Anti-Patriarchal Patriarchs

Nancy Jay’s analysis of the patriarchal narratives in Throughout Your Generations Forever is vitiated (to use a solid old Calvinian term) by her reliance on the documentary hypothesis. P says this, J and E that. P traces smooth sacrificial descent from fathers to sons; J and E reveal a more conflicted situation.

Problems come up as a result. First, because she never deals with the final text she doesn’t offer an explanation of Genesis’s treatment of patriliny and patriarchal hierarchy. But Genesis, not P or J or E (if they existed), is the critical book in anything but ancient history, and probably in ancient history too. Second, the sources don’t perform to type. P’s declaration that Sarah will be “mother of nations” is “problematic for patriliny” as found in P, even though Genesis 17, where this blessing occurs, “is pure P” (101).

At least Jay notices that Genesis makes much of the maternity of the seed: “Ishmael, although he was Abraham’s son, turned out not to be Sarah’s. Ishmael was the offspring of an exogamous union (Hagar was an Egyptian) and descent from Abraham alone was not enough to make him the true heir. Ishmael was only a ‘father’s son’ – insufficient for continuity.” She turns even this toward patriliny: “Only Isaac could be the true heir, for he could trace his patrilineal descent through his mother (who, according to E, had the same father as Abraham)” (101). But that doesn’t make contextual sense: In Genesis 17, Sarah’s sisterhood to Abraham has not yet been raised. When Abraham says that (20:12), it’s as much a surprise to the reader as it is to Abimelech. 

Paul’s interpretation is more theologically, textually, and even anthropologically precise. What makes Isaac unique is not his father but his mother, not least the fact that he was born of dead parents (Romans 4; Galatians 4). What makes the seed of Abraham different is that it is neither patrilineal nor matrilineal nor any form of sarko-lineal; coming from Isaac, Israel is pneumato-lineal.