Old Testament Lore
A Mosaic Tapestry
Norman M. Chansky
Old Testament lore
A Mosaic Tapestry
Copyright © 2011 Norman Chansky. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
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isbn 13: 978-1-61097-010-5
eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7295-7
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To my children: Linda, James, Keren, Tamar, and Matthew
and to their children Elizabeth, Sara, Bethany, Gilad, Kinneret, Allison, Isaac, Meredith, Raia, and Emma
and to my great grandchild Daniella
and to my sisters: Lois and Sonya.
Words are inadequate to describe my appreciation to my wife Elissa for her support and inspiration.
Poetry is the suggestion by the imagination of noble grounds for noble emotions.
—John Ruskin,: Modern Painters III, iv. 1
Foreword
Humans have always wondered about the mysteries of the universe as well as the unique history of their people. They ask what does my world consist of? How did it come about? They also seek to understand themselves, to know their personal stories, to find their place in the universe. Ancestors shaped their outlook on life;. humans wish to know how. For many of us the answer begins with Creation and continues through The Flood, the Patriarchs, and the Prophets.
However, each culture has its own creation story to fix its place in history and to define its destiny. It is hard to find a culture that does not evoke the divine.That story gives a culture its unique signature. According to a Crow Indian legend, in the beginning there was only water and ducks. Then the Sun, the Creator, merged with the Coyote. The Creator told the ducks to dive into the water and from the mud on their webbed feet the Earth was created and peopled. Early Egyptians explained that dry land appeared out of a primordial ocean. Atum, the Sun god- later named Ra, father of all other gods, arose from an abyss. In Mesopotamia, creation also took place from a watery abyss, Apsu. But the world came into being from a violent clash between older and younger gods. Marduk, made the sky and earth from two halves of the body of Tiamat, a dragon personifying evil. In Persian cosmology, Ahura Mazda was the creator of Man as well as the decider and ruler of natural events such as the course of the moon. Good and Evil, twin attributes of his character, contend for supremacy. In the end virtue defeats evil. The gods of the Greek and Roman pantheons go by the names of Zeus and Jupiter respectively. But neither were creators. Rather according to Greek mythology the world begins with Chaos, a vast void surrounded by water, the domain of Eurynome, the goddess of all things. She coupled with a snake and gave birth to Eros. Eurynome separated the sky from the sea. Out of that relationship was born Gaia, Mother Earth, and Uranus, the Heavens. Gaia married Uranus and gave birth to the Titans, the most important of which was Cronus who married Rhea but then swallowed all of their children. Only Zeus survived by a trick devised by Gaia.
Compare these stories with an aboriginal creation myth. In the beginning all was still. All of the spirits of the earth were asleep. Then the Father of all Spirits stirred and woke up the Sun Mother who was bidden to go down to earth and awaken all of the spirits. Her light spread across the earth, melted ice which became oceans, rivers, and lakes. She penetrated into caves and wakened insects. These in turn combined with flowers of every color imaginable. She enjoined all creatures in the cosmos to live in peace with one another. Then she returned to the sky.
In sharp contrast is the Hebrew story of Creation. There is only one God Who Created the cosmos, by fiat, through words not brutality, trickery, or coaxing. “Let there be light!” This is how the Creation account of the Hebrews begins. Although the heavens and earth were Created from an abyss, it was the Spirit of God that Hovered over the deep dividing light from darkness. God is in complete control of the Creative process: day, night, vegetation, lower animals and higher animals. Man is Created with the mandate to protect all manner of life. Then on the seventh day God Rested and Gave the Sacred Sabbath to humanity. The Sacred Sabbath is also a Mandate.
Genesis is said to present two accounts of Creation: the P or priestly account (Gen I and II, 1–4) and the J account (Gen II 4b-24). There are several differences between them. In the former God is called “Elohim”; in the latter, the ineffable name yood, hay, vav, hay is sometimes transliterated “Yahweh.” In the former, animals were Created before Man; in the latter, after Man. In the former, man and woman were Created simultaneously; in the latter, woman was taken from Adam’s rib. These dual accounts are not isolated instances but templates for other narrations. There are multiple versions of the same “event” giving The Bible an aura of the recondite. Reconciling the versions and finding the deeper meanings of single accounts has been an undertaking of scholars of many faith communities for many centuries. Scholars extract meaning through the special blueprint that charts their courses. All readers delve into the sacred text and map their own meanings in an effort to define who were their ancestors, who they are now and who they seek to become.
Our knowledge of the past is ever expanding; the meanings we derive from the Old Testament, therefore, alter as well.
Preface
The lure and lore of The Old Testament is magnetic. The aim of this book of poetry is to draw the reader to its lodestone. Extracting the universal essences of that holy book, this collection of poems maps the journey into the spine and soul of the people of The Old Testament as they grew up. Imagine that we gather at the base of the mystical Mount Sinai, rampart against idolatry. Overhead is a canopy of sundry inspired images, rhymes, and rhythms. All sacred; all hallowed. Stitched into that canopy is a rich saga of a people struggling to remain alive, to achieve some semblance of dignity, and to transmit God’s Message from the holy mount. Resisting memory’s urge to fade and forget, the words of the Old Testament live on, electrify, intrigue, and enchant us with their grandeur. Old Testament Lore accesses treasured biblical sagas through poesy. It does not retell history but it imaginatively renders the biblical narrative. Included herein are poems that ignite mystery and awe since the dawn of Creation. Witness the struggles, feats, foibles, sapience, and ardor of Adam and his descendants, including Noah and Abraham and their lines, during halcyon and stormy times. Plumb the words of the poets and prophets. Sing their songs.
Most of the poems in this work were prompted by books of the Jewish canon: The Pentateuch, Prophets, and the Writings. A few poems were inspired by the Apocrypha, writings in the Old Testament style, which are sacred to some faith communities but not all. The four chapters in this collection correspond to the above cited four books. In writing the poems I used a number of styles found in Biblical texts: rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, metonymy, simile, and parallelism. The plan of this collection is to begin poems with my liberal adaptation of a Biblical reference in italics.
Readers are invited to view the biblical narrative through my lens and reflect them through their prism. The Bible is like a kaleidoscope, a treasure trove of many shapes and colors wandering about in a cylinder, in arrangements that captivate, in patterns which fascinate, reflecting motifs geometric, harmonious and symmetric. No matter the design one beholds, a people of beauty poignantly unfolds.
Norman M. Chansky, PhD
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