[Laurentiu Cristofor]

New religions don't start from scratch - they always build on existing beliefs with a different twist. Islam is a continuation of Judaism and Christianity. Christianity is built from Judaism. Judaism is built on top of older myths and legends. Some of these original myths are changed so much that their original intent is almost lost, having been replaced by newer interpretations.

The Garden of Eden myth has puzzled me for a long time, because frankly, it's hard to make sense why the fall of man is due to gaining divine knowledge, if we are to take the myth literally. Then I read Jared Diamond's article The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race and I realized this was it. The event that is at the base of this myth must be the transition of human society from hunter-gathering to agriculture. The so called "curses" associated with the "original evil" are the effects associated with the introduction of agriculture - woman becomes the reproductive tool of man, while man is breaking his back working the land.

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Last edited by Laurentiu Cristofor; 04-10-2010 at 10:00 AM. Reason: Corrected Jared Diamond's name from Javier Diamond.

[Ash]

Hard to know if it's a myth or history since none of us were there to witness it ourselves.
Taking the story literally would make the story fanciful - how can an apple give someone the knowledge of good and evil?
There more to it than meets the eye.

Hard to know if it's a myth or history since none of us were there to witness it ourselves.
Taking the story literally would make the story fanciful - how can an apple give someone the knowledge of good and evil?
There more to it than meets the eye.

Ash it was a fruit. Never a mention of what fruit however.

[Ash]

Ash it was a fruit. Never a mention of what fruit however.

Whatever the word used in whatever version of the Bible, it's metaphorical.

[Ratmagiclady]

Well, actually the Garden of Eden myth, along with a lot of the stories in Genesis, doesn't originate with Judaism: it came from Babylonian Paganism, somewhat rearranged, and may be even older: one reason a lot of the stories don't make sense to schoolkids is cause in fact they *were* kind of rearranged from their original context.


Though that's of course not really the subject of the linked article. Agriculture has, of course, brought with it serious problems: one can only hope we can work something out.

What'd H.G. Wells say: "Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. "

[wildman]

I've always thought that the Garden of Eden thing is just the Judaic version of the "good old days".

Any culture that's old enough runs into hard times. Then the -

"it's tough now but there was once a good old days when we were right with god [and by implication we are not now] and all we have to do is get right with god for those good old days to return."

thinking starts.

That sort of thing. I think it's basic to human nature rather than peculiar to any particular culture. It's origins is the human psyche not historical.

It's a sort of stand in, mundane ersatz paradise that could return to the people if they do the right thing and before they enter the true kingdom of god at death.

I'm still waiting myself.

[causey]

The anthropological roots of a myth may have very little to do with its significance. The meaning of Eden is individual-psychological rather than collective-historical. (Or so it seems to me.) It designates a place or origin of the soul--and an origin is not necessarily something left behind, in the past. One needs to redeem himself for the fall from Eden, that is, to ascend to the origin. Psychologically, Eden is the origin that we need to realize, to which we need to bring ourselves. (And I think this is a deep human need. Don't people want to be happy? Well, the kind of knowledge that is a way of assertion of the self over the world puts one in the 'wrong' relation to things and thus stands in the way of genuine self-fulfillment. As a sort of vague empirical evidence: generally, the saddest persons are those 'in the know'.)

---------- Post added 04-10-2010 at 07:21 AM ----------

What'd H.G. Wells say: "Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. "

The latter seems to be winning.

[Ratmagiclady]

Well, I do think that when people start ascribing certain authorities to certain notions of origins, it certainly *affects* how they see the world: we all have a mythic sense, of course: if a version of that myth simultaneously blames 'knowledge of good and evil' for a 'fallen state' ...and *dooms* people to it, that's interesting. Certainly that book treats agriculture and the cited-in-the-article civilization (notice how the cities already *existed* in the story when the tribal ancestors were kicked out of the 'garden,' ...that certainly is interesting in this context: one of those places it stops making *sense* is in fact in trying to make it a linear history of all humanity.)

One can see a certain group of religions both kind of obsessed with 'judging good and evil' and simultaneously deeply-suspicious of, even hostile to, *knowledge.*

Personally, I think the whole 'ignorance is bliss' notion to be highly over-rated. I think I'm be more in the Buddhist camp that ignorance is one of the big causes of *suffering.*

Certainly in that when it comes to trying to get this civilization thing right, there's quite a lot of history of learning things the hard way, then with entrenched interests preventing further progress, using some pretty aggressive ignorance: often just when, perhaps *because* it's time to take the next step.

The more stress there is on a society, the more likely some will be *wanting* things to return to some 'good old days when things were simpler,' (People have an uncanny tendency to have been *children* in their own pasts, go figure. )

I think there's a real tendency for some to figure that if someone else isn't 'miserable,' they must be 'cheating' on the supposedly-deserved punishment or something. I don't think that saying 'This was a mistake, let's undo it,' in either sense really helps that much, though there are surely lessons to learn.

Civilization (and our technology) needs to *mature,* not like 'regress,' ...we really do have all that we remember of history and can see in each other and the world to draw on.

To say that 'knowing more makes you miserable' is only a part of the picture. Sometimes learning more 'hurts' ...struggling *against* learning more certainly causes strife and suffering and tragedy, ...there's also something past just seeing the problems... Realizing that we can pass *through* those problems, and that that actually feels pretty darn good. A lot more good to be doing that than sort of hiding in fear that it's all too big to cope with. Helplessness doesn't feel very good at *all,* really.

Classifying everything 'good or evil' before you even look tends to make fearful, ignorant people of us.

[causey]

Not any kind of ignorance is bliss. Lack of understanding is the opposite of bliss.

[joele]

The Mesopotamian's had an interesting familiar myth. I guess this is what Ratmagiclady is referring to?

A man called Adapa is allowed to obtain godly forbidden knowledge but denied immortality. His god, Ea, warns him in Eridu, "not to eat or he will die," the fruit to be offered him in heaven by the god Anu.

[jeffkrol]

I find myself attracted to this logic and it does answer some of the questions I've posed in my own life.. YMMV..........
Secondly, consider the political implications of the story of Genesis. Elaine Pagels, in her fascinating book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988), pointed out that the long-held attitude of the Christian church of submitting to greatly flawed systems of secular government was usually justified by the "fallen condition" of humanity as first described in Genesis. Following largely the interpretations of Saint Augustine, most Christians felt that even bad governments were to be preferred to liberty because humans are so corrupted by Adam and Eve's original sin that they are in capable of governing themselves. The libertarian fervor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that gave rise to the American and French revolutions was clearly not motivated by the spirit of Genesis. The statement that "all men are created equal" does not occur in that scripture, but sprang from the inspiration of the American revolutionaries, who drew from Hermetic, Gnostic, and similar non-mainstream sources. .......
The creation myth of any culture has a profound effect on the attitudes, social mores, and political systems that prevail. So long as the Book of Genesis remains a basic text for Jews, Christians, and Muslims we can expect the societies within which these religions flourish to be influenced by this book. Still, there is some hope on the horizon. Although the Gnostic alternatives to the content of Genesis are still usually neglected, as indeed they were on television and in the press last year, some prominent figures of our culture are beginning to take notice. To mention but one such figure, Harold Bloom has become one of the most prominent voices calling attention to the creative character of the Gnostic alternative to mainstream religion. His books American Religion (1992) and Omens of Millennium (1996) have made a powerful case for the timeliness and perennial value of the positions taken by Christian Gnostics, Jewish Kabbalists, and Sufi mystics, all of whom are inspired by a common gnosis. It may be useful to conclude with an incisive and in our view definitive statement from the pen of this scholar:

If you can accept a God who coexists with death camps, schizophrenia, and AIDS, yet remains all-powerful and somehow benign, then you have faith, and you have accepted the covenant with Yahweh.... If you know yourself as having an affinity with the alien or stranger God, cut off from this world, then you are a Gnostic, and perhaps the best and strongest moments still come to what is best and oldest in you, to a breath or spark that long precedes this Creation.

The Genesis Factor

From Harold Bloom........
Gnosis
The experience of Gnosis is a varied phenomenon: your knowing may be prompted by a moment of utter solitude, or by the presence of another person. You may be reading or writing, watching an image or a tree, or gazing only inward. Gnosis, though related both to mysticism and to wisdom, is quite distinct from either. Mysticism, though it comes in many kinds, by no means opposes itself to faith; perhaps indeed it is the most intense form of faith. Wisdom, in the biblical sense, is allied with the prophetic reception of a God who dominates our world, which is seen having fallen away his original Creation. Gnosis grants you acquaintance with a God unknown to, and remote from, this world, a God in exile from a false creation that, in itself, constituted a fall. You yourself, in knowing and being known by this alienated God, come to see that originally your deepest self was no part of the Creation-Fall, but goes back to an archaic time before time, when that deepest self was part of a fullness that was God, a more human God than any worshipped since.

[Green_Manelishi]

The Genesis account is God setting the record straight after Noah's family/Tower of Babble with time causing the true account to be added to, modified, and twisted into the myths of other civilizations.

But you go ahead and believe whatever tickles your lugs.

[causey]

People in the know, always eager to build new Babylons. (Not adverting to the Gnostics!)

[Ratmagiclady]

Interesting stuff, Jeffkrol. I've hung out with lots of Gnostic types, (though you'll hear a lot of definitions from a lot of people (within and without) about just what that *means,* ...I'm not sure all would necessarily agree with that encapsulation of it in this case, but what's new there.

For the whole matter of the 'Rights of Man,' I'd definitely be much more inclined to credit the Enlightenment, with Deist ideas functioning, in part, as a way to reconcile with more linear and literalistic religious ideas, among other things.

Creation myths are important, really *if* you place such importance there. Sometimes it's hard for folks who take that view more or less for granted to realize that 'creation' doesn't always mean 'control and ownership.'

Perhaps it's simpler to observe that creation myths tend to end up being used to suit religious authorities that rely on them... Just like in some, ideas of 'What, specifically, happens after we die' ...are more *central* in religions that are, well, kind of 'death-focused.'

The attention's put there cause the intention is put there.

Other faiths aren't trying to 'explain a Fall' cause there *isn't* one, as such. At least not one that really defines and limits daily life and the future.

Many other religions and faiths have a notion that 'Everything was OK, once, now it's harder,' certainly a 'Where did it all come from' has many stories. (My kind of religion has *lots* of 'Creation myths,' ...and one that's probably the most central: but this isn't by way of reducing it all to a single human-centered narrative.

I, for instance, might well say that 'Creation' isn't an artifact or an object or event: it's an ongoing *unfolding.* It's like a wave, and we are part of the sea.

Ultimately, all the same 'Moment.' Definitely not linear and separate from us or 'God Herself' as one of our favorite mystics says.

More a matter of 'Wow' than "This, therefore that,"

[wildman]

The Genesis account is God setting the record straight

...he pronounced ex cathedra.