- Scholars have often said that the Hebrew texts are the first example of written history. Earlier writing from Sumeria recorded myths (including the Flood story), genealogies, laws and accounts, but the Hebrews were the first to write a narrative history of their people. Before the “people of the book,” the common culture of a clan or tribe was formed exclusively by oral tales and images.
- Images are fundamentally different from words. Leonard Shlain, in his book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, lays out a theory about this difference and the impact it has had on cultural evolution. Shlain thought that writing stimulated left brain, linear, cause-and-effect thinking, associated with males, while a focus on images produced a more intuitive and holistic style of thought, associated with females.
- The “people of the book” crusaded against images, as their God warned them away from the “alien gods” of other people. The most interesting scenes in Genesis revolve around the struggles within the tribe of Abraham over images and other vestiges of goddess worship, for clearly these stories are about a people in transition. And this is where Crumb’s work becomes important.
- By rendering every letter of Genesis faithfully into images, Crumb has given us a blank canvas on which to color new meaning. Combining words and images together allows us to escape the fundamentalism of either one alone.
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