God's servants: are they tricksters?

[_karl61]

From Robin Lane Fox - THe Unauthorized Version: truth and fiction in the Bible.

This is the best book I have ever read about the Hebrew and Christian Religion. I am on page 405 and I have been glued to this book since I started. At times I found myself laughing. He has this oh, really - lets see what it really says attitude. This book is such a fun book. He does not try to write big words - it's just straightforward. Robin Lane Fox is scholar and historian at Oxford College in England.

pg 405: "At its simplest, people may be trapped by the unforseen power of words: a vow, perhaps, or a blessing, a promise or a contract. To utter such words is to commit oneself to action or even to bring something about: societies with a keen sense of law or custom cannot help confronting the problem of words which bring about something which their performer never saw. He may genuninely have been imprudent like Jephthah who vowed to sacrifice whatever he first met on his return from victory: he met his virgin daughter. One party may be tricked by another, expecially if he is dealing with Jacob, the Artful Doger of the Biblical world. All over the world, tricks make powerful stories and in Genesis we meet plenty of them: how Jacob decieved Esau over his birthright or Issac over a blessing, how Jacob outwitted Laban over his speckled sheep, of how Laban turned the tables on Jacob by marrying him off to Lea, the unexpected daughter. In many of their contexts, words which have been said connot be undone: once Isaac has bLessed Jacob, he cannot unbless him; once Jacob has married Leah, he cannot unmarry her. Agents, therefore, must live with the unforeseen consequence of what hey have said"