What The Adam and Eve story could mean.
If the Adam and Eve story (which I will refer to as Eden) is an allegory, is it alluding to something?, and in this day and age that 'something' can only mean one thing.
I have noted in past posts that the Adam and Eve story is similar to other ancient Mesopotamian cultures', but different too. In the Gilgemesh epic the woman seduces the man, in Eden the woman compels the man to eat forbidden fruit.
The story, as an allegory, sounds like the "forbidden fruit" means something else, but weather that is because it is alluding to sexual sin/temptation or weather it is carried over from the early epic that did deal with sexual enticement is something that needs to be considered.
I am going to assume it is not dealing with sexual sin per se but all sin. here is what I think the allegory is telling us.
Humans are great at making excuses for bad behaviour. Sure, in the olden days Judges didn't go lenient on youth because of a broken home, or poverty, but they sure blamed one group for their sins. In the Middle East of the gospels women were not only less then men, they were the tempters. The Pharasees bring Jesus a woman "caught in the act of adultery"!!!! Um, and she was alone? Of course not (rhetorical question). But she was the women in this act, and a man was considered to be easily tempted, so easily, in fact, that he wasn't really capable of saying "no", so the Pharasees are implying she is a wanton woman, or a prostitute or someone who enticed the poor man, who is just a victim of her cunning charm.
Well, maybe not entirely, but think about the East for a second. Who has to cover up - the women. Why? in order to not tempt men. Um, if a man sees a beautiful woman he is incapable of restraining himself? If a couple is caught in adultery who is going to get stoned? Never have I heard of a human rights case pleading for a man to be spared a stoning, lashing, jail sentence because he was caught in adultery (with a woman). No matter how 'right wing' and 'eye for eye' a society is, it seems the concept of a woman's charms are a guaranteed excuse for immoral behaviour.
So, back to Eden. In Eden the man and woman are completely innocent - that is, unaware of the power of sexual attraction as well as sinless. They can walk around naked, yet never fear being overcome with lust, sort of the opposite of the Bibical Jewish, and all ancient eastern, culture(s) - that would assume any young couple left to wander around naked together ought to be stoned for their sin (for a sin would surely have occurred). Adam is free from the tyranny of a Woman's charm, in the beginning.
This is where it gets tricky. Is the women then, once fallen, able to tempt Adam because she is now sexually alluring? Is she using her sexuality/femininity to win him over to herself? or her schemes - apple eating-? Or, is this a story about people in a state of innocence, unencumbered by worldly lusts just being human and sinning no matter how free from excuses they may be?
I side with the second idea - Eden is a sin-free, excuse-free setting. God is not saying people lived in a state of innocence once, he is saying IF people lived in a state of innocence, raised free from parental foibles (hence no mom or dad), societal/ cultural pressures (hence no one else around) and other's sins (hence no 'fallen' world) they would still mess up. We are sinful by nature, not nurture.
I like the fact that Eden doesn't really have a 'real' sin in the story. Eating fruit is hardly a sin, but disobedience is a sin and is actually what all sin is. So, from this analogy we all let God down (aka fall short of the Glory of God), even if God eradicated our past, scrubbed our memories and put us in a magical garden, made us as pure as the driven snow, and hung out with us every day, we would sin (and not be slow about it).
Note: This is just my opinion and could change. I can find very little in evangelical literature on what the allegory of Adam and Eve in Eden is saying, since most evangelical's take it literally or if not, debate it's veracity. I just want to learn what God is telling us through this allegory, and throwing out my own views here.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
So This Is Where it is at.
I am still not fully able to appreciate the allegorical aspects of the Garden of Eden, because of my desire to 'stay the course' on the New Testament. It is one thing to take Adam and Eve as an allegory, written for less scientifically minded types over at least three thousand (if not more millennia) years ago. All of the time I have spent attending Christian Churches, the one thing that is drilled into us is that the New Testament is the tenant of our faith. Most Evangelicals allow poetic license for old testament writers. The Psalms are poetic, Job was not a scientist (hence the world's pillars mentioned), The Israelites didn't understand the earth's orbit - so Joshua stopped the Sun to buy time. But that same poetic, free license is not given to New Testament interpretations. Of course all scripture has been translated, cultural differences are noted, but to varying degrees. What is often enshrined in our sub-culture of Evangelical Christianity is that Paul spoke directly from the mouth of God.
If Paul says.... then that must be the truth. Which is fine, to a point. Paul is almost infallible. I have heard many an evangelical comment negatively about the Catholic notion that the Pope is the continuation of the apostle Peter's work, and, due to this, he speaks infallibly when the Catholic church has it's huge once-a-century Council of Trent (or somewhere) meetings. Evangelicals know everyone is sinful and cannot be infallible. Unless that person is Paul and he is writing down something, even if it is a letter to a specific person, about a specific situation, at a specific time in history. Oh, it is never directly said, but it is implied. Just try to question whether Paul really was speaking from God, or himself of as a product of his time.
But lately I have been realizing that God never changed. He addressed Job in his world (a flat disk-shaped earth) held up by pillars (Job 9:6), the Israelites in theirs (Joshua 10:13) as stopping the Sun meant lengthening their day (something an over-tilt of the earth's axis would do - as it does in an arctic summer) and he does it again in Paul's day. Paul is subject to his own biases and world views?!? If so should we take him at face value for validity of Adam and Eve?
Here is where Paul is subject to his time and culture's understanding:
9One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, 10because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor. Hebrews 7: 9 - 10
Here is what Paul means.
In Paul's time, and for millennia before babies were made in this manner. Adam, or first man, whose name varies in various cultures, was formed with all of humankind inside his testes. His sperm were tiny formed babies (hence, his seed). Inside the microscopic, fully formed Seth was an even more microscopic fully formed Enosh and inside Enosh was a tinier, yet, fully formed Kenan... all the way to Paul's day. Since Levi was a future relative of Abraham, inside Abraham was a fully formed, yet microscopic Isac and inside this tiny Isac's sperm was an even tinier Jacob who had a microscopic Levi in him when Abraham tithed to Melchizedek. This is also how Adam can bring down everyone with his sin (and not Eve, since she sinned alone, not having 'seeds' within her). (Romans 5: 12 -14, well actually verses 12 - 19).
Whew. So Paul, thinks that Adam caused humankind's fall because only Adam carried humankind in his loins. Did God know women also carried (slightly over) half of our genetic make-up? And Paul didn't get this correct, even though he (supposedly) heard each word he wrote straight from God? So if God isn't teaching his leaders scientific details, would it be safe to assume that God isn't about to challenge the one Mother/Father theory of humankind, widely held in Paul's day? Does that mean it is a fact? Not if the Old Testament is any indication.
The more I live the more I am convinced that our current focus on the New Testament being a direct quote from God is seriously flawed. Paul does speak from a prophetic. apostolic state of grace, most of the time. But not every letter of every word of every scroll is a direct quote from God Himself. Some is from God, prompted by the Holy Spirit, but some is just Paul, being Paul in his 35 (?) AD Grecco/Roman world.
Paul is busy writing to people, sometimes it is a reply to a long-lost letter, sometimes it is a response to something that he has been told about. Paul's letters are to a group of people who see the world very differently from us. In their world everyone is related to a first father. In their world men make the babies, women grow them. The point isn't how much Paul got scientifically correct, it is that he responded to the points of their letters, queries and situations correctly, of Jews and Non-Jews getting access to God (another reason why he brings up Adam and Eve rather than those sinning Isrealites in the dessert), of the poor and slaves being treated as equal, of how to manage a meeting of Christians and other important concepts that make Christianity what it is. Does it really matter if he had the concept of genetics correct, or weather he believed in a literal Adam or Eve?
If Paul says.... then that must be the truth. Which is fine, to a point. Paul is almost infallible. I have heard many an evangelical comment negatively about the Catholic notion that the Pope is the continuation of the apostle Peter's work, and, due to this, he speaks infallibly when the Catholic church has it's huge once-a-century Council of Trent (or somewhere) meetings. Evangelicals know everyone is sinful and cannot be infallible. Unless that person is Paul and he is writing down something, even if it is a letter to a specific person, about a specific situation, at a specific time in history. Oh, it is never directly said, but it is implied. Just try to question whether Paul really was speaking from God, or himself of as a product of his time.
But lately I have been realizing that God never changed. He addressed Job in his world (a flat disk-shaped earth) held up by pillars (Job 9:6), the Israelites in theirs (Joshua 10:13) as stopping the Sun meant lengthening their day (something an over-tilt of the earth's axis would do - as it does in an arctic summer) and he does it again in Paul's day. Paul is subject to his own biases and world views?!? If so should we take him at face value for validity of Adam and Eve?
Here is where Paul is subject to his time and culture's understanding:
9One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, 10because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor. Hebrews 7: 9 - 10
Here is what Paul means.
In Paul's time, and for millennia before babies were made in this manner. Adam, or first man, whose name varies in various cultures, was formed with all of humankind inside his testes. His sperm were tiny formed babies (hence, his seed). Inside the microscopic, fully formed Seth was an even more microscopic fully formed Enosh and inside Enosh was a tinier, yet, fully formed Kenan... all the way to Paul's day. Since Levi was a future relative of Abraham, inside Abraham was a fully formed, yet microscopic Isac and inside this tiny Isac's sperm was an even tinier Jacob who had a microscopic Levi in him when Abraham tithed to Melchizedek. This is also how Adam can bring down everyone with his sin (and not Eve, since she sinned alone, not having 'seeds' within her). (Romans 5: 12 -14, well actually verses 12 - 19).
Whew. So Paul, thinks that Adam caused humankind's fall because only Adam carried humankind in his loins. Did God know women also carried (slightly over) half of our genetic make-up? And Paul didn't get this correct, even though he (supposedly) heard each word he wrote straight from God? So if God isn't teaching his leaders scientific details, would it be safe to assume that God isn't about to challenge the one Mother/Father theory of humankind, widely held in Paul's day? Does that mean it is a fact? Not if the Old Testament is any indication.
The more I live the more I am convinced that our current focus on the New Testament being a direct quote from God is seriously flawed. Paul does speak from a prophetic. apostolic state of grace, most of the time. But not every letter of every word of every scroll is a direct quote from God Himself. Some is from God, prompted by the Holy Spirit, but some is just Paul, being Paul in his 35 (?) AD Grecco/Roman world.
Paul is busy writing to people, sometimes it is a reply to a long-lost letter, sometimes it is a response to something that he has been told about. Paul's letters are to a group of people who see the world very differently from us. In their world everyone is related to a first father. In their world men make the babies, women grow them. The point isn't how much Paul got scientifically correct, it is that he responded to the points of their letters, queries and situations correctly, of Jews and Non-Jews getting access to God (another reason why he brings up Adam and Eve rather than those sinning Isrealites in the dessert), of the poor and slaves being treated as equal, of how to manage a meeting of Christians and other important concepts that make Christianity what it is. Does it really matter if he had the concept of genetics correct, or weather he believed in a literal Adam or Eve?
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Who is the author of Genesis
I was thinking that the best way to determine the historical validity of Adam and Eve is to look at the surrounding cultures, their belief systems and then work on what Genesis is trying to tell us in light of this. This is a good thing to do, but, who and when it was written down could tell us a lot too.
I thought it was Moses. The guy who brought us Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Well...
It was probably written in the post-exilic period.
I thought it was Moses. The guy who brought us Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Well...
It was probably written in the post-exilic period.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
I am Searching for Prophetic Meaning in a Myth
Just like the title says, I want to focus this blog on what Genesis is saying to us, to get here, I need to dispel common notions, interpretations and understandings of Genesis, without throwing the baby out with the bath-water. I think I have written why Genesis ch. 2-3 cannot be literal (I will leave the Paul argument out of it for now, but I do have an excellent link about that for later). Getting caught up in wether or not Genesis is an historical account we are supposed to be reading literally allows 98% of evangelicals to miss the whole point, meaning and message of Genesis. I am trying to find out what God wanted his people to understand about himself and their relationship to him from the story.
For those in the literal camp, just think, for a moment, why Genesis isn't scientific. Would it do any good for God to explain genetics? Even Darwin didn't know or understand genetics (he used a theory of heredity, which preceded genetics). Darwin could see evidence for evolution through the fossil record, biogeography, comparative anatomy and artificial selection, since then more and more evidence has piled up to support evolution (carbon dating, more fossils, genetics, mapping genomes - esp. the human's, monkey's, and soon Neanderthal's). But God's purpose in Genesis is not to explain to us the workings of the universe, for that he gave us brians and natural curiosity. God's purpose is to restore humans to himself, in a nutshell. Getting into a scientific explanation would seriously detract from his purpose.
To illustrate, I am going to pick on my poor grade 8 gym teacher.
Our grade eight gym teacher taught the whole class gym, and once a year health. Not the homeroom teachers we all knew and loved, not community health nurse, but the school gym teacher. He was not impressed. We had to learn about sex ed. So, he taught us mitosis and meiosis. Now, I was not a teacher back when I was in Jr. High, but I think it is a safe bet to say that sex ed. was supposed to be about choices, maybe birth control, perhaps. I am pretty sure it wasn't meant to substitute a biology class. Teaching grade eights about cell division, although technically correct, misses the point.
Why would God give ancient Hebrews a science lesson? What words would He use? How does one explain genetics, selection, and mutations, when they don't even know that women contributed to a child's makeup? That's right, Adam's seed was their understanding of how babies were made, plant a seed (plant or human) and grow it in a field (or womb). Hence we all get Adam's sin, not Eve's. God doesn't bother to correct this, it's not what he wants to say, so why do we keep letting our need for literalism get in the way of the message?
So God is letting his people know that he once walked among us, making our lives easy. Our sin drove him away and we are now separated from him, life is not easy and we are now sinners. I don't know how literally we can take any of the Adam and Eve story. I would like to think that parts are real. That is tough though.
If Adam and Eve are based on a Mesopotamian myth then it would make sense to go digging into the two stories and compare and contrast them.
If the Adam and Eve story is about the Hebrews' fall from grace and current situation in Babylon, it would make sense to compare it to Israel's history. From life in the promised land (garden of Paradise) to loss of Israel/captivity (exile from Eden).
If the Adam and Eve story is completely unique - a difficult concept given its similarities to other ancient myths - then what do we make of it?
All three ways of reading it will lead us down different paths by causing us to reach different conclusions as each view will place the emphasis on different parts of the story. The other problem we encounter is reading Genesis 2 and 3 with our contemporary focus on origins in mind.
We love to look at the Adam and Eve story, thanks to the apostle Paul, as the way women and men should be viewed in the church. We focus on how one act of sin could taint us all, thanks to Augustine, we wonder what the earth was like pre-fall, we wonder whether there were mutations, diseases and death in the wildlife's genomes in Paradise. On and on we go, wondering, trying to make sense of something that really wasn't meant to make us lose the true meaning.
But I want to know what God wanted the readers to learn. Was it the man's and woman's role in the body of Christ? How we became sinful? How easy life would be without sin and a call to that pre-sinful, pre-consequential state? I don't think that was the point of this. A fall explains why the world is bad, unbalanced and chaotic. God is reveling how he is going to make it right, first to the Israelites, then to the nations.
One point to remember is that the ancients saw the world as a battle between enveloping chaos, randomness and darkness vs. order, light and predictability. Doing good, avoiding evil, maintaining order were done, not just to have peace and prosperity, but to avoid chaos from gaining a foothold. In their creation stories, heros or gods fought off the Chaos (usually a sea serpent called Leviathan who lived in the deep under the flat world). The god/hero won and good was victorious.
In the story of Adam and Eve, neither Adam nor Eve overthrow the serpent, the serpent "wins", if you will, and Adam and Eve lose their ordered Paradise. They are thrown into a chaotic world that will work against them. They will have to labour hard to maintain order, reap a harvest and grow a family. They lost, they need a hero/saviour.
We don't see this obvious need, because we aren't familiar with the creation myths of the day.
If Genesis 1 -11 is written in the post-exilic period, it certainly does parallel the Jewish plight. First, God makes a promise land/garden where he can commune with his people/couple. The people/couple mess up by disobedience (other gods/eating forbidden things). The result of disobedience is expulsion from the promised land/garden. In the land beyond the Promised land/garden life is difficult and the people/couple are separated from that close intimacy they had with their maker. If God kicked Adam and Eve out of Paradise, he eventually gave their predecessors a Promised Land, and maybe he will give the Jews' predecessors another chance, if they turn back to God.
What if the Adam and Eve story wasn't written in the post-exilic period, it wasn't based on Sumerian myths, but rather on a stylized form of a real couple who God granted great favour and prosperity. We would have to ignore the serpent, Eden's geographic location, and how they came into existence for this to work. Okay, so Adam and Eve are given everything they could want, and a close relationship with God. They get tempted, somehow, and disobey God, eating the one they weren't supposed to, and they lose their favoured status, prosperity and closeness with God. They go off, unblessed into the hostile world and raise two sons, one a horrible son who kills the other then is lost to them, then they have another son and become the ancestors of everyone. It works nicely with the idea that Adam and Eve are real, but it leaves out the part where they can hope for a saviour (the hero who slays the Leviathan/Chaos) or salvation (turning to God will restore the promised land). In the other two stories, the need for a saviour to restore them is implied, in this one, the story ends hopelessly.
For those in the literal camp, just think, for a moment, why Genesis isn't scientific. Would it do any good for God to explain genetics? Even Darwin didn't know or understand genetics (he used a theory of heredity, which preceded genetics). Darwin could see evidence for evolution through the fossil record, biogeography, comparative anatomy and artificial selection, since then more and more evidence has piled up to support evolution (carbon dating, more fossils, genetics, mapping genomes - esp. the human's, monkey's, and soon Neanderthal's). But God's purpose in Genesis is not to explain to us the workings of the universe, for that he gave us brians and natural curiosity. God's purpose is to restore humans to himself, in a nutshell. Getting into a scientific explanation would seriously detract from his purpose.
To illustrate, I am going to pick on my poor grade 8 gym teacher.
Our grade eight gym teacher taught the whole class gym, and once a year health. Not the homeroom teachers we all knew and loved, not community health nurse, but the school gym teacher. He was not impressed. We had to learn about sex ed. So, he taught us mitosis and meiosis. Now, I was not a teacher back when I was in Jr. High, but I think it is a safe bet to say that sex ed. was supposed to be about choices, maybe birth control, perhaps. I am pretty sure it wasn't meant to substitute a biology class. Teaching grade eights about cell division, although technically correct, misses the point.
Why would God give ancient Hebrews a science lesson? What words would He use? How does one explain genetics, selection, and mutations, when they don't even know that women contributed to a child's makeup? That's right, Adam's seed was their understanding of how babies were made, plant a seed (plant or human) and grow it in a field (or womb). Hence we all get Adam's sin, not Eve's. God doesn't bother to correct this, it's not what he wants to say, so why do we keep letting our need for literalism get in the way of the message?
So God is letting his people know that he once walked among us, making our lives easy. Our sin drove him away and we are now separated from him, life is not easy and we are now sinners. I don't know how literally we can take any of the Adam and Eve story. I would like to think that parts are real. That is tough though.
If Adam and Eve are based on a Mesopotamian myth then it would make sense to go digging into the two stories and compare and contrast them.
If the Adam and Eve story is about the Hebrews' fall from grace and current situation in Babylon, it would make sense to compare it to Israel's history. From life in the promised land (garden of Paradise) to loss of Israel/captivity (exile from Eden).
If the Adam and Eve story is completely unique - a difficult concept given its similarities to other ancient myths - then what do we make of it?
All three ways of reading it will lead us down different paths by causing us to reach different conclusions as each view will place the emphasis on different parts of the story. The other problem we encounter is reading Genesis 2 and 3 with our contemporary focus on origins in mind.
We love to look at the Adam and Eve story, thanks to the apostle Paul, as the way women and men should be viewed in the church. We focus on how one act of sin could taint us all, thanks to Augustine, we wonder what the earth was like pre-fall, we wonder whether there were mutations, diseases and death in the wildlife's genomes in Paradise. On and on we go, wondering, trying to make sense of something that really wasn't meant to make us lose the true meaning.
But I want to know what God wanted the readers to learn. Was it the man's and woman's role in the body of Christ? How we became sinful? How easy life would be without sin and a call to that pre-sinful, pre-consequential state? I don't think that was the point of this. A fall explains why the world is bad, unbalanced and chaotic. God is reveling how he is going to make it right, first to the Israelites, then to the nations.
One point to remember is that the ancients saw the world as a battle between enveloping chaos, randomness and darkness vs. order, light and predictability. Doing good, avoiding evil, maintaining order were done, not just to have peace and prosperity, but to avoid chaos from gaining a foothold. In their creation stories, heros or gods fought off the Chaos (usually a sea serpent called Leviathan who lived in the deep under the flat world). The god/hero won and good was victorious.
In the story of Adam and Eve, neither Adam nor Eve overthrow the serpent, the serpent "wins", if you will, and Adam and Eve lose their ordered Paradise. They are thrown into a chaotic world that will work against them. They will have to labour hard to maintain order, reap a harvest and grow a family. They lost, they need a hero/saviour.
We don't see this obvious need, because we aren't familiar with the creation myths of the day.
If Genesis 1 -11 is written in the post-exilic period, it certainly does parallel the Jewish plight. First, God makes a promise land/garden where he can commune with his people/couple. The people/couple mess up by disobedience (other gods/eating forbidden things). The result of disobedience is expulsion from the promised land/garden. In the land beyond the Promised land/garden life is difficult and the people/couple are separated from that close intimacy they had with their maker. If God kicked Adam and Eve out of Paradise, he eventually gave their predecessors a Promised Land, and maybe he will give the Jews' predecessors another chance, if they turn back to God.
What if the Adam and Eve story wasn't written in the post-exilic period, it wasn't based on Sumerian myths, but rather on a stylized form of a real couple who God granted great favour and prosperity. We would have to ignore the serpent, Eden's geographic location, and how they came into existence for this to work. Okay, so Adam and Eve are given everything they could want, and a close relationship with God. They get tempted, somehow, and disobey God, eating the one they weren't supposed to, and they lose their favoured status, prosperity and closeness with God. They go off, unblessed into the hostile world and raise two sons, one a horrible son who kills the other then is lost to them, then they have another son and become the ancestors of everyone. It works nicely with the idea that Adam and Eve are real, but it leaves out the part where they can hope for a saviour (the hero who slays the Leviathan/Chaos) or salvation (turning to God will restore the promised land). In the other two stories, the need for a saviour to restore them is implied, in this one, the story ends hopelessly.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Interesting Tidbits I am Musing on
Today I was listening to the radio and the host was interviewing an author on "the search for the authentic", and why that is so popular for our times. The author was Andrew Potter and the host and the author were discussing why people want more "authentic" expressions (read items) and lifestyles. The return to nature is a big deal now adays. Can't give up your city loft?, that's Okay, you can eat a 100 mile diet, know the farmer who grows your chicken dinners, and buy organic hemp clothing or vintage (aka second hand) coats. This is done, partly, to get in touch with our roots.
Roots? As in agricultural roots?
Just a second, didn't agriculture and cities sort of develop together? I mean, perhaps a few centuries apart, but evolutionarily that is not enough time for our genes to develop a strong preference for one type of living over another. The percentage of a population living rurally (agriculturally) vs. urbanly (in cities or towns) may have shifted over time, but farmers living in the volatile Ancient Middle East couldn't have lived too far from town. Marauding armies and bands of thugs meant easy sprinting distance to the city gates was a necessity. So, are our neolithic roots any more agricultural than urban?
A truly authentic experience would be to take up hunting, spear-fishing and camping. Something that is hard to do while maintaining a city-loft lifestyle. Stanley Park, in Vancouver, may get a few more homeless as soon as people realize this is a truly authentic way to get back to your roots. Wild berry picking is hard when everyone else is keeps picking your dinner.
I get it, it's too hard. Try going to a stone age society - Brazilian tourism can let you know which group is giving tours of the amazon basin groups. It might make you nostalgic for your warm shower, air conditioning and veggies (fruit and monkey's brains get a little boring after a week or two).
I guess all those red necks are living the truly authentic lifestyle so sought after by the urban masses!
Roots? As in agricultural roots?
Just a second, didn't agriculture and cities sort of develop together? I mean, perhaps a few centuries apart, but evolutionarily that is not enough time for our genes to develop a strong preference for one type of living over another. The percentage of a population living rurally (agriculturally) vs. urbanly (in cities or towns) may have shifted over time, but farmers living in the volatile Ancient Middle East couldn't have lived too far from town. Marauding armies and bands of thugs meant easy sprinting distance to the city gates was a necessity. So, are our neolithic roots any more agricultural than urban?
A truly authentic experience would be to take up hunting, spear-fishing and camping. Something that is hard to do while maintaining a city-loft lifestyle. Stanley Park, in Vancouver, may get a few more homeless as soon as people realize this is a truly authentic way to get back to your roots. Wild berry picking is hard when everyone else is keeps picking your dinner.
I get it, it's too hard. Try going to a stone age society - Brazilian tourism can let you know which group is giving tours of the amazon basin groups. It might make you nostalgic for your warm shower, air conditioning and veggies (fruit and monkey's brains get a little boring after a week or two).
I guess all those red necks are living the truly authentic lifestyle so sought after by the urban masses!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Did other middle eastern cultures have Adam and Eve stories?
Many Christians are well aware of the Gilgemesh epic and its flood story. Less known is that the Gilgemesh epic also contains a story rather similar to Adam and Eve, but it is not a first couple account.
This portion of the Gilgemesh epic parallels the Adam and Eve story - with a few changes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noiblvbWHcM&feature=related
about the parallels here:
http://www.mailstar.net/adam-and-eve.html
and
http://www.angelfire.com/nt/theology/Appx08.html
This portion of the Gilgemesh epic parallels the Adam and Eve story - with a few changes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noiblvbWHcM&feature=related
about the parallels here:
http://www.mailstar.net/adam-and-eve.html
and
http://www.angelfire.com/nt/theology/Appx08.html
It is too strange, is Eden real?
I read this part of the creation story over and over and never really paid attention to it. I read this many times, but never really understood it, so I assumed it made sense to someone. Well, it would take a lot of manipulation to make this place real in a literal reading.
Genesis Chapter 2 verses 10 - 13
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. (NI*V)
This place exists? Headwaters (let's assume the Bible is accurate for this argument) mean the river's source, usually the headwaters are lakes or glaciers or snow capped peaks, Eden is none of these. In ancient summerian, Edin meant wilderness or desert, in the Bible, Eden is the place where God puts his garden. So out in the desert, somewhere, there are headwaters? Okay, let us suppose this is ture (or Eden is way up a mountain somewhere). Two of the rivers begin close to each other, in Turkey. One of the rivers is in Saudi Arabia and the last one is in Africa (Sudan). Hmmm, and they all share a headwater source, which originates in the land of Eden and flows through the garden. Some river, covering three continents (we'll keep Turkey in Europe for Geographical reasons), all with different drainage basins. This doesen't exist. Even if we switched 'headwaters' for the river's ends. If Eden doesn't exist, am I expected to take this chapter literally?
It is interesting to read what people do to make this place real:
Here is an account that insists we can use the Red Sea as a river:
http://www.kjvbible.org/rivers_of_the_garden_of_eden.html
This one says we can use the Persian Gulf as a river's source:
http://ldolphin.org/eden/
Wikipedia says we really don't know, but it does follow Sumerian creation myths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden
Here is an interesting Youtube video on the subject and possible location - it deals with the "fall of Man" but has some maps that would place it SE of Ur.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRMyzBZbS1Q&feature=related
If we allow Eden to be a Mesopotamian place, remember, Edin means the wild step in the Sumerian language, it may well refer to the lands around Mesopotamia.
Genesis Chapter 2 verses 10 - 13
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. (NI*V)
This place exists? Headwaters (let's assume the Bible is accurate for this argument) mean the river's source, usually the headwaters are lakes or glaciers or snow capped peaks, Eden is none of these. In ancient summerian, Edin meant wilderness or desert, in the Bible, Eden is the place where God puts his garden. So out in the desert, somewhere, there are headwaters? Okay, let us suppose this is ture (or Eden is way up a mountain somewhere). Two of the rivers begin close to each other, in Turkey. One of the rivers is in Saudi Arabia and the last one is in Africa (Sudan). Hmmm, and they all share a headwater source, which originates in the land of Eden and flows through the garden. Some river, covering three continents (we'll keep Turkey in Europe for Geographical reasons), all with different drainage basins. This doesen't exist. Even if we switched 'headwaters' for the river's ends. If Eden doesn't exist, am I expected to take this chapter literally?
It is interesting to read what people do to make this place real:
Here is an account that insists we can use the Red Sea as a river:
http://www.kjvbible.org/rivers_of_the_garden_of_eden.html
This one says we can use the Persian Gulf as a river's source:
http://ldolphin.org/eden/
Wikipedia says we really don't know, but it does follow Sumerian creation myths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden
Here is an interesting Youtube video on the subject and possible location - it deals with the "fall of Man" but has some maps that would place it SE of Ur.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRMyzBZbS1Q&feature=related
If we allow Eden to be a Mesopotamian place, remember, Edin means the wild step in the Sumerian language, it may well refer to the lands around Mesopotamia.
Friday, April 9, 2010
It is too strange
I first allowed evolution to be a reality by holding onto a Biblicaly literal Adam and Eve story. There was a mitochondrial 'Eve" about 150 - 200 thousand years ago. That means we can all trace our mitochondrial DNA lines back to her, but she was not the only person around. We inherit our mitochondria (that little power-house in our cells with its own DNA) from our mothers, so this doesn't help us with an Adam. The males have a "Y" factor in their chromosomes which can also be linked back, the common male ancestor is about 90 thousand years old, so a Noah maybe? I don't think the scientists named that guy, but they did name that woman we share mitochondria with "Eve". Here's the catch. Lines break. Mitochondrial Eve is the woman who managed to produce daughters, granddaughters etc, straight up till today. If one generation of her descendants had not had any daughters, her DNA line would have been broken and another woman, further back in time, would have been the mitochondrial Eve. This is more about a statistic than a person.
But Mitochondrial Eve and her husband "Adam"would have lived back in the Middle Paleolithic era. The Middle Paleolithic peoples were Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. The Neanderthal DNA has just been sequenced and it looks like we avoided them genetically.* No trysts in the forrest between the two groups. "Eve" would have had a basic understanding of religion (art is developed and so is burying the dead). This is, however, way, way, way before writing or agriculture. Eden is a garden and Adam is expected to do his own gardening (farming) once he is kicked out of Paradise onto the cursed land. The first couple may have lived a long time, but this setting is over 100,000 years before agriculture even begins, even Adam wasn't that old. Let's remember nothing is written down, there is no record left for future reference here, only oral tradition would be a possible means to pass the story along.
Try this: If I asked what your grandmother's name was, most of us would know, what about your great-grandma? Yep. Okay her mom - your great-great grandma? And what about your great-grandma's grandma (your great-great-great grandma)? Lost you yet? I haven't a clue. Unless you are an aristocrat, you probably lose track of this at some point. Even if you have a family tree, do you know anything other than their name and birthdate/place? We don't even know much about our own Grandparent's grandparents, let alone relatives living a millenium ago.
National heros may stick in a population's memory for a time, but for how long? If we didn't use anyone mentioned in the Bible, how many thousand years can we go back? Alexander the Great, just over 2 thousand years ago, King Ashoka less, Gutama Buddha about 2500 - I can't think of an historical, non-bibical figure beyond Buddha. I don't think Gilgamesh truly counts but he was supposedly king of the Akkadians about 4700 years ago. Do you know why I don't count Gilgamesh? It is because he hasn't been a consistent historical figure. Sure he has epics widely written about his feats, he survived the worldwide flood, he battled demon gods and Sea Leviathans and did all sorts of legendary stuff. But despite his obvious popularity back 5,000 years ago, he fell out of human consciousness for at least 2500 years. In the 1800s some British Archeologists found the Babylonian/Mesopotamian stella, and could now translate ancient Mesopotamian texts, including a heap of Gilgamesh stories. But it was not oral tradition that gave us Gilgamesh as an historical figure, it was written tradition.
Let's place "Eve" at 150,000 years ago. What legend or tale could let her memory live on for that long? I can't get beyond Gilgamesh (4700 years ago) in historical figures, keeping in mind that historical means written. Could Adam and Eve really get passed down orally form the Middle Paleolithic period - they have so many Summerian characteristics about them. It is doubtful the Summerians' would have told oral legends about people as far removed as mitochondrial Eve.
For those who haven't read their Bible in, oh, forever, Genesis Chapter two also mentions where Eden is, an important piece of info for it to be historical. Or, does it? I leave you to grab a map and your copy of Genesis and try to figure out where the river that feeds the headwaters could be, don't ask google where Bibical scholars place Eden, just have fun trying to figure it out yourself. I will continue the strangeness of Genesis next post.
UPDATE*
Okay, here is my first lesson about blogging new scientific discoveries. The scientist is excited and shares a little, not complete picture, of what is know with a reporter before the full report is released, the reporter is excited and shares the incomplete picture, as a complete picture, with the radio announcer, TV anchorperson etc. Pretty soon the incomplete picture is fact. Oops. I was wrong, we did mingle our genes with the Neanderthals. We do share 4% of our DNA with Neanderthals (well not everyone, only those who have non-subsaharan ancestors) if you are a 'pure' human, you have not only never mingled your DNA with a Neanderthal, but you also avoided any human who left the African continent about 150 thousand years ago (eg. anyone of non-African heritage) don't you love genetics, it turns old assumptions on their heads.
But Mitochondrial Eve and her husband "Adam"would have lived back in the Middle Paleolithic era. The Middle Paleolithic peoples were Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. The Neanderthal DNA has just been sequenced and it looks like we avoided them genetically.* No trysts in the forrest between the two groups. "Eve" would have had a basic understanding of religion (art is developed and so is burying the dead). This is, however, way, way, way before writing or agriculture. Eden is a garden and Adam is expected to do his own gardening (farming) once he is kicked out of Paradise onto the cursed land. The first couple may have lived a long time, but this setting is over 100,000 years before agriculture even begins, even Adam wasn't that old. Let's remember nothing is written down, there is no record left for future reference here, only oral tradition would be a possible means to pass the story along.
Try this: If I asked what your grandmother's name was, most of us would know, what about your great-grandma? Yep. Okay her mom - your great-great grandma? And what about your great-grandma's grandma (your great-great-great grandma)? Lost you yet? I haven't a clue. Unless you are an aristocrat, you probably lose track of this at some point. Even if you have a family tree, do you know anything other than their name and birthdate/place? We don't even know much about our own Grandparent's grandparents, let alone relatives living a millenium ago.
National heros may stick in a population's memory for a time, but for how long? If we didn't use anyone mentioned in the Bible, how many thousand years can we go back? Alexander the Great, just over 2 thousand years ago, King Ashoka less, Gutama Buddha about 2500 - I can't think of an historical, non-bibical figure beyond Buddha. I don't think Gilgamesh truly counts but he was supposedly king of the Akkadians about 4700 years ago. Do you know why I don't count Gilgamesh? It is because he hasn't been a consistent historical figure. Sure he has epics widely written about his feats, he survived the worldwide flood, he battled demon gods and Sea Leviathans and did all sorts of legendary stuff. But despite his obvious popularity back 5,000 years ago, he fell out of human consciousness for at least 2500 years. In the 1800s some British Archeologists found the Babylonian/Mesopotamian stella, and could now translate ancient Mesopotamian texts, including a heap of Gilgamesh stories. But it was not oral tradition that gave us Gilgamesh as an historical figure, it was written tradition.
Let's place "Eve" at 150,000 years ago. What legend or tale could let her memory live on for that long? I can't get beyond Gilgamesh (4700 years ago) in historical figures, keeping in mind that historical means written. Could Adam and Eve really get passed down orally form the Middle Paleolithic period - they have so many Summerian characteristics about them. It is doubtful the Summerians' would have told oral legends about people as far removed as mitochondrial Eve.
For those who haven't read their Bible in, oh, forever, Genesis Chapter two also mentions where Eden is, an important piece of info for it to be historical. Or, does it? I leave you to grab a map and your copy of Genesis and try to figure out where the river that feeds the headwaters could be, don't ask google where Bibical scholars place Eden, just have fun trying to figure it out yourself. I will continue the strangeness of Genesis next post.
UPDATE*
Okay, here is my first lesson about blogging new scientific discoveries. The scientist is excited and shares a little, not complete picture, of what is know with a reporter before the full report is released, the reporter is excited and shares the incomplete picture, as a complete picture, with the radio announcer, TV anchorperson etc. Pretty soon the incomplete picture is fact. Oops. I was wrong, we did mingle our genes with the Neanderthals. We do share 4% of our DNA with Neanderthals (well not everyone, only those who have non-subsaharan ancestors) if you are a 'pure' human, you have not only never mingled your DNA with a Neanderthal, but you also avoided any human who left the African continent about 150 thousand years ago (eg. anyone of non-African heritage) don't you love genetics, it turns old assumptions on their heads.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
My difficulties with Genesis Chapter 2
I got my head around the evolution of all species, My Husband explained how it worked - it made sense and fit. I knew and loved horses from my earliest memories. I rode, learned about them and and the difference between horses and mules. Most people don't, so I will briefly explain it. Horses are a different species than donkeys (duh) but closely related. So closely, in fact, that a mare (female horse) and a male donkey (I am sure there is some name for him, but I am a horse gal, donkeys didn't factor) can breed and have a ... horse? no, a donkey? no, a new species? No! a Mule, yep. Mules are born infertile. The only way to get yourself a mule farm is to own a few mares and at least one male donkey. Mules aren't a species, they can't make baby mules (as of this post, who knows what some wacky scientist will do in a lab next). My Husband explained that this was because horses and donkeys were genetically very similar, but not similar enough to reproduce as members of the same species can (eg. make a population from 2 of that species).
When it came to humans, I started to take Adam and Eve literally - a God miracle, plunked down on an evolved earth. I felt evolution was OKay (disclaimer: I knew nothing of human genetics at this time, just that I wanted Adam and Eve to be different, unique and specially made). Why couldn't God just decide to make a ruler over his creation ( a creation he brought up by evolution)? Then, once he had Adam, he obviously needed to make a helper for him too, so he could have formed Eve from Adam's rib - I mean, who could make this stuff up and get anyone to believe it, Moses must have believed it in order to write it.
I questioned my husband, discovered a mitochondrial Eve, decided she was the real Eve and asked how they figured out who our ancient mom was and why they didn't have an ancesteral dad to go with her (my Adam). Then, I began to sense my husband doubted Adam and Eve. That upset me. Old earth and Evolution were fine, but Adam and Eve could not be tampered with without serious faith implications. I need to explain that up until this point, I had never read or heard about other views on Genesis.
The Genetic problem with God-made, instant ancesteral parents of us all is the lingering ruins of bygone genetic material lingering in our genome. I won't go back to India this post, I will go to Europe. Well, England at least, on a visit with my grade 12 class one rainy October/November. We took a short detour from our city to city train stops. Boarding a train for some out-of-the-way line to deepest, darkest (actually one of the sunniest days of our trip) Wales. Our teacher had to tell the train driver where to stop! Once we disembarked from the train, we had to walk, in the pitch dark, on a winding country road to the hostel. The next morning we were told we would not be boarding at the same train stop, but traveling on foot to the next town. Off we went through sheep fields, being silly, as teenagers do. At some point we slithered down a hill, probably to get ahead of classmates and in the little valley there was an old abandoned stone cottage. Our teacher figured it was hundreds of years old, the stones kept the shape, but the roof and door were long gone. It was cute, I took a picture and off we went. I remember it because I still have the photo, it still looks like a cottage. ( I don't have a decent scanner, so I can't post it) That same trip we visited York, Yorkshire on Halloween night, and went on a Ghost Walk. Very beautiful and the perfect setting for a Ghosty movie (note to Twilight producers). We walked around the two city walls, one, older, more weathered and built around 600 AD, but still a wall, the second was larger, newer and had places to walk on it, but neither wall was complete, both showed up, then disappeared. Both were walls, but non-functioning walls.
No, this post is not about ruins in England, I won't bother with my Black Forest trip to Germany either (visits to non-functioning castles, yet definitely castles). There was a point to this. The point is, to a geneticist, our genomes (I guess that is what all of our own genes seen at once are) have functional parts, making all our body parts, including our eye colour, blood type and sex, and the "ruins". The ruins are the genes that we can tell used to do things, such as a Vitamin C making gene, there, visible, but mutated in us (and Chimps) but not in Fido - yeah, I don't need to give my dog orange juice to prevent scurvy in him, he'll just make Vit. C from his dry dog food.
Then there was this specific ruin. It is what made me discard my literal Eve (who I felt might have been especially made from an evolved Adam's rib - really, who are more Ape-like, men or women?). The egg-yolk gene. It is funny how one small rudder can turn the huge ship around. We are mammals, I learned that we were specifically placental mammals. Kangaroos, Koalas and apparently all mammals in Australia pre-Euro Eco-Terrorists (who dared to bring horses and sheep amongst other non-native species) were not placental. Kangas and Koalas have pouches, so they are called Marsupials and those Duck-billed Platypuses and along with a few other mammals lay eggs, they are Monotremes. In evolution, Mammals started as Monotremes, later they evolved into Marsupials, before becoming Placental Mammals. Placental Mammals out-competed the Marsupials (except for a few pockets in South America), but never got to Australia, the Marsupials in Australia managed to diversify, so there are marsupial mice, wild dogs, kangas, koalas and Tasmanian Devils, but no native Placental Mammals in Australia. Yet, and this is what got me, we have the ruins of egg yolk genes in us.
I know, if you, like me, aren't a biologist that it seems possible, we do (us females) have eggs. But the yolk is what grows to feed the egg. Humans, and other Placental Mammals grow a Placenta to feed our young in-utero. We never grow yolk. We do grow a yolk sac for our week-old fetus*, but it never fills with yolk, an umbilical cord to the placenta forms and feeds the fetus instead. Cool. Oh, um, we have a yolk making gene lying around? Now, I am all for conspiracy theories, one just shouldn't trust the experts too much (they brought us WMD in Iraq and other wonders), but it is a little hard to fudge these facts. Ruins of genes from bygone eras littering our genome. There are thousands of these defunct, but clearly identifiable gene "ruins" left in us and other species. Actually, the ruins look similar in closely related species, but different in less related species. And these aren't the signature marks of one creator for all species either, the genes that are ruins in one species are not in other species and in others they still function. Yolk genes are not in bacteria, nor any species that is pre-egg yolk making, but they are in post yolk-making mammals (all this was discovered in the past 10 years or so, just driving another nail in the creationist's theory).
After I learned about the egg yolk ruin, I was left with wishing I could believe in a literal Adam and Eve, made especially by the direct hand of God, and the reality that we were just part of a long evolutionary chain of events was unsettling. This would have been fine if the Bible had let me know previously. It hadn't, as far as I could tell, so I felt a little suspicious of the book in general.
* I have no clue if the fetus is a week or a day or a month old at this point, I am just taking poetic license here.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Well, maybe circumstances got God out of the Box...
Here I am, dealing with the fact that my husband is now an evolutionist, not an intelligent design proponent, but a theistic evolutionist, whatever that means, and I am wondering what to do with most of Genesis chapter one. Allegory? about what? Made up story to appease ancient people - wouldn't; "I created the Heavens and the Earth." do? Why add more detail? Like the six days then a rest? If it was an old earth, but his original audience believed in an insta-earth, why did he need to play it up and add that on the seventh day he rested (very tiring making a world in six days, eh?).
I had, in another lifetime (life before marriage and kids), gone off on missions and travel in India and Nepal - another story for another blog. India (the part I lived in, and the home I lived in) and Nepal were Hindu. I had a lot of book knowledge about Hinduism, but book knowledge is a sanitized arms-length look at something. Try living in a Hindu household, in a Hindu town, in a Hindu country and you will begin to feel as though you are traveling back in time (or perhaps out of time). Hinduism's roots lie in agriculture, more than Jesus' parables to his followers do. Everything in Hinduism has its place and time. The moon cycles, the constellations cycle, the season's cycle, the mother Ganga (Ganges river) cycles too, as do people from young to adult to old, occasionally to pilgrims, then re-birthed anew. These cycles . High on the rooftop at night, we could see houses lit up by 'Christmas' lights. They were houses having/ hosting a wedding - a huge multi-day affair, some nights we could hear music playing, other nights we just sat on our high rooftop (we had the highest) and enjoyed the sights and sounds of wedding season, every 2nd or 3rd month, more lights, more music. Why? It was an auspicious time to get married, the astrologists said so. Wednesdays were an unauspicous day to begin a journey (they became very auspicious for me, I could get train tickets more easily on Wednesdays -and accordingly planned my trip). On Tuesdays the shops closed. Why? It was their god's day - they had to fast, go pray, they needed luck, wealth, good fortune. Each caste, each profession, each person prayed to a variety of gods, according to their needs - career or personal needs. The god they were praying for dictated which day of the week they prayed, fasted and visited the temple - on their way to work. Sundays were a day off, a vestige of the British era. No one could pick a holy day of the week for Hindus, all days had their gods to worship, auspicious days were dictated by the ever changing constellations as much as by the calendar saying it was Wednesday.
Back to this lifetime - if God isn't saying he literally created the world in six days, then rested, what exactly is the point of Genesis 1? My husband had told me that it was actually a hardship for the Jews to take a day off work in an agricultural society, crops needed harvesting whether or not it was the Sabbath. It was a hardship for most in India too, the servants were too poor to take a day off a week, so they looked after the children in the home 24/7. There was no law mandating a day off, agriculturally based cultures don't do that, they work - hard. If each day of the week belonged to different gods and goddesses in Hinduism, it would be impossible to choose one day to dedicate to all the god/desses, it might anger the other gods - that would be bad, then you would need the rest of the week off to appease the rest, work would cease.
It just clicked for me. If God was talking to a polytheistic culture, he would have to show them how each day belonged to only one God, and, since he created everything, all they needed to do was to have one day of the week dedicated to Him, the rest they could save for working. I suspect, although I can't find any evidence, that the first day (where God creates Darkness and Light) belonged to gods who were considered controllers of darkness and light, and each day following would be dedicated to another god credited with creating that thing(s) the bible says is created on that particular day of the week.
I did find an interesting parallel between the ancient babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish and Genesis chapter one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enuma_Elish
I figured if Genesis one was a myth, so be it, but Genesis two must be the start of the literal Bible. It didn't seem to be that connected to Genesis one, it wasn't debunking any gods or creation myths that I could remember. The setting was a little strange (Eden has a river that waters the headwaters of four rivers, on three continents, that don't begin anywhere near each other), but I really didn't think much about it, wasn't it alluding to something that the original audience knew that was lost on us now? Adam hadn't been made, so there was no farmer to plant and harvest the farm fields, but obviously all the wild plants God created were there. I didn't get the animals coming along after Adam, but maybe those were special garden animals. The rest just sort of wafted by, I didn't get it, but I figured we must all be descended from Adam and Eve, that much was clear.
So, how did circumstances get God out of my literal box? Living in India gave me a different perspective for Genesis chapter 1 (realized many years later), I just needed to be honest with chapter 2, so I got honest. Really, if I quit fearing my faith would crumble knowing God didn't create Adam and Eve, at least not in the way the story states, then I could accept it as myth, and trust that their was a point to Genesis chapter 2, as well as chapter 1.
I had, in another lifetime (life before marriage and kids), gone off on missions and travel in India and Nepal - another story for another blog. India (the part I lived in, and the home I lived in) and Nepal were Hindu. I had a lot of book knowledge about Hinduism, but book knowledge is a sanitized arms-length look at something. Try living in a Hindu household, in a Hindu town, in a Hindu country and you will begin to feel as though you are traveling back in time (or perhaps out of time). Hinduism's roots lie in agriculture, more than Jesus' parables to his followers do. Everything in Hinduism has its place and time. The moon cycles, the constellations cycle, the season's cycle, the mother Ganga (Ganges river) cycles too, as do people from young to adult to old, occasionally to pilgrims, then re-birthed anew. These cycles . High on the rooftop at night, we could see houses lit up by 'Christmas' lights. They were houses having/ hosting a wedding - a huge multi-day affair, some nights we could hear music playing, other nights we just sat on our high rooftop (we had the highest) and enjoyed the sights and sounds of wedding season, every 2nd or 3rd month, more lights, more music. Why? It was an auspicious time to get married, the astrologists said so. Wednesdays were an unauspicous day to begin a journey (they became very auspicious for me, I could get train tickets more easily on Wednesdays -and accordingly planned my trip). On Tuesdays the shops closed. Why? It was their god's day - they had to fast, go pray, they needed luck, wealth, good fortune. Each caste, each profession, each person prayed to a variety of gods, according to their needs - career or personal needs. The god they were praying for dictated which day of the week they prayed, fasted and visited the temple - on their way to work. Sundays were a day off, a vestige of the British era. No one could pick a holy day of the week for Hindus, all days had their gods to worship, auspicious days were dictated by the ever changing constellations as much as by the calendar saying it was Wednesday.
Back to this lifetime - if God isn't saying he literally created the world in six days, then rested, what exactly is the point of Genesis 1? My husband had told me that it was actually a hardship for the Jews to take a day off work in an agricultural society, crops needed harvesting whether or not it was the Sabbath. It was a hardship for most in India too, the servants were too poor to take a day off a week, so they looked after the children in the home 24/7. There was no law mandating a day off, agriculturally based cultures don't do that, they work - hard. If each day of the week belonged to different gods and goddesses in Hinduism, it would be impossible to choose one day to dedicate to all the god/desses, it might anger the other gods - that would be bad, then you would need the rest of the week off to appease the rest, work would cease.
It just clicked for me. If God was talking to a polytheistic culture, he would have to show them how each day belonged to only one God, and, since he created everything, all they needed to do was to have one day of the week dedicated to Him, the rest they could save for working. I suspect, although I can't find any evidence, that the first day (where God creates Darkness and Light) belonged to gods who were considered controllers of darkness and light, and each day following would be dedicated to another god credited with creating that thing(s) the bible says is created on that particular day of the week.
I did find an interesting parallel between the ancient babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish and Genesis chapter one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enuma_Elish
I figured if Genesis one was a myth, so be it, but Genesis two must be the start of the literal Bible. It didn't seem to be that connected to Genesis one, it wasn't debunking any gods or creation myths that I could remember. The setting was a little strange (Eden has a river that waters the headwaters of four rivers, on three continents, that don't begin anywhere near each other), but I really didn't think much about it, wasn't it alluding to something that the original audience knew that was lost on us now? Adam hadn't been made, so there was no farmer to plant and harvest the farm fields, but obviously all the wild plants God created were there. I didn't get the animals coming along after Adam, but maybe those were special garden animals. The rest just sort of wafted by, I didn't get it, but I figured we must all be descended from Adam and Eve, that much was clear.
So, how did circumstances get God out of my literal box? Living in India gave me a different perspective for Genesis chapter 1 (realized many years later), I just needed to be honest with chapter 2, so I got honest. Really, if I quit fearing my faith would crumble knowing God didn't create Adam and Eve, at least not in the way the story states, then I could accept it as myth, and trust that their was a point to Genesis chapter 2, as well as chapter 1.
Getting God out of the box...
So the expression "Don't put God in a box" often comes too late, God is already in a box, and it takes a while for us to get our heads around a God that isn't what we thought he was. The first place we go to is the Bible - is this possible? Would God really have done this? Why was it done this way? For many life events, a "reworking" of God is really a reworking of our understanding of Him, his Bible and our interpretations.
For the first few Chapters of Genesis this can be tough. First, I need to go back to a general, lay-person understanding of the Bible. Without knowing it, Christians constantly weigh scripture and declare it literal or figurative. In the Old Testament (OT), people didn't know about round-spherical earths that orbited the Sun, so references to corners of the earth, and the sun going around the earth were what ancient people observed, not literal, scientific explanations of space, just don't tell the Church Officials who tried Galileo for doubting earth's universal centrality. This non-literal reading is fine for eyewitness accounts such as, Psalmists writing songs/poems about God's wonderful world, Joshua extending the day. The writers observed the sun cross the sky, the flat land stretching away from a mountaintop viewpoint and wrote about it, the point of these stories or psalms is not about geographical accuracy, it is about God's interactions with people, the geo-descriptions are just background information.
Literal interpretations of the bible are generally reserved for accounts of what people did in various situations. It is historically impossible to verify weather Jezebel was, indeed, the most wicked woman ever, weather Elijah was scared of her, or David really was taken by Abigail's beauty. History rarely leaves us clues so detailed. Christians have no reason to doubt these are accurate stories, not just because they are entirely possible, but because the writers were inspired by God to write these details down. Any Christian will notice that bible stories are very bereft of details. Stories are given a little detail, but almost no background. Turning a biblical story into a movie or book requires a lot of imaginative detail to fill out the biblical narrative. This often gives me, and others, the impression that what few details do show up are important to the inspired biblical narrative, and must have been important for the original audience to hear, and by extension, due to God's inspiration, for us also.
The problem with Genesis 2 is that the story of Adam and Eve is not written by eyewitnesses scribbling down what they saw and thought. Genesis is attributed to Moses, a great and godly man who would not make stories about God up. Therefore, you can't just say "well, that is what they thought about how people got onto the earth back then," because that would make Moses is a storyteller, not a God-inspired writer. Why would Moses add talking reptiles, trees that have the power to give knowledge and Eve popping out of Adam's rib? He couldn't have been there and thought he saw these things happening, in the same fashion as the Psalmist, who sees the sun circle the earth.
Yet I never really thought about other ancient near eastern culture's creation stories. What did the Egyptians, Babylonians and Canaanites believe about humans? I had taken Ancient Mesopotamian courses in university, I knew Sumerian literature had some big complicated story about gods and goddesses wanting helpers to do all sorts of work, but it didn't remotely remind me of Adam or Eve, and they made a bunch of humans all at once. Nothing really sounded close to the Hebrew Adam and Eve, unlike the flood stories, which seemed to be a running theme throughout ancient Asia literature. But this is what I thought: if all the ancient cultures had a flood story, that just proved the Bible right. There must have been a world-wide flood. If Genesis was right about a world-wide flood, surely then, the Adam Eve story was true as well. Besides, didn't the New Testament writer (practically author) Paul bring up Adam and Eve as if they were literal figures?
God was in my box of literalism. If His book (the Bible) was going to write about Adam and Eve, then have a (the) New Testament writer bring it up as if they existed, then they must be real and we must be their descendants. Remove that, and the whole old and new testaments would collapse into a pit of human myths, tales and superstitions.
For the first few Chapters of Genesis this can be tough. First, I need to go back to a general, lay-person understanding of the Bible. Without knowing it, Christians constantly weigh scripture and declare it literal or figurative. In the Old Testament (OT), people didn't know about round-spherical earths that orbited the Sun, so references to corners of the earth, and the sun going around the earth were what ancient people observed, not literal, scientific explanations of space, just don't tell the Church Officials who tried Galileo for doubting earth's universal centrality. This non-literal reading is fine for eyewitness accounts such as, Psalmists writing songs/poems about God's wonderful world, Joshua extending the day. The writers observed the sun cross the sky, the flat land stretching away from a mountaintop viewpoint and wrote about it, the point of these stories or psalms is not about geographical accuracy, it is about God's interactions with people, the geo-descriptions are just background information.
Literal interpretations of the bible are generally reserved for accounts of what people did in various situations. It is historically impossible to verify weather Jezebel was, indeed, the most wicked woman ever, weather Elijah was scared of her, or David really was taken by Abigail's beauty. History rarely leaves us clues so detailed. Christians have no reason to doubt these are accurate stories, not just because they are entirely possible, but because the writers were inspired by God to write these details down. Any Christian will notice that bible stories are very bereft of details. Stories are given a little detail, but almost no background. Turning a biblical story into a movie or book requires a lot of imaginative detail to fill out the biblical narrative. This often gives me, and others, the impression that what few details do show up are important to the inspired biblical narrative, and must have been important for the original audience to hear, and by extension, due to God's inspiration, for us also.
The problem with Genesis 2 is that the story of Adam and Eve is not written by eyewitnesses scribbling down what they saw and thought. Genesis is attributed to Moses, a great and godly man who would not make stories about God up. Therefore, you can't just say "well, that is what they thought about how people got onto the earth back then," because that would make Moses is a storyteller, not a God-inspired writer. Why would Moses add talking reptiles, trees that have the power to give knowledge and Eve popping out of Adam's rib? He couldn't have been there and thought he saw these things happening, in the same fashion as the Psalmist, who sees the sun circle the earth.
Yet I never really thought about other ancient near eastern culture's creation stories. What did the Egyptians, Babylonians and Canaanites believe about humans? I had taken Ancient Mesopotamian courses in university, I knew Sumerian literature had some big complicated story about gods and goddesses wanting helpers to do all sorts of work, but it didn't remotely remind me of Adam or Eve, and they made a bunch of humans all at once. Nothing really sounded close to the Hebrew Adam and Eve, unlike the flood stories, which seemed to be a running theme throughout ancient Asia literature. But this is what I thought: if all the ancient cultures had a flood story, that just proved the Bible right. There must have been a world-wide flood. If Genesis was right about a world-wide flood, surely then, the Adam Eve story was true as well. Besides, didn't the New Testament writer (practically author) Paul bring up Adam and Eve as if they were literal figures?
God was in my box of literalism. If His book (the Bible) was going to write about Adam and Eve, then have a (the) New Testament writer bring it up as if they existed, then they must be real and we must be their descendants. Remove that, and the whole old and new testaments would collapse into a pit of human myths, tales and superstitions.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Putting God in Box without realizing it
I became an Evangelical Christian when I was 12, through a friend's church and subsequent summer camp experiences. It was a Baptist church in my hometown, and I don't think I heard the word "Born Again" used, but that would be what some Christians would call it. My family was nominally Anglican, with Church going grandparents and uncles. Previous to this, I attended church in the summers with my grandparents, and had been taken to Sunday school in the past, but the evangelical experience demanded much more, a heartfelt belief that had been absent in the Anglican sermons.
I liked church, the community and the youth group, I began reading the bible, enjoying the stories, and loved the history behind them (I still love history). I remember a meal in the basement after church showed me how different evangelical christianity was from my former Anglican church experience. We were eating and talking about creation. I mentioned evolution and my friends said it wasn't true. The pastor, who was also our youth leader, sat down and I asked him. He said evolution was a "bunch of garbage". I was mildly surprised and knew this would not be appreciated in my house, religious ideas that were not mainstream were viewed as superstition.
I don't really know how I dealt with Evolution in the years following, I remember my science teacher having us write a paper on how the Universe began. I was somewhat of a keener and spent a long time on the paper. We presented our papers to, a less than stellar, science teacher. One of my Sunday School/Public School classmates said he believed God created the Heavens and the Earth - the teacher said that was fine, he respected his beliefs. I was ticked off, why had I bothered to do the work? I could have done that too. If I did think about Evolution vs. Creation, it was in a very dualistic way. If I was in church, out with Christian friends etc., I just agreed that God did it "like the Bible said", but if I talked with Christians who were scientists, or otherwise well educated who explained that God could have used Evolution, that 6 God days were not 6 earth days etc. I was fine with that too. If I was talking to a non-christian, though, I suddenly felt compelled to point out all the problems with evolution, as if that would help them believe in Christ.
University brought out the dualist in me. I sympathized with science majors who had to write exams on Evolution, feeling that the professors must be very anti-christian, but also agreed with other students, who insisted that Christians shouldn't insist on belief in Creationism, it was driving decent science types away from God, Christianity, etc. I didn't major in Science, rather Fine Art and History (with a minor in English). Evolution was not a major topic for my classes, and myself and many Christians who went through with me, avoided Evolution classes and remained firm in the belief that Creation was the (or a valid) way.
Around this time, My University Church's Young Adult group began to shift from an evangelical form of Christianity to a more Charismatic style. Our leaders travelled to Charismatic conferences, and the focus of our bible studies shifted more to the Charismatic (Gifts of the Spirit, Biblical Prophecy, and so on). I finished up my University, and moved to a town where many of the conferences we had attended were held. I boarded with a family from the Church we had often visited and began teaching in that town. The Charismatic church was quite different in focus from the Evangelical churches I had attended before. Many people had become Christians as adults, some very recently, emphasis on knowing and reading the bible was not as strong as in evangelical churches, Spiritual gifts, prayer and worship were far more sought after. The church had many great musicians, very connected in Christian music - we had Delirious come to our church youth conference before they were known in North America. Prayer meetings would go in for hours, with everyone prophesying over each person at the meeting, even the teenagers loved this. Pastors preached from the Old Testament as often (or more) as the New Testament. From all this, the Bible was viewed to hold certain messages that were not explicit in the first reading. For example, Song of Solomon was not just about a King's love for his bride, but a message about Jesus' love for his church, or any follower of him. This would later help me look at the Bible in a less literal way.
I moved on, later meeting my Husband, who was doing his PhD. in Biology, when I returned to another University to get an additional education degree. I didn't think much about Evolution, life was busy, I had two kids, worked and went to church in a much larger city, evolution was not a main topic. Once my husband finished his PhD. he got a teaching job out in one of the city's suburbs. We moved out there and attended the Charismatic denomination I had attended in town of my first teaching job, but that church was on a lifeline and soon folded. We then went to the church down the street from us. It is Evangelical and I had not been to an Evangelical Church in over 15 years. Evolution is a big deal, or, at least, a deal at all.
This would have been completely lost on me, however, my PhD. husband got asked to write a book about Christian faith and Science, a geneticist by training, he had been doing most of his work on fly genes, teaching stuff to his students like immunology, genetics etc. I don't know what he had said about evolution, but it didn't come up much at home. This book chapter changed things. He had to look at Evolution and Intelligent Design. Evolution looked good, ID not so much. That started a little schism between us. Not much, just a little. I had gone through the gamut, from a young evolutionist (product of Public Education), to creationist (product of Evangelical literalism) to a non opinionated, but deeply suspicious of all things evolution, Christian (product of too much bickering in on the web, and serious doubts about it's usefulness in the first place). I was comfortable not knowing. I mean, did it even matter? it wasn't like we were going to evolve into something else in my lifetime and human would be raptured or cast away long before anything else got around to replacing us.
The post's title is: Putting God in a Box without realizing it. Although I explained that I was very dualistic in my approach to science and faith, at certain regular intervals I secretly believed that if God said he made man and women, at some point, from the dust, then science, which always changes, would one day reveal this. I also took it as a badge of true faith to believe that God could have created the world in 6 days, if he wanted to and that trying to square science up with faith was a waste of time, either we didn't understand what the bible meant (Read the rest of Genesis chapters one to eleven, and the world gets ever weirder) or science hadn't turned over the magic fossil, archeologists had yet to unearth the magic, tell-tale grave - and all would be made clear at a future date. Somehow the Bible would be justified, the rest was a distraction.
It never occurred to me that the first 11 chapters of Genesis could be a myth, and still be from God. I guess the prevalent attitude in Evangelical circles is that a literal interpretation of Adam and Eve is necessary to understand our fallen sinful state. Tampering with the validity of this, would cause a Christian to question everything else and become a wishy-washy pseudo-believer (insert non-evangelical protestant denomination of choice). My God, was safely and securely in an Evangelical literal-reading-of-Genesis box - take him out and watch your faith unravel at your own risk, but don't bring that stuff up around here.
Then my husband began to lift Genesis chapters 1-3 out of this box.
I liked church, the community and the youth group, I began reading the bible, enjoying the stories, and loved the history behind them (I still love history). I remember a meal in the basement after church showed me how different evangelical christianity was from my former Anglican church experience. We were eating and talking about creation. I mentioned evolution and my friends said it wasn't true. The pastor, who was also our youth leader, sat down and I asked him. He said evolution was a "bunch of garbage". I was mildly surprised and knew this would not be appreciated in my house, religious ideas that were not mainstream were viewed as superstition.
I don't really know how I dealt with Evolution in the years following, I remember my science teacher having us write a paper on how the Universe began. I was somewhat of a keener and spent a long time on the paper. We presented our papers to, a less than stellar, science teacher. One of my Sunday School/Public School classmates said he believed God created the Heavens and the Earth - the teacher said that was fine, he respected his beliefs. I was ticked off, why had I bothered to do the work? I could have done that too. If I did think about Evolution vs. Creation, it was in a very dualistic way. If I was in church, out with Christian friends etc., I just agreed that God did it "like the Bible said", but if I talked with Christians who were scientists, or otherwise well educated who explained that God could have used Evolution, that 6 God days were not 6 earth days etc. I was fine with that too. If I was talking to a non-christian, though, I suddenly felt compelled to point out all the problems with evolution, as if that would help them believe in Christ.
University brought out the dualist in me. I sympathized with science majors who had to write exams on Evolution, feeling that the professors must be very anti-christian, but also agreed with other students, who insisted that Christians shouldn't insist on belief in Creationism, it was driving decent science types away from God, Christianity, etc. I didn't major in Science, rather Fine Art and History (with a minor in English). Evolution was not a major topic for my classes, and myself and many Christians who went through with me, avoided Evolution classes and remained firm in the belief that Creation was the (or a valid) way.
Around this time, My University Church's Young Adult group began to shift from an evangelical form of Christianity to a more Charismatic style. Our leaders travelled to Charismatic conferences, and the focus of our bible studies shifted more to the Charismatic (Gifts of the Spirit, Biblical Prophecy, and so on). I finished up my University, and moved to a town where many of the conferences we had attended were held. I boarded with a family from the Church we had often visited and began teaching in that town. The Charismatic church was quite different in focus from the Evangelical churches I had attended before. Many people had become Christians as adults, some very recently, emphasis on knowing and reading the bible was not as strong as in evangelical churches, Spiritual gifts, prayer and worship were far more sought after. The church had many great musicians, very connected in Christian music - we had Delirious come to our church youth conference before they were known in North America. Prayer meetings would go in for hours, with everyone prophesying over each person at the meeting, even the teenagers loved this. Pastors preached from the Old Testament as often (or more) as the New Testament. From all this, the Bible was viewed to hold certain messages that were not explicit in the first reading. For example, Song of Solomon was not just about a King's love for his bride, but a message about Jesus' love for his church, or any follower of him. This would later help me look at the Bible in a less literal way.
I moved on, later meeting my Husband, who was doing his PhD. in Biology, when I returned to another University to get an additional education degree. I didn't think much about Evolution, life was busy, I had two kids, worked and went to church in a much larger city, evolution was not a main topic. Once my husband finished his PhD. he got a teaching job out in one of the city's suburbs. We moved out there and attended the Charismatic denomination I had attended in town of my first teaching job, but that church was on a lifeline and soon folded. We then went to the church down the street from us. It is Evangelical and I had not been to an Evangelical Church in over 15 years. Evolution is a big deal, or, at least, a deal at all.
This would have been completely lost on me, however, my PhD. husband got asked to write a book about Christian faith and Science, a geneticist by training, he had been doing most of his work on fly genes, teaching stuff to his students like immunology, genetics etc. I don't know what he had said about evolution, but it didn't come up much at home. This book chapter changed things. He had to look at Evolution and Intelligent Design. Evolution looked good, ID not so much. That started a little schism between us. Not much, just a little. I had gone through the gamut, from a young evolutionist (product of Public Education), to creationist (product of Evangelical literalism) to a non opinionated, but deeply suspicious of all things evolution, Christian (product of too much bickering in on the web, and serious doubts about it's usefulness in the first place). I was comfortable not knowing. I mean, did it even matter? it wasn't like we were going to evolve into something else in my lifetime and human would be raptured or cast away long before anything else got around to replacing us.
The post's title is: Putting God in a Box without realizing it. Although I explained that I was very dualistic in my approach to science and faith, at certain regular intervals I secretly believed that if God said he made man and women, at some point, from the dust, then science, which always changes, would one day reveal this. I also took it as a badge of true faith to believe that God could have created the world in 6 days, if he wanted to and that trying to square science up with faith was a waste of time, either we didn't understand what the bible meant (Read the rest of Genesis chapters one to eleven, and the world gets ever weirder) or science hadn't turned over the magic fossil, archeologists had yet to unearth the magic, tell-tale grave - and all would be made clear at a future date. Somehow the Bible would be justified, the rest was a distraction.
It never occurred to me that the first 11 chapters of Genesis could be a myth, and still be from God. I guess the prevalent attitude in Evangelical circles is that a literal interpretation of Adam and Eve is necessary to understand our fallen sinful state. Tampering with the validity of this, would cause a Christian to question everything else and become a wishy-washy pseudo-believer (insert non-evangelical protestant denomination of choice). My God, was safely and securely in an Evangelical literal-reading-of-Genesis box - take him out and watch your faith unravel at your own risk, but don't bring that stuff up around here.
Then my husband began to lift Genesis chapters 1-3 out of this box.
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