Wednesday, 16 September 2009
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Bible Study Reflections: Genesis 3
Today's reflection is on Genesis 3: The Fall of Ma. To read this passage click here.
Apparently, the serpent can talk. He conversed with the woman. The woman was aware of 'wisdom' and had a range of vocabulary, as did the serpent. The man's and woman's eyes were open. Were the man's eyes functional for seeing before, in order to name the woman and the other animals? Did he have a different kind of sensoral method to discern one living creature from another? Same with the woman? God said he would greatly increase the pains. Were there already pains for childbearing, or no pains at all? Perhaps Eve had a child before that is unknown to our humankind, and it is in comparison to that birthing? Clearly a lot of things are left unattended.
What we do understand clearly is that the serpent could converse. The woman was aware of levels of understanding, something called wisdom. The serpent tempted the woman and the woman subjected herself to the temptation. Her husband who was with her did nothing to stop her and he subjected himself to the temptation as well. God walked in the garden, they heard Him, they felt shame. They somehow sewed (with what material?) fig leaves together to make coverings for themselves. God confronted them, since their appearance was no longer stark naked---it was clear that a change occurred.Adam somehow already had a name. How he was named is not written. It is written thoguh how Eve got her name--Adam named her as such for becoming mother of all mankind. God banished and drove them out, and put a guardian in front of the Tree of Life to keep them out. Cherubim with a flaming sword. Cherubs being plural and cherubim singular, it is just one cherub with a flaming sword. It is not said whether the cherubim guards the entire garden or from the other organisms, but just the Tree of Life. Even the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is not blocked.
In Chapter 2, we read that there was no man to till the ground---therefore the earth was watered by a rising mist. It was only with man's existence that rain began. So man has some experience with the Earth and tilling it. If not physical experience, then in knowledge, that it is his duty to the earth because of the stewardship God made him with. God curses the ground for doing against his command/statement/advice/counseling, and says that it will not always cooperate with his efforts.
God also says that woman's desire will be for her husband, and he will rule over her. There is established now, a hierarchy in relationships--of one above the other. There is no talk about gender and what constitutes gender. It is simply the relationship of husband and wife. There is a foreshadowing: man will strike the serpent's head as the serpent strikes his heel. Both lose in some way, but man can live, man has hope. The serpent will be crushed because its intelligent source---the area of its nostrils and ability to breathe, the area where it captures its prey and thereby nourishes itself--is destroyed. The man is temporarily decapitated in one foot, but he still has another and as we have seen with many war vets, losing one limb makes some even bolder in their way of living because they have less to lose.
There is no record of time and how many days the man and woman were in the garden. How long the conversation took. The sense of time and placed are not elucidated. While the whole earth was made, how much of that space was the garden? What becomes of the garden? What becomes of that Tree of Life? After man and woman fall, it is a mystery to us because we are not meant to know--a cherubim was set in place to guard it from being approached by any man or woman.
So from reading this, there are again, more things left to the imagination. More things heaped on for dispute because of differences in imagination; but there are the statements that are indisputable in themselves, because they are consistent as they build on each other--and we are only three chapters in to the beginning!
In my first entry for this adventure, I laid my position of not being a theologian etcetera and I'd just like to echo this statement. I open up my post to comments from other Bible-ReadersWhat do you think some of the answers are to the italicized questions? What are your reactions to this passage?
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About the Author
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- From: ellicepark@xanga
- Name: Ellice
- About Me: im really personal. all the time. everywhere. but almost never conspicuous about it.
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Comments (12)
What a weasel move it was for Adam to blame Eve for eating the apple.
As I said last time, if it were me, I would have eaten the apple - even without some talking snake telling me to (I love Satan as a character by the way).
And like I said last time, Genesis has an ugly amount of misogyny. "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." That's terrible.
I don't have time for a lengthy reply - will come back later, but two things struck me right away. First - about the pains in childbirth, it could be said that Cain and Abel were actuallly conceived and born in Eden .... I'll have to actually re-look those passages again. And, about the rain and the tilling of the ground .......the first bit of rain, from what I understand, didn't occur until the flood.
It's seems all of the wrong questions are being asked. It doesn't matter what they used to sew the fig leaves with, or where Eden went to. What's important is man's sin and God's plan to redeem humanity, which is actually presented in this chapter.
Spiritual allegory.
@When_We_Were_Both_Cats@xanga - @nicolevw@xanga - @MagisterTom@xanga - @BookMark61@xanga -
thanks for your feedback. i didn't know you gave it until magister tom came to my personal space and mentioned it. i don't know why xanga posits my entries in such an odd way by asking questions that are different in intention from the entire content of my post. but i guess it's what they do for audience participation. and that's all right i guess, since i'm donating my work for their space. in any case, i hope you did not get led astray by that -- or perhaps that's too presumptuous of a phrase to use "led astray".? what i mean is get confused about the focus because of two differing fouses--mine and revelife's. in any case , thanks for your feedback.
One thing I used to ask myself a lot... "Is the garden of Eden an actual physical place on earth? Or is it just spiritual allegory?"
Many cultures of the world have some kind of tale of a place of perfect tranquility (like the legend of Shambala in Himalaya). The exact accounts are different and the story of what actually happened may have warped over time as the tales are passed on orally through succesive generations (like Chinese whispers). If one research into this, one will find some similarities in creation, fall and flood accounts of various people groups in the world.
Personally, I think that Genesis 1-3 are both literal and allegorical. God did created the world, and He did created an original pair of humans, and that they chose to sin against God. The author of Genesis (whoever it was, most say it's Moses) is like a painter, who paints a picture of what happened. The picture itself is not the object, but a reflection of it; it conveys theological meaning rather than simply a historical account of what happened.
Besides, the garden of Eden would have been destroyed by the global flood in Noah's time anyway.
Either way (literal or allegorical), the point of the story is to highlight the origin of sin, and its consequences on humanity and the earth on the whole.
i would strongly recommend the genesis conversation between a ton of people on pbs several years back. it's in book form too :)
@TrumvilleOrbison@xanga - url?
@ellicepark@xanga - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/genesis/
they have SO many insights and ideas. :) i didn't see it, but i have the book and there's always something surprising..none of these questions were ones that the author of genesis thought about when writing it. it is a story, and if one gets caught in the semantics of it, they will miss the point.
a few points though, the name Adam comes from the Hebrew word Adama, which means earth, or dirt (which is what he was made from.) Since we can ascertain Hebrew was not the first language on Earth, it's probably true that, if there was a person named Adam, his name was not Adam.
Secondly, the whole "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" thing. This is a result of sin, which Jesus in-part came to free us from, which means woman are no longer subject to rule by a man (if they ever were.) Jesus himself says "But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." (Matt. 23:8-12) This is incredibly incompatible with much of the teaching of Paul. What that means, I'll let you decide.
@foxes_have_holes@xanga - yeah thanks for your feedback, too. if you read the post, you'd see that the author of the post didn't actually focus on those questions either--it was revelife's choice to highlight those questions in order to garner audience participation.