Amos

Hello Jeremy, I don't know if you are serious or not but I will elaborate because there is a lot more to say on this parable.

Earlier in this thread I proposed that Gen.1 describes how the essence of existence is created and that the fall of creation (including the fall of man) was already created in verse 3 with the arrival of darkness in the mind of creation. This situation was reversed when temporal darkness was removed and so it was that eternal life was conceived on the seventh day in Gen. 2. The point here is that if life is created ex nihilo in Gen.1 with "God said" it must also be conceived to exist before it can become the life force of the living. Hence the "God said" is replaced with the word "thus" on the seventh day = the onset of motion . . . and therefore "a river rises in Eden" (verse 10).

This river divides into four branches to outline the journey of life.

The first division is the division of man's mind and represents the fall of man. These two rivers show how man, now as human, will search all over the world for power, wealth and beauty and he will do this to find a sense of identity while outside of Eden where life is temporal (as was promised later in Gen. 3 "you will know that you will die"). The first river is called Pishon (probably for good reason) because that is where riches are found (daylight). The second river is called Gihon and this is where worldly riches prove to be less satisfying than we expected (evening) and so it is that between these two rivers we journey along between pleasure and pain because evening always follows to cast a shadow of doubt upon our day (to make dreaming possible as seen from a different plain wherein pain is the actual curse).

Far and wide these rivers will go and we will journey as if we are without a homeland but with a homing instinct nonetheless because we once left Eden behind. It must be the curse that is driving us and so it must be a curse to be driven by the curse or the serpent would not have been cursed. I mean, really, isn't it bad enough that we are cursed but must we be driven by the curse? (try telling Bush that, b )

Of course it is a necessity or we'd be having ivory towers outside of Eden and that wouldn't be fair to Eden. (I'll drop this here but one must wonder how they ended up in Rome ).

So first it was greed and later the pain and finally the curse that drives us in life and if our days get dark enough and our nights get long enough we might look back upon our journey of life and see that same river again that we first left behind; "back home" this is, and if we can muster the courage to go there and give an account of ourselves we will find that the land of our birth outlined here as between the Tigris and Euphrates is found in our own mind.

And more to follow if you have any questions.

spin

This is all pretty degrading stuff that has little to do with the thread.

Amaleq13, please shut up about the trinity here.

CyberShy, please read the text and not read into it.

In the day when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field hade yet sprung up -- for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no-one to till the ground -- then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground... You know, while there was still no plants or herbs, God made man. You can fix many of your errors by simply reading the text.

This is not what the text indicates: "gen2 is about placing human in the garden of Eden, and growing plants, trees in this garden"

Amos, what the hell are you trying to say? No, don't answer that. It will probably be still further incomprehensible.


spin

Amaleq13

Bite me, you moderator wannabe.

That said, I think Doctor X's reply makes additional comment unnecessary.

CyberShy

Spin, the KJ translation says:
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground."

Thus, your word "when" (in "when no plant of the field") and your word "then" (in "then the Lord God formed man") do not appear in the text. I'm not sure what translation you use, but the KJ is as close as you can come to the hebrew text. (and it does reflect the dutch 'statenvertaling' about 100%, which is know for it's accuracy as well)

Amos

Well spin I am just trying to put things together for you.

So why did you think the seventh day did not need a "God said" and why was the serpent cursed if not for our benefit?

Perhaps most of all, why must Jews be without a land of their own?

Amos

. . . in Nederland, bedoel je zeker wel.

rlogan

Hi Cybershy. I would suggest taking a look at this:

documentary hypothesis at Wiki

Read the links too, and by golly even order "Who wrote the Bible".

Dr. X and Spin suffer from the affliction of additional knowledge that is brought to bear on the subject. Please forgive them for the moment and get an introduction to the documentary hypothesis so that you see the big picture first.

You need to view Genesis within the context of what is known about the entire pentateuch, OT, and the history of the region. I think if you just establish an attitude of "OK I'll follow this reasoning just for purposes of argument" then you will be able to do the next thing Spin is suggesting - read what is actually written without "reading into".

Next, drop a couple of hits of blotter, down a shot of everclear and roll up a big fattie - and you'll understand everything Amos is saying...

GakuseiDon

Which is exactly what I said. Gen 1 looks at the general establishment of everything. Gen 2 looks at the establishment of the first field at the Garden of Eden.

Now, they may have been started as two entirely separate myths, as per JEDP. But they have been stitched together, in such a way that they don't necessarily form any contradiction.

Why are they called "animals" and "plants" in Gen 1, but "animals of the field" and "plants of the field" in Gen 2, straight after God had put Adam into the Garden to till the ground? Sounds like they are referring to different things, at least to me. And if they are referring to different things, that makes it hard to compare them to show any contradiction.

Wouldn't you say that Gen 1 refers to the general ordering of the world, and Gen 2 refers to the domestication of man's environment?

spin

Things don't translate so nicely as one would like it into an Indo-European language, for we like more temporal connections.

We have the earth with nothing in it, as plants and herbs were not there (the text says: every plant before it was on the earth [+RM YHYH H-'RC], and every herb of the field before it grew [+RM YCMX]), nor man to work the ground (ie to make things grow).

First thing that happens according to the narrative is a mist coming up from the earth which moistened the whole ground. This event in which the ground was moistened is a necessary condition for the formation of man, for without that mist you would have no starting material. There is still nothing that grows.

God uses the moistened earth to make man. First act of creation according to the narrative and the narrative is all the reader has to fo on. The text is clear at this point. Everything that comes is subsequent according to the narrative, the planting of the garden the formation of the trees out of the ground. Then still later he formed animals out of the ground.

Now you might like to claim that he only made trees in the garden and although the narrative doesn't talk about other trees God made them before. The text simply doesn't allow you to make that conclusion. The text provides us with these facts:

1, out of the ground God formed man, 2:7
2, out of the ground he formed trees, 2:9
3, out of the ground he formed animals, 2:19

Note, same method in narrative order. This gives you an order of events. If you don't like that you can fiddle with the text, but you fiddle alone.


spin

spin

Oh, GakuseiDon, isn't it just so important that they don't form any contradiction?

Well, just think a little Creation account number one is from a wet world (fine for Mesopotamia with its nasty flooding), yet in account number two, the world is a totally dry one (fine for dry old Palestine).

Now notice the way God creates in the two different accounts. In the first it is sufficient to say something and it happens. In the second God has to get down to the dirt to make things happen. If you didn't know any better you'd think that we were dealing with two different gods, one who only needed to conceive the idea and it would take form and the other who had to get his hands dirty.

We have two different accounts from two different sources and there is no need for them to be in accord.

Perhaps they were in fact two different gods, using this logic. They have different names, Elohim and YHWH Elohim.

2:5 makes it clear that there was nothing on this earth. You accept that the accounts come from two different sources and "stitched together"; you should be aware that different writers use different terms, even for the same thing, as in Elohim and YHWH Elohim, and every winged bird of every kind (1:21) and every bird of the sky (2:19).

If you don't read the text you could.

Back to the drawing board, GakuseiDon, and stop making desperate distinctions.


spin