But maybe if I blog about it I'll have better luck. Or maybe not, I don't know. No guarantees.
Note that I'm not a Bible scholar, so this isn't going to be authoritative. I'll make no attempt to be either inclusive or conclusive. Check out the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, if you want that. I'm just going to comment on whatever comes to mind.
I'm not even going to read that annotated version of the Bible. Instead, I'll read the King James Version - because I like the language - in its 1769 revision, to get more modern spelling. If that's not accurate,... well, I'll let 'God' worry about that. :)
I won't read very fast, probably, since I'm commenting, too. But I might have a lot to say about some chapters, with little to say about others. I just don't know. The point is, what you get is what you get. Right now, I don't have a clue what to expect, myself.
Genesis, Chapter 1:
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Neat, isn't it? Very poetic. But how can anyone read Genesis without recognizing it as a 'just-so' story of primitive mythology?
When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. I read Native American mythology, too, a bit. Genesis is just like that. So it's always been hard for me to understand why anyone in the 21st Century would believe that it was actually true.
Of course, most Christians don't believe that, not literally (which pretty much eliminates the whole point of Jesus Christ, but I'll get to that later), but many do. There's just a shocking number of fundamentalists in America these days. Have they never read any other mythology? I just don't get it.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
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| The sun, planets and angels and the firmament. Woodcut dated 1475. - from Wikipedia |
Primitive people didn't have a clue about modern cosmology (no surprise), so they invented a universe which made sense to them. (All cultures did this, not just the early Jews.) What made sense to them was a fixed ceiling, separating the waters above (from where the rain came) from the waters below.
The sun, the moon, and the stars were fixed in that firmament. (Note that rain came from above that!) Of course, since this clearly indicated that the Sun revolved around the Earth, rather than the other way around, later astronomers who discovered the truth were threatened with death for going against the Bible.
The church didn't even bother to look at Galileo's data, since he had to be wrong. After all, the Bible had to be true, right? So they threatened to burn him alive - as they'd done other heretics - until he recanted. Faith-based thinking.
Chapter 2:
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
Suddenly, it's "the LORD God," not just "God." Starting in Chapter 2, Verse 4, we get a different (though similar) creation story, with even the name of the deity expressed differently.
Now, according to Jewish (and Christian) tradition, Moses wrote all of this (indeed, the entire Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament). But why would he suddenly switch how he referred to his own god?
Furthermore, the two stories contradict each other (for example, animals created before people in one account, afterwards in the other). This isn't just a creation myth like other creation myths, it's actually more than one myth combined into one.
Obviously, they're similar, because if they hadn't been similar, they wouldn't have been combined into one culture's holy text like this. But again, it just seems obvious that this is a primitive myth similar to what every other primitive culture invented. These were stories people told to each other, until they were eventually written down - and codified - into a more or less coherent belief system.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Oh, this is going to cause problems, isn't it? :)
But let me get this straight. God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent, and he can put this "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" anywhere he wanted. So why put it in the Garden of Eden, especially since he knew (he's omniscient, remember) what was going to happen? Or didn't he get all-knowing until after this?
Furthermore, how did Adam and Eve know that disobeying God was wrong before they'd eaten the fruit? Before that, they didn't have any concept of right and wrong, so why blame them for something they had no control over? (If you get a puppy, do you punish him for piddling on the floor before you've even had a chance to teach him otherwise?)
Afterwards, they knew it was wrong. But not ahead of time. (Again, God should have known that, if he had a brain at all, let alone omniscience.)
Finally, I think it's interesting that God warns Adam not to eat the fruit, but this is before he has even created Eve. In the next chapter, Eve apparently knows about this rule, but did God tell her, or just Adam? After all, if she had any sense at all, she wouldn't have necessarily believed everything a man told her. :)
Chapter 3:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
The serpent was telling the truth, wasn't he? It was good food, not poison. (God lied about that, since they clearly didn't die the same day they ate the fruit.) And it did give Adam and Eve knowledge (knowledge that God was apparently keeping for himself). In effect, this made human beings into people, rather than just animals.
I think it's funny, because this is basically the Prometheus myth. But, as Wikipedia notes, Prometheus "is known for his intelligence and as a champion of mankind." Of course, many primitive creation stories have similar myths, but don't most of them think that knowledge is a good thing?
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
Eve wanted to be wise. And she was right to want that, wasn't she? I wonder, is intelligence praised anywhere in the Bible? I'll have to look for that as I continue reading. Obedience is praised, yes, but obedience is for slaves. Free men and women should desire knowledge, should desire intelligence, should desire wisdom.
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:
Snakes had legs before this happened? I've heard Christians claim that this wasn't actually a talking snake, but just a mistranslation. Leaving aside the fact that the least an omniscient, omnipotent god could do is make sure his holy book was translated accurately, I'd say this passage makes it abundantly clear that it really was a snake, don't you?
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Why does Adam get to rule over Eve? Why blame her more than him? After all, God warned Adam about eating the fruit before Eve was even around. At the very least, they should be equally to blame. (Although, as I noted, it's hard to blame either of them when they were incapable of telling right from wrong. As a myth, this one not only teaches the wrong things, it makes God seem like a dick.)
22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
Speaking of acting like a dick, note how God doesn't want Adam and Eve to "become as one of us"? ("Us"? There is more than one god, then?)
They were just animals until they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but now, they're a threat, apparently. They threaten to become gods, themselves. If they ate of the tree of life, they would become gods, and 'God' apparently doesn't want the competition, so he drives them away.
Of course, he could have avoided all this if he'd just put those two trees somewhere else. That was remarkably stupid for the all-knowing creator of the universe, don't you think? And I'm still wondering about that "us." Who else was there?
But then, the people who imagined all this weren't monotheists, not as we'd define the term. They believed that multiple gods existed, but they just worshiped their own. That's why the Second Commandment says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." That wouldn't make sense if there were no other gods, would it?
All in all, Chapter 3 makes Adam and Eve look like real heroes, don't you think? God, as I've said, looks like a real dick. That's the kind of god you think is worth worshiping? I really don't get it.
One other thing: I don't see anything here about blaming Adam and Eve's descendants for any of this. Did I miss something?
As I've said, I don't think that even Adam and Eve were at fault, since they had no way of knowing that disobeying God was wrong. But God doesn't seem to indicate that this "original sin" (which phrase isn't used here, either) is going to affect their children (except for not growing up in the Garden of Eden, of course).
But maybe that's elsewhere in the Bible? With luck, we'll get there eventually. For now, I think this is long enough.
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PS. This whole series - assuming that there will be one - can be found here.
I appreciate what you're attempting to do here. To be honest, I doubt many Christians or people who say they believe the bible have done this. I've read only this first entry in your series so far, and I'm interested to see what observations you make as we go along. I am not a Bible scholar either, but I've read some stuff by people who are.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing to consider when reading the Old Testament, or any other ancient writing, for that matter, is, what is the context of the writing. None of these works were written in a vacuum, and many people "study" them (the Bible) as if they were. A part of this is being knowledgeable of the culture from which the author originates, and what the cultures around the author are like. Given the context, we also must be careful not to apply our own modern culture to the text either. This can lead to further misunderstanding.
Another thing to recognize is, what type of writing is it? The Bible contains many different types of writing, such as historical accounts, prophecy, poetry and songs. Each type has its own purpose within the overall work of the Scripture itself. Understanding what type of writing the given portion is will aid in how to understand it.
Take this first portion of Genesis. This is the account of the creation of the world, but given it's structure(and I'm leaning on what I remember from an Old Testament Survey class I took two decades ago, so feel free to confirm this) it is very poetic. The retelling of the creation account is not the combination of two creation myths, as you suppose in your reading of it, but is presented with a structure reminiscent of the parallelism of Hebrew Poetry most visible in the "Wisdom Literature" of the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, etc. Types of Parallelism in Hebrew poetry aren't a redundancy, but a structuring of the text to emphasize or clarify a point.
I'm curious to note that you mention a contradiction here, but after rereading the passage myself, I don't see it. I'm curious as to where you see this. (I apologize for asking this of a blog you posted over 10 years ago.)
What I read here, and again, I am not a biblical scholar, is we see the account framed, first and foremost, with the supposition of the existence of God. Preeminent, before all things, even before the world, God is. Then God creates the world. This account assumes God exists, and declares that God exists outside of and apart from His creation.
Given the last interaction we had, nearly 2 months ago, in the YouTube comments section(sorry about the wait), I thought this would be a good place to park for a moment. If the creation account is taken literally, at least in the fact that God created the world, but He is not a part of that creation. This would, by my understanding, severely limit our ability, as creatures within this world, to OBSERVE god within this creation apart from the ways in which he has interacted with us directly. In other words, is there evidence we can gather from this creation, by means of the scientific method, that would prove the existence of this God, who is outside this creation, who is not made up of this creation?
(I ran out of space)
ReplyDeleteI'll admit, I don't know the answer, but I would put forth one factor to consider- that is, the interpretation made by the observer of the evidence collected, both in determining what qualifies as evidence to begin with, and how one can interpret the evidence to reach a conclusion. Deciding what evidence is worth considering and how that evidence is interpreted will lead to the observer's conclusion. (How's that for parallelism?)
I've seen videos and read articles that have made claims such as, "This scientific discovery proves the existence of God!" and I intended to present some to you, but I'll be honest, I haven't done the research to present any of these to you at this time for your consideration. I'll attempt to track some down. One note about them, though, is that they all MUST resort on some form of interpretation by the observer to reach these conclusions. I would hope that these claims would be made in good faith, but that, again, would take some interpretation of our own.
I feel I've run off on a rabbit trail a bit here, but if you'll indulge me, I'd like to come back and revisit this Blog again to discuss some of the other comments you've made about the text. I appreciate you reaching out again. I hope to respond in a much swifter manner in the future.
One of the experts I edited out of the first comment is Dr. Michael S. Heiser, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Heiser He is an Old Testament Scholar and Hebrew language expert featured prominently in this presentation: https://youtu.be/2QM7anD5vSI?si=6st6V8SQRb4oTilX You may find it interesting.
Thanks for the comment, Josh. But why don't you send me an email, so we can discuss this stuff? Here's the contact page: https://garthright.blogspot.com/p/contact.html
ReplyDeleteI enjoy discussing this stuff, but I haven't blogged in years. As you point out, I posted this more than ten years ago. And when it comes to blog posts here, I never even made it through the OT, let alone the whole Bible. (It just got mind-numbingly boring in Numbers. But I didn't blog for long, anyway.)
Briefly, I agree with you about books not being written in a vacuum. But Christians don't consider this to be just another book. And if a god had anything to do with it - any god, let alone one that's supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful - then I'd expect a book to be written well enough that at least his own worshipers would all agree on what it said!
I don't expect to "observe" a god, if that god doesn't want to be observed (though... why not?). I don't expect to "observe" magic leprechauns, either, if they don't want to be observed. But evidence is how we distinguish reality from delusion and wishful-thinking.
I certainly don't ask for a 'scientific discovery proving the existence of God.' But asking for something distinguishable from wishful-thinking backing up religious claims doesn't really seem like too much to ask, does it? But it always is.
Again, please send me an email. It's far easier to discuss this stuff by email. But thanks again for the reply.