(Michelangelo, 1510, Sistine Chapel, Vatican)
Genesis 1-3 "The Creation and Fall"
There are some obvious tensions in this "first story" that people have
wrestled to make sense of for the past 2500-3000 years. Given the
care taken constructed and compiling these stories we can assume the
authors/editors chose to leave them in. We
probably won't make sense of them -- or even agree -- but they are
worth addressing and discussing.
(Michelangelo, 1510, Sistine Chapel, Vatican)
Two Versions
Note the two separate accounts of creation. Consider how radically
different these affect our interpretations of gender roles in this first
couple.
Most scholars now
agree these two versions were written by different sources at different
times (though obviously both stem from a single tradition and perhaps
oral version):
a) P or "Priestly": The first, so called “Priestly source”, refers to “God” as "Elohim", which simply means the “god”, as in "a god", and is used to refer to other gods etc. rather than a specific deity. We see this in Genesis 1.
b) J: the second so called “J" source” refers to “God” as “YWHW” (probably pronounced “Yahweh”) and is often translated into English as “Lord” (from the later Greek Adonai, which could refer to both a god and a king), but in Hebrew it reads as a personal name.
Other evidence these are two, separate sources: in the first, Genesis 1, animals are made first, before man, and in the second, Genesis 2, animals are made after man.
Most importantly, the first creates “humans” and infers man and woman are created at once, and the second clearly creates a specific human – Adam (which also means “human”) -- before a specific woman, Eve.
This pattern of two interwoven sources continues throughout the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) and includes two other sources. For more on this, see Friedman, Richard. Who Wrote The Bible? A good, technical but brief primer is here, as well.
Polytheism vs. Polydeism
What sense can be made of
the frequent use of plural pronouns -- such as "our" -- that God uses?
This discussion also opens into the point that "monotheism" did not
initially refer to the belief in a single, all encompassing god, but
rather the worship of a single god: polydeism is a belief in many
gods in which the believer worships only one, while polytheism the
worshipping of many gods. Note that the Hebrews
did not and still do not embrace the Christian concept of the Trinity
(as it suggests polytheism or polydeism),
so we aren't asking for a Christian answer to this question; we're
interested in what the author of these books thought at the time they
wrote them.
Speculate on what would have happened to the world if Eve had not eaten of the fruit. Would Adam and Eve have died? If they never had sex, would this be the end of the human species?
God
As Having "Personhood"
In what ways do the
authors' choice of verbs give this god qualities of a
person? That is, what in this story gives the god a physicality
and/or other qualities associated with people?
What do you believe this place, Eden, represents?
Are Apples Evil?
Connecting the Eden’s “fruit” with apples is a relatively modern invention,
apparently rooted in the Latin pun on “malum”, which means both “apple” and
“evil”.
Jewish tradition has associated the tree’s fruit with grapes, tamarinds, figs and wheat, or with wine itself. The last two are associated with ancient, pagan cults of fertility (Demeter/Ceres (“cereal”) and rebirth.
(According to Greek mythology, Hera’s garden of the Hesperides grew golden apples of immortality. The apple tree or trees was guarded by a dragon or serpent. Heracles (Hercules)11th labor involved stealing some of the apples.)
Is This God Conceived Of
As Omniscient and/or Omnipotent?
Modern, later
Judeo-Christian-Islamic conceptions of this character, God, see Him as
omniscient and omnipotent -- that is, all knowing and all powerful
(we'll see this theme in The Book Of Job).
Omniscience necessarily implies the ability to know the future as well
as the past, as well as what anyone anywhere is thinking, along with the
power to head off evil before it occurs. This early
characterization of God problematizes this belief from the very outset
because it suggests this God must have known what would happen when he
put the tree of knowledge within Adam and Eve's easy grasp, not to
mention letting the serpent wander around and talk to Eve.
If God has made mankind in his own image, what does this imply about the Temptation? If this god is omniscient (all knowing), doesn't it necessarily follow that he knew Eve would eat of the fruit? Could this story be about the inevitability of humanity's expulsion from Eden?
What do you believe this story -- just this one -- tells us about the nature of the knowledge this tree contains?
Omniscience
and Genesis 6-8, 9 "The Great Flood"
Working off of the previous question concerning omniscience and
omnipotence, again God decides to punish all of humanity for
their "wickedness", by killing them all, with the exception of
Noah and his family. Further, he "repents" that he made humans in
the first place: "for it repenteth me that I have made them" (Gen.
6.7). Can this be reconciled with his omniscience and omnipotence?
In the transition between Genesis 8 and 9 we find another significant difference between J saying the Lord telling Noah "nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done," while the Priestly source in 9 has God say that he will never flood the Earth; this is an important difference for contemporary Christians who debate whether the Book Of Revelation (the last of the New Testament books to be written, around 95 AD, on the Greek island of Patmos) should be considered literal or even a part of the Bible, since it prophesizes the destruction of humankind.
(More on
The Flood
Genesis 3:
“Knowledge” and Sin
The verb “to know” is problematic at various points in the Bible, as it may
refer alternatively to either “wisdom/intelligence” or “sexual knowledge” (a
phrase that perhaps originates in this biblical question). This is a pretty
important point when one considers that the phrase is the starting point for the
entire conception of Judeo-Christian-Islamic sin and evil. Jewish
tradition interprets the tree to hold all knowledge, suggesting Adam and
Eve would become immortal or thus God Himself, and the text itself refers to
knowledge of "good and evil", suggesting, again, more than exclusively sexuality. Christian tradition after
Augustine interpret the tree to hold knowledge of sin. The nature of this
sin is usually sexual, for the obvious reasons presented in the story itself.
This conflicting
interpretation resonates with other key passages, including
Genesis 19 and the events that doom the town of Sodom. The men of the
city demand of Lot that he bring them the strangers (God’s angels) “so that we
may know them.” Jewish tradition always and still holds that the
sin of these men is one of inhospitality.
Ezekiel 16:49 Gives the town's
transgression larger, social context, as well: "Behold, this was the guilt
of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and
careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy."
Christian tradition holds that the “knowledge” is homosexuality. Note how this radically different interpretation is essentially linguistic, suggests radically different conceptions of knowledge and sin, and is still relevant to current debates about homosexuality. (It’s also worth pointing out that Adam and Eve apply their knowledge to the creation of all mankind, and that throughout the Bible married couples are encouraged to have sexual knowledge of each other.)
Also note that the term “sodomy” (anal sex) is rooted in the Christian interpretation of this story, not vice versa, much the way “crap” derives from the name of the toilet’s inventor: Thomas Crapper. Perhaps the term “sodomy” should refer to inhospitality? (Note: This is not to say that the Hebrews were not opposed to homosexuality; they were, although this was true in a time when these same people practiced polygamy and slavery and a man could sleep with his female slaves. Also, the punishment for sex out of marriage (unless with a slave) was death.)
There's a good discussion of homosexuality in Gen. 19 on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah