Long believed to bear witness to the beginning of all life, the Bible's first book, Genesis, has been plumbed by a cornucopia of theologies and philosophies for ideas about social organization, human relationships, class, gender and gender roles, marriage, land rights, private property, and so much more. For many readers, assumptions about a divine creator, whose eye is cast upon a favored community, are at the heart of Western societies and politics and reside at the core of many national foundation myths. Yet despite all this, Genesis is not a frequent subject of postcolonial analyses seeking to expose the rootedness of inequalities within dominant social, political, and economic institutions. At times irreverent, at others conciliatory, Jeremiah Cataldo explores postcolonialism's rudeness, anger, and subversiveness as challenges to dominant traditions of interpreting Genesis and how those traditions influence who we are, how we relate to each other, how we read the Bible, and why despite an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, we passionately cling to what divides us.
Jeremiah Cataldo is professor of history in the Frederik Meijer Honors College at Grand Valley State University.
Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Adam, Eve, and Steve's Serpent Chapter 3: Colonizing Cain Chapter 4: Highbrow Hamitic Hypothesis Chapter 5: Flooding the world and saving a few Chapter 6: Inverting the Tower of Babel Chapter 7: Father Abraham sentenced a son, or two Chapter 8: A(n incestual, pedophilic) cave-dwelling Lot Chapter 9: Sarah's (colonizing) laughter and Hagar's (colonized) tears Chapter 10: Jacob and Esau Chapter 11: Joseph from lowly status into authoritative body Conclusion: Taking stock of the trajectory of Genesis\
This volume contains a number of self-contained chapters that can become assigned reading in courses or segments of a syllabus designed to address the impact of the Bible in Western culture primarily, over the past 300-odd years. Any of them is sure to stimulate lively discussion and debate and accomplish the author's goal of reassessing the meanings we assign to biblical texts and the objectified values and assumptions about truth that have resulted from their association with the Bible. -- Diana Edelman, University of Oslo, professor emerita Scholars interested in what a neo-postcolonial approach to biblical studies may entail will surely find this book very helpful. The chapters following the introduction can serve well as a starting point for in-class, thoughtful debates and learning among undergraduate (and graduate) students in academic institutions, particularly, but not only, in the USA. -- Ehud Ben Zvi, University of Alberta, professor emeritus
