Originally Posted by Baalazel

The story of Babel is very interesting to me. I think the passages that make up Genesis from the Garden in Eden to the Tower of Babel are a set piece meant to reveal something about the nature of God. The evolution of God if you will.

We all understand that Genesis is a collection of stories and legends reworked and rewritten time and again before they took the form we have today. Genesis is essentially a political document created to support the positions of powerful agents in the struggle for the dominance of Israel. It was important that these factions be able to call upon Yahweh to strengthen their hold on those they ruled.

And what better way than to present Yahweh in a book. A book that was a talismanic representation of their devotion to Yahweh and of his devotion to them. So we have a straight forward presentation of Yahweh and his power in the hands of a class not shy in claiming that power for themselves.

But is it that straight forward? Is there another current that flows under the orthodoxy of the stories of creation and Babel? I think there is. I think this collection contains an account of the nature of Yahweh hidden by the redactor in plain sight. Here is how I think it was done.

First we should understand that the book of Genesis is a tale of separation. It is clearly seen in the creation stories in the first two chapters. God separates the light from the darkness Gen.1:4. He separates the waters and the firmament in 1:6, the waters and the land in 1:9. In some sense even the animals and plants are separated from the seas and the land. In this same sense God separated Adam from the dust of the earth and Eve from Adam.

If we go past the Babel story into the legends of Abraham -which is not my intent- we find Abraham separated from his home. Gods promise to Abraham to separate a land out for his decedents. The separation of Abraham from Lot. A quick read makes the point that the theme of separation is used throughout the book of Genesis.

Now let’s look at how Yahweh is presented. The first time we can approach Yahweh as a being of substance is in chapter 2 when he rests from his labors of creation. Such a human image, the worker, hot and tired who needs relief from the strain of toiling in the fields. And he has the need as well to stop and reflect on his work. To admire his work. To experience the sense of satisfaction that comes after the work is done.

This is not a minor point. Yahweh has separated doing from knowing. Action from thought. Wanting and having. Labor from satisfaction. And he has already separated good from bad. He has created the classifications of blessedness and sanctification against which must stand forces in opposition to them. Gods know good and evil. Good and evil are the primal separation.

If we turn to the creation of Adam we find a human like Yahweh who seems to kneel in the dust out of which he separates the man. We remember how in chapter 1 Yahweh created the man in his own image. Another image of Yahweh as man is the one that has him planting the garden. There is no “Let there be a garden”, Yahweh plants a garden. Does he dig the holes, drop in the plants, fertilize and water well?

It is a powerful picture of a being deeply involved in the process of taming the wildness of nature to satisfy his ends. He has separated out order from chaos. Just as he did in 1:2 only on a smaller scale. But not an unimportant scale because here we find the first inkling of civilization. The first thought that a man can adapt the world to his own needs.

So now we not only have man separated from the dust of the earth but separated from nature as well. We watch the very birth of the Babel story here. We discover that Yahweh himself is the father of Babel. It is Yahweh as man who sets his own creation on the path to its’ destruction. And that may be the most telling separation. The separate powers of creation and destruction.

We must not pass over the separation of Eve from Adam. This separation is momentous for in chapter 3 the woman raises the man out of the dust and makes him human, indeed she makes him a god. She and the man pay dearly for their actions but only because the creator is dishonest and envious. And frightened. We will see why at Babel.

The punishment Yahweh enacts is expulsion from the garden so the woman and the man can not eat the fruit of the tree of life and live forever. Yahweh reserves immortality for himself but he knows now that the woman and the man will never cease their search for it. And there is another separation here to keep in mind. The separation of life from the living. After the woman and the man eat the fruit we find the man/god Yahweh walking in the garden in the cool of the day. He is still attached to his creation. He enjoys the cool peace of the garden. Perhaps he has taken time again to reflect on his work.

The story is too well known to need repeating here. What needs repeating is Yahweh’s reaction at finding the two naked. He killed. He made them aprons of skins. The first deaths in the Bible were at the hands of Yahweh. Maybe they were only animals but they were nevertheless living things.

What we have here the first blood sacrifice as payment for sin. The separation of life from the living. Death in payment for living. And this was only a vision of what was to come. Yahweh, with blood on his hands, with the taste of it on his tongue begins an orgy of death by drowning. Noah and the righteous separated from the waters of judgment by an ark of gopher wood.

And we look back and can see the evolution of Yahweh from the man/god gardener who visits his creation in the cool of the day to the severe judge of sin who would destroy his creation because it suits him. But where is Yahweh in the story of the flood? He no longer walks through his creation. We do not see him. He does not present himself to Noah, he only tells him what is to be done.

And Noah never speaks. Yahweh has removed himself so far from the world of men that now they can not talk to him. They can only obey. And Noah built the ark as Yahweh commanded and brought the animals by sevens of the clean and two by two of the unclean. Separated out by some process not revealed, by some law not told to us some animals are now clean and some are now unclean.

And the redactor has laid out all he needs for the end of his revelation concerning Yahweh, and he ends at Babel. In 11:5 we read

“And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man builded.”

The man/god of Eden is now the sky God who must descend to act within his creation. He is a God with no blood on his hands. He is the High God who must not be seen walking.

11:6 “And the Lord said, behold the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them which they imagine to do.”

And what is it the people imagine to do that so worry’s Yahweh? They imagine immortality. That is what civilization is. That is what culture is. It is why we build cities. Why we have children. All these things are attempts to regain what was denied humanity in the garden. And that is the one thing Yahweh fears most. He knows it will be found. The Tree of Life is out there and he knows we will find it.

This is the message the redactor has left us. We can now see that Yahweh is not the same today and tomorrow and always. Yahweh changed, he left the creation he fashioned on it’s own and then grew weary of it. Perhaps if he had walked more often in the garden things would have been different. Perhaps there would have been no flood. Maybe there would have been no Babel.

Perhaps if Yahweh had remained close to his work, as close as the dust, as close as the blood on his hands, perhaps then he could not have killed. Not again, not so wantonly, not so callously. The redactor wants us to know that Yahweh can’t be trusted. He will not be today what he was yesterday. He will not be the same tomorrow as he is today.

And lastly the redactor wants us to know that Yahweh fears us more than we could ever imagine. Why? Because we will not be denied. We will gain what was taken from us in Eden.

And Yahweh knows that someday we will have our immortality. And then we will come after him. And this is the deepest separation. A God separated from his creation by fear. Not our fear of God, but Gods’ fear of us.

”And this they begin to do and now nothing will be restrained from them which they imagine to do.”

Baal

Originally Posted by Baalazel

I find this interesting as a Pagan devoted to the Goddess Inanna. It's also interesting that you would choose a passage which presents a story that is the exact opposite of the Biblical story of Babel. That is, one where the gods decree that there be only one language in order to facilitate communication between people and their deities. Why do you think that is?

And how do you feel about the evidence that some Biblical stories are fashioned from the older stories of other cultures?

Baal

Originally Posted by sugarhitman

Wow! God fear us? God envies us, his own creation? Why? What can we possibly do to God who can create (He created through the Word not through physical toil) or destroy with a mere word.

Originally Posted by arnoldo

This ancient sumerian text seems to have a story similar to the biblical tower of babel

Source cite: Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta

In the final lines quoted above we see that it is Enki who claims responsibility for "changing the speech" and bringing "contention" to a human family that had once been "as one."

Originally Posted by Baalazel

And how do you feel about the evidence that some Biblical stories are fashioned from the older stories of other cultures?

Baal

Originally Posted by neilgodfrey

Another translation with an opposite conclusion is found here.

So which is the correct translation?

Originally Posted by Baalazel

Please note that the text says Yahweh planted the garden. In fact I point out in my post that he did not say “let there be a garden”. That you have once again failed to offer any defense of your stand but have thought it sufficient to huff and blow does not surprise me. As always, it disappoints me.

Is it that you are so enamored of scripture that you can’t grasp its meaning even when it is laid out for you verse by verse? I have known for years that the great majority of Christians have no idea what the Bible really says. I began to understand it in college when I saw those who sat in class with me accept interpretations that I knew were not valid according to scripture.

I see now that you are just like them. So fearful of the dark magic of the word that you can not even begin to rest your heart and mind away from its grip. I have been anoyed with you in the midst of all this. I now find that annoyance has been replaced with pity for the realization that you are incapable of the leap to freedom that energises so many here.

Please try sugar to understand that I can’t go after a god who does not exist. What I have tried to do is make the point that interpretation of scripture is open to many more understandings than the narrow and parochial ones you and those like you hold.

The version of events I presented and their meaning are true to the text. I have added nothing. It is possible to understand the stories in precisely the way I presented them. That you are not able, at the very least, to admit that though you disagree, my interpretation is valid says more to me about your religious worldview than you could imagine.

Now as to your impolite and childish response. Satan is a Christian god. I am not a Christian so he is your worry not mine. I do not play video games. I do however read a great many Occult works. I am a Pagan. I practice magic and witchcraft.

That should assure you that I am indeed nuts but let me assure you that my grasp of religion is so far beyond anything you have achieved that I find your presentation to be immature and lacking in the grace that true students of religion exhibit.

As to my sobriquet, it amuses me that having once been a Christian I can now throw it in the face of those who still slavishly hold to that moldy superstition.

And, please know that I have a great respect for Johnny and read him avidly.

Baal

Originally Posted by sugarman

Im childish and immature? Ive read some of your other threads and your vulgar langauge. And where did you come up with such a interpretation? By this story, coupled with your other threads and name (Baal is another name for Beezlebub, lord of the demons, Lord of the flies) there is more than a hint of radical anti-theism here. So you are a witch that practices witchcraft? But yet christianty is superstition? Witches are ofcourse very hostile to christianity and God of the Bible which explains your threads....now I know and understand.