ARE THE PATRIARCHS REAL PEOPLE?

ARE THE PATRIARCHS REAL PEOPLE?

Whenever someone is exposed to the world of biblical studies for the first time, they often go looking for “what really happened.” They learn the complexity of the origins of Israel as a people from archaeology and biblical literature, from text and rock, and they just want to know what really happened. They learn how characters can be archetypal, that is, representing larger groups of people or larger movements in social consciousness, and they just want to know what really happened. They learn how larger historical events or shifts get telescoped into stories that explain the past, but they just want to know what actually happened. This is because in our thinking, we want our faith and our past to be grounded in reality. Real events. Real time. Real encounter.

In my experience, people can handle mythological elements in Genesis 1-11. They can accept that the first people represent Israel or in some sense all people, they can deal with a talking snake or a tree of life is a stock image in antiquity being put to work by an author. They can learn how Cain and Abel are archetypes for farmer and herder, they can even awaken to Noah’s Ark being a floating motif in ancient Near Eastern mythology being nuanced by the writers of the biblical versions.

But when they hit Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, it is like a mental wall. If these were not real people who I can not really imitate in my own faith…then what? Have I just believed a lie? 

No. Your faith is well placed. But it is placed in God, not the sacred literature written to tell about God and God’s encounter with Israel’s forefathers. The Patriarch Cycles are about real people, at least I believe, but they are remembered in human literature which has its own genre, artistry, and place in time. What you have in the Patriarch Cycles is ancient literature about the fathers of a nation. And their stories, and they are stories, are there to tell you first about God and secondly about what it looked like to follow God long ago. 

And so we learn through story and exemplar. We read the narratives, dialogue, chapter and verse, but then we get to ask questions about when the fathers of Israel have acted with virtue, vice, or something in between. Questions about the characters are the right questions. Questions about historical fact will fail to tell the truth in a compelling way. But to entertain the crisis almost every serious student of the Bible comes to with respect to “what really happened,” here are two ways forward from some scholars who came before us.

PATRIARCH CYCLES AS LEGENDS.

In the 19th Century, Herman Gunkel did many fascinating studies on folklore and the Bible. He argued that the stories in Genesis are not historiographic but are legendary. This does not mean there is no historical kernel or memory, but rather the literature which recounts these figures is the genre of legend. 

And so these stories are not interested in giving a modern historical account. That is the farthest thing from the biblical writers’ minds. They are interested in telling people the story of the Israelite people and explaining the past to make sense of the present. 

In Genesis 12-50, for Gunkel, we find all sorts of legends. Etiological legends, which explain the cause of a phenomenon like why snakes have no legs. Ethnological legends which explain people groups like the Moabites. Etymological legends that explain why places or people have the names they do. And Ceremonial legends that explain a religious ritual, like when the story of Jacob wrestling a man at the Jobok river is leveraged to tell why “we Israeilites” never eat the sinew that connects the hip bone with the hip socket.

Once you start looking for the genre of legend, Gunkel is right— they are everywhere in the Patriarchal stories. We might not want to conclude that is all we have in Genesis 12-50, but it is a helpful tool to have in your box when you read this fantastic literature in the Bible. 

LOCAL LEGENDS WOVEN INTO AN EPIC.

In the 20th century, we had learned much about composite and comparative literature in the previous dawn of critical biblical scholarship. We came to understand that biblical literature which presents itself as unified story, whether it is in the Torah or the Gospels, is actually composed of many written stories and oral tradition which have been woven together by an editor. The work of Gunkel specified what kinds of materials were being stitched together in the Torah, and specifically in the Patriarchal Cycles of Genesis 12-50.

A group of German scholars built upon Gunkel’s work, most importantly, Martin Noth (1902-1968). Noth came to believe that the cycles of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were originally distinct and local. Distinct, as in they were not originally a lineage but unrelated patriarchs of ethnic groups. And local, the text of Genesis gives clues as to where they came from. 

And so Abraham seems to have a connection with the “Oaks of Mamre” near Hebron. And so Isaac seems to associate with Beersheba, south of the later city of Jerusalem. And so Jacob seems to be a cycle of stories from Bethel and Shechem, in the central highlands. 

At some point these stories were collected and linked with a genealogy, which seems to be the task of the editors of Genesis throughout. Toledot, or generation lists (“these are the generations of ______…”) not only map the world in the Primeval History (Genesis 1-11), they continue throughout the book of beginnings. 

ARE THE PATRIARCHS REAL PEOPLE?

We should notice that priority and length of story is given to Abraham. This may be because the locale his cycle of stories is associated with will become Judah.

Judah, after all, will stand the text of time over and against big brother Israel and in distinction to the rest of the peoples the biblical authors call “canaanites.” What better way to unify people than to combine their ethnic myths into a single lineage? And what better way to vie for uniqueness under the worship of Yahweh than to show that Israel was not originally Canaanite, but a called out people of old? 

The writers of the Bible are brilliant when when we understand what they are doing in writing a national epic. Moreover, through story and exemplar, we not only gain bearing as to how the people of God will live by faith, but we come to see Israel’s God as the guide to the people’s heroic journey. The only character who contends towards justice, piety, and love of man is God. 

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob seem prone to tricksterism and taking matters or handmaids into their own hands. And when they act with virtue, when they are positive exemplars, it is because they are leaning towards God’s behavior towards themselves. They are learning imitato Dei, imitation of God, and the result is virtue. Mind you, the God they are imitating is an early conception— and Iron Age God, but for some reason good and for some reason covenanted to being for humanity.

And when the character of God is extra-Iron Age…ish— when God seems unduly angry for modern sensibility— Abraham contends with God. Abraham slowly learns to care about what God cares about and proves it when he is tested. And as readers, we gain virtue by reading the STORY of struggle with God. Entering the story and searching for virtue is the gift of ancient sacred literature, and the Patriarch Cycles are great ancient literature.

If you read them slowly you will have all sorts of thoughts, ideas, and emotions. God will make you joyful and angry. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will take you to a far off land and when you get there… show you yourself and reveal your internal struggle with God. And so are the Patriarchs real people? Hauntingly real.