Listening: Margot Käßmann, Die Bibel für Kinder, 17:30-21:41; Grimm brothers, Kinder- und Hausmärchen, Nr. 4, "Märchen von einem der auszog, um das fürchten zu lernen" (23 min.); Roald Dahl, Sophiechen und der Riese, 2:24-2:53.
I asked J this morning if he wanted to read or listen to the story of Cain and Abel. He said no and became very upset, so we didn't. I'm not sure why he reacted so strongly. I asked him if he's heard the story at school (he goes to an Episcopal day school with weekly religious lessons) or at church with his grandmother. He said no, that he's just read the story the one time with me (over a year ago now). I remember we read (more like quickly scanned) the version in Annemarie Benedikt, Die Kinderbibel. It has a pretty gripping picture of the fratricide that may be the main case of the negative impression:
The reason Cain's offering is rejected by God is not easy to explain to a child. Famously, the bible itself says nothing about a difference in the brothers' motives: In the course of time Cain brought to the lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions (Genesis 4: 3-4). Both Benedikt and our other German children's bible, by Eckart zur Neiden, rationalize God's rejection of Cain's offering by the traditional move of imputing selfish motives to the latter, which God perceives. Käßmann has an interesting way of dealing with this: her Cain has the impression that God favors Abel's over his offering, and becomes jealous.
The famous Golden Children's Bible, which was my only bible as a child, imputes just the barest hint of greater thankfulness to Abel: One day it came to pass that Cain brought some of his harvest as an offering to the lord, while Abel brought the fattest and choicest of his lambs. I remember very clearly reading that passage and really struggling to understand why exactly God rejected Cain here, and I think that interpretive challenge was and is a good thing. The psychologizing takes an easy way out, and does some injustice to the complexity of Cain as a figure.
When I asked J what he thought of Jesus's parables about the good Samaritan and the good shepherd, he said: "Daddy, do you know what I noticed? The animals are all smiling in the book!" Lo and behold:
When I asked him what he thought about it he said it was probably right in the case of the sheep, since he was lost and now found, but he wasn't sure about the donkey, since donkeys have to carry a lot of weight and sometimes their owners don't treat them very well, like the miller in the Musicians of Bremen.
J really enjoyed the Grimm tale "Märchen von einem der auszog, um das fürchten zu lernen" (English description here) this—our second—time. He himself has been having a lot of bad dreams, so the idea of an absolutely fearless boy who cheerfully disposes of horrifying creatures and situations is very appealing to him. He also enjoys the "stupid boy" topos, being himself in a phase where he's calling everything stupid.
I took the opportunity of working on the important idiom jemanden für etwas halten = "to consider somebody to be something." I said: Die Leute halten den Jungen für dumm, aber er ist es nicht, er ist nur ganz jung und unerfahren und vielleicht ein bisschen einfältig. ("People think the boy is stupid, but he isn't; he's just young and inexperienced and maybe a little simple-minded").
J's favorite episode today was in the cursed castle when the "half a man" comes tumbling down the chimney, followed by the other half. When I asked whether it was the upper half and the lower, or the left half and the right, J said that it could also be the front half and the back (die vorne [sic] Hälfte und die hintere), which I thought was quite clever.
Age 5.1.12
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