Biblical Literacy

The Most Important People, Events, and Ideas of the Hebrew Bible

Joseph Telushkin

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780688142971
• eBook ISBN: 9780062013019
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

The Hebrew Bible is a source of strength and wisdom for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Its timeless and moving tales have long inspired the hearts and stirred the imaginations of believers and skeptics alike. Now, as Americans seek out sources of strength in troubled times, many return to the Bible for inspiration and comfort.

In Biblical Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin provides an accessible, comprehensive introduction to the stories and ideas contained in the Hebrew Bible. In short, engaging essays, Rabbi Telushkin illuminates the most important and well-known passages in each book. Biblical Literacy is an invaluable reference for anyone who wants to deepen her knowledge of the Hebrew Bible.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is the author of seven influential Jewish books, including The Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism (with Dennis Prager), Jewish Literacy, and Jewish Wisdom, as well as several novels. A frequent speaker on Jewish issues, Rabbi Telushkin was ordained at Yeshiva University and pursued graduate studies at Columbia University.

"[This book] is compulsively readable. Its scholarship is impeccable, yet it reads like a novel. This is a book for Jews, Christians, and skeptics alike, for anyone who wishes to understand the most influential book ever written." -Rabbi David Woznica, Director, Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, 92nd Street Y

Part One

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

I. GENESIS

1. In the Beginning

GENESIS, CHAPTER 1

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1). The first and most important fact established in the Bible’s opening chapter, indeed in its opening sentence, is that God, and God alone, created the world. This assertion represents a complete break with the prevailing view at the time, that nature itself is divine. Ancient man worshiped nature; the sun was its most common manifestation. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for sun, shemesh, from the root meaning “servant,”* leaves no doubt about the divine order of the universe: that which other people worship as God (i.e., the Babylonian sun god was called Shamash), the language of the Bible makes clear, is but God’s servant.

Underscoring God’s supreme and supernatural capabilities, the Bible declares that God can create through words alone: “God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light” (1:3).

The order of creation in Genesis 1 is:

Day 1: light Day 1: the sky

Day 3: the earth, oceans, and vegetation

Day 4: the sun, moon, and stars

Day 5: fish, insects, and birds

Day 6: the animal kingdom and human beings

Despite arguments advanced by biblical fundamentalists, Genesis 1 need not be understood as meaning that God created the world in six twenty-four-hour days. Indeed, given that there were no sun and moon prior to the fourth day, it is meaningless to speak in terms of standardized, modern time units. Many religious scholars understand each of the six “days” as representing eons.

Humans are the only beings described as being created “in the image of God” (see entry 146) and thus apparently represent the apogee of creation.

Many Bible readers have long puzzled over differences in a second version of the creation story presented in Genesis, chapter 2. While 1:27 suggests that man and woman were created simultaneously—“in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”—2:7–8 speaks of God fashioning Adam alone, from the earth.* Eventually, God concludes, “It is not good for man to be alone” (2:18).^† He puts Adam into a deep sleep, withdraws one of his ribs, and from it fashions Eve, the first woman (2:21–23).

Is such an explanation of woman’s creation demeaning to women? On the one hand, the claim that man was created first, and woman formed out of a part of him, might suggest the male’s inherent superiority. On the other hand, the fact that every new creature depicted in the divine creation is more highly developed than the one that preceded it might indicate that woman, who is last to be created, represents the apex of creation.

In any event, the account in chapter 1, which states that both sexes are created in God’s image, clearly suggests that they are equal in God’s eyes.

God’s initial intention seems to be to create a herbivorous world, and so He directs human beings to restrict their diet to vegetables and fruits (1:29), while also confining the animal kingdom to the consumption of green plants (1:30). Later, after the Flood, God permits humans to eat meat (Genesis 9:3–4).

By the end of the sixth day, God has finished His work, and so on the seventh day, He ceases to create, thereby establishing, as early as the Bible’s second chapter, the tradition of the Sabbath: “And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done” (2:3). Much later, the Fourth Commandment ordained that Israel “remember the Sabbath day to make it holy,” as a reminder of the very first seventh day, during which the Lord refrained from creating (Exodus 20:8–11).

The biblical view of creation is optimistic. Genesis’s opening chapter repeatedly describes the Lord as pleased with what He has brought into being: “God saw that the light was good” (1:4); “The earth brought forth vegetation … and God saw that this was good” (1:12); “And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good” (1:31; see also 1:10, 18, and 21, where God pronounces similar judgment on His other creations).

Yet good as it was, creation was still unfinished. The Rabbis of the Talmud deduced from God’s ceasing to create that it is humankind’s mission to serve as God’s partner in finishing His creation and perfecting the world.

2. Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden
GENESIS 2:7–3:24
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
GENESIS 2:15–17, CHAPTER 3

Adam and Eve, the Bible’s first man and woman, are the prototype for all people. The Hebrew for “human being” is ben adam, a child of Adam.

The couple begin their lives in a paradise, which the Bible calls the Garden of Eden. There, God provides for all their needs, in return for which He imposes several commandments: They are to be fruitful and multiply (see entry 147), fill the earth and master it (1:28), restrict their diet to fruit and vegetables (1:29), and refrain from eating from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”* God gives this commandment to Adam before He creates Eve, and offers no rationale for it. Adam simply is warned that “as soon as you eat [of the tree of knowledge], you shall die” (2:17).

Immediately after imposing this prohibition, God creates Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. Absent any recorded communication between God and Eve, we must assume that she learns of the prohibition concerning the tree of knowledge from Adam.

Enter the serpent, who we are told is “the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that the Lord had made” (3:1). He speaks human language (the Bible’s only other talking animal is Balaam’s donkey; see entry 50), and challenges Eve: “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’” (3:1).

The serpent, in his shrewdness, challenges Eve, who unlike Adam has not heard the prohibition directly from God. Thus, she is more open to disbelieving that God had ever promulgated such a decree.

Eve’s response to the serpent’s question indicates that Adam may have treated Eve as a simpleton, for she now attributes to God words that He never uttered, but which Adam seems to have told her He had: “It is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said: ‘You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die.’” Fearing that Eve might be tempted to eat the forbidden fruit, Adam apparently told her that God prohibited them from even touching the tree.

The Midrash, which consists of rabbinic commentaries on the Bible, suggests that the cunning serpent utilized Adam’s additional, and erroneous, instruction to convince Eve that her husband had lied to her; he pushed Eve against the tree, waited till she realized that she had remained unharmed, then told her, “You are not going to die [if you eat of the tree’s fruit].”

The serpent tells Eve that God wishes to deter her and Adam from eating of the tree because He doesn’t want them to be Godlike: “God knows that as soon as you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like divine beings who know good and evil” (3:5).

It remains a mystery why such knowledge would upset God: Indeed, traditional Jewish theology teaches that the meaning of the creation of people in God’s image is precisely that they resemble Him in being able to distinguish good from evil.

In any case, Eve is seduced both by a serpent who urges her to eat of the tree’s fruit and by the tree’s delightful appearance. She eats of the tree’s fruit, then gives a fruit to Adam, who eats it as well.

Now, for the first time, Adam and Eve become conscious of their nakedness,* and cover themselves with loincloths. Soon after, the couple, sensing God’s presence in the Garden, hide. God calls out to them, “Ayecha—Where are you?”

Obviously, the all-knowing God does not ask this because He can’t find them; rather, God wishes to encourage Adam and Eve to acknowledge their sin. But they don’t. Instead, Adam responds by explaining that he was hiding because he feared to confront God while naked. The Lord asks him, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat of the tree from which I had forbidden you to eat?” (3:11).

We now encounter an age-old problem: the inability of most people to acknowledge their guilt forthrightly but, instead, to “scapegoat” someone or something else. Adam blames Eve, and, by implication, God, for his sin: “The woman You put at my side, she gave me of the tree and I ate.” In turn, Eve blames the serpent: “The serpent duped me, and I ate.”

God now decrees punishment for both the serpent and the two humans:

The serpent will lose his ability to walk; instead, he will crawl on the earth and eat dirt, and live in a state of constant enmity with human beings, who will strike at his head. Strangely, nothing is said about his losing the ability to converse with human beings (perhaps because this was a one-time occurrence, as in the case of Balaam’s donkey, see entry 50).

Eve receives two punishments: Childbirth will be painful for her, and her husband will rule over her. Although this is often cited as a biblical mandate for men dominating their wives, the Bible never says or implies that this punishment is intended to apply to Eve’s descendants. Why should it? Eve alone sinned. All that the text declares is that her husband will rule over her, presumably as punishment for her having led him to sin.

Adam is punished by having to labor hard for his food: “By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread until you return to the ground … for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (3:19).

The final punishment decreed for Adam and Eve is expulsion from the Garden of Eden. No longer will they be surrounded by fruit-bearing trees; from now on they will have to labor for their food.

Reflections: Is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise an unmitigated curse? Not according to the most ingenious interpretation of why Eve sinned, which I heard from the late Jewish educator Shlomo Bardin (founder of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Southern California). He explained Eve’s behavior through this parable:

“Imagine that a young woman marries a young man whose father is president of a large company. After the marriage, the father makes the son a vice president and gives him a large salary, but because he has no work experience, the father gives him no responsibilities. Every week, the young man draws a large check, but he has nothing to do. His wife soon realizes that she is not married to a man but to a boy, and that as long as her husband stays in his father’s firm, he will always be a boy. So she forces him to quit his job, give up his security, go to another city, and start out on his own. That is the reason Eve ate from the tree.”

God’s words apparently did not mean that Adam would die immediately (see 2:17), but that on the day he ate from the tree he would become mortal and so subject to eventual death. Despite God’s warning that on the day Adam ate from the tree, he would die, Adam lives nine hundred years; his and Eve’s descendants eventually populate the entire world.

Note: Adam, Eve, and the doctrine of Original Sin-. In Christian theology, eating the forbidden fruit constitutes the Original Sin which taints all future human beings with a primal transgression. Such sinfulness can supposedly be overcome through baptism and acceptance of the divinity of Jesus Christ who died to atone for humankind’s sins, of which the eating from the tree was the first.

Significant as this episode is in Christian teachings, it does not, as Jewish theologian Louis Jacobs argues, “occupy an important place in [conventional] Jewish theology” (The Jewish Religion: A Companion, page 14). The prevailing attitude among Jewish scholars is that people sin as Adam and Eve sinned, not because they sinned.

However, Jacobs does note that among students of the mystical kabbalah, a doctrine similar to Original Sin did evolve that argued that because all human souls were contained as sparks in Adam’s soul, all of humankind was contaminated by Adam’s sin. However, this kabbalistic doctrine about the significance of Adam’s sin remained a peripheral teaching in Jewish life. Furthermore, “even in those [kabbalistic] versions of Judaism in which the idea of Original Sin is accepted, it differs from Christian dogma in that God alone, not a savior like Jesus, helps man to overcome his sinful nature” (page 370).

3. Cain and Abel
GENESIS, CHAPTER 4
“Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”
4:9

Although people often think of the world as becoming ever more violent, according to the Bible the violence in men’s natures has existed since the beginning. Nothing conveys this somber fact more dramatically than the murder committed by Cain, the first child born to Adam and Eve, of his brother Abel.

Cain’s life starts with high hopes: His mother chooses a name for him that means “I have gained a male child with the help of the Lord.” A short time later, Abel is born, although we are not told the reason for his name.

When the two brothers grow up, Cain becomes a farmer, Abel a shepherd. One day they each bring a gift to God; Cain brings fruit from the land he has tended, while Abel brings “the choicest of the firstling of his flock.” The Bible’s choice of language implies that Abel has worked at bringing God something more precious t...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE: PEOPLE AND EVENTS
• PART TWO: LAWS AND IDEAS
• PART THREE: THE 613 LAWS OF THE TORAH: IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX
• Books by Joseph Telushkin
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Copyright
• About the Publisher