I've almost finished Genesis of Justice by Alan M. Dershowitz, lawyer, Harvard Law School Professor, author, and occasional TV commentator. The book's title is astonishingly apt: the author traces the origin of our present legal system from the first book of the Bible to the Ten Commandments, and from there to Magna Carta, to the present day and our court system.
Frankly, I was totally ignorant of the true nature of the tawdry tales of incest, murder, sodomy, betrayal, fratricide, and argumentativeness with God, that is ever-present in Genesis. On those few times I read a portion or two of this first book of the Bible I allowed myself to be fooled by the majestic tone of the prose while skimming what the words actually say; what I read must have been sanitized. Did Dershowitz, perhaps, come up with the true, accurate Jewish tales of horror? After all, it is their book. When I studied Milton's Paradise Lost we were not told,even though the entire course was devoted to Milton, how selectively Milton chose to tell the story of expulsion from the Garden.
Oh well, I'm not much of a scholar, but from a fiction writing POV Dershowitz's studious exposition of what's really, truly in Genesis is an eye-opener. I'll have to write him a fan letter. (He gives where to write! Ha ha ha.)
Barry
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