WAS God in the pocket of Big Tree? (myths, Islam, punishment)
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Ok. Sorry if it was a bit sharp, but really, details about the geography in Genesis seemed to be getting into details that didn't much matter.The cartoon was just a hoot after all and not serious comment, even on the factuality of the Eden scenario.
P.s while on the subject it is interesting to note Gen 2.10 -14 that the Eden seems to cover from below Egypt (Cush - which we think of as Nubia) up to Mesopotamia with the Tigris and Euphrates mentioned and it seems that the Red sea is supposed to be Gihon and we would suppose "Pishon" to be the Nile, though it doesn't flow "around" anything exactly and we can't be sure where "Havilah is. ut it does all seem to be.
Well, the sages say that the Nile's headwaters split into four...Maybe the meditaranean sea wasn't always as we know it...
Well, the sages say that the Nile's headwaters split into four...Maybe the meditaranean sea wasn't always as we know it...
I don't know about Pishon=Nile.
Ignoring the mythological aspects of the 4 rivers (which has analogues in other ANE sources), if such rivers existed (and the lands they were associated with) we still have no conclusive way of determining their identity. It has been convincingly argued by Coleman that the Pishon is the Halys River - modern day Kizil Irmak in Turkey. The word Pishon, actually, can easily be derived from a Hittite word - thus the suggestion of Turkey. The Tigris and Euphrates derive from Turkey as well.
This argues for a Northern location of Eden, of course, which has much support. But, there are other locations suggested as well. I favor a Northern location, personally.
For some of the latest treatment of a possible location of Eden, see Zevit - What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? (Yale University Press, 2013, pp. 85-119) and Korpel and de Moor - Adam, Eve, and the Devil: A New Beginning (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2nd Ed. 2015, pp. 29-44). Richard, I think you would particularly enjoy Ziony Zevit's work.
Like so many biblical passages, it's a beautiful story, but when viewed as 100% accurate history, completely illogical nonsense.
For example, would a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent deity be unaware that Adam and Eve would succumb to temptation in the Garden?
Was Yahweh surprised at what went down there? Did he not create the serpent and the Tree and the Fruit? Is he not all-knowing? Was Yahweh not aware Adam and Eve would disobey him, covering all humanity in sin forever, resulting in a system of eternal punishment?
Likewise, did Yahweh not see that humankind would become so corrupt he'd have to wipe nearly all of them out in a flood?
Some lieralists may claim free will comes into play in stories like these (of course, they also propose the entire Bible is inerrant and 100% literally true and historically accurate, so...) but how the hell is eternal punishment and mass genocide, even given free will, compatible with a deity that is allegedly omniscient and benevolent?
Like so many biblical passages, it's a beautiful story, but when viewed as 100% accurate history, completely illogical nonsense.
For example, would a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent deity be unaware that Adam and Eve would succumb to temptation in the Garden?
Was Yahweh surprised at what went down there? Did he not create the serpent and the Tree and the Fruit? Is he not all-knowing? Was Yahweh not aware Adam and Eve would disobey him, covering all humanity in sin forever, resulting in a system of eternal punishment?
Likewise, did Yahweh not see that humankind would become so corrupt he'd have to wipe nearly all of them out in a flood?
Some lieralists may claim free will comes into play in stories like these (of course, they also propose the entire Bible is inerrant and 100% literally true and historically accurate, so...) but how the hell is eternal punishment and mass genocide, even given free will, compatible with a deity that is allegedly omniscient and benevolent?
Logic and reason crumble...
Yes, as history it is mythic.
However, I would not use the above arguments. The Yahwistic author (that was only one of the sources of the various sections of the Pentateuch or Torah) never depicted an omniscient or omnipotent deity. YHWH was quite fallible, just as fallible as many of the Greek gods. This same author was the one who penned, or compiled, the Genesis 2-3 story of the Garden. In it, it is pretty clear that things don't go according to plan, and this continues throughout the Yahwist's account.
It is only later, with the advent of the idea of a Universal God that the idea of his omniscience and omnipotence comes into play. The Bible itself presents a very complicated and flawed God, however - and not just by the Yahwist. So you are correct - he was not all-knowing. Scholars, academics and many believers have realized this for hundreds of years now.
The type of people this argument would affect probably don't have the close reading skills to be able to accept your arguments, anyways - they would just explain them away through complicated exegesis that twists the Bible's actual words. And they certainly don't accept the Documentary Hypothesis, which illustrates the composite authorship of the Pentateuch.
Yes apart from the myth, the writers were talking about rivers they knew. The idea of a Northern location is an interesting one. But Cush is south of Egypt as I recall.
On another thread, Eusebius, who has added a signal corp to his value to atheism, raised the interesting suggestion that God actually had it in for the Jews who had been given His Laws and repeatedly failed to live by them...in spirit if they did in the letter. This is of course the Christian Take on Paul's debunking of the Jewish Law as being able to save. The later Gospel -writers portrayed the Law as even a barrier to salvation (synoptics) and a burden to those who observed it (Acts).
There is so much wrong with all that, it is hard to know where to start, but the main debunk is that God apparently DID look out for the Jews in the Maccabean revolt (though he allowed Herod to kill them all off) and he had the Persians released them from captivity, never mind he first had Israel and Judea beaten and enslaved TWICE.
Anyone with an atom of sense should see the answer - there IS no God and the history of the Jews, Christians and everyone else is just history with successes and failures. We are on our own and always have been. And the sooner we realize this and take responsibility instead of waste time praying for assistance or hoping for God or Jesus to arrive in clouds and thunder and either put everything right or destroy everything (no-one seems very clear on this) the better.
...when viewed as 100% accurate history, completely illogical nonsense.
For example, would a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent deity be unaware that Adam and Eve would succumb to temptation in the Garden?
Was Yahweh surprised at what went down there? Did he not create the serpent and the Tree and the Fruit? Is he not all-knowing? Was Yahweh not aware Adam and Eve would disobey him, covering all humanity in sin forever, resulting in a system of eternal punishment?
Likewise, did Yahweh not see that humankind would become so corrupt he'd have to wipe nearly all of them out in a flood?
Some lieralists may claim free will comes into play in stories like these (of course, they also propose the entire Bible is inerrant and 100% literally true and historically accurate, so...) but how the hell is eternal punishment and mass genocide, even given free will, compatible with a deity that is allegedly omniscient and benevolent?
Logic and reason crumble...
Even if we ignore the logic-fault regarding omniscience, the story falls flat from a logic standpoint all on it's own.
What was the motivation to induce them to eat?
The motivation was that they "...would know good and evil...". In order for it to be an inducement, it would mean that they *lacked* knowledge of "good and evil".
Lacking that knowledge, they would be incapable of discerning that the act was 'wrong'.
The author was an idiot and an incompetent writer. The story falls flat on its face from the get-go.
Yes apart from the myth, the writers were talking about rivers they knew. The idea of a Northern location is an interesting one. But Cush is south of Egypt as I recall.
Not necessarily. The names of the Gihon and Pishon are not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, nor are they mentioned in other ancient Near Eastern sources. It is quite possible that they were legendary rivers that nobody really knew the location of. After all, the 4 rivers flowing from the Mountain of God (parallel to the Garden of God) was a common ANE tradition. Basically, for Israelites living around the time of the composition of Genesis 2-3, the mention of the Gihon and Pishon would have evoked a legendary picture of a place far away and forgotten. The Tigris and Euphrates would have further added to the idea that Eden was far away, far from the inhabited world of the Israelites.
Kush is mentioned several times in the Bible apart from the Garden story, and they refer to different locations apparantly. (See Gen 10:8, Isaiah 11:11 and Esther 1:1 for a possible Mesopotamian Kush; see Isaiah 11:11, Ezekiel 30:4,9 and Nahum 3:9 for a possible location south of Egypt along the Red Sea) Some have suggested that the Gihon of Eden is the Karun River, which flows from Iran to the Persian Gulf. This may then refer to the Kassites (the kaššu in Akkadian, which gives the "sh" consonant of Kush) who lived north of the Zagros Mountains in Iran. Some tribes made it to Mespotamia and established kingdoms there.
One thing is clear from most research: Eden was in the North, somewhere. It was probably meant to evoke a place that could no longer be found, on the outskirts of the known world, a place of lost beginnings and powerful myths. The literature on this subject is, unfortunately, vast ha ha!
Even if we ignore the logic-fault regarding omniscience, the story falls flat from a logic standpoint all on it's own.
What was the motivation to induce them to eat?
The motivation was that they "...would know good and evil...". In order for it to be an inducement, it would mean that they *lacked* knowledge of "good and evil".
Lacking that knowledge, they would be incapable of discerning that the act was 'wrong'.
The author was an idiot and an incompetent writer. The story falls flat on its face from the get-go.
That's a pretty elementary critique. The author was far from an idiot and incompetent. He was steeped in the ANE traditions of his time and used them quite cleverly.
The phrase "the knowing of good and bad" was commonly used in the ancient Near East to indicate a knowledge of "everything". It was just a colloquial way of stating that one possessed much wisdom, attested in extra-biblical sources to many great figures who were esteemed for "knowing what was good and bad". It's similar to saying "from A to Z" in English. So there was not necessarily a moral component to the tree of knowledge.
One of the core principles the compiler seems to be making (for after all, he had multiple traditions of different trees he was weaving together) is that humans rejected eternal life in favor of knowledge and sentience. This was also a theme of the Epic of Gilgamesh, where a snake robbed him of possible life in favor of wisdom instead. Other stories echo this sentiment that this is what makes humans "human" - we are cursed to understand the misery of our own mortality.
It seems that YHWH punished the humans because they disobeyed and messed up his plan (to have animal-like gardeners who were no threat whatsoever to Divine Rule) and because they were one step closer to being rivals, to being gods.
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