Civilization #22: The Literary Genesis of the Yahwist

We talked about King David of Israel and how he created the project of the Bible in order to create legitimacy and authority. We're continuing along this theme.

The Chronology of the Bible

Let's go over the chronology of the Bible. In the beginning there was God. In the Bible his name is Yahweh, and he created the world. Then he created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. People who take the Bible literally believe this was about 4000 BC.

As we know, Adam and Eve, because they disobeyed God, were banished from the Garden of Eden. They had two sons, Cain and Abel, and then their family started to populate the Earth. But then humans started to misbehave. We went to war. We were greedy, and so God decided to destroy the world in something called the Great Flood. This is the story of Noah's Ark. Remember, Noah was beloved by God, so God told him to build a great ship, and then he would be able to live.

After Noah's Ark came along a man named Abraham. This is about 2000 BC. Abraham was born in the city of Ur in Mesopotamia. He was beloved by God because he was a righteous and decent man. God made a covenant with him. A covenant is a contract. It's a promise. The contract is this:

If you, Abraham, swear allegiance to me, Yahweh, I will make you and your descendants founders of a great nation called Israel that will stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates. That's the promised land.

In return, as a mark of this covenant, Abraham and his descendants will engage in circumcision. Basically the foreskin of their penis will be surgically removed at birth. That's the covenant.

Abraham had a son named Isaac, and Isaac had a son named Jacob. Jacob is the younger son of Isaac, so Esau should have inherited the birthright and the blessing from his father Isaac. But Jacob played a trick on Esau and stole the birthright. Esau was very angry, so Jacob had to run away and live with a relative for a couple of decades.

While there, he married two sisters named Leah and Rachel. Together they had 12 sons. The 12 sons became the 12 founders of the 12 tribes of Israel. Jacob will be renamed by God as Israel, so Jacob really is the founder of the nation of Israel.

Jacob's youngest son is named Joseph. He is beloved by Jacob so much that his brothers became jealous of him and sold him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph was also beloved by God, and he had a special gift of reading dreams. He became a special advisor to the pharaoh, and he became very wealthy.

Meanwhile, back in the land of Israel, Jacob and his sons, their family, are facing this massive famine. Joseph comes and rescues them, and the entire nation of Israel moves down to Egypt, where they become very wealthy and prosperous. Because they have many children, eventually, after a couple of decades, they become a threat to the establishment. The new pharaoh, who has no memory of the contributions of Joseph, enslaves the Israelites. He wants them to die, so he basically forbids them to have sons, and he basically tries to sanction the Israelites as much as possible.

Eventually a man named Moses is born into the Israelites in Egypt. Because he's a boy, he has to be killed, so his mother puts him in a basket. This basket drifts down the Nile and into the hands of the Egyptian princess. Moses grows up to become an Egyptian prince. But eventually God informs him of who he really is. He's the prophet who will deliver the Israelites back into the promised land.

The pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites go. There's a major contest, a duel between Moses and the pharaoh, and then God sends down ten plagues, ten plagues, to force the pharaoh to release the Israelites.

Moses is taking the Israelites into the promised land, and then the pharaoh has a change of heart, and he wants to destroy the Israelites before they can escape. The pharaoh chases them. Moses causes the sea to part. They cross the valley, and when the pharaoh and his army are about to enter the sea, the sea closes in on them and drowns them.

Then when Moses and the Israelites are in the desert, Moses ascends a mountain to receive the law of God. This is what we call the Ten Commandments. But while Moses is away, the Israelites create an idol to celebrate Yahweh. Yahweh hates this because Yahweh does not want to be represented on Earth. Yahweh sentences them to a long exile in the desert, and he tells Moses:

You will deliver the people from Egypt, and that is your mission, but you will not enter the promised land. You can see the promised land, but you will not enter the promised land.

The mission goes to Joshua, who is Moses' disciple. Joshua and the Israelites start a massive military campaign into the land of Canaan, which is the promised land. Over the span of years, they basically massacre the people, and they create the nation of Israel.

Then we enter the period called the Judges. These are 12 individuals who become the tribal leaders of Israel. Israel at this time is at war with all the neighbors, the Moabites, the Philistines, the Canaanites. This period lasts for a long time until the Israelites pick a king named Saul to lead them.

As we know, from King Saul will come David, who will usurp the throne from Saul and be the great king of Israel that we remember. David is considered the real founder of the state of Israel as well as the Jewish faith. That's the chronology of the Bible.

A Chronology or a Cosmology?

Because the Bible is written almost like a historical document, for most of human history people believed this to be literally true. But in the past 300 years there have been many archaeologists who have tried to prove the events in the Bible. For example, Noah's Ark. If there really was a flood, there would be a geological record. There would be a ship. There would be a memory of this. But we have never been able to find any concrete evidence to support Noah's Ark.

How about the Garden of Eden? If the Garden of Eden really existed, we could also find it, and we've never been able to find it. How about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Again, no evidence that any of these individuals ever existed. How about Moses? We would think if Moses really did exist, there would be some records of him in Egyptian history. Ten plagues is a travesty and a disaster on the Egyptian people. No record of that. The parting of the sea, no record of that. The Judges, Joshua, nothing.

It is only when we get to David that we begin to see historical records and proof that David actually existed. But before that, nothing in the Bible has proven to be historical. This is very confusing. What I will show you is if you see the Bible as a historical record, you will only get confused. If you see this as a chronology, this makes no sense.

If you see this as a work of fiction, like a lot of people will do, this doesn't make much sense either, because when you read the Bible these events aren't actually interconnected with each other. David has no memory of Moses, for example. That's weird. Moses has no memory of Abraham. These stories are not interconnected.

If this is not a historical record, if this is not a work of pure fiction, what is this thing? What I will show you is this is not a chronology. This is a cosmology.

Three Reasons for Writing Projects

1. Remember, we talked about why things are written down in the ancient past. As I said, kings sponsor writing projects for three major reasons. The first reason is to create legitimacy and authority.
2. The second reason is to create a national identity, cohesion among the people.
3. The third reason is the idea of differentiation, to tell people who they are not. We're Israelites. We're not Egyptians. We're not Canaanites. We're not Philistines.

These are the three major reasons why kings sponsor writing projects. For the Israelites and David, these three imperatives are particularly salient. They're really necessary. Let me explain why that's the case.

Legitimacy and the Poet God

Legitimacy. Remember, David usurped the throne from Saul. Saul came from a noble family, and he was elected by the chieftains to be their king. Then David launched a rebellion and eventually usurped the throne, so David has a major legitimacy problem.

How he solves the problem, as we discussed, is the Bible presents him as a poet king. This is a very important concept. Poet king. There have been warrior kings, kings who go to war, and they win legitimacy by defeating all their enemies. There have been priest kings, kings who are head of a major religion, but David is the first poet king.

He writes poetry. He sings songs. He's a sensitive soul. That's what explains his affair with Bathsheba. That tells us he could never have possibly been ambitious and wanted to kill Saul. He's the first poet king. Why is he king of Israel? Because guess what, guys? God is the poet God. Yahweh is the poet God.

This is a radical conception of divinity in the ancient world. Gods previously have been priests or warriors. This is the first time in human history where God, Yahweh, has been presented as a poet God. When you read the Bible, it's very interesting how he creates the world. He speaks, and things are created. He says, “Let there be light. Let there be heaven and earth.” He speaks, and when he speaks, a new world is created. Then he looks at this world and says, “And this is good.”

He's like a writer who speaks words and then who edits his words in order to create something much more beautiful. He's a poet. As a poet, he's very sensitive, which means he creates Adam and Eve because he's lonely. He wants friendship.

In other words, the Bible is fundamentally a story of friendship, of two poets who are alone in the world and who found friendship and comfort in each other's existence. The way the Bible accomplishes this is through the idea of covenant. In the Bible there are four covenants, promises.

1. The first covenant is between Noah and Yahweh. It's what we call the Noahic Covenant. The idea is this. After Yahweh destroys the world, he feels tremendous remorse for what he's done. He promises Noah, “As long as humans are not too evil, I will not destroy the world. If humans stay good, I will not destroy the world.”
2. The second covenant is between Abraham and Yahweh, and it's called the Abrahamic Covenant. In this covenant Yahweh says to Abraham, “If you and your descendants stay true to me, I will create a great nation out of you. I will give you the nation of Israel.”
3. The third covenant is between Moses and Yahweh, and it's called the Mosaic Covenant. The idea is, “If the Israelites follow the Ten Commandments and worship Yahweh, only Yahweh, then Yahweh will protect them as a nation. Yahweh will show them favor.”
4. Those are the three covenants. But when we get to David, called the Davidic Covenant, something interesting happens. All three previously are what we call conditional covenants. If you do this, then I will do this. But when we get to David, it's unconditional. “I, Yahweh, will promise that you, David, and your descendants will forever rule Israel. The House of David will forever rule Israel.”

It's an unconditional covenant that shows his everlasting friendship with David. In other words, the Davidic Covenant marks the end of biblical history. Yahweh, this great God, poet God, who searched the universe for friendship, has now found his great friend in David. His search has ended, and biblical history has ended.

This is a radical new idea in human history, how a king and a god can be poets, and how reality can be constructed through words. That's why in the Bible there's a very famous phrase, “In the beginning there was the Word.” That's why Jewish people are so literary because that's part of the tradition. If you look at some of the most famous writers and some of the most famous thinkers in the world, they're mainly Jewish. Again, a lot of it is because the Jewish faith is the first faith to focus on literary creation. That's the idea of legitimacy.

Cohesion and Syncretization

The second purpose is to create cohesion. As we discussed, after the Bronze Age collapsed, the land of Canaan was in complete chaos. You had all these different groups within Canaan. You had the nomads from the desert, the Bedouins. You have the hill people of Canaan. You have refugees from the cities of Canaan, and the cities have been destroyed. You have Egyptian priests. You have foreign mercenaries. Now you have Sea Peoples, these Greeks and these other peoples who are coming into Canaan because they've lost their lands back at home.

You've got this very different group of people together. They're in competition with other groups like the Philistines, so now they need to create a national identity out of all this. That's what the Bible is doing, guys.

Remember, there's a concept we learned that's very important called syncretization. It means when you bring different religions together and create a new religion. For example, let's just say my god is Zeus, and your god is Hera. I conquer you, and I make you part of my people. What we do in this instance is we marry our gods to each other. Now Zeus is married to Hera, and they have children like Aphrodite and Athena.

This is a way to soothe the process of conquest, because even though I've conquered you, I still have to live with you. We have to blend in our different cultures.

This is also true for the idea of genealogy, family history. Every tribe has a patriarch. The reason for the patriarch is to tell the people we've been in this land for the longest time, and that's why we have legitimacy and control over this land, because we were here first.

Now when tribes get together, they intermarry. They form alliances. What they do that's very common is their ancestors merge together, and they become sons and fathers of each other, as though it's one family history. You take these different family histories and you merge them into one line, the same process of syncretization.

You look at this instance, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It's basically three major tribes of Israel coming together to form one family history. In this instance, the most powerful family is that of Jacob because Jacob, Israel, gives his name to the new nation of Israel. The second most important person or tribe is Abraham because he's the progenitor of this family. Third will be Isaac. In fact, in the Bible Isaac receives the least amount of attention.

But the syncretization process also helps us explain Moses, because we've been looking for 100 years, and we have not found any evidence that Moses ever existed or anyone like Moses existed in Egypt. What's Moses doing? What Moses is doing is explaining why there are Egyptian priests in the nation of Israel.

Why are priests important? Because if you're David and you're now king, you want to create legitimacy, and you want to create authority. The best way you create authority is by centralizing your power. Back then the best and easiest way to centralize power is by centralizing religious ritual.

What he did was this. He made his new capital Jerusalem, and he built something called the Temple of Jerusalem, which became the house of Yahweh. This is where Yahweh lived. If you wanted to worship Yahweh, and you had to because he was your god, you had to come all the way to Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice. Who controlled the sacrifice process? Priests.

Why are the Egyptian priests controlling the sacrifice process? Because they're the ones who led the people of Israel out of Egypt, the ones who delivered the Israelites into freedom. Moses is an Egyptian name. It means son of. It's a very common Egyptian name. For example, Ramses means son of Ra. Ramses is a very famous Egyptian pharaoh. Ramses means son of Ra, the sun god. Both Moses and his brother Aaron, these are Egyptian names for Egyptian priests.

David was heavily reliant on these Egyptian priests in order to centralize authority. Also, the idea of circumcision is an ancient Egyptian practice that priests specialized in. If the new law is to be a member of Israel, to be an Israelite, means you have to get circumcised, you have to circumcise your children, you're going to go to the Egyptian priests to circumcise your children because they're good at that, and they know how to do that. By making circumcision the major mark of what it means to be an Israelite, it gives authority and power to these Egyptian priests.

The Judges, what we believe is the Judges are these local heroes that bring all the other tribes of Israel together. In other words, if you are a member of this new nation of Israel, you have an entity or an ancestor within the cosmology of the Bible. This explains why the history of Israel is so convoluted, contradictory and complex, because you're trying to create a national identity where all tribes, everyone, is able to contribute effectively to the creation of the nation of Israel.

Differentiation and Identity

The last question is differentiation. This is the most important because remember, you have Egyptian priests in Israel. How do we know they're loyal to Israel and not to Egypt? Because the Egyptian priests went to war with the pharaoh.

We have Canaanites within the state of Israel. How do we know they're loyal? Because they went to war with the Canaanites. What's interesting with the Bible is the Israelites, in their history, went to war with everyone. The Egyptians, the Philistines, the Canaanites. Went to war with everyone. Why? Because they had members from every single geography and location in that area, and so they need to differentiate themselves. The best way to differentiate yourself is by going to war with them.

Also, guys, when you use the word nation, I have to warn you, this is not the modern sense. Nation is a loose political affiliation that is fluid. Today, the nation-state, you're Chinese, you're stuck being Chinese. But back then, if you're an Israelite, guess what? You could walk across the street and become a Moabite.

The idea of identity back then was extremely loose and fluid. When we use the term Moabite or Canaanite, basically we're talking about a geographical location that has some political force, but it's not a fixed identity. The very idea of ethnicity, race, group identity back then was extremely fluid, was basically nonexistent. The very idea of Israel is a literary creation. The idea of Israelite is a political creation.

The Yahwist

This explains why the Bible is structured the way it is. But then the question, and this is an important question, is this was standard cultural practice back then. Everyone did this to create identity. Why is it we have the Bible today and not, say, other texts from Egypt or Mesopotamia? Why is it that the Bible was able to conquer the world, basically? Because you have 2 billion Christians. You have a billion Muslims. The Bible was able to conquer the world and capture the imagination of humanity.

Here I want to explain why the Bible is so powerful. It was how it was written that made it so powerful. We talked about the apology of David, about the Bathsheba story. We believe the person who wrote those stories is what we call the court historian. We have absolutely no idea who he is. He's basically the official historian of the court of David, and every court will have an official historian. Those stories are good, but they're not literary. They're just propaganda and spin.

But the person who wrote the Bible, especially Genesis, was a unique literary genius of the stature of Homer and Plato and Dante. The person who first wrote the Bible was an incredible literary genius. We call her the Yahwist. Why do we call her the Yahwist? It's just convention because she uses Yahweh as the name of God, and other writers don't actually use Yahweh as the name of God. By convention we call her the Yahwist.

Now the question is who is she? We're fairly certain it's a she because she focuses not on war, not on conflict, but on domestic tragedy and affairs, childbirth, marriage, love. This is unique in human history. We're fairly confident it's a she.

There are many who believe she is of the court of David. The reason why is first of all what she writes is very favorable to the court of David. Also, back then, as you can imagine, only aristocratic women had the privilege of reading and writing. She clearly had access to the mythology of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. She had access to a great education. We believe she's a princess.

I will go further and make the argument that she must be either the daughter or the granddaughter of King David. I would make this argument that she has to be the daughter or the granddaughter of King David. The reason why is what she wrote was so controversial and so unique and so imaginative that the priesthood could not possibly accept what she did. If she was just a priest, or if she was just an aristocrat of low birth, there was no way her writings would become part of the Bible. She must have been someone of high authority.

There is actually a precedent for this. For example, we know that in about 2000 BC, at least a thousand years before the Yahwist began to write, Sargon of Akkad is the first great empire builder, the first emperor, basically. This is someone that back then during the time of King David everyone knew and worshiped. King David knew about him, and he knew about his practices.

When King Sargon of Akkad conquered Mesopotamia, he appointed his daughter named Enheduanna to be the high priestess of the religion. But what's interesting about her is she's a poet, and she's the first named author in human history. This is 2000 BCE. She wrote a lot of poetry. There is a history, a precedent for these kings to appoint their daughters to be the official poet of their nation.

That's what I think the Yahwist is. But honestly, we'll never know, and it's not important. We just have to know she was an exceptional literary genius who made the Bible what it is today.

Let's go over some of her literary contributions very shortly. Again, because the Bible has been redacted for about 2,000 or 3,000 years, we've lost a lot of her original writings. I will analyze a couple of stories that we know for sure she wrote. The first is called Adam and Eve. The second is the story of Jacob and Rachel.

Adam and Eve

You think you know the story of Adam and Eve, but I guarantee you it's wrong. I guarantee you even if you know the story of Adam and Eve, it's wrong. Let's go over the official or the mainstream understanding of the story of Adam and Eve.

God told Adam and Eve:

Listen, this is the Garden of Eden. It's paradise. You can do whatever you want. Life is easy. Apples fall from the sky. You can pick tomatoes and carrots from the ground. Life is easy. It's paradise for you. But there's one rule and only one rule in the Garden of Eden. The rule is do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because it's poisonous.

Of course Adam and Eve had to disobey God. God became so angry that he banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. That was our act of disobedience, the first act of disobedience, our first sin, the original sin that has doomed us forever until the redemption of Jesus. That's the story we all know.

The story is completely and utterly wrong. That's not what it says in the Bible. I'll explain first what the Bible says, and then I'll explain how we can interpret the story.

God says to Adam and Eve, “Don't eat that fruit.” Adam and Eve are curious. Why can't you eat that fruit? Then Eve meets a serpent on the ground, and Eve and the serpent talk. Eve basically says, “We can't eat that fruit.” The serpent says, “Why?” Eve says, “It's poisonous.”

The serpent says, “No, it's not poisonous. You're being lied to. The reason why Yahweh does not want you to eat from the fruit is once you eat it, you will become like God. Your eyes will open. You will have the knowledge of good and evil.”

Then Eve gets angry because she feels manipulated, and she convinces Adam to eat the fruit as well. They eat the fruit, and their eyes are open now. They have knowledge of good and evil. Yahweh visits them in the garden, and he discovers they're hiding from him. Yahweh commands them to come out, and he sees right away they're embarrassed about their nakedness. They're embarrassed about being confronted by Yahweh. Yahweh knows they've eaten the fruit.

Adam says to Yahweh, “It's Eve's fault.” Eve says to Yahweh, “It's the serpent's fault.” Yahweh decides to punish all three. He says to the serpent, “From now on, you will slither on the ground, and you'll be hunted by man. Eve, from now on, you and all your descendants will suffer the pains of childbirth. Childbirth will be an extremely painful process.”

Then he says to Adam, “From now on, you must sweat to grow food to feed yourself. From now on, life will be hardship. It will be toil and pain and suffering.”

Then he does this. This is very interesting, and this is where the Bible demonstrates its genius:

And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them. Then the Lord said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. And now he might reach out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and live forever.”

This is where the Bible is genius because it's telling us why God is banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. It's telling us it's because there's another tree God didn't mention to them. It's called the Tree of Life, and it allows you to live forever.

Why is this a problem? There are two things that differentiate God from us humans. The first thing is God has knowledge of good and evil. The second thing is God lives forever. That's it. That's the only difference. If Adam and Eve now know good and evil, if they eat from the Tree of Life, they can live forever. God's afraid we'll become like God. Therefore, to protect the Tree of Life, he has to banish us from the garden.

What Is Good and Evil?

What is good and evil? This is a really complicated idea, but good and evil does not mean you know God and you know Satan. That's not what it means. It means you know what's good for you and what's bad for you.

For example, before I knew good and evil, I hit this table. I feel pain, and I'm like, what pain? What is that? Is that good, or is that bad? I don't know, so I do it again. I do it again. I cannot learn from my mistakes because I can't differentiate what's good for me and what's bad for me.

But now I know good and evil. I'm like, I hit this thing. I feel pain. Therefore it's evil. Therefore I shouldn't do it again. Therefore I should avoid this table. Knowing good and evil means you have the capacity to learn and to grow through a process of self-reflection. Once you have judgment, once you're able to differentiate what's good for you and what's bad for you, you can always grow as a person.

If you can do this forever, if you have life and live forever, it means you become God because your knowledge is now infinite. That's what the logic of good and evil is, the ability to differentiate for yourself what is good for you and what is bad for you, to engage in a process of reflection and self-growth. God's afraid that if we continue to grow, we will become as powerful as God himself.

God as a Parent

The key line is this:

And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them.

This is right after he punishes Adam and Eve. This is right after he scolds them. This is God pitying them and giving them a present. This is very strange. This is paradoxical. Why would God do this?

There are different ways to interpret this, but I think this is God showing remorse and regret. This is a radical idea, but this is God saying to Adam and Eve, “I'm sorry for this.” This is God showing remorse and regret. Why is God showing remorse and regret? You show remorse and regret when you do wrong. But what did God do wrong? What did God do wrong? Why is God in the wrong here? It's a radical idea, but can you figure it out?

God lied to Adam and Eve. God said to Adam and Eve, “Do not eat from this tree because it's poisonous.” Imagine this. Imagine you're my two daughters, and you're like 6 or 7 years old. You see me at night drinking whiskey or beer. I'm really happy because I'm drinking whiskey and beer. You two are curious, and you say to me, “Dad, what is this?” I say, “It's poison.”

Then you're like, “Why are you drinking poison, Dad?” I'm like, “Because I'm older than you are. When you're as old as I am, you can drink this poison.” You two are now curious. You're curious. Why is Dad drinking poison?

Your uncle comes to the house one day, and you ask your uncle, “Hey, is alcohol poisonous?” Your uncle's like, “Of course it's not poisonous. What are you talking about?” Of course what you two do is you break into the alcohol cabinet, and you drink whiskey. You become very happy, and you throw up.

I come home, and I shout at you, “You guys are terrible. I told you not to drink that. Go to your room, and you're suspended for a month.” You go to your room. You cry. Then I come knocking and say, “Hey, do you guys want to go out to McDonald's and have a hamburger together?”

Because I know I'm in the wrong. I shouldn't have said to you alcohol is poisonous. I'm being a bad parent. What's remarkable about the story is it's basically a domestic comedy. This is what happens among families all the time. This is the power of the story of Adam and Eve. It's a domestic comedy. It's something we can all relate to. It's something we can all understand.

What's also really powerful about the story is God is fallible. God has made a terrible mistake. What's important is this. God understands he's made a mistake. That's why he's showing remorse and regret.

Again, Yahweh is a poet God. He's curious about the world. He wants to have friends, but he's inexperienced. He's naive. He's a new father, so he's going to make mistakes. Making mistakes is a process of growing up. What makes humans exceptional, what makes humans unique from animals, is our capacity to make mistakes and to learn from them because we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Do you see how radical all this is? These are radical new ideas in human history. God is fallible. What's important is to understand and admit your mistakes and grow from them.

Cain and Abel

The story continues because now Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden. They have two sons named Cain and Abel. Abel is a shepherd, and Cain is a farmer. But they both love God. They both want the respect and attention of God. They give presents to God.

Abel is a shepherd, so he offers mutton to God. Cain is a farmer, so he offers, I don't know, wheat or vegetables to God. God tastes both. Then God's like, “This mutton, it's tasty. Awesome. Thank you, Abel.” Then he eats Cain's offering, and Cain's very anxious. He's very excited. Then God, Yahweh, is like, “This food sucks, man.”

This is what it says in the Bible:

The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.

He hated Cain's present. He loved Abel's present.

So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? If you do well, will you not be accepted?”

Again, it's a domestic comedy. You're my girls. You're my daughters. You go to school, and you work very hard on presenting a present to me. I say to one of you, “This is an awesome present. Thank you.” I say to the other, “You suck, man.” I'm being a bad parent. God is being a terrible parent. “If you do well, will you not be accepted? You suck, man. The problem isn't me. The problem is you. You just suck.”

Of course what happens next is Cain kills Abel. But then what happens next is interesting because Yahweh finds out about this, and he banishes Cain. Then Cain says to God, “Hey, if you banish me, people will know I committed wrong, and therefore I will be killed by other people.”

Then Yahweh says to Cain, “I'll put a mark on you, the Mark of Cain. If anyone touches you, then I will punish that person. I will protect you with the Mark of Cain.”

This is again God showing remorse and regret for what he's done because God knows in his heart he's in the wrong here. But what allowed God to understand he committed wrong is because Cain argued with him. Cain argued back.

This is a radical conception of faith in the Hebrew Bible. Faith, love of God, requires you to argue with God because it's only through the process of argument that God, who's fallible, will learn and grow. When you argue, when you fight back, you're helping the other person grow.

As you can see, it's a powerful story that reveals so much about the idea of faith and justice and divinity.

Economy and Irony

1. Again, the Yahwist is a literary genius. There are two things that make her stand out, that make her unique in the history of literature. The first is her economy. Economy just means using as few words as possible to express as much as possible.
2. You can see the story of Adam and Eve, the story of Cain and Abel, is very economical. She's using very few words, but within these words are a universe of ideas, almost infinite meaning. You can interpret these stories any way you want.
   
   The second idea is irony. Irony just means she's funny. If you tell your kids, “Don't eat that apple. Don't eat that fruit because it's poisonous,” guess what? Your kids are going to eat that fruit, and then you're going to look like an idiot because it's not poisonous. It's ironic.
   
   She's making fun of Yahweh. She's making fun of the highest authority in the Israelite faith. Again, that's why if she were not the daughter of David or granddaughter of David, there's no way this story would have gone into the Bible. But it's a great story that has infinite literary power.

Rachel and Jacob

The last story I will mention is the story of Rachel and Jacob. It's a very short story. What happens is this. Jacob runs away from his brother Esau because Jacob stole Esau's birthright and blessing. Jacob ends up with a relative named Laban, and Laban has two daughters, Leah and Rachel. Leah's the eldest. Rachel is the younger one.

Jacob falls in love with Rachel right away, and he says to Laban, “I will work for you for free for seven years, and then I will want your daughter Rachel's hand in return for my work.” Laban says, “You're a relative, and it's better for me to give her to you than to a complete stranger. So yeah.”

Seven years pass, and there's a wedding between Rachel and Jacob. That night Jacob has sex with a woman. He wakes up and sees it's not Rachel. It's Leah. He slept with Leah. He is now married to Leah.

Then Jacob says to Laban, “You tricked me.” Laban says, “It is the custom of our people to marry the firstborn first. We have to marry Leah off first before we can marry off Rachel. If you continue to work for me for seven years, I will give you Rachel as well.” Jacob agrees.

It's a very short story, and there's a lot of economy and irony in the story. But again, within the short story there is a universe of ideas and emotions. If you're able to think very clearly and closely about the story, we will discover that Rachel and Leah hate each other. How do we know that? Because Leah stole Jacob from Rachel.

We can imagine that when Laban announced that Rachel would marry Jacob, Leah was very jealous. For seven years, every night at dinner, Leah would cry and scream at her father, “How could you embarrass me like this? I'm your firstborn. Do I mean nothing to you?”

Then we can imagine the family drama and the comedy. Laban's like, “If after seven years Jacob marries Rachel, they're going to run off together. For the rest of my life I'm going to be stuck with Leah screaming at me and hitting me in the head for the rest of my life.” He's like, “I need to figure out how to get out of this deal.” That's why he tricks Jacob.

We can also figure out that Rachel and Jacob love each other. Their love is the greatest love in the world because first of all Jacob's willing to put up with this crap for another seven years in order to be with Rachel. Second of all Rachel's willing to wait for Jacob. She could at any time just run off and be with someone else, but she's willing to endure. She's willing to suffer.

We can imagine the entire family dynamic and history based on just a few sentences in the Bible. That's the power of the Yahwist. The Yahwist is really writing about what it means to be human, what it means to have a family. That's why the Bible endures to this day, because there are these powerful stories in the Bible that reveal to us what it means to be human, what it means to love, what it means to forgive, what it means to have family.

That's why the Bible has inspired people for thousands of years because in these stories you are part of the writing process. It's co-creation. Your meaning, your understanding, interpretation is what gives life to these words. There aren't that many words, but your understanding of these words is what makes these words powerful to you.

Again, these stories are unique in human history. Everyone knows the story of Adam and Eve because it's just a powerful story. You can also argue the power of Adam and Eve is because it makes us nostalgic for the Ice Age. In the Ice Age we were an egalitarian society where everyone was equal. The Garden of Eden is a metaphor, a symbol for that time.

It is provoking or activating our nostalgia for that time. Within each of us must be that long-lost memory of a time when we humans were alone in the world. There weren't that many of us, but life was fairly pleasant. Food was plentiful. We were all friends with each other. We didn't really struggle against each other. We didn't struggle against nature. We were one with nature and with each other.

Who Do Christians Believe Wrote the Bible?

Who do Christians believe to have written the Bible? God. These are the words of God. In the Bible there are people called prophets. How prophets work is they visit heaven, or they're visited by an angel. There's one scene where the angel or God takes a parchment and puts it into the mouth of the prophet. The prophet is speaking every word that's the direct word of God.

It's almost like he's just a mailman. I'm God. I put it in your mouth. You come back to your Earth, and you basically announce the word of God.

There are people who believe God wrote every word, but this is only a minority of Christians. Most Christians believe that whoever wrote the Bible was inspired by God, that these prophets were inspired by God to write down the truths of God.

But if you actually try to read the Bible by yourself, it's impossible because it's been redacted so many times. As I explained, there are at least four different sources in the Bible that have been spliced together randomly. It's been edited constantly over the centuries.

But honestly, no one reads the Bible in its entirety. What usually happens is people only read sections of the Bible. Most people get their understanding of the Bible from preachers. Preachers will explain to you what these stories mean, but you won't actually have to read them together.

What I'm offering you is not a scriptural interpretation of the Bible. I'm offering you what I call a literary interpretation of the Bible.

When the Persian Empire conquers the world, Zoroastrianism, their religion, will start to merge with the Bible, which creates new ideas that would eventually become the basis of Christianity.