Bill Moyers did a television series on PBS 20 years ago on Genesis, a book in the Christian Bible. The series was based on a roundtable of people from all walks of life, and all religions or lack of religion.
Genesis: A Living Conversation
By the time I saw it, the conversations were over. I had no one to discuss the topics with. I've wanted to discuss them with a group. Perhaps Hubski is that group. There seem to be a few people here who are interested in religious conversations, perhaps from a secular view. I'm hoping that levydb might become interested in the discussion.
The series is a 10 part series. If there is any interest, I'll add more posts from the series. Unfortunately, I can't find the video of the series online except for the clip with the transcript. The linked piece is a transcript.
The first part of the series is from the beginning of Genesis and is called "Temptation".
In the video clip in this piece, I'm struck by how confrontational the theists appear. And I'm only guessing they're the theists based on their arguments. The secular people seem to visibly look like they were struck as they lean back in their seats to defensively give their view. Two people tried to explain that they were just reading this as though they were reading any other story. Other people appeared insulted by that even though that was the premise of the discussion.
Several of the people talked about how this is the first glimpse of God that people see in the Bible. The description of him tells about how he created humans and how he views them.
Interjecting here, a pastor once noted that God has to be relatable. If God were an alien who had no common characteristics with humans and no way of communicating at all, there wouldn't be any connection.
It's interesting to see the split between those people who see the God in the story as a benevolent being and those who see him as more demanding.
Many seemed to feel that eating the fruit was about the ability to make free choices and then to see the morality of their choices.
The part where a couple people noted that it was our (human's fault) for death, evil and suffering showed to me some of the differences between religions that Leon was pointing out. There was a lot of blame to go around in that story.
They go on to talk about how Eve shared the fruit with Adam, Adam tells God about it and then God subjugates her for it. At least one person was upset at the misogyny in that.
At the end, they talk about whether the story is descriptive or prescriptive.
Here's the story they're interpreting.
- God planted a garden in Eden and put man in it. And God planted there many trees and right in the middle of the — garden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God said to Adam, “Eat freely from every tree but one. Do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you eat from that tree on that day you will die. Yes, die.”
And, after woman was created she dwelled in the garden with Adam and all its creatures and all its beauty including the trees God planted there.
Now the serpent was the most shrewd of all the creatures. He said to the woman,
“Why don’t you eat from every tree in the garden?” The woman told the serpent that they couldn’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
They must not eat from that tree nor touch it, or they would die. “You will not die!” said the serpent. “Your eyes will be opened, you will gain knowledge and become like the gods yourselves. You will understand the difference between good and evil.”
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, lovely to look at, and could make her wise, she took the fruit and ate. She gave it to Adam and he took it and ate it too. And the eyes of both were opened. They knew they were naked; so they made clothes for themselves with fig leaves. And as they walked together in the garden they heard the voice of God in the cool of the day, and so they are among the trees.
“Where are you?” God asked.
“I heard your voice in the garden,” Adam said, “and I was afraid because I was naked.”
And the Lord God asked, “Who told you you were naked? Did you eat of the tree that was forbidden?” Then Adam told the Lord that the woman had given him the fruit from the tree. The Lord asked the woman, “What have you done?” And she said,”The serpent tricked me and I ate.”
“You are cursed,” the Lord said to the serpent. “Because you did this you will crawl on your belly in the dust from now on;'”You — and — the woman will be enemies.”
“And you,” God said to the woman. “Because you have done this, sorrow and pain will go with the bearing of your children and still you will desire your husband he will rule over you.”
And to Adam the Lord said, “Because you have listened to your wife and not to your God, you will toil and sweat to bring food from the ground. For you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Then Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. And the Lord sent Adam and Eve out of the garden. God said, “Now that man has become like us and knows good from evil, what if he should reach out and take also from the tree of life and live forever”
So God banished Adam and Eve from the garden and placed winged creatures and a flaming sword to guard the Tree of Life at the east of Eden.
From your background and experience with or without religion, what does it mean to you?
Background: raised catholic for my first 16 or so years, never particularly believed in it, but have spent a fair amount of time thinking/learning about the bible in various settings. So, I have a lot of feelings on this story, though it is mainly just small details that I find interesting rather than an overarching opinion. I will probably just piggyback onto existing comments for that opinion. (Note: I am using my New Jerusalem Bible, so the text may be slightly different. It can be a bit clunky at times, but I find it to be the most readable, stripped back, and accurate version.) ------ 1. Gen 3:16, "Your yearning will be for your husband, and he will dominate you". So, obviously there is a lot to say about the "and he will dominate you" part of this, but I actually find "your yearning will be for your husband" more fraught and full of possible interpretations. Of particular interest to me is that this comes in the "doling out punishment" section, implying that this yearning is not only woman's new lot in life, but a punishment. I get that the intention is tying it to the preceding, so that the thought is "childbearing will hurt, but you are going to keep wanting to fuck anyway", but I think it is still contextually interesting, especially if you look at the parable of the serpent/temptation as one of sexual exploration. Of note also is that the hebrew word for "dominate" used here is typically related to animals and the like, IIRC. (Sidenote: a professor I had in college - biblical scholar, translated it from the original hebrew himself, etc etc - is convinced that the author of Genesis is female. Not sure I wholly agree, but it definitely does have some interesting gender dynamics) 2. Gen 3:21 "Yahweh God made tunics of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them". This is a very minor moment, but one that has always struck me. Notably, this is the first instance of death in the bible (unless these animals were skinned alive), and I find it almost nurturing that God goes to the trouble of making tunics before sending these folks into the wild. This is, to me, God at his most parental and arguably most human. 3. Gen 3:6 "...She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it". I like that the marriage of Adam and Eve is so ambiguous - were they created married? Was their marriage ceremony deemed too uninteresting for inclusion in Genesis? Also that marriage exists before the knowledge of good and evil, or mortality. Something I never really considered the implications of before. ----- Extra reading for anyone interested: Cain by Jose Saramago is a beautiful retelling of much of the book of Genesis (and others), and has my favorite representation of OT God in it. Queering Genesis, an insightful alternative interpretation of the creation narrative (only focuses on books 1 and 2 though, so the fall isn't really mentioned). A good site in general. EDIT: Will keep adding as ideas come to me.
A teacher once told me his only rule for reading the Bible is don't ask why God does what he does, in part because there is no decent/definitive answer (except arguably the end of the Book of Job and/or "because I am the Lord, your God"), and more importantly, because it isn't a very interesting question. Of more interest are things like "why did the authors choose to portray God this way?" or "how did the humans react to this?". I think even if you just consider Yahweh as a literary character, one of his few consistent character traits is that he just does stuff and is inscrutable, and attempting to divine (ha) intention is impossible by His very nature. I also side with Leibniz in thinking that one of God's characteristics is that he is perfect. So what does this story tell us? 1. That God, a perfect being, created us without the knowledge of good and evil built in. 2. That God, a perfect being, presumably felt that this was the preferable state of existence. 3. That Adam and Eve seem to have eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil BEFORE the Tree of Life I am inferring this from Gen 3:22, "Now that man has become like one of us in knowing good from evil, he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and pick from the tree of life too, and eat and live forever!" Which leads me to the more interesting question, and one that nobody seems to ask: What is the purpose and the meaning of the tree of Life? I don't think it is explicitly stated that Adam and Eve are mortal before the fall, but why would there be a tree that makes them immortal if they weren't? And why are they allowed this tree (Gen 2:16), but not knowledge of good and evil? The implication being that eternal life is being Godlike in an acceptable way, but being knowledgeable of good and evil isn't. These are all questions I don't have answers to, and would love to talk about.
I don't think it is explicitly stated that Adam and Eve are mortal before the fall, but why would there be a tree that makes them immortal if they weren't? And why are they allowed this tree (Gen 2:16), but not knowledge of good and evil? The implication being that eternal life is being Godlike in an acceptable way, but being knowledgeable of good and evil isn't. I'm not very knowledgeable about the Bible, so you can correct me when my theory doesn't match the text. My understanding was that God had created the angels, probably before he created the Earth. The angels had many of the same properties as God, so they knew good and evil and were immortal. At that time, Lucifer turned against God. The angels were immortal, so Lucifer was also immortal. God would be battling Lucifer for eternity. God didn't want to duplicate that with humans, so he didn't make humans immortal but allowed for them to be immortal by eating from the tree of life. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of good and evil, they now had the possibility of turning into another Lucifer, so God took away their ability to become immortal by taking away their access to the tree of life. I'm not sure how I'd answer that if I couldn't ask why God did something in any coherent fashion. I don't think I agree with your teacher that asking why God does something should be disallowed. If God is completely random with no coherence or logic, God would be not just incomprehensible but also unrelatable. God would be like an alien doing random actions for no reason whatsoever. I do agree with your teacher at the edges where there are incomprehensible human issues. Why did God create free will? Why did God allow evil in the world? Those are questions that can't be answered by looking for God logic because those are the questions that are beyond comprehension. However, I think there must be some questions where people are allowed to ask why God did something or the Bible would be completely illogical. Edit: I thought about this for a bit and think I can answer it from the writer's viewpoint also. I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding your question. From the writer's view, polytheism was prevalent at the time. The Bible was an attempt to push monotheism. The placement of angels in the story explained what was going on with the many gods and why there were good and bad gods, which they already believed in at that time. The garden story explained why humans didn't have the same powers as the gods. The creation part pushed the idea of one God above all the other angels (gods). The tree of life was written in to explain why humans die and gods don't.What is the purpose and the meaning of the tree of Life?
Maybe it's not so much the Tree of Life as a theme on its own, but rather the Tree of Life in combination with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? I'm not 100% sure how to answer the question, but it is a really great question. I mean in terms of why it was written that way maybe to reiterate the point that the lives we live here, with the knowledge we gained, was never meant to be permanent, so much so that God cast man out of Eden before they could become immortal.
The entire story of Adam and Eve confuses me, and I rarely look at it as anything but a story. Little back story on myself I was raised Roman Catholic, but grew out of organized religion over time finding far too many incongruous ideas. So, Adam and Eve are newly created beings by God. He places them in this garden anew, we can essentially tell they have no knowledge of morals, reason, etc. He tells them not to eat of the tree of knowledge. Now the assumption is that until they eat from the tree of knowledge, they don't know what is right or wrong. My question then is how on earth do they differentiate that not eating the fruit is good or bad? How do they know the serpent is bad? How do they know God is good? How could God blame them for doing something they lacked the knowledge to understand completely? It's like telling a child not to touch the stove because it will hurt them. Some children try to touch it anyway. The usual thing a parent does is not keep the child in a room with a stove, until they are old enough to understand the danger. This entire story paints God in a really weird light because it seems like his plan was for Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit in the end. Also the other part of the story that is just plain weird is when God casts out Adam and Eve because they could become like him if they eat from the tree of life. That is a really weird and scary implications for Roman Catholicism, who like to believe that God is literally the beginning and the end. I mean it's just weird for them to set the tone of the Bible by saying human kind is half-way to Godhood.
I think an underlying concept, not directly written out in the story but brought up by your question, is the importance of obedience to God. Adam and Eve didn't necessarily have to know about good and evil beforehand, but their lack of obedience landed them in the position they found themselves. As to whether how central that theme should be, I think that's up to individual interpretation. I don't know if eating from the tree of life has as strong of an implication as you say. If it means that they'd live forever in the physical world, that just means they live forever. They're still subject to physical limitations and the will of God as a creator. If anything, I could see it as an even greater punishment, as it forces them to live forever in the physical world (which God has now allowed to cause them to suffer) meaning they can never be released from life and ascend to heaven.
So I mean if you think about it the earlier part of genesis is essentially setting the reader up for the fall of mankind. We are shown Gods power so that obedience makes sense because God obviously has more knowledge on these subjects than humanity could, so even if we don't know whether something God tells us is good or bad we should follow his lead anyway because he is the more powerful company. That for me sort of sets a weird tone for the rest of the bible doesn't it? I mean we are essentially saying "regardless of what God says obey him because look what happened when adam and eve didnt." It's an interesting perspective I've never really noticed.
Yes. It is an odd tone, but I think it's a necessary one at the time given the audience. From my understanding, life was very much on the ropes for people back then. The message of obedience was a necessary one because social cohesion went a long way to ensuring the survival of communities and nations. The stories that are told and the beliefs that were held help reinforce this mindset. This idea gets pulled into weird directions sometimes, for example a military victory is proof in being held in God's favor or a hardship comes about because an individual or a group of people have done something that dissapoints God. When you get to The New Testament, the tone changes. Theologically speaking, Jesus and his revelation are meant to replace the laws and requirements of The Old Testament and his message is something new. He still speaks of obedience, yes, but he also speaks heavily of compassion and justice. This happens literally centuries after The Old Testament was written and the world is a different place now, more advanced, more stable, and more connected. Yeah, it's not a bed of roses, but it's better than what was before. This stability brings about a lifestyle security that allows people to think with a slightly higher level of motivation. The message is no longer "Fear God and fear thy neighbor," but "Love God and love thy neighbor." In both though, there is still a message to obey. It just comes across differently.
No I definitely understand how the Old Testament was made to cater to the needs of the time, and it sort of begs the question did the writers ever think the religion would last this long? I mean discussing the implications of this idea of obedience. Do you think they knew it would be so strictly interepted thousands and thousands of years later like it is?
Well, I have two ways of thinking about that. If we're to consider religion as something that is revealed in dispensations in the Abrahamic tradition, I think the prophets knew themselves that their words were meant for a certain age, but that people would still cling to tradition. While people might argue over the meaning of words though, The Word, that is God's Word whatever it might be is permanent and changeless, and that any changes in our areas of focus and our perception of it is due to our limited understanding and the times and situations we find ourselves in. So I don't think they worried, because in essence they know it is good, just, and true. On the other hand, we could be more mundane. The people who passed on the message were concerned with their immediate times and not much more. For example, if I vote for president I'm concerned about how it'll affect the country in the short term, not how whoever wins is gonna dictate history for the next 2,000 years.
I think I'm more in line with the second way of thinking than the first. I mean both seem right, but one is just assuming what you know is the only thing there is and that there can be no other way, but God's way right? I mean to assume that we could fully interpret the will or ideas of God in any time or place is a little bit weird to say. I find it hard to blame those traditions because how can we expect anyone to make doctrine or dogma that is full-proof for thousands of years? Does that then mean that religion is to be interpreted differently as time moves forward? Then that brings into question the idea from the first way about God's Word. Is it something that is unaffected by perspective or focus? I feel like we are pulling pretty far away from the original subject, but this is a cool discussion.
Well, while I think God can become knowable and familiar in a fashion, I'm inclined to agree with you that the totality of God will be forever incomprehensible to us. He's just too vast. At the same time, I think as we come to better understanding of ourselves and the world around us, we can better understand His messages, from all sources and all dispensations. What once might have seemed mundane and straightforward becomes revelationary and profound all over again. Something that was once vague and nebulous suddenly becomes clear and easily discernable. I think certain dogmas seem irreconcilable sometimes because we're often tempted to take the words at face value and interpret with our current understanding of the world. I think when we stop to look at the potential underlying purpose behind them and try to view them in the time frame they were meant for, suddenly they become much more sophisticated. For an overly simplified example, if we were to look at a religion's dietary restrictions and compare them to the time, region, and culture they came from, we can see how some restrictions that might seem silly to us today protected people at that time and place from all sorts of diseases. Finally, I don't think it is the dogma that we should look at as permanent, but the underlying spiritual messages of the religion. In the grand scheme of things, whether or not a person eats pork is probably near inconsequential. The line for what is and isn't blasphemy will sway. That we are to love each other, care for each other, and better the world along with ourselves, that will never change. I think that message is The Word.
Shooting from the hip here. People have always had a fascination with origin stories. Almost every civilization has had them and the run the gamut from colorful and completely fantastical to slightly more reasonable and possibly somewhat grounded in actual history. People put a lot of thought and energy behind where we come from and even today we're preoccupied with the question, from astronomers trying to discover the origins of the universe as a whole to anthropologists trying to piece together the history or early man to modern historians analyzing the births of nations, cultural movements, and ideas. I think there is a very good argument for saying that knowing where we come from helps us understand where we are and where we might go from here. While I personally don't spend too much time thinking about these things, I find that when others are discussing discoveries and ideas I often become an eager listener. The Bible itself, especially The Old Testament, can be hard to study. It is dense, where a single sentence can sometimes have paragraphs of significance, and often times it expects the reader to have a cultural knowledge which many people no longer have, being millenia removed from the time the books were written. As a result, I've often found it easier to read a small section of The Bible and then search out essays on what I've just read to fill me in on many of the gaps. This isn't a criticism on The Bible, I'm just saying for the sake of anyone reading this that if you find reading it a challenge, you are nowhere near alone. So to Adam and Eve in particular, I think as far as origin stories go, it's a bit of a downer. I appreciate the fact that it tries to describe the possible origins of self awareness and suffering. Times are hard now. I can't imagine how hard they were way back when. In their day to day lives there was probably a lot of frustration and suffering to go around and naturally, when that happens, people look to someone or something to blame. I think doing so made their situation a bit more bearable. Seeing as how this story came from a patriarchal society, it's no wonder in one perspective Eve receives that blame. Seeing as how back then people felt like much of their lives rested on outside sources beyond their control, it's no wonder God and The Serpent received some of the blame. Adam too, in this story, probably deserves some blame as well. I sometimes wonder if the reason there's plenty of blame to go around is by design, do people can feel either relived that their position in life is not their fault or that the blame is somewhat theirs in actuality, and by accepting that, they become empowered to try and do better. While I personally don't believe in original sin, I can understand how it can be an effective theological motivator. As to jadedog's pastor's comment on knowing God, I think that while we're created in God's image, I think we often try to attribute our own understanding of the world around us to Him, thereby making Him more relatable. I think metaphorically speaking, trying to understand God in entirety would be like trying to stand on the surface of the sun and see the whole thing. For one, it's impossible by sheer magnitude alone. For two, the effort alone would burn us up. As an aside, I get frustrated when people talk about Adam and Eve and gloss over the part where God gave Adam dominion over all living things, great and small. It's right there, in the Bible, in the beginning pages before things get drawn our and hard to follow. The earth is ours and we need to take care of it. How do people ignore that?
Re: dominion over all things great and small - it's interesting that this seems clearly to be how this line ought to be interpreted now, but that it has been read in the opposite way for much of history. The idea of Stewardship in the context of Christianity is relatively new, and this same line was often interpreted as "all this splendor is made for us to use as we please". Also, interesting to see the idea of Adam as "master" (Gen 1:26) of all living things and the reading that Eve becomes just one more thing to master in the Fall.
I know original words and translations mean a lot, so I'm kind of curious as to what the original text meant. Even if they meant "dominion" as a king, ruler type concept (which if we really wanted to dig into this we could bring in the whole argument of Divine Right of Kings), a good ruler has to be responsible and compassionate. The logic strikes me as frustratingly infantile and tenuous and I bet you my dinner that a lot of people in authority, both in official government and church capacity as philisophical thinkers, knew better. They just wanted easy outs to justify crummy behavior. The entire New Testament was almost like hitting a theological reset button, where the new word of the day, as revealed by God, is "compassion." If your theological arguments don't hold up to the ideals of that virtue, there's a good chance they need to strongly be reevaluated.
Shouting out to ThatFanficGuy cause these conversations interest you and levydb cause jadedog mentioned you in the original post without a shout out. It's early in the morning and the whole house is pitch black. I'm half tempted to pull one of my Bibles out and reread the source material even though jadedog has a good summary in the post. I'm also half tempted to make a response shooting from the hip. I'm gonna mull on things for a bit. I'll post in an hour or so maybe.
Do both. :) Do a shoot from the hip response. You can add another response from your source. There's so much stuff in just that one piece. Something that has me thinking since I re-read that was the imagery of the serpent. One of the participants in the roundtable mentioned that the snake was a phallic symbol and that the serpent represented a sexual awakening. That would not have occurred to me. I thought of the serpent as the evil force or the representation of the devil. Looking it up in wiki, it's both. Serpent Is that the source of the idea that sexual awakenings are shameful? Did the interpretation of that imagery have implications for how sex is seen in the Bible? The difficult task in looking at this story as if it's just another story is all the background that comes with the story. If I hadn't known anything about the story, like if I was an alien from another planet, I wouldn't know about the devil, so I wouldn't have been able to interpret it that way. Since religion affects so many people around the world, it would be difficult to find someone who could read the story from a neutral point of view. It would be so fascinating to see what they had to say.