Maggi Dawn » genesis

Genesis: nothing left to the imagination

maggi dawn — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:05:51 +0000

Robert Crumb talks about his new comic-strip Genesis, (which I previously blogged here) saying that it is a multi-layered text, full of imaginative possibilities. Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon says on the piece that it teases the imagination. I’m not sure that Crumb’s work teases so much as leaves nothing to the imagination, but I like Baines’s other comment – that in Church congregations listen to these outrageous stories, followed by the words “This is the word of the Lord”. The scripted response, which congregations usually trot out obediently, is “Thanks be to God”, but like Mr Bains, I’m often left thinking that a more appropriate reaction would be “WHAAAAT???“Hell fire and brimstone, incest and rape, women and children treated worse than animals… “THis is the Word of the Lord” should most certainly be replaced in many instances by – “this is an outrageous story to our ears – what does the ancient text have to tell us about what they thought about God then, what we think now, why we still read it at all… “ Pretty often I edit our lectionary very liberally on the basis that the unthinkable, unimaginable horror stories in scripture should only be read in services where there is an adequate space to address them, and when it’s a read-sing-pray service, the readings have to be selected appropriately. That’s not at all the same thing as editing out the dodgy bits – it’s about choosing when and where they are read, with the possibility of addressing the strange and difficult readings.

Meantime, Crumb’s book is well worth adding to your collection of Bible versions. It’s on my Christmas wish list.

The Bible – Genesis, Illustrated by Robert Crumb

maggi dawn — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:48:39 +0000

I have quite a collection of Bibles on my shelf ( several of which, no doubt, the AmazingGrace BaptistChurch would add to their bonfire next week ) and quite a few notebooks with my own translations. One or two of these have illustrations in – like the classic 1960's Good News for Modern Man (remember that one?) and the more recent Manga Bible. But a new version of Genesis is about to be published: Robert Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated.

Apparently Mike Judge, of religious think-tank the Christian Institute, said that Crumb's comic book was "…turning the Bible into titillation. It seems wholly inappropriate for what is essentially God's rescue plan for mankind. If you are going to publish your own version of the Bible it must be done with a great deal of sensitivity. The Bible is a very important text to many many people and should be treated with the respect it deserves…
Representing it in your own way is all very well and good but it must be remembered that it is a matter of people's faith, their religion.
Faith is such an important part of people's lives that one must remember to tread very carefully."

But the liberties Crumb takes seem to be nothing much more than including sex and nudity. A comic-strip Genesis would have a lot of blank pages if you left out the dodgy bits. Genesis is packed to the gills with dysfunctional families, polygamy, adultery, sex, more adultery, incest, rape, cheats, liars and dodgy double dealers. I'm not sure what Mr Judge means by "treading carefully" but I don't think it enhances a reading of Genesis to sanitise it.

I tend to think that illustrated versions can limit, rather than expand, the interpretative and imaginative possibilites of the big Bible sagas. I'd love to see an author like Patrick Gale or Salley Vickers re-tell it. But if you are a collector of Bibles, you will want this one for your collection.

Abraham, and “Obsession”

maggi dawn — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:40:00 +0000

The Magnficient Obsession is a new book by Ann Graham Lotz (who is the daughter of famous evangelist Billy Graham)

It tracks the story of Abraham, but rather than locating it as a historical study, Ms Lotz writes of how an in-depth study of Abraham's life changed her own life significantly. She travels through Abraham's story, making connections with her own life,
and writing with some vulnerability about the way in which she makes
the ancient relationship between Abraham and God into a reality in her own life. Her reflections on what it means to be a friend of God, to be on a Journey with God, to reject the "idolatry of evangelicalism" and to exist primarily for the blessing of others, gives a contemporary take on the relevance of this ancient story for contemporary life.