Bible adventures with Perfs!

Personally i can't believe the "J" writer was actually writing a devotional work though he/she was clearly very talented.
What do you mean by devotional work? To me, it makes perfect sense for the various writers of Genesis to be writing down what they or their community believed about God and their role in creation to preserve it (and to give it some degree of additional holiness).
 
Maybe God wanted Adam to see a world without Eve so he would appreciate her more? :dunno:
That had occurred to me. That could be the case, but then it makes for a a crafty and disingenuous God, IMO.

Hi, Perf!
By receiving your personal invitation to this thread, am I right that you are interested in my answers for real??? ;)
Absolutely! Thanks for replying! I'm not going to comment on everything, but don't think I don't appreciate those parts as well. I want to be somewhat selective in how I answer here, because this thread could easily balloon out of control otherwise (plus I just don't have enough time!)

1. Adam actually saw that no animal "befitted" him, so he needed a "wife" of his own "type".
(Not species, we're talking about spiritual abilities here.)
So why does God not appear to have anticipated this? It appears that God provided everything else needed for man's survival before he came into being, why did he have to wait until no animal worked out for him to be partnered with a woman?

I might take a peek at it, but my goal here isn't to be particularly skeptical but much more exploratory. I will also be doing my main reading away from the computer.
 
What do you mean by devotional work? To me, it makes perfect sense for the various writers of Genesis to be writing down what they or their community believed about God and their role in creation to preserve it (and to give it some degree of additional holiness).

I believe that is probably true for "E" and "P" and the redactor. It is of course possible i am wrong and "J" was also doing so. By devotional i mean the writer wasn't writing something they thought would be considered holy. I think the others were, at least in some sense. I'm thinking of the familiarity "J" uses with God. Calling Him by name, having him walk around, giving Him human feelings. It isn't a flattering portrayal. "J" also makes some fun at times of the patriarchs, particularly Isaac. I could certainly be wrong, but it doesn't read like the writer is in awe of his/her God at all.
 
I should clarify that I'm not a strict Biblical literalist, and I'll freely concede that the creation accounts of Genesis are most likely myths. This isn't a bad thing. Genesis was written first and foremost for ancient middle eastern types, and myth was just how they communicated in that cultural context. Myths can and do express truth (especially divinely inspired ones), but complete internal consistency shouldn't be expected, since that's really beside the point of the genre.

That being said, oxen can till fields, which would be a big part of tending and keeping a garden that size, so that's one thing. Chickens and sheep can provide food, and dogs can herd food providers. It's not too hard to see how animals might have been of benefit to a hypothetical Adam if he existed.
Just how many people was Adam gardening for? Just himself, right? And I take it that he was originally meant to be a vegetarian (because there were no animals), so he wouldn't need any herding dogs...

However, if there were no animals, how did the various flowering plants get pollenated ('cuz you need bees for that)? :hmm:
 
Just how many people was Adam gardening for? Just himself, right? And I take it that he was originally meant to be a vegetarian (because there were no animals), so he wouldn't need any herding dogs...

However, if there were no animals, how did the various flowering plants get pollenated ('cuz you need bees for that)? :hmm:

I would suggest that those are questions that never would have mattered to the authors because they most likely didn't take it as literal history.
 
If I'm expected to follow the tenets of this book, it matters to me that it should make sense. I grant that the Bible (both Old and New) can be very poetic and inspirational, but they're certainly not very logical.
 
Let's not distract from Perfection's thread here. Creationism can (and will) be argued in other threads.

he asked me, and that aint creationism

as for Adam's helpmate, perhaps its allegory for man's departure from the animals

ancient peoples may have maintained oral histories all the way back to a time when more primitive peoples walked the land.
 
If I'm expected to follow the tenets of this book, it matters to me that it should make sense. I grant that the Bible (both Old and New) can be very poetic and inspirational, but they're certainly not very logical.

You can certainly follow the theology or philosophy without expecting to completely decipher a story first written down 3k years ago.
 
I'm sure you got the best translation available, but I remain skeptical. There is just so much theological bias in the translations that it's impossible to trust any. As I mentioned, I occasionally entertain myself by translating random bits of the NT. Most of the time, what I get is about the same as the official translation, but occasionally, it is far from it. Quite often, the version that I get actually makes more sense in the original Greek than in the English! And every so often, it is clear that whole passages are just bad paraphrases, with a clear bias intended.

At one time, I thought perhaps to even study Ancient Hebrew and maybe Aramaic for the same reason, until I realized I don't give a damn about the Bible. And what else would I do with those languages?
 
Just how many people was Adam gardening for? Just himself, right? And I take it that he was originally meant to be a vegetarian (because there were no animals), so he wouldn't need any herding dogs...
Sheep make milk. But yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that Adam would need to do a whole lot of gardening for himself. It also doesn't make sense that you seriously expect a book targeted towards semi-nomadic pastoral and agrarian communities nearly 3000 years ago or so would address concerns like that. There's a lot of wonderful stuff to be learned from it, some of which wouldn't have been understood by the original audience, but their context needs to be considered when reading it.
 
According to the sumerians people were created to take over the burden of the gods. Genesis has two related references, there was no Adam to till the ground and, God took the Adam and placed him in the Garden to tend it.

With the discovery and translation of Mesopotamian religious texts since the mid 1800s, the Bible has another source for understanding the Old Testament's "pre-history".
 
Sheep make milk. But yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that Adam would need to do a whole lot of gardening for himself. It also doesn't make sense that you seriously expect a book targeted towards semi-nomadic pastoral and agrarian communities nearly 3000 years ago or so would address concerns like that. There's a lot of wonderful stuff to be learned from it, some of which wouldn't have been understood by the original audience, but their context needs to be considered when reading it.
Simmer down. Believe it or not, I have read a fair portion of the Old Testament. I'm aware that most of it is myth and allegory. It's based on an oral tradition that changed who knows how many times, for how many audiences, for how many purposes, before it was written down. And even writing it down didn't mean it was forever unchangeable.

I actually do enjoy some of the bible stories, particularly the one about Joseph. While it's rather fascinating that there may be independent evidence in Egypt for Joseph's time as Vizier (according to a documentary I saw some years ago), to me the story speaks a lot more about family and how the members do/don't get along, and what lengths some people will go to to preserve their own sense of pride or place.

And yes, I'm being critical of the story of Adam and the Garden. We know that there was already a thriving civilization before he was supposed to have been created, so that's one reason I just can't take it seriously. Nothing about this part of Genesis makes any sense to me, unless it's meant to explain the whys and wherefores of a particular region turning from primarily hunter/gathering to agriculture where it's necessary to own animals instead of just killing them for short-term uses.
 
I own the same bible, great translation/annotations imho.
 
Simmer down. Believe it or not, I have read a fair portion of the Old Testament. I'm aware that most of it is myth and allegory. It's based on an oral tradition that changed who knows how many times, for how many audiences, for how many purposes, before it was written down. And even writing it down didn't mean it was forever unchangeable.

I actually do enjoy some of the bible stories, particularly the one about Joseph. While it's rather fascinating that there may be independent evidence in Egypt for Joseph's time as Vizier (according to a documentary I saw some years ago), to me the story speaks a lot more about family and how the members do/don't get along, and what lengths some people will go to to preserve their own sense of pride or place.

And yes, I'm being critical of the story of Adam and the Garden. We know that there was already a thriving civilization before he was supposed to have been created, so that's one reason I just can't take it seriously. Nothing about this part of Genesis makes any sense to me, unless it's meant to explain the whys and wherefores of a particular region turning from primarily hunter/gathering to agriculture where it's necessary to own animals instead of just killing them for short-term uses.
Sorry if I seemed a bit harsh, but I'm still a bit confused by your approach. You seem to acknowledge and accept the mythic nature of the creation narrative in Genesis, yet its ahistoricity seems to be an issue with you. For the sake of comparison, would you reject the Aeneid or Heimskringla on similar grounds? I'm also not sure what you mean in your last sentence either. The narrative assumes humanity is agrarian from the start, for one thing. It seems pretty obvious that it's meant to explain things about who God is, who we are in relation to Him, how the universe and its inhabitants came into being, and the origins and nature of death, among other things. At a fundamental level, the explanations given hold true today, and they're better conveyed to ancient people by myth than by our more abstract ways of discussing such things.
 
Sorry if I seemed a bit harsh, but I'm still a bit confused by your approach. You seem to acknowledge and accept the mythic nature of the creation narrative in Genesis, yet its ahistoricity seems to be an issue with you. For the sake of comparison, would you reject the Aeneid or Heimskringla on similar grounds?
My issue is that it doesn't make sense. Whether it's absolute fact, totally made-up fiction, or a combination of the two - the story of Adam, Eve, the Garden, and the snake just do not make sense to me. They may make perfect sense to other people. They just don't to me.

I can't give an answer about the other myths you reference, since I haven't read them.
 
Hi Civ2, I am a bit confused about the creation of Eve.


in Genesis 1:27
God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
This is before Adam sort out the animals and god decide to create Eve for him.
However the text suggests that both man and woman were created (or that the first man was hermaphrodite or that man is intended here generically as a "race" distinct from animal or plants).

in Genesis 2:20-22
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man
This is when Eve is created custom made for and from Adam.
The text seems to suggest that either Eve was the first woman or that there were other women created previously but none was good for Adam and a custom model had to be created.


How to interpret the incongruence between these two parts?
 
wolfigor
The same link from my last post.
Genesis 1
Verse 27:
...
Male and female He created them.


[Yet,] later it states: "He took one of his ribs, etc." According to Midrash Aggadah, He created him with two faces at first, and afterward He divided him. According to the simple meaning of the verse, it informs you that they were both created on Friday. However, it was not explained how they were created, but it is explained elsewhere.
Genesis 2
Verse 18: It is not good for, etc.


So that they [the heretics] not claim that there are two dominions, G-d, above, is alone, without a mate and this one [man], below without a mate.

A helper for him.

If he is worthy then [she is] a helpmate, if he is not worthy then [she is] opposite him, to fight him.

Verse 19: Formed from the ground.

This "creating" is the same as "the making" which was stated above: "And G-d made the animals of the earth, etc." However, here it comes to explain that the fowl was created from the swamps. Since above it stated that they [the fowls] were created from water and here it states that they were created from the earth. Also, it teaches you that immediately, on the day they were created He brought them to man to call them by name. According to Aggadah, the word {Hebrew Ref} here has the meaning of dominating and subjugating as [in the verse:] "When you will besiege a city;" [accordingly, here it means] that He subjugated them under the domination of man.

Whatever the man called [each] living creature, etc.

You must transpose [the words] and explain it: All living souls that were given a name by Adam will retain that name forever.

Verse 20: But the man did not find a helper... Ad-noy El-him caused unconsciousness to fall.

When He brought them [the animals] before him He brought the male and female of each specie. [Adam] said: They each have a mate but I have no mate; immediately: "And G-d put [Adam]..."

Verse 21: Of his ribs.

[Has the literal meaning] from his sides as [in the verse] "The sides of the Tabernacle." This [coincides with] what we said: that they were [first] created with two faces.

And closed-over.

The place of the cut.

And he slept...and He took.

So that he not see the piece of flesh from which she was created and be repulsive to him.

Verse 22: [He] built.

Like a building, broad at the bottom and narrow at the top so that she can carry the child. [Just] as a wheat silo which is broad at the bottom and narrow at the top so that its weight not be a strain on its walls.

[He] built the rib ... into a woman.

[Meaning:] so that it should become a woman as [in the verse]: "And Gidon made it to an ephod," [meaning] so that it should become an ephod.

Verse 23: This at last.

This teaches that Adam attempted to find [a mate] amongst all the animals and beasts and he was not satisfied with them until he discovered Chavah.

This shall be called Woman, for from Man, etc.

[The words {Hebrew Ref} and {Hebrew Ref} ] have the same root. From this [we derive] that the world was created with the Holy Tongue.

Verse 24: Therefore, a man shall leave.

The Divine Spirit is saying this prohibiting to the "sons of Noach" forbidden marital relations.

One flesh.

The child is formed by both [parents] thereby becoming unified as "one flesh."
 
wolfigor
Yup.
You know, some "bibleologists" come up with stupid ideas like "multiple authors" because the narrative is not in a perfect chronology.
But almost every book has a "summary" in the beginning which then goes into chapters and the actual text.
So Genesis just brings the "summary" of Creation and then goes into some details about the most important part of it - us.:D
 
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