So the last time I was here, many of you were as well.

We got halfway through the story of Jacob and I've bean digging underneath this story sporadically.

Since then, try to find out whether they're themes are being developed.

I've got some things that I think you're really interesting to talk about.

So, um, so we'll get right into it, so I'm gonna review a little bit first.

So we were talking about Jacob and all re update his biography a little bit so that we can place ourselves in the proper context before we go on.

So his mother, Rebecca, gave birth to twins, and the twins, even in her womb, were struggling for what they were struggling.

And, of course, the story is that they were struggling for dominance.

The older are the younger against the older Really?

Because Jacob Jacob means usurper and Rebecca had a, uh what would you call a vision from God that said that Jacob would supplant He saw.

And so even before her twins were born, they were in a state of competition.

And that's a recapitulation of the motif of the hostile brothers, right?

It's a very very, very common mythological motif.

And we already saw that really well developed in the story of Cain and Abel.

Right?

And Cain and Abel were essentially the 1st 2 human beings, the 1st 2 natural born human beings, and they're instantly locked in the state of enmity, which is symbolic of first, the enmity that exists within people's psyche.

Between the part of them, you might say that's aiming at the light and the part of them that's aiming at the darkness, and I think that's a reasonable way of portraying it.

Obviously, it's a way that sort of rife with symbolism.

But my experience of people, especially when you get to know them seriously or when they're dealing with serious issues, is that there is quite clearly a part of them that's striving to do well in the world or even to do good and another part that's deeply cynical and embittered that it says to hell with it and is self destructive and lashes out and really aims at making things worse.

And so that seems to be a natural part of the human psyche.

And that's also reflected in the the idea of the fall and so those ideas are not easily cast away their associated with the rise of self consciousness, right in in the story of the Garden of Eden.

And I think that's right, because I do think that are self consciousness produces that division within its because more than any other creature were intensely aware of our Finn itude and suffering, and that tends to turn us at least to some degree against being itself.

You know, I was watching, um, a bunch of protesters in the U.

S last week scream out the sky.

How about Trump?

You know, and, uh, it was interesting.

Like I thought it was an extraordinarily narcissistic display, but but despite that, there's something symbolically appropriate about it.

I also there's a movie I really like, sadly enough called Fu Bar.

I don't know how many of you have seen that.

Yeah, you know that movie I take it, Yeah, it's about the people I grew up with.

So yeah, that's true, man.

I'm telling you, that's true.

So the guy, the main actor in food bar, who's quite bright but completely uncivilized, gets testicular cancer, and there's one great scene where he gets far too drunk and he's stumbling around the street, you know, in, you know, virtually comatose state and course.

He's not very thrilled with what's happened to him, and he's shaking his fist at the sky.

It's pouring rain in these cursing God and, you know, it's like, Well, you can kind of understand his position.

So that kind of reminded me of these people who were yelling at this guy, you know, they were basically they're out dramatizing the idea of in rate they were enraged at.

Well, you could say God, of course, most of them wouldn't say that, but they were the ones yelling at the damn sky.

I mean, you know, so you gotta you gotta look at what they're doing rather than what they say.

And they were outraged that being was constructed such that Trump could have arisen as president.

And so well, So this idea, you know, that we could be easily turned against being and work for its destruction is a really It's a really common, common, common theme.

It never goes away.

You see, it echoed in stories like with the new marvel Siri's, for example, you see the enmity between Thor and Loki.

That's a good example of the same thing.

Or between Batman and the Joker.

There's There's Superman and Lex Luthor these There's the's pairs off hero against Villain.

That's a really dramatic and easily what everyone can understand that dynamic rate.

It's a basic plot, and the reason it's a basic plot is because it's true of the battle within.

Our spirits are only individual spirits.

It's true within families, because sibling rivalry can be unbelievably brutal.

It's true between human beings who are strangers.

It's true between groups of people, like it's true at every level of analysis.

And then, in some sense, it's It's architecturally true, at least with regards to deep religious symbolism, because you see that echoed in many stories as well.

So I think the clearest representation is probably Christ and Satan.

That's the closest to appear archetype.

Although there's in the old Egyptian stories, there's Oh, Cyrus and Seth or Horace and Seth, and Seth is a precursor to Satan, Adama logically so.

It's a very, very common motif.

And so that's what happens again in Rebecca's womb.

Is that this thing?

This idea is played out right away, and the two two twins are actually what would you call it?

There they have, ah, super ordinate destiny because one of them is destined to become the father of Israel and course that's it.

Pinnacle moment in the Old Testament, obviously, and arguably Pinnacle moment in human history now, you know, degree to which the stories in the Old Testament actually constitute what we would consider empirical history is a matter of debate, but it doesn't matter in some sense, because, as I mentioned, I think before in this lecture series.

No, there are the reforms of fiction that are meta true, which means that they're not necessarily about a specific individual.

Although I, I generally think they are based on the life of specific individuals.

It's the simplest theory, but who knows, right, But they're they're more real than reality itself because they abstract out the most relevant elements of reality and present them to you.

That's why you watch fiction, you know you know you want, you want your fiction boiled down, right?

You want to boil down to the essence.

That's what makes good fiction, and that essence is something that's truer than than plain old truth.

If it's handled well.

And so, you know, if you watch a Shakespeare play, half a lifetime of events can go by in a Shakespeare play, and it covers a wide range of scenes and so on.

And and so it's It's cut and edited and compressed all at once.

But because of that, it blasts you with with a kind of emotional and ethical force that just the mirror videotaping of someone's daily life you wouldn't even wouldn't even come close to approximating.

So then this motif of the hostile brothers That's a that's a deep, deep, archetypal truth and Rachel.

Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from my bowels, and one people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.

And so there's on inversion there, right?

Because, as we've discussed historically speaking and traditionally speaking, it's the elder son that to whom the disproportionate blessings flow.

Um, there's some truth in that to even more.

What would you say?

More empirically, I Q tends to decrease as the number of Children in the family increase.

The younger, the oldest, is the smartest.

Generally speaking, it isn't clear why that is.

But it might be that they get more attention and who knows?

So those of you, her younger can be very unhappy about that fact now, Jacob Okay, so there's another.

There's another plot line here, too, because, um, uh, Abraham and Rebecca are at odds.

It's sorry Isaac and Rebecca are at odds about the Children, right?

So there's a There's a need a pool twist to a two because, well, Isaac is allied with Esa, who turns out to be the hunter type.

So he's your basic rough and tumble character.

You know, he's kind of a wild looking guy, Harry, and he likes to be outside.

He lives intense.

He likes to hunt.

He's a man's man.

That's one way of thinking about it.

Where is Jacob?

Dwells intense.

You know he doesn't go outside much.

He's Maur.

Well, maybe he's more introverted, but he's certainly this sort of kid, adolescents say, who hangs around home, and there's some intimation that he's his money while he's clearly his mother's favorite and with all the advantages, and I was supposed disadvantage that go along with that, and Isaac and Rebecca don't see eye to eye about who should have predominance among the sons.

And Rebecca is quite complicity with Jacob in inverting the social order.

So the first thing that happens that's crooked is that he saw comes in from hunting.

And he's, you know, maybe he's been out for a number of days and he's ravenous and he's kind of an impulsive guy.

Doesn't really seem to think about the long term very much.

And Jacob was cooking some lentil stew and, uh, East.

I want some of it.

Jacob refuses, and and then says that he'll trade his his birthright for it.

And, ah, eso agrees, which is a bad deal, right?

It's a bad deal.

And so you you could say that S O actually deserves what's coming to him, although at minimum you'd have to think of them both as being equally culpable.

It's a nasty trick, and so that's Jacob's first trick.

And then the second trick is that it's later and Isaac is old and blind and, you know, close to death.

And it's time for him to be still a blessing on his sons, which is a very important event, apparently among these ancient people.

Um and he saw again is out hunting and Rachel dressed dresses.

Jacob up in a Harry, puts a goat skin on his arms, so he's kind of Harry, like Esso and dresses a Minnesota is closed, so he smells like he's so on, Isaac tells.

He sought to go out, hunt him up some venison, I think it is.

And ah, which is a favorite of his.

And Rebecca has Jacob cook up a couple of goat kids and serve that to Isaac and play the role of eso.

And so he does that.

It's pretty net damn nasty, really.

All things considered, you know, to play a trick like that both on your brother and on your blind father and the in collusion with your mother.

It's not the sort of thing that's really designed to promote lot of familial harmony, and so especially because you've already screwed him over in a big way.

Once, you know, you think you'd think that would be sufficient.

So anyways, he's successful, and Esau loses his father's blessing and so that Jacob ends up really in the position of the first born.

And it's quite interesting because God tells Rachel that Jacob is going to be the dominant twin, and you'd think again with gods a blessing or a least the prophecy that Jacob would end up being a good guy.

But he's certainly not presented that way to begin with, which is also quite interesting, given that he's the eventual founder of Israel.

And it's another indication of the realism of these old stories.

You know, it's it's quite amazing to me.

It's always been quite amazing to me how unprintable fied these stories have remained, you know, because you'd think that if you're even the least bit cynical, especially if you had the kind of Marxist religion is the opiate of the masses kind of viewpoint, which which is a credible viewpoint, you know, although it's wrong.

But it's crazy.

Well, I think it's a shallow.

I think it's a shallow interpretation, and not part of the reason I think it's a shallow interpretation is because the stories would be a lot prettier.

If that was the case, these characters wouldn't have this strange, realistic moral ambiguity about them.

You know, if you're gonna feed people of fantasy, then you wanted to be like a Harlequin novel or are greeting card or something like that.

You don't want it to be a story that's full of betrayal and deceit and murder and mayhem and genocide and all of that.

If that just doesn't seem all that, what would you say?

Calming, I guess, would be the right right answer.

So anyways, Jacob gets away with this, but he saw is not happy.

And Jacob is quite convinced that he might kill him.

And I think that was a reasonable fear because he saw was a tough guy and he was used to being outside and he knew how to hunt and he knew how to kill.

And he actually wasn't very happy about getting seriously screwed over by his, you know, stay at home, younger brother twice.

And so Jacob runs off and goes to visit his uncle and on the way.

And this is a very interesting part of this story.

He stops and to sleep, and he takes a stone for a pillow.

And then he has this vision.

It's called a dream, but the context makes it look like a vision of a ladder reaching up to heaven.

And with angels moving up and down the ladder, let's say and there's some representations of that.

I showed you some of them the last time we met, but I'll read it to you first.

He delighted upon a certain place and tired.

They're all night because the sun was set and he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows and lay down in that place to sleep.

And he dreamed and beheld a ladder set upon the earth and the top of it reached heaven and behold the angels of God, ascending and descending on it.

And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, they father and the god of Isaac, the land where on the lioce toothy I will give it and to thy seed.

And I see chubby is the dust of the earth and now shalt spread abroad to the west, into the east, into the north and the south.

That lays out the economical directions.

Right?

So now there's a center with economical directions, like the thing that you see, you know, that little symbol you see on maps.

It's the same thing that symbolically placed upon the earth.

So a center has been established with radiating uh, well, with with what with with direction lines radiating from it.

So it establishes as as a place.

And in the a nice seed shell, all the families of the Earth be blessed.

So that's pretty good news for Jacob.