Genesis, from Spring through Fall

Induction

There was once a female psychologist who used to be a very good friend of mine until at a party she called Genesis “boring”. Her husband, who had a somewhat more intellectual view of scripture, explained that she meant that Genesis consisted mainly of fairy tales when compared to the redemption through Jesus’ death on the cross and His Resurrection; a clarification which did not really make things that much better. I was dumbfounded. Even though I knew (and know) I could have talked for an hour or two about Genesis alone, I had no idea what to say to a crowd of people to whom Genesis obviously meant nothing more than a collection of myths, who did not even know what a myth was. I didn’t know how to begin. Now that I think about it; I am still stunned. How can anyone find Beethoven’s 7th or Rembrandt’s Sacrifice of Isaac or War and Peace or Wang Wei’s Wheel Rim River Cycle or a Chinese landscape painting by Dong Yuan or Don Juan by Mozart or the Odyssey or the Grand Canyon or Paris or Ben Hur or Wagner’s Parsifal or an Egyptian mummy or de Tour de France or Grace Kelly’s dresses in To Catch a Thief or LeBron or the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” boring? Even if those things are new to us, can’t we sense the splendor, the magnificence emanating from them? This series of articles about the Torah, the Five Books of Moses (I don’t like the sound of the word Pentateuch) may be a reaction triggered by the frustrating experiences I had like the above described conversation. Genesis, to me is treasure of condensed, distilled wisdom, and one of the most direct windows we have on the ancient past when people lived most of their lives in the open air without worrying about mortgages and video games. This is an attempt to share my fascination with these texts that in themselves consist of centuries of edition, redacting, adding, subtracting, multiplying dividing - and re- (but not de-) constructing…

O man!* (footnotes below each section)

This article turned out to be quite long. I thought of breaking it up, but found that it is too much of a whole to do so. You have my explicit permission to take breaks reading it. It consists of 3 chapters:

Genesis 1, P’s creation story

Genesis 2, J’s creation story

Genesis 3, The Fall

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Footnotes:

*  Ashkenaszi pronunciation of amen.

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Genesis 1: P’s creation story (for who P is, see intro to Genesis 2)

The first day.

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ —— In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

One of the great lines in world literature. Thousands of years of sea monsters, storm gods and love goddesses eroded away to leave us with this one granite sentence, the perfect, diamond hard shape, left standing; something like the way hundreds of years have gotten honed, polished and perfected in the army cry Hoo-ah!!! In the face of all earlier creation stories, where the world was invariably a result of strife between gods, and the physical earth shaped out of a defeated goddess’s carcass (Tiamat in the Babylonian canon): here just this line, beginning with a בְּ, a beth, meaning ‘house’, ‘home’, signifying God’s Home, that is, the Life Spirit’s turf, His reign over everything, calm, matter of fact, but enormous: God created the Universe. This is the transcendental God, called אֱלֹהִ֑ים, Elohi’m, pronounced ‘elloheem’, I’m writing the apostrophe because it looks like the yod at that place in the Hebrew. Elohi’m, usually translated God, is magnificent, impersonal, the God of the Universe, the Spirit of everything, who once set Himself to music by means of Beethoven’s mind in the rock solid, immovable key passages of the Ninth, opening movement, or the beginning of Bruckner’s Ninth (==> see the musical example here on the right, from my Bruckner for 2, ==> list of illustrations).

Today, however, scholars prefer to translate when in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, regarding the first verse as a clause dependent on the second. In fact, there seem to be three possible translations, here given in schema form:

1. God created. The earth was void. God created light. 2. When God created, the earth was void. God created light. 3. When God created, and the earth was void, then God created light.

Scholars look at earlier Mesopotamian epics, most of which start with the wenn schon denn schon (when Sean, then Sian) clause. Here is Enuma Elish: the main comparison, from early in the 2nd millennium, therefore about 1200 years before P (which would be 1200 BP):**

• When in high the heaven had not been named

• Firm ground below had not been called by name

• Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter,

• (And) Mummu - Tiamat, who bore them all, their waters commingling as a single body

• No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land appeared

• When no gods whatever had been brought into being,

• Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined -

• Then it was that the gods were formed within them.  (Pritchard 1969, pp. 60–61)

Note the suggestive, mysterious series of whens with seven not yets, in these verses, culminating in the last: then the gods were formed ...  the emptiness of primeval times. The Atrahasis has a similar start:

• When the gods instead of men // Did the work, bore the loads,

• The gods’ load was too great // The work too hard, the trouble too much

• The great Anunnaki made the Igigi // Carry the workload sevenfold (Stephanie Dalley, Oxford, 1989)

The Anunnaki are the gods from down below, the Igigi reside in the heavens. The last remind me of Ginnifer Goodwin in He’s not that into You, but you have to have seen that movie. A similar formula can be found in the relatively late tablet 12 of Gilgamesh, the slaying of the Huluppa Tree:

• In the first days, in the very first days,
  In the first nights, in the very first nights,
  In the first years, in the very first years,

• In the first days when everything needed was brought into being,
  In the first days when everything needed was properly nourished,
  When bread was baked in the shrines of the land,
  And bread was tasted in the homes of the land,
  When heaven had moved away from earth,
  And the earth had separated from heaven,
  And the name of man was fixed;

• When the Sky God, An, had carried off the heavens,
  And the Air God, Enlil, had carried off the earth,
  When the Queen of the Great Below, Ereshkigal, was given the underworld for her domain - (Wolkstein/Kramer 1983?)

But treating Genesis as an imitation of these poems seems to make it inferior, pushing it into the straight jacket that it might not fit into, like so many conductors do with music: 

• 1 In the beginning (when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 *the earth was a *formless void *and darkness covered the face of the deep, *while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters), 3 *Then God said, “Let there be light”; *and there was light. (NRSV).

This sounds rather common, standard, prozaic. It trivializes the unique and magnificent creation of the universe, taking it for granted, demoting the greatest act in the history of the universe to a mere introduction to the creations that follow - somewhat like the unbelievably ignorant classification of Beethoven as a “transitional composer”, rather than the top of the pyramid he really is. It also misses the power and the uniqueness of the first sentence: GOD created everything, of whose omnipotence we know that the author (especially P) was convinced. It seems like a scene in the Lord of the Rings movie, where every great theatrical moment in the book is botched; like how when all seemed lost, the fierce and hateful Corsairs had arrived: and Eómer had already resolved to make a last stand, “and do deeds of song on the fields of the Pelennor, though no man should live to remember the Last King of the Mark - even as he laughed in despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them - then a wonder and great joy; and he cast his sword up into the sunlight and sang as he caught it. And behold! on the foremost ship a great standard broke, and the displayed it as she tunred toward the Harlond. There flowered a white tree, and that was for Gondor; but seven stars were about it, and a crown above it; the sigh of Elendil that no lord had borne for years beyond count (…) Thus came Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Elessar, Isildur’s heir, out of the Paths of the Death, borne upon a wind from the sea to the Kingdom of Gondor — and the mirth of the Rohirrim was a torrent of laughter and a flashing of swords, and the joy and wonder of the City was a music of trumpets and a ringing of bells … how all that, and infinitely more, read it yourself (Return of the King, Book V - 6, Battle of the Pellenor Fields) … is reduced in the movie to Vigo Mortensen jumping off a boat. Ggggggghhhhhnnnnnnn!!!!!

Of course this translation of Genesis 1:1 isn’t nearly that bad. Nothing is as bad as that movie where the director, whose name I fortunately don’t remember, manages to make Cate Blanchett seem like she can’t act.

One of the reasons the potential for multiple translations exists here is the alleged complexity of the first three sentences’ grammar. To my amateur ear it sounds simple enough: B’reshit, in the beginning: time clause, Elohi’m, God: subject, bara, created: verb, et, object qualifier, hashamaim, the heavens: object, v’et, and + object qualifier, haaretz, the earth: object. Then there are the vavs conversive and reversive (here both marked *), translated everywhere else in Hebrew with and: as also the KJV, Luther, Károli and Wycliffe versions do, below. Same with the extremely obvious absence of a conjunctive (“when”) at the beginning of the sentence, which hurts my ears. I would like to know what the problem is — si scis, O doctor, fac ut sciam! Enlighten me!

I think the Hebrew has something much more beautiful and meaningful to say on its own:

• 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth …………

• 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters …………

• 3 And God said, Let there be light … and there was light. (KJV)

To me, this sentence has much more mystery, calm, and majesty. In the beginning … just that. God stands above everything. In the beginning, God created everything - בָּרָ֣א barah, ‘create’, is in the Bible reserved for God alone. God created. No tempest. No hurricane. No battle. No sea monster carcass. Just God manifesting His Will. The repeated formula in the following parts and God said X and X happened confirms this interpretation. God, the Spiritual force - may the Force be with you - is outside nature. He works in nature, through nature, but is not part of it. That is the gigantic message of this beginning line, which will be confirmed further along. The calm certainty of fact... Then, the description, which is so much more awe-inspiring on its own, condensed, poetic: void, without form, darkness, deep, and God’s Spirit - ר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים - Ruach-Elohi’m, God’s breath moving, floating over the waters - with nothing to depend on. What a great word, ר֣וּחַ, ‘rwachhh’, meaning wind, sounds like it - wind, spirit, breath of God …. And then, the action: and God said … and it was so. I wish this were the case with my children, but it never is, especially when one doesn’t have children.

Would that modern translation be a case of the perfect turning out to be the enemy of the good? We have perfection in classical music with fewer and fewer people being interested, and frankly, I much prefer the chutzpah in the old recordings. I used to love the moment in the end of Beethoven One when the violins and the oboe play the run and the theme again, then suddenly the whole orchestra bursting in fortissimo - sooo Beethoven! Muscle Mozart I call him in this early period. Last time I played it however, in Robbins Landon’s “historically informed” edition, the moment was gone, a prissy English crescendo had been inserted, for whatever reason. Most of the time, the historical approach takes the dust of centuries off the music. But perhaps sometimes we overdo it. P lived a millennium after the latest possible date of origin of the Enuma Elish. Everything else in the creation story and in the entire Torah shows that not only P, but all authors of the Torah wanted to break with the pagan religions they had grown up in. Tell me what I’m missing. O doctores histerici!

Let’s look at Luther’s version from 1505:

• 1 Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.  2 Und die Erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auf der Tiefe; und der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser.  3 Und Gott sprach: Es werde Licht! und es ward Licht.

German geist is a great word. It incorporates both mind and spirit. Luther has God’s Mind ‘drift’ (schweben) over the water, another word English doesn’t really have - schweben is what a glider does and only that. Note the compactness: schuf, Himmel und Erde, wüst und leer, Geist, Finster auf der Tiefe (Luther doesn’t translate עַל־פְּנֵ֣י ‘in the face of’, though that expression is beautiful too). Later: Die Feste, for the firmament… German can be compact, even in names. Ireen Wüst (b. Goirle, 1986) from my home town in the South, surely made everything look wüst und leer for the German speed skaters who competed against her from 2006 till 2018.***

One more foreign translation, the Hungarian Károli Gáspár (“Caspar Charley”), from the 1580s: 

• 1  Kezdetben teremté Isten az eget és a földet.  2 A föld pedig kietlen és puszta vala, és setétség vala a mélység színén, és az Isten Lelke lebeg vala a vizek felett.  3 És monda Isten: Legyen világosság: és lõn világosság.

I love the elevated language, the old verb forms (teremté, lõn, vala like in English maketh and whilst, and thou of course); kietlen I find translated as drear, except if it’s written kietelen, than it’s ‘tickle’ in Dutch; but most of all the word puszta - the empty earth, a puszta, only grasslands, a very sporadic well, and perhaps one peasant with a poncho on a horse playing bagpipes in a calm breeze floating over the waters, far far away … the joke is on me, of course, not on Károli.

Here’s one more! I stumbled upon Wycliffe, from 1384, the same year that Wycliffe deprived the Roman Catholic Inquisition of a lucrative trial and execution by dying a natural death.

• 1 In the beginning God made of nought heaven and earth. 2 Forsooth the earth was idle and void, and darknesses were on the face of (the) depth; and the Spirit of the Lord was borne on the waters. 3 And God said, Light be made, and the light was made.

“Creating of naught, ex nihilo, from nothing, pertains to an important metaphysical issue. Did God create from nothing, or was there already something from which God created? All the earlier creation stories presupposed something from which the creation process started. Judeo-Christianity only presupposes God, Who is not made out of matter. Wycliff’s translation of nought can also just be an intrinsic translation of בָּרָ֣א, bara, ‘create’, which is only used for God. That still gets us back to the ex nihilo argument: only God can create something out of naught. We often create naught out of something… (I can so hear Fred Willard say this!)

This discussion reminds me of God’s epithets omnipotent, omniscient. Those are man-made concepts, and man never tires of making conclusions based on those concepts. I don’t mean the common atheist argument that if God is omnipotent, why did he let RG III get injured? I rather mean: if God is omniscient, how can we have free will? Free will excludes any possibility to predict our choices. How can God know what by definition cannot be known? Predestination, omniscience, omnipotence, these are concepts we don’t understand, even though we made them up ourselves. They are too big for us. They don’t exist in the material universe, we cannot grasp the idea. We think we do, and that is the dangerous point. That’s how Calvin created his predestination doctrine, which was poutine to place (my accent) in order to free people from the shackles of the Roman Catholic Church with its indulgences, but which has ever since been used to put on new handcuffs for reformed Christians: if I’m not pious, or successful, it means I am damned. We cannot make judgements based on concepts we have artificially made up, along the way, long after the Bible had been set in place.

My favorite ‘translation” of Genesis 1:1-3, however is Haydn’s -

If you want to get the most out of following paragraphs, keep your screen scrolled up so this sentence remains on your screen and the picture below is invisible until the last moment. Here is some Latin filling the website provides to facilitate this procedure. You don’t have to read it, it’s just filling.

Quare dices Sanctam Romanam Catholicam Ecclesiam esse solam vehiculum obtenendo Deum Gratiam? Quando cessit ducere Sanctam Ecclesiam Sanctus Spiritus Dei? Aut Inquisitionem Deus voluit? Non male enim videris in pinula plissada caligulisque altis cum altis calcaneis, O sacerdos mi. Quare docent doctores linguam Cathiensem legis grammatica Latina? Nigra sum sed formosa. Ego ‘nigra est, ergo formosa’ dicam. Debet et credit. Esse aut non esse, causa hoc est. Stabat Mater, Ma wat staat er, Benedictus Benen dicht Truus. Agnus Dei, qui tolit peccata Mundi, dona nobis tacet. Tres, comma, quattuor deces unum nova et cetera. Vestimenta virentes non tibi facit prorsum quemcumcue, O magistra strepitus. Non fas fuisset maledicere occultos lictores rei publica alae sinistrae, sed etiam facio. Putrite in inferno.

As I said, my favorite ‘translation” is Haydn’s. (Don’t scroll down yet …)

Haydn wrote one of the most impressive moments in music history at the beginning of his Creation, one of the most haunting overtures ever written, expressing the chaos in gorgeous, uncertain undefined 18th century musical terms, with many of the neo-classical elements, here with a foreshadowing of the Romantic era - with both the clarity of the human features in a portrait by Gainsboro’s Blue Boy or Copley’s Mrs. Montresor, and the nebulous haziness of the surrounding forest and skies … then, when everything halts to a universal silence where you only hear your neighbor breathing**** : the baritone, in a mysterious pianissimo: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth - and the earth was void and without form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Complete silence, indistinct, formeless, void …. And God’s Spirit … (how gorgeous …) moved … upon the face of the waters … The chorus sings, pianissimo

… and God spoke …

pianissimo sounds …

let there be light … whispered … … plucked ….

and ………

there …….

was ………………

… with the whole orchestra thundering full throttle:

“And God saw the light …

BANG!!!

that it was good!

BANG!!!

And God separated the Light

BANG!!!

from the Dark!!!

BANG, BANG!!!!! (d i s c r e t e l y w a l k o f f s t a g e t o c h a n g e y o u r b r o k e n s t r i n g s, n o t e v e r y o n e a t t h e s a m e t i m e)

And then immediately on to a tune in the conventional rococo of the18th century. Let the games begin …

(one of the cutest thing is when this is performed with boys, and one boy commences the FF entrance “LIGHT!!!” a fraction of a second early …)

I am not sure that the magnificence of Haydn’s treatment of the text has been fully emphasized. Haydn had a scientific, not a poetic approach to these enormous core matters. The best way to show what I mean is perhaps the example of his other oratorio, the Seasons, first preformed in the first year of the 19th century (1801), but still belonging to the 18th. How does the piece begin? With Spring, of course, like Vivaldi. But while Vivaldi gives the usual, poetical approach, spring, light, happy, E major, you all know the drill, Haydn shows an entirely different side of spring. Struggle. Battle. The effort that it takes young sprouts to literally push through the dead weight of previous generations, old life, that’s in their way. The music is passionate, powerful, combatant. And I’m not even mentioning the first four measures, four austere, spacious sforzatos, showing the turn of the planet in the universe, closer to the sun’s warmth. Astronomy in music. You don’t see Mozart do that, you don’t even see Beethoven do it; and I wish Haydn had done it more often.

In his Creation likewise. Vivaldi would have shown light as something light-weight, gorgeous, Rubenesque, or even Watteauian (5 vowels!): flute rays over brook-babbling violin arpeggios in a sumptuous mezzo-piano, a bird-cry in the clarinet, some fallen wood in the cellos; rich, shimmering sounds, light, permeating everything with its joyful, beneficial, life giving quality. Haydn, here as well, chooses the scientific approach, and shows us a genius foreshadowing of the Big Bang theory (not the TV series…)! — I read that Darwin’s grandfather had written a poem in 1791 about a cyclically contracting and expanding universe, and there were some philosophers even in the middle ages who speculated about an explosion. Whatever Haydn’s source, and whatever his genius intuition, Haydn’s approach is scientific, not poetic. It is science put to music. Richard Dawkins, with the tunnel vision so typical for bright intellectuals, wishes that some great composer would put evolution to music the way Haydn had Creation. Here it is, right under our nose.* It’s funny how in form, his music really belongs to the 18th, but in mind, at least here, it belongs to the next century. Like I said, too bad he did not break out of his 18th century conventionalism more often. Haydn had a different way to express his religion than Mozart, who always kept close to the human emotion. Mozart finds the depths in human hearts, Haydn in observing the universe. In that aspect, Beethoven may be closer to him than to Mozart, though he followed Mozart closer in his harmonies and musical forms. Beethoven is also more abstract.

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Footnotes:

* In the same way, 50 years before J would be LBJ.

** My dad sometimes speaks to her brother who lives in the street.

*** … except in Toledo, where people are used to talk during concerts

**** For the time being, Dawkins’ plea shall remain unanswered. Classical music today is no longer capable of creating greatness like Haydn’s Creation. In our unlimited, bottomless arrogance, we have thrown away the greatest part of our own musical creation. On the other hand, Haydn seems to have understood better than Dawkins that evolution is included in Genesis’ two creation stories….

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The second day

The next thing God does - and he takes an entire “day” to do it, is making a division. This is described according to a first millennium BC, Iron Age world view, an earth in the form of a disc with a dome above it, the skies, with water reservoirs from which rain comes, snow and hail likewise, and above that the heavens - and a reversed dome below the disc, making sheol, or the underworld. The Bible was written by people who thought that the earth was flat. But the deeper meaning behind this, if the author was aware or unaware - may lie in the unaware parts God is speaking most - is the concept of division.

Among the infinite possibilities of how to divide something, we could name life/death, God/man, nature/God, man/animal, male/female, mind/body, spirit/matter, good/evil, the sacred and the profane, Jerry Brown and the Cleveland Browns. Those divisions are no longer taken as seriously as they used to be. Death we have tried to ban it out of our daily routines, which shows in the inordinate lifelessness of western funerals*, the New Orleans jazz funeral excepted. That should be an example for all of us, as well as the woman who decorated my sister’s coffin with bright flowers and sang her heart out like a Roman sibyl. We more and more forget that man is not God in our childish reduction of life’s mysteries to mere molecules and organic cells. We forget nature has but one moral code: ‘I am stronger, I eat you’, and if we want to rise above that code we need to separate ourselves from nature. We have gotten to expect women to act like men in glorifying male features like success, assertiveness, leadership, physical strength, courage, boldness etc, while propagating that all differences are ‘socialized behavior’. We do not respect the body any more, and make it more and more the slave of the mind; medications are almost exclusively substances that are imposed on the body, with side effects and a varying degrees of dependency. We deny the existence of spirit altogether, claiming that the material world is all there is. Not evil, but hate is outlawed in places like Berkeley California, giving us to understand that hating evil is a violation of the new moral code. The separation sacred vs. profane has almost completely been lifted. And the environment becomes more and more a tool to take freedom away from the individual (man/nature again). The separation true/false has been all but abolished in today’s media.

There is one separation that has helped me determine a good moral code: the personal vs. the universal. We have an eternal and a temporal side, or at least a spiritual and an incarnate side; and those always get mixed up. When Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek He is speaking on the universal level. On the personal level, a good punch in the face of a narcissist jerk may actually be healing for everybody. If someone is abusing me, as a person I have all the rights in the world to defend myself. Only on the universal level do I care for the soul of the abuser. “Forgive those that trespass against us” is on the universal level. Tyler Perry makes the difference perfectly clear in his brilliant movie Why Did I Get Married? where a wife forgives her abusive ex so that her anger doesn’t ruin her relationship with her next man. She literally lets the scumbag go. Forgiveness never means that she has to return to her abusive husband if he asks for forgiveness. Forgiveness can never be another means for the perpetrator to hold over the victim.

Is today’s tendency to do away with the separations a step forward in our evolution? Or is it a regression to primitivism, as our (high end) art and music suggests, both of which can be (and sometimes has been) created by a chimpanzee. Pope Benedict did two things that I thoroughly admire. He abdicated, and he said that the greatest danger of today’s culture is relativism.** (not in that order). That went of course one ear in and out the other with most people who probably thought good riddance. That doesn’t mean he was wrong. Below you find a devastatingly deviating opinion about the state of our culture today. Keep in mind that this doesn’t come from a church person, but from a feminist.

• (since the 60’s) Western society went mad. (...) All its values were inverted. The things sane societies loved, it hated; the things sane societies hated, it loved. (…). It pursued chaos and hated order; it worshiped ugliness and loathed beauty. If sane people wanted to dress as well as they could, these people were persuaded to dress as hideously and grotesquely as possible; if sane people wanted music to be melodious, these people (whether we are speaking of their “popular” or their “serious” music - her clause! Ns) (...) liked raucous and tuneless noise. If women had been feminine, if home life had been secure, if children had been innocent, if men had been gallant, if art had been beautiful, then all these things must be stood on their heads. Of course normal life before (...) was not always like that. Of course, things had often fallen short of their ideals, or even their minimal norms; but at least most people tried to do things properly and at least the surrounding civilization encouraged them to try. Never before had the deliberate aim been a an inverted parody of all that should be. (...) the creed of a madhouse. Alice Lucy Trent, The Feminine Universe

Ayn Rand shows this trend in the difference between two events from 1969: the landing on the moon and Woodstock.

Footnote:

* As long as there is life, there is hope - the undertaker’s motto …

** I don’t understand the whole idea of relativism. In the first place, everything is relative is an absolute statement, so it denies itself. But also, who can deny that I am a biological product of a clearly defined man and a woman, even if I may always be mistaken about who those two people are? A brother who has a sex change becomes a sister, but a father who has a sex change will always remain the father of that particular child. Relativism is the big lie of today’s culture. It sanctions any idea whatsoever under the strategy no opinion has any value but one’s own.

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The third day (and whatever comes after three).

The professors have pointed at the symmetry inherent in P’s creation story, which can be divided in two pairs of three days:

1. The heavens and the earth <==> 4. The luminaries

2. The expanse (division upper an lower) <==> 5. Animals in the sea and in the air (the upper and lower parts according to the division)

3. Dry land and plants <==> 6. Dry land animals (of the middle), man. The middle man (not described).

In this context I just mention the time when I asked a Jehovah’s witness, who was Chinese - her name was 亭東, Ding Dong - how God could have created the world in the first day when the concept “day” wasn’t created until the 4th day.* The Bible was written by people who thought that the earth was flat. That sentence has a deep wisdom to it. The Bible never loses sight of its human, anthropocentric viewpoint, in which the earth is indeed flat. So we have to read the Bible in both senses of that statement. On the one hand, the authors didn’t know that life actually started out in the seas, and that it took God at least an unimaginable amount of time to get the oxygen level just right for the Cambrian Life Explosion to occur. On the other hand, they did know the difference between man and beast better than most people today, judging from Genesis 3 or America’s Funniest Home Videos, in which I dearly miss Tom Bergeron, the only person who understood that utter dryness is the only working commentary such a program can be take. There! The separation between the dryness of true humor and the wetness of drool.

Day Four: God creating the Sun the Moon and the stars, is a jab at the nature religions, where the sun and the moon were gods and goddesses themselves. Here they were created just to tell time, to give light and to make the seasons. Nothing more, just an Austrian clock… ** The question of what sort of light God created on the first day if the Sun was only created on the fourth is similar to how God created anything on the first three days when the concept day had not yet been invented. Such issues are dealth with in my article Apologetics, which was forthcoming for at least 5000 years, but it’s here now! There is no limit to resistance against science based on badly understood lines from the Bible. My dad likes East Clintwood.

Day Five talks about the sea monsters. That seems to be another jab at the Enuma Elish and the other Mesopotamian creation stories, where the world was created from the female sea monster Tiamat, whose name which may have found it’s way into Genesis in the word תְה֑וֹם (t’chom). The professors speaking. Yonder, the Sea Monster was a preexisting (‘preek-zitting’ in Dutch) entity, equal to, even superior to the gods. Our Priestly Author wants to make clear that God is above all things, and Tiamat, even though her name is almost a palindrome, as well as Yam, Leviathan, Tannin and Rahab, and the Rabarberbarbarabarbarenbazaarbarbarbier enjoying his Rabarberbarbarabarbaren-bazaarbarbarbierbier in the Lekkerkerkerkerkerkerkerker, are, just like everything else, created beings. Nancy Pelosi is not part of the subject of this article.

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Footnote:

* Jehova’s Witnesses are my favorite thing next to Székely Goulash and Tirami Su. When I begin questioning their positions, I can see them try to categorize me: am I a Jew, a Muslim, an atheist? They never succeed, because they don’t have me in their filing system. This may well be the most important sentence in this whole blog post.

** An Austrian clock is a Swiss clock that is always slightly off.

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The sixth day: man

• Gen. 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

I printed this whole passage just to show how much weight P lays (‘wait, P lays!’) on the dominion given to man over all other forms of life. Just to say it again, even if I’m no good: if caterpillars could have written the Torah, it would say that the caterpillars would have as much trees to lay waste as they liked. But humans are the only species capable of thinking of other spices, and the fact that we are doing a lousy job taking care of everything does not negate that we are the only ones that even give it a thought. For species idem ditto (who noticed I wrote spices?). Man is the only chance at a moral universe: without us being in charge, it’s dog eat dog all the way. That’s why it can never be the same to kill an animal or murder a human being; and the thought of a man being executed for killing a dog is the nazi extreme of a train of thought that I see all too often advocated today. The creeping things that creep upon the earth in verse 26 do not include Michael Moore.

In His image God created man. I have often been fascinated by the mathematics of a “perfect” man’s body, with the reproductive organs right in the middle, the navel in the golden ratio point* (2nd hlf f ft nt), the spread between the arms extended equalling the body length. I do not see such perfection in the other primates, or even in a horse - I may not have studied them enough. But looking at Da Vinci’s study of the Vitruvian man* man, I cannot help being reminded of this line in Genesis that says that we are indeed created in God’s image.

I heard an interpretation that I like very much, even though I think it is rabbinic shrewdness from a later date. Dennis PRager had heard it too, fairly recently - I heard it in Belgium, early 1990s. To whom did God speak when he said “Let us make man in our image”? I believe it’s the Royal We. Some think he spoke to angels, and why not (what do angels speak, Ainglish?)? The part naming the angels may have been edited out - if P ever wrote about angels: this story seems to have been created by P alone, in which case there wouldn’t ever have been any angels in it). The idea here however is that he spoke to the animals, and created us in both God’s image and that of the animals. We have a dual nature, which is magnified of course in Christ (whether homo-ousios or homo-i-ousios). We strive to God, so we build our churches with spires, but we also want to jump in the next puddle if no one is look — ( …)

(this part of the tablet is missing. I wrote this article on tablets, some parts of which are missing)

(…) — the sabbath of chapter 2. The division between these chapters is from the Vulgata, and it is here very very unfortunate that Genesis 2:1-3 is not made part of the first chapter). P’s text shows the effort God put in creating all this, or the immensity of the work:

• 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

The sabbath, PRager points out, is a celebration of time. I read that it was so old that the writers here even presuppose it.

Non cupio LXXII virgines, cupio unam feminam unam ruham aut sociniam gerens habensque LXXI alias pendentes in vestibulario suo.

Footnote:

* Leonardo’s notes:

• Vetruvio, architect, puts in his work on architecture that the measurements of man are in nature distributed in this manner: that is a palm is four fingers, a foot is four palms, a cubit is six palms, four cubits make a man, a pace is four cubits, a man is 24 palms and these measurements are in his buildings. If you open your legs enough that your head is lowered by one-fourteenth of your height and raise your hands enough that your extended fingers touch the line of the top of your head, know that the centre of the extended limbs will be the navel, and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle.

The lower section of text gives these proportions:

• The length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man; from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of the height of a man; from below the chin to the top of the head is one-eighth of the height of a man; from above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of a man; from above the chest to the hairline is one-seventh of the height of a man. The maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of the height of a man; from the breasts to the top of the head is a quarter of the height of a man; the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is a quarter of the height of a man; the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of the height of a man; the length of the hand is one-tenth of the height of a man; the root of the penis is at half the height of a man; the foot is one-seventh of the height of a man; from below the foot to below the knee is a quarter of the height of a man; from below the knee to the root of the penis is a quarter of the height of a man; the distances from below the chin to the nose and the eyebrows and the hairline are equal to the ears and to one-third of the face.

To add my own twopence: the golden ratio (0.618) is the division on a line ABC such that BC:AB = AB:AC. The fibionacci series, starting with 1+1, then adding the previous number to each result, yileds the Fibonacci series 1,2,5,8,13,21,34,55,89 ->, where each proportion between the next two neighboring numbers approaches 0.618 closer from alternate sides. This proportion 0.618 can be seen in the navel (whole length), elbow (arm), wrist (hand to elbow), fingers (wrist to tips), first finger phalange, knee (leg) eyes (head), mouth (eyes to chin), etc.

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Genesis 2: J’s creation story

The Torah has two creation stories (John 1 is in the New Testament). Genesis 1, discussed above, is now generally attributed to the Priestly Author (P) whom I sometimes like to call ‘Prissy Author’ and whom most scholars place between 722 and 587 BC.  The Jahwist’s (J’s) creation account here, beginning at verse 2:4b, is generally considered older: most scholars still seem to place J and E before P except after C. — The Jahwist was long considered David’s court historian (Harold Bloom, with the usual political correctness typical for the late 20th century cultural intellectual, has him be a cross dresser), but this hypothesis is now under scrutiny because David might not even have had a court, just like women don’t have Adam’s apples. While P and E call God אֱלֹהִ֑ים Elohi’m until the Revelation to Moses in Exodus, J calls God יהוה‎, Jahweh, throughout, never Elohi’m except in direct speech. In almost all translations, Elohi’m is translated God and Jahweh the LORD. In Jewish religion, Jahweh (English Yahweh, I stuck with the German spelling to show how J got his or her name) is vocalized as Jehovah, though no one is allowed to say that. Even the usual insertion Adonai, “my Lord”, in some circles is allowed only in prayers and the synagogue, at other times He is called Hashem, ‘the Name’. Have I mentioned that I think the word only should be abolished in religion?

Although the jury is still out on Genesis 1:1-3, everyone agrees that J here does follow the Enuma Elish style motive: when Strauss then Johann —— (wenn Richard, dann aber Wagner).*

• Gen 2:5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground… (Gen. 2:5)

• Enuma Elish 1:1-2,6-9 When in high the heaven had not been named, firm ground below had not been called by name (…) No reed had been mátyásed * *, no marsh land appeared; when no gods whatever had been brought into being, uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined - (Enuma Elish, 1:1-2 etc.)

Robert Graves, who, like me, sometimes seems to say anything whatsoever, points out that the first creation story (P) matches the Mesopotamian cosmologies which “begin with the emergence of earth from a primeval watery chaos, metaphorical of how dry land emerges annually from the winter floods of Tigris and Euphrates. Genesis 2, however, mirrors Canaanite geographic and climatic conditions. The pre-creation universe is sun-scorched, parched and barren, if from a long summer. When autumn finally approaches, the first sign of rain is morning mist rising dense and white from the valleys.” (Hebrew Myths, p. 25). I found most of this corroborated by Bill T. Arnold of the New Cambridge Bible Commentary. If P wrote after J, he must have borrowed from his Mesopotamian examples, which would make sense for his transcendental, conceptual worldview. J, concrete and tangible, would have taken her examples from experience, not from a literature class.

The problem is that the two creation stories don’t match. In Gen 1, plants come before sea and air animals before land animals before man. In chapter 2, man comes before plants before animals, and woman at the end. On the right you can see it in scheme form (note that the bird genius on the background strongly resembles the god Tash from Narnia). In Egypt, he was Thóth, which in Greek, Θώθ, is one of those words like the Hebrew word for horse, סוּס, that look like a bycicle. The only word I know in our alphabet that looks like itself is Hungarian olló, which means scissors). ==============>

Here is how my Apologetics guys explain the discrepancy away:

“The differences in the order of creation events are due to the narratives’ respective purposes. the first gives a loosely (?) chronological account, gathering creation events into a discernable pattern to show the symmetry of creation’s purpose (whose symmetry??? Ns). The second is topical, focusing on the sixth day by expanding on the creation and the relationship of man and woman. Genesis 2 presupposes chapter 1 and does not duplicate all the creation events.”

Here are both Bible passages. You be the judge if they contradict each other or we are just dealing with details. The way I read the Bible, there is no problem, they are just two stories explaining the world in mythical terms. But those like my apologetics who believe in the literal truth of the Bible may have a problem. Note that if we do have an evasion here, a pretended accuracy, it is done with a half truth: Gen. 2 does give a topical account, expanding on the creation and the male/female relationship (except that most of “us” now think Genesis 1 was the elaboration). But more about techniques used by biblical and other literalists in my forthcoming article Apologetics.

• Gen 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew (Hebrew טֶ֚רֶם terem = not yet): for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (…) 18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. Gen 2:5-7, 18-19, KJV);

• Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day. (…)  23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (…) 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. (Gen 1:11-13 & 24-27, 31, KJV).

Note J’s tangible images: the mist, man made from clay, God blowing life into Adam’s nostrils (which also occurs in the Egyptian Instruction of Medicare or however you write that, where Ra breathes life in humankind). P has noting of those flesh and blood images. Even Adam’s name calling of the animals seems closer to us than P’s transcendental descriptions. Ceterum censeo hallmarkis in imaginis moventis vestitos feminarum esse intolerabilos.

Footnotes:

* Isn’t it frustrating that footnotes usually revel only the information you already know? What lies between fear and sex? —- Fünf …

** To mátyás reed = to make a reed hut, in Babylogarian. Steffens and Manning classify the Babylogarian huts as the Omaha type, based on the story of Rebecca, whose second name in certain late rabbinic traditions was Reed (ריד). This knowledge I acquired by inspiration.

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The Tree of Life

The two trees have always bothered me, and I’m sure I am not alone. How many of you knew that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge between Good and Evil are two separate trees? All of you? Oh. Well, I had an atheist upbringing, and alas! that sometimes shows. Besides, there seems to be an interpretation that the two trees are one. How that should agree with Gen 3: 22 now, lest he puts forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, is a true mystery to me. A complicated mystery, rather unexpected, my sister would say. Unless that’s interpolated, but I have not seen that claim been made.

• 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[d] and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush (NIV: possibly SE Mesopotamia: KJV: Ethiopia) 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Gen 2:8-17, NIV)

Just a quick word about translations: modern translations contain an updated scholarship and are often more correct. King James, before his head rolled, assumed the traditional identification of Kush with Ethiopia, while NIV (named after its authors David and Barbara Niven) places it in South East Mesopotamia, though I have no idea where the Nivens got their information. This seems to be a two edged sword: how much of today’s scholarship will hold up over time? The old translations are always the simpler, which sometimes are the best ones, especially in shaving. Hungarians tend to be silent on the subject of Kush.

The World Tree is an archetypical symbol appearing in almost all religions.

The Hungarian Égig Érő Fa (“A-geek A-rø Fuh” = "sky-high tree"), also called Tree of Life and World Tree (isn’t it ironic that világ means ‘world’ in Hungarian?), is a feature of Hungarian shamanism and Hungarian folk art and folk tales. Like Iggdrasil, this tree was the world, the canopy forming the sky and its roots the underworld, where snakes and toads live. The gods lived on top in their castles. The demons and deceased warriors lived beneath them, also in splendid castles. At the bottom humans and animals live. beneath the roots lived the giant dragon Sarkány. The táltosok (shamans) are the men who, in trance, climb up the tree and wander in the seven or nine layers of the sky. From there, they bring messages down from the gods. This way, the Shaman forms the connection between gods and men (Gottschalk, Lexicon der Mythologie 1996). One version of these tale is about the kiskondás (small swineherd, a sort of Jack-and-the-Beanstalk) who climbs up the tree to save the princess who is held captive by a dragon (serpent!). In the tales birds often sit on the tree, for example eagles, hawks or the mythical Hungarian bird, the turul. ‘Tour all Ural, Turul?’

(I have this from Wikipedia. My dad’s only reference to trees is “Do you see these nice shrubs here? Take a good look, because next week you won’t see them here no more. They will be in my garden.”)

Then there is Yggdrasil, the Norse world tree. In the Proze Edda, it says that “there the gods must hold their courts each day, that its branches extend out over all of the world and reach out over the sky. Three of the roots of the tree support it, and these three roots also extend extremely far. The root over Niflheim is gnawed at by the wyrm Níðhöggr, and beneath this root is the spring Hvergelmir. Beneath the root that reaches the frost Jötnar is the well Mímisbrunnr (I think that’s near Stockholm) which has wisdom and intelligence contained in it, and the master of the well is called Mimir (cf. Wagner’s character Mime). The third root of the well "extends to heaven" and that beneath the root is the "very holy" well Urðarbrunnr, where the gods hold their court, and where the Æsir ride every day over the bridge Bifröst. An eagle sits on the branches of Yggdrasil and that it has much knowledge. Between the eyes of the eagle sits a hawk called Veðrfölnir. A squirrel called Ratatoskr scurries up and down the ash Yggdrasil carrying "malicious messages" between the eagle and Níðhöggr. Four stags named Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, and Duraþrór run between the branches of Yggdrasil and consume its foliage. In the spring Hvergelmir are so many snakes along with Níðhöggr "that no tongue can enumerate them”. “The norns that live by the holy well Urðarbrunnr each day take water from the well and mud from around it and pour it over Yggdrasil so that the branches of the ash do not rot away or decay. Dew falls from Yggdrasil to the earth, explaining that "this is what people call honeydew, and from it bees feed”.

These examples are from the ‘Christian’ era, though their contents are pagan. I included them because we have more detailed information about the symbols used.

Cleopatra piramidos aedificando pterodactylos adhibebat levandis petrarum.

Older, and perhaps reaching back to much earlier symbols are the Assyrian reliefs of a tree tended by human or eagle-headed winged genies, as the “Tash” in the background of the chart above comparing Genesis 1 and 2. The Sumerian seal a little further below is from 2500 or 2200 BC, dependent on whom I believe.

The Bo tree, also called Bodhi tree, according to Buddhist tradition, is the pipal (Ficus religiosa) under which the Buddha sat when he attained Enlightenment (Bodhi) at Bodh Gaya (near Gaya, west-central Bihar state, India). The ficus family belong to my favorite trees, they sprout in the canopy of a host tree, let their roots fall all the way to the ground and then surround the host tree, strangling it (though the roots of Buddha’s tree, the Ficus religiosa, penetrate inside the host’s trunk, eventually splitting it open). One tree can become so large that it resembles a village of trees. But doesn’t it seem ironic that the most peaceful of all religions has such a predator tree as symbol?

An archaeological discovery of a sacrificial pit at Sanxingdui in Sichuan, China (1990s) yielded, dating from about 1200 BC, three bronze trees, one of them 12 feet high. At the base was a dragon, and fruit hanging from the lower branches. At the top is a bird-like (Phoenix) creature with claws. Also found in Sichuan, from the late Han dynasty (c 25 – 220 CE), is another tree of life. The ceramic base is guarded by a horned beast with wings. The leaves of the tree represent coins and people. At the apex is a bird with coins and the Sun.

Finally two storis from the Gilgamesh epic, one from plate 11, where Utanapisiltem or however he is called, the Noah of the flood, tells Gilgamesh how to acquire a branch of the tree that gives eternal life. From tablet 11 of the Standard Babylonian version, finished 1300 - 1000 BC:

• There is a plant whose roots are like camel thorn

  whose thorn, like a rose’s, will spike your [missing]

  if you yourself can win that plant, you will win [the Cleveland Browns]

Later, when Gilgamesh has dived in and taken the plant, he takes it home, but on a resting place near a pond he falls alseep:

• Gilgamesh saw a pool whose water was cool

  went down into the water and washed

  a snake smelled the fragrance of the plant

  it came up silently and carried off the plant

  as it took it away it shed its scaly skin

The second story is the Huluppu tree, from plate 12, which is believed to be a late, Neo Assyrian interpolation from the 7th century BC.

• At that time, a tree, a single tree, a huluppu-tree (willow or puplar)
  Was planted by the banks of the Euphrates.
  The tree was nurtured by the waters of the Euphrates.
  The whirling South Wind arose, pulling at its roots
  And ripping at its branches
  Until the waters of the Euphrates carried it away.

• A woman (Inanna) who walked in fear of the word of the Sky God, An,
  Who walked in fear of the Air God, Enlil,
  Plucked the tree from the river and spoke:

“I shall bring this tree to Uruk (Erech)
I shall plant this tree in my holy garden.”

• Inanna (see?) cared for the tree with her hand
  She settled the earth around the tree with her foot
  She wondered:

- “How long will it be until I have a shining throne to sit upon?
How long will it be until I have a shining bed to lie upon?”

• The years passed; five years, and then ten years.
  The tree grew thick,
  But its bark did not split.
  Then the serpent who could not be charmed
  Made it's nest in the roots of the huluppu-tree.
  The Anzu-bird (sometimes depicted with a human body) set its young in the branches of the tree.
  And the dark maid Lilith (Kramer’s translation uncertain) built her home in the trunk.

Gilgamesh is called to cut the tree, chase the unlawful inhabitants, and bring the tree to Inanna, who builds a throne and a bed from it.

• Gilgamesh struck the serpent who could not be charmed.
  The Anzu-bird flew with his young to the mountains;
  And Lilith (?) smashed her home and fled to the wild, uninhabited places.

• Gilgamesh then loosened the roots of the huluppa-tree;
  And the sons of the city, who accompanied him, cut off the branches.

• From the trunk of the tree he carved a throne for his holy sister.
  From the trunk of the tree Gilgamesh carved a bed for Inanna.
  From the roots of the tree she fashioned a pukku (drum) for her brother.
  From the crown of the tree Inanna fashioned a mikku (drumstick) for Gilgamesh
  the hero of Uruk. (transl. Wolkstein & Kramer 1983)

This version of the myth has been dated to the New Assyrian Empire, which is the one that destroyed the kingdom of Israel; it is from or close to the time J and P were writing Genesis. Cutting down the tree and using it for his purposes already shows the western mentality of man taking control of nature, which we also find in Genesis, and which may not have existed in the cults of earlier Sumerian and early Babylonian times (for a short history of Mesopotamia, see +=> Who Wrote the Bible here on this blog - or better, from a fairly recent general book by someone who really knows).

I am making the connection - try to stop me! - with the Sumerian and Babylonian ziggurath, which we will find back in discussing Gen 11 (Genesis II, from Cain through Noha). The World Tree, like this Sumerian “pyramid”, served to make connection between man and gods.

Finally our own Christmas Tree, which combines pagan Germanic traditions around yule tide, the winter solstice, with Christianity, the way the Roman Catholic Church (thankfully) used to incorporate older, pagan traditions to make the story of Christ accessible for a heathen public. In Lutheran circles however, the story runs that Martin Luther saw the stars through the tree branches and thought “How wonderful! We take that tree home and put lights in the tree and celebrate Christmas.” That’s the women’s version. The men’s version is that Luther was walking in the forest all right, looked up, saw the stars through the tree, and WHAM!!!!! ran right into the tree’s trunk, and said: “If there were lights in this tree, this wouldn’t have happened.” (from Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion).

In some of these myths we encountered the motive of the snake in the tree. That was a fertility symbol in all of Mesopotamia. We find the symbol still used in the Aesculapius symbol of our doctors, which reaches back to the third milennium BC. Joe Campbell points out the imaginative attraction the snake had as a symbol for rejuvenation by shedding its skin (see above, Gilgamesh’ story), while carrying both phallic as vaginal (swallowing) allusions. I found quite a few ancient images of a snake in a tree, especially in the Greek story of Herakles and the apples of the Hesperides, but also in older ones, like Sumerian seals, though the really ancient images were somewhat less convincing than Campbell and the myriads of pagan and Christian knuckleheads on the internet tried to make me believe.** The harmony between the tree, the snake and the humans seems clear. Campbell points out that western mythology created a dichotomy between man and nature (as here in Genesis), while in the east the view veered toward community. “… over there one finds non-duality, peace of soul - and inhumanity; here, tension, duality, and a sense of exile - yet the face not of the mere functionary, but of the freely willing, autonomous individual, competent to change destiny and so responsible to himself, humanity, and the future, not to the cosmos, metaphysics, and the past. That is the wall that cuts the two hemispheres right apart, east and west, from here to heaven, hell, and beyond.” (Masks, Oriental, p. 130).

Well spoken. Less great is the immediately following quote by Daisetz Suzuki, summarizing the western spiritual situation: “Man is against God, Nature is against God, and Man and Nature are against each other”, which sounds like a man succumbing to the Peter Principle in trying to make a statement outside his expertise. I believe Campbell with all his genius was influenced by an anti-Christian anti-establishment bias that had taken hold among western intellectuals in the 1960s. Let’s not forget the Japanese atrocities in WW2 or the 70 million state supported murders in Maoist China, a now accepted fact, completely unknown at the time when Campbell wrote; or the 3 million state-ordered murders in the Cambodian Pol Pot regime, which hadn’t yet taken place: evidently, the destructive forces in the so called ‘eastern one-with-nature spirituality’ weren’t really that different from ours - (some acquaintance with Asian history shows that these atrocities did not happen by western influence alone). And philosophically, as I pointed out before, nature is amoral: the only evolution that I see for man is rising above the natural world, toward a philosophy based on the celebration of the life force in the individual, that is, each individual. We need to aware of our connection with nature. But we do need the separation in order to find out what we have in common and where we are different. We had to sever the ties, symbolized in the fall from paradise, or Herakles taking the apples of the Hesperides, or a late Gilgamesh slaying the Huluppu Tree. In the mean time, we may find it appropriate that this western duality - by the way argument number 23,743,080,423b for a late authorship of the Torah - is symbolized as well in the two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge between Good and Evil. Note the shift from the first to the second tree. In the Mesopotamian past, the quest for immortality took center stage. In Genesis, it is not immortality the authors were after, but man’s relationship with God, the animals, and each other. “Not magic, it proclaims, but human action is the key to a meaningful life.” (Sarna, p. 27). This ‘soon to boot she gay’ (Korean for “to be continued”).

J talks about eating from trees, not animals. Would the Torah originally have meant us to be vegetarian? Note that veggies are not included in the kashrut laws. I don’t know where this impulse comes from: are we supposed to be vegetarians, and if we absolutely have to eat meat, then under strict rules? Like the French diet book that forbids all alcohol except wine … Or are we carnivores, but killing an animal belongs to God, so you need a priest to do it, which means sacrifice?

This sentence has words.

This sentence too. But no verb. Anywhere.

Footnote:

* Most early seals either have a snake or a tree, and even the Sumerian Goddess in the Tree has the snake outside the tree. It was fascinating that every website that showed those seals that I could find was run by pagan or Christian propagandists who take anything to support their particular obsession.

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The first thing that was not good in the Bible was that man was alone. In order to make an צֵלָע (‘A-zer’), ‘helper’ for Adam, Jahweh creates the animals, and Adam names them. Naming something or someone is a form of ownership. It gives control. But that was not enough, besides, all that name calling had made Adam tired. So God let a deep sleep descend upon Adam (my translation of Luther’s ließ einen tiefen Schlaf fallen) and a rib is taken from his side.

• 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam[f] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs[g] and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LordGod made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said,

• “This is now bone of my bones
      and flesh of my flesh;
  she shall be called ‘woman,’
      for she was taken out of man.”

• 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. (NIV)

I hear that the translation of צֵלָע can mean “side” (NIV gives as alternative: took part of the man’s side), but of course וַיִּקַּ֗ח אַחַת֙ מִצַּלְעֹתָ֔יו does read to my amateur mind as and he took one of his ribS/sideS. Would this translation “side” be modern, feminist propaganda? I hear, and not from feminist corners, that the Hebrew word עֵ֖זֶר “helper” (“I will make a helper suitable for him”, Gen. 2:18b) implies equality. On the other hand, God initially uses the word for the animals, who are clearly man’s subordinate. There is still a case for female superiority to be made from Genesis. Eve was created last, and her creation takes six verses vs. Adam’s meager one. Taking both creation stories together, the idea is inescapable that the best was created last. God created man, then She corrected Her mistake …* —— Unfortunately, the part where Eve (חַוָּה, Chavvah, ‘mother of all’) is created was written by J, while the idea that the best was created last is suggested only in the first creation story. J starts out with man, then the plants, then the animals, then Eve: the veggies and the meat sandwiched by the eaters. Eve is however the only creature that was created from organic human flesh, while Adam came. like the other animals, from the soil.

Again, note the anthropomorphic terminology in J: deep sleep, rib, closing the flesh (בָּשָׂ֖ר ‘basar’). One flesh is of course repeated in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, basically the rhetorical prototype of the scene in Some Like it Hot where the mafia boss (see ==> Gallery at the end) in his Italian criminal rhetoric says: some people say (…) with his facial expression betraying his true rage, followed by but I say (…) his face thereby resuming the gracious, obliging expression of the hypocrite. “It is written that … but I say …”.  Ἠκούσατε ὅτι ἐρρέθη· (…), ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν (…). By the way, isn’t that sermon one huge polemic against the formalist, legalist dead letter approach of organized religion? The more than obvious similarity between the Pharisees and most modern church ideologies is so huge an elephant that I don’t imagine how utterly and completely this gets ignored by almost all Christians in the world.

The place where Jesus quotes Genesis is actually not in the Sermon of the Mount, but I wanted to get that mafia boss in. In Math 19: 4 -> Jesus quotes εἰς σάρκα μίαν, in one flesh, after which He quotes the famous What God has joined together, let no man put asunder. I don’t think it means that when some schlump in church pronounces something, it’s straight from God - but it does mean that we do find completion in martial, correction marital union simply by being with and touching and …. enjoying the other sex, and real love by the commitment to each other.

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Footnote:

* 1. God saw that Adam was not happy. So He said: “Let us provide you with a companion who is beautiful, joyful, faithful, loyal, devoted, committed and dependable, who knows the fire pot and never a cross word.” Adam replied: “That sounds great, Lord. But what is that going to cost me?” God, thoughtful: “I don’t think I can do it for less than an arm and a leg…” Adam pondered: “Well, God, that’s a bit steep! Got anything for a rib?” ———————— 2. “I want to marry a woman who is beautiful, rich, sexy, attractive and stupid.” —- “Why stupid?” —— “How else would such a girl ever want to marry me?” ———————— 3. The third joke is in the text.

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Genesis 3 - the step to humanhood

This is my favorite chapter in the whole Bible - Lot having sex with his two daughters is a good second (too bad it’s not a threesome and we don’t get to see any of it); my third favorite is Peter jumping in the lake the moment he sees the resurrected Jesus on the shore - I so want to see that in a cartoon ….

We have seen the Snake in the Tree motive. We have seen that in a God-in-nature environment, this is a harmonious symbol, the Tree of Life, and the phallic and vulval symbols of reproduction and all the nice things and sometimes less preferable consequences that come with that. We have seen that at the Axial Age, when man began to hold himself accountable for his existence, the Tree of Life got a sister tree, the  עֵ֕ץ הַדַּ֖עַת ט֥וֹב וָרָֽע, eyts hada’as toyv voroh, the Tree of Knowledge between Good and Evil. We have seen the enmity between the double-tongued, two-faced reptile who creeps up to you biting you in the heel and filling your whole life with poison - and the snake … (I should have kept that joke for a review of Fahrenheit 9/11). Was this enmity another slap in the face of nature religions, which revered the serpent as a god? And why?

In the old Mesopotamian rites, from early Sumer all the way to Babylonia of the Chaldeans, where gods were worshiped in the form of animals, meteorological phenomena and celestial bodies, man was a footstool of the gods. It is in Jahweh that man becomes valuable, precious, and worthy. This is what was missing in the old Mesopotamian worldview. What doctrine, what moral code venerates snakes but desecrates human beings? — Jahweh is the only God who has humans created in God’s image. We are more than just part of nature. To really become humans, we need separation again - or at rather independence - from our natural roots. Therefore, no more animal or tree worship. no more goddesses. Thou shalt not venerate Oprah. But that comes at a prize. A double prize, actually. First, if there is only one God, Who is a Mighty fortress, Whom we have a Covenant with, how could the destruction of Israel in 722 and Judah in 587 have happened? It used to be a matter of the winning gods taking over the pantheon of the losers. But Jahweh can’t be taken over by anyone. So we are the culprit. The new vision, unique in history till then, is that rather than accepting a new upper god and a new overlord, Israel stuck with Jahweh, Who gave us the Law to tell good from evil.

This new thought, this revolution in morals fits the Axial Age. Not God, but man is responsible. Confucius talks about the music of societies: if the music is harmonious, so is society, but it is men who make society. Buddha shows the path to individual enlightenment. Plato wrote a somewhat fascistoid political system for his Republic, governed by man. Everywhere, man began to hold himself accountable. We are responsible, therefore culpable. Symbolically, this is expressed in the Garden of Eden. Then it is repeated in the story of Cain, the first murder. Noah is the next one, the Flood. Then Saddam and Gomorrah or however you write that; Isaac’s sacrifice; Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel of God; Joseph’s bragging; Moses’ exile from the Promised Land (anyone knows exactly what Moses did wrong to deserve that punishment? It was not Golden Calf).* David sending Uriah to the front lines. The list goes on and on. Everything is put in terms of our failure to be moral human beings. Eating the fruit of the Tree is right at the center of our humanhood. In Adam we are all sinners. In Christ we are all forgiven. But even in Christianity, the guilt manifests itself in the very premise of the proposition: we are doomed unless. Salvation only through Christ, which in the core of its meaning I believe: you can’t find eternal life by backstabbing your neighbor; Christ exemplifies the state of mind that redeems. In the literal sense, however, salvation only by a Hebrew or Greek name and kneeling in front of a schlump in a dress at an altar is one of the most erroneous and frankly, in view of our experience today, one of most childish ideas around. But why do we have to be doomed in the first place? Where does that come from? Apparently from Mesopotamia, where man was shit, via Israel, where man failed to keep Samaria and Jerusalem free, but kept believing in Jahweh. Ja weh, by the way, is German for yes, pain…

This idea of a corruption of a once the perfect world is of course ubiquitous. It is probably what fed the myth of the United Monarchy (and the United Kingdom in soccer). I know it from Greek mythology, which has a Golden Age being succeeded by a Silver, a Bronze and finally our current Iron Age. We even find this myth in Marx’s communist ideal of the distant past, a view that’s based on nothing, made to be the “foundation” of an idea that has killed over 100 million people and made billions utterly miserable. Another paradise story taken too literally. All these genealogies express the loss of the bliss of ignorance we humans sustained by becoming human. We are now responsible, accountable** therefore guilty.

By the way, nowhere does it say the serpent was Satan. The afore-mentioned Bill T. Arnold, whose original name was Benedict because he had funny parents,*** claims ‘there is nothing in Israel’s scriptures that would equate the serpent with Satan, especially since the early Israelites did not embody all evil in a single personage’. Perhaps evil is nameless, like a black hole sucking everything in. Don’t believe the Benedict story.

How did Israel/Judah develop this idea when emerging out of the hill countries of the Canaanite landscape? Perhaps of some Egyptian immigrants imported this idea alongside the circumcision, the ban on pork and the (Egyptian) name Moses. Jahweh born from the Aton cult of Ekhnaton? Great achievements often seem to come from the fringes of society. That backward state of Qin in remote Szechuan was the last state expected to gain the ultimate power in China in 220 BC. Rome was at the outsikirts of Etruscan society. The Greeks didn’t have a written literature mere centuries before they created the greatest literature ever. The Hebrews (Habiru or Háboru) were considered scum, Israel on the Merneptah or Merenptah Stele (1207 BC) seemed to have identified a ragtag of lower class marginals, emerging from the poor and insignificant hill country, later to create themselves one and a half local state, treading water to stay afloat in the international power balance. Yet, we are still reading their books, based on this idea. And look at Israel. Still standing, resurrected, after 3000 years. Still believing in the One Great God of Israel, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד‬, Adonai Elohe’nu, Adonai Echad. Unbelievable. Incredibilis quantae collisiones interveniunt hodie.

What was the snake’s temptation to Eve? It was to be like God. But aren’t we supposed to become like God? Aren’t we made in God’s image? We find a distinction here that I also find in the use of recreational drugs. The reason why I never took drugs**** is that I at least believed that it would artificially induce stages of mind that would not be good for us unless acquired as a result of hard work, emotional evolvement and meditative concentration. Drugs would be like climbing a mountain by helicopter - and call that mountain climbing. I believed drug use was spiritually unhealthy, and I was right of course, judging from the human tragedies that have come from that misunderstanding. I believe eating from the fruit of the tree of Knowledge between Good and Evil was such a shortcut, not in itself, as I will show in a minute, but as a means to become like God without doing the moral work. Knowledge and power come with responsibility. What the snake offered was power without responsibility. Jesus is reported to have withstood three such temptations from the Accuser. First He was tempted to change stones in bread, to still hunger. Then he was dared to jump off a cliff to show he was really God’s son. Finally He was given dominion over the whole then known world (Luke seems to have the order wrong). Jesus’ answers are phenomenal. Man doesn’t live by bread alone; one doesn’t test God; and one serves God only. For Him that meant any government over man had to be about man, therefore had to go through the Cross. If Jesus was about Jesus, he wouldn’t be Jesus (Schiffer, 2 Clevelanders, 1d1-0t1c).

Footnotes:

* Moses beat water out of the rock twice. Once because God asked him (Ex. 17:6). that story is by E. The second time, in P’s story, God did not ask him to do it. Moses was punished for anticipating God’s Will = playing God. I have always mistrusted that story. Seems like a bandaid reason. P is always out to discredit Mozes, and the cloned rock beating story confirms this idea. J describes Moses’ death at 120, with good eyes and strength intact.

** Listening to an interview about the success of a certain college team, I heard a coach say that everyone was a cannibal. I marveled at the lengths sports people went in finding metaphors for a true fighting spirit. When he said it again - coaches and especially players don’t show a rich vocabulary except in beeps - I realized he had said accountable. Likewise, a Japanese Suzuki cello teacher was teaching a 13 year old boy to engage … and deduct. I marveled such language rich in philosophy, especially since I had the same teacher be phenominal in a group class where he taught entirely without words. Near the end of the one-hour lesson I watched, I suddenly realized he mean relax.

*** Other cases off this sort of misplaced sense of humor in parents are Mary Christmas, March April May, Filippo Lippi and Everhard Assmann. When March April May married David June, she became March April May June. If, let’s say I first saw March April May June in July 2019, that month in my life would become March April May June July. It’s funny that I saw August in March April May June July, not in September or October. Last March, March marched the March of Brandenburg. By the way, that about Benedict I made up of course.

**** I smoked three cigarets in my life. The first was in the early 1980s to reenact a jazz band after a TV broadcast had impressed a bunch of guys and me. The second was in order to disguise myself when Jeannette took me from the airport after a tour with La Petite Bande. I had grown a beard, wore a cowboy hat and perhaps cut my hair, and I had practice-smoked one cigaret. Coming from the plane, I had forgotten all about the cigaret, but I nevertheless walked right past her with my beard, hat, and new jacket. The last time I smoked one was in honor of the late Washington McClain, days after his tragic death. Of course I never inhaled at any of those instances. The inordinate stupidity of today’s medial system shows when I tell them this story when questioned, then find myself classified as an “occasional smoker”. As for drugs, I lived in Amsterdam for 11 years, but never smoked a single joint. What I don’t understand here in the US is how people can ever do something they can be arrested for, while not really needing it. Names rarely stay in my memory.

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But now for the core of the matter. On a deeper level, the story of the Fall reflects a true historical development that took place somewhere between 200,000 and 30,000 BC, as historians now date the event. Something in us changed, as a consequence of which we developed the inner need to clothe ourselves. Also, both we and the animals became mortal. We also became aware of the enormous power of our sexuality, and of difference between mere having sex and making love, the latter apparently being reserved for humans only. What happened is that we developed egos. For an animal, lead by instincts, sex is not dangerous, it is natural. But for an ego sex is life threatening. An animal simply lets itself be taken by the tsunami of the sex drive. An ego, especially in the still frail state it was then and still is now, would be destroyed unless the proper defenses are into place: clothes, moral guidelines, rules. But what is an ego? What is this new thing, that came with the fruit we ate - which nowhere in the Bible is claimed to be an apple - from the Tree of Knowledge between Good and Evil? It was self awareness. An animal is not naked because it does not know it exists. It merely exists, naked or clothed and “kempt” in a prissy old lady’s handbag. Our humanoid ancestors, still being animals, did not know they existed either.. Then we ate. We lost our blindfolds, and “suddenly” (in reality it may have taken 200,000 years), we saw ourselves. Chesterfield finds the first evidence of that in the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira (little did he know, as I didn’t when I was swimming in the Ardèche river as a 10-year old, that in the 1980s an even older set of caves would be discovered near Chauvet, almost right under where I was swimming). Reflexive thinking gives the awareness that I exist, that I am me, different from everything else that’s not me. With that comes shame, nakedness, and, finally, mortality.

An animal doesn’t die, because it is unable to grab the concept of dying. An animal sees live and dead animals as two different things, not as two different states of the same animal. It never realizes that one day, it will itself be dead. Even when a dog wails at the sight of a known trusted animal which somehow now behaves like the dead animals, it doesn’t understand what happened. It wails because the trusted animal doesn’t move any more like it is supposed to. Each of the millions and millions of fossils we have dug up shows that there were plenty of animals millions of years before there were humans, and all of those animals died: hundreds of thousands of species that once were, disappeared, never to come back. It is the concept of death that was born in the story of the fall. This is how all those animals of the past died retroactively. They died in our newly acquired concept of mortality, engendered by our newly acquired concept of self. Now, dinosaur bones in the earth were no longer seen as things that came with the earth, but remnants of giants that once lived. Now we feel the insecurities that come with knowing, knowing we can be sick, knowing we are going to die. And with that came shame and the need to be clothed, the need for protection against our vulnerability qua individuals, against an overwhelming sex drive also, that is now perceived as taking over the lives we want to or should live, or our overall sense of security of being in control. Sex is relinquishing control, that’s why we are so dead scared of it. Moses’ dialogue with Jahweh in Exodus shows an individual who has become aware of himself outside of the clan. Who am I to be entrusted with such a task? As long as instincts or the clan told him what to, there was little uncertainty. Moses’ is the anxiety of the individual, standing alone in the world, alone in facing God.

Our fallen state can be viewed in the same way. I always thought it absurd that I am in danger of damnation because my grandfather ate from a tree he wasn’t supposed to eat from. I always wondered why other people don’t point this out, but in a time where one third of the population thinks it as good idea that white people owe black people money because of what their great-grandfathers did or did not do to their great-grandfathers, it becomes clear that a good many people don’t seem to understand the downright evil in a code that puts the moral condition of one person at the mercy of the actions of another. This is why I can’t stand La Traviata, but that’s not relevant here.** Genesis 3 is mythical language, it is a story to show people who don’t know big words that when we acquired reflexive thinking, we became sinners as well. A dog is neither good nor evil, it just is, it does what it is supposed to do. A dog that kills a man is put to sleep only because that serves an inner human need; we somehow cannot deal with seeing such a dog run around the next day with its tail wagging and its tongue happily hanging out. Our capacity to realize what we are doing makes us “a cannibal”*** . Our actions didn’t change, our mind became aware that some of the things we had been doing and still do are wrong. Or to say it in another way: I don’t know who decided that I was born here, but as a human being I have inherited the imperfect, “sinful” condition that comes with the incarnation. Since I did not create myself, I don’t deserve to be damned for being myself - that’s the big mistake of the entire Christian Church - but I do have the inherited obligation to become aware of evil and resist it.

Perhaps this guilt trip goes back further. In his Book, Tot Bestaan Bestemd, which I here translate provisionally as Destined to Existence, Belgian scientist/philosopher Gerard Bodifée shows how our mere existence makes us guilty in our own eyes. For a million years, we, our humanoid ancestors, blew each others’ brains out. Becoming human came with the realization that our victims are like us, and that our killing them, even if the moral code required it, makes us guilty. This idea utterly dominates Greek mythology. Every hero eventually ‘pays the price"‘. One example from Troy: the only Achaean**** hero whom the gods allowed to come home alive without having to swerve for 7 (Menelaos) or 10 (Odysseus) years, or be killed straight away (Agamemnon), was Nestor, whose age had forced him to limit his actions to riding around the battlefield scolding the younger folks. Guilt comes with the territory of being human. The Torah is a way of dealing with that. Acciam croc soler ouch alla moustaph gidelum amenahem varahiri oussere carbulath.***** Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not f#$%ing blue…

Do we realize that with this view in mind, neither God nor the serpent lied? God said:

• 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

The serpent said:

• 4 (…) Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

God meant that death would come into our consciousness, and in us, we as well as the animals would become mortal. The snake meant more literally that man would not die as soon as he ate, but his eyes would be opened. Both statements are true. As a good probe of today’s media will show, the most dangerous lie is the half truth.

God noticed what had happened, in this story not because he was omniscient, as in P’s texts, but because he read that Adam and Eve’s behavior when they were hiding from God, who, in J’s universe, simply walked around like in medieval and renaissance paintings. “How do you know you are naked?” —— “If sperm is so rich in sugar, professor, why doesn’t it taste sweet?” Then each of the three players gets their punishment, which etiologically explains 1. enmity between snake and man; 2. a woman’s pain in childbirth; 3. working in the sweat of our brow. That, too, has deeper meanings. We have become aware that life is difficult, but also, by working with our minds, we have chosen the hard path. Agriculture is hard and risky. About that vs. shepherding in the following chapter Genesis 4: Winter. Between a happy, “everlasting” life in ignorant bliss and to know it all, we of course chose to know it all, and we are now dealing with the consequences, 500 TV channels and nothing but the dumbest commercials. Also, note that each of the three actors in J’s play got its, her and his own punishment. We are accountable for our own action, not the actions of our fathers. Our moral status is dependent on the actions of others only in a nazi philosophy.

In this context, Collier’s painting above of Lilith, which I of course ardently admire for the masterful texture of the snake’s skin, may have some relevance. More about Lilith below at the commentary on the illustrations. The picture came from an article about Eve, who has been blamed by many priests and other sexually shriveled creatures for millennia as being the culprit for the fall of man in a vision that completely misses the point, but gives great opportunities as projection point for repressed emotions, abysmal insecurities and inferiority complexes. Blaming Eve for Adam’s not taking his own responsibility is one thing, but blaming all women in the world for that story is the sort of justified evil you only seem to find in religious circles. I take that back, atheists have the same morbid reasoning. So have politicians and criminals. As long as we blame either Adam or Eve of the snake for the story of the Fall, we have not learned from it what we had to learn. Cleopatra si non habuisset nasulum exquisitissimulum, historia mundi dissimilissime fuierat. Roses are red, Violets are blue, sunflowers yellow, I bet you were expecting something romantic but no, these are just gardening facts.

I want to finish by showing Jahweh’s mercy in his Wrath. “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” We find a similar act of mercy in the next chapter. J’s God is merciful, P’s is just just, just a ‘justice of the peace’ (I’ve wanted to write that the whole time…). I’m also thinking of Abraham’s bartering with God (Gen. 18:16-33). It may be a good argument for the Documentary Hypothesis (==> Who Wrote the Bible in this blog) that for the life of me I cannot imagine the Priestly Author writing anything like that scene…

And oh, what great examples of evading responsibility! Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, and the poor serpent has no one to blame. Like the three worms who are hopping through the desert; the first worm says “the desert in front, two worms behind me”; the middle worm says “one worm in front, one worm behind me”; the last worm: “two worms in ahead, and two worms behind me”. How is that possible? Answer in the last footnote.***

Footnotes:

* I cannot suspend my moral ideas in this particular case. What I refuse to accept is that the idea that one girl’s chances to marry are dependent on her sister’s actions, is justified. Mimi’s death is seen as tragic, not scandalous. The couple could have died on the barricades, like Don Juan; but not this pining in ignorance. Too bad for the wonderful music.

** see footnote ** above on accountable

*** the word “Greek” doesn’t appear anywhere in Homer, and the Greek word for Greek, ελληνικός, only once

**** from Molière’s le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, if you believe it or not…

***** The last worm lied. Luther called himself a worm, from Ps. 22:6: I’m a worm, and no man. The conundrums caused by a literal approach of things will be discussed in my upcoming article about reflective surfaces.

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“Shiiiiit ….”

Illustrations

1. From: Schiffer: Bruckner for 2: Eleven and a half symphonies arranged for two cellos, 2022, ISBN 1800-F0R-5H1T, forthcoming…

2. Symphony no 1 in C major, Beethoven, Cianchettini & Sperati, London, n.d.[1809]. There may have been something in the manuscript from 1799/1800. Anner Bijlsma could’t stand Robbins Landon, and he once publicly took this musicologist’s program notes on the Haydn (D) concerto he had just played in concert and threw them on the floor, before encoring with a phenomenal encore performance of Bach’s 3rd Allemande (Irrsee, Bavaria, on or very close to Sept. 1, 1993. I was there).

3. LIGHT!!! Heidelberg 1844/5, William Turner (1775 - 1857), detail - Tate/National Gallery UK

4. Felsenlandschaft im Elbsandsteingebirge (1822-23) Caspar David Friedrich. Although this is painting is not about spring, it evokes the mood of Haydn’s Spring overture much closer than Abbot and Costello’s Who’s on First.

5. from Understanding Genesis (1966), p. 5, by Nahum Sarna

6. Mrs. George Watson (Elizabeth Oliver), 1765, John Simpleton Copley. Steffens claims that ‘her’ name was actually Olivier Elisé, a very good crossdresser…

7. The Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci ca. 1490. Steffens believes this is a secret portrait of Michelangelo.

8. Creation of Adam, Michelangelo Buonarotti, 1508-12, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City. Steffens did not say anything about this work.

9. Genesis I & 2, with the Assyrian Bird Genius as background, New Assyrian I think, 7th century BC.

10. Iggdrasil, illustration from a plate included in a posthumous English translation of the Prose Edda by Oluf Olufsen Bagge (1847)

11. Adam and Eve in Paradise, Jan Bruegel the Elder, Antwerp c. 1600, V(irginia) & A(lberta) Museum, at least that’s what I think V&A Museum means, because nowhere does their website have the civility to disclose where they are. My title: Circe is away doing her round …

12. Tree of the Hesperides, Greek pottery, 360 BC. Steffens believes that … oh who cares?!!!

13. From the Votive Cup of Gudea of Larsa: The Serpent Lord, c. 2025 BC - Louvre

14. Goddess of the Tree (Campbell: 2500 BC), Sumerian cylinder seal, “provenance unknown”, British Museum. “Provenance unknown” to me means “made by an antiquarian during the tome they were digging”

15. Lot and his Daughters, 1635/8, Artemisia, Toledo Museum of Art. Isn’t it great how one girl’s face is entirely clad in shadows? That was of course the girl whose idea it was to have incestuous communion with their father. The girl in the light, who I’m sure has Artemisia’s soul, still has to be convinced … O Clorinda of the canvas … O sublimation of crime endured …

16. Title uncertain (God’s Curse?), Jacques (James) Tissot (1836-1902) - provenance unknown. Tissot panted numerous works with a much more elaborate and rich use of color, which makes me doubt that this work is really his. The psychology matches Tissot’s quality, though.

17. Apples on Tree, water color from Pinterest, and therefore anonymous.

18. Lilith 1892 - John Collier (1850-1934) - Atkinson Liverpool, which doesn’t seen to be called Liverpool any more, but Merceyside. Lilith was Adam’s first wife. Just like the Hungarian origin of the House of David (formerly called the House of Ar(p)ad), Lilith “was taken out of the Bible by later redactors”. The best, though probably equally inaccurate, description of Lilith was that she “did it with God and wanted to be on top.” I am mentioning her because of possibly but spurious (rejected by Opitz and Ribichini) connection with tablet 7 (a later Syrian interpolation, 600 BC) of the Gilgamesh epic, where a female spirit lived in the Huluppu tree that Gilgamesh has to cut down in order to make throne for Inanna. Another suggested translation of the name in question is ‘owl’, which also connects to Isaiah 34:14, where Lilith also appears in the LXX and the Vulgata as ‘owl’.

19. Expulsion from Paradise (1828), Thomas Cole, Museum of Fine Art, Boston. The conversation —- You ate too! —- Yeah, well, isn’t it my fault again! —- I saw you looking at that cougar! —- What’s that supposed to mean? —- You know that better than anyone —- You just say that because you can’t have chocolate any more! - has not been preserved.

Blog cover photo: Buttermere Lake, with Part of Cromackwater, Cumberland, a Shower, 1798, by William Turner (1775-1851), National Gallery

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Bibliography: (this list still is still in the phase of the orange cones)

Arnold, B., Genesis (New Cambridge Bible Commentary)

Campbel, Joe: Masks of the Gods: Oriental Mythology 1962

Cross, Frank Moore: From Epic to Canon, 1998

Dalley, Stephanie: Myths from Mesopotamia, 1989

Friedman, Richard Elliott: Who Wrote the Bible? 1987

Gottschalk, Lexicon der Mythologie 1996 (via Marx, Helma, Das Buch der Mythen 1999)

Grabbe, Ancient Israel, 2017 - an overview of what we know about the historic Bible time and how we know it.

Sarna, Nahum: JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, 5749 (1989). this book reads from left to right, even though 80% in it in in English.

Sarna, Nahum: Understanding Genesis, 1966

Worsworth Dictionary of Symbolism, Hans Biedermann, 1989 (orig. German)

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Gallery:

1. Chauvet 30,000 BC —— 2. Tree of Life - detail rhyton Marlik, Persia, 1000 BC —— 3. Stone relief from the throne room of Ashurnasirpal II. Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), northern Iraq. Neo-Assyrian, 870–860 BC. British Museum. The relief shows Ashurnassirames or however his name twice on the seal, on either side with a winged spirit behind him. But where is the snake? —— 4. Blue Boy, by Thomas Gainsborough (1770), thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttle (1752–1805), but I know, by inspiration, that it’s Mozart. —— 5. Mrs. Montresor, by John Singleton Copley, 1778 —— 6 & 7. Two paintings by and rather more typical of James Tissot: 6. Mme Duzinc* (my title); 7. Croquet —- 8. Painting by Congo (1954-64) —- 9. The artist who made the previous painting —- 10. Nehemiah Persoff as the mafia boss in Some Like it Hot (1959) —— 1I. “Wüst, Ireen Wüst…”

* Mme Duzinc is the Lady in a story by Alphonse Allais who during her pregnancy insisted on ebony and ivory furniture. Then she had a completely African baby. Nine months prior, “Mme Duzinc avait cru devoir partager le lit (bed) d’un attaché de la délégation Haitienne”.