Sarai kill their brother Haran?
B. Are they married to keep this secret in the family?
C. Do they have no children because brother and sister cannot consummate this forced marriage?
D. Is murder why they leave town to settle in a strange land?
E. Does Abram imagine unending blessings because he cannot get any blessings from his murderous father, his unknown mother, his barren marriage and the strange land his father settled in?

*****

When our world is being destroyed can we, inspired by Abram, learn how to find divine resources to create a new world?

Who’s Calling

 ^{Who’s Calling}

^{“Go to the land I will show you” [12:1]}  

^{Who is the divinity speaking to Abram?  We readers are told it is Lord Yahway.  But Lord Yahway does not introduce himself to Abram.  Why?  Lord Yahway has not spoken to humanity for ten generations—since the Flood.  He has destroyed the tower of Babel and destroyed human unity: we are so babled we can no longer understand each other.  No wonder Lord Yahway does not tell Abram who is calling.}

^*****

^{And who is this disembodied divinity who does not introduce Himself and yet promises “All families on earth will be blessed through you” [12:4]
He feels like a part or voice or being in our psyche who has divorced himself from having a body and a personality. He is so far away from life He dreams of a new life in a new world. He is so un-blessed so family-less He imagines a world where all families will be blessed through him.
*****
Stripped of the blessings of life we may dream, work for and co-create a blessed life. Divinity seems to be life welling to make us more than well when we are less than well. The form our welling life takes and the way it communicates to us I imagine is continually co-created by us and our expanding tribe.}

Shitty Divinity

I wonder what we need to do to more and more see and hear divinity?

Maybe like Abram we need the courage to hear what is alive for us and then the faith to wander into this unknown new world?

I go live in Israel for three years. One day I churn manure into the ground of a chicken coup for 8 hours. After my work I meet the rabbi on the Kibbutz. Perhaps for the first time I feel I don't have to say anything bright or witty or do anything special. I am a valuable human being because I am covered with shit.

May accepting when we feel shitty reveal divinity.