Original Sin

After some thought I can only surmise that what is written by Paul regarding “original sin” by Adam is a radical remake of the connotation between sin and redemption. I believe Paul is indicating, something he designed, that since we are born through a sin initiated by Adam then we need a propitiation of that sin through Christ. To my knowledge this is not indicated in either the gospels or the OT. Please correct me if I am wrong.
It seems that to understand Paul’s reckoning here is to understand his concept of the OT and the need for a salvific redeemer as well as the state of mankind.
It is truly ironic that while Paul considers mankind inherently good I Tim 4:4

For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.

he also considers man to be in a fallen state awaiting the final redemption(Romans 8:20, “Against its will, everything on earth was subjected to God’s curse.”. Therefore, we become will not to God who makes everything good, but to a personal Satan who makes everything cursed and evil. There is no neutrality where man can work towards goodness, we are simply overwhelmed by this active and dynamic evil energy of Satan who perverts the very will of God. God ceases to be God of this world to replaced by the Devil. I consider this to be antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and his apostles and to the nature of the OT. For this reason the laws of Moses are unnecessary because they are of zero efficaciousness and only through the redemptive power of Jesus can we be saved. No works and truly not even through faith can we be saved. Only through the salvific redemption of Jesus.
It is correct that people die, but they die because the body wears out. The cells entropy and die. This, however, is not because of sin, but because of natural consequence of being born and living. Adams eating of the fruit did cause the immediate death of Adam. In fact, Adam continued living for a great while longer. It caused the death of his paradise and of the lifestyle in which he was accustomed. In this sense not only does he die a physical, but ultimately a spiritual death.

The Hebrew text (“dying you will die”) does not refer to two aspects of death (“dying spiritually, you will then die physically”). The construction simply emphasizes the certainty of death, however it is defined. Death is essentially separation. To die physically means separation from the land of the living, but not extinction. To die spiritually means to be separated from God. Both occur with sin, although the physical alienation is more gradual than instant, and the spiritual is immediate, although the effects of it continue the separation.
the NET Bible

Because of that we have a unique spiritual separation from God. Jesus taught the way to heal this rift. To make a permanent and everlasting At-one-ment.

Dem bones!

It was announced today that the bones of Paul were discovered in all places, his historical grave site.

Pope: Scientific analysis done on St. Paul’s bones By NICOLE WINFIELD – 1 day ago

ROME (AP) — The first-ever scientific tests on what are believed to be the remains of the Apostle Paul “seem to conclude” that they do indeed belong to the Roman Catholic saint, Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday.

Archaeologists recently unearthed and opened the white marble sarcophagus located under the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome, which for some 2,000 years has been believed by the faithful to be the tomb of St. Paul.

Benedict said scientists had conducted carbon dating tests on bone fragments found inside the sarcophagus and confirmed that they date from the first or second century.

“This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul,” Benedict said, announcing the findings at a service in the basilica to mark the end of the Vatican’s Paoline year, in honor of the apostle.

Paul, along with Peter, are the two main figures known for spreading the Christian faith after the death of Christ.

According to tradition, St. Paul, also known as the apostle of the Gentiles, was beheaded in Rome in the 1st century during the persecution of early Christians by Roman emperors. Popular belief holds that bone fragments from his head are in another Rome basilica, St. John Lateran, with his other remains inside the sarcophagus.

The pope said that when archaeologists opened the sarcophagus, they discovered alongside the bone fragments some grains of incense, a “precious” piece of purple linen with gold sequins and a blue fabric with linen filaments.

Vatican archaeologists in 2002 began excavating the 8-foot-long coffin, which dates from at least A.D. 390 and was buried under the basilica’s main altar. The decision to unearth it was made after pilgrims who came to Rome during the Roman Catholic Church’s 2000 Jubilee year expressed disappointment at finding that the saint’s tomb — buried under layers of plaster and further hidden by an iron grate — could not be visited or touched.

The top of the coffin has small openings — subsequently covered with mortar — because in ancient times Christians would insert offerings or try to touch the remains.

The basilica stands at the site of two 4th-century churches — including one destroyed by a fire in 1823 that had left the tomb visible, first above ground and later in a crypt. After the fire, the crypt was filled with earth and covered by a new altar. A slab of cracked marble with the words “Paul apostle martyr” in Latin was also found embedded in the floor above the tomb.

Monday is the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, a major feast day for the Roman Catholic Church, during which the pope will bestow a woolen pallium, or scarf, on all the new archbishops he has recently named. The pallium is a band of white wool decorated with black crosses that is a sign of pastoral authority and a symbol of the archbishops’ bond with the pope.

At the end of Sunday’s service in the warm basilica, the 82-year-old Benedict lost his balance slightly as he slipped on a step on the altar, and was steadied by one of his assistants who was by his side.

Paul

C14 testing confirmed the bone fragments found dated to around the 1st or 2nd century ACE. Further testing showed they were the bones of a middle aged man. Adjacent to the tomb and church where Paul was eventually laid was discovered the oldest known image of Paul that dates to around the year 400 ACE.
On a more critical note what does the board representation feel about the influence of Paul’s teachings in the early church? Was he…
1. An usurper who integrated pagan ideals into a Jewish setting?
2. A revolutionary who saw beyond the provincialism of Jewish Christianity?
3. An apostle?
4. A heretic?
5. Something else?

“Oh, My God!”

I was listening to the Dennis Prager show this morning and he was discussing the use or more aptly the abuse of using God’s name is social discourse. Many people reject the use of interjecting the word, ‘god’ in their grammar because they feel it is using God’s name in vain. Dennis explained…
QUOTE
Because religion can be the greatest tool for goodness, it can also be the greatest tool for evil. And those who use it for evil commit the worst of sins. The second/third (depending on your enumeration) of the Ten Commandments reads, “Thou shall not take the name of God in vain, for God will not hold
him guiltless that takes His name in vain.”This commandment prohibits much more than merely frivolously saying the word “God.” What it really prohibits (and describes as essentially unforgivable) is committing evil while acting religious. Or, as the original Hebrew literally reads, “carrying” God’s name in vain.

Specifically, he stated that the Hebrew word for ‘using’ God’s name, na’sa, or carry means we should not do evil and invoke the name of God in that invocation. This seems to make some sense given the next part of this passage which states that this shall not be done in vain or shav (שָׁוְא ) a command which seems to prohibit the use of the name for any frivolous or insincere reason.

Secondly, since we know that term god is not an actual name but simply an appelation are we really using God’s name (Jehovah, Elohim, YHWH, etc.) in vain?

A Nostalgia for Paradise

In folklore Mircia Eliade called it a “nostalgia for Paradise” in his “Patterns in Comparative Religion”,

…the desire to recover the state of freedom and beatitude before the Fall, the will to restore communication between Earth and Heaven.” Further, “the nostalgia for Paradise belongs…to those profound emotions that arise in man when, longing to participate in the sacred with the whole of his being, he discovers that this wholeness is only apparently, and that in reality the very constitution of his being is consequence of its dividedness.”

In actual terms we are all wanderers living on a wandering planet (In Greek planan meaning to lead astray) or beings in exile. Our desire or nostalgia for that we sense only in shadows or vague memories springs from this deprivation.
Most of what we construct around our lives is simply stop gap, fast food restaurants, TV, amusements, etc. all lend to this idea that we do not really belong, that we are all truly hungry.
Elie Wiesel commented on this further,

I cannot see any other exile, but the real exile, and that exile is total. It envelops all endeavors, all explorations, all illusions, all hopes, all triumphs, and this means that whatever we do is never complete. Our life is not complete, and lo and behold, our death is not complete: one does not die when one should, or the way one should.”

The Gnostic’s taught a form of this exile in the form of the Hymn of the Pearl,

QUOTE
When I was a little child,
and dwelling in my kingdom, in my father’s house,
and was content with the wealth and the luxuries of my nourishers,
from the East, our home,
my parents equipped me (and) sent me forth;
and of the wealth of our treasury
they took abundantly, (and) tied up for me a load
large and (yet) light, which I myself could carry,
gold of Beth-Ellaya,
and silver of Gazak the great,
and rubies of India,
and agates from Beth-Kashan,
and they furnished me with the adamant,
which can crush iron.

And they took off from me the glittering robe,
which in their affection they made for me,
and the purple toga,
which was measured (and) woven to my stature.

And they made a compact with me,
and wrote it in my heart, that it might not be forgotten:
“If thou goest down into Egypt,
and bringest the one pearl,
which is in the midst of the sea
around the loud-breathing serpent,
thou shalt put on thy glittering robe
and thy toga, with which (thou art) contented,
and with thy brother, who is next to us in authority,
thou shalt be heir in our kingdom.”

I quitted the East (and) went down,
there being two guardians,
for the way was dangerous and difficult,
and I was very young to travel it.

I passed through the borders of Maishan,
the meeting-place of the merchants of the East,
and I reached the land of Babel,
and I entered the walls of Sarbug.

I went down into Egypt,
and my companions parted from me.

I went straight to the serpent,
I dwelt in his abode,
(waiting) till he should lumber and sleep,
and I could take my pearl from him.

And when I was single and alone
(and) became strange to my family,
one of my race, a free-born man,
and Oriental, I saw there,
a youth fair and loveable,
the son of oil-sellers;
and he came and attached himself to me,
and I made him my intimate friend,
and associate with whom I shared my merchandise.
I warned him against the Egyptians,
and against consorting with the unclean;

And I dressed in their dress,
that they might not hold me in abhorrence,
because I was come from abroad in order to take the pearl,
and arouse the serpent against me.

But in some way other or another
they found out that I was not their countryman,
and they dealt with me treacherously,
and gave their food to eat.

I forget that I was a son of kings,
and I served their king;
and I forgot the pearl,
for which my parents had sent me,
and because of the burden of their oppressions
I lay in a deep sleep.

But all this things that befell me
my parents perceived, and were grieved for me;
and proclamation was made in our kingdom,
that every one should come to our gate [kingdom],
kings and princes of Parthia,
and all the nobles of the East.

And they wove a plan on my behalf,
that I might not be left in Egypt;
and they wrote to me a letter,
and every noble signed his name to it:
“From thy father, the king of kings,
and thy mother, the mistress of the East,
and from thy brother, our second (in authority),
to thee our son, who art in Egypt, greeting!
Call to mind that thou art a son of kings!
See the slavery,–whom thou servest!
Remember the pearl,
for which thou was sent to Egypt!
Think of thy robe,
and remember thy splendid toga,
which thou shalt wear and (with which) thou shalt be adorned,
when thy name hath been read out in the list of the valiant,
and thy brother, our viceroy,
thou shalt be in our kingdom.”

My letter is a letter,
which the king sealed with his own right hand,
(to keep it) from the wicked ones, the children of Babel,
and from the savage demons of Sarbug.

It flew in the likeness of an eagle,
the king of all birds;
it flew and alight beside me,
and became all speech.

At its voice and the sound of its rustling,
I started and arose from my sleep.

I took it up and kissed it,
and I began (and) read it;
and according to what was traced on my heart
were the words of my letter.

I remembered that I was a son of royal parents,
and my noble birth asserted itself.

I remembered the pearl,
for which I had been sent to Egypt,
and I began to charm him,
the terrible loud breathing serpent.

I hushed him asleep and lulled him into slumber,
for my father’s name I named over him,
and the name of our second (in power),
and the of my mother, the queen of the East.

And I snatched away the pearl,
and turned to go back to my father’s house.

And their filthy and unclean dress I stripped off,
and left it in their country;
and I took my way straight to come
to the light of our home in the East.

And my letter, my awakener,
I found before me on the road;
and as with its voice it had awakened me,
(so) too with its light it was leading me.

It, that dwelt in the palace,
gave light before me with its form,
and with its voice and its guidance
it also encouraged me to speed,
and with its love it drew me on.

I went forth (and) passed by Sarbug;
I left Babel on my left hand;
and I came to the great Maisan,
to the haven of merchants,
which sitteth on the shore of the sea.

And my bright robe, which I had stripped off,
and the toga that was wrapped with it,
from Rantha and Reken(?)
my parents had sent thither
by the hand of their treasures,
who in their truth could be trusted therewith.

And because I remembered not its fashion,–
for in my childhood I had left it in my father’s house,–
on a sudden, when I received it,
the garment seemed to me to become like a mirror of myself.

I saw it all in all,
and I to received all in it,
for we were two in distinction
and yet gain one in one likeness.

And the treasurers too,
who brought it to me, I saw in like manner
to be two (and yet) one likeness,
for one sign of the king was written on them (both),
of the hands of him who restored to me through them
my trust and my wealth,
my decorated robe, which
was adorned with glorious colors,
with gold and beryls
and rubies and agates
and sardonyxes, varied in color.
And it was skillfully worked in its home on high,
and with diamond clasps
were all its seams fastened;
and the image of the king of kings
was embroidered and depicted in full all over it,
and like the stone of the sapphire too
its hues were varied.

And I saw also that all over it
the instincts of knowledge were working,
and I saw too that it was preparing to speak.

I heard the sound of its tones,
which it uttered with its….., (saying):
“I am the active in deeds,
whom they reared for him before my father;
and I perceived myself,
that my stature grew according to his labors.”

And in its kingly movements
it poured itself entirely over me,
and on the hand of its givers
it hastened that I might take it.

And love urged me too run
to meet it and receive it;
and I stretched forth and took it.
With the beauty of its colors I adorned myself,
and I wrapped myself wholly in my toga
of brilliant hues.

I clothed myself with it, and went up to the gate
of salutation and prostration;

I bowed my head and worshipped the majesty
of my father who sent me,–
for I had done his commandments,
and he too had done what he promised,–
and the gate of his….,
I mingled with his princes,
for he rejoiced in me and received me,
and I was with him in his kingdom,
and with the voice of….
all his servants praised him.

And he promised that to the gate too
of the king of kings with him I should go,
and with my offering and my pearl
with him should present myself to our king.

Sexual Nature of Deity in the Old Testament

(The following was written by David Bokovoy, doctrinal candidate at Brandeis University and was reprinted here with his kind permission.  It was originally post on the Mormon Apologetic and Discussion Board)

Biblical authors do not depict their God having sex, but this does not mean that the authors did not view their deity as a sexual being.

In fact, given the archeological evidence pertaining to ancient Israel, together with the stories of the divine realm from ancient Canaan, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, biblical authors would have possessed a highly unusual view, if they understood their God as celibate; for a recent analysis of this issue see Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Of course the discovery of the pottery shards from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud which depict Yahweh with his wife, illustrate that Yahweh himself, at least in some Israelite minds, was a sexual being; for a nice general survey see Margalit, Baruch, “The Meaning and Significance of Asherah,” Vetus Testamentum 40 (1990): 264-297.

Given this prevailing trend, when it comes to the biblical view of God’s sexuality, absence of evidence is not evidence of abstinence.

In reality, the Bible contains important clues suggesting that God and his heavenly host were, in fact, sexual beings. While this observation may seem blasphemous to some Christians, biblical authors clearly felt quite comfortable portraying their deity in sexual terms.

One recent study devoted to this topic includes Willem Boshoff’s “Sexual Encounters of a Different Kind: Hosea 1:2 as Foreplay to the Message of the Book of Hosea,” in Religion and Theology 1(1994): 329-339.

In the article, Boshoff discusses the fact that Hos 1:2 relies upon the imagery of conjugal infidelity in relationship to the Yahweh-Israel relationship. Boshoff suggests that the imagery and vocabulary in the book of Hosea reflect the multifaceted religious situation in ancient Israel wherein Hosea was one of many competing religious viewpoints.

Bhosoff notes that the discoveries at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud have, in fact, provided interpreters with access to these Israelite perspectives.

Of course to build the case for God’s sexuality in the Bible, one cannot rely solely upon one or two individual texts. It’s the combination of sources that produces the final image of a sexual deity witnessed in the Bible.

The first piece of evidence for this view derives from the story of Eden in Genesis 2-3.

The account depicts man as the primordial gardener– a task that man shares with Yahweh himself. When Yahweh speaks to his divine council in Genesis 3:22 and declares, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,” the dependent qualifier “knowing” proves meaningful.

Prior to partaking of the fruit, the man was already “like” God. Not only was man immortal, but also man, as gardener, performed the task of a god. Hence, partaking of the fruit produced a specific result, the man became like the gods “knowing.”

Based upon the fact that Genesis 4:1 presents Adam immediately “knowing” his wife upon leaving the Garden of Eden, biblical scholar Marc Brettler observes that “eating from the tree of ‘knowledge’ leads to a very specific type of ‘knowing;’ nowhere in the text is this knowledge depicted as intellectual or ethical” in How to Read the Bible (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2005): 46.

Notice that according to the account, the first thing that the man and women “know” after eating the fruit is gender difference.

Also, as Brettler insightfully notes, “the renaming of the woman as Eve, chavvah (‘progenitress’), ‘because she was the mother of all the living’ (Gen. 3:20), happens only after eating from the tree. This too bolsters the ‘sexual’ reading of this story—eating of the tree of ultimate ‘knowledge’ turns the wife of Adam from ha-ishah (‘the woman’) into a (potential) mother” (Ibid.).

To this, I would add the fact that sexual metaphors of fruit and gardens are ubiquitous in Near Eastern love poetry; see J. Atkins, Sex in Literature, vol. III (London: 1978): 178, 222.

Ancient Mesopotamian authors regularly incorporated these metaphors to create erotic motifs:

Vigorously he sprouted, vigorously he sprouted and sprouted,
Watered it- it being lettuce!
In his black garden of the desert bearing much yield did my darling of his mother,
My barley stalk full of allure in its farrow, water it- water lettuce,
Did my one- a very apple tree bearing fruit at the top- water it- it being a garden!

As cited in T. Jacobsen, Harps that Once: Sumerian Poetry in Translation (1987): 94.

Do not dig a [canal]
Do not plough [a field], let me be your field.
Farmer, do not search for a wet place,
My precious sweet, let me be your wet place.
Let the ditch (?) be your farrow,
let me be your canal,
Let our little apples be your desire!

As cited in Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, 149-150.

The highly sexual connotation of gardens and fruit was not unknown to the author of the Song of Songs 4:12-13a:

A garden locked is my sister,
my bride,
a garden locked, a fountain
sealed.
Your channel is an orchard of pomegranates
with all choicest fruits

With this understanding, it seems meaningful that imediately after leaving the Garden of Eden, “the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain” (Gen. 4:1).

From both a biblical and general Near Eastern perspective, Eve’s description of this event leaves the role of God in this process perhaps intentionally ambiguous: “I have procreated a man with Yahweh.”

In support of my reading of Genesis 4:1 as “I have procreated a man with Yahweh,” I would add that the Hebrew root qnh has a grammatical cognate in the Ugaritic word qny

In addition to its general meaning “to acquire,” the Ugaritic verb qny denotes “creation through procreation,” and “to bring forth”; see M.H. Pope, El in the Ugaritic Texts (Leiden: Brill, 1955); 50-54.

The same connotation for qnh clearly appears in the Hebrew Bible. Therefore, Stefan Paas has suggested that “the semantic separation between the two fields of meaning is actually not as sharp as first might appear; it is possible that the original meaning of qnh is ‘to create,’ from which the other meanings are derivative. YHWH is the Owner because He is the Creator”; see Stefan Paas, Creation and Judgment: Creation Texts in Some Eighth Century Prophets (Leiden: Brill, 2003): 66.

Genesis 4:1 seems to be a play on the ancient tradition that a God could produce offspring with a mortal woman through sexual intercourse.

The interesting story about the gods having sex with mortal women in Genesis 6 illustrates that sexuality was, in fact, both a power and a pleasure associated with the gods by biblical authors.

To further clarify, the text does not state that Yahweh had relations with Eve; Genesis 4:1 specifically states that “the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived.”

However, in her speech, Eve uses the word qny which means at miniumum, “to create,” and implies “to procreate.” According to Eve, she performed this act ’t , i.e. “with,” Yahweh. In its original cultural context, this statement carried a suggestive meaning.

Dr. Marc Brettler’s commentary given on the Samson birth narrative in Judges 13, from his work The Book of Judges, proves insightful:

“When Manoah’s wife speaks to her husband, she notes (v. 6), ‘The man of God has come to me’;… the idom “come to” is also used in sexual contexts, so this may also be translated: ‘The man of God slept with me.’ Through this double entendre put in the mouth of the clever wife of Manoah, a double entendre that her dim-witted husband is too stupid to understand, the audience is told the true father of the ‘boy to be born’” in The Book of Judges (London: Routledge, 2002): 45.

Brettler’s reading—which is also given by biblical scholars A. Reinhartz and S. Ackermann—is sustained by comparing Judges 13 to other biblical stories concerning barren women. For example, in 1 Samuel, Hannah conceives after offering her prayer, albeit specifically following the statement, “Elkanah was intimate with Hannah his wife, and Yahweh remembered her” (1: 19).

Accordingly, Brettler argues that “the parentage of the child explains his superhuman abilities” (Ibid. 46). Samson is like the Nephilim of old.

And speaking of the Nephilim, these superhuman creatures were produced when the gods saw that the mortal women were fair, “and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose” (Gen. 6:2). This story illustrates that gods, in the biblical view, were indeed sexual beings, just as they were throughout the ancient Near East. It really is wrong to suppose that biblical Israel existed in some sort of cultural vacuum.

Notice that the biblical God Yahweh reacts to the illicit sexual act of the gods in Genesis 6 with anger and destruction. In the Bible, the antithesis to Genesis 6 is Genesis 19, were human beings are the ones who seek sexual encounters with the members of the heavenly host. Significantly, God also reacts to this illicit act with anger and destruction.

Gods seeking sex with humans, or humans seeking sex with gods; either way, these stories illustrate that biblical authors viewed the members of the divine council as sexual beings.

I think we should ask ourselves the question, if the gods in Genesis 6 were capable of having sex, why not the God who ruled over them in the divine council? Remember, it was this very being who acknowledged the legitimacy of the serpent’s observation that eating from the fruit made Adam and Eve like the gods in “knowing” (Gen. 3:22).

[Kevin Graham] is correct that the Ugaritic tablets present El as highly sexual. But what if the only Ugaritic tablet we had was the story of king Kirta?

None of the patriarchal stories portray the biblical God having sex. Then again, neither does the Canaaanite myth of Kirta from ancient Ugarit.

This ancient myth focuses upon the centrality of kingship as a Canaanite institution through three tablets telling the story of king Kirta. Thus, the account is not concerned with the details of the celestial realm; only the exploits of the Canaanite king.

However, in the myth, Kirta receives a visit from El, the head of the divine council of deities:

For in his dream El came down,
in his vision the Father of Men.

He approached and asked Kirta:
‘Why are you weeping, Kirta?
Why does the Gracious One, the Lad of El, shed tears?
Does he want to rule like the Bull, his father,
or to have power like the Father of Men?’
(as cited in Stories From Ancient Canaan; ed. Michael D. Coogan, pg. 58-59).

Since this “patriarchal” story is not concerned with the celestial realm, the myth never describes the sexual exploits of El–only his interactions with his “prophet/king.”

However, as Kevin corretly notes, we know from other sources that the people of Ugarit viewed the Bull of Heaven as sexuality active. Asherah, the principal goddess of Sidon and Tyre, was the “Mother of the Gods.” She was El’s wife.

Therefore, simply because the patriarchal stories in the book of Genesis do not portray the details of the celestial realm doesn’t mean that the authors did not view God as a sexual being.

In fact, other details found throughout the Bible, like those I’ve identified above, suggest that from a biblical perspective, sexuality is a power intimately associated with God–just as it is in every other ancient Near Eastern tradition.

Following the formation of woman in Genesis 2, the biblical text provides an intriguing note:

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh”? (Gen 2:24).

This narrative statement draws upon the fact that the man in Eden leaves God and cleaves unto his wife as one flesh. Indeed, immediately after the text states that God drove out the man from the garden of Eden, the account states that “the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain”? (Gen 3:24-4:1).

The story of Eden presents a tale of the primordial man leaving God and cleaving unto his wife as one flesh. However, Genesis 2:24 not only states that the man left his father, the account specifically notes that the man also left his mother.

The concept of a divine consort is certainly not foreign to other biblical texts. Biblical scholar Michael Coogan has argued that the personification of wisdom in Proverbs 1-9 provides evidence for the ongoing worship of a goddess as consort of Yahweh; Michael D. Coogan, “The Goddess Wisdom: ‘Where Can She Be Found?’,” Literary Reflexes of Popular Religion, Baruch Hu (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999): 203-209. 1999

Coogan suggests that “as time went on . . . orthodoxy recognized that this daring use of popular polytheism was at least a source of confusion if not an outright threat and so it took pains to demythologize the goddess Wisdom, to make her an abstraction” Ibid. 208.

If Coogan is correct, this would explain why Yahweh’s consort whom the man leaves behind does not appear directly in Genesis 2-3.

Interesting, however, that without her appearance, it is extremely difficult to make much sense of the biblical story of Eden.

Dirty Harry and Gospel Research

Sometimes the study of religious affairs especially those of an arcane variety such as ancient Israel etc., and especially given the regimen of a modern day believer wrapped in the mantle of higher criticism can run afoul of some major league soul searching.  It came to me it is akin to the plot of a movie, in this case, “Dirty Harry”.  In the beginning of “Dirty Harry”, Harry bravely and confidently pulls out his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, (which) would blow your head clean off”, and asks the young bank robber, “I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. …you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”   The young man promptly drops his bid to retrieve his own weapon and as Harry walks away ask, “I gots ta know.”  At which point Callahan pulls the trigger on an empty chamber.

The question all serious students asked themselves is at what point are we facing the gun barrel of a .44 Magnum and asking the question of “I gots to know” in our pursuit of information and knowledge.  Will our questions produce a death inducing fusillade  of murderous truth or will we be rewarded with the knowledge of a simple “click” of an empty chamber?

The answers are not easy, but they are often worth the suspense.

What did the Israelites mean by God?

I was reading some articles tonight about Psalms and I started asking my self, “Self, what did the Israelites mean by God?” In some ways this is a germane question since we, i.e., humans have equated ourselves with God in someways.
After all, the OT refers to ‘god’ for all lesser supernatural beings such as the ghost in I Sam. 28:13, a demon of illness in Job 19:22 and, of course, the bene elohim or god-sons of Elohim. (Pss. 29.1; 89.7; Gen. 6.2, 4; Job 1.6; 2.1; 38.7.) Even man in Ps. 8:6 is referred to as having been “appoint(ed)…to rule over your creation; you have placed everything under their authority.”
So what is the difference? Then I read Ps. 82:6-7 where God passes judgement on all of us…”I thought, ‘You are gods; all of you are sons of the Most High.’Yet you will die like mortals; you will fall like all the other rulers.” God is telling us the difference. We are like God in that we share in his soverignty and power over other living creatures or as the article I read states,

What characterizes a ‘god’ is a superhuman and supernatural power, wisdom and insight. A ‘god’ is in a special degree a ‘holy’ being and partakes of all the faculties and attributes of ‘holiness’ (cf. above, pp. 54f.). The ‘godlikeness’ of man in Ps. 8 consists above all in his sovereignty and power over all other beings, in his godlike ‘honour and glory’ compared to them. The Psalms in Israel’s Worship Vol. 1 by Sigmund Mowinckel, D. R. Ap-Thomas; Abingdon Press, 1962

What we don’t share is our mortality and our inability to rule over space and time of nature and history. Only God is immortal and does not die (Hab. 1:12, “Lord, you have been active from ancient times; my sovereign God, you are immortal. Lord, you have made them your instrument of judgment. Protector, you have appointed them as your instrument of punishment.”) and does, indeed rule over all time and space.

Any comments?

An interesting tidbit..

Philo of Alexandria writing early in the Christian century and certainly from a Gnostic viewpoint writes a “most sacred mystery”, i.e., that Isaac the son of Abraham was actually begotten by God and not Abraham. Within six of his texts he writes of this very unconventional interpretation, but points to the passage in Gen. 21:6 where it states, “And Sarah said, “God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me.” Philo interprets “has made me” as begotten or “Laughter God has made for me.” hence the name Isaac or “laughter”. In a now lost book by Philo called De Isaaco Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough states that “De Isaaco developed as its central theme the fact that Isaac was so completely at one with the power behind the cosmos that he typified joy.” (By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Heleniistic Judaism, pp. 156-166.) As Christians, of course, this reminds us of Jesus, also a Son of God, who underwent the same sacrifice that almost befell Isaac and in roughly the same location. Interestingly, Philo doesn’t equate the supposition with any reality instead rendering it an allegory by describing God as “perfect in nature, sowing and begetting happiness in the soul.”

Nephi And Euripedes

In 1st Nephi Nephi is ordered to take the life of a inebriated Laban with some great reluctance.

QUOTE

10
And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.
11
And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered
him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take
away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments
of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.
12
And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands;
18
Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword.

While this has troubled me for a long time I still see the need to 1. follow the commands of God and 2. see the rationale that Nephi came up with. Therefore, it was of some interest when the other day I was looking through Euripides’ The Libation Bearers which is a story of the death of Clytemnestra at the hands of her son, Orestes, for taking the life of his father, Agamemnon.

QUOTE

ORESTES
The very one I seek. This fellow here
has had enough.

CLYTAEMNESTRA
No, not Aegisthus,
not my love, my power . . . dead.

ORESTES
You loved this man? Then you’ll find your rest
in a common grave with him—he’s one man
you won’t abandon when he dies.

CLYTAEMNESTRA
Hold off, my son, my child. Take pity
on these breasts. Here you often lay asleep.
Your toothless gums sucked out the milk
that made you strong.

ORESTES
Pylades, what do I do?
It’s a dreadful act to kill my mother.

PYLADES
What then becomes of what Apollo said,
what he foretold at Delphi? We made an oath.
Make all men your enemies but not the gods.

Somehow this has placed the story of Nephi is a different perspective. Nephi had little choice. He could have disobeyed God, but suffered as a consequence at the hands of God. What we see in the story of Euripides is a blood-oath of revenge that is carried out between son and mother. A violation to be sure, but no greater than Clytemnestra killing of her husband and marrying her suitor. In the story of Nephi we find a story that is highly reminiscent of a similar blood oath between the family of Nephi and Laban. Within this story we can find a small encapsulation of classical revenge.

Giants in the Earth!

I have been fascinated with this concept because its inclusion in Genesis seems a bit odd and a lot like a folktale or at best reflects a feeling of another culture that seemed to conflate itself with a similiar Hebrew account.
The verse in question:

1 AND it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

And as a result

5 ¶ And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

In Greek literature there are an incredible number of references to a race of giants. Adrienne Mayor’s book, “The First Fossil Hunters” presents a number of sources that deal directly with this. In 560 B.C. the oracle at Delphi told the Spartans that in order to triumph over their enemy they needed to find the bones of Orestes, who was an earlier hero. Later they found a very large coffin of a “man” measuring at least 10 feet. The Spartans were quick to assume that they had stumbled across the remains of the hero Orestes and brought the bones back with them to Sparta. What the Spartans couldn’t have known was that the bones were more than likely the remains of a mammoth. Since then many Ice Age mammals have been found in this area. Many Greek city states hereafter engaged in a “bone hunt” for heroes finding many remains of mammoth bones. Many modern scholars have even equated the character of Polyphemus, the Cyclops of Odysseus’ fame with the remains of mammoths which appear, at least in their skeletal form to resemble a one-eyed being.

One of the more important heroes uncovered were the remains of Ajax of Trojan War fame which was found near Rhoeteum. They were shown to an early Greek commentator named Pausanias who described the bones as essentially gigantic. The patella or kneecap was approximately the size of discus. Other Greek santuaries also contained remains of what the Greeks called the heroes of old and the giants that used to exist in the time of the earliest gods. Most of these giants and heroes were associated with the combatants of the Trojan War. Much more can be recorded of these ancient fossil accounts, but suffice to say that the Greeks considered the fossils to be the remains of earlier heroes and giants.
This unique attribution was not only made by the Greeks, but also by the ancient Jews. Citing to a group of bones dug around Hebron, Israel, Josephus alluded to an earlier “race of giants, who had bodies so large and contenances so entirely different than humans, that they were amazing to the sight and terrible to the hearing. These bones are still shown to this very day, unlike any credible relations of other men.”(Jewish Antiquities 5.2.3)
Bringing this back to the destruction of the Nephilim we see that their description relates closely to that of the ancient Greeks, “they bore children for them: these were the heroes of old, the men of renown.”

Many scholars have seen the story of the Nephilim as atypical and as Julius Wellhausen has indicated it is “a cracked erratic boulder” and should be thrown away. Biblical folklorist Hermann Gunkel has called it a fragment of an earlier story. Ronald Hendel in a Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 106, No. 1. (Mar., 1987), pp. 13-26.(Of Demigods and the Deluge: Toward an Interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4) writes that he believes the giants represent an earlier account of how God decides to rid the world not of humans, but of the giants which are seen as a pollutant.

In the Atrahasis the chief god Enlil is reported to have been disturbed by the noise of the humans.

” The noise of mankind disturbs Enlil’s sleep, so he decrees destruction for humanity,
first in the form of several plagues and drought and finally in the form of
the flood.”
In the Greek retelling of the flood myth, Atrahasis it reads:

The land grew extensive, the people multiplied,
The land was bellowing like a bull.
At their uproar the god became angry;
Enlil heard their noise.
He addressed the great gods,
“The noise of mankind has become oppressive to me.
Because of their uproar I am deprived of sleep.”

In the Genesis account we are told it was because of the wickedness of the people not because of the illicit affairs between the “Sons of God” (more on this later) and the ‘daughters of men”

In Ezekiel 32:27, we read of the Nephilim as warriors who have fallen:

“They lie with the warriors,

The Nephilim of old,

who descended to Sheol

with their weapons of war.

They placed their swords

beneath their heads

and their shields

upon their bones,

for the terror of the warriors

was upon the land of the living.”

Here we are told that the giants were actually warriors of great renown simlar to that of the Greeks.
In other parts of the Bible the Nephilim are described as giants of Canaan. In Numbers 13:33, “All the people whom we saw in its midst were people of great size; there we saw the Nephilim—the Anaqim are part of the Nephilim—and we seemed in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and so we must have seemed in their eyes.”
Also in Deuteronomy 3:11 the giant Anaqim aka Nephilim, aka Rephaim, we are told of the famous king Og of Bashan who was reported to be one of these giants. In 2Samuel 21:19 we read of the more familiar Goliath and his brother of Gath. Through it all the giants were reportedly wiped out by the flood and military actions, Joshua 11:22, we read “No Anaqim remained in the land of Israel, but some remained in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod.”
The one constant here in relationship to the giants, both among the Hebrew tradition and the Greek tradition, is that they were to be wiped off the face of the earth due to the imbalance they have created in the universe. In Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey the reason for the more is the eradication of the imbalance caused by the mating of semi-deities such as the giants and mortal women.
In Hesiods, Catalogue of Women, it states,

“All the gods were divided in spirit through strife, for at that time high thundering Zeus was planning wondrous deeds, to mingle disorder on the boundless earth, for he already was hastening to annihilate the race of mortal men, as a pretext to destroy the lives of the demigods, [so that] the children of the gods [would not mate with wretched] mortals, seeing

[fate] with their own eyes, but that the blessed gods
[henceforth], as before, should have their way of !ife
and their accustomed places apart from mortal men.”

What is evident here is that Zeus was precipitating a war to “destroy the demigods”. Similarly, God, Enlil, etc., set out to destroy the Nephilim through a similar destruction, not of war but of water and flood. I guess the question I would have would be why would God want to destroy the giants. Hendel points to the fact that Hebrew religion is overwhelmed with the “preoccupation of ancient Israelite thought (was the) suppression of anomaly in dietary laws and the laws of kinship.” These laws helped to “keep distinct the categories of creation.” In each of the destructions the natural order is maintained by a suppression and irradication of the anomaly that existed among the people. Either through war (Greek Trojan) or through Flood (Hebrew and Mesopotamian) the destruction of the giants served to meet this end.
While the appearance of colossal bones or “giants in the earth”might have been an impetus to equate them with the “Son of God” the question lingers as to who these Sons of God were.
One interesting comparison has been found in Deuteronomy 32. In chapter 4 of the KJV it states,

“7 ¶ Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.
9 For the LORD’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”
Notice that in verse eight it states the “children of Israel”. In the DSS and in the Septuagint this has been found to be a scribal error. It should read, “Sons of God”. Ronald Hendel comments on this by showing that these Sons of God were actually, “not only present at the beginning of the world, but also figured importantly in the division of the nations. According to the following verse, Yahweh chose Israel as his own portion, implying that each of the other deities, the Sons of God, also received a nation to rule over.”

These same Sons of God were also present at the beginning,
In Job 1:6 and 2:1, the Sons of God present themselves to Yahweh in the heavenly divine assembly. Later, in Job 38:7, we learn that the Sons of God have been with Yahweh at the creation of the world; when they see what God has wrought “the Sons of God shout[ed] for joy.” The Sons of God (Hebrew,, again appear at Yahweh’s divine assembly in Psalm 89:7, where Yahweh’s incomparability among the gods is proclaimed. A similar scene is found in Psalm 29:1, where the Sons of God (Hebrew, sing praises to Yahweh.”
While we as LDS believe that spiritual semi-deities such as Sons of God cannot procreate with physical mortals it helps to understand how ancient Israelites helped to explain the remnants of fossilized creatures. How else but to attribute to them the qualities of a super race created by illicit mating between the Sons of God and the Daughters of Man. So, what I believe is being seen here is a conflation of an earlier legend with that of visual evidences as supplied by the fossil record.
In summary, product of a mating between the demi-gods and mortals were destroyed because they created an imbalance in the harmony of the natural cosmology of the ancient Greeks and Israelites. Evidence for the offspring was found in the fossilized remains of early mammals.
Another interesting side connection is a small passage in the Book of Mormon which started to intrigue me. In Ether 9:19 it states, “19 And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms.”
While I can only engage in speculation here I can only surmise that while we have no direct evidence of any contemporaneous existence of elephants, horses and men we can surmise that the ancients who came along later found the fossilized remains of the horses, elephants, etc. and saw them for what they were:recent burials of animals. I sincerely doubt that they would have had an understanding of animals that had existed prior to their own existence. Two books discuss this in better detail than I have, one, Adrienne Mayor’s “Fossil Legends of the First Americans” and “When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth” by Elizabeth and Paul Barber.