What Do You Think?

[R. S. Martin]

I think Antlerman's love of music is idolotry and therefore evil.

 

So do I. When three-quarters of a thread is off-topic and a normally good guy says it's just a side-bar, well, I think he's intoxicated on something.

[Grandpa Harley]

Which good guy?

[R. S. Martin]

Which good guy?

 

I was responding to Legion Regalis's comment about Antlerman.

[Antlerman]

I think Antlerman's love of music is idolotry and therefore evil.

 

So do I. When three-quarters of a thread is off-topic and a normally good guy says it's just a side-bar, well, I think he's intoxicated on something.

It's it difficult for you when you can't control a conversation Ruby? I think if you look at the actual side bars here, it's less than 3 percent, and really not that off topic. I'm sorry this is so upsetting you this way. You should really try to relax a little about this. It's fine for someone to relax a little in an informal discussion such as this, and in fact helps the discussion.

 

A good leader Ruby does not slap people who don't follow the rules. The X-style of management went out over 50 years ago. Good leaders today create an atmosphere where people have the freedom to contribute through their own individuality. The end result is a much stronger product. Help me and others contribute to your topics by allowing us to be ourselves.

 

No one is derailing the topic, except perhaps in bringing up issues of control over others like this. I'm telling you as a friend that a sideways tone as above and trying to control me will drive me away quite quickly, and I don't want to see that happen. We're not living in the 1940's, and I see no benefit in trying to go back there.

 

Please help me feel free to contribute on my terms. I think I have a strong history of contributing quite a lot around here, don't you?

 

MWC, in a brief response to your post about defining Myth, I want to spend a lot more time on this. Quickly, for your consideration, when I hear the word "Myth" I see it as much more a function of language and ideas in common use, rather than tales of the supernatural, of gods and figures of superhuman status. The whole field of Semiotics and to me in particular Roland Barthes looks at sign, symbol, and myth usage in daily life:

 

Related to connotation is what Roland Barthes refers to as myth. We usually associate myths with classical fables about the exploits of gods and heroes. But for Barthes myths were the dominant ideologies of our time. In a departure from Hjelmslev's model Barthes argues that the orders of signification called denotation and connotation combine to produce ideology - which has been described (though not by Barthes) as a third order of signification (Fiske & Hartley 1978, 43; O'Sullivan et al. 1994, 287). In a very famous example from his essay 'Myth Today' (in Mythologies), Barthes illustrates this concept of myth:

 

I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier... In myth (and this is the chief peculiarity of the latter), the signifier is already formed by the signs of the language... Myth has in fact a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us...

 

One must put the biography of the Negro in parentheses if one wants to free the picture, and prepare it to receive its signified... The form does not suppress the meaning, it only impoverishes it, it puts it at a distance... It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth. The form of myth is not a symbol: the Negro who salutes is not the symbol of the French Empire: he has too much presence, he appears as a rich, fully experienced, spontaneous, innocent, indisputable image. But at the same time this presence is tamed, put at a distance, made almost transparent; it recedes a little, it becomes the accomplice of a concept which comes to it fully armed, French imperiality...

 

Myth is... defined by its intention... much more than by its literal sense... In spite of this, its intention is somehow frozen, purified, eternalized, made absent by this literal sense (The French Empire? It's just a fact: look at this good Negro who salutes like one of our own boys). This constituent ambiguity... has two consequences for the signification, which henceforth appears both like a notification and like a statement of fact... French imperiality condemns the saluting Negro to be nothing more than an instrumental signifier, the Negro suddenly hails me in the name of French imperiality; but at the same moment the Negro's salute thickens, becomes vitrified, freezes into an eternal reference meant to establish French imperiality...

 

We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature... In the case of the soldier-Negro... what is got rid of is certainly not French imperiality (on the contrary, since what must be actualized is its presence); it is the contingent, historical, in one word: fabricated, quality of colonialism. Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact. If I state the fact of French imperiality without explaining it, I am very near to finding that it is natural and goes without saying: I am reassured. In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions... Things appear to mean something by themselves...

 

(Barthes 1987)

Signs and codes are generated by myths and in turn serve to maintain them. Popular usage of the term 'myth' suggests that it refers to beliefs which are demonstrably false, but the semiotic use of the term does not necessarily suggest this. Myths can be seen as extended metaphors. Like metaphors, myths help us to make sense of our experiences within a culture (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 185-6). They express and serve to organize shared ways of conceptualizing something within a culture. Semioticians in the Saussurean tradition treat the relationship between nature and culture as relatively arbitrary (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 90, 95). For Barthes, myths serve the ideological function of naturalization (Barthes 1977, 45-6). Their function is to naturalize the cultural - in other words, to make dominant cultural and historical values, attitudes and beliefs seem entirely 'natural', 'normal', self-evident, timeless, obvious 'common-sense' - and thus objective and 'true' reflections of 'the way things are'.

 

<snip>

 

From here

 

This comes back to my other topics on Language and our sense of reality. So much to add, but my time is limited these days. Perhaps this weekend will allow me to form my thoughts a little better.. until then.. I'll just listen to these wonderful LP's. I'm listening to some Bach flute concertos right now. Rather pleasant to the soul.

[mwc]

MWC, in a brief response to your post about defining Myth, I want to spend a lot more time on this. Quickly, for your consideration, when I hear the word "Myth" I see it as much more a function of language and ideas in common use, rather than tales of the supernatural, of gods and figures of superhuman status. The whole field of Semiotics and to me in particular Roland Barthes looks at sign, symbol, and myth usage in daily life:

 

From here

 

This comes back to my other topics on Language and our sense of reality. So much to add, but my time is limited these days. Perhaps this weekend will allow me to form my thoughts a little better.. until then.. I'll just listen to these wonderful LP's. I'm listening to some Bach flute concertos right now. Rather pleasant to the soul.

Thanks for the link. I managed to read through that one page. For an introduction it was a bit of a heavy read but informative nonetheless.

 

One thing that I took away from this, and I don't think it was intentional on your part, was that it was mentioned more than once that proper interpretation relied on cultural context. Something that I (maybe awkwardly) have been trying to get across in part. Something I have stated as sort of a "man in the middle" situation among others in attempts to make my point.

 

On that web page (near the bottom) they show a picture of Marylin Monroe with this text:

At the denotative level this is a photograph of the movie star Marilyn Monroe. At a connotative level we associate this photograph with Marilyn Monroe's star qualities of glamour, sexuality, beauty - if this is an early photograph - but also with her depression, drug-taking and untimely death if it is one of her last photographs. At a mythic level we understand this sign as activating the myth of Hollywood: the dream factory that produces glamour in the form of the stars it constructs, but also the dream machine that can crush them - all with a view to profit and expediency. (Hayward 1996, 310)

As side note for those who didn't read the page they explain what the terms mean in detail but I think people can infer their meaning well enough so that I won't have to repeat them here.

 

Now imagine if you were to attempt this in 1000 years with this same image but with no name attached. We do attempt such things but they're pretty much meaningless. Pretty woman in photo. Maybe she's happy. Maybe not. We can invent any world we want for her to live in. The sky's the limit.

 

It's almost the same with these bible stories. We're lifting them out of their world and losing their context. Now did the person who borrowed the story do the same? That's now a story two times removed from its original setting. I know it really doesn't apply but could we say this is the "story" of the things like I quoted above from this recovered "thing?" Not likely. So a new "myth" could be built around it if we so choose.

 

I still think I'm explaining this poorly. I just find it odd that people are trying to tell people to look at these old stories to find meaning for today. These stories were written for those people in their world. If people wish to understand their stories, they need to understand those people in their world (the proper context). Then once that is done, the stories can be understood, and if they want to then take whatever meaning derived from the stories at that point and apply that to the modern world then so be it.

 

It just seems fruitless to do it any other way and I feel the link you sent me to leans towards a similar type of reasoning. Their first example about a French person understanding the Italian food advertisement but an actual Italian person not quite getting it because it is based, in part, on stereotypes in the French culture about what Italian is also is similar to what I am trying to say. The people in Babylon "got" the stories but the "captives" missed the point when they "borrowed" them because they didn't fully understand the culture. People today don't seem to understand any of the previous cultures so how can they possibly hope to extract the proper meaning from the stories? As I said before. Let's say the snake at one point represented "wisdom" but now that same snake represents (to many/most) "evil" or even "the devil/Satan" how can those two items ever be resolved?

 

I don't find this to be an "okay" situation. If the story/myth is to serve its purpose then we need to know what those symbols meant so that we can apply the lesson to our own lives. If the meaning of those symbols, or the story itself, gets corrupted then the lesson is also corrupted or lost. No Jews believe that the story of the garden is about the "fall" of mankind and yet most xians do. Something is wrong when this happens. Simply ignoring it and coming up with another "solution" doesn't seem like a solution at all.

 

Well, that was, as usual quite long. Take your time reading it and getting back with me. I'm in no rush. Seems this thread had been "abandoned" by the owner anyway.

 

mwc

[Grandpa Harley]

Did anyone read Miller's essay on myth in 'Dark Knight Returns'? He said that he wanted to write a 'Gottendamerung' style ending, showing the Superheroes (the 'Gods') in their twilight... atavisms out of time, but still with power... then he wrote Year One... the beginning now has the context of the end... it worked with the North Gods... all the stories told are contextualised by the end myth... In the case of the Jesus myth, the end is the 'ultimate' sacrifice. The nature of the end 'qualifies' the rest.

[Antlerman]

Thanks for the link. I managed to read through that one page. For an introduction it was a bit of a heavy read but informative nonetheless.

 

One thing that I took away from this, and I don't think it was intentional on your part, was that it was mentioned more than once that proper interpretation relied on cultural context. Something that I (maybe awkwardly) have been trying to get across in part. Something I have stated as sort of a "man in the middle" situation among others in attempts to make my point.

 

On that web page (near the bottom) they show a picture of Marylin Monroe with this text:

At the denotative level this is a photograph of the movie star Marilyn Monroe. At a connotative level we associate this photograph with Marilyn Monroe's star qualities of glamour, sexuality, beauty - if this is an early photograph - but also with her depression, drug-taking and untimely death if it is one of her last photographs. At a mythic level we understand this sign as activating the myth of Hollywood: the dream factory that produces glamour in the form of the stars it constructs, but also the dream machine that can crush them - all with a view to profit and expediency. (Hayward 1996, 310)

As side note for those who didn't read the page they explain what the terms mean in detail but I think people can infer their meaning well enough so that I won't have to repeat them here.

 

Now imagine if you were to attempt this in 1000 years with this same image but with no name attached. We do attempt such things but they're pretty much meaningless. Pretty woman in photo. Maybe she's happy. Maybe not. We can invent any world we want for her to live in. The sky's the limit.

 

It's almost the same with these bible stories. We're lifting them out of their world and losing their context. Now did the person who borrowed the story do the same? That's now a story two times removed from its original setting. I know it really doesn't apply but could we say this is the "story" of the things like I quoted above from this recovered "thing?" Not likely. So a new "myth" could be built around it if we so choose.

I’m making the time this morning to make a better response as I have some thoughts I need to get out on this topic. (Sits down with a cup of coffee and puts on a Bach Cantata to listen to, ironically grabbing Cantata 147 randomly out of my collection )

 

I was thinking about this last night and I think we are both having difficulty talking about what we’re seeing surrounding this myth of the Garden and the “Fall of Man”. I appreciate very much everything you’re saying and understand it myself, having found digging out the original contexts of these myths adds a layer of depth and meaning to it that goes way beyond the “adopted” meanings in a contemporary setting. Please bear with me as I try to lay this out. It may get lengthy.

 

What I have been looking at, comparing myth to music (and hence the aside anecdotes about my love of music in this conversation for those who couldn’t catch the connections), is that there is personal meaning in looking at myth that can be gained, on very much the same level as one finds personal meaning from art, poetry, and music.

 

Where my focus on this has been failing is in recognizing the greater reality of myth in how it goes beyond just personal understanding, into the realm of a greater cultural understanding. Culturally, we are taught that art is a personal experience. It’s permissible to interpret art in whatever way it speaks to us. Art comes from an individual, and therefore individuals respond to it on an individual basis. This is where I brought up my own music and how people may “see” many different things in it. (for those curious to hear some of those for the purpose of context: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=10097 )

 

Myths on the other hand are understood collectively. Myths are a collective creation of a culture, and not the creation of an individual. Understanding myth on an individual basis is frowned upon if it deviates from the norm. In this regard it is unlike art. Societies create and protect the myths that come from itself. Myths are the language of the culture, and consequently much less so the language of any one individual. That people derive meaning from it on an individual basis is fine, so long as it works closely within the greater context of the culture who shares that interpretation.

 

To what you’ve been talking about the Jew’s lifting the original story: There is a difference between what probably happened with the Jews in Babylon, and how the Christian Church co-opted the myth for themselves.

 

The adopting of a cultural myth:

 

A wedding dress is traditionally white in one culture to symbolize purity. White however in other cultures signifies death. Now imagine a culture that wears black at weddings is taken captive and made to live with the white-dress culture. Over time, a natural progression occurs that traditions, including values and their supporting mythologies, begin to be practiced by those cultures who have been assimilated into it.

 

Over time, the practice of wearing a white dress starts occurring. Except here’s the catch: In order to for those cultures to maintain some of their original identity, these stories and traditions become “adopted” to fit that culture. White doesn’t mean necessarily “purity”, but something in between that can be acceptable to them. White is adopted to mean: “Set apart”, or something like this.

 

Now here’s what I was driving at in my focus. This dress tradition now has a new cultural significance. It will carry the same force of cultural language for them, as its predecessor did for the cultural it originated from in a slightly different form. Again, myth and traditions are the collective language of cultures, and not individuals. To create a new, completely unique myth as I think I recall you suggesting at some point, is not something that happens naturally.

 

I see all this more from a perspective of “memetic evolution”: Ideas being an almost living, breathing organism that is given life and evolves like other biological organisms on the shoulders of human societies. This is why to say, “Spit on the Bible” is taken with such offense by people. They collectively protect those traditions and myths that are the supporting language of identity of the culture they find shelter within.

 

The Christian adoption of the story of the Fall however is another matter. Unlike a natural evolution of myth being adopted from one culture into another culture in a slightly different form, the Christian adaptation was hugely a political manipulation. These myth stories were force fit. Like Grandpa Harley points out in his post preceding this one that the end myth is what seems to be at the heart of their reinterpreting the myth before it. They needed to get these various factions of Christological mystery cults scattered about the empire to be gathered under one authority. This is not a case of Cosmopolitan assimilation of cultures and their myths, its one of a political marketing manipulation for the purpose of control of these groups.

 

The whole Fall of Man is a creation that supports the end myth, and the Jews themselves don’t look at it like the Christians do. Unfortunately, for people like us who learned to interpret it through the lens of a Christian reading, it is difficult to pick it up and see it differently. It actually takes a conscious effort to remove prior training to see it objectively. It would be the same for the Jew to try to understand it from a Christian perspective. Now imagine a staunch believer who reads it? To him, everyone else is nuts, it’s so clear to them!

 

Now to where you and I are looking at this from different angles: The majority of people who adopt these myths are doing so because they are looking for answers. This is how it works in cultures. The “deeper truths” that interest people like you or me (probably the majority who participate in these discussions), are something they prefer to actually avoid. If you look too closely at it, you may find yourself moving much further into the realm of “personal meaning”, and that act may lead to a break from the collective understand of the myth, and consequently that dreaded state of alienation for them! Most people are more interested in staying close to the herd.

 

When you open up the surrounding cultures to understand the myth in a deeper light, you are in essence doing what I talked about with music. This is moving away from the collective ownership of myth, into the individual appreciation. It’s functioning on a different level. This is what happened to me as I was going through Bible College. I found myself far more engrossed with the surrounding context, and seeing value in that, rather than using it in the context of my surrounding culture. I just couldn’t “dumb it down” to follow along with the herd. I guess it comes down to personality types?

 

I’ll leave it a this for now.

 

Well, that was, as usual quite long. Take your time reading it and getting back with me. I'm in no rush. Seems this thread had been "abandoned" by the owner anyway.

 

mwc

I’ve enjoyed my coffee and music while typing this. I hope that my light-heartedness intermixed in this discussion hasn’t been too distracting to others. I didn’t expect that it would be met with such dissatisfaction. That’s really unfortunate.

[Grandpa Harley]

Ref wedding dresses... In Hong Kong white is for funerals and red/gold for weddings.

[NotBlinded]

Case in point. Who decides this? Campbell? Why? Because he doesn't believe in talking snakes and magical trees? Since he doesn't then it must mean something different than what is written? That's a bit presumptuous of him. The author could have read/heard the story and thought that this is the real deal. This is how it happened. These aren't symbols at all. Now here we are 2500 years later and it's symbolic since people don't like the literal version. Now we just need to find concepts that fit the symbols that we can live with and we're good to go. So it really doesn't matter what was written since we're just filling in things as we see fit. The original author may have sat down and wrote a line by line history but now it's somehow myth and those symbols that had no meaning coming out of his hand suddenly are dripping with meaning that was never there. Why? Just because.

 

Just like people attributed, wrongly, the wars to Tolkien they are attributing "myth" to the garden author. We don't know he had myth in mind but myth it has suddenly become. He may have written for another purpose which is why in my post to Antlerman I pointed out that maybe I wasn't using the proper terms. Perhaps it's fable or some other thing? It's not meant to be redone for each new generation. It is what it is and we are to derive a meaning from it but we also know it has been edited (badly) and that meaning is long gone. I'd like to know it is an "allegory" or myth before trying to derive some deeper meaning from it in its "broken" state.

 

Since the Jews kept their midrash from their holy writings it seems reasonable to think they thought this literal but I don't know if it was always that way or how far back that tradition goes. Perhaps early on they were mixed and this is midrash on something else? I really don't know.

Hi mwc!

 

First I just want to say that it really doesn't matter if they thought it was a literal snake or not. Would it have mattered if Tolkien had thought that everything in the Lord of Rings actually happened? Would it have changed the impact on a person's psyche through the story line?

 

You know, the other morning (about 4:40 am), I suddenly woke up with this on my mind. It was like I was in the middle of a thought process even in sleep. That sucked!

 

Anyway, if someone saw a correspondence to the war maybe it's because they got the same feeling from it? Even if it wasn't meant to be in anyway related, this person (or person) felt the same feeling.

 

I am trying to think of that mythical squid looking thing that someone wrote about??? These stories were changed also over the years and if I remember correctly, the author didn't really care as long as it invoked the same response in the reader. Oh well...started with a C...Catulus or something.

 

Next, do you really think that the originator of the story believed in a talking snake? The people he told it to may have believed it, but do you honest think the very first person to originate the story did? Where they insane or brilliant? Now, when we get to the author, I agree that they just may have thought it was factual. But, that doesn't take away from the inward experience of the myth...true or not.

 

Campbell has said in his books that he believes they believed but they just didn't understand the metaphoric language. Yes, I think they also believed and many do. But I just can't think that the person who first told about Jonah being in the belly of a whale for three days actually believed it to be true. There are too many other stories of people going away and then returning a new person throughout all myths to think that it actually happened this time and Jonah himself believed it. He was probably telling what his experience was like, metaphorically.

 

Frustrating aren't I?

I think you'd be worse if we actually ended up agreeing on this.

 

mwc

 

I think we agree more than we disagree.

[NotBlinded]

I think Antlerman's love of music is idolotry and therefore evil.

 

There, topic back on track.

[Grandpa Harley]

Gaius Valerius Catullus, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, or Gaius Lutatius Catulus

 

Catulus is the one who wrote 'I'm going to fuck you the arse and make you give me head' in Latin...

[NotBlinded]

Now imagine if you were to attempt this in 1000 years with this same image but with no name attached. We do attempt such things but they're pretty much meaningless. Pretty woman in photo. Maybe she's happy. Maybe not. We can invent any world we want for her to live in. The sky's the limit.

 

It's almost the same with these bible stories. We're lifting them out of their world and losing their context. Now did the person who borrowed the story do the same? That's now a story two times removed from its original setting. I know it really doesn't apply but could we say this is the "story" of the things like I quoted above from this recovered "thing?" Not likely. So a new "myth" could be built around it if we so choose.

 

I still think I'm explaining this poorly. I just find it odd that people are trying to tell people to look at these old stories to find meaning for today. These stories were written for those people in their world. If people wish to understand their stories, they need to understand those people in their world (the proper context). Then once that is done, the stories can be understood, and if they want to then take whatever meaning derived from the stories at that point and apply that to the modern world then so be it.

 

It just seems fruitless to do it any other way and I feel the link you sent me to leans towards a similar type of reasoning. Their first example about a French person understanding the Italian food advertisement but an actual Italian person not quite getting it because it is based, in part, on stereotypes in the French culture about what Italian is also is similar to what I am trying to say. The people in Babylon "got" the stories but the "captives" missed the point when they "borrowed" them because they didn't fully understand the culture. People today don't seem to understand any of the previous cultures so how can they possibly hope to extract the proper meaning from the stories? As I said before. Let's say the snake at one point represented "wisdom" but now that same snake represents (to many/most) "evil" or even "the devil/Satan" how can those two items ever be resolved?

I agree that a cultural understanding must be a part of the overall comprehension.

 

I don't find this to be an "okay" situation. If the story/myth is to serve its purpose then we need to know what those symbols meant so that we can apply the lesson to our own lives. If the meaning of those symbols, or the story itself, gets corrupted then the lesson is also corrupted or lost. No Jews believe that the story of the garden is about the "fall" of mankind and yet most xians do. Something is wrong when this happens. Simply ignoring it and coming up with another "solution" doesn't seem like a solution at all.

Is that all you've been trying to say? hehehe

 

I agree, the symbols used of ancient times need to be understood but in a connotative way. Let's take Jonah for instance...today, we could have a story about a person that felt out of place in society so he gives up on everything. He has endured such hardships, that he has lost his "soul". This person goes and lives in the streets and encounters something that turns his life around and he realizes that his entire life was spent in fear and running away. He "awakens" and returns to society to tell others about his experience. This is what Campbell calls the "boon" at the end of the hero's journey.

 

But you see, once these symbols are understood (yes in cultural, connotative context), they are very similar thoughout the many mythologies and even movies of today. The "denotative" qualities change, but the "connotative" qualities remain.

 

In today's society, the symbology shouldn't be explained. Like Star Wars for instance. Nobody really tells us the meaning in these stories, but we can sense it. Star Wars was influenced with Campbell's understanding of mythology and I know I don't do him justice when I bring him in the converstations.

 

[NotBlinded]

Gaius Valerius Catullus, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, or Gaius Lutatius Catulus

 

Catulus is the one who wrote 'I'm going to fuck you the arse and make you give me head' in Latin...

Okay...no, that wasn't it!

[R. S. Martin]

Seems this thread had been "abandoned" by the owner anyway.

 

mwc

 

Yes, the original owner of this thread has abandoned it. But it looks like folks have taken up where they left off. Glad to see it.

[mwc]

First I just want to say that it really doesn't matter if they thought it was a literal snake or not. Would it have mattered if Tolkien had thought that everything in the Lord of Rings actually happened? Would it have changed the impact on a person's psyche through the story line?

If the snake was a real snake then the story was literally true and it's more a science story than anything. Snakes walked and talked and now they don't. This would be an important thing to know really. If this didn't literally happen then this story as literal science can be dismissed and we can move past it. In America today we are still fighting this very battle. 2500+ years later and this battle is still being waged. I would say it is vitally important to know whether or not this snake is a literal snake or not once and for all.

 

But that's just me I guess. If we could at least take the story out of the land of the literal into the land of the "myth" (in the broad term at this point) I think that could be a good start. Not just for this conversation but for everyone and everything. Start with snake, then the flood, Moses and on through...just like the minimalist camp is doing in Israel today. Though, that's a topic for another day.

 

You know, the other morning (about 4:40 am), I suddenly woke up with this on my mind. It was like I was in the middle of a thought process even in sleep. That sucked!

I'm glad this happens to others around here too. Why can't I get this to happen with one of those billion dollar ideas? Or at least where I put that stupid vacuum cleaner belt I bought a few months back? Grrr.

 

I am trying to think of that mythical squid looking thing that someone wrote about??? These stories were changed also over the years and if I remember correctly, the author didn't really care as long as it invoked the same response in the reader. Oh well...started with a C...Catulus or something.

After reading what GH said I'm not even going to try guessing at what you're trying to say here. It invoked quite a few "mythical" images.

 

Next, do you really think that the originator of the story believed in a talking snake? The people he told it to may have believed it, but do you honest think the very first person to originate the story did? Where they insane or brilliant? Now, when we get to the author, I agree that they just may have thought it was factual. But, that doesn't take away from the inward experience of the myth...true or not.

Here's where we are going to disagree. Maybe I'll do better explaining today (it could happen). Since this thread is technically about good and evil and this led to the whole discussion of the fall and the garden to begin with it seemed only right to focus on that story. This is about where the topic turned into this broader discussion on myths and so on.

 

Thinking about all this had me looking at the "broken" concept of the story. For example, I have noted that in most ancient symbolism the snake represent "wisdom" which was also the goddess Asherah (known by many names). The "Tree of Life" is also associated with this same god and it's likely that the Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil) could very well be her too. So in one small story there are three symbols of the same goddess in different forms. So read the story and replace those symbols with "her" and see how it reads. Now the story is awkward. Something is "off." Adam and Eve couldn't go near the Tree of KoGaE (Asherah) but the snake (Asherah) says to go ahead and take from the tree (Asherah). They do. God gets mad and tosses them from the garden so they couldn't partake of the Tree of Life (Asherah) and makes the snake (Asherah) crawl forever. Yes, the items could be different aspects of the same deity but it normally didn't work quite that way. That's usually when the gods had sex and the babies were these attributes. There are just too many things that are one deity in this story. It's confusing and if this is a myth it seems hopelessly corrupt.

 

How could anyone really interpret this properly? Remembering that these symbols had to mean something to these people back then. We could simply forget all that and say "Well, what does the story mean to us now?" And that could be valid but that would mean let's simply do away with the entire context. Plucking the story out of the bible, as if in a vacuum, and looking at it that way. If we don't we must deal with it as is. In the context it is in. Is it a struggle between good and evil? Is it something else entirely? Knowing that will tell us how to apply it to our lives today if we so choose.

 

As I pointed out in the quote from Proverbs, it seems that not everyone thought that "wisdom" was a bad thing. They equated "wisdom" and "Tree of Life" so if the time periods and locales are about the same we can tie those two symbols together. Which means that A&E were tossed from the garden so they couldn't have access to "wisdom." That's quite a negative thing to say about YHWH if you think about it. He doesn't want us to have access to wisdom. But people see this story and read "Tree of Life" not as "wisdom" as the author of Proverbs did but as "eternal life" when the two are not related at all. A&E never had eternal life in their grasp and the people 2500 years ago would have never thought that. They let wisdom slip through their fingers. But then this begs the question of "What then is the knowledge of good and evil if not wisdom?" They listened to wisdom in the form of the snake and gained one form of knowledge but lost access to another. Do you see how the metaphor, myth, allegory or whatever name we want to stick to this thing no longer seems to convey a coherent message because someone along the way didn't understand one or more symbols? Maybe it's me? But reading Genesis against the probably older Proverbs I think it was the author of Genesis who decided to alter the story to try to make a different point (something to do with his god being super great or something...I don't really know because he did a poor job when he borrowed the story...he wrecked what was probably a meaningful myth and now we're stuck trying to polish a turd...see I do get this).

 

Campbell has said in his books that he believes they believed but they just didn't understand the metaphoric language. Yes, I think they also believed and many do. But I just can't think that the person who first told about Jonah being in the belly of a whale for three days actually believed it to be true. There are too many other stories of people going away and then returning a new person throughout all myths to think that it actually happened this time and Jonah himself believed it. He was probably telling what his experience was like, metaphorically.

Tell that to Jonah. He believed it when he came out of the giant fish and had to tell those poor people why he was so stinky.

 

Too bad that story, like so many others, reads very Canaanite (and therefore pagan...non-literal) to me. It's also incomplete. Go read it.

 

Anyhow, if I'm right and it is of a pagan origin but with Jewish-isms plopped over the top of it in some attempt to "fix it up," then it is just a symbolic story more than likely dealing with some natural cycle. This will also relate to what I've been saying as well. What is that cycle? We can guess but we can never know because it has been lost in the "update." There's some "new" message that has been poorly overlaid on top. Maybe the original message wouldn't be worth anything to us and it doesn't matter that it is lost. Maybe, beyond the "nature" message the "myth" to do with the gods would have blown our minds. Too bad. It's gone. Now we've got the story of a giant fish and Jonah. What does it mean? That you better not cross YHWH 'cuz he'll come get ya! Oooh! Deep. Later it will mean that jesus can pop out of his hole nice and fresh after 3 days (give or take). Believe it or go to hell! Neat. So the interpretation of the later story is just dandy. I think knowing the sun will go away for awhile, or something like that, would have been a better thing to have Jonah tell everyone. It's truly universal and applies even today. And it keeps the message in the same vein as the original myth...just reinterpreted for the "modern" culture to utilize. Not butchered with the intent lost forever.

 

I think we agree more than we disagree.

I disagree.

 

mwc

[Legion]

As I pointed out in the quote from Proverbs, it seems that not everyone thought that "wisdom" was a bad thing. They equated "wisdom" and "Tree of Life" so if the time periods and locales are about the same we can tie those two symbols together. Which means that A&E were tossed from the garden so they couldn't have access to "wisdom." That's quite a negative thing to say about YHWH if you think about it. He doesn't want us to have access to wisdom. But people see this story and read "Tree of Life" not as "wisdom" as the author of Proverbs did but as "eternal life" when the two are not related at all. A&E never had eternal life in their grasp and the people 2500 years ago would have never thought that. They let wisdom slip through their fingers. But then this begs the question of "What then is the knowledge of good and evil if not wisdom?" They listened to wisdom in the form of the snake and gained one form of knowledge but lost access to another. Do you see how the metaphor, myth, allegory or whatever name we want to stick to this thing no longer seems to convey a coherent message because someone along the way didn't understand one or more symbols? Maybe it's me? But reading Genesis against the probably older Proverbs I think it was the author of Genesis who decided to alter the story to try to make a different point (something to do with his god being super great or something...I don't really know because he did a poor job when he borrowed the story...he wrecked what was probably a meaningful myth and now we're stuck trying to polish a turd...see I do get this).

MWC, this is well written and I am following you for a good portion of it. Then somewhere in there I get lost. I hope that you will expand on this some more.

[Antlerman]

Now we've got the story of a giant fish and Jonah. What does it mean? That you better not cross YHWH 'cuz he'll come get ya! Oooh! Deep. Later it will mean that jesus can pop out of his hole nice and fresh after 3 days (give or take). Believe it or go to hell! Neat.

[mwc]

As I pointed out in the quote from Proverbs, it seems that not everyone thought that "wisdom" was a bad thing. They equated "wisdom" and "Tree of Life" so if the time periods and locales are about the same we can tie those two symbols together. Which means that A&E were tossed from the garden so they couldn't have access to "wisdom." That's quite a negative thing to say about YHWH if you think about it. He doesn't want us to have access to wisdom. But people see this story and read "Tree of Life" not as "wisdom" as the author of Proverbs did but as "eternal life" when the two are not related at all. A&E never had eternal life in their grasp and the people 2500 years ago would have never thought that. They let wisdom slip through their fingers. But then this begs the question of "What then is the knowledge of good and evil if not wisdom?" They listened to wisdom in the form of the snake and gained one form of knowledge but lost access to another. Do you see how the metaphor, myth, allegory or whatever name we want to stick to this thing no longer seems to convey a coherent message because someone along the way didn't understand one or more symbols? Maybe it's me? But reading Genesis against the probably older Proverbs I think it was the author of Genesis who decided to alter the story to try to make a different point (something to do with his god being super great or something...I don't really know because he did a poor job when he borrowed the story...he wrecked what was probably a meaningful myth and now we're stuck trying to polish a turd...see I do get this).

MWC, this is well written and I am following you for a good portion of it. Then somewhere in there I get lost. I hope that you will expand on this some more.

Yeah, what was I trying to say?

 

Briefly Asherah was a fertility goddess and was known by many names, many symbols and in many cultures. So depending on when and/or where something was written, and its context, would determine which names and/or symbols were used in the stories to reference her. A few examples of things that I am personally aware of being used for the various forms of Asherah are snakes (including a bronze serpent), poles, and trees (usually palms).

 

That's the basic setup. More specifically we can head into the Proverbs where "wisdom" is personified as female. She has two hands. The right hand has "length of days" (long life) and the left has riches and honor. She is a "Tree of Life" and everyone is happy who keeps her.

 

Contrast that usage of the word with this one that is just a few verses before "7 Put no high value on your wisdom: let the fear of the Lord be before you, and keep yourself from evil:" It's not part of the same poem. Wisdom isn't personified. It's not valued. It's almost ugly. After that poem the usage is similar to this. Flat. Boring. Literal. Wisdom has gone from being a beautiful woman to a stale, rational, object.

 

It's my belief that the YHWH cult didn't appreciate/understand/<something> the Asherah/pagan cults. This means that the garden story, which I think also comes from a pagan source is missing its "essence" just as the "essence" of the surrounding part of the Proverbs are also missing because the author simply didn't have the ability to duplicate the work beyond the poem in that one section. This means the meaning of the Genesis story is corrupt.

 

So in the Genesis story we have Adam and Eve, the snake, the Tree of Knowledge and after A&E get evicted the Tree of Life is revealed. If we are to use symbols to help decipher this message then the symbols should have a fairly clear meaning (see the Proverb). But looking at the Genesis players we already have two items that are known to be Asherah (the snake and the Tree of Life). I also did some reading and it's possible that the Hebrew word for Eve was also used for Asherah at some point so there are now three symbols that are the same goddess but I'll just leave that one alone for now. So A&E are told by YHWH to not eat from the ToK (Tree of Knowledge) because they will die but the snake (Asherah/"wisdom") tells them to go ahead and eat it because they won't die.

 

If we refer to Proverbs here for a second we can see that wisdom and long life are related. So in the Genesis tale wisdom tells A&E that the knowledge won't kill them. Proverbs says that doing what they are about to do is actually a good thing and it should bring them happiness. That is giving in to the wisdom of the gods. Long life, riches and honor await them. That sounds like something I'd want.

 

But YHWH gives them something quite different. They get the knowledge of "Good and Evil" (whatever that is...we supposedly have it) alright but he curses the snake ("wisdom"...perhaps a "wrong" kind of wisdom...so we would need to know what "forms" it could take) and he removes A&E from her presence in the garden so that they can't have long life (which is also Asherah in the form of the Tree of Life). They lived very longs lives so perhaps the author took this to mean eternal life or a long life to him was an extremely long time (I imagine equal to that of a god whatever that is). They don't get riches. They are shamed in their nudity so there's no honor in their actions. It's all the opposite of what Asherah said it would be. Of course looking at it from the point of view of an Asherah follower the god YHWH is anti-wisdom, anti-knowledge, anti-life and anti-you really. He's totalitarian and he cursed your god in his writings on top of all that.

 

It's a propaganda piece against the Asherah cult but the multiple uses of the Asherah symbols requires that we know what the symbols mean in the various contexts in order to interpret the message. Asherah as Eve. Asherah as the snake. Asherah as the Tree of Life. Are there other occurrences of her I'm missing? Is this too many uses? It's unlikely that YHWH was her initial foe so who was it? Ba'al? El? Knowledge like this might clarify the story a bit.

 

As it is the story has been altered from the one in Proverbs, which is partaking of wisdom will bring you long life, riches and honor, to just the opposite. Obedience to YHWH, The Law and his representatives is what matters. I'd say that's a major corruption of the myth.

 

Does that clarify things any?

 

mwc

[Legion]

Thanks for trying to clarify that for me MWC. To be honest though, what I mainly take away from it is that you feel that the original meaning of the myth has been lost or corrupted. It makes me feel vaguely sad and disappointed.

[mwc]

Thanks for trying to clarify that for me MWC. To be honest though, what I mainly take away from it is that you feel that the original meaning of the myth has been lost or corrupted. It makes me feel vaguely sad and disappointed.

That's exactly how I feel. In creating their own version of story that another was lost...possibly forever. I don't know if it was better or worse than what we have now but based on what insight Proverbs provides I would say it is probably the "better" version that was destroyed. The clash between, very broadly, independence ("wisdom" as a path to betterment) versus dependence ("YHWH"/the temple system/the Law as the path)...just like every other time the better organized, and vocal, group won out over the "better" ideal. It just gets more confusing when the "jesus" symbol gets tossed into to replaced "wisdom" later on.

 

mwc

[mwc]

I’m making the time this morning to make a better response as I have some thoughts I need to get out on this topic. (Sits down with a cup of coffee and puts on a Bach Cantata to listen to, ironically grabbing Cantata 147 randomly out of my collection )

My selection this morning is "White noise" by Computer Fans. It's a favorite of mine.

 

Please bear with me as I try to lay this out. It may get lengthy.

I just found this funny. Have you never seen my posts?

 

Where my focus on this has been failing is in recognizing the greater reality of myth in how it goes beyond just personal understanding, into the realm of a greater cultural understanding. Culturally, we are taught that art is a personal experience. It’s permissible to interpret art in whatever way it speaks to us. Art comes from an individual, and therefore individuals respond to it on an individual basis. This is where I brought up my own music and how people may “see” many different things in it. (for those curious to hear some of those for the purpose of context: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=10097 )

I didn't notice the link until just now so I went over and gave your album a quick run through. I have to admit it's not my kind of music but I did like the second and the last song. I'll have to go back and give it a more thorough listen later on just to be fair (trying to cram it in just so I can be familiar with it to respond to this message just seemed wrong but I didn't want to ignore it either).

 

Myths on the other hand are understood collectively. Myths are a collective creation of a culture, and not the creation of an individual. Understanding myth on an individual basis is frowned upon if it deviates from the norm. In this regard it is unlike art. Societies create and protect the myths that come from itself. Myths are the language of the culture, and consequently much less so the language of any one individual. That people derive meaning from it on an individual basis is fine, so long as it works closely within the greater context of the culture who shares that interpretation.

 

To what you’ve been talking about the Jew’s lifting the original story: There is a difference between what probably happened with the Jews in Babylon, and how the Christian Church co-opted the myth for themselves.

Here we are starting to agree. I think myths are "bigger" even though they can be interpreted by the individual as you say. I went and experienced a myth yesterday at the theater: Spiderman 3 (I think comic books and the like are modern myths but that's a whole other aspect and probably another topic altogether). But as I watched it I did think about this conversation and how if people didn't understand the context they could think this was a literal telling of some story or they could miss the allegory/mythic aspect of the story and just watch a live action cartoon. It could go either way...probably the latter. If it further touches a chord within a person then it will be, as you say, more like an individual interpretation like a painting at that point. My point would be "What if they spliced in the wrong real, or redubbed the movie with the wrong words?" Then no one could understand it at any level. It's all lost. Even poorly done movies leave the audience wondering these things. But that's neither here nor there.

 

The Jews, when they were in Babylon, got some ideas. They then "mocked" their captors in some of the stories (ie. the "Tower of Babel" story) but it is after that when the "prophets" go after the evil Ba'al worshipers and the like that we see things along the lines of later xianity occurs in Judaism. They actively kill off their opposition with the help of the kings in order to have Judaism be *the* religion. The books reflect editing so that YHWH is the supreme being. The books mention that symbols to other deities (I mentioned the bronze serpent of Asherah) in the temple (of YHWH) was destroyed. If the land was purely monotheistic from day one this wouldn't have happened. It was a cleansing just like the cleansing that occurred in the Roman empire later on. It's just not as well known. It's likely a similar thing happened again, on a smaller scale, around the time of the Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE. With disruptions like this the "flow" wasn't very organic.

 

Now here’s what I was driving at in my focus. This dress tradition now has a new cultural significance. It will carry the same force of cultural language for them, as its predecessor did for the cultural it originated from in a slightly different form. Again, myth and traditions are the collective language of cultures, and not individuals. To create a new, completely unique myth as I think I recall you suggesting at some point, is not something that happens naturally.

I agree. This can be seen, not just with myth, but with many other parts of cultures. See the evolution of culture from the Sumerian's down to the Babylonian. It was, overall, a nice organic transition. With all the wars and conquests it still transitioned surprisingly well considering how we envision these sorts of things.

 

I see all this more from a perspective of “memetic evolution”: Ideas being an almost living, breathing organism that is given life and evolves like other biological organisms on the shoulders of human societies. This is why to say, “Spit on the Bible” is taken with such offense by people. They collectively protect those traditions and myths that are the supporting language of identity of the culture they find shelter within.

 

The Christian adoption of the story of the Fall however is another matter. Unlike a natural evolution of myth being adopted from one culture into another culture in a slightly different form, the Christian adaptation was hugely a political manipulation. These myth stories were force fit. Like Grandpa Harley points out in his post preceding this one that the end myth is what seems to be at the heart of their reinterpreting the myth before it. They needed to get these various factions of Christological mystery cults scattered about the empire to be gathered under one authority. This is not a case of Cosmopolitan assimilation of cultures and their myths, its one of a political marketing manipulation for the purpose of control of these groups.

A lot of early groups seemed to easily adapt, or integrate, into their surroundings when their culture fell apart. The Jews/Hebrews were different. Take the Philistines for instance. They were more advanced/sophisticated in most every way but to my knowledge we still debate whether or not they had a written language. When their civilization collapsed they just disappeared. Very strange...to us at least but maybe not to them.

 

It's the Jews ability to maintain this strong cohesion as a group that has kept them "alive." The xians in adapting the same principal has managed to do the same. So even though the groups were politically manipulated the groups also manipulated the politicians. It went both ways. Politicians didn't "invent" the religion. The religion "infiltrated" politics and turned in to its advantage. Much like the evangelicals are trying to "control" the Republican party today to the exclusion of the other sects. They'll embrace those sects to achieve a goal but they'll destroy them (if they could) once that goal is achieved. Now flashback to 4th century Rome. It's a similar thing. Use whoever you need to use and toss them aside when finished. Religion is a tool to achieve a goal. It was that way when the "Levites" wanted a shiny temple in which to raise taxes in Jerusalem too. The nice thing is god even gave them directions on how to build it.

 

The whole Fall of Man is a creation that supports the end myth, and the Jews themselves don’t look at it like the Christians do. Unfortunately, for people like us who learned to interpret it through the lens of a Christian reading, it is difficult to pick it up and see it differently. It actually takes a conscious effort to remove prior training to see it objectively. It would be the same for the Jew to try to understand it from a Christian perspective. Now imagine a staunch believer who reads it? To him, everyone else is nuts, it’s so clear to them!

Exactly. They don't see it the same way. So what happened? It's my understanding that myths are based on symbols and such that can be interpreted. It seems that "local" groups (xians for one) are putting their own interpretation in the way. Further back, in order to support his personal tastes, some guy altered the story to support his god YHWH. It was forced. It didn't evolve.

 

Now to where you and I are looking at this from different angles: The majority of people who adopt these myths are doing so because they are looking for answers. This is how it works in cultures. The “deeper truths” that interest people like you or me (probably the majority who participate in these discussions), are something they prefer to actually avoid. If you look too closely at it, you may find yourself moving much further into the realm of “personal meaning”, and that act may lead to a break from the collective understand of the myth, and consequently that dreaded state of alienation for them! Most people are more interested in staying close to the herd.

 

When you open up the surrounding cultures to understand the myth in a deeper light, you are in essence doing what I talked about with music. This is moving away from the collective ownership of myth, into the individual appreciation. It’s functioning on a different level. This is what happened to me as I was going through Bible College. I found myself far more engrossed with the surrounding context, and seeing value in that, rather than using it in the context of my surrounding culture. I just couldn’t “dumb it down” to follow along with the herd. I guess it comes down to personality types?

I think we are seeing this roughly the same way overall (as much as I tease NBBTB over this) but it's just a matter of I think that the story we're seeing in the bible is not accurate. It's "forced" or "corrupt" or something. There's something wrong with it. It's not what it should be and it's preventing a proper interpretation (and it's not just this one story). So when we try to pull the actual meaning from it, and any "deeper" meaning from it that we're getting a corrupted message as a result. That's how, in part at least, the idea of a "fallen" human came about. That how, in part, the idea of "Satan" ended up being in the garden. That's how all these little misconceptions could sneak into the interpretation. Because what was once one story with a different message was altered (poorly) and now the message is muddied and attempts to interpret it are ruined.

 

It's like an optical illusion. The normal sight cues have been removed and now people are left to guess at which object is closer or which object is taller. If the shadows and all were put back, in their proper places, it would make sense again. But we no longer have that information. So one person looks at it and sees it one way and another sees it a bit different. Both perfectly valid but neither quite right.

 

I’ll leave it a this for now.

Good enough. I don't think I made much sense today. I took a bit of migraine medicine and got a little "fog" going in the old head. Who knows? Maybe that makes me better.

 

I’ve enjoyed my coffee and music while typing this. I hope that my light-heartedness intermixed in this discussion hasn’t been too distracting to others. I didn’t expect that it would be met with such dissatisfaction. That’s really unfortunate.

It is unfortunate. My topics derail all the time. I can either get upset or go along with it and maybe learn something else or just have some fun. Oh well. That's just what happens on public forums. I guess it proves people are just evil.

 

mwc

[NotBlinded]

Not butchered with the intent lost forever.

I never said it wasn't butchered.

 

They added a male figure in the story because of the culture they came from. The symbols have to apply to the people from that culture. They were trying to make it fit for them. Good. Did it fit for them? Not if they took the meaning literally. Does it fit for us? No, unless we change the myth some.

 

All I have ever been saying is that there is a certain response from inside the person that will happen when the story is read in relation to the time they are living. Every story can change every single element as long as that response is the same. It can't have the same response if you are an outsider and know nothing about that culture. And it won't have the same response if the symbols are taken as actual occurances.

 

If it means wisdom, then it means wisdom regardless of the story told to invoke that response. It's an inner understanding of an inner emotional/psychological response. Remove the male chauvinist attitude and the story can still be salvaged to some extent.

 

It's my belief that the YHWH cult didn't appreciate/understand/<something> the Asherah/pagan cults. This means that the garden story, which I think also comes from a pagan source is missing its "essence" just as the "essence" of the surrounding part of the Proverbs are also missing because the author simply didn't have the ability to duplicate the work beyond the poem in that one section. This means the meaning of the Genesis story is corrupt.

I agree with you. This makes sense, so did the original authors understand? The pagan ones. I'm sure they did.

 

This is where I have said that if the symbols aren't understood and they are taken as factual, then the story becomes meaningless.

 

Jonah was never in the belly of whale and there was never a literal garden. To think so is absurd and will do nothing to invoke a response of "wisdom". Quite the opposite actually!

 

I think we agree more than we disagree.

I disagree.

 

mwc

I disagree.

[NotBlinded]

I think we are seeing this roughly the same way overall (as much as I tease NBBTB over this) but it's just a matter of I think that the story we're seeing in the bible is not accurate. It's "forced" or "corrupt" or something. There's something wrong with it. It's not what it should be and it's preventing a proper interpretation (and it's not just this one story). So when we try to pull the actual meaning from it, and any "deeper" meaning from it that we're getting a corrupted message as a result. That's how, in part at least, the idea of a "fallen" human came about. That how, in part, the idea of "Satan" ended up being in the garden. That's how all these little misconceptions could sneak into the interpretation. Because what was once one story with a different message was altered (poorly) and now the message is muddied and attempts to interpret it are ruined.

 

It's like an optical illusion. The normal sight cues have been removed and now people are left to guess at which object is closer or which object is taller. If the shadows and all were put back, in their proper places, it would make sense again. But we no longer have that information. So one person looks at it and sees it one way and another sees it a bit different. Both perfectly valid but neither quite right.

I think we have reached an agreement!

 

But, I still think that there are elements that can be salvaged by comparing other myths. Even Campbell wasn't too thrilled with the YHWH cult. They took symbols that had meaning and killed them.

 

Where did we really disagree? I can't pinpoint it!

[mwc]

Not butchered with the intent lost forever.

I never said it wasn't butchered.

Did I say you said that? If I did I didn't mean to put words in your mouth.

 

They added a male figure in the story because of the culture they came from. The symbols have to apply to the people from that culture. They were trying to make it fit for them. Good. Did it fit for them? Not if they took the meaning literally.

Good. We're almost there I think. Clearly they only spoke for their group but eventually they came to dominate and we just assume they spoke for their culture. The fact that Asherah in her many forms never disappeared from the scene entirely (or at least until much later) shows this. A war was being waged and this was one of the battlefronts.

 

Also, the male figure isn't really the problem but the monotheistic figure. It just doesn't fit into the pagan hole their putting it in. So they have to twist one belief system to make the other fit. We know that xianity doesn't truly fit into Judaism but xians sure think it does since they never truly understand Judaism anyhow. I doubt the early Jews bothered to understand the belief system they were raping either. Now they just reject it outright of course since their religion is god given just as xianity is...they don't seem to notice their (pagan) roots are showing.

 

Does it fit for us? No, unless we change the myth some.

I'm glad you said this. Tell me what the myth means...really means...so we can adapt it. This is the main thrust of my complaint.

 

I've given my views from Proverbs. I've given my views on the Genesis story itself. But this gets us no closer to what the story actually means. Right now yet another thread has started trying to find meaning in this corrupted story. So many attempts but so little progress. I personally think that, contextually, the Proverbs is about as close as we're going to get and I also think that it is pretty adaptable as-is. But it's also pagan and the supposedly the antithesis of the very library it's contained in.

 

All I have ever been saying is that there is a certain response from inside the person that will happen when the story is read in relation to the time they are living. Every story can change every single element as long as that response is the same. It can't have the same response if you are an outsider and know nothing about that culture. And it won't have the same response if the symbols are taken as actual occurances.

 

If it means wisdom, then it means wisdom regardless of the story told to invoke that response. It's an inner understanding of an inner emotional/psychological response. Remove the male chauvinist attitude and the story can still be salvaged to some extent.

While it's a bit off the topic of good and evil, just a little further in you'll come to Cain and Abel, which I mention before, but it's also (I believe) the first rendition of a scapegoat story in the book as well. I don't know if it's intention but probably so. The only difference is that the story follows the scapegoat (Cain) into the wilderness which is unusual. This "myth" gets played out time and again and becomes easy to see (maybe too easy which is why I might have to question it) but the garden story that precedes it seemingly has confused symbolism which is what is causing my complaint and these repeated little side-tracked discussions.

 

The scapegoat analog seems to be a primary theme and it can be picked out despite the change in symbols. This is where you and I agree. What you are saying here applies nicely to this. But the garden story is something different. There is something "wrong" with it and so it seems that trying to pull meaning from the current "version" is only a source of frustration as a result. It can be done but it takes quite a bit of mental gymnastics and I think this is because the actual meaning has been "hidden" because of the corruption that occurred in the rewrite. A "myth" or "allegory" that is re-used for a political or for "propaganda," may have a different agenda than one written for other purposes (whether that is to explain the "world" or for "spiritual" reasons). Trying to put another god in their place while raising YHWH into top position, using humans as pawns, might not retain the "pure essence" the myth once might have had.

 

I agree with you. This makes sense, so did the original authors understand? The pagan ones. I'm sure they did.

I don't know. As I said above, I've given some thoughts but they're just guesses.

 

This is where I have said that if the symbols aren't understood and they are taken as factual, then the story becomes meaningless.

 

Jonah was never in the belly of whale and there was never a literal garden. To think so is absurd and will do nothing to invoke a response of "wisdom". Quite the opposite actually!

Meaningless? Maybe. I think corrupt might apply better because it still has some meaning. A literal talking snake obvious has meaning to people today. Now it's literally the most evil creature ever. So one corrupted interpretation has been compounded with another. What are the odds that these people will be convinced this evil talking snake was really just "wisdom" or something along those lines as described in the Proverbs? I think it's unlikely to undo the damage. There's little hope that they will embrace that symbol as the path to happiness after how much effort has been invested in the opposite. Now jesus is that path but he doesn't work in the garden story so it's unworkable contextually (although some have the mental agility to pull this off I never did).

 

So, no Jonah. No fish. No garden. Wisdom is subtle like a snake in the field.

 

I disagree.

But I said that so do we now agree or disagree??? Damn you!!!

 

mwc

[NotBlinded]

But I said that so do we now agree or disagree??? Damn you!!!

 

mwc

 

You know I love your insights!

 

And no, you never said that I said it wasn't butchered. I'm just paranoid I guess!

 

I think we agree. The problem I see with myself is focusing too much on the psychological aspect of myths because, IMO, if that isn't there as something mystical (awe-inspiring), then the whole thing is worthless. I really hated myths in school because I didn't understand the messages. The other functions of myths such as sociological and pedagogical can carry a culture through even if the cosmological and mystical functions are off, I guess. It's the culture without the awe (what a shame). Where's the awe if the mystical has been taken and made concrete?