Pre-Genesis aliens

The Al-Anon daily readers with which I have been starting my day for some time had gotten a little stale of late, so I conferred with my friend Mark, out in Seattle, has been reconnecting with his Jewish heritage. He suggested a few titles for me, including The Lonely Man of Faith by Joseph Soloveitchik, a towering figure in the rabbinical world who for decades taught Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University. I had suggested to Mark that we might have a distance book club, and that this might be a good place to start. To which I said, OKURYV.

In this 1965 book, Soloveitchik takes as his jumping off point the contradictions between Genesis I, in which God makes man to dominate the world, and Genesis II, in which God makes man to tend to it. I read for a little while, and then realized that, if I was going to really take this little book of Soloveitchik's seriously, I needed to go back and take in the referenced scripture. So I went and got my Bible off the shelf. Actually, I got the New English Oxford Study Edition, with the revised translation, because I couldn't find the King James edition I have had since childhood (but never really cracked). I know it is around here somewhere.

So I start reading, from the beginning, and God is making the world by proclamation, using all these words: light, water, earth, firmament, fruit, seeds, beasts, etc. And I realized that the only way (s)he would have all of these words was if (s)he had already made other worlds.

Which really made me pine for Star Trek. Since Graham and I finished watching Deep Space 9, he has insisted that we watch The Blacklist, in which James Spader has a lot of fun playing a master criminal, and lots of people die. But, compared to the majesty of the Star Trek universe, with its ever-expanding cast of extra-terrestrial beings and its genuine, multi-decade attempt to grow a franchise which meditates as seriously as possible on the growth and interplay of civilizations and species, it fairly pales. I will make a serious push for us to get started with Voyager as soon as possible.