Categories
World History

Snake in the Grass

snake (close up of head)

O Adam, Where Art Thou?

Busted!

The Beginning of Dragons?

Kings, and Giants, and Gods. Oh, my!

Snake in the Grass

Enter the Villain.

It’s a serpent. That does not mean a snake. A snake is a serpent, but not all serpents are snakes.

A serpent has the lithe mobility of a snake. An eel can be called a serpent: a water serpent. It is usually described as serpentine.

We will see later that this serpent has legs. It is a wild animal, not livestock.

The serpent was the wiliest wild animal God had created.

It wound its way through the garden’s grove of amazingly beautiful trees that were bearing various delicious fruits. It looped between them until he saw his targets: Adam and Eve.

The serpent moved alongside.

“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”

The question drips with feigned innocence.

O Adam, Where Art Thou?

Adam says nothing, and that is his first mistake.

In fact, Moses, writing in his signature extreme minimalistic style, doesn’t even mention Adam until Adam takes action much later in the story!

Eve speaks and the more she talks, the deeper she gets into trouble. But the first thing strange to us is that speaking to the serpent seems normal to her!

Eve says, “We may eat the fruit of the trees except for the tree in the middle of the garden. He says if we touch that tree we will die.”

Oh, Eve! It’s plain that the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has been dominating your thoughts. There is another tree in the middle of the garden: the Tree of Life. But Eve doesn’t mention that. She also adds a prohibition of not touching the forbidden tree. It’s not smart to add to God’s words.

Still, Adam says nothing.

The serpent zeros in on Eve, the weaker prey. “You shall not certainly die. (emphasis mine)” The serpent follows Eve’s lead and inserts doubt by adding to God’s instructions.

Adam remains silent.

“God knows that when you eat the fruit of that tree, you will be like God (by) knowing good and evil.” The serpent appeals directly to pride in the guise of wisdom.

Now we are at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Have we been strolling there while Eve and the serpent were talking? Or has Eve already been there admiring the tree?

Eve ticks off the virtue of the tree’s fruit. Good for food. Check. Pleasing to look at. Check. Desirable for gaining wisdom. Check.

She reaches for the fruit and—Adam says nothing. He does nothing.

Feeling very brave, she picks the fruit. She notes triumphantly that she hasn’t “died” from touching it (whatever dying means). Therefore, there is no harm in eating it. (Terrible logic!)

She eats it. Adam sees all of this and does nothing.

Eve is still living. She gives some fruit to Adam, and he eats it. (This is the first time Moses mentions Adam: “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Moses doesn’t even deign to name Adam!)

Then BAM! Their brains are barraged with all kinds of new thoughts. They have the knowledge of evil. They know how to cheat, how to steal, how to murder, how to wreck their relationship of perfect partnership. They feel shame and guilt and hate.

Their brains were not created to endure this knowledge. The pain! The stress! They want to die. No, not that! Dying sounds like something really awful.

If you logically accept what Genesis says, you have just learned the source of all mental illness. And you see that mental illness can never be cured, only contained and alleviated.

Is mental illness sin? No, Moses doesn’t say that. Mental illness is the result of Adam and Eve’s sin.

Busted!

God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. No humans came running to meet Him. “Where are you?” (As if He didn’t know!)

Adam: I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.

God: Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the forbidden tree?

Adam: The woman you put here with me gave me some fruit, and I ate it.

Here is the original blame shifter! It’s God’s fault because he made the woman. It’s her fault for giving the fruit to Adam. Okay, he admits, he did eat it. But he doesn’t admit which tree grew the fruit.

God to Eve: What is this you’ve done?

Eve learns fast. “It’s the serpent’s fault! He deceived me! (This translates to “It’s not my fault. I didn’t know any better!)

God doesn’t give the serpent a chance to answer the charges. God is now the judge handing out justice.

God to Serpent: You are cursed above all animals, wild and livestock. You will crawl on your belly and eat dust for the rest of your life. Your offspring and the woman’s will be at war forever. (This refers to Jesus.) You will damage Him, but He will crush you!

God to Woman: Your childbirth pains will be extremely severe. Your desire will be for your husband (there is no agreement on what this means) and he will rule over you.

The equal partnership is destroyed.

Since that time, any relationship will have times of honest disagreement, and someone will have to make the decision. This is not a demotion to housemaid. But it is a demotion from co-president to vice president.

Interestingly, each person will be confronted with his or her weakness.

To Adam, who was never deceived by the serpent: Step up! Take responsibility!

For the woman: If a tie vote is broken in the direction you don’t like, step back and get with the program!

It is important to recognize that this hierarchy is specifically within marriage. It does not relate to professional relationships, for instance. And it in no way negates the brains or skills of women.

Women, if you don’t choose to be Vice-President, do the man a favor and don’t marry him. Marry someone else you do trust, or stay single.

God judges Adam: The command to subdue the earth stands, but it will no longer be a joyous walk in the garden. Thorns and thistles will thwart you (whatever they are). Gardening now becomes hard work. You will sweat to grow your food. In the end, “you will return to the dust from which you came.”

And then God threw them out of the garden and placed an angel with a sword to prevent them from returning and eating from the Tree of Life.

Now, that sounds petty. But, actually it was love. If they ate from the Tree of Life now, they would live forever in the miserable, stressful, guilt- and shame-ridden lives we all find ourselves in. That’s hell, not heaven.

But never fear. God has a plan.

The Beginning of Dragons?

Although this whole incidence of loss of innocence is ignored in cultural legends, the “serpent” is part of worldwide consciousness. Sometimes it is legless and wingless. Sometimes it has multiple heads and/or horns. It may have legs but no wings. It may have a beard. Some do have wings. Some breathe fire. And in Mesoamerica, it has feathers but not wings.

These are all forms of what we refer to as a dragon. In all cultures, serpents/dragons are supernaturally powerful and clever.

But there is a difference of opinion about character. In China, dragons are benevolent and wise. In European civilizations, they are destructive and evil.

Interestingly, ancient Mesopotamia, the earliest literate culture, describes both benevolent and destructive dragons! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon

May I share my personal hypothesis? Mesopotamia is closest to the truth as told by Genesis because the serpent presented itself as benevolent and wise, but it was really destructive and crafty. Its intent was evil.

Some cultures emphasize the dragon/serpent as it was created, but some describe it after its punishment.

Kings, and Giants, and Gods. Oh, my!

And now, we continue to the time when these beings existed. Guess what? They were all humans!

Read it for yourself: Genesis chapter 3

Photo credit: Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Categories
World History

The First Humans

God and Adam touch - from Sistine Chapel

The Biblical Adam and Eve

Going to Work

Humans in God’s Image

We Agree!

How Humans Differ from Apes

What Was Life like in the Garden of Eden?

The First Humans

We have examined the evolutionary explanation of the first human. Now it’s time to look to Genesis.

The Biblical Adam and Eve

Adam was made from dust. God breathed into his nostrils “the breath of life.”

God said, “It’s not good for man to live alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

He brought all of the birds and wild animals to Adam to see what he would call them. Adam named them. (Try that. I bet you can’t do it!) But Adam did not find a suitable helper.

So, God performed the first surgery. It was orthopedic! He took a rib from Adam’s side and used it to create the woman.

Adam said, “She shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man.”

It has been noted that Eve was not taken from Adam’s head so she would be the boss. She was not taken from Adam’s feet so he could trample on her. She was taken from his side to partner with him in the work God gave them to do.

Going to Work

What was that work? “…rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” They were to be king and queen of planet Earth!

God also commanded, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”

“Be fruitful and multiply” is the only command that humans have always enthusiastically obeyed!

The earth refers to the geological earth: the ground. It does not refer to subduing anything living. Humans were to rule non-human creatures, not subdue them. Also, humans were not commanded to rule over each other.

To subdue the earth means to bring it under control for the good of themselves and the creatures they kindly rule.

The diet of every living thing was to be all of the green plants. The diet of humans was also vegetarian: every seed-bearing plant and every tree with fruit containing seed(s).

I know. This brings up questions such as, “Then why did predators have teeth.” Or, “Didn’t this mess up the gastrointestinal systems of predators?”

Hey, I didn’t say Biblical theories don’t raise questions. And we may never know the answers. Moses writes on a need to know basis and this is something we apparently don’t need to know.

Humans in God’s Image

How could they accomplish all of this? Because man and woman were created in God’s image. At the very least, that means that people are in a different category from animals.

Therefore, there are three biological kingdoms: plants, animals, and humans.

We Agree!

All historians I have heard of agree on some things. In the earliest preliterate days, humans were smarter than apes. We just don’t agree by how much.

Let’s look at apes!

Apes have instincts. All animals do. This built-in action helps the apes survive.

You have instincts too. If your hand gets too close to fire, it jerks back. You don’t think about it at all.

Apes are intelligent. They solve problems using tools. An ape might use a rock to crush nut shells. A branch lying on the ground could be used to reach fruit. This is using nature as it is found.

Apes are even smarter than that. If there is no branch lying around, an ape can break one off of a tree. The ape might make it shorter. Maybe the twigs need to be removed. This is changing nature to make a tool.

They also remember this invention the next time the need arises.

However, that’s as far as apes go.

How Humans Differ From Apes

Apes are usually presented as being very close to humans, something like a second cousin. Are they?

  1. The National Library of Medicine says that there is a 4% difference between ape and human DNA. In fact, there are “35 single nucleotide differences” and “approxiamately 90 Mb of insertions and deletions” in the DNA. Read it here:. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16339373/#:~:text=Humans%20and%20chimpanzees%20shared%20a,Mb%20of%20insertions%20and%20deletions. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound close at all to me.
  2. Humans focus on the future. We are always thinking what we will do tomorrow. In fact, since “tomorrow” is not yet in existence within our world, it is actually the first part of eternity. Because we live in the future, always thinking about tomorrow, we invent tools to help us do our work easier, faster, or better next time.
  3. Humans also create the arts. Create means “to make out of nothing.” We can’t quite do that, but what humans can do is the next best thing. We can create out of our imagination. We don’t only modify and improve existing objects. We actually can create new objects, tools, toys, machines, shelters, clothing, weapons, and works of art.

This is different from problem solving.

You see, painting can’t feed you (unless you sell it). A drum can’t help you sleep. Quite the opposite! There is no reason for the arts…except they are fun!

Yet, humans in all times and places have produced art.

  • Humans have free will. We aren’t bound by instincts and survival problem solving. We can choose to act against instinct and survival. And we do—frequently.

What Was Life like in the Garden of Eden?

Dream Time is remembered in the human collective consciousness. Amazing!

There is a universal longing to return to that time. You see it at every zoo. You see it 24 hours a day on Animal Planet channel. People long to rule animals with love and be loved in return. Just think of all of the pets in the United States alone!

The Bible says those days will return. Prophecy is poetic language, which you may recognize in the description below. This scene is not an actual scene, but a description of the Peaceful Kingdom, as it has been called.

“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child shall lead them.

“The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

“The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.” Isaiah chapter 11, verses 6-8.

Don’t you long for a world like that? I do!

Read it for yourself: Genesis 1:27-31 and 2:18-25

Photo credit: Vieriu Adrian