Our Fathers' Wells: A Personal Encounter With the Myths of Genesis - Hardcover

Pitzele, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006250617X ISBN 13: 9780062506177

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1995

Synopsis

Born of thoroughly assimilated Jewish parents, Peter Pitzele journeys back from his various odysseys in alternative faiths to search out the roots of his own birthright. In discovering and claiming just what that means to him, he plants his focus firmly in the biblical book of Genesis. Here he finds the first articulation of those mythic paradigms that will form in time the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Here are "the fathers' wells," the deep and difficult source texts for our imagination of God.
Pitzele's approach to Genesis is personal and pluralistic. He reads not only with a detailed knowledge of the tales, but with the imagination of a psychodramatist. Scripture for him is full of dramatic possibility and psychological truth. The great cast of archetypal figures - Adam, Eve, Cain, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph - are given a fuller dimension in his rendering of their stories. Woven throughout are slices of Pitzele's own personal history, demonstrating the relationship between myth and experience, between the profound images of the Western spiritual tradition and the life of a man who wrestles with his roles as father, husband, son, and brother.
In the spirit of conservation, Pitzele seeks to clarify the wells of our spiritual inheritance. His journey of exploration and self-discovery has an immediacy for any of us grappling to find meaning and relevance in the gifts of the past. His purpose is not merely to retell but to re-animate our foundational stories and to bring them to bear on our own lives.

About this title

From the Publisher:

After half a lifetime of searching for spiritual enlightenment, a university professor returns to his religious roots by wrestling with the patriarchal myths in the Book of Genesis.

About the Author:

Peter Pitzele is now Director of Psychodrama Services at Four Winds Hospital in Katonah, New York, and teaches at Hebrew Union College and Union Theological Seminary.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 006250617X
• ISBN 13: 9780062506177
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 258