Allegory, people.
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The Story of Adam and Eve, Sexist, Egotistical and Guilt-Inducing
by sabastious 32 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Heaven
Sure snakes can talk. You encounter them every week on stage at the KH.
LOL @ cameo-d!
Snakes in human clothing.... doh!
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mindmelda
I've heard that there are two different creation stories from a rabbi too.
Makes sense, there's a lot of dissonance in the Genesis account, in the first 5 books, actually, but I figure it's a lot of cobbled together myths from different times and thinking among the Jews.
I try to remember that it's all about the Jews. If you're not Jewish nor follow the faith of the Jews, then its not your book, your people or your rules!
Yes, I know Jesus was Jewish, but hey...according to Christianity, he was God in the flesh, and that flesh just happened to be Hebrew. I'm not sure you could say that God had a racial preference, technically, since he supposedly created ALL humans, not just the Hebrews.
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sabastious
Allegory, people.
I don't think it is completely allegorical. I believe the story was originally human history as has had allegorical elements added after the fact. This is pure speculation and a hunch.
-Sab
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Pistoff
If it is not myth, then explain to me how eating an apple from the wrong tree made Adam and Eve the original sinners, unforgiven, while King David lied, whored and murdered and was still considered a good king?
Wake up. Adam and Eve is a story of creation like the others from ancient mythology, it is just the one we grew up with and therefore doesn't sound quite as crazy.
Adam Eve and the Serpent is a GREAT book about this, and the acceptance of Augustine's dramatic changing of christianity's view of the tone of the Adam and Eve story.
P
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Doug Mason
mindmelda,
Here are a couple of books that I know you would enjoy:
"Who Wrote the Bible?", Richard Elliott Friedman. He provides the name of the person most likely to have cobbled together the various parts of the first five books. I should comment that the last of those books, Deuteronomy, was more than likely writen by just one person, Jeremiah's scribe, Baruch.
"Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible through Jewish Eyes", John Shelby Spong.
As everyone knows, Spong is controversial and confronting in the extreme, and is therefore essential reading, if only to provide a challenge to one's belief system and as a check on what one holds dear. Another most interesting and arresting book of his is, "Jesus for the Non-Religious".
Doug
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ziddina
Uhm, okay, I HATE to get technical, but...
The story of "Adam and Eve" isn't that old... Since the bible itself [oldest bit of extant writing traceable to the "Hebrew" scriptures] is only around 3,500 years old, it wasn't exactly "ignorant" humans that were around when "Adam and Eve" came along... Well, with the possible exception of the Isra-EL-ites...
Since they ["Adam and Eve"] came along LOOONG after the Neanderthals [230,000 to 30,000 years ago] and LOOOONG after Homo Sapiens first appeared on the scene [around 120,000 years ago], the idiots who believed the "Adam & Eve" story weren't exactly living in 'ancient' times...
[above stats from the website: http://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans/programs/neanderthal/ ]
I mean, come on!!! The Egyptians were well-established as a civilization by the time of "Abraham"... check out this timeline: http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/history/timeline.html
If one determines the period of "Abraham" as being of about the same antiquity of the bible, then "Abraham" must have been in existence around the time of the Egyptian "Intermediate Period II"
But let's give ol' "Abraham" a thousand years, just to be generous... In that case, "Abraham" would have been in existence around the time of the Egyptian "Old Kingdom", which included such luminaries as Pharoah Khufu, Sneferu, and Huni...
So, as I've said before, while a bunch of ignorant, superstitious, backwards, Middle-Eastern Isra-EL-ite sheepherders were wandering around the wilderness, being scared into awe by erupting volcanoes; the Egyptians had already built an impressive civilization...
Which was preceeded by the impressive Minoan civilization of Crete, among others...
It's NOT like there were no advanced civilizations around during the time that this mythology ["Adam & Eve"] got started...
Zid
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sabastious
@Zid - I think the concept of the Adam and Eve story is indeed ancient. But the actual evolved story we have today is not.
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ziddina
Sabastious, there are a lot of "First man and woman" stories out there, but very few with the symbolism of the "tree of life", "tree of knowledge of good and evil", and especially with the symbolism of the "talking snake" AS IT IS PUT FORTH in the bible...
There are older 'creation' myths with SACRED snakes, though... In fact, one of the oldest deities worshipped on the face of the planet is the "Rainbow Serpent God/Goddess" [sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes hermaphroditic, depending on which Aboriginal tribe you talk to...] of the Australian Aborigines... Some estimates of the age of their collective mythology places it in existence at around 40,000 years ago, and some push it back even further, to 80,000 years ago and perhaps even older...
Unfortunately, many of the pseudo "Adam&Eve" stories found amongst so-called 'primitive' peoples often turn out to be traces of "white civilization" that have worked their way into the tribal mythology at a MUCH more recent date...
Zid
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sabastious
@Zidd
I'm not sure what you are trying to debate.
The fact is, this story has been used for a very specific purpose. My neanderthal illustration was not set in stone (hah!). The main point of the post is it's title.
The story was made to control humans and control women even more so. It explains "WHY?" and very poorly at that.
People keep saying it's allegorical, then what is the general consensus of what it originally was supposed to represent? Revelation says in it's opening that it is symbolism, why does the Genesis account speak as if it were true human history? Because the writers thought it WAS human history.
-Sab