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The Institute Of Child Welfare Monograph Series, No. 12.
The book of Genesis portrays the character Jacob as a brazen
trickster who deceives members of his own family: his father Isaac,
brother Esau, and uncle Laban. At the same time, Genesis depicts
Jacob as YHWH's chosen, from whom the entire people Israel derive
and for whom they are named. These two notices produce a latent
tension in the text: Jacob is concurrently an unabashed trickster
and YHWH's preference. How is one to address this tension? Scholars
have long focused on the implications for the character and
characterization of Jacob. The very question, however, at its core
raises an issue that is theological in nature. The Jacob cycle (Gen
25-36) is just as much, if not more, a text about God as it is
about Jacob, a point startlingly absent in a great deal of Genesis
scholarship. Anderson argues for the presence of what he has dubbed
a theology of deception in the Jacob cycle: YHWH operates as a
divine trickster who both uses and engages in deception for the
perpetuation of the ancestral promise (Gen 12:1-3). Through a
literary hermeneutic, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship
between how the text means and what the text means, and a keen eye
to the larger task of Old Testament theology as literally "a word
about God," Anderson examines the various manifestations of YHWH as
trickster in the Jacob cycle. The phenomenon of divine deception at
every turn is intimately tethered in diverse ways to YHWH's unique
concern for the protection and advancement of the ancestral
promise, which has cosmic implications. Attention is given to the
ways that the multiple deceptions-some previously unnoticed-evoke,
advance, and at times fulfill the ancestral promise. Anderson's
careful and thoughtful interweaving of trickster texts and
traditions in the interest of theology is a unique contribution of
this important volume. Oftentimes, scholars who are interested in
the trickster are unconcerned with the theological ramifications of
the presence of material of this sort in the biblical text, while
theologians have often neglected the vibrant and pervasive presence
of the trickster in the biblical text. Equally vital is the
necessity of viewing the Old Testament's image of God as also
comprising dynamic, subversive, and unsettling elements. Attempts
to whitewash or sanitize the biblical God fail to recognize and
appreciate the complex and intricate ways that YHWH interacts with
his chosen people. This witness to YHWH's engagement in deception
stands alongside and paradoxically informs the biblical text's
portrait of YHWH as trustworthy and a God who does not lie.
Anderson's Jacob and the Divine Trickster stands as a stimulating
and provocative investigation into the most interesting and
challenging character in the Bible, God, and marks the first true
comprehensive treatment of YHWH as divine trickster. Anderson has
set the stage to continue the conversation and investigation into a
theology of deception in the Hebrew Bible.
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