Saturday, May 11, 2013

creation narrative in Genesis addresses reproduction, not sexuality.

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In the first creation narrative, Gen 1:27-8, “G-d created the human in his shadow, in shadow G-d created him; male and female created He them. 1:28: And God blessed them; and God said to them: ‘be many and fruitful…’” This is the same command that G-d gave the beasts in Gen 1:22.  It is not a command that was addressed specifically or exclusively to humans.

As was done with the beasts, G-d blesses the humans, and tells them to be many and fruitful  רבו ופרו. Interestingly enough, the humans have not, at this point, been gendered.  They are still genderless.

In Gen 2:18, we find that G-d said it is not good for “the human”  האדם  to be alone.  G-d then created “a helper”   עזר .  G—d took one of the bones from the human, and from that bone made “woman.”  Because there was woman, there was woman’s opposite, man. (rhetorical-critical exegesis of Gen 2:23 courtesy of Dr Phyllis Trible).

Gen 2:24 tells us:  ”A man will leave his mother and father and  דבק with his woman and they will be one flesh.”  This is the sole occurrence of the verb דבק.  The contemporary translation of דבק is "glue," or "attach."

In the 2nd creation narrative, Gen 3,  G-d tells the woman that she will experience pain in giving birth. G-d does say that giving birth is her punishment, nor does G-d insist that producing offspring is her responsibility or her sole function.  

Upon their expulsion from the garden Gen 3:20, the man calls the woman Chava (Life), because “she will be the mother of all life ( חי ).  

In Gen 15, we find that G-d puts the burden for propagating the species on the male, not on the female:  G-d says to Abraham “he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.’ 15:5: And He brought him forth abroad, and said: ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars, if thou be able to count them’; and He said unto him: ‘So shall thy seed be.” (Gen 15:4-5)  From this it is inferred that G-d placed the onus of reproduction on the male (Abraham) rather than on the female.

What we infer from this is that the principal issue is ownership of the product of the act of reproduction.  The text focuses on permissible sexual relations within a family: incest by itself is not a particularly horrifying thought, but that the result of an incestuous act could make a mess of inheritance rights and could damage the clarity of lines of descent within a family group.

This is also why the woman caught in adultery is stoned to death:  it is not that she  is punished for having fun when she should not have, nor is it because she was “immodest.”  She is punished for the simultaneous commission of two crimes:  theft (for taking the product of copulation with one man, since the product was property of the male and not of the female), and fraud (for attempting to pass the product of copulation with one man off as the product of copulation with a partner to whom she was contracted to produce offspring.

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