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?

[marco]

ps: I think that you will find that there is no 'I can see you' in Genesis , but rather the rhetorical 'who told you that you are naked'. If there is indeed, no need for satire, then why use it?

Do we suppose these are God's actual words? It is sufficient that the playwright informed us that God speaks and takes part in this garden game. The absurdity is having God do any of this in a "garden" somewhere in the Middle East, before Hezbollah and Hamas arrived. I agree I'm gilding the lily, but we are permitted to play with Shakespeare's lines. My old English teacher would say that satire is mocking a folly out of fashion. He did not say that some follies are resistant to mockery.

[marco]

7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

What does this passage actually say.
Has this rejection of a person's actions by Yahweh, any modern relevance?
What was wrong with Cain's offering?
Why did he kill his brother?

The non-acceptance of Cain's offering is simply a device to give Cain a pretext for the shocking murder. I recall reading that Remus laughed at the small walls Romulus had built. We can take this metaphorically, but again the idea is to shock us with the fratricide.

We have God asking questions once more as if Cain and the deity were street partners. Cain's reply has become proverbial. Cain had killed his brother as a consequence of God's pettiness. I agree the play characters are well enough written.

[marco]

I find a consideration of the Genesis narrative to be totally relevant to the issues faced by humans in the world today. Genesis is, in its essence, based on human realities.

History is a good teacher but traditionally we fail to pay attention and repeat our errors.
In the third and fourth centuries we had vast hordes of people pushed by wilder races across the Roman borders: Vandals, Goths and Visigoths, Franks and Lombards. Then came the Huns. There are many reasons for migrations to Europe today, not just one. For all we know Qatar might be Allah's reconstruction of Eden.

If Genesis in some way can provide an answer for us to this awful problem then I shall honour it as a sanctum of sapience. I guess that nursery tales provide equivalent instruction.

[Thomas123]

I find a consideration of the Genesis narrative to be totally relevant to the issues faced by humans in the world today. Genesis is, in its essence, based on human realities.

History is a good teacher but traditionally we fail to pay attention and repeat our errors.
In the third and fourth centuries we had vast hordes of people pushed by wilder races across the Roman borders: Vandals, Goths and Visigoths, Franks and Lombards. Then came the Huns. There are many reasons for migrations to Europe today, not just one. For all we know Qatar might be Allah's reconstruction of Eden.

If Genesis in some way can provide an answer for us to this awful problem then I shall honour it as a sanctum of sapience. I guess that nursery tales provide equivalent instruction.

The Genesis presentation could not possibly be more different to the nursery tales you glibly refer to at the end of your well considered post. I enjoy the tone of this as I enjoy the pedantic wit of the grave digger in Hamlet. It is the dismissiveness of Hamlet and Horatio to the bumbling of poor Osric. That was just class snobbery and meanness. If this discussion was a Shakespearean play, you would indeed be a prince, marco.

I believe you started this thread in good faith and I implore you to extract proper measure from the contributions made here, particularly from those that expound a theistic interpretation of the actual script that is a common reference here.
If for example ,I add a throwaway comment to this laboured post, then I feel that it weakens it.
I love the image of a lapwing with a shell on its head depiction of poor Osric, and I could share Shakeaspere with you all day,but not here.

[marco]

I believe you started this thread in good faith and I implore you to extract proper measure from the contributions made here, particularly from those that expound a theistic interpretation of the actual script that is a common reference here.

Dear friend Thomas, I was seduced by you into introducing Shakespeare by your quote from Hamlet, "there's the rub." My purpose is not diversionary but to illustrate that in commenting on Genesis I am commenting on a fictional play with fictional characters, and the methodology I would use to analyse Hamlet is the same as that for Yahweh or Cain. I cannot transform myself into someone who believes Hamlet is still Prince of Denmark.

As an aside the lapwing builds its haphazard nest - just wisps of grass - in brown ploughed fields to match the eggs, but quite forgets about tractors. From any writing we can extract information, so I accept that we can make measureless mileage from Genesis. You attempt to do so and I respect these extractions, but I believe similar wisdom can be got from almost anywhere. The wisdom is in the mind of the interpreter, not the original writer whose sole purpose was to make a message that glorified God. We have examples of this beatification of the base in modern art appraisal.

[Thomas123]

[Replying to post 115 by marco]

I love your lapwing analogy, marco, and I in no way want to appear as if I am badgering you by making observations.on the contrary, I feel that I am being informed by your personal view point. Much of what you write prompts questions to my mind. Take this latest post, for instance,
marco: The wisdom is in the mind of the interpreter, not the original writer whose sole purpose was to make a message that glorified God.

I cannot in any way ,either logically or literally,consider this reason to be the sole purpose of the compilers. Why do you think that?

[Thomas123]

7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

What does this passage actually say.
Has this rejection of a person's actions by Yahweh, any modern relevance?
What was wrong with Cain's offering?
Why did he kill his brother?

The non-acceptance of Cain's offering is simply a device to give Cain a pretext for the shocking murder. I recall reading that Remus laughed at the small walls Romulus had built. We can take this metaphorically, but again the idea is to shock us with the fratricide.

We have God asking questions once more as if Cain and the deity were street partners. Cain's reply has become proverbial. Cain had killed his brother as a consequence of God's pettiness. I agree the play characters are well enough written.

Why shock with a fraticide?
Why require a pretext for murder?
What does the enclosed passage actually say?
What was unacceptable within the Cain offering according to the piece provided?

[Purple Knight]

We have examples of this beatification of the base in modern art appraisal.

Perhaps I am not the only one who finds much modern art appalling.

Did you hear that someone, as a jest, placed a pineapple in an art exhibit, and then observed as all the patrons took pictures and discussed what it meant?

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 23516.html

Ruairi Gray, a business information technology student at Robert Gordon University in Scotland, and his friend Lloyd Jack, reportedly left the fruit at the Look Again exhibition at RGU's Sir Ian Wood building, hoping that it might be mistaken for art.

When they returned four days later he found that the pineapple had been put inside its own glass display case at the event.

So when people interpret and reinterpret an art exhibit to gain meaning...

...where is the wisdom? Well, not in the pineapple.

Pineapples go in the mouth, not in the brain.

[marco]

Did you hear that someone, as a jest, placed a pineapple in an art exhibit, and then observed as all the patrons took pictures and discussed what it meant?

No one could mistake Michelangelo's David for a casual lump of marble. The artistry and skill are there in the beauty and balance. I was forced by artistic friends to visit the Tate in London and when I saw a used coffee cup pinned to a wall, as a manifestation of the new Da Vinci, I had to leave. A lady who was cleaning a German gallery threw away some scrap iron which she thought - correctly - was rubbish, and she was reprimanded for throwing out some valuable modern art exhibit.

This is highly relevant to Bible tales - here is your pineapple and look around for the admirers. Of course we can extract wisdom if we set our minds to the task. As a youth I attended a Jesuit lecture on Genesis and was impressed by his skilful attribution of metaphor here and there. I had entered the room thinking Adam (no surname) and Mrs. Adam were truly our first human representatives. A mass of catechism and tough dogma prevented my earlier mind from questioning. Now it is not about primal parents but about teasing meaning from metaphor as from a pineapple.

[Thomas123]

[Replying to post 119 by marco]

Regardless of extracting artistic merit from an out of context pineapple, the deductions here are contrived and erroneous. Who started talking about pineapples in art?

I still have not really received answers to my actual questions about the 'Cain' text.

Listen to this!
marco::Now it is not about primal parents but about teasing meaning from metaphor as from a pineapple..

The Genesis narrative is extracted from our pre history and it's actual subject is about our primal parents and has nothing remotely to do with pineapple.
To attempt such a connection is simple mischief.