On quotes and editing

Much of the italics in "Corruption" drafts are paraphrases from Genesis, chapter 3.

Here are some quotes I paraphrase:

3:1 "1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman: 'Yea, hath God said: Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?""

3:6 "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."

3:11 " And He said: 'Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat".

A note on grapes: There are exegetes who say the forbidden fruit Eve ate from was a grape. Some say it was a fig. The rabbinic claim is that God did not say which fruit it was, because He did not want to embarrass the fruit, that people would despise it and say, "through you we were exiled from the garden". God's sensitivity towards inanimate objects that cause strife, shows a lot both about how the rabbis perceived God, and about the values that they thought were worthy for people to emulate. (Of course, God has no gender, but English has no gender-neutral pronoun!).

A lot of my take on Genesis is influenced by Rashi. Although my piece is called "Corruption" the concept of Eve as corrupter of mankind, as portrayed in current Western culture, has much more to do with medieval Christian theology than with Judaism, but that's a discussion for a different time.

I wish I had an editor, both because, while obviously, a large part of me really wants cheerleaders for my work, another part of me recognizes that constructive criticism is probably a good thing, and because there are "minor" things, like whether to use "clings" or "clinging" in "Corruption" or "how" or "that" in my Jeremiah 19 piece, that I think it would be good to get some input about from a reader. Instead, I wind up agonizing and usually do nothing. I think the same way we must overcome intertia in our physical lives, there is perhaps a little bit of that creatively: there has to be enough of a motivation for you to change the word, for it to be worth it. You have a block of stone, and you don't want to wreck it by being too heavy with the chisel.