The First Book of Moses: Genesis, Chapters 11-28

These chapters deal with the life of the prophet Abram (later Abraham) and Sarai (later Sarah), their children Isaac, and Ishmael, and later the children of Isaac, Esau and Jacob.

The different chapters deal with different anecdotes of what happens to Abram (his dealings with his brother, his children, and his wife), but I found a few that caught my interest more than others and I shall write about those parts.

One thing that I found particularly interesting was all the incest going on here. First of all, in the very beginning everyone was copulating with their brothers and sisters, but since they didn't exactly have a choice that doesn't really count. However, Abram married his half-sister, and then Abrams daughters had sex with him and bore his children. Yet even though the Bible used to be the basis for a good portion of the world's notions of "right" and "wrong," incest is not approved of and can even be punished by the law. Is it because as science evolved people realized that this was not healthy? I can't remember if incest was common in the Middle Ages, but the royal family did some. I find it strange because I can imagine that many hard-core Catholics would find it appropriate to do incest because it's in the Bible, but it doesn't seem to happen.

Also, a part of of this book made me think of the book, "The Handmaid's Tale." Although I found that book extremely stupid and unrealistic, there's a part where the narrator says that because in the tale of Sarai and Abram Sarai can't have children, she agrees to let her handmaid have the children for her, and that's what happens in the book. Maybe that's where people got the idea of adoption?

Another part I liked was when God asked Abram to sacrifice his son Isaac to him. In the end he stops him, saying he'd just wanted to see whether Abram was capable of doing it. Does that mean that men are supposed to love God more than their children? I suppose they should, because God created everything and children are rather useless, and that would explain why so many people thought the Crusades were for a cause worth dying for. In a way, though, isn't that human sacrifice? Humans are willingly offering their lives to God, in the hope that they would have a better afterlife, and that is sort of what happened with the Aztecs.

I thought Sarai was an interesting character. She did not seem to completely believe in God's power, as was demonstrated by the fact that she laughed when she heard God was going to get rid of her barrenness, yet no ill comes of her lack of faith. Apparently as long as you believe in God somewhat he takes care of you.

Then we go on to the tale of the twins, Jacob and Esau. Esau is older but surrenders his birthright to his brother in exchange for food, and Jacob eventually ends up stealing Esau's blessing from his brother because his mother asked him to. Esau is very bitter, and wants to kill his twin, so Jacob runs away. We are then left in suspense.

I think Jacob is supposed to represent greed. He is always trying to usurp his brother and claim hit titles without any regard for anyone else, and when Esau decided he wants revenge Jacob hides away.