The Edenic rebellion: Can we learn from it?

Well was God omniscient or not?

The talking snake has always confused me. And when it was told it would crawl on it's belly forever, that gave me the impression they walked until that point.
Kinda ruined it for all snakes, if you ask me. But no one is.

Good point. What was the snake before God punished him. When Christians draw pictures of this event the snake is already crawling on his belly.

A liberator.

Is it good to be ignorant? Apparently conservative Christians think so. That's why so many of them dislike public education. They see the world outside of their bubble as corrupt and evil. Ignorance is a blessing for them.

I figure the boys up at the temple were sittin' around chewin' the fat (and they liked havin' fat to chew) and came to the conclusion that they needed to keep the story simple, but dramatic. Keep the peasants head down and tillin' the soil, and make sure they're full of the fear of god at harvest time.

My guess here.

Re: The Edenic rebellion: Can we learn from it?
Who is this bloke? What did he say? Why should he not be our libeator? Rex Mundi. Lux. Lucifer...Are you a Gnostic neo?

It's a whole predestination issue. Cos if God knew Adam and Eve wus gonna be pluckin' the fruits from that tree there... Then he knows just as well what we are gonna do at any given point of time. So, with a predetermined life... The needs for choices regarding good or evil are useless, because thems there choices aint really choices, doncha know?

As for the snake crawling? Well, I ain't overly fond of em. But I hate them spiders with those hairy legs and all much worse. So what did they do?
Literal interpretation? Even in my most christian of days (which were not many, granted) I never doubted that this story was meant to be an allegory.

As for your last sentence? That one pretty much goes for all old belief systems you know. All of them tried to explain that which could not be explained by rational means.

Naj.

Heh
Oh boy...

I see the "Edenic Rebellion" as allegorical; it makes no sense as a historical event. To me, the allegory points to that evolutionary juncture when humankind began to know the world analytically/verbally, when he made distinctions between good and bad, ugly and beautiful, true and false, danger and security, life and death--all the dichotomies of our dualistic mentality. Before the "rebellion" our animalic state of mind was free of the existential problems which dualism generates. Like other animals we enjoyed a psychological paradise which we abandoned (we expelled ourselves from Eden) as the cost of our evolutionary "advance."

Were that the case, and i've read it articulated in much the same terms elsewhere, the authors of that bit of myth were subtle to a degree which the later passages of puerile rage and destruction of the biblical god bring into disrepute.

I for one doubt it. Who at said time could see what was happening and
write about it in such a manner? The terms you use are constructs that
have evolved over millenia, and are much younger then said bible story.

Can you shed some light on this issue? It's fascinating.

Naj, a very good point. It could be that MY interpretation is too contemporary linguistically and culturally to coincide with the intentions of the Old Testament mythogists. But who knows? Maybe our eras are not hermetically sealed off one one another, just as contemporary cultures can be partially bridged (by anthropologists) no matter how racially distinct they may be
Set, I've made this point more than once elsewhere in A2K.
JLN

The genus homo has been around for millions of years; homo sapiens sapiens at least for several tens of thousands of years. Our homo sapiens ancestors were no less intelligent than are we. It would have been a simple matter for them to look at other species, and other members of their own species, and distinguish between innocent hebetude and innocence lost.

Set, I agree. Anthropologists have noticed that peoples of very technologically-scientifically backward societies may be extremely "deficient" compared to us in their manipulation of the material world, but, at the same time, demonstrate equal or superior "wisdom" in matters of justice, the existential problems of death. illness, and social values (I'm making the tenuous assumption, of course, that contemporary "primitives" parallel, as "survivals" the conditions of prehistoric man).

It seems like there is a bit of space to move around in when discussing passages of the good book literally but the room for interpretation in terms of allegorical definitions is as diverse as you'd expect I guess.

I remember someone once giving the impression that he considered the Bible to be a writing of 2 halves in more ways than one, it was written for the masses for reasons we can all agree on but there was a deeper level to it that was very much intentional. This deeper meaning was placed there to act as a guide to allow those of us who are inquisitive/intelligent/spiritually/emotionally developed enough (choose your weapon guys...) to comprehend both it's true meaning and to use it wisely ie to become the all loving, all peaceful beings that require nothing and give everything that so many dream about. What, this deeper level of thinking was deliberately kept hidden, if you will, because most people aren't ready for it or couldn't it be explained any other way??

I can't buy that though (the intentionality in particular), seems like it's just as likely that we get back from it what we put in precisely because it's SO open to interpretation (if you want to use the Bible at all). Although saying that, it's clearly capable of feeding egos on a big scale when, for instance, Joe Bloggs convinces himself that he's discovered some inspired meaning to a passage locked deep away in the abyss that is Corinthians...that was...actually intended literally, who knows.

IMHO, If a term as overanalisation exists, it might be applied to the bible.

Innocence lost, Setanta? How easy is it truly to step 'outside' of one's own frame of reference and compare with others? I won't argue the point of intelligence, since you are obviously right. Many people equal technological progress with intellectual progress, but that doesn't hold.

The earliest hunter gather groups did just that. Much time for soulsearching wasn't left, when one has to work continually just to survive.
Not only that, how much material was there to 'compare' with? Other humans, Neanderthalers?

JL, I have heard that much of the Old Testament was composed while the people of Israel lived in Babylon, in exile. It was a comfort to compare their own state of exile with the travails of the older Israelilites, who of course had to wonder through the desert, and were often tried.
Not only that, but the punishment doled out by God(the exile) not only gave a reason, but also hope of deliverance(since God always forgave his people for their sins).
The value of allegory was perhaps more important to people in those days then now, for the simple reason that stories were the main, if not only, way to communicate with each other.
But I doubt whether these allegories were used in such a subtle manner.
The fall from paradise was meant to make people understand why life was hard, and why their benevolent God didn't make it easier for them.
This, of course, is my interpretation. Feel free to crucify me if I got it wrong...

Naj

Naj, you are probably right that most people who depended on the allegories of Old Testament traditional knowledge interpreted that literature in a literal sense, much as the fundamentalists of today do. Nevertheless, I do feel that the WRITERS of that literature were far more sophisticated than the majority of their audience. As such their constructions were, as they say, multivocal, offering more than one level of meaning. This is suggested to me by the mere fact that I can "see" non-traditional meanings. I suspect that all of the world's mythologies offer--whether accepted or not--deep levels of meaning. I'm thinking here of the orientations of scholars like, M. Eliade and J. Campbell.

I've always (always in the sense of all my adult life) worked on the assumption that since the derivation of homo sapiens sapiens, humans have potentially been as intelligent and perceptive as they are now. Limiting factors include a lack of a conscientious system of education and the necessarily short life span which limited the accumulation of experiential knowledge. Illiteracy did not stop our ancestors from creating elaborately beautiful civilizations, but it necessarily limited the amount of knowledge they could preserve to what could be memorized. Some cultures have placed a high value on memorization and have used song and verse as memory aids.

When MacArthur made his move to take all of New Guinea, he bypassed the Japanese stronghold at Rabual on New Britain, and established a base at the island of Manus. Margaret Mead had already visited Manus before the war, and recorded the details of their society in detail. After the United States Navy made it into a sprawling base, something similar to a cargo cult arose, but much more sophisticated. The cargo cults only saw a few white men, and the products of their civilization--the cargo. But on Manus, there was a long-standing base with so many of the attributes of the civilization which produced the "cargo" visible to the inhabitants on a daily basis. The established members of the community, those who had mated and had children, turned their backs on the new ways, and tried to ignore them. Younger members of the community, however, very quickly adpated to the new cultural terms of their existence, and adopted many of the mannerisms of the Americans who set up and ran the base.

I suspect that if it were possible to pick up old stone age people, and bring them to our world at a young enough age, they would quickly become technologically sophisticated. When the Hudson's Bay Company began trading with the Amerindians, their trade goods quickly became the most valuable artifacts available to the tribes, and a rudimentary form of vigorous capitalism grew up as tribes near the HBC "factories" traded pelts for goods, and then traded the goods to other Amerindians for more pelts. A young Canadien was employed by HBC at the end of the 17th century. Early in the eighteenth century, while he was still a teen, he travelled from James Bay to what is now the Bitterroot Range in Idaho. At York Factory on Hudson's Bay, an Amerindian could trade 23 made beaver pelts for an HBC musket, a cleaning kit, a bullet mold, two pounds of lead and a five-pound keg of fine-grain black powder. The young coureur du bois found that the HBC musket--the musket only--traded in the Bitterroot Mountains for 200 made beaver pelt. We are all more human under the skin than modern people often realize.