We recieved specific instruction never to use the word "just" in this class, due to it's limiting nature, which I think is fair. It is limiting, like someone saying "you can't do that, you're just a kid", or "you're just a woman." This is the same sort of logic that seemed to be operating for the author of a 1904 study on adolescent behaviour, which defined adolescence as a feminine phase, and that essentially women(as well as Indians, black people, Jews etc.)are "arrested adolescents". Yet another example of old-time science that we can look back and be horrified by.

In addition to learning this in class today(which I guess is mildly off-topic), I also was introduced(or perhaps re-introduced) to the notion of Jesus fitting into the archetype of the mythological hero: born under strange circumstances, someone attempting to kill him at birth, raised by foster parents, performs great acts with some sort of divine backup, and dies on top of a mountain--Golgatha in Jesus' case--. This concept is rather intriguing.

Also intriguing is the comparisons to be found in the between the Greek tradition of valorizing standing toe-to-toe with the gods(because of course in the Greek world the gods are capricious and not terribly trustworthy; as is Yahweh come to think of it) and Biblical examples of the same, such as Abram/Abraham haggling with Yahweh over how many righteous men Sodom and Gomorrah should be spared for and Job trying to put God on trial for the suffering that he as a righteous man has endured.

We also discussed the well motif employed by J in the book of Genesis. This is were the servent meets Rebecca, who is to be his master's son's wife, and also were Rebecca first sees Isaac from afar(their intimate impressions and ideas, alas, are not to be evidenced. Merely a matter of lacunae). And this is also where Jacob meets Rachel, his cousin(!) with whom he falls madly in love.

I do admit that I like the word "lacunae". Don't know why really; just do. It sounds vaguely magical. And indeed the Biblical world is loaded with the concept of word-magic. This is why the Blessing, once bestowed to one person, cannot be taken back. You perhaps didn't want it this way(Isaac sure as hell didn't want to bless Jacob instead of Esau), but this is the way it's going to be. Such is the power of the logos.