Interpretation: a Journal of Political Philosophy
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Interpretation A JOURNAL J. OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Fall 1998 Volume 26 Number 1 3 Cameron Wybrow The Significance of the City in Genesis 1-11 21 Robert D. Sacks The Book of Job: Translation and Commentary on Chapters 39-42 65 Andrew Reece Drama, Narrative, and Socratic Eros in Plato's Charmides 77 Mark Kremer Liberty and Revolution in Burke's Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol 99 Steven Berg Interpreting the Twofold Presentation of the Will to Power Doctrine in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra Review Essays 121 Frank Schalow Heidegger, the Polity, and National Socialism 137 Bruce W. Ballard Whose Pluralism? Interpretation Editor-in-Chief Hilail Gildin, Dept. of Philosophy, Queens College Executive Editor Leonard Grey General Editors Seth G. Benardete Charles E. Butterworth * Hilail Gildin Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Howard B. White (d. 1974) Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell Joseph Cropsey Ernest L. Fortin John Hallowell (d. 1992) Harry V. 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(718)997-5542 Fax (718) 997-5565 E Mail: [email protected] The Significance of the City in Genesis 1-11 Cameron Wybrow McMaster Divinity College The city is mentioned in three episodes in Genesis 1-11: in Genesis 4, where it is said that Cain (or possibly his son Enoch) built the first city; in Genesis 10, where it is stated that Nimrod ruled over (and possibly built) cities; and in Genesis 1 1, in which the unified human race attempts to build Babel, the city and tower with its top in the heavens. Traditional exegesis of these stories, Jewish and Christian, was often sur prisingly antiurban, antitechnical, and antipolitical. Why was this? One finds in the traditional commentaries a number of overlapping themes. First, the city is associated with those who are supposed to be impious in their intentions: Cain, Nimrod, the Babel-builders. Second, the city is connected with land ownership, and thus opposed to an allegedly purer form of life, that of the nomadic herds man. Third, the city is associated with the complexity and sophistication of a number of arts, few of which are necessary for survival and many of which are superfluous and possibly morally dangerous. Finally, the city is associated with improper aspirations toward human greatness or even human divinization, with the pride or hubris which desires to compete with, or even defy, the Lord God. In this paper I wish to make three arguments. The first is that much of the traditional pious exegesis of Genesis 1-11 fails in its very reasonable task the elaboration of a moral or political theory of urban life because, in its urge to moralize about the lives and motives of the early city-builders, it makes funda mental interpretive errors. It improperly fuses the characters and accomplish ments of Cain, Nimrod, and the Babel-builders, not paying enough attention to the different contexts in which these characters appear, and it prejudges the motives of the characters in all three cases, failing to note that in each instance there are redeeming features, or at least reasonable excuses, for the actions of those characters. The second thing I wish to argue is that the failure to read the text carefully does damage to the one major point on which the traditional interpreters seem to be correct: the unacceptability of the Babel project. For, as I will argue, although the Babel-builders are not evil in intent, the effort they are making is indeed condemned from the political-theological perspective of the Biblical narrator. Finally, I wish to argue that, in light of the Babel project, Nimrod's kingdom of cities is not to be understood as a tyranny but as a per fectly reasonable attempt to establish a political ordering among men at a time when law, divine or conventional, has not yet made inroads into the human heart. interpretation. Fall 1998, Vol. 26, No. 1 4 Interpretation I will proceed in the following manner. First, I will present the political themes which can be gleaned from the discussion of Cain, Nimrod and the Babel-builders in some representative premodern commentaries. Next, I will show the inadequacy of the handling of the political themes by comparing the interpreters' traditional remarks with the fine details of the Biblical text. Fi nally, I will propose my own tentative account of the Bible's moral-political evaluation of the city. A. THE CRITIQUE OF THE CITY IN TRADITIONAL EXEGESIS The traditional commentaries on Genesis are legion, and I have consulted only enough to reveal some representative tendencies. Specifically, I have used Genesis Rabbah, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, Abravanel's Commentary on the Pen tateuch, Augustine's City of God, and Calvin's Commentary on Genesis. Out of these I have constructed a kind of composite account of the antiurban, anti- technical, antipolitical tendencies of the Jewish and Christian traditions. In fus ing different commentaries I am not trying to blur the differences between them (they are all properly distinguished in the text and notes), but merely trying to establish some general tendencies of interpretation, against which I can set my own. 1. Traditional Hostility Toward Cain and His Line One must begin with Cain. Cain, who is traditionally credited with founding the first city, has had abuse heaped upon him by scores of Jewish and Christian millennia.1 interpreters for at least two His motives and his spiritual character, and the spiritual character of his descendants, have all been impugned, often with little basis in the text. This negative portrayal of Cain colors the event with which he is associated, that is, the founding of the city, and establishes among interpreters an antiurban, antipolitical atmosphere, in which those city-builders recorded later in Genesis 1-11 (especially Nimrod and the Babel-builders) will find it hard to get a fair hearing. Cain's very birth is suspect, according to some of the rabbis. Noting that Cain, unlike his Genesis 5 counterpart Seth, is not said to have been born after Adam's (hence God's) image, they conclude that he is actually the offspring of Eve and the angel of death Sammael. This is why he becomes a murderer and Abel.2 kills the son truly in God's image, With this rather unauspicious head start in life, Cain cannot be expected to produce much good. Thus, his religious performance is faulty. When he sacri fices to the Lord (Gen. 4.3-5), he offers (according to some of the rabbis) the refuse,3 most inferior samples of his produce, the or, if the quality is acceptable, The City in Genesis 5 he gives only a paltry amount after finishing most of it off himself (Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, p. 153). Those interpreters, such as Augustine and Calvin, who are not willing to supplement the Genesis story quite so blatantly regarding the nature of Cain's offerings, supplement it equally regarding Cain's motives. Cal vin declares that there was nothing wrong with Cain's grain, but with his hy pocrisy; Cain practised a purely external religion and did not really serve God in his heart. Augustine, finding nothing wrong with Cain's sacrifice, declares that Cain's other activities (unmentioned in the Biblical text) must have been evil.4 The traditional commentators are a little lighter on Cain in one respect: they do not unanimously condemn Cain's choice of occupation as a tiller of the ground (4.2). Calvin grants that this occupation can be laudable and holy, and that it in fact can be interpreted as commanded by God in Genesis 1 and 2 (Calvin, p. 192). Augustine says nothing negative, and Rabbi Eliezer allows Cain's choice. The Genesis Rabbah, however, says bluntly of Cain's occupa tion: "Cain, Noah, and Uzziah lusted after the ground, and no good came of leper" them.