Is Genesis True?

[Thief]

Rebirth is fact.

not buying that

 

[sealchan]

I don't care for the word "moving", because that always implies emotionalism. Spiritual truth is experientially different than emotionalism. Emotions being moved or stirred, may or may not accompany spiritual realizations. In fact, the highest states of spiritual awareness are completely beyond emotions.

Somewhere in Campbell's musings about the nature of art where he draws in James Joyce's character of Stephen Daedelus, he presents the highest level of the goal of art as involving the artist bringing his/her audience into the presence of the "secret cause" of all things in conjunction with the majesty of pity and/or terror for what is grave and constant in human nature. To be struck to our core by the mystery of this grand razor's edge upon which we walk and into which we must find room for all that we hold dear and count as meaningful inspite of the easy grace with which all of that can be snuffed out at any moment without much effort.

 

[Thief]

God isn't a fact

oh....really?

nothing Greater than you?

 

[Baladas]

The male/female symbolism is also present in the Babylonian religion, which is fairly important as the story of Eden seems to date back to the age of the Babylonian captivity. It is symbolism the Jews would have been familiar with at the time that the story seems to have come about, at the very least, as they would have been in contact with the Babylonians as well as the Indo-European Persians.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your familiarity with Babylonian myth.
What you've said is true, but I think that you may still be generalizing a little bit.
Tiamat was the goddess of the salt seas and mother of the gods, and she also represented primordial chaos. Her mate Apsu (fresh water) was the father.
I don't believe that Apsu was ever a diety of the skies.

 

[Thief]

Mmmm... think we sort of went around the corner there.

and there seems to be several more corners.....posted

But I remain firm to the line drawn.....
there is a God
and someone had to be first to walk with Him

if this never happened.....then ALL of religion is a lie

not that I need religion to believe in God

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

The first symbol to look at is the symbolism of male and female. This symbolism is typical in the ancient age of the male symbolic of the heavenly and the female symbolic of the earthly. That is why in many early polytheistic religions you have often have male gods governing the sky, and female goddesses governing the earth. Compare to Dievs/Mara in Baltic Paganism or Uranus/Gaia in Hellenic stories.

The dichotomy of male Adam and female Eve then could be understood as being representative of the spiritual or non-materialistic side of mankind and its material side. This would explain why Eve is tempted first and in turn tempts Adam, as the materialistic side of a person is what first is tempted, and from the temptations of that side, the non-materialistic side may follow the materialistic side.

Eden is said to be perfect. Eating the fruit of "knowledge of good and evil" causes one to leave Eden, and also causes one to see things in terms of good and bad, and causes Adam and Eve suffering when they ascribe "bad" to their state of nudity after adopting this "knowledge". After they eat the fruit / adopt the "knowledge", they are cast out of Eden and no longer live in a perfect world.

Although it is of note that even before they are cast out, Eden itself becomes imperfect in their eyes, no longer a paradise. While before the fruit, they were content with the nudity of Eden, after the fruit, they clearly viewed this as a flaw in the state of their lifestyle.

It's important to note that if you were to not view anything in the world in terms of "good" and "bad" you would view the world as "perfect", since in your eyes it contained no bad whatsoever. No matter how hellish the world you live in is, if you don't view it through a lens of good and bad, it just is. And if it just is without any negative, and it could not in any way be better, then it is simply wholly perfect.

Meanwhile no matter how privileged your life is, if you view things as "good" and "bad", then your life will have suffering and imperfection. Your complaints may boil down to first-world problems and may be unwarranted, but as long as you still make such value judgments then you will be suffering due to the perceived imperfection of the things around you.

The symbolism of the whole is thus this:

Humanity has a non-materialistic side and a materialistic side. Through attachment to the materialistic side, humans come to see the world in terms of "good" and "bad", which causes humans to fail to comprehend the world as a perfect paradise and to instead come to view the world as containing bad, and being imperfect, and thus suffering.

There's more symbolism in the tale that could be dissected at length, but that's the gist of it.

The male/female part aside (as male and female are decidedly the purview of the living beings of Earth, and therefore only marginally applicable to the greater reality posed by "the universe"), this definitely answers the question I posed. I do feel that the expectation of "good" or "bad" causes many people much trouble in life. It is a sort of "fall" from the possibility of holding an overall more neutral position. I feel that neutrality alone is more inline with the universe as it is experienced. From such a grand perspective - all is merely neutral. Many people won't like that idea, and cast it as insensitivity to human suffering - but that isn't it at all. It's acknowledgement of other perspectives, even as you live and react within the subjective experience of being "human" - you hold onto the understanding that you are mote of dust, or less, that the comings and goings of living beings are entirely trivial things, and that you can therefore often actively choose what you let affect your subjective experience and what you do not.

 

[sealchan]

Symbolic truth. As opposed to like, true truth?
I dunno what symbolic truth is.

In the event, Genesis, like pretty much all of t he
bible, is subject to the same interpretation as
metaphor, symbol.

And as such, is found to say pretty much whatever
whoever wants to decide that it says.

That may be where the "truth" mainly lies,
in what it reveals of the reader.

There is a rich scholarly study of myth and comparative myth out there that has found that stories across all cultures have shared themes and motifs. Certain psychologists have noted that these themes and motifs often turn up in dreams from dreamers unaware of the stories that their dreams resemble. As such we have the outline for a science of psychology which can take as its field of study myth, dreams and the psychology of human self-talk (how we spin narratives to explain ourselves and our lives).

Symbols are specific images or ideas which share this universal character. In Jungian studies they are called archetypes. My own study of dreams has lead me to believe that there are other more subtle structural patterns in dreams that may not be so usefully categorized as "archetypes" but applied as simply familiar patterns that help reveal universal motifs that reflect the structure of the psyche.

As such all in instructive for a science of psychology and a deeper understanding of ourselves.

 

[Windwalker]

Symbolic truth. As opposed to like, true truth?
I dunno what symbolic truth is.

In the event, Genesis, like pretty much all of t he
bible, is subject to the same interpretation as
metaphor, symbol.

And as such, is found to say pretty much whatever
whoever wants to decide that it says.

That may be where the "truth" mainly lies,
in what it reveals of the reader.

Of course. It's what truth is inspired in the reader. Is it a higher truth, then it's symbolic. Is it a "lower truth", then it's a descriptor of facts. Symbolism is about rising above the current mode of thought, not cementing it into facts. This is what metaphors do. They point to something greater than themselves, a "finger pointing at the moon" as it were, not a descriptor of the moon itself.

 

[Sanzbir]

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your familiarity with Babylonian myth.
What you've said is true, but I think that you may still be generalizing a little bit.
Tiamat was the goddess of the salt seas and mother of the gods, and she also represented primordial chaos. Her mate Apsu (fresh water) was the father.
I don't believe that Apsu was ever a diety of the skies.

I was thinking more of Anu and Marduk in the case of the Babylonian male sky dieties.

 

[Sanzbir]

Many people won't like that idea, and cast it as insensitivity to human suffering - but that isn't it at all.

I've found much the same when explaining that idea, lots of people think such an idea is insensitive to human suffering...

Which I find a bit strange, as such a mindset is the only cure for the root cause of human suffering. Nothing but a return to unity over dichotomy will give a person liberation from suffering... Everything else only treats the symptoms, at best.

 

[Baladas]

The characterization of the lives of ancient
humankind as "nasty, brutish, and short"
sounds about right.

Anyone who thinks things were great at
some time in the past really should have
access to a time machine, and a one way
ticket.

There are a whole lot of "connections to nature"
that few of us would like very much.

Agreed, I am quite aware that romanticizing the past is not the answer. I tend to agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson in that I find a kind of spirituality in seeking to understand the universe with the best tools we have available.

It seems to me that many people have the tendency to overemphasize either the wisdom or the stupidity of ancient peoples, depending on who you talk to.

That last part made me laugh, and it's very true. With my comment on connecting to nature, I was referring to the sense of wellbeing that spending time away from the buzz of technology and frantic schedules often brings to people. Anyone familiar with history knows that the quality (or at least the potential quality) of human life has steadily improved since the Renaissance.

 

[metis]

I take it as being allegory.

 

[Earthling]

The first couple chapters of the book of Genesis describe the Fall of man from paradise, a state of unity and eternal life with God, to a state of separation, pain, loss, suffering, and death. While it is obvious to most modern readers, and especially those with any modest degree of valid scientific knowledge that the details of the story are not factual historically nor scientifically, is the story true nonetheless? Is there a real truth to the underlying theme portrayed through these symbolic characters, Adam and Eve, that is captured faithfully in the myth of the Garden of Eden?

It absolutely blows my mind how in almost complete ignorance people place some exaggerated view of current science as an invalidation of the mythology of the Bible. I suppose it's understandable in view only upon the introduction of the mythology later adopted by theology or, more likely especially in the case of Genesis, developed in the dark ages under those current scientific or philosophical explanations or understandings of the world at that time. In order to fairly evaluate the Genesis account you have to take all of this under some consideration but more importantly you have to evaluate the reams of data discovered since the mid 1800's until now.

So, in such a meaningful discourse what do we have?

1. The original Bible. Understanding the ancient Hebrew and how it is incorporated or translated into the current English.

2. The tradition, the myth introduced later and mixed with that tradition, and much of the current theology based upon those. Tradition, myth, theology.

3. The current understanding based upon discoveries in textual content since the mid 1800's.

4. We have the current science and how that differs from all of the above.

This is what we are going to do in this thread. Rather than just assume that science makes the ancient myth look foolish so the ancient text is negated somehow, less we should look foolish in the light of modern day academia.

Since this post is on the border of being longer than the attention span of the average reader, including myself, I will continue later.

 

[Earthling]

I take it as being allegory.

Why?

 

[Audie]

I take it as being allegory.

Make-believe originally passed off
as true, but changing to allegory as
they became unbearably nonsensical
to educated people.

 

[Muffled]

I do not believe the fall came with Adam and Eve for all of humanity as we know it. It is a scenario of a fall for Adam and Eve but the fact that they were granted eternal life when others weren't only goes to show how very much God had a special interest in those people.

 

[Muffled]

I think Genesis, like much of the Bible, is a work of fiction.

I believe you are making that up.

 

[Baladas]

I was thinking more of Anu and Marduk in the case of the Babylonian male sky dieties.

I'm sorry, I think I may have misunderstood your initial meaning a little bit. If so I apologize (I can only blame my not having had coffee yet this morning). I read your post as saying that Babylon had a mother earth and father sky, but I haven't read anything that leads me to believe that.

Marduk was indeed a storm/sky god, and he did kill Tiamat, using her corpse to finish the creation of the earth that Enki had started. However, Tiamat was the primordial sea goddess of chaos, not of earth. There is also the myth of Ishtar bringing knowledge to the people of Uruk, leading to the rise of civilization, but it's my understanding that Ishtar/Inanna was not a mother or creator goddess (though she was a fertility goddess).

Please correct me if I'm wrong, I am always willing to learn.

 

[metis]

Make-believe originally passed off
as true, but changing to allegory as
they became unbearably nonsensical
to educated people.

As Confucius supposedly said (paraphrased): The more you know, the more you know you really don't know [much].

Maybe take his advice.

 

[Muffled]

most people see Genesis as an explanation for why we die

I believe we were never meant to live forever....in flesh

and the ideal living conditions of Adam and Eve were a petri dish
having served it's purpose
it was dismantled

I believe this is a promised event so it would seem intentional to me to promise something. Whether it suits God's purpose in the long run remains to be seen.