
Economics in Genesis / Bereisheet.
You may know that Genesis tells two distinct creation stories. But did you know that each story champions its own vision of work, wealth, and power? Let me explain how I found that theme. My story begins in a high school economics class.
Few North American high school students get a course in economics. But they absorb plenty of information from daily life!
My high school did require a course in economics—economic theory, to be precise. But the lessons didn’t match my life experience at all. So I couldn’t understand even basic concepts.
It wasn’t the teacher’s fault. Mr. Irgang was passionate about the material. He talked a mile a minute, but he went over everything at least twice. He illustrated key ideas with charts, graphs, and big body language.
Mr. Irgang was a Keynesian, a fan of well-regulated capitalism. So, he believed it’s good to look at big economic trends. And that those trends follow certain patterns. But because capitalism isn’t perfect, the patterns sometimes get out of whack. Then, the government needs to step in and help people.
This approach fit his life experience. He grew up under New Deal capitalism. Served (as I later learned) in the Korean War and got his tuition funded by the federal GI Bill. Then, he taught at Stuyvesant High School, a public high school that welcomed intellectually gifted kids from every neighborhood and social class.
In Mr. Irgang’s course, we started with macro-economics—big-picture economics. And with the law of supply and demand. This law implies, for example, that when demand is high but supply is low, sellers charge more for goods.
This made no sense to my 16-year old mind. What if, for example, a lot of people need food and there is very little? Would anyone who had food withhold it from as many people as possible? Or give it only to those who could pay? Maybe if there was war and they were refugees and needed to escape to safety. But if they were a big food company with a good business? No one would do that.
When we got to microeconomics I was even more confused. That’s the Adam Smith-type perspective: if individuals are free to pursue their enlightened self-interest, everything will work out for the best. An “invisible hand” will see to it. What is this invisible hand, I wondered. Is it like a conscience inside each person? Helping them understand that it is in their self-interest not to rip others off?
Because I had never participated in any economies based on self-interest, I wasn’t sure. In my family household, we were taught not to act out of self-interest. Instead, we each did our part because we were a family. Bound together by love, respect, history, shared future, and an interdependence that was, well, just the way we lived.
There was no economy of self-interest at my school, either. Stuyvesant is called a “competitive” school because you have to pass a test to get in. But, once there, we students didn’t compete with each other. We shared ideas, studied together, formed clubs, created underground newsletters. Why? Because we were friends, and excited about our shared interests. And because we were all stuck together in this ridiculous age-inappropriate vessel called high school.
Mr. Irgang used tests to calculate our grades. There was no opportunity to write a paper exploring our own questions. If there were, then I might have learned that famous writers had the same questions I did.
But I know that now! Capitalism’s challenges are headline news. So I’m catching up in my reading. I’m revisiting my old childhood questions, and asking some new ones.
Like: what if I read the Torah’s two creation stories as economic allegories? Where creation is a metaphor for human work. And the world is a metaphor for a workplace.
Then, the story in Genesis 1 doesn’t look so idyllic. In Genesis 1, God’s name is Elohim, which also means “aristocrats” or “nobles.” Elohim speaks and things come into being—as if an invisible, uncredited staff of thousands does the work. Humans, created in Elohim’s image, are to rule over the other creatures.
This looks a bit like an autocratic order. The kind of world that corporate capitalists try to create in their giant businesses. Where a tiny group makes all the decisions that a few managers implement and all the rest follow.
The story in Genesis 2-3, on the other hand, looks like a fun adventure in co-creation. God makes something and then waits for feedback from the creature. What does it need? I’ll make that thing. And—like a responsible owner-operator—I’ll even get down in the dirt like an artisan to do it. For example, the earth needs someone to serve it; how about a human being birthed from the humus? The human needs a companion? I’ll let it tell me what suits. The snake wants to teach the humans? Well okay as long as it gives them good information.
Seems like paradise. A kind of employees’ paradise. Until suddenly God gets nervous about the direction of change. Then God takes back all the freedom.
This is a really important point. It’s a reminder that economic democracy is fragile. You have to pay attention all the time. Because there’s always someone powerful who thinks an autocracy will be more efficient.
This is, for me, a novel way of reading Genesis. So, I do expect to think and write more about it. And I want to thank Richard D. Wolff and Stephen A. Resnick whose introductory economics textbook I am now reading. I wish we had such a clearly written book when I was in high school!
Readers: The book is Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. After reading it, I now want to call Genesis 1-3, “Contending Economic Theories”!
Photo credit: Ramesh Ialwani, via Wikimedia Commons
I love this novel economic take on Genesis, Laura! Especially just as we’re starting the whole Torah cycle over and thinking about this very story right now. It’s also interesting to me that even though the second story is more of a co-creation, God takes back the power as soon as he (and God feels very much like a “he” in these stories) starts feeling challenged. Hmmm. Seems like we have to be a bit more wary of God in our dealings with him/her/them!
It certainly is an interesting lens! One approach is to just assume that God has all the power, so avoid looking at divine power dynamics. But why assume that there is only one way for God to be powerful? In Torah stories, God is a character, often seen from a human character’s point of view. And some characters, like Moses, surely see some delegation and sharing going on here…
Thanks Laura. Interesting as always.
BTW, I am living in Toronto now. Lovely to be with family but missing Vancouver.
Thanks so much, Shira! Toronto is such a vibrant place. Enjoy!
“. . . But if they were a big food company with a good business? No one would do that. . . . ”
ROFL!
One of the peculiarities of capitalism (as practiced in the US) is that economic players are allowed to ignore “externalities” — damage that a business does to the general welfare, but whose cost is not included in the business’s financial statement.
Examples are a mining company which discharges toxic substances into a lake, or a company (or group of companies) who control the insulin supply, and continually stop producing “old formulations” (which are cheap), and substitute “new formulations” which are more expensive.
As an extreme example, some electric power companies in California were colluding with network operators, to produce artificial “shortages” which would raise consumer’s costs, and increase their own profits. I believe Enron’s business may have involved that.
Getting a food company to pay for the _true social cost_ of limiting supply and raising prices, causing a famine — or just causing hunger and malnutrition — is what governments _should_ do, but often don’t.
I bet I know who you’re voting for, in this US election.
Thanks, Charles! To his credit, Mr. Irgang did teach us that harm to people, land, and society count as opportunity costs. And, in his Keynesian view, should be regulated by corporate conscience. And, failing that, subject to government supervision!
” Then God takes back all the freedom.”
God doesn’t take away all the freedom. Once Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, their eyes are opened, and they are no longer just fulfilling God’s commands, but following their own desires.
And God says (like Daddy cutting off the trust fund of a contrary child):
. . . “There is a price to pay. You’re on your own, working for a living, bearing children in pain — welcome to adulthood!”
and throws them out of the Garden, into the messy reality outside it.
Yes, but if you stay in the workplace model, it seems the boss is firing them, or at least no longer providing all the work tools they need.
And Cain and Abel represent two economic models. Cain is an agriculturalist. Agriculture, in the scheme of human history, led to good food supply, and then a parasitic controlling class of priests and rulers who built city states and warred with each other to exercise central, top-down control. Abel practiced nomadic herding – an economic model whose social consequences have been smaller communities of relatively equal wealth and a collective spirit. God chooses Abel’s model. The early proponent of wealth and centralized power does the obvious – he kills his brother and wonders why God isn’t happy with him.
Avi wins the modern midrash prize!
With some ingenuity, practically every conflict in the Torah can be rebranded in economic terms. Moses champions economy of feudalism, if you wish), while Korach, a more flexible, decentralized economy of capitalism.
Yes, that’s a great observation. Social organization always has economic facets and implications.
Avi’s great at midrash! This one, though, between agriculture and nomadic herding, is well known in academic biblical studies.
Yes, absolutely. I wrote about this in Mouth of the Donkey. The economic conflict between the farmers and the shepherds (or ranchers) appears in a number of places in the Torah. Think about Datan and Aviram, who are angry that Moses seems to have a farming community in mind (and note that later the Reubenites want to get set up in their good grazing land asap). God has the very earth they whine about swallow them up. In this case, it seems God chooses the farming model…