I'm pondering this possible opinion that who we see ourselves as humans had a distinct beginning point in the history of human beings that occurred in a specific year of 4026 BCE. Though as a mythological beginning, that it was a point of "decision", that something woke up in the human creatures and "chose to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and become as God", it doesn't exactly bear up date-wise with the eye opening of humans historically, differentiating them from simply being as the beasts of the field. It's too late historically.
Bear with my thoughts here a little. I certainly get the existential trip that the story of Adam and Eve speaks to in the book of Genesis. I see it as quite expressive of that inner sense of separation that we as humans experience, both from the world, others, and God, that sense of our own aloneness, our nakedness, the knowledge of our own upcoming demise, or death, or more pointedly our non-existence. As humans die, we don't just die in our bodies, we die as our unique individual "me", our self identities. "I shall be no more". These two deaths is what makes us human, and the latter is far more terrifying to us and propels us in all directions to avoid facing that non-existence, imagining ourselves continuing as immortals, and whatnot.
I see the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis as an account of that, a story about that. Not about earth history, but a history of our uniquely modern human existential angst. We awoke to a differentiated self from our previously merely being part of the eco-system on a biological level. I get it. I think its a great myth that has teeth this way. It doesn't of course me the actual characters were history figures in flesh and bone, but they are very much representative of our humanness on an imaginal level. (The imaginal refers to "images", not mental fantasy. It pertains to archetypal forms).
Did this awakening to our 'soul' happen 4000'ish BCE? No, I'd say much earlier than that (again, that date, that story, is mere fabric on an archetypal truth, so to make it scientific destroys that, to be blunt. Historically you see early religious expressions which reflect this existential awareness reaching back to 50,000 BCE. Fertility symbols and musical instruments have been found that old. This is very much humans beginning to experience themselves in a magical sort of mental soup, the earliest expressions of humans realizing themselves separate from just functioning biologically within the eco-system. Here is where we began 'waking up", our eyes opening from that slumber in the arms of the Great Mother, the earth system that gives birth and destroys life though blood (the beginning of sacrificial systems).
What we see historically, through artifacts of art and later literature, is a developmental progression of self-awakening of human consciousness from archaic, to magic, to mythic forms of that awakening in culture. (see Jean Gebser's work) The mythic stage actually developed up from the earlier magic stage about 5000 years ago, or roughly 3000 BCE. The story of Genesis reflects human conscious seeing itself in the world through the use of mythological symbols and stories. So what you see in the Garden story, the story of the Fall, is an expression of human self-awareness operating at the mythic level, talking about what we all as humans experience as our existential angst. The story in the book of Genesis fits into that period of time, being written sometime after the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which it borrows its basic theme from. That was dated somewhere around 1100 BCE.
Without getting more technical than that, I kind of get the 'sense' of a 4000 BCE date for origin of who people sees themselves as human fits. It is itself reflective of a mythological stage of conscious awareness, the beginning of seeing themselves in the world in that structure. In a way, its true, in referencing that stages of development in ourselves, the existential terror in realizing we are naked, in realizing isolation in ourselves, like pinpointing in our personal history when we first awoke to the world in the way we ourselves in it now. Those in a mythic stage of seeing the world, who resonate with that, can say, "Sure, who I see myself as is reflected in that story", that awakening to the mythic stage roughly 5000 years ago.
Bear with my thoughts here a little. I certainly get the existential trip that the story of Adam and Eve speaks to in the book of Genesis. I see it as quite expressive of that inner sense of separation that we as humans experience, both from the world, others, and God, that sense of our own aloneness, our nakedness, the knowledge of our own upcoming demise, or death, or more pointedly our non-existence. As humans die, we don't just die in our bodies, we die as our unique individual "me", our self identities. "I shall be no more". These two deaths is what makes us human, and the latter is far more terrifying to us and propels us in all directions to avoid facing that non-existence, imagining ourselves continuing as immortals, and whatnot.
I see the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis as an account of that, a story about that. Not about earth history, but a history of our uniquely modern human existential angst. We awoke to a differentiated self from our previously merely being part of the eco-system on a biological level. I get it. I think its a great myth that has teeth this way. It doesn't of course me the actual characters were history figures in flesh and bone, but they are very much representative of our humanness on an imaginal level. (The imaginal refers to "images", not mental fantasy. It pertains to archetypal forms).
Did this awakening to our 'soul' happen 4000'ish BCE? No, I'd say much earlier than that (again, that date, that story, is mere fabric on an archetypal truth, so to make it scientific destroys that, to be blunt. Historically you see early religious expressions which reflect this existential awareness reaching back to 50,000 BCE. Fertility symbols and musical instruments have been found that old. This is very much humans beginning to experience themselves in a magical sort of mental soup, the earliest expressions of humans realizing themselves separate from just functioning biologically within the eco-system. Here is where we began 'waking up", our eyes opening from that slumber in the arms of the Great Mother, the earth system that gives birth and destroys life though blood (the beginning of sacrificial systems).
What we see historically, through artifacts of art and later literature, is a developmental progression of self-awakening of human consciousness from archaic, to magic, to mythic forms of that awakening in culture. (see Jean Gebser's work) The mythic stage actually developed up from the earlier magic stage about 5000 years ago, or roughly 3000 BCE. The story of Genesis reflects human conscious seeing itself in the world through the use of mythological symbols and stories. So what you see in the Garden story, the story of the Fall, is an expression of human self-awareness operating at the mythic level, talking about what we all as humans experience as our existential angst. The story in the book of Genesis fits into that period of time, being written sometime after the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which it borrows its basic theme from. That was dated somewhere around 1100 BCE.
Without getting more technical than that, I kind of get the 'sense' of a 4000 BCE date for origin of who people sees themselves as human fits. It is itself reflective of a mythological stage of conscious awareness, the beginning of seeing themselves in the world in that structure. In a way, its true, in referencing that stages of development in ourselves, the existential terror in realizing we are naked, in realizing isolation in ourselves, like pinpointing in our personal history when we first awoke to the world in the way we ourselves in it now. Those in a mythic stage of seeing the world, who resonate with that, can say, "Sure, who I see myself as is reflected in that story", that awakening to the mythic stage roughly 5000 years ago.
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... this is nothing more than the No True Scotsman fallacy at best and petty Western chauvinism at worst.
