Bible as Literature, Third Blog Question

You’ve got another friend, an agnostic/atheist, a cultured despiser, and he’s pretty bitter and sarcastic about the Bible and about religion.

You’re at the Beanery having coffee and he says something like this to you:

“You know what I really hate about the Bible? About believers? They’re so happy all the time, so confident, so clear. Nothing ever bothers them, or they think nothing ever bothers them. The Bible promises them happiness and teddy bears forevermore and they buy that. The Bible tells them exactly what God looks like and exactly what He wants them to do with their lives, and they do it. It’s disgusting.”

You say, “well, maybe you’re right. I don’t know. But we were just talking about this one ‘pericope’ in the Book of Genesis (that means a piece, a passage from scripture) and it doesn’t fit at all what you seem to think the Bible is about. It’s a story that’s sometimes called the story of Jacob ‘wrestling with the angel,’ though in fact it’s not clear that the being he wrestles with really is an angel. Anyway, let me show you the pericope and see what you think.”

Continue that conversation, talking about Genesis 32: 22-32 and exploring whatever implications you see in the passage for how the language of the Bible works (its form and style) and what it says (its apparent messages or themes or content).