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So this would be a thread for sort of developing a relationship with the text and being all personal? And the other thread would be for straight up textual analysis?
I'm on the "very difficult, nigh impossible tp seperate the two" side of that particular fence.
At any rate: I'm down with starting with Genesis, but I think we need to keep in mind how freakin' big the book is. I mean it goes all the way from the creation to Joseph's death in Egypt. There's a lot of stuff in there. Are going to try to go chronologically our just willy nilly, bringing up whatever strikes us as the most interesting?
On the beginning: I find that I favor the second creation story over the first. In truth it provides one of my main pro-choice arguments when dealing with the religous, when God blows the breath of life into Adam's nostrils. I like to argue that the first breath of the newborn is the breath of God, and that without it the fetus doesn't have the sort of "life" that we have.
Moving on to the fall of Man, which is one of the most interesting (to me, anyway) moments of Genesis. God has told Adam that he is free to eat anything, but should he eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he will surely die. Now here comes the serpent, who, for whatever reason, has a big mouth and convinces Eve to try some of the fruit. "Nah, you won't die, God knows you'll become like the gods who know Good from Evil," the serpent says.
Turns out that God wasn't really lying when he said they would die, although it was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It may have been more accurate to say "Eat from this tree and I'll see to it that you die", because that's what happens. Death is one of the several curses God throws around after the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then a weird moment:
"See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad! Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life also, and thus eat of it and live forever." (New American Bible translation). Then God, so fearing this, kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden and set a cherubim and a fiery revolving sword to gaurd the entrance so they could not return.
Puzzling speech. Who, exactly, is God speaking to there? Why is he so against man having eternal life as well as knowledge of Good and Evil? Why did the serpent do what he did? If the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden to man, who was it there for? Were God and his companions munching on this fruit?
This section throws up some interesting questions. Granted, it's not really supposed to be taken literally, but even so some of it is puzzling. |
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