Genesis (Episode 7)

Genesis, whether the first book of the Bible, the first of the Five Books of Moses, a video gaming console of the late 1980s, or a collaborative English rock band featuring Phil Collins, means, we are told by the likes of Big Lexi, “a beginning.” Does this meaning satisfy us? At the very starting line of our journey through the Good Book, we are treated with lexicographical kid gloves that imitate the sterilized, abstracted anglophonic world of the 21^st Century, where we are either horrified that our food once had a face or are completely oblivious to the myoidal origin of a hamburger patty. As an insightful Benedictine monk with a background in biology once remarked to me, “If you want to eat, something [either plant or animal] must die.”

Although the word “genesis” is more concerned with human gestation than digestion, a helpful key to its meaning can be found in, of all things, pasta, or rather, the names given to pasta. It is difficult to assign a thematic thread to the Italian system of naming pasta. The best sub-theme that I have postulated to date enjoins those pastas connected to the theme of debt collection. For example, there is farfalle, which we are supposed to believe means “butterfly” but is clearly a bowtie in shape and coercive association. In addition we have linguine with its presumed tongue shape, and gnocchi in the form of knees or kneecaps, which might not strictly be considered pasta on account of either its egg or potato content. The word “gnocchi” is derived from the Latin “genu” and the ancient Greek “γόνυ,” both meaning knee, that pivotal joint between the thigh and the lower leg.

The missing link upon which the word for “knee,” and the meaning of “genesis” hinges is the Greek alpha contract verb “γεννάω” meaning “to beget” in reference to a father and “to bear, give birth” in reference to a mother. The divergent meanings of this verb are attributed according to the complementarity of both parents out of the necessity to solve one of the great natural and social mysteries of human reproduction. Whenever a human child is born, one of the parents is identified by nature. For those of us less perceptive than others, God has deigned to connect the neonatal child for a time to the mother by means of a nutritive cord. The paternity question is not always so clear. A father might have been three sheets to the wind for the last nine months or even six feet under by the advent of the child.

It seems, however, that our ancestors across the borders and social mores of ancient civilizations developed a system of claiming the paternity of a child by having the father receive the child on his knees, that is, by placing a child close to his generative organs. These organs came to be known by the diminutive Latin form of “genu,” that is “genitals” in English or from Greek “γόνυ, γόνατος” to the English “gonads.” In modern hospitals we mimic this ritual by letting the child’s father cut the umbilical with clamps and specialize shears. Perhaps we today have lost something visceral and vital  in the ventris. By ceremonially receiving his issue on his knees, the father claims his child. The pater becomes patent. He promises to the mother, to the child, and to the community to provide for the child and to be the child’s protector. He becomes for that child and every subsequent child expendable. This was to our forefathers and is now today no little matter. It is the foundation of civilization as fidelity to and for the filius formed the family out of the lust and lasciviousness that left the libertine lonely, leant toward oblivion.

With this deep etymology the scope of the Book of Genesis comes into frame. We can more acutely appreciate the import of genealogies, paternal blessings, infidelities, and dubious lineage in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. On a very human level the question of Genesis can be understood in sum by the question, “Who’s your daddy?” Just as with our first parents in the garden, our troubles begin when we forget the greatness of our Father and the loving mercy of His mighty embrace. The Divine Paternity, when extended to the entire human family, through the Incarnation of the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, turns the devil’s taunt into the penitent’s mantra: Remember Who’s your Daddy.