The Voice of Jacob: On the Composition of Genesis (review)

154 SHOFAR Maimonides affirms the same strong libertarian position in the Guide of the Pelplexed that he puts forward in his more "popular" works. Shlomo Pines and Alexander Altmann's arguments concerning Maimonides' "secret" rejection of freedom should therefore themselves be rejected. William Dunphy also argues against a misinterpretation of Maimonides' view in "Maimonides ' Not-So-Secret Position on Creation" (pp. 151-172), namely against the view that "Maimonides, unlike Aquinas, held that creation could not be demonstrated but must be accepted by faith alone" (p. 151). He convincingly shows that this is a mistake and that Maimonides thought that philosophical argument was far from irrelevant in this matter. I highly recommend the book to anybody interested in the philosophy of Maimonides. Manfred Kuehn Purdue University The Voice of Jacob: On the Composition of Genesis, by Leslie Brisman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. 142 pp. $22.50. The Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature series now sports a volume that gives an altogether new meaning to the series' concept. In spite of his claim that his aim is exegesis, not dramatic fiction (p. xiv), the author rewrites (elements of) Genesis in a semi-fictional mode. Challenging the standard separation of strands of redaction according to theological conceptions attached to names for the deity, Brisman imagines two (re)writers, Jacob and a figure he names Eisaac. The Eisaaic text is responded to by Jacob, who labors to turn his own text into an original. Jacob is a recognizable character who polemically responds to his fate as a "hanger-on, an afterbirth or afterword , a secondary talent and no original" (p. 'xvii). Brisman imagines how Jacob asserts himself as an original writer, recasting the stern Eisaaic tradition into something motivated by literary, not sociological impulses. The resulting reading of Genesis looks like a dramatization of Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, a weaving on different discourses, in a polyphonic text. As in literary creation, the author does not feel compelled to hide his sympathy. This fictitious Jacob gets sympathy and privilege; he has the nicer theology of the two, the humanized, savory, sensuous deity, the opposite of Eisaac's abstract and distant god (the deities are also renamed). The wit, the love of language, the play with polysemy and heteroglossia: it all comes from witty Jacob. Truth with a capital T yields to meaning (p. 6): polysemy is a new-age truth. He is a character who belongs to the ever-young, to those who Volume 9. No.3 Spring 1991 155 are not interested in the hierarchical system of patriarchy. He stands for refreshing revolt. This fictional set-up is supposed to liberate the exegesis (the term, for me, hardly applies here) from age-old stuffy common-sense or prejudice. Starting from this cast of characters, and the set opposition between the two writers-cum-deities, Brisman sets out to read Genesis and brings up some fascinating possibilities. Thus he rereads the turning of Lot's wife during the flight from Sodom into a metaliterary comment. She turns to see Eisaac, and thus forfeits her status as character in the tale (p. 63). At other moments, however, the old prejudices are just repeated, on a lighter tone and without arguments, as in the story of Sarah and Hagar. Abraham is given to mean: "Be as mean as you like-just leave me alone" (p. 53). Not that it makes the patriarch any more sympathetic in this reviewer's eyes. The climactic moment in the tension between the two voices is assumed to be the near-sacrifice of Isaac. Brisman here comes up with a solution to the moral problem the passage poses: did God really claim child-sacrifice; or, inversely, was this founding father really willing to kill his son? Solution: when the deity blesses Abraham for heeding his command, what he means is not the command to sacrifice the son in verse 2 but the voice which forbids it in verse 12. Nothing new under the sun; and this solution doesn't work any better than all the worn ones. For Brisman's interpretation implies that Abraham desired to kill his son and only refrains from doing so out of obedience to...