The CBE Scroll

I finally got around to reading Thomas Cahill’s The Gifts of the Jews, which had been on my get-to list for a while now. It is a very creative interpretation of Hebrew history and how, in the words of the subtitle, “changed the way everyone thinks and feels.” One of Cahill’s observations has to do with the nature of interpersonal relationships in the pagan, pre-Abrahamic world and how the growing Hebrew understanding of God changed everything.

Before Abraham—and even during the patriarchal period—people were generally treated like pawns. We see this in Genesis when, for example, Abraham passed his wife off as his sister to save his own neck—not once but twice—and enrich himself in the process. We see it when Lot offered his virgin daughters to the men of Sodom, and when Abraham stood ready to offer his son Isaac on Mount Moriah.

In this age, wives, slaves, and others were not valued so much for their intrinsic worth as persons or as partners in a relationship, but for how you could use them to get ahead.

Cahill makes the astute observation that, before Abraham, this was also precisely why the gods were valued. There was no thought in ancient Sumeria of anyone desiring a “personal relationship” with Enlil or Ninhursag. You just performed the proper rituals in hopes of getting what you wanted out of your gods.

All of this began to change—slowly—with the Hebrew patriarchs. For example, when Sarah died, Abraham was willing to pay an exorbitant price for clear title to a place to bury her. He would have paid any price, Cahill writes, “and thus does he show belatedly, pathetically, his reverence for the matriarch” (pp. 87-88).

As the vision of a relationship with God emerges, so it seems does a vision for relationships with other humans. As the Hebrews grew from impersonal manipulation of the gods to a face-to-face relationship, a similar transformation occurred in the interpersonal sphere. Not only did they learn that they could not manipulate God, they learned that they were not to manipulate each other.

Later in Genesis, we read a story that bears this out. Jacob, anxious about being reunited with his estranged brother Esau, wrestles with God (Gen 32:24-32). In the morning, he names the place Peniel, “for I have seen God —panim el-panim — face to face.” One chapter later, the momentous reunion takes place and Jacob, transformed by his divine encounter, says to Esau, “for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Gen 33:10). Here is how Cahill describes what has happened:

We need not go into the finer details of how all of this gets played out in Jewish history with the Mosaic regulations to extend basic human rights even to slaves and foreigners or the prophets’ constant demands for justice. It was, to be sure, a rocky road and one from which Israel frequently diverted, but it ended, among other places, with…the Song of Solomon! Whatever the Song of Solomon is, it is an ode to romantic love between a man and a woman that has all the hallmarks of a mutual (and mutually satisfying) relationship of deep passion:

Cahill again: