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It is what happens when you discuss myths. Are you expecting folk to accept there is a god, there was a 1st pair, there was a garden of eden and there was a talking snake and there was magical fruit that gave people a brain to reason with
It is what happens when you discuss myths. Are you expecting folk to accept there is a god, there was a 1st pair, there was a garden of eden and there was a talking snake and there was magical fruit that gave people a brain to reason with
OR
Do you want an honest answer?
True, there is figurative language all throughout the Bible, especially in the beginning of Genesis. Perhaps the covering referred to some other sacrifice given by God. But I'm still not so sure.
So, you believe that something is a "myth" because it is described with figurative language? There had to be one pair at the beginning of humankind. There is no other scientific explanation for either humankind of any other species.
True, there is figurative language all throughout the Bible, especially in the beginning of Genesis. Perhaps the covering referred to some other sacrifice given by God. But I'm still not so sure.
So, you believe that something is a "myth" because it is described with figurative language?
It is a myth b/c it does not hold up to any logical scrutiny. We all know mankind has adapted the environment to himself and not the other way around. Were it not so we would not have motored tricycles for overweight folk that cannot walk far and god would have created cars and highways for us before we needed them or discovered the tech to make them.
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There had to be one pair at the beginning of humankind. There is no other scientific explanation for either humankind of any other species.
Bzzzt, wrong answer. No single pair can propagate a species. Animals are ess extinct when their breeding pairs fall below 50 or so as the gene pool is too shallow. Sure a pair can make offspring but that is only one generation capability. Then you enter alternate realities like sibling copulation to extend past that and we all know sibling copulation is generally banned and even as far as first cousins.
Before you go down the path of genetic purity, sorry, genes do not have a purity factor no matter how far back you wish to push it.
Creationists have tried unsuccessfully to marry science with myth but it only works in make believe scenarios. Before the discovery of DNA, folk were already aware, bonking your sister was taboo they just did not understand why. If you look at the sex laws in Lev. you will see they got prohibitions totally wrong. You could mate with your uncle's wife and any offspring would be perfectly healthy is she was not a blood relative. Daddy doing daughter in law, prohibited but again, offspring would be OK unless she was a niece or cousin. The supposed "morality" which probably holds still to this day is not based on genetics at all.
Lastly, there does seem to be a natural tendency NOT to be attracted to your siblings.
The making of "leather tunics" for the couple (in contrast to their attempt at making clothing out of plants) in no way states explicitly that ritual sacrifice was involved, and thus the first sacrifice. Did Yahweh make the supposed sacrifice himself and TO himself? Not likely. Claus Westermann puts it succinctly:
The connection of clothing made out of skins with the killing of animals and so with sacrifice can well operate in the ancient pattern which lies behind 3:21, but it plays no role in the present context...
....clothing occurs in a similar context in the Enkidu episode in the Gilgamesh Epic where the acquisition of knowledge, clothing and the taking of food suitable to humans are all found together...
(Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary, English translation: Fortress Press, 1984, p. 270)
The plain-sense reading of the passage (which is what one should be striving for instead of some figurative sense that is not found in the text and therefore highly suspect) is clear. To assume sacrifice of any ritualistic manner is to read something into the text, without any evidence.
The Gilgamesh Epic parallel episode is interesting, as the Yahwistic Author most likely was familiar with it, as a scribe of the Ancient Near East. Further parallels can be found in the The Myth of Adapa.
Later Jewish tradition had some very bizarre interpretations of this passage, calling the garments which the couple wore "garments of light" since the pronunciation of "garments of skin" with "garments of light" in Biblical Hebrew is very similar. The assumption was that since God himself had made the garments, they must be of a Divine nature, and that the slaying of an animal and subsequent tanning of the leather was not an act that Yahweh would have done. I disagree with the latter, simply because that is what the text says, and the Jewish exegetes are inserting anti-anthropomorphic ideas onto the God of the Yawhist - this is the same deity that planted a garden, created man out of dirt, built the first woman out of one of the man's bones, etc. He got his hands dirty - literally. But I digress. Further interpretations saw the "garments of skin" as actual human skin that clothed what had previously been purely spiritual bodies.
Imaginative and interesting as these are - the plain-sense of the text is being piously abused with these interpretations, similar to the assumption that 3:21 implied the very first ritual sacrifice.
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