WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.700 Welcome to this session of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. 2 00:00:03.280 --> 00:00:08.080 My name is Robert Fittian. I teach English up at Flinders University and have been on the 3 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:12.680 organising committee of this festival for the last two years, to my delight, 4 00:00:12.780 --> 00:00:18.000 particularly in the last couple of days. And it's my pleasure today to be introducing Regina Schwartz. 5 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:28.260 Literary and biblical studies come from the same route, really, that route being the careful study 6 00:00:28.260 --> 00:00:37.320 of the words, studying words because they matter. And Regina has grafted those two branches, 7 00:00:37.460 --> 00:00:41.920 literary and biblical studies, back together in her work. She's Professor of English and Religion 8 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:48.660 at Northwestern University and the Director of the Chicago Institute of Religion, Ethics and 9 00:00:48.660 --> 00:00:56.000 Violence. She has written books on literary and biblical, books and articles on literary 10 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:58.140 and biblical subjects from the 11 00:00:58.140 --> 00:01:01.580 the work of the great 17th century epic poet John Milton, 12 00:01:02.420 --> 00:01:07.240 through to her most recent book is called The Curse of Cain, 13 00:01:07.380 --> 00:01:09.000 The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, 14 00:01:09.740 --> 00:01:15.020 which is on the Hebrew Testament of the Bible. 15 00:01:16.200 --> 00:01:20.840 So Regina shows a strong sense of how words and stories, 16 00:01:20.980 --> 00:01:25.520 she knows that words and stories shape our individual and group identities, 17 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:29.140 how they predict our violence and conflict, 18 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:34.880 and how they allow us to imagine others as not entirely human. 19 00:01:36.040 --> 00:01:40.900 The Curse of Cain speaks particularly to the problem of national identity and genocide. 20 00:01:41.780 --> 00:01:45.760 It also speaks, to my delight, to the deep themes of this festival. 21 00:01:45.900 --> 00:01:49.680 The deep themes of this festival, although it may not be exceedingly obvious to you, 22 00:01:49.700 --> 00:01:51.020 have been scarcity and abundance. 23 00:01:51.800 --> 00:01:54.740 That has been our sort of organising principle. 24 00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:58.200 And from the preface to The Curse of Cain, 25 00:01:58.300 --> 00:02:01.160 I shall quote, because that's what English lecturers do, 26 00:02:01.300 --> 00:02:03.340 we steal other people's words, 27 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:06.180 and Regina writes, 28 00:02:06.360 --> 00:02:07.460 But why the violence? 29 00:02:07.780 --> 00:02:13.420 Why is claiming a distinctive collective identity important enough to spawn violence? 30 00:02:13.940 --> 00:02:17.240 I found an answer to this question in a principle of scarcity 31 00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:20.040 that pervades most thinking about identity. 32 00:02:21.180 --> 00:02:23.220 When everything is in short supply, 33 00:02:23.500 --> 00:02:25.500 it must be all competed for, 34 00:02:25.500 --> 00:02:29.900 land, prosperity, favour, even identity itself. 35 00:02:30.640 --> 00:02:34.340 And here I imagine she's thinking particularly of the Middle East, 36 00:02:34.360 --> 00:02:38.440 of biblical times where different people were competing for those things, 37 00:02:39.200 --> 00:02:39.880 and still are. 38 00:02:40.340 --> 00:02:43.020 In many biblical narratives she goes on, 39 00:02:43.160 --> 00:02:45.900 the one God is not imagined as infinitely giving, 40 00:02:46.020 --> 00:02:48.080 but strangely withholding. 41 00:02:48.920 --> 00:02:54.780 So there's that strange reversal through God's work that she's thinking of. 42 00:02:55.500 --> 00:02:59.500 She goes on to mention the glimpses of monotheistic plenitude, 43 00:03:00.240 --> 00:03:01.260 instead of scarcity. 44 00:03:01.380 --> 00:03:02.620 Plenitude, fullness. 45 00:03:03.500 --> 00:03:06.900 But then returns at the end of this paragraph to the idea 46 00:03:06.900 --> 00:03:10.840 that scarcity is encoded in the Bible as a principle of oneness. 47 00:03:11.780 --> 00:03:14.480 One land, one people, one nation. 48 00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:17.720 And in monotheistic thinking, one deity. 49 00:03:18.820 --> 00:03:21.620 It becomes a demand of exclusive allegiance 50 00:03:21.620 --> 00:03:25.480 that threatens with the violence of exclusivity, 51 00:03:25.500 --> 00:03:29.000 and it's violence of exclusion 52 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:31.300 that I think we'll be talking about today. 53 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:33.080 She concludes, 54 00:03:33.440 --> 00:03:36.740 when that thinking is translated into secular formations about peoples, 55 00:03:37.620 --> 00:03:41.320 one nation under God becomes less comforting than threatening. 56 00:03:41.520 --> 00:03:42.960 One nation under God, 57 00:03:43.060 --> 00:03:47.640 referring, I understand, to a nation that exists between Canada and Mexico, 58 00:03:47.860 --> 00:03:49.560 on the North American continent. 59 00:03:51.780 --> 00:03:54.640 So today she's going to expand on these ideas, 60 00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:58.240 on holy terror and the links between religion and violence. 61 00:03:58.480 --> 00:03:59.280 Regina Schwartz. 62 00:04:06.820 --> 00:04:08.060 Thank you very much, 63 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:10.800 and thanks very much to the organizers of the conference 64 00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:13.480 for including me in this fascinating event. 65 00:04:15.560 --> 00:04:20.880 I've been teaching the Bible for 20 years in different contexts now, 66 00:04:21.100 --> 00:04:23.820 and I should confess that there are days 67 00:04:23.820 --> 00:04:24.620 when teaching the Bible is not as important as it is now. 68 00:04:24.620 --> 00:04:27.280 Teaching the Bible makes you feel like a prophet. 69 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:30.500 You're slow of speech, like Moses. 70 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:33.360 You want to escape to the ends of the earth 71 00:04:33.360 --> 00:04:36.460 rather than convey certain messages, like Jonah. 72 00:04:37.140 --> 00:04:39.580 You feel alone, like Amos, 73 00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:42.440 who was not in one of the professional bands of prophets, 74 00:04:42.680 --> 00:04:44.940 especially if you're in a secular university 75 00:04:44.940 --> 00:04:48.340 interpreting the Bible without the authorization of a church community. 76 00:04:48.840 --> 00:04:51.140 And you feel persecuted by everyone, 77 00:04:51.340 --> 00:04:54.600 by those who think you ought to be teaching the canon of Western religion, 78 00:04:54.620 --> 00:04:56.260 rather than the Bible, 79 00:04:56.420 --> 00:04:59.580 and by those who wonder why you aren't doing something hip 80 00:04:59.580 --> 00:05:02.200 and non-canonical rather than the Bible. 81 00:05:02.620 --> 00:05:05.720 So in general, you often wish you'd never been born, 82 00:05:05.860 --> 00:05:06.640 like Jeremiah. 83 00:05:09.140 --> 00:05:12.240 But there are also days when you do feel inspired, 84 00:05:12.420 --> 00:05:13.320 like the prophets. 85 00:05:13.780 --> 00:05:16.700 Not because the word of God has been conveyed to you, 86 00:05:16.760 --> 00:05:18.700 but because you have to rise to the challenge 87 00:05:18.700 --> 00:05:22.000 of making the most familiar narratives of Western culture 88 00:05:22.580 --> 00:05:24.180 stories like the creation, 89 00:05:24.620 --> 00:05:25.840 the fall, and the flood, 90 00:05:25.960 --> 00:05:27.660 unfamiliar to students, 91 00:05:27.860 --> 00:05:29.800 so that they can see their wonder. 92 00:05:29.980 --> 00:05:33.780 And because you must face the challenge of making unfamiliar stories, 93 00:05:34.060 --> 00:05:37.480 stories like the rape of the concubine in Judges, 94 00:05:37.600 --> 00:05:39.780 the slaughter of the Shechemites, 95 00:05:39.940 --> 00:05:42.280 the horrific curses of Deuteronomy, 96 00:05:42.380 --> 00:05:46.260 sound less strange and perhaps less troubling. 97 00:05:47.220 --> 00:05:51.360 Amid all the vast variety of representations of God in the Bible, 98 00:05:51.500 --> 00:05:53.820 one that emerged with attention to each narrative, 99 00:05:54.060 --> 00:05:54.600 two basements, 100 00:05:54.620 --> 00:05:56.160 two basic poles have emerged for me. 101 00:05:56.980 --> 00:05:58.100 At one end of the spectrum, 102 00:05:58.420 --> 00:06:00.940 God is depicted as infinitely charitable. 103 00:06:01.240 --> 00:06:04.640 This is the abundance side of our conference. 104 00:06:04.920 --> 00:06:05.880 Infinitely charitable, 105 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:07.100 infinitely giving, 106 00:06:07.180 --> 00:06:08.600 with blessings for all. 107 00:06:09.020 --> 00:06:10.580 In Exodus, for example, 108 00:06:10.660 --> 00:06:14.040 the story of manna offers the depiction of God 109 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:15.680 raining food from the heavens, 110 00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:17.280 enough for everyone. 111 00:06:17.800 --> 00:06:20.220 The notion that some would want to hoard, 112 00:06:20.300 --> 00:06:21.680 to take more than they need, 113 00:06:21.860 --> 00:06:24.020 is addressed in a remarkable narrative, 114 00:06:24.020 --> 00:06:26.100 that schools the ancient Israelites 115 00:06:26.100 --> 00:06:28.780 in an equitable distribution of their resource. 116 00:06:29.740 --> 00:06:31.400 That, said Moses to them, 117 00:06:31.420 --> 00:06:33.420 is the bread God gives you to eat. 118 00:06:33.660 --> 00:06:35.080 This is God's command. 119 00:06:35.580 --> 00:06:38.580 Everyone must gather enough of it for his needs. 120 00:06:39.100 --> 00:06:41.540 When they measured in an omer of what they'd gathered, 121 00:06:41.620 --> 00:06:44.200 the man who had gathered more had not too much, 122 00:06:44.300 --> 00:06:46.940 and the man who'd gathered less had not too little. 123 00:06:47.260 --> 00:06:49.920 Each found he had gathered what he needed. 124 00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:53.800 But the ancient Israelites' failure to accept this divine, 125 00:06:54.020 --> 00:06:55.860 heavenly, ordered distribution of resources, 126 00:06:56.380 --> 00:06:58.460 each according to his needs, 127 00:06:58.640 --> 00:07:00.520 eventually engenders greed, 128 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:02.380 and they hoard their food, 129 00:07:02.540 --> 00:07:03.660 and it rots. 130 00:07:04.060 --> 00:07:05.380 Moses said to them, 131 00:07:05.480 --> 00:07:07.860 no one must keep any of it for tomorrow. 132 00:07:08.320 --> 00:07:10.040 But some would not listen, 133 00:07:10.140 --> 00:07:12.300 and kept part of it for the following day, 134 00:07:12.500 --> 00:07:14.840 and it bred maggots and smelt fowl, 135 00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:16.440 and Moses was angry with them. 136 00:07:17.180 --> 00:07:19.580 Despite all evidence to the contrary, 137 00:07:19.900 --> 00:07:22.060 despite their starving in the wilderness, 138 00:07:22.420 --> 00:07:24.000 the Israelites are angry with them, 139 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:25.700 and they are asked to trust in a God 140 00:07:25.700 --> 00:07:27.800 who will provide abundantly. 141 00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:30.300 And they are asked to base their ethics 142 00:07:30.300 --> 00:07:32.980 on such a belief in divine generosity, 143 00:07:33.220 --> 00:07:35.160 so that they will not hoard. 144 00:07:36.540 --> 00:07:37.820 Reading selectively, 145 00:07:37.900 --> 00:07:41.140 the way biblical interpretation has indeed always proceeded, 146 00:07:41.480 --> 00:07:44.620 produces a Bible that can fit any particular agenda. 147 00:07:45.320 --> 00:07:49.920 The manna story can offer up a vision of a generous, egalitarian God, 148 00:07:50.180 --> 00:07:53.980 and it can suggest the economy of a divine dispensation of charity. 149 00:07:53.980 --> 00:07:56.260 To bolster that case, 150 00:07:56.380 --> 00:07:57.840 we could add Deutero-Isaiah, 151 00:07:58.040 --> 00:07:59.880 and many other beautiful passages, 152 00:08:00.220 --> 00:08:03.180 like the poor and the needy ask for water, 153 00:08:03.260 --> 00:08:04.160 there is none, 154 00:08:04.400 --> 00:08:06.520 their tongue is parched with thirst, 155 00:08:06.840 --> 00:08:08.720 I, God, will answer them, 156 00:08:08.780 --> 00:08:11.160 I, the God of Israel, will not abandon them. 157 00:08:11.280 --> 00:08:12.500 In the wilderness, 158 00:08:12.700 --> 00:08:14.740 I will put cedar trees, 159 00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:17.040 acacias, myrtles, olives. 160 00:08:17.320 --> 00:08:18.440 In the desert, 161 00:08:18.520 --> 00:08:19.740 I will plant juniper, 162 00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:21.940 plane tree, and cypress, 163 00:08:22.040 --> 00:08:23.460 side by side. 164 00:08:23.460 --> 00:08:24.780 Could have added, 165 00:08:24.920 --> 00:08:26.780 in Adelaide, I will make water flow. 166 00:08:28.080 --> 00:08:30.820 The miracle of the loaves and fishes 167 00:08:30.820 --> 00:08:34.220 revisits this motif of a miraculous generosity, 168 00:08:34.380 --> 00:08:36.240 a transcendent generosity, 169 00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:39.960 but even these passages can be interpreted 170 00:08:39.960 --> 00:08:42.060 not to endorse an ethic of charity, 171 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:44.560 but its complete opposite, greed. 172 00:08:45.220 --> 00:08:49.660 In an op-ed about the Albanian refugees fleeing to Italy, 173 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:52.600 a spokesman for the Italian right wrote, 174 00:08:53.700 --> 00:08:56.240 we can offer them a plate of pasta, 175 00:08:56.340 --> 00:08:59.000 but not open the cafeterias. 176 00:08:59.460 --> 00:09:02.560 Even Jesus, who multiplied bread and fishes, 177 00:09:02.640 --> 00:09:04.420 did not open trattorias. 178 00:09:06.680 --> 00:09:09.560 He transformed water into wine, 179 00:09:09.680 --> 00:09:11.660 but it seems to me only once, 180 00:09:11.740 --> 00:09:13.560 and even then for a wedding. 181 00:09:15.100 --> 00:09:17.060 It's outrageous when I read this. 182 00:09:17.240 --> 00:09:20.980 I was in the midst of a book about misuses of the Bible. 183 00:09:22.880 --> 00:09:23.440 Albanian refugees, 184 00:09:26.280 --> 00:09:26.360 and the 185 00:09:53.220 --> 00:09:53.260 ! 186 00:09:53.280 --> 00:09:53.400 Albania, like Bosnia, he writes, 187 00:09:53.400 --> 00:09:56.380 I read from pulpits of pro-slavery antebellum ministers 188 00:09:56.380 --> 00:09:57.960 in the United States South 189 00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:01.560 that a whole race of mankind was cursed by Noah 190 00:10:01.560 --> 00:10:03.980 to be subjugated to another race, 191 00:10:04.140 --> 00:10:06.100 and that this was the will of God. 192 00:10:08.380 --> 00:10:11.440 Unhappily, this reading has recently been revived 193 00:10:11.440 --> 00:10:13.180 by white supremacists. 194 00:10:13.440 --> 00:10:16.560 One minister writes alarmingly in his book 195 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:20.280 called A Scriptural Justification of Racism. 196 00:10:21.440 --> 00:10:22.380 He writes, 197 00:10:22.380 --> 00:10:23.900 The curse was in his descendants 198 00:10:23.900 --> 00:10:27.340 in the form of spiritual and moral deformity, 199 00:10:27.420 --> 00:10:30.180 and Canaan's descendants were a cursed people. 200 00:10:30.400 --> 00:10:33.640 He thinks Canaan's descendants are African Americans. 201 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:36.920 These are the sinful people living in the Promised Land 202 00:10:36.920 --> 00:10:38.340 when the Israelites entered it. 203 00:10:38.500 --> 00:10:39.780 In Deuteronomy 7, 204 00:10:39.920 --> 00:10:41.800 God's people were told to destroy them 205 00:10:41.800 --> 00:10:42.920 and not intermarry with them, 206 00:10:42.960 --> 00:10:44.120 but Israel disobeyed, 207 00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:47.420 and consequently these people are always a trouble in the land, 208 00:10:47.580 --> 00:10:49.860 acting as pricks and as thorns. 209 00:10:50.940 --> 00:10:52.360 Okay, historical history. 210 00:10:52.360 --> 00:10:55.840 Historical examples of this kind of abuse of the scriptures are rife, 211 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:59.140 from the slaughter of Muslims by crusaders 212 00:10:59.140 --> 00:11:03.720 to the slaughter of Anabaptists by less radical Protestants, 213 00:11:03.860 --> 00:11:07.440 from the silence of the Vatican during the Holocaust 214 00:11:08.360 --> 00:11:12.340 to hate crimes against gays by the Christian identity movement, 215 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:16.060 in Spain during the expulsion of the Jews, 216 00:11:16.340 --> 00:11:19.860 in the New World during the errand into the wilderness, 217 00:11:19.860 --> 00:11:23.200 in Bosnia during ethnic cleansing, 218 00:11:23.420 --> 00:11:25.280 and I can go on and on. 219 00:11:25.680 --> 00:11:30.660 Too often a people forges its collective identity negatively 220 00:11:30.660 --> 00:11:32.700 against some other, 221 00:11:32.840 --> 00:11:36.560 and too easily us, as distinguished from them, 222 00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:39.140 has turned into us versus them. 223 00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:43.940 As Abraham Lincoln lamented in his second inaugural address, 224 00:11:44.400 --> 00:11:48.380 both sides in the Civil War read the same Bible, 225 00:11:48.380 --> 00:11:51.160 both pray to the same God, 226 00:11:51.380 --> 00:11:54.760 and each invokes his aid against the other. 227 00:11:56.120 --> 00:11:58.380 In the process of becoming preoccupied 228 00:11:58.940 --> 00:12:01.320 with defending the borders of religious identity, 229 00:12:01.740 --> 00:12:05.520 people can end up compromising their religious ethics. 230 00:12:06.160 --> 00:12:08.340 I am not the first to say this, 231 00:12:08.420 --> 00:12:09.980 and I certainly won't be the last. 232 00:12:10.400 --> 00:12:13.620 Jeremiah stood on the steps of the Temple of Jerusalem 233 00:12:13.620 --> 00:12:16.240 when worshippers streamed past him 234 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:18.360 to warn them that their abuses of religion 235 00:12:18.380 --> 00:12:19.120 and the worship of their fellow men 236 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:21.100 denied them the divine favor 237 00:12:21.100 --> 00:12:23.200 that they sought through religious ritual. 238 00:12:24.700 --> 00:12:28.200 Erasmus was impatient that monks worried too much 239 00:12:28.200 --> 00:12:29.840 about the color of their habits, 240 00:12:30.020 --> 00:12:31.660 whether Dominican or Franciscan, 241 00:12:31.680 --> 00:12:34.060 and not enough about feeding the poor. 242 00:12:35.380 --> 00:12:36.920 Matthew Arnold defined religion 243 00:12:36.920 --> 00:12:39.380 as a heightened ethical sensibility, 244 00:12:39.580 --> 00:12:42.560 so the idea of genocide in the name of God 245 00:12:42.560 --> 00:12:43.680 could make no sense. 246 00:12:45.260 --> 00:12:47.820 I wish that this were the whole story, 247 00:12:47.940 --> 00:12:51.160 that frequent perversions of biblical narratives 248 00:12:51.160 --> 00:12:54.820 have been deployed for causes of hatred and even genocide, 249 00:12:54.840 --> 00:12:57.260 for those of us who love the Bible, 250 00:12:57.400 --> 00:12:58.400 is terrible enough. 251 00:12:58.800 --> 00:13:01.200 But after these 20 years of stressing 252 00:13:01.200 --> 00:13:04.080 biblical visions of charity and liberation 253 00:13:04.080 --> 00:13:05.680 to university students, 254 00:13:05.920 --> 00:13:08.600 of allegorizing when I needed to 255 00:13:08.600 --> 00:13:09.980 in order to be consistent, 256 00:13:10.340 --> 00:13:13.480 I was finally forced to confront the violence 257 00:13:13.480 --> 00:13:15.220 depicted in some of its narratives, 258 00:13:15.980 --> 00:13:18.320 prompted by a student who didn't think 259 00:13:18.320 --> 00:13:19.720 I was telling the whole story 260 00:13:19.720 --> 00:13:22.220 when I extolled the Exodus 261 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:24.800 as a magnificent myth of liberation 262 00:13:25.420 --> 00:13:29.540 in contrast to many other foundational myths of conquest. 263 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:34.400 What about the Canaanites? he asked. 264 00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:37.600 I can remember him just raising his hand. 265 00:13:37.680 --> 00:13:38.760 He was a very young student. 266 00:13:38.940 --> 00:13:40.040 What about the Canaanites? 267 00:13:40.040 --> 00:13:42.600 And I've just been describing how great the Exodus is 268 00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:43.820 and how marvelous it is 269 00:13:43.820 --> 00:13:45.980 that this is a God of liberation from slavery. 270 00:13:46.200 --> 00:13:47.820 What about the Canaanites? 271 00:13:48.660 --> 00:13:51.240 The conquered Canaanites is what he meant. 272 00:13:52.880 --> 00:13:55.360 After that, I could not in all honesty 273 00:13:55.360 --> 00:13:58.100 close my eyes to the violence I began seeing 274 00:13:58.100 --> 00:13:59.680 in biblical narratives. 275 00:14:00.040 --> 00:14:03.000 And so I embarked on what has been a painful journey 276 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:05.240 to come to terms with not only the narratives 277 00:14:05.240 --> 00:14:07.720 that are a vital part of my own religious tradition, 278 00:14:07.940 --> 00:14:10.440 but the roots of my imaginative life, 279 00:14:10.620 --> 00:14:12.580 that is, the literature that I focus on, 280 00:14:12.580 --> 00:14:14.940 is explicitly indebted to the Bible. 281 00:14:16.020 --> 00:14:18.520 I discovered that while the Bible is indeed 282 00:14:18.520 --> 00:14:21.380 a repository of inspiring ethics and hope, 283 00:14:21.500 --> 00:14:22.940 that is not the whole story. 284 00:14:23.500 --> 00:14:27.560 The other pole, the dark side of monotheism, 285 00:14:27.660 --> 00:14:29.900 seems to cooperate with interpretations 286 00:14:29.900 --> 00:14:32.740 of exclusion and intolerance. 287 00:14:33.580 --> 00:14:36.280 In those stories, divine favor and blessings 288 00:14:36.280 --> 00:14:39.080 are scarce and must be competed for, 289 00:14:39.300 --> 00:14:41.560 inspiring deadly rivalries 290 00:14:41.560 --> 00:14:43.620 like the first fratricide, 291 00:14:43.660 --> 00:14:45.800 the story of Cain and Abel. 292 00:14:46.960 --> 00:14:49.200 While centuries of Christian theology 293 00:14:49.200 --> 00:14:52.280 is focused on the original sin of Adam and Eve, 294 00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:55.400 I turned my attention to the next narrative in Genesis, 295 00:14:55.740 --> 00:14:57.540 the story of Cain and Abel. 296 00:14:57.800 --> 00:15:01.020 For in it, the first brothers commit the first murder, 297 00:15:01.140 --> 00:15:03.860 and I see us as the heirs of Cain 298 00:15:03.860 --> 00:15:06.280 because we continue to murder our brothers. 299 00:15:07.380 --> 00:15:09.420 What disturbs me about the story 300 00:15:09.420 --> 00:15:11.000 is that if it's going to depict 301 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:14.260 the very first brothers engaged in a deadly rivalry, 302 00:15:14.460 --> 00:15:16.300 and I suppose sibling rivalry 303 00:15:16.300 --> 00:15:18.160 does offer the virtue of realism, 304 00:15:18.540 --> 00:15:23.180 why does it depict God as implicated in the problem 305 00:15:23.180 --> 00:15:24.940 rather than solving it? 306 00:15:25.460 --> 00:15:28.500 As you know, the story depicts both brothers 307 00:15:28.500 --> 00:15:30.480 offering a sacrifice to God, 308 00:15:31.080 --> 00:15:34.200 Abel from the flock and Cain from the soil. 309 00:15:34.420 --> 00:15:37.880 But God looks inexplicably with favor 310 00:15:37.880 --> 00:15:39.820 upon Abel and his offering, 311 00:15:39.820 --> 00:15:43.280 and does not look with favor upon Cain and his. 312 00:15:44.140 --> 00:15:46.280 Cain is devastated, of course, 313 00:15:46.360 --> 00:15:48.540 and murders Abel in a jealous rage. 314 00:15:49.320 --> 00:15:51.240 I couldn't help but wonder 315 00:15:51.240 --> 00:15:52.780 what would have happened 316 00:15:52.780 --> 00:15:54.860 if the story had described God 317 00:15:54.860 --> 00:15:57.180 accepting both of their sacrifices, 318 00:15:57.640 --> 00:15:59.620 thereby promoting cooperation 319 00:15:59.620 --> 00:16:02.320 between the sower and the shepherd 320 00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:04.300 instead of violent competition. 321 00:16:05.040 --> 00:16:09.220 And then I noticed that this deeply troubling depiction of divinity 322 00:16:09.220 --> 00:16:11.280 is not unique to that story, 323 00:16:11.460 --> 00:16:14.720 for God is depicted as playing favorites repeatedly, 324 00:16:15.100 --> 00:16:17.360 with someone receiving his blessings 325 00:16:17.360 --> 00:16:19.180 at someone else's expense. 326 00:16:19.880 --> 00:16:22.920 Some are blessed, and some are cursed. 327 00:16:23.640 --> 00:16:26.600 As a drunken Cassio puts it in Othello, 328 00:16:26.820 --> 00:16:28.020 God's above all, 329 00:16:28.180 --> 00:16:30.280 and there be souls that must be saved, 330 00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:32.240 and there be souls must not be saved. 331 00:16:33.180 --> 00:16:35.400 In the story of Jacob and Esau, 332 00:16:35.540 --> 00:16:38.120 after Jacob steals his elder brother's blessing, 333 00:16:38.120 --> 00:16:41.360 the unsuspecting Esau approaches his father 334 00:16:41.360 --> 00:16:42.880 to ask for his blessing, 335 00:16:43.020 --> 00:16:45.700 only to learn that because his younger brother 336 00:16:45.700 --> 00:16:46.860 has already been blessed, 337 00:16:47.100 --> 00:16:49.140 there is no blessing left for him. 338 00:16:50.280 --> 00:16:51.280 Here's the narrative. 339 00:16:51.600 --> 00:16:53.760 When Esau heard his father's words, 340 00:16:53.940 --> 00:16:56.380 he burst out with a loud and bitter cry 341 00:16:56.380 --> 00:16:57.660 and said to his father, 342 00:16:57.740 --> 00:17:00.180 Bless me, me too, my father. 343 00:17:00.520 --> 00:17:01.480 But he said, 344 00:17:01.620 --> 00:17:03.100 Your brother came deceitfully 345 00:17:03.100 --> 00:17:04.180 and took your blessing. 346 00:17:05.160 --> 00:17:07.600 Haven't you reserved any blessing for me? 347 00:17:08.300 --> 00:17:09.720 Isaac answered Esau, 348 00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:11.580 I've made him lord over you, 349 00:17:11.700 --> 00:17:14.000 and I've made all his relatives his servants, 350 00:17:14.240 --> 00:17:17.060 and I've sustained him with grain and new wine. 351 00:17:17.460 --> 00:17:20.520 So what can I possibly do for you, my son? 352 00:17:21.100 --> 00:17:24.420 And then Esau asks a profound question, 353 00:17:24.640 --> 00:17:27.180 one that resonates throughout the history, 354 00:17:27.380 --> 00:17:29.680 the long history of religious strife. 355 00:17:30.540 --> 00:17:34.200 Do you have only one blessing, my father? 356 00:17:34.720 --> 00:17:37.240 Bless me, me too, my father. 357 00:17:37.240 --> 00:17:39.200 Then Esau wept aloud. 358 00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:46.720 This ancestral myth of Jacob, Israel, and Esau, Edom, 359 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:49.540 with its terrible answer to Esau's pointed question, 360 00:17:49.880 --> 00:17:51.160 Have you only one blessing? 361 00:17:51.680 --> 00:17:54.540 points to an interminable future of violence 362 00:17:54.540 --> 00:17:55.520 between peoples. 363 00:17:55.780 --> 00:17:59.060 There will be no blessed future for the Edomites, 364 00:17:59.260 --> 00:18:00.960 the enemies of ancient Israel. 365 00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:04.540 Scarcity impels this pain. 366 00:18:05.020 --> 00:18:07.060 What if the authors had imagined 367 00:18:07.240 --> 00:18:11.640 the Edomites and the Israelites enjoying equally blessed futures? 368 00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:15.100 What if there had been two blessings? 369 00:18:16.040 --> 00:18:18.440 Would the cultural legacy of the Bible 370 00:18:18.440 --> 00:18:20.200 have been a less violent one? 371 00:18:20.780 --> 00:18:24.340 Would it have been more difficult to use the Bible as a weapon 372 00:18:24.340 --> 00:18:28.040 to degrade those who have strayed from the one jealous God, 373 00:18:28.220 --> 00:18:30.540 peoples who have been classified as infidels? 374 00:18:31.540 --> 00:18:34.180 Surely we would still have had the Crusades, 375 00:18:34.180 --> 00:18:35.220 the Inquisition, 376 00:18:35.260 --> 00:18:36.980 the Christian identity movement, 377 00:18:37.240 --> 00:18:39.980 but would the perpetrators have had to look elsewhere 378 00:18:39.980 --> 00:18:41.460 in their cultural legacy, 379 00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:44.620 other than representations of the will of God 380 00:18:44.620 --> 00:18:47.020 as recorded in his authorized text 381 00:18:47.020 --> 00:18:49.720 in order to authorize their hate crimes? 382 00:18:50.820 --> 00:18:53.480 Let me make my presuppositions clearer. 383 00:18:53.820 --> 00:18:56.280 I want to underscore that for me, 384 00:18:56.340 --> 00:18:58.360 these narratives, all narratives, 385 00:18:58.500 --> 00:19:02.160 are necessarily imperfect renderings of divinity. 386 00:19:02.440 --> 00:19:05.240 They reflect human preoccupations, 387 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:08.540 offering more of a window onto our social realm 388 00:19:08.540 --> 00:19:09.740 than any divine one. 389 00:19:10.360 --> 00:19:15.180 Needless to say, scarcity is a tragic condition of our world, 390 00:19:15.300 --> 00:19:19.260 and willing it away through utopian religions doesn't work. 391 00:19:19.620 --> 00:19:23.420 But what is different about this human depiction of God, 392 00:19:23.620 --> 00:19:25.680 this notion of monotheism, 393 00:19:25.820 --> 00:19:30.120 is that it transfers the real material scarcity of the world 394 00:19:30.120 --> 00:19:31.160 to divinity. 395 00:19:31.500 --> 00:19:35.220 No longer is scarcity only a condition experienced by God, 396 00:19:35.220 --> 00:19:36.000 or experienced by human beings, 397 00:19:36.260 --> 00:19:39.340 but it also comes to be conceived as a limitation 398 00:19:39.340 --> 00:19:41.060 in the spiritual sphere. 399 00:19:41.760 --> 00:19:45.460 And then, in a circular and deadly way, 400 00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:48.140 this divine principle of scarcity 401 00:19:48.140 --> 00:19:52.080