Adam and Eve

[halo07guy]

I just find it odd that someone banged their sister in the beginning.......

 

[one_raven]

I just find it odd that someone banged their sister in the beginning.......

Who did that? :bugeye:
Neither were "concieved", so they were not brother and sister.
God created Eve as a companion for Adam.

 

[madanthonywayne]

It's been years since I read that.
I need to pick it up again.
Thanks.

No problem. As I said, Rand was pointing out many of the same things as you. But she was doing it to discredit Christianity, whereas your analysis actually serves to make some sense of a story that really doesn't make much sense otherwise.

 

[one_raven]

The Torah is the section of the Tanakh that is supposed to be a history of the Jews.
The creation story from the Torah closely parallels and is likely based on the Sumerian Creation story.
The Sumerian civilization was one of the first in the world (as far as we know) - certainly one of the first in the Middle East.
As far as anyone can tell, the first "man" came out of Ethiopia, migrated through Djibouti crossed the Mandab Strait into Yemen.

Early man, like all primates, likely thrived along Riparian habitats.
Until he developed the necessary agrarian skills required to sustain large numbers of people in an environment, he would have been nomadic.
Shell middens 125,000 years old have been found in Eritrea indicating the diet of early humans was sea food obtained by beachcombing as he followed the shore of the Red Sea south to Djibouti, where he could see land (Yemen) across the Mandab Strait.
From there, following the water, they ended up settling in Sumer (modern day Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates - two of the rivers in Genesis).

NIV Genesis 2:10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Sumer had people farming the lands at least as far back as 6600 BCE.
The earliest records we have of Sumerian religion date back to about 4000 BCE.
They were a polytheistic people.

When did man become man?
When he could tell stories.

The earliest humans recognized their many vulnerabilities and were keenly aware of their own mortality.
They did not have fur to protect them from the elements.
They did not have razor sharp claws and fangs to fight off predators.
They were not terribly fast runners.
They could not see very well in the dark.
They could not swim long distances.

Humans had two saving graces on which to depend for survival: intellect and community; aside from that, they were weak and knew it.
Everywhere humans looked, there was something more powerful than they were.
These more powerful things held sway over their lives, and as a result, over their collective psyche.
People fear what is more powerful than them.
They also respect what is more powerful than them.
People began to anthropomorphise the forces of nature and animals and tell stories about them.
They began to pray to what was more powerful than them.
They began to develop Gods - God to fear - Gods to worship - Gods to respect - Gods to beg for food and rain - Gods to blame for drought and pestilence.

Man was at the mercy of the Gods for everything, including whether or not there would be food for him to eat.
Man learning to plant and harvest crops, farm animals and use the river to irrigate fields gave him the ability to stop migrating to follow food and settle Sumer.

Settling Sumer gave man the ability to have control over his own destiny.
He built houses.
He planted crops.
He irrigated fields.
He raised animals.

There was still draught, disease and other problems to face, but man was becoming more powerful, and learned how to deal with these problems as a community.
He was no longer at complete mercy of the whims of the Gods.

Adam and Eve was the Sumerian story of how man grasped the gauntlet of self-determination and took power from the Gods to control his own life.

Abraham was Sumerian.

 

[madanthonywayne]

They began to develop Gods - God to fear - Gods to worship - Gods to respect - Gods to beg for food and rain - Gods to blame for drought and pestilence.

Man was at the mercy of the Gods for everything, including whether or not there would be food for him to eat.
Man learning to plant and harvest crops, farm animals and use the river to irrigate fields gave him the ability to stop migrating to follow food and settle Sumer.

Settling Sumer gave man the ability to have control over his own destiny.
He built houses.
He planted crops.
He irrigated fields.
He raised animals.

There was still draught, disease and other problems to face, but man was becoming more powerful, and learned how to deal with these problems as a community.
He was no longer at complete mercy of the whims of the Gods.

Adam and Eve was the Sumerian story of how man grasped the gauntlet of self-determination and took power from the Gods to control his own life.

Abraham was Sumerian.

It might also be the transition point from polytheism to monotheism. Notice that the garden of eden story is one of the few places where God says "us"

NIV Genesis 3:2 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us​

A world with multiple gods is ruled by the capricious nature of these many gods, it is a fundamentaly irrational and incomprehensible place.

But a universe with one God has rules that can be understood by the human mind. It is a universe in which man is not at the mercy of a pantheon of gods who arbitrarily decide his fate.

One God, one set of rules which the human mind can grasp and manipulate to his benefit.

So when man left the garden of eden, a place where his every need was provided for him by the gods, he left a world he could never understand and entered a world of rational thought. Of cause and effect. Of right and wrong.

 

[Enmos]

So back to the question..
Why was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil placed in the Garden of Eden?
Why put it there if they were not supposed to eat from it?

I was always taught it was to test his faith or obedience.
Anyway, since when does a plant have to be edible for it to be in a garden ?

Now that i think of it, it is kind of strange the the tree was called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. You would almost think God didnt want Adam to know good from evil..
Or, since God is supposed to be all-knowing, God set up Adam to eat from it. And God had it planned for Adam all along.

 

[Carcano]

Why would God have even placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden (Hell, why would he have even CREATED the trees) if he didn't want them to eat of it?

Because the Hebrews who wrote Genesis needed a way of explaining why man has such a hard life in a world created by a perfect and benevolent God.

The only way out was to blame it on man, whos life was idyllic in the beginning, but fell from grace through original sin, and was thus cursed..."in the sweat of thy face thou shall eat bread. til thou return to the ground, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shall return".

 

[Grantywanty]

I was always taught it was to test his faith or obedience.
Anyway, since when does a plant have to be edible for it to be in a garden ?

Now that i think of it, it is kind of strange the the tree was called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. You would almost think God didnt want Adam to know good from evil..
Or, since God is supposed to be all-knowing, God set up Adam to eat from it. And God had it planned for Adam all along.

To psychologize it: it creates a pattern where the older males in a group can say to everyone else: don't ask questions about certain things and avoid certain experiences BECAUSE we told you so. This makes the myth attractive to those with power because it creates a model for arbritrary elder male control of knowledge and experience. This may have even been the intention of making the myth this way, not that this had to be conscious on the parts of the mythmakers.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

To psychologize it: it creates a pattern where the older males in a group can say to everyone else: don't ask questions about certain things and avoid certain experiences BECAUSE we told you so. This makes the myth attractive to those with power because it creates a model for arbritrary elder male control of knowledge and experience. This may have even been the intention of making the myth this way, not that this had to be conscious on the parts of the mythmakers.

This sounds like what my wife says:

Men invented religion so they would never have to say, "I don't know."

 

[Dark520]

Regardless of how true or untrue the story itself is, I thought that was a very thorough and well-thought out examination of it, I enjoyed reading.

 

[one_raven]

It might also be the transition point from polytheism to monotheism.

Exactly.
I think it is plausible that the two go hand-in-hand.
The more control you take over your own life, the less Gods/Demons you need.

 

[one_raven]

Regardless of how true or untrue the story itself is, I thought that was a very thorough and well-thought out examination of it, I enjoyed reading.

Thank you.

 

[sniffy]

Although i played no part in the debate I also enjoyed reading the posts. It illustrates that it is possible to discuss religious texts without resorting to insult and injury.

It helps that the thread is in the right place!

 

[Artizan007]

Something to do with the Exodus!

A few thoughts,

Could this story have something to do with "Moses" explaining or telling their story of the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt? I have often wondered why Moses' choice of a "snake in the garden", why the two trees etc. Where did these ideas come from?

Did not the Pharaoh (God incarnated/God's son, a god, but also a man) have on his head dress a serpent? (This serpent is depicted in some instances with 6 legs - were these the six legs that were removed when the serpent was told in Genesis, it would no longer walk but "crawl on its belly"? Depicting its destruction. The serpent God in Eqypt, Hetepes-Sekhus was a symbol of power, oppression and deception. Re, Hetepes, and Pharaoh were "destroyed" by YHWH when the Jews left Egypt under Moses along with many of the other lesser God's of Egypt.

Maybe this was Moses' way of showing the people of Israel that YHWH, their 'true' Creator God and more powerful than the 'false' Re, the creator God of the Egyptians.

Re/Amon Re was the most powerful god of Egypt, he had the Underworld Cobra goddess represented on Pharaoh's head dress as his all seeing eye. It is she who conquers Osiris's enemies, death and chaos. Amon Re was the king of Gods, a creator god, master of life and shown to be a primeval deity and a symbol of creative force. Did not Re travel through the sea of Reeds in to the underworld. In this story within the Torah, did not the children of Israel pass through this "sea of Reeds" where Pharaoh and his soldiers were destroyed.

The Egyptian texts seem to assign great antiquity to Ra's existence - it seems that he was the creator God of the Egyptians. YHWH destroyed Amon Re, and Moses rod, when it became a serpent ate the Magician's rods that turned into serpents could show the destruction of Hetepes-Sekhus.

So is this story in Genesis simply how the Jewish people made sense of what happened to them in Egypt? Maybe they came out of Egypt into their own land and needed to tell their own story of creation, and their relation to YHWH that created them and brought them out of Egypt? Hence the Genesis 1 & 2 accounts of creation, humanity, etc, and subsequent chapters, showing humanities progression from Israel's perspective.

I am still learning, but I thought it may spark some discussion.

 

[S.A.M.]

Exactly.
I think it is plausible that the two go hand-in-hand.
The more control you take over your own life, the less Gods/Demons you need.

On the presumption that polytheism preceded monotheism.

History of course, appears to say otherwise.

 

[iceaura]

The more control you take over your own life, the less Gods/Demons you need.

There isn't much evidence of strong religions with gods among pre-agricultural people - which fits, in a way: hunter/gatherers may feel they have more "control" over their fates than farmers waiting for rain do.

On the presumption that polytheism preceded monotheism.

History of course, appears to say otherwise.

I doubt history goes back far enough to have much say in the matter.

 

[one_raven]

History of course, appears to say otherwise.

Not according to everything I have ever read on the subject.

 

[one_raven]

Artizan007,

Interesting stuff.
I need to do some more research.
Do you have more information about the six-legged "serpent" on the pharoah's headdress?

 

[one_raven]

It wasn't the "Tree of Knowledge", it was the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil".

 

[S.A.M.]

Not according to everything I have ever read on the subject.

Perhaps you need to read a little more in depth:

e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urmonotheismus

http://www.worldspirituality.org/primitive-monotheism.html

“China, India, Egypt, and Greece all agree in the monotheistic type of their early religion. The Orphic hymns, long before the advent of the popular divinities, celebrated the Pantheos, the Universal God. The odes compiled by Confucius testify to the early worship of Shangte, the Supreme Euler. The Vedas speak of ‘one unknown true Being, all-present, all-powerful; the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the universe.’ And in Egypt, as late as the time of Plutarch, there were still vestiges of a monotheistic worship. ‘The other Egyptians,’ he says, ‘all made offerings at the tombs of the sacred beasts; but the inhabitants of the Thebaid stood alone in making no such offerings, not regarding as a god anything that can die, and acknowledging no god but one, whom they call Kneph, who had no birth, and can have no death. Abraham, in his wanderings, found the God of his fathers known and honored in Salem, in Gerar, and in Memphis; while at a later day Jethro, in Midian, and Balaam, in Mesopotamia, were witnesses that the knowledge of Jehovah was not yet extinct in those countries.’”[130]