Musings on Genesis, divine inspiration

>I don't understand Genesis but I'm going to act like it's a science textbook

Let me give it a crack, OP.

Now, all you anons can feel free to rip this to shreds as

1) I have no knowledge of the texts in the original language

2) Nor nothing but intro paragraph wiki levels of Historical knowledge

For these reasons I wouldn't dare say that my interpretation is anything like a "correct" one, but in the day to day, it's how I adhere to it, and how it appeals to me. I feel as though I'm able to hold these interpretations as 1) some stories are perhaps so universal (or hey, we just abide by a generally Christian influenced culture) that their symbolic language will continue to stir deep-core unconscious feelings in us, speaking to us in the day-to-day, and 2) I have lived and suffered juuust enough to have accumulated gobs of experiences both pleasurable and traumatic that necessarily push me along these pre carved mythical channels. So, allow me to in the beginning...

I hold that Genesis is one of the most symbolically rich stories that I've ever encountered, so rich in depth, that you may hear a thousand interpretations of it (in particular, I like Paramhansa Yogananda's and Marlon Brando's interpretations) and it will still be able to take on more. For me though, Genesis is a wide, wiiide swath container/allegory of the experience of a person growing up in the world amidst a see of people doing the same. The Creation, Garden of Eden story,and all those that follow, were conceived as a way, I imagine a reeally proto-psychology/therapy interpretation of "Why does my life seem like it was so good (as a child), and now it just keeps getting shittier? As a story, it is the ultimate balm, and the perhaps the only way to begin a book attempting to explain the all of things, the journey from this world to that which is to come and all that jazz

Because imagine you’re a troubled soul in need of the wisdom of the ancient rabbis. If you are troubled, more than likely we can generalize it down to you lack the inability to deal with changes in a body that is ever calcifying/getting stuck in old ways. Genesis speaks directly to this (and more).

Think of a baby, just a little bundle of nerves and screaming and hunger and high, high plasticity. All was dark, and then there was light. Simple, yeah, but it speaks to many other things. (Also, just to the general initial sensations of the senses, of recognizing patterns. Think Pynchon's line on how "And then the lord said let there be light" was also the first division..). But imo, this speaks to an aggregated perception by generations of wisemen who saw in glimpses what we may now have an overview of via Psychology. That baby grows and all is good. The baby has a sort of inebriation to work which we adults call play. Very quickly it takes in all things new because all things are new. This is the baby perceiving. Soon, the baby can get to perceiving PATTERNS from its perceptions (the ball is red, hello mother), which leads to those PATTERNS informing its DECISIONS (if I cry at mother, food/her face will come).

All is good, all was good. Untill that baby (Adam & Eve, themselves as a pair standing in poetically for the initial encounter of Mother/Father, Man/Woman, Divine/Masculine, etc. as well as a “good enough, yeah that’s how we all came to be” answer to that favorite first-term philosophy course question “Where do we come from?”) encounters Knowledge and Life, via Sin (the serpent/Satan.). As a parable for real life, this refers to when our bodies and life (experiences) finally as they are inevitably won’t to do, betray us.

Okay, so this plastic child, going on man is acquiring more and more patterns, which leads to a regular enough BEHAVIOR. Once any person performs a BEHAVIOR often enough, they do so without having to think about it anymore (this is useful in nature, you can’t pause to contemplate the encroaching Tiger). This leads to the BEHAVIOR becoming unconscious, and thus, a HABIT is born. Okay, great right?

Well, the problem is that eventually, your HABITS may eventually get in the way of new needs of yours (and in this sense, I use HABIT in its widest scope as eeeverything you do unconsciously, so not just curse in traffic, or your little ocd-type morning rituals, but also stuff like smoking, eating a certain, holding your inner monologue the way that you do, even speaking language). This happens all the time. You are in the habit of sleeping in late, but suddenly, college is here and you keep missing that morning class you signed up for because “hey, I used to do it all the time in High School.” And you try to just stop, but fact is (and as with any unconscious behavior) you can’t undelete your old habits as you always still subconsciously need to fulfill their old wants. This would be hard enough problem as is solo, but these double-binding problems begin to pile on somewhere around your teens and for many of us, just amplify exponentially from there across ALL swaths of life. And what’s worse, EVERYONE is undergoing this same quaking whirpool, so we are all always attempting to wade through a thicket of flesh and mind, informed continuously by contradictory top-down, bottom-up nerve signals.

This is Bunyan’s Slough of Despond, this is the turmoil of the Fallen Angels in Paradise Lost, and this is most certainly one of the arcs attempted to be soothed down in Genesis. One of the most fundamental flaws in the human condition is the process of internal conflict – both wanting and not wanting something at the same time. So how do we deal with this if left to our own devices?

Original Sin = Self-Centeredness (the shame of nakednes = self-consciousness, the lying to God). That’s right, Egoism is what is meant by the Fall of Man. Being cast out of the garden refers to the twilight of the ego that we undergo growing up where it seems like the only way we can deal with having this contradictory body is to conceive a self capable of balming us with all of our pretty little lies, from hence comes self-pity, egoism, pride, all that jazz. Religion at its most ideal then is a way to get people back to the eternal now, to cast off the castles we build in our mind where living in a shattered world, we vainly attempt to rebuild the pieces into fortifications which in turn only trap us. It is no mistake that two of the biggest messages of Holy texts are Forgivesness (as with the Our Father, to forgive debtors is to no longer behold others to past and future pains) and seeking salvation with others (no better way of getting out of your head than helping somebody else. All this reminds me heavily of a favorite Corinthians

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
Corinthians
This ended up longer and more rambling than I intended. It’s sloppy, and perhaps unclear in areas, but I do think that if anything, this is an okay way to begin more intricate conversations informed by people more well-read. Thoughts?

DUDE IT'S A METAPHOR LMAO

DUDE EVERYTHING I CAN'T EXPLAIN/UNDERSTAND/RECONCILE WITH SCIENCE IS A METHAPHOR LMAO

DUDE THE BIBLE IS TOTALLY LITERAL AND WITHOUT ERROR EXCEPT FOR EVERYTHING THAT IS A METAPHOR LMAO

DUDE EVERYTHING IN MY PROTESTANT BIBLE IS TOTALLY THE ORIGINAL TEXT AND HAS NEVER BEEN CHANGED, HOWEVER EVERYTHING THAT WAS REMOVED WAS TOTALLY NOT IMPORTANT AND WAS JUST FANFICTION BULLSHIT LMAO

Sorry for the shitpost

Please explain it to me then.

>implying we said anything else was literal
>implying we're protestants
You can believe Job and Jonah are holy books while understanding that they're probably plays, user.

>spoonfeed me theology so I can mock it

What makes a book holy or not? Church approval? Lip service to some specific religion?

Ah, how fitting.
>You see, these couple lines have to be extrapolated and arranged in a very convenient way to make even a tiny little bit of sense, that's why you need to have a deep understanding in theology before even trying to look at them from a doubtful point of view.

Why not?

the weight you give it with serious contemplation maybe?

>I am going to act like my premises are the most natural ideas in the world and everyone else is either autistic or stupid

Light, or wisdom and knowledge, is dependent on both God and nature, but gives insights into them. Was that hard? Was that more useful in five thousand years of tent sermons than
>uhhh yeah there was light bouncin around for billions of years and, like, it was all just hot for a while, but the earth was formed later on out of hot rocks

I've never said anything about anyone. I'm just pointing the fact that what's written in there doesn't make any sense nor have any apparent relation with everything we know so far.
You said you don't agree with my position but can't even bother to answer my question. Why don't you explain it to me if you understand it?

Because no atheists ever have responded to that explanation with anything more than
>lol you have to twist it
Does that make sense? Do you see why we assume bad faith?
>doesn't make any sense
Have you read the thread? Do you see the other anons' take on it? No, you didn't, and you don't, because you're an autistic evangelist trying to reduce everything to facts.

This does tie in to what I know about the culture of the ancient Jews. Their culture was passed down orally until the Israel-Judah civil war, which caused them to pen down their stories and use them as propaganda and veiled threats.

>And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
>God called the light “day”
Doesn't make much sense to me.

I'm just pointing out that it's not meant to provide facts about the universe as much as wisdom for a good life.

>. Now one such criticism that I have heard is that if you maintain that the creation account in Genesis is symbolical and not meant as scientific treatise, then it begs the question: symbolic of what? Of creation? Then why not just tell us how it really happened?

Cause the first creation account in Gen 1 is centuries younger than the second (Gen 2 ff), and serves a different purpose: It was written in the time of the Babylonian exile (as determined by the style and language it was written in) and served the purpose to show the Israelits that lived there and were slowly falling into worship of the Babylonian gods - among many were stars and such things or forces of nature, that those all were just objects and creation of god. That is why it names every single thing compared to the second creation myth.

Light comes from God. God provides definition between light, truth, and darkness, error.

Why do you assume that I'm an atheist? Why are you calling me "autistic" for no reason? There aren't any references to this specific part in the other posts.
You're wrong if you think that if you say your explanation, people can't oppose it. What kind of mentality is that? Do I have to take everything you say as truth?

I'm not saying that they can't, just that they don't. And I'm assuming you're an atheist because that's who usually asks that sort of question, and autistic because that's the sort of person that derides metaphor and symbolism because they're not facts.

So light can mean day, wisdom, truth, knowledge, etc? How do you know which one is the correct one in a particular verse?
I mean, I suppose anyone reading that would see it as the moment of the creation of the day/night cycle.

It can mean any or all of the above, that's where a lot of the beauty comes from, from equating metaphysical and physical concepts. When you say "anyone reading that" are you saying "anyone" as in anyone raised in modern Western mandatory education, or anyone raised in a Hebrew sheep-raising clan?

Literally anyone. After all, it clearly states that "God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night”".

That's where you're letting your cultural bias overwhelm you. Ancient Hebrews put symbolism into literally everything, and never saw anything at face value. Look at this:
biologos.org/blogs/archive/the-numerology-of-genesis-1
And that's not just modern scholars wanking, that's the sort of thing rank-and-file Hebrews talked about.

And they probably believed the light came after the Earth was created. They believed the heavens were a literal dome, too. It didn't affect their lives much. It would have been hard for them to correct orbits, but they weren't launching any satellites.

Would the model for their cosmology look more like this?

Yeah, that's the sort of thing they believed in.

I honestly don't think our current understanding of the cosmos is that much more accurate than theirs. I don't subscribe to the "NOW we understand the universe" school of thought.

No, that's a modern literalist intepretation.

It's not likely that many Hebrews thought about it that much. They never even did much trade or sea travel.

Clearly the "heavens" does not mean the actual sky as God creates the sky later. It is possible for it to be interpreted as God's domain, and the Earth as the domain where man and God's future creation is to be.

I always thought of it in a "one step closer" kind of way. Like, we do know more than they did, but we know a lot less than what our descendants will.

Yeah, I'm glad we know as much as we do and that we can do as much as we can with it. I'm just not sold on us knowing all there is to know, because we never did before.

>I honestly don't think our current understanding of the cosmos is that much more accurate than theirs.
Oh please.

It's a statement of optimism, user, not a denigration of modern science.

Nah, "sky" must mean something else. Because symbolism, you know.

>science is about producing workable models.
We don't have to have every little blade of grass shown on a football diagram, so why should we expect the same from a model of an atom or the solar system.

Genesis is less than 10% creation myths

Creation-of-the-universe myths. All of it is the creation of the Israelites.

>We don't have to have every little blade of grass shown on a football diagram
That's what science aim for, actually.
Don't you think that "our current understanding of the cosmos is that much more accurate than theirs" is a bit too much? I mean, come on.
And I'm pretty sure we have the solar system figurated out.

Hopefully the time comes when it doesn't seem to be an exaggeration.

To be fair, the Bible gets the number PI wrong.

So it was either written by men who had imperfect knowledge or God just didn't give a shit about letting us know about PI.

I'm just saying that credit should be given where credit is due. They did the best they could, given their situation, and we're doing the best we can do.

>reminder that this is a thing.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysecinv367w

>symbolic of what?
I read a hypothesis somewhere that all creation stories are ultimately derived from the boy leaving the house to marry and become the man.

This is the worst bait I have ever seen. I even had to stop lurking to point it. Are you really getting triggered because they approximated the size of pi to 3 in a description of a pool?
Btw,shit, I got baited.

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I don't know. If God was all knowing, he know about at least going out a few decimal places.

Fortunately for God, he's not the one that wrote the Bible.

>I'm just saying that credit should be given where credit is due.
I agree.
>They did the best they could, given their situation.
Yeah, nothing.

Maybe the writer was an engineer. And good luck getting exactly pi in almost all numerical systems out there.

Did you know how Hebrews wrote numbers? Letters. Just letters. They had numerical values for letters. And so the craftsman making the molten sea would know, "yeah, I'm not supposed to be making a hexagon, let's just get this as close to these measurements as possible."

>exactly pi in almost all numerical systems
Pi is transcendental, it cannot be exactly represented in any number system which isn't base-pi.

I did not know the fancy name, but I put that "almost" there because of that idea.

So if the Bible was written by men who had imperfect knowledge of the universe, doesn't that mean the Bible provides imperfect knowledge?

Or if ancient Hebrew was incapable of explaining numbers correctly, doesn't that mean its imperfect knowledge and thus not the source of all understanding.

Of the universe, yes. Thus the
>it's not a science textbook
thing.

You're acting like we're Baptists again.

>let me set you up with a hypothesis so I can knock it down

So if the Bible can't explain science, should we not use the Bible to determine our science?

Or to an extension of that... Not to use it for important things.

There's more important things than science.

>So if the Bible can't explain science, should we not use the Bible to determine our science?
Yes.
>Or to an extension of that... Not to use it for important things.
Not following your argument.

>Principia Mathematica should not be used to determine monetary policy
>It should therefore not be used for important things

Without Calculus a lot of the higher functions of financial calculations do not work, so I'm not sure where you are going with this.

I mean science and technology has given us 99% of our standard of living. Its the only thing that keeps us from extinction or a very miserably life.

Without morality a lot of the higher functions of science genocide people.

Right, but you don't need Christianity for that. Ask the Chinese.

Thank God the Nazis put a stop to that.

Tell that to the Canaanites

And you don't need Principia Mathematica for calculus. Are we going to get back to Genesis?

The Chinese have butchered an awful lot of folk throughout their history.

I mean, I'm fine if you want to say Genesis is a metaphor. Even the Pope says evolution is real.

So has literally every culture.

So did the Christians in the 30 years war.

Genesis is a metaphor to a point, and only to a point. Certain aspects of the story are absolutely not a metaphor.

For example, The Fall is not a metaphor. It can't be a metaphor, because it explains Original Sin and all the Christian thought that flows from this.

Original Sin is a dogma belonging wholly to the Catholics and their spawn.

>not reading the thread

So if the Pope says evolution is real, does that make the story of the fall invalid as a literal story? I mean who were technically the first humans to fall?

With what species did it occur? Ardipithecus? Australopithecus? Erectus? Modern man?

The first protean slime to figure out self-replication.

Wouldn't that make all animals fallen by extent? I was fine with converting chimps, but a cat would be impossible.

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

I actually just read genesis the other night (doing a read through of the bible so I can better understand medieval psychology) and I'm wondering: how many of these city states are known to have existed historically? Like, they mention the Amorites, Uruk, Ur, etc.

What could the flood have been? I am of the opinion it was the filling in of the Persian gulf (which would have once also been a river valley similar to Mesopotamia and Elam.

It's pretty accurate about what other city-states the Israelites squabbled with.

I'm on board with the Black Sea flood theory. Big enough to really look like the world went under.

I think it's the Persian gulf. That would have been big enough of an area surrounded by enough civilized peoples to seem like the whole world. I am going to go out on a limb and say that a tsunami broke down the floodgates as it were, and flooded the gulf in a very short amount of time. Whether that is tectonic, meteor impact, or just glacial melt I cannot say. I think it would be cool to do some underwater archaeology in the region because it definitely was dry around 8000 years ago at least.

Further, the Sumerian account tells of the Apsu, a people who live in boats in a marshy area, and after whose boats Utnapishtim's boat is to be designed. It would make sense that if there was an area significantly lower than sea level with rivers flowing into it, that area would be marshy.

>musings on the Bible

Why? Any man who has any remote understanding of the world around him tends to notice the Bible has inaccuracies so heinous it's ridiculous

>pi is 3
>the Sun was made before the Earth
>the sky was a roof actually
>Mount Ararat was the highest in the world apparently
>did you know animals came before insects n shiet?
>people lived for like, thousands of years
>never mind that most of those names and events were straight up copied from Sumerian myths

>>the Sun was made before the Earth
Depends on how you define both.

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