This week, we celebrated Rosh Hashanah, which is sort of the Jewish New Year, though to me at least is more significant as it begins a ten day period of reflection. This period culminates with Yom Kippur, where we ask God to forgive us for our sins (past for some Jews, future for others) and hope for a happy and healthy coming year.
Part of Ellen’s rules for attending services is that it is okay for at least parts of the service to read a book brought with us, as long as the book has a Jewish theme. This year I have decided to reread Genesis, a relatively new translation of Genesis by Robert Alter, http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Translation-Commentary-Robert-Alter/dp/039331670X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378560203&sr=8-1&keywords=genesis+alter.
Genesis remains my favorite part of the bible. The stories found there are of people who feel very real.
They wrestle with big issues, ethics, religion, and their place in the world. They have great strengths and weaknesses. They succeed and fail. I always learn something new whenever I read about them.
Alter wrote the new translation because he felt that traditional translations did not capture a lot of form of the original Hebrew. His take is that there was much use of repetition and alliteration in the original, all of which is typically lost when the literal meaning drives the translation. I am not a good Hebrew reader and certainly not of Biblical Hebrew, so will have to take his word on it.
I spent a significant amount of time reading and thinking about the Garden of Eden part of Genesis this time. There is much to ponder.
For example, the story of the creation of people is told twice. The first talks about both male and female being created at the same time, or in the same person. The second talks about female being created from man. Even the use of the word man is problematic. The Hebrew for Adam can just mean human.
The Eve part is also pretty interesting. First, the female in Hebrew is actually called Chava, or perhaps Chawwa (the v sound now was likely a w sound then). How that got to Eve through the Greek is not 100% obvious to me.
There is a growing literature that talks about the role of a mother-goddess, often called Asherah, in early Jewish religion. In pre-Israeli days, Asherah was associated with trees (tree of knowledge?) and snakes. Snakes in that context were symbols of fertility, knowledge and healing (note the modern symbol for medicine, a caduceus, is a combination of a staff plus intertwined snakes. This came from Greek and Roman gods, Hermes, and earlier from the ancient near east.
A case can be made, in the interests of complete disclosure one I am sympathetic toward, that in the 800-500 (around) BCE time frame, there was a movement within Judaism from a more matriarchal-influenced practice (with a female consort, Asherah) and with active female participation, to a male, priestly dominated religion. Some of this plays out in the story of Adam and Chava (or Chawwa) (or Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
At a minimum, something to think about.