What can we gather from Genesis?

[marco]

Can we extract anything good from the Genesis account of creation? God apparently told Adam, the first human: "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." He didn't say why he had planted poisonous berries in a perfect orchard. Adam seems to have lived on, having escaped the dangerous garden.


We can extract beautiful meanings from the tales of Hans Andersen, such as the Little Mermaid who learns that pleasure comes at a great price. From the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in Greek mythology we can understand that a man can enter his dark psyche to find something precious, only to have it snatched away.


Can we learn anything useful from the Genesis creation story?

If we accept the existence of Neanderthal man do we simply throw Genesis in the bucket?

[earl]

Thomas McDonald stated ,....criteria what qualifies as a human.
Here are two
Here is Serpent by name ,who was a beast of the field ,not of Adams blood,made contact with Eve.They then discussed what God's attitude was for breaking the rules.
1.Serpent's discussion indicates he knows who God is.He therefore has the ability to worship God. Is there another type who can worship?
2.There was hatred (enmity) between Serpent's seed and Eve's seed.
Is there any other than a human that can hate?
This shows some type of pre existing human group ,tribe before Adam and Eve already established in view of his seed,not her seed blood line.
As the primitive story goes beasts of the Earth were established on day 5,prior to Adam on day 6.
Serpent's race of people were given no mention.
This open up an unknown human species prior to Adam.

[Thomas123]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_in_mythology
Snakes have a validity or currency among the people who come into contact with them.Their lifestyles, their hunting strategies, with and without venom, their movements without legs,etc may have prompted enquiry within humans.Monkey troops are completely spooked by them and for good reason. Nomadic people would be completely tuned into snakes. I want to consider the wording of the Genesis reference to the woman snake connection further. After all it is a cornerstone of the Virgin Mary worship of Christianity.

[Thomas123]

Thomas McDonald stated ,....criteria what qualifies as a human.
Here are two
Here is Serpent by name ,who was a beast of the field ,not of Adams blood,made contact with Eve.They then discussed what God's attitude was for breaking the rules.
1.Serpent's discussion indicates he knows who God is.He therefore has the ability to worship God. Is there another type who can worship?
2.There was hatred (enmity) between Serpent's seed and Eve's seed.
Is there any other than a human that can hate?
This shows some type of pre existing human group ,tribe before Adam and Eve already established in view of his seed,not her seed blood line.
As the primitive story goes beasts of the Earth were established on day 5,prior to Adam on day 6.
Serpent's race of people were given no mention.
This open up an unknown human species prior to Adam.

Reply
With respect earl, I feel that your hypothesis has very little literary basis.This personified Serpent with a capital letter is not in the text, the serpent is just another beast of the field. Even at the end of this encounter he is low to the ground waiting for the descendants of Eve to trod on him and waiting to bite them on the heel in return. There is no Serpent in this.

6th day Genesis 1( same day man is made and latter stages of evolved life forms)
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Snakes were regarded as Gods in much of our ancient past. Personally ,I dont get it.They do nothing for me.

[Athetotheist]

I believe in the equality of life forms on earth

Nothing within the Yahweh creation is more or less.

Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground without your father's will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
(Matthew 10:29-31)

It doesn't seem that the Jesus figure was so highly enlightened.

[Difflugia]

Snakes were regarded as Gods in much of our ancient past. Personally ,I dont get it.They do nothing for me.

I know I've mentioned this before, but one of my favorite historical speculations about the Bible is Ignác Goldziher's hypothesis that the Levites were originally priests of a Leviathan cult before switching to Yahwism. Though admittedly a bit thin on evidence, it would make sense of at least the strange quirk of the Adam and Eve story that it actually is the serpent that tells the truth about the Tree of Knowledge ("...you will not immediately die..." and "...when you eat, your eyes will be opened...") rather than God (or perhaps an original council of gods). In the original, the serpent was a Prometheus-like hero figure, offering the knowledge that elevated humanity from its original state of servility to the gods. Moses also seems to have an affinity for snakes at various points (the showdown with the Egyptians of Exodus and the bronze serpent of Numbers 21, for example).

[Thomas123]

[Replying to post 95 by Difflugia]

I would appreciate any links on this subject.

I had a good snooze on matters pertaining to women and snakes and it brought me to some very weird places. I had a previous post by marco ringing in my ears about young women being stoned in Abrahamaic Faith's both now and in the recent past. What if the whole thing had revolved around an anti feminine twist on promiscuity.

The text does not forcibly push this agenda. Adam's lame excuse that ' she told him to do it', stands to intentionally ridicule him. It does not get him off the hook when it comes to dishing out consequences for their joint action. One will have difficulty with births and the other will be a slave to the land.

A word that intrigued me greatly in this narrative was 'beguiled'
It is such an interesting word, more Shakespearean than Hebrew, to my ear.

I looked up its original purport.

beguile (v.)
"delude by artifice," early 13c., from be- + guile (v.). Meaning "entertain with passtimes" is by 1580s (compare the sense evolution of amuse). Related: Beguiled; beguiling.

Was it a real snake. Was it perhaps a rock python or something of that sort. Was it meant to infer a large non poisonous snake . In these days of social distancing, Eve never shows real fear of being bitten. I am probably reading too much into this but is it possible that the snake has opened the woman's eyes to the dynamic of stealth and its possibilities. She has watched the snake at length and become beguiled with its actions. She has discovered the stealth modus.
Perhaps consider that the tree of good and evil actually contains a neutral, placebo effect ,its significance only imagined by this pair within their world. The reason I suggest considering this is because the narrative might support it. Is observation of the snake over time the actual administrator of a more critical thinking, good and evil agenda. Safer than closely observing crocodiles., I would imagine.
The pair want to cover their bodies to deceive themselves and their immediate impulse is to hide. They are exploring 'stealth' before moving into it's more sophisticated expressions used in animal interaction., ambush from the crocodile, etc. We then move to the critical faculties of deception and cunning.

[Difflugia]

I would appreciate any links on this subject.

Though a number of commenters reference the Goldziher book from my last post (Mythology Among the Hebrews and its Historical Development), nobody's really developed on the idea much, probably because it is merely speculative.

There are a few interesting tidbits that might lead to more ideas, though. The serpent-staff created by Moses is called "Nechushtan," which the text derives from a play on words between "snake" (נְחַש�, nechash and "bronze" (נְחֹ֔שֶ�ת, nechoshet). If the word Nechushtan predated the time of 2 Kings as the name of a deity, then the "-tan" ending in both Leviathan and Nechushtan may be of similar construction. There are also clues that the origin legends for the tribe of Levi may be relatively late. There are multiple, somewhat conflicting reasons given for why the Levites are a tribe, but have no land. Additionally, Micah's Levite in Judges 17 was both "of the tribe of Judah" and a Levite, which doesn't really make sense unless "Levite" was originally a profession rather than a tribal affiliation.

If you have access to the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (maybe in a library or something; I guess probably not useful right now under "stay at home" orders, but I just checked and used copies of the book list for ~$400), then the articles on Leviathan (p. 511) and Nehushtan (p. 615) are entertaining. Unfortunately, the Google Books preview omits huge chunks of its text. I'll see if I can find the time to transcribe those two articles into my member notes.

I also seem to remember that Richard Elliott Friedman wrote quite a bit about alternate Levite origin ideas in his The Exodus. I've run myself out of time at the moment, but I'll look through the books I've talked about and maybe try to find a few more later.

[Zzyzx]

.

If you have access to the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (maybe in a library or something; I guess probably not useful right now under "stay at home" orders, but I just checked and used copies of the book list for ~$400),

Might try on-line: -- https://archive.org/stream/DictionaryOf ... e_djvu.txt

[Thomas123]

I believe in the equality of life forms on earth

Nothing within the Yahweh creation is more or less.

Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground without your father's will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
(Matthew 10:29-31)

It doesn't seem that the Jesus figure was so highly enlightened.

28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

[Thomas123]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Levant
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History ... ent_Levant

The Southern Levant has a long history and is one of the areas of the world most intensively investigated by archaeologists. It is considered likely to be the first place that both early hominins and modern humans colonised outside of Africa. Consequently, it has a rich Stone Age archaeology, stretching back as early as 1.5 million years ago. With one of the earliest sites for urban settlements of humans, it also corresponds to the western parts of the Fertile Crescent.

Great location for a Genesis narrative!