A Biblical Exegesis

Heheh, what can I say, VALIS was relevant to my interests. And then I read a book on Kabbalah 'cos of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Speaking of which: a worrying amount of the pretentious symbolism in that series actually makes sense in a Kabbalic context. Even GNR (spoiler if you don't know the acronym).

I watched the series and I'm still not sure what that means...

Yeah, that's the other thing about the "Fan Fic" summary - most of the important apocryphal texts were written long before the modern canon developed. The gnostic texts I mentioned were written in the second century or so, I think, for example.

^Giant Naked Rei from End of Evangelion.

edited 25th Dec '09 7:46:05 PM by Tzetze

Oh, fuck this post.

edited 25th Dec '09 7:52:00 PM by Lucky Revenant

Tzetze: That always made sense to me. Then again, I went into Evangelion already knowing the basic Kabbalistic symbolism, so...

Genesis 3

This chapter is headed "Human Disobedience" in the Good News Bible.

We are informed that the snake is the most cunning animal that the Lord God has made. The snake, who can talk, apparently, asks the woman whether God told her not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden. The woman replies that she may eat the fruit from any tree except the one in the middle of the garden; and that if she so much as touches the fruit of that tree, she will die. Oddly, she doesn't specify whether she is talking about the tree of the knowledge of good and bad or the tree of life, but the snake apparently knows that she means the former.

The snake says that if the woman eats the fruit she will not die. He claims that God said that because if she eats it she will become like God, and will "know what is good and what is bad".

There is an interesting footnote after this part. Apparently "like God" could also be rendered as "like the gods", intriguingly enough - so there may have been more than one? The footnote also states once again that "know what is good and what is bad" could have been "know everything".

I can't help wondering here how it's reasonable to expect the woman to obey God if she doesn't know good from bad.

The woman thinks the fruit looks tasty, and of course, she wants to become wise, so she takes and eats the fruit, and gives some to her husband, who eats some as well. At once, they gain understanding and immediately they realise that they are naked. This is apparently a bad thing, because they then sew themselves clothes out of fig leaves.

So, seemingly the snake was right. God lied to the man in order to prevent him from gaining knowledge.

So, that evening, when they hear the Lord God walking in the garden - God is seemingly anthropomorphic here, so one can perhaps take "made in His image" literally - the man and the woman hide in the trees. The Lord God calls out to the man, "Where are you?"

The man replies that he was hiding because he's naked.

God asks the man who told him that, and whether he ate the forbidden fruit.

The man seems unwilling to take responsibility for his actions here, making a point of the fact that the woman gave him the fruit, and even that it was God who put the woman there.

So the Lord God asks the woman why she gave the man the fruit, and she is also unwilling to accept responsibility, and blames the snake for "tricking her".

I'm finding this rather problematic. As far as I can tell, the snake didn't trick anybody. It told the truth, it's just that it also encouraged the woman to disobey God. There was no trick. One would have imagined that the man and the woman would know full well that God wouldn't like being disobeyed, so it seems pointless to blame the snake.

I'm also disturbed by God's apparent desire to keep the humans ignorant, but I guess that's simply Values Dissonance.

No, because eating the fruit introduced death and sin.

Gnosticism: Again the snake is a hero, and Adam wants to hide his newfound knowledge that the demiurge is not the true god from him.

As for the "gods" thing, the ancient Jews were polytheistic. For example, the name of God "Elohim" means "deities".

@ Tzetze: That is interesting. I can certainly see how the Gnostics arrived at that conclusion, although obviously that's taking a number of liberties with the text.

I'm aware that the early Jews were polytheistic, but I'm a little surprised that this could have made it into Genesis, given the monotheistic creation story it presents.

@ Katrika: Did eating the fruit introduce death, or was that a punishment imposed by God?

I'm a little unclear on the origins of sin here. Was disobeying God in itself a sin? If so, surely eating the fruit made no difference to that.

It's been a while since I read Genesis, but IIRC, the next chapter sheds some light on these questions.

I don't know if you know this, but Genesis is really fucking old.

Really? Man, I had no idea!

But, you know what I mean, right? We've just had a story about how God created the entire world, with no mention of other gods.

Genesis 4

"God Pronounces Judgement", says this edition.

The Lord God punishes the snake by condemning him, and him alone of all the animals, to bear a curse: he must crawl along on his belly and eat dust as long as he lives. His offspring will forever be the enemy of woman's; they will crush his head, and he will bite their heels.

Then God turns His attention to the woman. Her punishment is that she will suffer dangerous pregnancies and painful childbirth, and yet she will still desire her husband, but will be subject to him.

I'm not going to lie: I really wish the passage described in the above paragraph had never been written. It makes my blood boil. The only way I can personally accept it is to remind myself that this part of the Book is the product of an earlier age with different values. But I digress.

God then turns His attentions to the man. The man's punishment is that the ground itself will be under a curse, so that the man will have to toil away to grow food, battling weeds and thorns, and he will be forced to eat wild plants. He will have to work until he goes back to the soil from whence he came; he was made from soil, and will become it again.

I'm finding the vagueness of the language here simultanously intriguing and rather frustrating. Evidently God is informing the man that he will die, but it's not clear: is this part of the punishment, or is God merely stating a fact? And if the latter, is the man's consumption of the fruit the reason that he will die, or would he have died anyway? Whatever the case, the man did not die immediately after eating the fruit, although again, "day" might not actually have meant "day" here.

Adam (presumably the man, although it doesn't actually say that; a footnote says that his name means "humanity") names his wife Eve (a pun on the Hebrew word for "living", meaning "human beings" in this context). The Lord God clothes them in animal skins.

A new headed section now: "Adam and Eve are Sent Out of the Garden".

The Lord God notes that the man "has become like one of us" and has knowledge of good and bad. To whom is He talking? Given the context and the previous chapter, other gods? I think it more likely that He is simply referring to Himself in the plural again.

God goes on to say that the man must not be allowed to eat from the fruit of the tree of life, which will render him immortal. Wow. I guess that confirms that they are indeed two trees. And yet, this also means that the man was not originally forbidden from eating from that tree, so by disobeying God, it looks like Adam and Eve threw away their chance at immortality.

Then the Lord God sends Adam out of the garden and makes him cultivate the soil. At the east side of the garden, He places "living creatures" and a flaming sword which turns in all directions, to guard the tree of life. A footnote explains that the "living creatures" described here were called Cherubim in older editions. Given that Eden itself is in the east, presumably Adam and Eve are very far east at the moment, if the east side is where the guards are stationed.

So, that's Genesis 4. Next time: "Cain and Abel".

edited 26th Dec '09 2:31:45 PM by BobbyG

But, you know what I mean, right? We've just had a story about how God created the entire world, with no mention of other gods.

Editing.

East of Eden is here according to the Mormons.

Ah yes, I've heard of that. But... in Missouri? The rivers mentioned earlier appear to contradict that.

1. Geography changes over time
2. Missouri is on the Mississippi and has lakes and shit
3. Mormons believe that American Indians are descended from the lost Jewish tribes, they have a lot of other problems with science.

edited 26th Dec '09 2:35:32 PM by Tzetze

OK. But Cush, Assyria, the Tigris and the Euphrates are all locations which we know to exist or have existed, and they're on the other side of the world.

Still, I suppose tectonic plates move about, so there's that.

Whoops, I didn't realize that it actually named the rivers outright. ^_^;

I could go on about Mormon illogic for a while but I'll skip it.

No, because eating the fruit introduced death and sin.

Actually, this is an interesting outlook. The answer most Christians give to the Problem of Evil is "Because God wanted us to have free will," but judging by Genesis, it would appear that he didn't. Humans weren't supposed to be able to sin.

The Lord God notes that the man "has become like one of us" and has knowledge of good and bad. To whom is He talking? Given the context and the previous chapter, other gods? I think it more likely that He is simply referring to Himself in the plural again.

My best guess, when it mentions God speaking in terms like 'us' or 'we' that it's referring to the Holy Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Three in One thing.

The answer most Christians give to the Problem of Evil is "Because God wanted us to have free will, " but judging by Genesis, it would appear that he didn't. Humans weren't supposed to be able to sin.

Alternatively, I'd think it might be more a case of 'ignorance is bliss', for lack of a better way of putting it. They had free will before, they just didn't know how to sin. After all, if they weren't capable of sin prior to eating the fruit, then Gods rule of 'don't eat the fruit', which was their original sin, would have been something they would have been incapable of doing. But by eating the fruit and gaining all that knowledge, they now know how to disobey God without having someone else telling them how to do it or leaving a tempting suggestion for them to follow.

And since I'm actually hopping in to do some replies now (thought I wish I knew how to get that quoting stuff working), I'll say that this is definitely an interesting blog you're doing. I come from a Lutheran background myself (Dad's a Pastor to boot), so it's interesting so far to see this in action from a background such as you described.

edited 27th Dec '09 12:20:57 AM by Space Jawa

Quotes are accomplished by [[quoteblock]]heysometext[[/quoteblock]]

Oh, thank you! That should make things better.

I'm surprised this hasn't degenerated into a flamewar yet.

And it had better not. If that happens, I'mma start smiting posts with the Stick of Off-Topic Smiting.

@ Space Jawa: Ah yes, the Trinity. I hadn't thought of that, but that would make sense. Although, that of course goes back to Tzetze's comment about it being edited, since the Jews would presumably have considered "three-in-one" to be blasphemous.

Sinful actions must logically be possible if free will exists. Perhaps they simply didn't have any motivation to sin, and therefore wouldn't have done, without the snake's prompting or the knowledge the fruit provided.

^^ We're generally a more civilized lot anyway.

^ When's the next one?

Next update? Probably either this afternoon or tomorrow. Either way, when I'm a little more awake, I think.

Ah, I see.