The Ultimate Codification of Order

Everyone who has been forced to read the bible in a certain way should do themselves a favor and read this blog:

There it stands, and because it’s in the Bible, there it will go on standing: our civilization’s first white-collar crime. Its placement halfway through Genesis seems no accident, as it speaks to the book’s core concern, its ruling idea. No, not sin. Not obedience. Not faith. Those are certainly important issues in this account of the struggles of a new race to organize and elevate itself, but they are luxury themes compared to this:

Property law.

From a functional, practical perspective, the work of a great, great many early Bible stories is to articulate, investigate, and, in some fashion, adjudicate a variety of title claims to a great array of holdings and assets, some physical, some social, some spiritual. We may feel as we turn the pages of the scripture like seminarians in a lovely library, but really we’re law students in a drafty lecture hall. And what we’re doing is analyzing precedent, from the case of the Soup Bowl and the Birthright (a right which some contend Esau essentially forfeited the moment he contemplated parting with it, especially for such a lousy price, meaning that little brother Jacob inherited it before he paid for it, meaning he could have petitioned to have the soup returned) back to Adam and Eve’s Eviction Without Notice (since they’d trusted God and never demanded a lease, and since He’d trusted them and never asked for one, and also because no rent was paid or charged, leaving no financial paper trail for the serpent to conjure into an oral contract, their position or status in Eden was roughly that of two grown-up children camping out indefinitely in a parent’s yard).

It’s all about getting, giving, keeping, appraising, losing, regaining, and dividing. If there were a motto carved into God’s Throne, it might well read: “The buck starts here.” As does the hectare, the olive grove, the ingot, all the cattle and the chattel, the birthright, the pearl, the breastplate, and the grape. And the lordships, of course, which aren’t just titles and costumes, but large sealed crates of prerogatives and licenses lashed to the backs of camels led by slaves.

Genesis is a treatise in story form on the paramount economic questions that civilized societies must answer, credibly, consistently, and durably, if they’re not to backslide into piracy or erupt in orgiastic grabbing. Why do certain people have more than others? And what authority or history legitimizes their holdings and their powers? The Bible’s answer is circular but perfect: our belongings belong to us because they’re linked to a lengthy chain of title securely held at its far end by He who originally owned them unencumbered, absolutely free and clear,  by virtue of having made them out of nothing, without assistance, without outside investment, such that no lien nor levy can ever hurt them.

In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth, but in doing so, in the very act of acting, He created the deed. And all the deeds deriving from it, too, which He knew would be worthless as legal instruments unless they were properly recorded and filed. That’s when his clerks got down to work, affirming the standing of the first Creation by verbally constructing another one under it, the great Book of Owning and Claiming we call The Bible.