ITT We interpret the Bible (somewhat) Literally

Started by zarus tathra, July 03, 2013, 09:59:45 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

zarus tathra

The vast majority of people assume that Adam and Eve were the first humans in the Bible, but this is not so. In the first chapter, during the 6 days of creation, they clearly state that the Elohim (The gods collectively, yes the Bible is polytheistic) create the heavens and the earth and all the creatures of the Earth, including the humans. On the seventh day, the Elohim rest, and afterwards, Yahweh, a singular god, creates the Garden of Eden.

Adam isn't a free human, he's just a human created out of dust and clay to tend to the garden, like some kind of robot. Eve is created to keep him company. And in this context, Yahweh telling Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of knowledge and life makes a lot of sense. Yahweh isn't telling humanity to collectively avoid eating of the fruit of knowledge, he's telling two creatures that He made to do a specific task not to eat of that fruit. It's like the difference between an industrial robot and an experiment in general artificial intelligence. You want the latter to be as intelligent and free-ranging as possible, like with the original humans, but you want the industrial robot to stick to its task. Adam and Eve weren't punished for wanting knowledge, pushing them out of the garden was almost a necessity. By eating the Fruit of Knowledge, they could no longer content themselves with being stewards, and so Yahweh had to drive them out, since what kind of knowledgeable creature wants to spend eternity in a garden?
?"Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed, when there is a lack of will." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Ideals are imperfect. Morals are self-serving.

Jason78

Winner of WitchSabrinas Best Advice Award 2012


We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real
tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato

zarus tathra

The actual King James Bible. Just read the first two chapters and take notes of the chronology. The first humans are created before the Garden, and Adam is created to tend to the Garden and for no other purpose.

As for the Elohim and Yahweh thing, that's taken from the original Hebrew text.
?"Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed, when there is a lack of will." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Ideals are imperfect. Morals are self-serving.

Solitary

Eve was not the first woman according to Scripture, it was Lilith who left Adam after he wouldn't let her be on top during sex. Then Adam asked Yahweh to make him a woman (Eve) because he got tired of his sheep?  :rollin:  Solitary
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Solitary

From the internet: We dunno what you've heard. You could have heard Lilith is a model for Oppressed Womanhood. You could have heard she's a succubus who gives men wet dreams. You could have heard that she's a demoness who murders babies. You could have heard that she's a goddess, the wife of Death.

On the one hand there are all these (and likely other) interpretations. On the other hand there are the legends themselves, which are also quite varied, from Jewish folklore. Let's start with a paraphrase of the most familiar legend, which dates to medieval times, from the controversial work known as the Alphabet of Ben Sirah, including a few of our own interjections:

When God created Adam, he was lonely, so God created Lilith from the same dust from which Adam was molded. But they quarrelled; Adam [the proverbial domineering male] wished to rule over Lilith. But Lilith [a militant feminist] was also proud and willful, claiming equality with Adam because she was created from the same dust. She left Adam and fled the Garden. God sent three angels in pursuit of Lilith. They caught her and ordered her to return to Adam. She refused, and said that she would henceforth weaken and kill little children, infants and babes.

The angels overpowered her, and she promised that if the mother hung an amulet over the baby bearing the names of the three angels, she would stay away from that home. So they let her go, and God created Eve to be Adam's mate [created from Adam's rib, so that she couldn't claim equality]. And ever since, Lilith flies around the world, howling her hatred of mankind through the night, and vowing vengeance because of the shabby treatment she had received from Adam. She is also called "The Howling One."

You can see how this legend could lead to various interpretations, depending on whether you think she is noble (in rebelling against male domination) or evil (in vowing vengeance against innocent babies.)

But where does this legend come from? The author of Ben Sirah basically wove together three separate threads from centuries earlier works, because Lilith is a very ancient legend.

Let's start with the Bible as primary source material. Genesis of course mentions Adam and Eve, but -- please note -- doesn't mention Lilith. The idea of Lilith as a "prior first woman" before Eve arises much later. The only reference to Lilith in the Bible (Old or New Testaments) is Isaiah 34:14, probably written around 540 BC; it's a description of desolation, jackals and ravens among nettles and briers, etc.: "Goat demons shall greet each other; there too the lilith will repose." Most of the other creatures referenced in this poetry cannot be positively identified. The KJV, following the Vulgate, translates "the lilith" as "the night demon," confusing the lili- with the Hebrew word for night. But presumably Isaiah meant some sort of demon.

The notion of a lilith as a demon is probably Assyrian (say around 700 BC), incorporated into Isaiah by way of the ancient Israelite contacts with the mythologies of Babylonia and Chaldea. The Assyrians had three female demons, Lilit, Lilu,and Ardat Lilit. There's little doubt that the Hebrew lilith-demon mentioned in Isaiah was a folkloric adaptation of the Assyrian demons.

Several hundred years after Isaiah, we find Talmudic writings that describe Lilith (now as a named demon, rather than a broad category) as an irresistibly seductive she-demon with long hair (presumably worn loose, a sure sign of wantonness) and wings. Terey wants us to be sure to say that she's a succubus. She seduces unwary men, then savagely kills the children she bears for them.

From this, she becomes the demon responsible for the death of babies. In ancient times, one needed to protect against such demons; today, we blame other factors for the death of infants. To guard against Lilith, superstitious Jews would hang four amulets, one on the wall of each room of a newborn babe, with the inscription "Lilith - abi!" ["Lilith - begone!"] which some think is the origin, much later, of the English word "lullaby."

OK, that's legend one: a she-demon who kills babies.

Legend two: early rabbinic writings about Adam and Eve. There are rabbinic midrashim, stories filling in the gaps in the text, that tell of Adam and Eve after they leave the garden. Adam is angry with Eve for causing so much trouble, so he leaves her, and is beset by demons (called "lilith"; the name is still a generic category of demon). A particular lilith called Penzai seduces Adam and becomes pregnant. Got it? So that legend associates a lilith with Adam.

Legend three: an early midrash that puzzles about why Eve is created from a rib of Adam, why not created equally with him? The midrash suggests the creation of a prior "first woman" (unnamed) who doesn't work out as a fitting companion for Adam.

OK, so around a thousand years later (give or take a few centuries), the Alphabet of Ben Sira  creates the story we started with, tying together all three legends, merging (1) Lilith the child-slaying night-demon story with (2) Penzai the lilith who seduces Adam with (3) the "prior first woman" story.

This mingling of legends provided a good Jewish context for the ancient custom of making the Lilith amulets (thus exonerating the custom from the taint of superstition or witchcraft.) That's why the legend of Lilith as Adam's first wife doesn't emerge until medieval times, although the strands of the story are much earlier.

The Zohar, the great book of Jewish mysticism from the 12th Century, adds yet another dimension. The Zohar generally doesn't mention Lilith by name, but refers to her as the wife of Samael, the Angel of Death ... and sometimes as the wife of Satan. She sleeps with men, causing wet dreams, and she collects semen from the marriage bed. (Flowing semen is a symbol of life, the white fluid, contrasted with flowing blood as a symbol of death, the red fluid, so the demoness who kills children collecting semen is symbolically very neat.)

So that's the legend(s) and their origin(s). A little confusing, but demonology is not an exact science.

Now, a brief footnote in Modern Times. You can imagine that modern feminists would latch on to the rabbinic story of punishment for resisting male domination, and use Lilith as a symbol. It's a two-edged symbol, of course, since Lilith as a demon who destroys newborns pre-dates the medieval explanation of Lilith as a rebellious wife. However, the modern use of Lilith as a symbol of oppressed womanhood is quite strong.

For tons more information, check out http:/www.lilitu.com/lilith/  

A warning, though: because Lilith is used a modern symbol, some websites have distorted the legends to meet their political agendas. That's OK, we're not quibbling with that, that's one of the reasons that legends and mythologies persist is that they can grow and develop. We're just saying, be careful to separate modern interpretations from earlier historic ones.
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

FrankDK

There are two creation accounts, each with its own chronology.

In Gen 1:1 - 2:3, God makes everything in the Universe (although the order is mixed up, with flowering plants coming too early, and three days and nights of light and darkness before the sun is created), and makes man and woman, in indeterminate numbers and without names:

1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

The second account, from 2:4 to 2:23 or so, has a different order and mentions Adam and Eve.

Here's a good synopsis of the genesis of Genesis:

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f ... gen1st.htm

Frank

stromboli

The Mormons interpret this as proof that there are multiple gods- you can essentially become a god, by obtaining the celestial kingdom, and building your own worlds.

Christians interpret this as the triune God-Elohim, Yahweh (Jesus) and the Holy spirit. See? They find a way around it.  :-D

zarus tathra

There aren't "two accounts." The first chapter talks about the first 6 days of creation. The second chapter begins with the seventh day. And THEN they talk about the Garden of Eden. So the creation account isn't separate from the story of the Garden. This means that the bulk of the human race predates Adam and Eve and there isn't a discrepancy.

Wait, nvm all of this. The Garden of Eden's creation takes place during the 6 days of activity. But the idea that Adam and Eve were created to tend to the garden still stands, as does the fact that they can't serve this function anymore once they eat of the Fruit of Knowledge.
?"Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed, when there is a lack of will." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Ideals are imperfect. Morals are self-serving.

josephpalazzo

In those days, the writers of the bible might have seemed to be clever folks, but by today's standard, they are mental midgets. What's so horribly surprising is the number of fucking morons who still believe in that crap.

Scary.

FrankDK

> In those days, the writers of the bible might have seemed to be clever folks, but by today's standard, they are mental midgets.

I'm not so sure.  I suspect the people who were making this stuff up and writing down the old oral traditions knew perfectly well that it wasn't literally true.  In the tradition of many primitive religions, making up stories about things gave them a feeling of power over those things, just like a doctor will tell you you have "cranial neuralgia" if he can't figure out what is causing your headache.  It was intended to be poetry, not science.

After all, they included obvious contradictions, especially when combining the traditions of the northern and southern kingdoms.  These are called "doublets," and then occur very frequently, especially in the descriptions of the early prophets like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Both traditions had these stories, and they diverged slowly as each group told and retold them.  (For example, read Gen 37 and try to figure out who sold Joseph into slavery and to whom.  There are two versions.)  Then when the two were integrated after King Ahaz united the kingdoms, redactors shuffled the two together, alternating the version first from one tradition, then the other.

> What's so horribly surprising is the number of fucking morons who still believe in that crap.

An apt description of what's wrong with the world today.

Frank

Voskhod

There is literally no point in attempting to interpret the Bible literally because doing so would only confirm the assumptions we have already made about doing so: That its complete and utter bronze-age lunacy.
.
[size=100]
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -H.P. Lovecraft
[/size][/b]

Solitary

Welcome aboard Voskhod!  You got that right!  =D>  Solitary
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.