Proto-version of Adam and Eve in Paradise found.

Teinz · May 23, 2014

Lots of "ifs and buts". But it seems as if two Dutch researchers have found a version of the story of Adam and Eve that predates Genesis by five centuries.

A number of clay tablets from Ugarit, dating from the late thirteenth century BCE, throw new light, Korpel and de Moor argue, on the background of the first chapters of Genesis and the myth of Adam. In these tablets, El, the creator deity, and his wife Asherah lived in a vineyard or garden on the slopes of Mt Ararat, known in the Bible as the mountain where Noah’s ark came to rest. The first sinner was not a human being, but an evil god called Horon who wanted to depose El. Horon was thrown down from the mountain of the gods, and in revenge he transformed the Tree of Life in the garden into a Tree of Death and enveloped the whole world in a poisonous fog. Adam was sent down to restore life on earth, but failed because Horon in the form of a huge serpent bit him. As a result Adam and his wife lost their immortality.

Couldn't find any related articles in English just yet. Perhaps the discovery needs some time to percolate throughout the community.

It's a pretty interesting find, at least in my view. OTOH, it might just be another case of parallelomania.

http://www.sheffieldphoenix.com/showbook.asp?bkid=271

Maxx · May 23, 2014

Teinz said:
Lots of "ifs and buts". But it seems as if two Dutch researchers have found a version of the story of Adam and Eve that predates Genesis by five centuries.

Couldn't find any related articles in English just yet. Perhaps the discovery needs some time to percolate throughout the community.

It's a pretty interesting find, at least in my view. OTOH, it might just be another case of parallelomania.

http://www.sheffieldphoenix.com/showbook.asp?bkid=271

I don't think this is a case of a single discovery. It seems (after a Wikipedia check) that tablets were found at Ugarit from about 1927 to 1994. I think what is going on here is that on-going studies in narratives about the divine as they were in the Ancient Near East are turning up many similar narrative structures: for example, walled gardens, tresspass, loss of immortality, snakes and so on. It's not so much a matter of parallelomania as it is a systematic look into what stories and motifs were floating around in that part of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit

You get the same general variations on themes (not those themes but a very different set) in mesoAmerica: 13 heavens, various underworlds, directional and astronomical color coding, vision snakes, rain gods etc. There, I think, the changes over time are somewhat clearer (eg. the Venus War cult is a late addition, the rise of Tulla etc.).

Or even Quetzalcoatl:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl

Teinz · May 23, 2014

Maxx said:
I don't think this is a case of a single discovery. It seems (after a Wikipedia check) that tablets were found at Ugarit from about 1927 to 1994. I think what is going on here is that on-going studies in narratives about the divine as they were in the Ancient Near East are turning up many similar narrative structures: for example, walled gardens, tresspass, loss of immortality, snakes and so on. It's not so much a matter of parallelomania as it is a systematic look into what stories and motifs were floating around in that part of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit

Indeed the tablets are part of a larger collection. According to Dutch press, the story was divided between two different tablets, both of which had been translated years before. Korpel and de Moor only discovered the connection between them.

The differences between the new story and the one familiar to us, are fascinating. Adam is a god, turned mortal by Horon, the snake. Why did that part not survive the ages? Why did we become a creation of God, instead of the descendants of an equal? There were gods in the vineyard! That sounds like a party to me. When did that become a God in a garden and why?

Maxx said:
You get the same general variations on themes (not those themes but a very different set) in mesoAmerica: 13 heavens, various underworlds, directional and astronomical color coding, vision snakes, rain gods etc. There, I think, the changes over time are somewhat clearer (eg. the Venus War cult is a late addition, the rise of Tulla etc.).

Or even Quetzalcoatl:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl

That's the second time you point me to mesoAmerica. I seem to remember iced beverages. I did some digging the last time, I'm gonna do it again. Thanks.

Maxx · May 23, 2014

Teinz said:
That's the second time you point me to mesoAmerica. I seem to remember iced beverages. I did some digging the last time, I'm gonna do it again. Thanks.

I just sort of reflexively compare comparisons -- the Ancient Near East is a culture area like MesoAmerica and methods that get interesting results for one (eg. comparing narrative/motif complexes) should work okay for the other.
The differences are revealing too: MesoAmerica is still with us in the sense that regional belief systems such as Witches and Magicians, ceremonials and prayer sticks are still functioning day-to-day in the region while there seems to be almost nothing left of the Ancient Near East as a culture.
Also, the approach to complexes in MesoAmerica has always been historical in the sense that say the Venus War Cult is seen as arising and flourishing and vanishing in a time frame, whereas for the Near East a similar complex has an ahistorical side in the sense that the original stories are often seen as prefiguring later stories rather than having a complete function in their own time. So nobody has yet noticed that the Venus War Cult in some ways prefigures SteamPunk, for example.

Quetzalcoatl is the exception since his cults tend to be ahistorically projected one way or another.

Maxx · May 23, 2014

Teinz said:
The differences between the new story and the one familiar to us, are fascinating. Adam is a god, turned mortal by Horon, the snake. Why did that part not survive the ages? Why did we become a creation of God, instead of the descendants of an equal? There were gods in the vineyard! That sounds like a party to me. When did that become a God in a garden and why?

People and gods are not always necessarily seen as all that different. Plenty of categories of either can transgress into the space of that other (god or human). For example, a Mayan King could communicate with the underworld and his ancestors and other powers via a psychoduct or a vision snake. Similarly (or in a similar way, but perhaps in reverse) Adam could give up his immortality to save the world from a universal poison fog.
After all, for a King to retain his supernatural powers, often he has to sacrifice many enemy kings in his rubber-ball game court. Supernatural power isn't pretty and often it can be lost to a snake or a poison fog or a defeat in battle.

RichardGarfinkle · May 27, 2014

It's not terribly surprising that the stories in Genesis were variations on cycles that were floating around. There's a modern tendency to forget that divine stories were and are passed around and traded between cultures.

This kind of thing didn't disappear with the writing down of holy texts. Indeed, there is a Catholic saint story (Saints Barlaam and Josaphat) which can be found in the Golden Legend that contains a transplanted piece of the life of the Buddha.

I wish we had more of those very early stories. The last time I read Genesis I got the distinct impression that the Cain and Abel stories might be part of a larger cycle of stories (with the brother who does things right and the brother who does things wrong).

Xelebes · Oct 14, 2014

I'm getting a weird impression (relatively recently) that the forbidden fruit isn't fruit itself. It's sex. Adam and Eve had sex and once they were done, they were stuneed by what happened with each other's body. God did not so much punish them as he introduced them to the later stage in life: adulthood.

But maybe I am being an offensive dickhead, an atheist who had come from a smorgasborg of churches growing but a dickhead nonetheless.

Siri Kirpal · Oct 14, 2014

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

That's what the Freudians and certain churches would have you believe, Xelebes. Me, I think the fruit is ego, the consciousness of self that can lift you high or drag you out of a state of primal one-pointedness, make you aware that you will die, etc.

And no, I don't think you're a dickhead.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Xelebes · Oct 14, 2014

Hm, which churches? Because I've never heard anyone proposing such.

kuwisdelu · Oct 14, 2014

Xelebes said:
I'm getting a weird impression (relatively recently) that the forbidden fruit isn't fruit itself. It's sex.

The fruit is quite obviously a metaphor, but I don't think it's meant to symbolize any one thing like sex, or drugs, or rock and roll. It can be any and all of those things.

It's called the Fruit of Knowledge (of Good and Evil) for a reason, after all. Ultimately, all knowledge of the world represents a loss of innocence in some way, whether it be knowledge of each other (sex) or knowledge of other things, such as technology or science, which can be used to destroy just as easily as they can be used to create.

I interpret the story as ultimately requiring that we taste the forbidden fruit; it's necessary for the advancement of humankind. But all advancement comes at a price. It's ultimately a fable about all kinds of revolution, and how it is often inevitable and necessary, but also costly.

Xelebes · Oct 14, 2014

The reason why I am being a bit reductionist with it all is that it A) ties up the loose knot from the previous two stories (creation of man and the creation of woman) and bridges the concept of man sprouting like a seed from the dust and creating a woman from a cutting from the said sprout.

So sex is the forbidden fruit.

There can be a lot attached to it, but much interpretation sounds a bit like scope creep and possibly an attempt at doubling the euphemism to hide the concept of sex that drives the story. The scope creep is the most troublesome, especially as readers of the bible are left trying to grapple with the concept of original sin, when in fact the story only tells the origin of sin. This may be a convenient construct as it leads one away from an important aspect of sin: responsibility. You are not merely responsible for sin, but not doing one's responsibility is to sin.

Another part of the scope creep is that it elevates the maturity of Adam and Eve and changes the relationship of God and the couple from a strictly sensible paternal relationship to a precocious and overbearing paternal relationship. It is this new relationship which drives many to agnosticism or atheism.

kuwisdelu said:
I interpret the story as ultimately requiring that we taste the forbidden fruit; it's necessary for the advancement of humankind. But all advancement comes at a price. It's ultimately a fable about all kinds of revolution, and how it is often inevitable and necessary, but also costly.

And that is the interpretation I feel has no scope creep.

So in the end, sex is the event that is important that draws Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden into the Land of Nod. The other attributes attached to the forbidden fruit are done at one's own peril.

kuwisdelu · Oct 14, 2014

Xelebes said:
There can be a lot attached to it, but much interpretation sounds a bit like scope creep and possibly an attempt at doubling the euphemism to hide the concept of sex that drives the story. The scope creep is the most troublesome, especially as readers of the bible are left trying to grapple with the concept of original sin, when in fact the story only tells the origin of sin. This may be a convenient construct as it leads one away from an important aspect of sin: responsibility. You are not merely responsible for sin, but not doing one's responsibility is to sin.

Another part of the scope creep is that it elevates the maturity of Adam and Eve and changes the relationship of God and the couple from a strictly sensible paternal relationship to a precocious and overbearing paternal relationship. It is this new relationship which drives many to agnosticism or atheism.

I'm having some trouble discerning what you're asserting and what you're saying other people believe. You're saying you have trouble accepting wider interpretations and think they're harmful to the religion?

I suppose I don't understand the peril of interpreting it as being about more than sex.

Xelebes · Oct 15, 2014

I am asserting that many, if not most interpretations that I have been exposed to are double-euphemisms. Not even sure that is a term, so let me expand.

Simple euphemism: take a subject and sanitise it with a play on words.

Double euphemism: take the play on words and deny the subject it was to sanitise through various mechanisms of interpretation.

This lets the interpreter off the hook and allows them to come to their own conclusions. Oftentimes this conclusion is much broader and as a consequence, less bounded. This can make a simple lesson turn into a perverted lesson, the lesson suffering from scope creep.

The Forbidden Fruit is sex and the Land of Nod is adulthood: we can find comparable concepts and the metaphor can grow as normal.

The Forbidden Fruit is not sex and the Land of Nod is therefore. . . punishment?

Siri Kirpal · Oct 15, 2014

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

The thing is if you read the first two (ie the oldest) books of the Bible carefully, you'll see that sex isn't something the guys back then hid. Read the story of Lot and his daughters, for ex.

As far as which churches, couldn't name specific ones, but if you read the literature (that's what we all do here, right?), you kinda get the idea that certain Christian groups and/or individual preachers equate sin with sex.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

kuwisdelu · Oct 15, 2014

Xelebes said:
The Forbidden Fruit is sex and the Land of Nod is adulthood: we can find comparable concepts and the metaphor can grow as normal.

The Forbidden Fruit is not sex and the Land of Nod is therefore. . . punishment?

Sex or not, I don't see a meaningful difference in the consequences there.

Or are you telling me you don't consider adulthood to be a punishment?

:tongue

If we just got things right, we could all be cute little girls forever, like in my Japanese cartoons.

Or, y'know, become Pokémon trainers and go on adventures and never grow up.

. . . all coming-of-age stories are fundamentally tragedies.

RichardGarfinkle · Oct 16, 2014

The pull of biblical exegesis is too strong. I cannot resist the temptation of the tree of argument.

There are a few internal problems with the idea that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was sex.

The first lies in the fact that this verse comes just after the creation of Adam and Eve.

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 creepeth upon the earth.'

Be fruitful and multiply requires sex.

There are also these verses, again well before the fall.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Again, sex is clearly being implied, but sex without shame.

The only verse that might imply there was something sexual about eating the fruit is this one.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves girdles.

But that doesn't have to be about sex at all. It only has to do with nakedness out in public. Remember that this was originally the holy book of a culture with a nudity taboo (that's clear from internal evidence amongst other things).

So, once Adam and Eve know good from evil they become aware of how people are supposed to act. What's the most immediately obvious fact under those circumstances? That they're naked. So they try to do something about that.

Finally, there's the verse just before the banishment from Eden.

And the LORD God said: 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.'

This implies that knowing good from evil is a divine characteristic, but sex is usually seen as an earthly thing, not a heavenly one (go ahead with the jokes, kuwi).

AMCrenshaw · Oct 16, 2014

re: multiplying requires sex:
is that how eve was born?

[among other things, my personal take on the adam/eve story concerns the dangers of taking things too literally, and thinking that one can know good and evil perfectly and objectively. i think also the mysterious magical happenings introduce the poetic communication to follow]

RichardGarfinkle · Oct 17, 2014

AMCrenshaw said:
re: multiplying requires sex:
is that how eve was born?

[among other things, my personal take on the adam/eve story concerns the dangers of taking things too literally, and thinking that one can know good and evil perfectly and objectively. i think also the mysterious magical happenings introduce the poetic communication to follow]

Eve was created directly by God. The instruction to be fruitful and multiply clearly indicates that humans should now go take care of this on their own using the installed equipment.

AMCrenshaw · Oct 17, 2014

i'm not trying to be needlessly difficult: i do not see textual support for that interpretation. in fact it would seem adam and eve pre-fall are prince and princess of the lands, while after the fall, become its subjects -- and that only after the fall are the consequences of actual physical sexual activity discussed in any detail whatsoever.

p.s. i'm ok with disagreeing on an interpretation

kuwisdelu · Oct 17, 2014

So presumably before the fall, humans could reproduce asexually?

Where's the fun in that?

AMCrenshaw · Oct 18, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
So presumably before the fall, humans could reproduce asexually?

Where's the fun in that?

Whereas Eve sprang from Adam's rib, had there been reproduction before the fall, one is free to guess how the next generation would have been born.

One thing I find ..interesting.. about the OP article and the genesis story of the Bible is the connection between Eve and the Horon serpent as the original sinners.

Teinz · Dec 4, 2014

Siri Kirpal said:
Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

That's what the Freudians and certain churches would have you believe, Xelebes. Me, I think the fruit is ego, the consciousness of self that can lift you high or drag you out of a state of primal one-pointedness, make you aware that you will die, etc.

And no, I don't think you're a dickhead.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

I tend to agree with this. With both Xelebes not being a dickhead, and the interpretation that the Fruit is the Ego.

Somewhere, way back in our history (I don't even know wether or not this started with homo sapiens or even earlier human species), our ancesters must have noticed a big difference between the natural world around them, plants and animals, and themselves. They had developed self-consciousness while every other living thing around them remained in their state of ignorant bliss.

I believe the story about the Tree of Knowledge is a way to articulate this insight, to give it a sense of purpose. This also corresponds nicely with the banishment from Eden. Adam and Eve left their natural state, their ignorance. They gained self-consciousness. While this might seem a boon on first sight, knowing one exists, and experiencing this existence is not always a great deal of fun. It might even be considered a punishment. So the story also reflects this insight.

As a child, I always thought God was being pretty harsh banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden. After all, they were tricked into eating from the tree. It wasn't really their fault. Later on, I thought it couldn't be their fault, because before they ate the Fruit, they didn't really have free will, right? Free will came with the taste of the fruit. All in all, a pretty unjust situation. But this image of a vengeful God that unjustly sentences mankind to a life of toil and strife also resonates with the fact that we humans didn't ask for this existence, this self-consciousness. Nature imposed it onto us. We don't have any choice. Seems unjust, but it is the way it is.

Just pondering for this bit. I think the story of Prometheus has similarities to the story of Adam and Eve. Prometheus provided fire for humankind, i.e. consciousness, and was punished for it. Prometheus can be translated into "He who thinks ahead", and if one trait characterises humans, it's our ability to think ahead, which requires we know we exist in the first place.

Anyone else know about myths from other religions that deal with ego, or consciousness?

I'll say I really appreciate everyone's post in this thread. It is all highly interesting.

Maxx · Dec 4, 2014

Teinz said:
Anyone else know about myths from other religions that deal with ego, or consciousness?

I'll say I really appreciate everyone's post in this thread. It is all highly interesting.

Off-hand I would not say that consciousness per se is a big deal in the mythical world. You do get a lot of myths concerned with explaining the current social order. While on the surface this doesn't seem to be the case with myths like that of Adam and Eve, as Levi-Stauss used to say, that's because those myths exist to be interpreted by experts in interpreting myths and that is how the current social order gets supported by myths of that sort.

In fact I would say that if a myth seems to have a lot of interpretive variability, it is a myth that was designed that way.

Here's a myth that is pretty blunt about what's what:

The Oldest Princess of the senior lineage was collecting shellfish and her hands were full pearls. She went into the woods to pee and stepped in some bear shit. "Ick!" she exclaimed. The bear came out and said, "If you think my shit is icky, what about yours?" The Princess pretended to poop out some pearls and the bear decided she should be his wife. Thus the senior lineage acquired all the rights and dominance associated with all bear images and songs and ceremonies.

Xelebes · Dec 4, 2014

Teinz said:
I tend to agree with this. With both Xelebes not being a dickhead, and the interpretation that the Fruit is the Ego.

Somewhere, way back in our history (I don't even know wether or not this started with homo sapiens or even earlier human species), our ancesters must have noticed a big difference between the natural world around them, plants and animals, and themselves. They had developed self-consciousness while every other living thing around them remained in their state of ignorant bliss.

I believe the story about the Tree of Knowledge is a way to articulate this insight, to give it a sense of purpose. This also corresponds nicely with the banishment from Eden. Adam and Eve left their natural state, their ignorance. They gained self-consciousness. While this might seem a boon on first sight, knowing one exists, and experiencing this existence is not always a great deal of fun. It might even be considered a punishment. So the story also reflects this insight.

As a child, I always thought God was being pretty harsh banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden. After all, they were tricked into eating from the tree. It wasn't really their fault. Later on, I thought it couldn't be their fault, because before they ate the Fruit, they didn't really have free will, right? Free will came with the taste of the fruit. All in all, a pretty unjust situation. But this image of a vengeful God that unjustly sentences mankind to a life of toil and strife also resonates with the fact that we humans didn't ask for this existence, this self-consciousness. Nature imposed it onto us. We don't have any choice. Seems unjust, but it is the way it is.

Just pondering for this bit. I think the story of Prometheus has similarities to the story of Adam and Eve. Prometheus provided fire for humankind, i.e. consciousness, and was punished for it. Prometheus can be translated into "He who thinks ahead", and if one trait characterises humans, it's our ability to think ahead, which requires we know we exist in the first place.

Anyone else know about myths from other religions that deal with ego, or consciousness?

I'll say I really appreciate everyone's post in this thread. It is all highly interesting.

I should clarify that with sex comes maturity: puberty. We go from the land of childish innocence to the land of adult responsibility. Ego becomes an issue because we want to return to childhood to avoid the responsibility that adulthood brings. The temptation is the novel experience for Adam and Eve - they don't really experience the temptation before or it is not related in the story. The sex isn't the important part, as I may have unintentionally intimated in my posts prior, but rather the growth that Adam and Eve experience together as they go from child to adult.

And as a consequence, one of the first things mentioned when they leave the garden of Eden is bearing their son, Cain. And then Abel. And then Cain kills Abel out of jealousy. And then Seth is born. And then Enoch, who builds the first city.

But Maxx may very well be right that the myth is intentionally vague.

Proto-version of Adam and Eve in Paradise found.

Back at it again.

Got the hang of it, here

Back at it again.

Got the hang of it, here

Got the hang of it, here

Nurture Phoenixes

Delerium ex Ennui

Swan in Process

Delerium ex Ennui

Revolutionize the World

Delerium ex Ennui

Revolutionize the World

Delerium ex Ennui

Swan in Process

Revolutionize the World

Nurture Phoenixes

...

Nurture Phoenixes

...

Revolutionize the World

...

Back at it again.

Got the hang of it, here

Delerium ex Ennui