The Fall. What can we say about the Fall that hasn't been said many times before? Well, if all you read is the text, quite a lot.
The Serpent is interesting, for a start. He talks, and so he's a magical creature. He has a human-like personality, for he is "crafty" (although I really prefer the old term "subtle", for it makes him sound like a lawyer). He talks about YHWH Elohim only as "Elohim", for a start - I don't know what meaning there is in that. It's not that the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) had become sacred, for it is spread through Genesis and you'd expect it to be elided by the Redactor if that were the case. Maybe it's from several traditions, one of which didn't identify El and YHWH (in which case it might be an old Phoenician etiological story, re-used in the Hebrew religion).
The serpent is a wild animal, and one of YHWH Elohim's productions. He first of all challenges whether Elohim did forbid the eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and then says that if the woman eats its fruit, she and her man will be like Elohim, knowing what is proper and improper (I use this rather than "good" and "evil" because they have two millenia of connotations. The Hebrew is thov, which means something like "functions within its intended purpose", and ragh, which doesn't). So the humans eat of the Tree, and they become aware that they are naked, and make clothes. Now this is intriguing, for it suggests that humans were intended to wear clothes. And it implies, therefore, that YHWH Elohim does, too.
They hear YHWH Elohim walking "in the evening breeze", like a landowner enjoying his garden, and they hide among the trees. Let's consider this - YHWH Elohim has a body, does not see everywhere, and can be emulated by the man and the woman. This isn't the Tri-omni deity of monotheism. This is a sacred individual with powers, who in other respects is just like us. YHWH Elohim resembles Apollo or Thor more than he does the God of Christianity - he's rather more like the God of Mormonism. And humans are potentially deities too, like in Mormon theology. YHWH told them they would die if they ate it, but they don't; instead they are exiled from the Garden, cursed with harsh childbirth and made to grow crops.
Is it just me, or does this sound like an etiology for difficult childbirth and the need for agriculture? Oh, and as a side issue, and explanation why serpents do not move like lizards and why people tend to hate snakes. The evolutionary explanations for these are rather different. Snakes evolved from burrowing or swimming adaptations from a class of reptiles ("reptile" is an artificial class, but let it pass). Primates like us hate snakes because they are arboreal predators that can attack and eat young primates. Difficult childbirth is due to the increase in head size with brain growth in our lineage - we basically reached a limit to the size of head that can routinely fit down the pelvic opening, and the degree of later brain growth that can routinely survive after birth.
But think about agriculture for a minute. These evolutionary events are well before any human thought to tell stories, but agriculture is less than 5000 years old at the time this story was first written, and it did not happen all at once overnight. There are still nomadic tribes in the region, and foraging societies must have survived for a long time in regions that had sedentary agricultural societies. This is a story that justifies agriculture.
Why would we need to? In our modern era, we forget exactly what the costs of agriculture are. A farmer would work 12 to 16 hours a day, and eat poorly. They would typically have a single staple crop and a little meat and dairy, and die early, at around 40. Foragers eat well and diversely, and have vitamin sources and lots of meat. They "work" for about 4 hours a day, sometimes less, and the rest is spent in socialising and ritual behaviours. They often live, barring accidents and warfare, to the age of 70. Why then do we have agriculture?
Because farming allows a much higher density of population, despite its cost to the farmers. Foragers are usually in the modern range or better of height, and have slimmer builds and are fitter than farmers. A study done way back in the 1980s by the late David Rindos showed that agrarian skeletons were much shorter and disease ridden than forager skeletons, but the population was higher and more children survived the early years among farmers because the food supply was more regular. Many foraging animals' young die during winter or droughts, while farmers' children had a better survival rate.
None of this information is available to the ancients, so they have to justify agriculture to their population (or else they'd have desertions to foraging when it was possible, and this would mean the urban centres would be untenable - this happens from time to time). That it is a punishment by the creator gods is a good justification indeed. And the basic nature of humans is that they are "dust", and hence subject to these strictures by the creator god. As the J source is likely written to justify a social order involving urban centres of power and a monarchy, this is a crucial bit of social engineering.
Like any middle eastern deity, YHWHW Elohim is a fairly petty individual. He doesn't want competition from his creations, so he blocks access to the "Tree of Life", which is a magical tree whose fruit can make you live forever. We have two magical trees, a corporeal deity of limited knowledge and good will, a snake that talks and has intentions like any trickster god to thwart the designs of the deity, and a justification for wearing clothes, which is not a matter just of shame, but of intended purpose.
The Garden, which continues after this, is guarded at the easternmost point by a "cherubim" (a sword-wielding creature or servant?) and a possibly independently alive flaming sword to prevent anyone else getting access to the tree of life. It's a lot like any number of similar myths about eternal life magics. Note that the Garden is not guarded on its west side. So originally, people were living, "in the wild", so to speak, in the far east, which for our author must be India or central Asia.
In another episode of magical naming, the man gives his woman a name (shem or character) that defines her: "mother" (Havva, or "living one"), which we know today as "Eve", because she is the mother of all who live. [But is she? More on this later.]
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Hold on, if the guards are on the Eastern side of the Garden, to keep humanity out, that implies that the author thought the Garden must be somewhere *westward* of where the author himself/herself lived.
As you describe it, you have humanity somewhere in Mesopotamia, the Garden somewhere in India, and the cherubs on the eastern side of that - presumably to guard against the Japanese?
Yeah, that's what bothered me. I resolve it by presupposing that Adam, Eve, Cain and their lot all ended up living in the far east until they eventually find their way back to The Known World.
"Cherubim" is the plural (like Elohim, for that matter). The serpent is the only one in the story whose every word was true - even though his intent was to deceive - another interesting point about the tale.
So, if YHWH was was walking around in human form, did he have genitalia? Presumably so if Adam was created in his image. But if so, for what purpose? Ornamentation?
I think BOTH sides would agree that the ENTIRE scripture is about social engineering. I think their only DISAGREEMENT is on who is the engineer.
It's kinda funny, becuase we were as a family discussing how ridiculous the fall story is in light of Adam's shame. The scripture says that Adam and Eve become aware of their nakedness and were ashamed... obviously a stupid thing, for the reasons you've written. But I've found that people who are educated in theology tend to argue that the REASON they were ashamed was not to do with their nakedness, but with awareness of sexuality... and that before the fall, since everything lived forever, there was no reason to reproduce, and no sin since there was no use (or misuse) of reproductive acts.
Which is again stupid because the order to "go forth and multiply" can hardly be fulfilled without sexual contact, Unless they want to argue that there was ANOTHER method of reproduction pre-fall, and that men only grew penises after Adam ate from the tree...
Is it just me, or does this sound like an etiology for difficult childbirth and the need for agriculture?
Yes it does. Also, the whole story seems to resemble the story of Pandora's box - don't eat the apple, don't open the box.
Just how old are the various suspected sources; or to put in another way, just how old are the stories?
The reason I ask is the apparent assumption implied by statements such as:
Had that been "first written down" it'd make my puzzlement clearer: It seems to me people assume these stories were written down as, or soon after, they were created. That seems very very unlikely; much more likely is the stories circulated in oral form (I presume for quite a long time), and (eventually) written down (presumably multiple times). And of course, long-circulating oral stories would (I also presume) be tweaked and modified and so on so as to be both easier to remember and more entertaining.
(I apologise if I'm asking something previously dealt with: It looks like this blog entry is part of a series, but it's the first part I've read, so now I'll go read the rest...)
"Which is again stupid because the order to "go forth and multiply" can hardly be fulfilled without sexual contact"
Thats it! God is a Math geek!
Another myth is created...
Adam: "One times one is two. Two times two is four. Four times four is sixteen. Sixteen times sixteen is sixty-four. Your turn Eve."
Eve: "Sixty-four times sixty-four is.. uhh.. four-thousand-ninety-six? Four-thousand-ninety-six times four-thousand-ninety-six is.. umm.. my abacus only goes up to 10^8."
Adam: "Ha! You're bad at math, and since you're the only woman here, that must mean all women are bad at math!"
Eve: "... why did you get all the easy ones?"
I don't think foraging automatically gives a better standard of living once there is a growing agricultural population next door, encroaching on the foraging land, collecting lots of firewood, their livestock eating the best edible plants and so on. The farmers would still be capable of taking bushmeat and depleting the stocks of prey animals for everyone.
Anyways, beer would have been a much better justification for agriculture.
"... a snake that talks and has intentions like any trickster god ..."
Perhaps an interesting conjecture is that there is a connection between the snake in the garden and the "bronze snake that Moses had made" of 2 Kings 18:4 (see Numbers 21:9). This could suggest some type of ancient "serpent god" the worship/recognition of which was suppressed in the time of 2 Kings, but has left remains in the Genesis 2-3 story.
Anyways, beer would have been a much better justification for agriculture.
"Malt does more than Milton can
to justify God's ways to Man"?
John...
Just wanted to tell you I have found this series very interesting so far. I appreciate your efforts.
blf - Wiki has a short essay on how Genesis was written.
John - does the curse of a difficult birth imply that Adam and Eve just had small heads? Perhaps this is the answer to the riddle of Homo floresiensis.
Bob
John Wilkins is an aged, eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland, in Australia. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts, which he is working into two books. He is also interested in cultural evolution, philosophy of religion, Macintosh computers and his kids (they sort of make it a necessity, you know?). However he hates God and he tries to hurt God through those who love God and by vainly attempting to argue away common beleifs about the Bible with arguments that he know's are bullshit but he does it anyway becaue perhaps he will cause some one weak in faith to doubt, when they see all his worldy accomplishment and his human knowledge written in wordy sentences. And atheist love his crap because they are guilty of what they claim their Christian enemy's are guilty of by accepting any argument against God and being blind to its many fallacies.
My whole problem with a literal interpretation of Genesis, and of 'theistic evolutionists' like Francis Collins, is that, if evolution is true, then there were no 'original sinners' to commit the original sin. Collins, et al, fail to provide an adequate account of how human beings acquired this 'sinful' nature, and thus the need for a savior. The apostle Paul apparently believed in Adam & Eve and original sin...
Just my two cents.
Best,
Juno
Simon (#15) - watch it. Do not pad your responses and do not copy my material. If you are going to insult me, do it directly. And I don't hate God - so far as I know, God is indeterminate in nature and existence, so how could I hate him/them?
Juno - the etiology of original sin is, I believe, a post hoc justification of Christ's death. There is little evidence of original sin before the NT.
I just blogged on Genesis myself a couple of days ago. One source I used identifies Eve with the consort of the Canaanites' god (El), Asherah. This fertility goddess was associated with the Tree of Life and with the serpent (or snake). The Israelites' name for Asherah was Chawwa, or Eve in English.
In those early days, Asherah was competing with El/YHWH for "market share." So the patrYahwists probably put her in Chapter 2 to establish her inferiority to their chief god, and to men, too.
Juno - my whole problem w/a literal interpretation of Genesis is that I find it difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he demands the blood sacrifice of his son to atone for sin that he knew ahead of time would be committed (being omniscient and all), and that it would be commited by those "without knowledge of good and evil."
Kind of like me knowing that my child IS a child and "without knowledge of good and evil" (that's what the parents are supposed to teach, right?). Then me telling my child don't touch this shiny thing when I go away. My child, "without knowledge of good and evil", but with strong childish curiosity, touches the shiny thing. I come back, see that she has touched the shiny thing, and blow my top and condemn her and all her children and grandchildren to go away from me forever. Can you imagine any parent doing that? Yeah, me either.
But then, wait, after a while, I calm down and say, OK, you did this thing that I knew you were going to do since you are "without knowledge of good and evil", so now I'm going to demand that you accept the blood sacrifice that I myself will provide in order for us to no longer be estranged.
Seems like a lot of leaps for a little kid who just wanted to touch a shiny thing and was "without knowledge of good and evil".
That should have read patriachal Yhwists.
Bob,
The wikipedia page appears to only discuss the history of the text. I didn't notice much discussion of the probable verbal (oral story-telling) tradition which preceeded the various priests, scribes, and so ons creating the written texts. Or, to put it another way, I didn't see any discussion of the history of the stories, rather than of the preserved writings.
It's highly improbable the stories were created when/as they were written down. I presume, albeit without any actual evidence, the stories were circulating orally for quite some time prior to being written down (similar to Homer's Odyssey, which probably circulated in oral form for numerous (hundreds?) of years before being written down).
So again I am wondering: Just how old are the stories? Not the texts, but the myths etc they contain? (I assume there are clews in the (earliest?) texts, contemporary artworks, and so on.)
This seems as good a place as any to ask: Can you, O Great White Ape (or anyone else here for that matter), point me to a good, reasonably scholarly but layperson-accessible book or two on this topic, the origins of the Old Testament scriptures? This is fascinating stuff, and I've been wanting to learn more about it for quite some time. Especially the sort of stuff blf is asking about above.
Also/or: a good annotated edition of The Bible, especially including historical and cultural and literary contexts, that's affordable and portable (for better or worse, I do most of my reading on the NYC subway).
Thanks!
Oh I'm so out of date that it is hardly worth asking me. The last commentary I read on Genesis is Gerhard von Rad's commentary, from the 1970s, I think (about when I read it). I have heard a lot of pro- and con- about this book:
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (Free Press, New York, 2001, 385 pages, ISBN 0684869128, cloth, $26.00; Touchstone Books, New York, 2002, ISBN 0684869136, paperback, $14.00).
Here's a review.
Brian @ #9:
Adam shouldn't get too cocky about his math skillz - he got more of his calculations wrong than Eve did. ;-)
"Adam: "One times one is One. Two times two is four. Four times four is sixteen. Sixteen times sixteen is Two hundred and fifty six."
Pretty mainstream Christian theology I reckon would tell you:
First humans created innocent, morally neutral. In the likeness of God but not possessing his very life and nature, represented by the Tree of Life, associated with the Holy Spirit, Rev 2v9. Responsibility implies freewill and choice. God is inherently good. There was already rebellion in heaven and Lucifer (one of the three highest angels) had been cast out and was represented by the serpent. Unlike man, Satan, identified with the serpent in Rev. 12v9, was damned beyond redemption, for undisclosed reasons. Had man partaken of the Tree of Life, there would be no moral good/bad issue at all, because he would've shared the inherently good life of God, which remains God's intent for man.
However, the serpent got him to partake of the tree of knowledge of good and evil instead. His eyes were now open to the possibility of moral autonomy and of having independent judgement of right and wrong from God's. He followed in the serpent's footsteps. Only God is capable of adequate lordship over the creation. Both satan and man will mess it up. God is not being difficult or insecure. He just knows the creation better than do the created, men or angels. Adam now feels exposed. He is no longer comfortable with transparency but wishes to hide. God has anticipated all this without being responsible for it. He has not created robots. He has prepared a recovery route for humanity. It involves the sacrifice of his Son, the One who is fully God and fully man, Jesus Christ. Indeed the necessity for the blood sacrifice is written deep into the human soul and has been manifest in all ancient cultures. Man must put his faith in the redeeming Son of God, aka the Son of Man. This may be foolishness to the worldly logician (1 Cor 1v29) but quite honestly we are not in a position to be choosy. We are born in a sinful condition. We are not condemend for this, but we will be if we do not accept God's answer, which is faith in Christ (John 3v16,17, Rom 10v9,10). He restores us to the Tree of Life John 10v10, 14v6, Rev 22v2,14,19.
The underlying purposes of God transcend the fabric of the present creation, though that creation suggests them sometimes. Science is in the business of probing and seeking to understand the fabric of the present creation. The best it will ever do is succeed in that. but even that is not reality. Reality is found in Christ.
Brian @ #9:
Adam shouldn't get too cocky about his math skillz - he got more of his calculations wrong than Eve did. ;-)
"Adam: "One times one is One. Two times two is four. Four times four is sixteen. Sixteen times sixteen is Two hundred and fifty six."
Just more proof that its all a myth ;-)
Man, how the heck did I screw up 1x1? I really wasn't paying enough attention...
Juno: As a mainline-ish, pretty liberal (I think) and definitely a TE Christian, my take of original sin is that it is the gulf between the imperfect and limited humanity and the presumably perfect and unlimited God, which cannot be bridged from our side of the gulf.
Hence, salvation is an act of God reaching out to us and giving us a hand. Why (or even if) it was necessary for Jesus to die on the cross is, quite literally, beyond me.
On Elohim: Michael Coogan put it best when he said that Biblical religion should to be viewed as a subset of Israelite religion should be viewed as subset of Canaanite religion. Elohim is cognate to 'lm in Akkadian just as El is for 'l. Elohim is linquisticaly plural but came to be used as a "plural of Magesty" in the singular sense by the Hebrews in reference to the deity YHWH. There are precedents in support of both uses, the texts from the Canaanite city of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) have plenty of uses of 'lm as plural and the Armana letters written in and around Canaan ca 1300 BCE have 'lm as singular in reference to the Pharaoh ("Greetings Pharoah, my 'lm, from your humble servent, yadda yadda yadda...). Though the majority of uses of Elohim within the Bible are in singular reference to the deity (YHWH), there are plenty others where Elohim is clearly plural in reference to other deities. Though we traditionally translate el as "god" (or "GOD") and Elohim as "GOD" or "gods" is should be remembered that (as John notes) on a more basic level it refers simply to "power" or "powers". To understand the sense of the meaning think "force" as in "that unseen thing that's responsible for things that happen, or as the Native Americans called them, "Spirits". That's all Elohim is. In the broadest sense, "an Elohim" is a "being from the divine (metaphysical) world" and "the Elohim" refers collectively to all such beings. Elohim="Spirits" and YHWH is, wait for it, "the Great Spirit in the Sky". Thus the use of Elohim in the Bible is more involved than simply "GOD" or "gods" and each instance should be evaluated on it's own merit rather than to simply assume Elohim = title for "GOD". Note particulary that while the "Elohim" of Gen 1 is responsible for creation, Ex 20:1 tells us 'You shall have no other "Elohim" before me', an explicit declaration that other Elohim indeed exist. Deuteronomy (written in the 6th century during a time of "nationalistic/theological furvor" requiring sole dedication to YHWH) repeately condems the worship of "other Elohim". P frequently states that YHWH shall "act to you as an Elohim", or "YHWH shall be your Elohim" in the same context as Pharoah in the Armana letters. The prophets (a "man of Elohim") warn us not go go after the Elohim of other nations. Josh 22:22 has the psudo-chant, "El, Elohim, YHWH, El, Elohim, YHWH" essentially all refering to the same deity (YHWH) in acknowledgement of different traditions where YHWH replaced/identifed with El and also where YHWH became the embodiment of the Elohim itself. YHWH was thus not simply "a" Elohim, he was "THE Elohim". In fact, "ha-Elohim" (The Elohim) also appears as one of YHWH's appelations. So recalling that Gen 2 is J, the conjunction "YHWH Elohim" appears here in transition (and only in two other places in the entire Bible) between P's primary use of Elohim and J's primary use of YHWH. This is considered to be the work of R to ease the transition, the assumption being that J originally simply had YHWH. J does however make infrequent reference (19 times in the 1st 2 books) to Elohim which in each case is easily seen as something completely different than YHWH when examined with the words roots in mind. The first three are in dialog spoken by the serpent, the next two are the references to the "sons of elohim" in Gen 6 prior to the flood (which even fundamentalists argue does not refer to YHWH), and the rest all fall under the category of being "blessed by the elohim" (may the gods...), "fearing the elohim" (respecting the wishs/laws of the gods), or in the generic context of "...when the elohim (gods) caused (such and such) to be, ...". All these usages slipped by during later times when Elohim=GOD and the original context changed. As J, the serpents use of Elohim and not YHWH Elohim supports the idea that it was R that added the Elohim to the 1st uses of YHWH in Gen 2, but left the serpents words alone because they already said Elohim, implying that J has the serpent refering generically to "the gods/powers/spirits", not to YHWH specifically. The serpents revelation to Eve is related to the meanings behind the two trees and the idea that by having access to both imortality (Tree of Life) and knowledge (Tree of Good and Evil) man is no longer a simple beast and becomes divine. Like most Hebrew themes, J is inverting the "classical view" from mesopotamia. Rather than man suffering from the doings of the gods, it is YHWH suffering from the mis-doings of man. The moral being the (miserable) state of man is man's on fault. All of this is nearly impossibly to gleem when reading in English. When translated, "YHWH (of the) Elohim" in Hebrew became "Kyrios Theos" in Greek, "Dominos Deus" in Latin, and "LORD GOD" in English, obscuring all references to the original polytheistic nature of the ancient Hebrews that developed into monotheism centuries after the original sources were written, stemming essentially from an extreme form of henotheism.
Some theology (as in historical analysis of religion)reminds me of most evolutionary spiel, and curiously, of the volumes of gumph written about socialogical/behavioural issues in schools.
Too much analysis on too little fact by people with too little experience of what they are talking about.
God so loved the world that he sent his only Son....
Too much gumph written by people with too little practical experience is a common problem in acedemia. God sent his Son.
Ooops. Repeated myself. One day when you are not locked into 'dive into analysis mode' God will show you the truth. He managed to with me......
This is not the place to proselytise, Simon. Do it again and I'll ban you. If you have an argument or discussion point, present it. But lots of people think others should believe what they do just because they believe it, and I'm afraid it cuts no ice here. Quite apart from anything else, it's insulting of you to make presumptions about me and my readers.
Is there any other creation mythology so malign as to depict the Creator hating the entire human race (and using a blunderbuss curse that ravages all the rest of the world)?
And just how is it that such a baleful "framing" even persists, never mind maintaining cultural hegemony for many centuries?
OK John, apologies. I apologise for being insulting, it rarely gets a result. (I do recall sitting with a director of a large telecomms company telling me that engineers were a strange bunch. I was one at the time.) If I contribute in future I will stick to the intended and desired scope of the site, which I guess was not likely to include preaching. I must admit I have not seen or read the rules. However, others yourself included have discussed theology.
My own view is summarised in saying that human rational thought has it's limitations as a means of getting to absolute truth. It is potentially limtited by it's processing architecture and capacity, memory capacity, historically-manifested tendency to predjudice and it's available input sources. Some problems can be overcome by using a body of investigators, but there is a possibility of wholesale drift. The Bible I believe to be God's offering to those who will simply receive it's truth on its own terms. It is designed to communicate the underlying truths of our existence. It is not intended to pander to any specific paradigm on life, and in this respect it probably accommodates the scientific paradigm poorly. I personally do not have a particularly precise scientific/historical take on early Genesis.
I would suggest however that science as a culture/discipline needs to be aware of the inherent limitations of the methods it is using. It is not of course that the rational is wrong. Indeed some would say that Christianity historically brought freedom to be rational in some cultures where previous belief systems were overly fatalistic and superstitious.
Indeed in many situations, generally ones without too many variables, all of which are under tight control or measurement, science is the right tool and one of which I have personal experience. When science attempts to model complex scenarios with no directly representative experiments, it can get very subjective and tentative.
There are other 'tools' which convey meaning, usually less exactly, but of areas which I think science gets a very poor grip on, eg emotional and spiritual aspects of life. Poetry, music or parables for example. In my opinion scientists tend to get out of their depth when they try to reduce these spheres of activity to rational precepts which they themeselves feel able to understand. If it is unacceptable to say that then I'll bow out.
Hi Pierce
I would answer you as follows:
God is defined as a father. Inherent in man is freewill and responsibility. God disciplines if necessary, and restricts to avoid damage. An insecure or indulgent father will fail to discipline his children. God has given a framework (the Gospel)in which it is possible to experience his goodness. If we walk outside it there are consequences. These may seem harsh, but they are appropriate and deliberate, when viewed from God's angle. We experience life within a fallen framework in which both the goodness of God, the evil of Satan and the mortality of man are experienced. Here I would see the fall as being manifest in the creation as death, predation, ugly, fearsome animals etc. Here of course Darwin had other ideas....
To see outside the warping of perception we are born into (and God understands our difficulty here) we must look at the person of Christ.
I am making my belief clear here. I trust that does not count as proselytising.
The reason many believe is simply that they are persuaded this is the truth.
Simon says
Define "absolute truth" without reference to any religious concept!
I trust this does not count as proselytising.
Well, it sure as hell (surer) doesn't count as an answer to either of my questions.
Pierce
Probably I'm being verbose again. Shorter version. I believe that:
God is love. I do not believe he is indiscriminating or arbitary in anything he does. My understanding of how Gen 1-3 relates to us is given in comment 25 above. If God appears cruel it is actually the severity of his mercy.
We live in a world in a fallen condition as per Genesis 3.
We are born sinners. We are unworthy of eternal life. We need a saviour. God does not hate people, but he does see their condition accurately, and wants us to see our condition accurately. I don't think he punishes for the sake of punishment or curses for malicious reasons. He made redemption possible by his own sacrifice. He desires fulness of life for people. That can only come about by believing and accepting his perspective as correct.
Thony, re comment 36 and truth, maybe I can't. Perhaps; that which is whole and without inconsistency.
Shorter version.
Shorter proselytizing is still proselytizing - and the opposite of appetizing.
I'd ask you to make a serious effort to answer either of my questions, except that this seems far beyond your capacity.
Simon, that's enough now. You have nothing to add but religious slogans, and this is not what this post is for. You are banned.
Thus the principle is demonstrated, folks:
Proselytizing contributes nothing to Moral Knowledge!
Great series, John, that unfortunately I'm only just getting around to reading. I've also just begun Armstrong's "The Great Transformation," and it seems that one of the most serious early religious crimes was lying, because of the oral nature of the first religions. (Incidentally my post today was the start of Graves' "The Greek Myths," as in that the sin is lying, in a funnier way.) So, maybe the great sin was the lying about having eaten the fruit?
@MPW re origins of OT scriptures:
Who Wrote the Bible?
by Richard Elliott Friedman
HarperSanFrancisco
ISBN-10: 0060630353
ISBN-13: 978-0060630355