Was the real Jewish Garden of Eden located in Jerusalem?

[Greatest I am]

Was the real Jewish Garden of Eden located in Jerusalem?

Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou a biblical scholar thinks so.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2kwlx6

When I add in the research being done by archeologist Israel Finkelstein showing what may be the true picture of the ancient Israelites, I too begin to think that the Jewish Eden was in Jerusalem. The God /King would have been from the Levi tribe and a Levi priest who would have been the head of the Jewish Divine Council.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x13mwrw_the-bible-unearthed-1-the-patriarchs_webcam

I think that the key is the river Gihon that ties it all together.

What do you think?

Was Eden in Jerusalem and did they have a God/King in charge?

Were all of our Gods and Kings always humans?

Regards
DL

 

[IcyPatriot]

This thread is also going well ...

 

[Greatest I am]

This thread is also going well ...

The non-believers are the fastest growing group while religious groups are slowly dying. Perhaps sports fans are ahead of the curve and that is why people here to not care about religious topics.

Many forums are getting more specific in the sections they create and some are ignoring religion all together.

Regards
DL

 

[The Brandon Five]

Was the real Jewish Garden of Eden located in Jerusalem?

Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou a biblical scholar thinks so.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2kwlx6

When I add in the research being done by archeologist Israel Finkelstein showing what may be the true picture of the ancient Israelites, I too begin to think that the Jewish Eden was in Jerusalem. The God /King would have been from the Levi tribe and a Levi priest who would have been the head of the Jewish Divine Council.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x13mwrw_the-bible-unearthed-1-the-patriarchs_webcam

I think that the key is the river Gihon that ties it all together.

What do you think?

Was Eden in Jerusalem and did they have a God/King in charge?

Were all of our Gods and Kings always humans?

Regards
DL

It might have been. What Kings are you thinking that anyone thought was not human?

 

[Greatest I am]

It might have been. What Kings are you thinking that anyone thought was not human?

I hope I did not give that impression. They were all human. I do not believe in any kind of supernatural.

I think that the kings of city states competed with various Gardens of Delight, Garden of Eden to the Jews, as a form of one-upmanship to show off wealth and power. The richest would have had outside terraces etc and the poorer ones would have had to settle for carved walls within their palace or temple complexes.

All God/Kings would have been kings speaking for God or possibly kings with a temple priest as a close second. In earlier days it would have been a shaman and tribal chief.

The theory being proposed makes a lot more sense than talking snakes in some mysterious garden.

The whole myth though might be based on an actual place if this scholar is correct. Dilmun.



Regards
DL

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Whenever the lead-in to a history show features a guy who says "my rule is, if people think it's crazy it must be right," I'm just a-waitin' for the really bad speculation.

I'm watching the rest of this, because what the hell... however, when events within historical time are so much in doubt, I am wondering whence comes this certainty of the locale of a mythic layer of the bible, deep in antiquity.

I will say, however, that we can learn a lot by the question that creation myths are constructed to answer, any inconsistencies in them, etc. For example, the Jewish tradition is that Adam's first wife - "Male and female He created them" - is a different figure from the second wife, Eve, whom he fashioned from Adam's rib. Of course, what we have is two different accounts which were both retained. They were told in different places, and both had currency by the time the stories were being committed to writing.

Like I said, I'll give this a listen, but it strikes me that "evidence" is going to be along the lines of place names and the like, the sort of stuff that made some guy say that the "Danube" and the name "Denmark" prove that the tribe of Dan (one of the 10 lost tribes, and by implication, probably the other ones) settled Europe.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Good lord, I'm about 12 minutes into this (so far) pedestrian elevation of what appears to be a journeyman borderline crackpot... and they're just "discovering" that a good starting place is Mesopotamia...

Spoiler alert: Everybody knows that... including the authors of Bereshit, or "Genesis." If Abraham comes from Ur, and Ur is in Mesopotamia... even at the level of literal word-for-word belief, you are going to make your first stop Mesopotamia. I see what's coming of course... he's going to decide some locale in Jerusalem is being identified, therefore putting the creation stories forward on the timeline. Not that this is any kind of huge issue from where I sit... I'm just not in the habit of believing every "non mainstream" guy who comes along. So far very little evidence of anything... but they spent a lot of their time on his Missouri State University bona fides, and explaining why in his case, it doesn't mean he's a minor player.

Going back to the crackpot video. I take it there aren't aliens in it, right?

Edit - sorry, I confused the OP's crackpot thought about Eden being in Jerusalem with the more pedestrian notion that it's in the vicinity of Mesopotamia. So it's more of a "nothing new" video than a "wacky" video.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Almost 22 minutes in and they're getting to the Mesopotamian creation story... And yes, still old hat. How long until we get to the waters above and the waters below, and Marduk and Tiamat? I'm figuring they stretch this out another 5 minutes before moving on to something - anything - new...

Edit - okay, so Marduk and Tiamat weren't on-point... (come to think of it, they're from the first creation account, but are also mesopotamian in origin....) \but all sorts of other already well trodden ground is ... still waiting for anything on why he thinks Eden is where he thinks it is...

 

[PatsFanInVa]

So the moment anything original comes into play, the questions pop up:
- This chunk of eastern Arabia that this guy thinks is Dilmun... is it the only location for Dilmun? What's the reference he uses to establish Dilmun is the same as this area of eastern Arabia? Do we have, for example, some sign-post saying "Dilmun, Population ______" in Cuneiform? If Dilmun is well established to be where he wants it to be, fine.... but how do I know that it's not like "Springfield" in the U.S. - that is, one of many locations for "Dilmun"?
- Then the voiceover says it can only be reached by sea, which is clearly untrue; a sea crossing would be the fastest route, but it could be reached by land, unless we are postulating different coastlines which made this part of Arabia an island. And even so, this was not a sea voyage that should scare any seafaring people... and while civilizations like Sumer and Akkad traditionally spread up and down the rivers, it seems that Arabia being "exotic" to them is a stretch...

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Okay, so now the idea of "sailors' stories" gets shot down by the guy's later explanation (lower sea levels, it's all dry land...) I'm thinking I've never seen anybody say Eden's in Jerusalem, per the implication of the OP, and I'd assume -- even were I a biblical literalist -- that it was "to the East," as specified in Bereshit... and we know that the figure of Abraham comes from Mesopotamia. What's flooring me is the dueling and conflicting crap the guy throws at the wall at various point. First it's "sailors' stories," but now we find that it was all dry land in the first place. So, what happened to the "sailors' stories" concept? I suppose the story will change in the telling, post 5-6000 BCE, and sailors will retroactively make Dilmun a mythic paradise? Or the part of Dilmun they mean is underwater?

Edit - contradiction never explained.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Annnnd with an unexplained and unsupported relocation of Cush to Iran ("You have to know that!") we get the four waters joined some distance north of where this guy places Eden... no doubt so it can now be forever underwater, explaining why nobody else ever figured it out, and sponsoring the next grant for a diving party or three.

Welp, it's always been treated as a mystery. Doesn't look any closer to being solved. I don't want to piss and moan any more about this guy. He's spent his whole career on this stuff, but Jesus, a whole thread about "A guy thinks Dilmun is Eden," coming to the conclusion that it is what we thought it is in origin - one of two creation stories in Bereshit; saying "it's really about agriculture" is (again) a stretch; agriculture would be the impetus for telling the story (once again, making a lot of allowances for this guy's theory.) It just re-states the hunter/gatherer vs. farmer paradigm that's evident before his work and has been commented on before as a major theme elsewhere in the early part of the Hebrew bible.

However... shall we speculate too that the brain case was smaller before agriculture, allowing easier births? If not, where does this layer of the story come from?

What other questions do the biblical stories answer? Both, like the Gilgamesh snippets, answer the questions of how we were created and why we die. In the second, we get an explanation of why we have to work. It explains giving birth in much more pain than animals, again, in the 2nd biblical version. It explains why snakes slither and why we hate them and vice versa... just incidentally...

The problem with examining one progenitor story and saying "aha! Here's the real origin and therefore real meaning of everything!" ignores the other layers that flow into the text putatively being examined. Enjoyable speculation about a progenitor story, but highly speculative and very incomplete as an explanation of the biblical story.

I suppose the OP knew very little of what is treated as common knowledge among secular biblical scholars, and thought it would blow everybody's mind that there's a guy in Missouri who knows that the early Hebrew bible has roots in Mesopotamia, and that there's a great deal in the Hebrew bible about the conflict between hunter/gatherer and agricultural lifestyles.

Does the OP even know that this conflict is underscored repeatedly in the Torah, to such an extent that by the time we can identify the Hebrews as a people (and to talk about them with any certainty as a people, we have to go way forward in time, to the Exodus period, perhaps 13oo BCE,) they outlawed eating hunted game (as opposed to domesticated animals)?

So within the corpus of stories as told by the Hebrews, you have both hunter/gatherers and farmers living side-by-side for quite some time, with a clear preference for an agricultural life - it's what God prefers, by this time. In the Mesopotamian story, this guy identifies a longing for the "idyllic" hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which is fine - but this meaning only has faint echoes in the Hebrew text.

Yes, the man must make a living by "the sweat of his brow," but then again, in the Hebrew version, man's not even huntering, he's just gathering. In fact, in the first creation story it's specified that the plant kingdom is given to us and to animals as food, and the second creation story also says the food we eat comes from the trees, and does not mention hunting animals. Meat-eating is identified very early with only domesticated animals - Cain's a farmer, and Abel's a herdsman (we also see that Eve, if the text is to be believed, might be unaware of the role of sex in human reproduction, but that's another story).

The point is that nostalgia for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, whether or not it has later echoes in Mesopotamian stories, has another meaning entirely by the time the Hebrews are incorporating elements of the story. Still interesting, as all of it is -- but enormously simplified, particularly in this guy's (not original) conclusion that the story comes about roughly in synch with the introduction of agriculture. All he does is make an unwarranted leap to the claim that the question of creation is not important to the bible's second creation story, and that it is only told to explain the neolithic revolution.

 

[Greatest I am]

Whenever the lead-in to a history show features a guy who says "my rule is, if people think it's crazy it must be right," I'm just a-waitin' for the really bad speculation.

I'm watching the rest of this, because what the hell... however, when events within historical time are so much in doubt, I am wondering whence comes this certainty of the locale of a mythic layer of the bible, deep in antiquity.

I will say, however, that we can learn a lot by the question that creation myths are constructed to answer, any inconsistencies in them, etc. For example, the Jewish tradition is that Adam's first wife - "Male and female He created them" - is a different figure from the second wife, Eve, whom he fashioned from Adam's rib. Of course, what we have is two different accounts which were both retained. They were told in different places, and both had currency by the time the stories were being committed to writing.

Like I said, I'll give this a listen, but it strikes me that "evidence" is going to be along the lines of place names and the like, the sort of stuff that made some guy say that the "Danube" and the name "Denmark" prove that the tribe of Dan (one of the 10 lost tribes, and by implication, probably the other ones) settled Europe.

Thanks for this.

Eden aside, I agree that the why of their writings is way more important than any actual location for what began the myth.

I tend not to mix Jewish tradition with the Christian one.

To me, as a Gnostic Christian, the Jewish purpose for their myths is miles ahead og Christianity's.

Jews and Gnostic Christians are seekers after God while Christians and Muslims have settled for being idol worshipers and we can all see how much destruction and war that that causes.

Christians and Muslims should return to seeking God and scrap their immoral homophobic and misogynous idol.

If time permits, please listen to how we should all be reading and using myths to find God. God as defined as our best rules and laws to live by and write them in our hearts so that we can then all say that we are Gods. In truth, you and I are Gods. Let me explain after I put this link in.

-----------------

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

-----------------

Let me explain why you and I are Gods using Christian and Jewish myths.

This Gnostic Christian’s apology for calling myself God.

Adam and Eve became as Gods when they gained a moral sense and no longer had their mind cut off from intelligent thought. As our primordial ancestors, we inherit that same trait even though Christianity wrongly thinks that to be evil and a fall. Retaining dominion over the earth, humans never revoked this inherited trait of a moral sense, --- and the right for man to judge himself. Jesus highlights this when he took the seat of judgement at God’s right hand.

When I use terms like “I am God”, or “you are God”, I am not speaking of the traditional miracle working God of scriptures and myths. He does not exist as far as we can know as he has never made an appearance to prove his reality.

What I am trying to convey to you by saying that you are a God in your own right is to be master of yourself and you need not be a sheep. You can, as Jesus says, pick up your burdens and responsibilities for your sins and follow his mind set. Be a shepherd. Lead by example.

What I am trying to convey is that the only God you can ever know is the good you find within yourself. It's your ideal of God and of the Jesus or Christ mind. That is quite different from me or someone thinking they are the traditional creator God, or thinking that they are more than anyone else. Both Jesus and the Christ in these myths are for equality. Not the misogyny that we presently enjoy. That is another topic though. We are to be co-equal with Jesus.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Jesus would explain this concept as one just seeing that they have joined God’s Divine Council by embracing his own Christ mind. Or better said, as this is the more eastern Jesus, we activate our pineal gland and open our third eye.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

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

Regards

DL

 

[Greatest I am]

Good lord, I'm about 12 minutes into this (so far) pedestrian elevation of what appears to be a journeyman borderline crackpot... and they're just "discovering" that a good starting place is Mesopotamia...

Spoiler alert: Everybody knows that... including the authors of Bereshit, or "Genesis." If Abraham comes from Ur, and Ur is in Mesopotamia... even at the level of literal word-for-word belief, you are going to make your first stop Mesopotamia. I see what's coming of course... he's going to decide some locale in Jerusalem is being identified, therefore putting the creation stories forward on the timeline. Not that this is any kind of huge issue from where I sit... I'm just not in the habit of believing every "non mainstream" guy who comes along. So far very little evidence of anything... but they spent a lot of their time on his Missouri State University bona fides, and explaining why in his case, it doesn't mean he's a minor player.

Going back to the crackpot video. I take it there aren't aliens in it, right?

Edit - sorry, I confused the OP's crackpot thought about Eden being in Jerusalem with the more pedestrian notion that it's in the vicinity of Mesopotamia. So it's more of a "nothing new" video than a "wacky" video.

As Gardens of delight, all the city states would have had them. Do try to open your mind just a tad.

There are two issues here. One is where the original myth began and the other is how all the city states used a version of it.

Regards
DL

 

[PatsFanInVa]

As Gardens of delight, all the city states would have had them. Do try to open your mind just a tad.

Having a garden does not equate to identifying the location of "the" garden - which I think we'll both agree is an exercise in academic curiosity, really. As to "gardens of delight," I'll take you at your word that "everybody had them," if so, probably in imitation of the Babylonians (by the time of the recording of the Hebrew bible). But on it's face, that's like saying many large cities have parkland (if true,) that a reference to Central Park written in Washington should be read some centuries later as meaning the National Mall. Why would you do it - particularly if the writer said "Central Park, to the North"? So it seems unlikely to me that the "garden" is based on a place in Jerusalem, particularly since the text as recorded says it is "to the East."

The common bits in the second creation story in Bereshit and the Gilgamesh epic seem to be (1) a plant which confers immortality, and (2) a serpent which either (a) bids Eve to eat an associated plant (knowledge,) or (b) snatches immortality (the plant) from Gilgamesh. So as I said it is an interesting hypothesis on one aspect of Gilgamesh, but not that helpful in establishing the "hidden meaning" of the second biblical creation as being solely a longing for a pre-agricultural existence - there is only an echo of that existence in the Hebrew version, and the Hebrew bible consistently comes down on the side of agriculture as progress (in fact, associated with "holiness," when compared with hunting.)

There are two issues here. One is where the original myth began and the other is how all the city states used a version of it.

I missed that every local city-state used a version of a "Garden" creation story in the ancient near East, or for that matter, a Garden/"fall" story. I'd like to see that demonstrated, although it's not at all uncommon to have similar stories among nearby societies. I actually doubt that there's a meaningful list of societies that use a Garden/Creation story - if you mean a story about a garden, well, that's just not saying much.

If you mean that every city-state on earth had such stories, it doesn't pop up in the Norse creation, where some cosmic cow suckles Odin, for example. I doubt it's anything like a universal.

Okay, let me get back to your earlier post.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

Thanks for this.

Eden aside, I agree that the why of their writings is way more important than any actual location for what began the myth.

I tend not to mix Jewish tradition with the Christian one.

To me, as a Gnostic Christian, the Jewish purpose for their myths is miles ahead og Christianity's.

"I used to worship rocks. Now I worship clouds. It's amazing how my views have matured."

I tend to look at Judaism and various forms of Christianity as what they are, different historical/religious traditions. I don't tend to think of Judaism or Christianity or Islam as "ahead of" or "behind" one another; indeed, all I have observed is that any religious body with sufficient secular power tends to do nasty things with that power; however, so do secular bodies with sufficient secular power.

Jews and Gnostic Christians are seekers after God while Christians and Muslims have settled for being idol worshipers and we can all see how much destruction and war that that causes.

It causes destruction and war to believe that one's own faith "seeks God" while others are only idolators. You use precisely the logic of the two religions you're going after here.

Christians and Muslims should return to seeking God and scrap their immoral homophobic and misogynous idol.

Those Christians and Muslims who interpret homophobic and misogynist texts as part of an early era are in precisely the same boat as those Jews who do likewise.

I'll skip your Hillel-story, as I know it well.

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

There's a tension between literalism and interpretive reading in Christianity, with sporadic claims by one or another sect that they have the "true" interpretation (or the interpretation that isn't really an interpretation but is literal). On any close examination it does break down into interpretive exercise, and necessarily so.

Okay, so the next bit is fun and interesting, but I do not fully agree; nor I fear would most Christians. For my part, I simply don't agree with you, though it seems a harmless enough teaching. My own beliefs are similarly heterodox and similarly infected by a few ideas East of Eden, as the saying goes. We just differ.

However, a Christian could easily ask you why you need Christ in your interpretation in the first place. It would seem you'd be just fine without a pre-existent Jewish or Christian layer on which to hang your hat. What in your interpretation needs Jesus?

Let me explain why you and I are Gods using Christian and Jewish myths.

This Gnostic Christian’s apology for calling myself God.

Adam and Eve became as Gods when they gained a moral sense and no longer had their mind cut off from intelligent thought. As our primordial ancestors, we inherit that same trait even though Christianity wrongly thinks that to be evil and a fall. Retaining dominion over the earth, humans never revoked this inherited trait of a moral sense, --- and the right for man to judge himself. Jesus highlights this when he took the seat of judgement at God’s right hand.

When I use terms like “I am God”, or “you are God”, I am not speaking of the traditional miracle working God of scriptures and myths. He does not exist as far as we can know as he has never made an appearance to prove his reality.

What I am trying to convey to you by saying that you are a God in your own right is to be master of yourself and you need not be a sheep. You can, as Jesus says, pick up your burdens and responsibilities for your sins and follow his mind set. Be a shepherd. Lead by example.

What I am trying to convey is that the only God you can ever know is the good you find within yourself. It's your ideal of God and of the Jesus or Christ mind. That is quite different from me or someone thinking they are the traditional creator God, or thinking that they are more than anyone else. Both Jesus and the Christ in these myths are for equality. Not the misogyny that we presently enjoy. That is another topic though. We are to be co-equal with Jesus.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Jesus would explain this concept as one just seeing that they have joined God’s Divine Council by embracing his own Christ mind. Or better said, as this is the more eastern Jesus, we activate our pineal gland and open our third eye.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

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

Regards

DL

 

[Greatest I am]

"I used to worship rocks. Now I worship clouds. It's amazing how my views have matured."

I tend to look at Judaism and various forms of Christianity as what they are, different historical/religious traditions. I don't tend to think of Judaism or Christianity or Islam as "ahead of" or "behind" one another; indeed, all I have observed is that any religious body with sufficient secular power tends to do nasty things with that power; however, so do secular bodies with sufficient secular power.



It causes destruction and war to believe that one's own faith "seeks God" while others are only idolators. You use precisely the logic of the two religions you're going after here.



Those Christians and Muslims who interpret homophobic and misogynist texts as part of an early era are in precisely the same boat as those Jews who do likewise.

I'll skip your Hillel-story, as I know it well.



There's a tension between literalism and interpretive reading in Christianity, with sporadic claims by one or another sect that they have the "true" interpretation (or the interpretation that isn't really an interpretation but is literal). On any close examination it does break down into interpretive exercise, and necessarily so.

Okay, so the next bit is fun and interesting, but I do not fully agree; nor I fear would most Christians. For my part, I simply don't agree with you, though it seems a harmless enough teaching. My own beliefs are similarly heterodox and similarly infected by a few ideas East of Eden, as the saying goes. We just differ.

However, a Christian could easily ask you why you need Christ in your interpretation in the first place. It would seem you'd be just fine without a pre-existent Jewish or Christian layer on which to hang your hat. What in your interpretation needs Jesus?

Gnostic Christianity use Jesus for traditional and focusing reasons. We do not need him. He is a tool to help access our higher minds. That is all. It does happen that scribes put the right words in his mouth for us to use. This second link shows how that works.


Gnostic Christians are perpetual seekers after God. God here I define as the best laws and rules to live life with. We believe that those laws and rules, as Jesus said, are found in our minds/hearts.

I use the following to try to illustrate this notion. A bit of history and then a mindset and method to do what I promote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&list=PLCBF574D

The thinking shown below is the Gnostic Christian’s goal as taught by Jesus but know that any belief can be internalized to activate your higher mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbesfXXw&feature=player_embedded

This method and mind set is how you become I am and brethren to Jesus, in the esoteric sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdSVl_HOo8Y

When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human and a brethren to Jesus.

--------------------------

As to Eden, I ignore the East of Eden phrase as immaterial to why I think the Jewish temple or palace complex housed their garden of Eden or Garden of delight. As I stated in the O.P. I believe it was in Jerusalem thanks to the reference to the river Gihon.

We may never know but I am leaning to what Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou is thinking once I add in what Israel Finkelstein is showing.

Regards
DL

 

[PatsFanInVa]

I've never been impressed by Finkelstein. As to the river Gihon, which "encircles the land of Cush," that just depends where you think Cush is. I don't know why people who consistently referred to "Cush" as a foreign country would use it as a code for their own capital, or what rationale you use to put the Euphrates in Jerusalem even if you've convinced yourself that Gihon/Cush is -- that is, if you're using any of the famous "clues" about Eden.

"Locating" Eden looks like a fool's errand to me.

I was reminded of this thread when watching the history channel doing a series on myths. Every time there's a snake and a tree in a story together there's an "eerie parallel" to the Garden of Eden including, I **** you not, the Midgard Serpent surrounding the (Norse) Tree of Life. Also, Hercules suffered, died, then was resurrected as a God so, Jesus. I mean, I'm a big fan of the biblical flood story tracing back to Gilgamesh, obviously with very important differences. But descending the bibilical flood narrative from the Gilgamesh epic is a way easier sell than the second creation story.

Similarly, the Hercules/Jesus thing seems less impressive than the Horus elements incorporated into the Jesus infancy story; both, however, can be grafted onto the truly known life of a guy who was relatively unknown until age 30, when retelling his very brief "ministry" some decades later. It's not like people could Google that **** - we've got the infancy narrative in the Horus material, and the after-death stuff in the Hercules example, and both sets of stories would have been known to the tellers. In this case, it's a far different exercise of incorporating the life (as known) of Moses, so self-consciously that it's actually referenced in the text, then mixing it in with coexisting narratives about Hercules and Horus. Sort of like a modern tea party guy claiming that Ronald Reagan freed the slaves.

 

[Greatest I am]

I've never been impressed by Finkelstein. As to the river Gihon, which "encircles the land of Cush," that just depends where you think Cush is. I don't know why people who consistently referred to "Cush" as a foreign country would use it as a code for their own capital, or what rationale you use to put the Euphrates in Jerusalem even if you've convinced yourself that Gihon/Cush is -- that is, if you're using any of the famous "clues" about Eden.

"Locating" Eden looks like a fool's errand to me.

I was reminded of this thread when watching the history channel doing a series on myths. Every time there's a snake and a tree in a story together there's an "eerie parallel" to the Garden of Eden including, I **** you not, the Midgard Serpent surrounding the (Norse) Tree of Life. Also, Hercules suffered, died, then was resurrected as a God so, Jesus. I mean, I'm a big fan of the biblical flood story tracing back to Gilgamesh, obviously with very important differences. But descending the bibilical flood narrative from the Gilgamesh epic is a way easier sell than the second creation story.

Similarly, the Hercules/Jesus thing seems less impressive than the Horus elements incorporated into the Jesus infancy story; both, however, can be grafted onto the truly known life of a guy who was relatively unknown until age 30, when retelling his very brief "ministry" some decades later. It's not like people could Google that **** - we've got the infancy narrative in the Horus material, and the after-death stuff in the Hercules example, and both sets of stories would have been known to the tellers. In this case, it's a far different exercise of incorporating the life (as known) of Moses, so self-consciously that it's actually referenced in the text, then mixing it in with coexisting narratives about Hercules and Horus. Sort of like a modern tea party guy claiming that Ronald Reagan freed the slaves.

I agree that it is all about archetypes and that the myths are made up.

That does not take away from the notion that most city states had garden's of delight and that the Garden of Eden, to the Jews of the day, would have had theirs in Jerusalem.

I try to prove that there were many Gardens of Eden and that Christianity should not have changed the moral of the Jewish myth of our elevation to one of a fall.

Gaining knowledge is always good.

Regards
DL

 

[PatsFanInVa]

I agree that it is all about archetypes and that the myths are made up.

That does not take away from the notion that most city states had garden's of delight and that the Garden of Eden, to the Jews of the day, would have had theirs in Jerusalem.

I try to prove that there were many Gardens of Eden and that Christianity should not have changed the moral of the Jewish myth of our elevation to one of a fall.

Gaining knowledge is always good.

Regards
DL

Said like a true gnostic, if there is such a thing But you're simply wrong about the traditional Jewish notion of Eden: The disobedience to God (eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil), despite the clear hazard that God presents the mortals with, and despite many other mitigating factors, is still considered a sin. The story still answers questions like "why do we have to die?", "why do it hurt to give birth?" and "why I gotta work all the time?"

However, Christians use this and every other story in the Hebrew bible as a bulwark for the principle of salvation through belief in the man-god.

For a Jew hearing the story in David's time, it would be like "ohhhhhhh that makes sense, if you don't ask too many questions. Well, guess I'll go back to some more brow-sweaty work."

For a Christian using the story thousands of years later, it's like "This one thing right here done at the dawn of mankind makes you guilty from birth, so surprise - you need Jesus!" I mean, right there, from the get-go, before you even do anything, if you don't agree with these guys about your salvation, boom, hell.

I don't know how purveyors of "rugged individualism" also purvey the notion that a long-dead man-god has forgiven them their sins. Seems a bit off to me. I mean, I could see people who say "We're all in this together, let's help the poorest among us, etc." saying such a thing... they'd be admitting (really admitting) that they're as bad as the next guy and acting accordingly.

I just can't understand someone pointing at the "evil illegals," or "evil Muslims," or "evil anybody," if they in fact believe that they're bad from birth themselves.

I don't think many people really believe this, unless it is asked in a theological context - and even then, I think most take it as an opportunity to shout how saved they are and how you need to be saved too.

I'm interested to read up on some of the Jewish commentary on the expulsion from the garden. It seems like pretty fertile ground, no pun intended. That's another nice thing about Judaism: despite the names of the branches, there is no official orthodoxy. Even within the "Orthodox" they argue day and night about such things.

I wonder if there's an interpretation that it's more a "test" than a "sin." After all, they were right there with the trees. We have to assume that God hid himself from his own knowledge of the outcome, as in any theological cliff-hanger. Having done so, is he considering what is the best way for Man to be, by determining how vulnerable we are to temptation?

Is it as simple as "If you do it, meh, you should live this kind of life; if you don't do it, I'll be your "provider" forever"?

I wonder which if any of the commentators took this position.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

So thus far I find a lot of very interesting commentary, but none questioning the "setup" angle. It's all about hidden chronologies within the narrative, exegesis from the commandment not to eat of the tree, versus Adam's added "eat of or touch the tree," etc. I did stumble upon one interesting feature (for a comparative ignoramous like myself) of Rambam's (Maimonides') interpretation. He was famous for saying that if it doesn't happen in our world, it's allegory - he states that the whole story must be allegory, because snakes don't talk. Every internet atheist who derisively says "talking snakes!" definitely owes this guy.