"Appreciation is a wonderful thing," wrote Voltaire. "It
makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well."

What if there had been no story?
No Abraham and Sarah, no Isaac and Rebekah,
and no Esau and Jacob, and no Rachel and Leah.
What if no one had remembered?
What if no one had cared enough to write it down?
Whaat if there had been no God of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel,
and the ten generations from Noah to Abraham had never existed?
What if there had been no creation and there was only chaos and the void?
What if God himself was only a hole in the darkness?

Annie Roiphe, Water from the Well