Lord Larehip

So when do we take the bible literally and when do we assume they are just f-ucking around? And how do account for it being sentenced to crawl about on its belly? Did it fly before?

In fact, there is no evidence that the snake that talks and the one that god curses were even the same. It reads like two stories being interpolated into one. The talking snake is a hero. In that version, god is a tyrant and a liar. He told Adam & Eve not the eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge or they would die. That was a lie. They ate it and did not die. The snake told them they wouldn't die and he spoke the truth. He said their eyes would be opened and, according to the author, that is exactly what happened. What did the snake do that was wrong?

There is no enmity between man and animals? Quite the opposite. We ride horses, we drink cow's milk and raise livestock for food, keep dogs and cats as pets--what enmity? The enmity is between man and god. That much can't denied.

grindy

Wow, the whole religion thing really starts to look pretty sensible and logical by comparison.
And I say this as a staunch atheist.

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the first question is a complex one. ancient texts often blur the line between historical truth and myth. perhaps it was taken as a literal truth that the events happened as described. but even if you take it literally that the serpent eats dust that would only make the story scientifically inaccurate. not exactly surprising for ancient folklore.


it would seem a bit odd if the snake from the story wasn't the one that god cursed. regardless of whether you want to side with the serpent or with god - there were 3 characters in the story that took the blame for adam and eve's disobedience to god. one was adam, one was eve, and the other was the serpent.


dunno if enmity is the best word but i certainly take from the story that mans relationship with nature changes after he is cast out of the garden. once again there is a similar narative in the gilgamesh tale. where enkidu was once capable of communicating with animals, he found after his encounter with the harlot that they would flee from him instead.

man's subordination of animals sort of fits perfectly with the biblical narrative as well. prior to the fall, all animals including man were supposedly vegetarian. there was no death. after the fall, god forced man to toil the fields and meek out an existence until he died

supposedly it went on like this until after the flood, when he tells noah it's now acceptable to eat meat, and that animals will fear man and man will subordinate them for his own existence

Oriphiel

I've always thought that the story of Adam and Eve was a metaphor for evolution. As in, Humans were simple animals until our intelligence developed, and then we started worrying about more than just survival (like wearing leaves to avoid the feeling of shame for being seen naked). From then on, rather than just exist as hunter-gatherers like so many other animals, we started to tame the world through domestication. And then herds and farms developed, and the world was eventually fenced and divided.

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Lord Larehip

You guys have to remember that these bible stories weren't just written down once and for all. They were revised and deleted and appended and changed more times than we will ever know. If you read the stories carefully, you can unwind some of these disparate threads. It doesn't do any good to say the bible only mentions 4 characters so they must be the same 4, for example. Different stories were brought in, names of characters changed to match earlier stories to the point that we frankly can't be sure what we are reading.

Eve tells god:

Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate."

Now certainly god should know that Eve was lying. The snake didn't trick her. The snake told her the truth and she ate it knowing fully well what she was doing. She sounds like a child denying her culpability. "It wasn't me, mommy, it was Johnny! He made me do it! I didn't want to!" Do you see the metaphor here? Adam and Eve are children who disobeyed their parent figure. When children no longer accept their parents' lies (such as there is a Santa Claus) it's because their eyes have opened enough (gained enough wisdom) to know it can't be true. They start to question those things and when they do, they've grown up and it's time to leave the nest and go off on their own--which is exactly what happens. Things will not be given to them anymore. They will have to work for them and sweat for them. Welcome to adulthood.

The bible isn't explaining evolution because the authors could not have known what that was and would have laughed in your face if you explained to them.

Then god says in 3:22:

Then the LORD God said, "See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"--

Here is an example of another story being woven in because it's problematic for a monotheistic religion to explain whom god is talking to. "Man has become like one of us" indicates that this part of the story was taken from a polytheistic tale. And again we see the enmity between god(s) and man. They don't want us to become like them. But what's it doing in the middle of a story that is simply a metaphor for growing up? Or did the author interpolate it because it represents the anger of the parents when they feel that their children are growing up too fast--becoming like them? And was the plural-speak of the line left in because we are supposed to understand it is one parent complaining to the other?

Moving onto the Noah story--how long did the flood last? Most of us will instantly say forty days. But it read it.

"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights."

"And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days."

"...the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained,and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated"

"and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared. At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made"

"In the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and saw that the face of the ground was drying. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry."

So the flood last 40 days, then 150 days, then it goes back to 40 days, then it's an entire year. No matter how you try to cut it, it doesn't make sense. It's at least three stories interpolated into one.

Here is the real story:



There's your ark and there's your dove. This star group was well known to the ancient Egyptians who used their sighting of it to time the return of the floodwaters of the Nile to the parched land. It was the difference of life and death to them. We call the Noah the captain of the ship but to the Egyptians, it was Horus represented by the star Canopus. Oddly, the ship sails backwards.

This constellation group also served as the source for the story of Jonah. He was thrown off a boat and his name means "dove." Coincidence, no doubt.

The Batlord

Oh goody.

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Chula Vista

What I'd like to know is how come back when you couldn't video or photo document things God worked like this:








And yet in modern times this is all we get to prove his existence:

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

Is that supposed to be the Virgin Mary's pussy or something? If so, I gotta say, I don't think she's a virgin anymore.

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Lord Larehip

Carpe Mortem

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Finally this thread is worth checking

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