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If someone had told the great men of the Hebrew Bible that they would be remembered by posterity as patriarchs, they might have replied, “What’s a patriarch?” The word derives not from Hebrew but from Greek roots (patria=family) and Greek (arkhēs=family). Nevertheless, it seems appropriate, because biblical men were first of all heads of families, and Genesis in particular is a book that emphasizes their responsibilities as guardians of their families and keepers of the covenant that God made with the founding father, Abraham. This lecture will examine the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph) in Genesis and then range beyond that book of beginnings to consider the most famous of biblical men, King David. As we shall see, great as he was, it was in his role as guardian of his family and keeper of the covenant that David failed most spectacularly, thereby reversing the moral trajectory that marked the major male figures in Genesis.
Bruce Thompson, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the Departments of History and Literature and the Associate Director of Jewish Studies at U.C.-Santa Cruz, and also teaches at the Institute. He received his Ph.D. in History from Stanford; his areas of scholarly research include European intellectual and cultural history, French history, British Isles history, American Jewish intellectual and cultural history, the history of cinema, and the history of espionage.
