Genesis and the Rise of Civilization

GENESIS AND THE RISE OF CIVILIATION (Excerpt)

ANOTHER VIEW OF “THE FALL”

            There is an understanding in our culture that God's wish for humanity was for men to be at war against the earth, and for women to be their slaves.  When these notions are challenged, the answer is usually something like “But that's how God wants it, look in Genesis.”  But the Eden narrative in the Book of Genesis absolutely refutes this notion: God wanted men and women to “dress and keep” (not hijack) the earth and enjoy each-other, naked and unashamed. 

            There is also an understanding in our culture that the “Garden of Eden” story must have originated with people like us, settled agriculturalists with a gender hierarchy.  This is strange, because agriculture and gender inequality are presented here as a curse, the worst curse God can think of.  If the story was written by wife-beating farmers, wouldn't agriculture and gender inequality be a blessing?  (In Genesis 1:28-30, part of the “Seven Day” creation story, God creates people and automatically gives them dominion over all plants and animals.  But that was written at least five hundred years later.)

            Let's imagine for a minute that the man and woman here are not two historical individuals but a tribe of people.  Let's imagine for a minute that eating from the forbidden Tree did not bring about a physical change, like Adam and Eve shrinking or suddenly becoming mortal.  Let's imagine for a minute that eating the fruit didn't give them omniscience, a totality of knowledge.  Let's imagine for a minute that the fruit reserved for God alone had no effect whatsoever, like eating straw, it just passed through.  What if the medicine reserved for God had only a placebo effect on humans?

            But the fruit was forbidden by God, and with a warning label this big, the medicine had to do something, right?  Maybe these people didn't feel any different, but one of them finally said “We ate of the Tree, so we must have learned something.  Maybe we know what to nurture and what to destroy.  We will nurture what's good for us to eat, and destroy anything that gets in our way!”  And because this was God's secret stash of knowledge, that meant that whatever these people wanted was what God wanted.  And anybody living any other way was wrong.  Not just silly, but against the will of God – blasphemy!  Anyone living on the land without taking total control of it for human food-production was living in defiance of the will of God!  They had to be taught how God wanted them to live, and if they refused they had to be exterminated so that the land could be properly managed according to the will of people who had gained the secret knowledge of God.

            What is “The Fall?”  What is the crime?  What is wrong with Adam and Eve gaining this knowledge?  Or believing that they have gained this knowledge?  In George Orwell's book 1984, there is “Thought-Crime...the essential crime that contained all others in itself.” Different people have different ideas of what humanity's worst crime is.  War.  Slavery.  Genocide.  Imprisonment.  The subjugation of women.  The torture and extinction of animals.  Damage to the environment.  I would propose that all of these active crimes stem from a single impulse: Human beings believing that they can decide what is right and what is wrong.  Human beings believing that they can choose what is nurtured and what is destroyed, what lives and who dies.  Human beings believing that they can take the place of God as judge and master of the world.  All of these other crimes are symptoms of this. 

            Did God decide 'this plant is a crop and that plant is a weed?'  No, people who had eaten from the tree decided that, and so began our war on weeds: plants that provide us with food or shelter or something nice to look at will be nurtured, and other plants will be destroyed.  If a plant is good for rabbits but not humans?  A weed, destroy it.  If a plant is good for rabbits and humans?  Protect the plant, kill the rabbits.  Wait a minute...war on rabbits?  Did God decide 'this animal is a pet and that animal is a pest?'  Did God decide 'this is gold and that's a stone?'  Did God decide 'this person is good stock and that person is a mongrel?'  No, but somebody did.  Someone who believed they possessed the knowledge to judge what should be nurtured and what should be destroyed.  The Anthropologist Daniel Quinn summed up this thinking in the following myth, a very dangerous myth: “The world was made for man, and man was made to conquer and rule it.” (Quinn, The Story of B, 1996)

            What is the punishment?  Genesis 2:17, God says “The tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”  The initial impulse, containing all great crimes in itself, is the beginning of the end.  All the rest is just dominoes knocking each-other over. The death threat will come true in the stories of Abel and the Flood – we'll be looking at how these disasters fall as direct logical consequences of this mutiny in Eden.  But God is merciful, humanity survives, and there is a chance of renewal with the abandonment of the Tower of Babel.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE RISE OF CIVILIZATION - 14

FOUR STORIES OF CREATION AND DECLINE - 14

BETWEEN THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES - 21

AROUND TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO... - 23

IT IS WRITTEN - 27

THE EPIC OF ENKIDU (GILGAMESH) - 28

CIVILIZATION - 30

GENESIS 1-11

“THE PRIMEVAL HISTORY”

CHAPTER ONE: THE GARDEN OF EDEN - 36

A PARABLE - 36

A FOLK SONG - 37

IN THE DAY... - 39

EARTHLING - 40

FOUR RIVERS - 41

THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE - 42

A HELPER - 43

CLASSIFYING THE ANIMALS - 43

THE RIB - 44

A SONG FOR WOMAN - 45

THE SERPENT - 46

CHAPTER TWO: THE CRIME - 50

THE FIG - 50

THE LORD WALKING - 50

THE SERPENT CURSED - 52

THE WOMAN IS CURSED - 53

THE MAN IS CURSED - 55

CLASSIFYING THE WOMAN - 56

GARMENTS -57

THE TREE OF LIFE - 57

CHERUBIM - 58

THE CRYPTO-SYSTEMATICS OF ORIGINAL SIN - 59

ANOTHER VIEW OF “THE FALL” - 60

CHAPTER THREE: CAIN AND ABEL - 64

THE FARMER AND THE COWBOY - 64

EARLY “CULTIVATION” METHODS - 65

CAIN'S COUNTENANCE FELL - 65

“SIN” - 66

IN THE FIELD - 67

THE MARK OF CAIN - 68

THE ANTI-GARDEN - 69

TWO TRIALS - 71

METAL WORKERS - 72

BEGATS - 73

THE SONG OF LAMECH - 73

CHILDREN OF CAIN? - 74

SONS OF GOD AND DAUGHTERS OF ADAM - 75

(FLOOD STORY HERE) - 76

CHAPTER FOUR: BABEL - 77

THE CITY OF BABEL - 77

TOMBSTONES - 79

BABEL AS THE CULMINATION OF “EDEN” - 81

CHAPTER FIVE: THE “SEVEN DAY” CREATION - 84

FROM CHAOS TO SABBATH - 84

IN THE BEGINNING... - 86

THE FACE OF THE DEEP - 87

CREATION BY WORD - 88

IN A NUTSHELL - 88

DIVIDING THE WATERS - 89

VEGETATION - 90

LIGHTS - 91

SEA-MONSTERS - 92

LEARNING FROM THE ANIMALS - 93

IN THE IMAGE OF GOD - 95

BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY - 96

THE FIRST SABBATH - 97

THE GENERATIONS OF GENESIS 5 - 98

AND MAN SAID, “CHAOS!” - 99

GOD ALONE? - 101

PROVERBS 8:22-36 - 103

CHAPTER SIX: FLOOD STORIES 108

ATRAHASIS - 108

WHY DOES ATRAHASIS MATTER? - 109

HOW THE FLOOD? - 111

WHY THE FLOOD? - 112

CHAPTER SEVEN: NOAH AND NIMROD - 114

NOAH AND THE ARK - 114

CREATION UNDONE - 115

NOAH AND THE VINE - 117

NOAH'S THREE SONS - 119

NIMROD OF SHINAR: SUMERIAN CULTURE - 120

GENESIS 12-50

“THE PATRIARCHAL HISTORY”

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE PATRIARCHAL HISTORY 128

ENTERING CANAAN - 128

THE PATRIARCHAL PERIOD - 130

SHEPHERDS - 132

MOTHERS OF ISRAEL - 134

ULTIMOGENITURE? - 138

EXPLAINING ABRAHAM – 139

CHAPTER NINE: THREE STORIES OF ABRAHAM - 142

ABRAHAM, PART I: IN EGYPT - 142

ABRAHAM, PART II: HEROES FOR HIRE - 144

AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR... - 148

ABRAHAM, PART III: THE THREE VISITORS - 149

CHAPTER TEN: LOT - 154

ABRAHAM'S EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE - 154

LOT IN SODOM - 155

THE “SIN” OF SODOM - 157

THE SCIENCE OF SODOM..? - 158

IN THE CAVE - 159

CHAPTER ELEVEN: SARAH, HAGAR AND ISHMAEL - 163

SARAH AND HAGAR - 163

HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS - 165

ISHMAEL BANISHED - 167

CHAPTER TWELVE: ABRAHAM AND ISAAC - 170

THE BIRTH OF ISAAC - 170

THE BINDING OF ISAAC, PART I : IN THE TEXT - 170

THE BINDING OF ISAAC, PART II: IN POPULAR MEMORY - 173

THE BINDING OF ISAAC, PART III: CHILD SACRIFICE - 175

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE FAITH OF ABRAHAM - 179

YHWH AND ABRAHAM, PART I: ABRAHAM WENT - 179

YHWH AND ABRAHAM, PART II: COVENANTS - 181

THE CAVE IN THE FIELD - 185

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: JACOB AND ESAU - 188

ISAAC - 188

JACOB AND ESAU, PART I: GARDENER AND HUNTER - 190

JACOB AND ESAU, PART II: INTERCEPTION - 192

JACOB AND ESAU, PART III: REUNION - 194

ISRAEL AND EDOM - 195

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: A FUGITIVE ARAMEAN - 197

JACOB, PART I: THE JOURNEY - 197

JACOB, PART II: IN ARAM - 198

JACOB, PART THREE: THE RAMP - 201

JACOB, PART IV: A FIGHT IN THE DARK - 202

JACOB'S SONS (AND DAUGHTER) - 205

DINAH - 207

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: JOSEPH - 212

JOSEPH, PART I: HUMILIATION - 212

EGYPTIAN CULTURE - 214

JOSEPH, PART II: TEMPTATION - 218

JOSEPH, PART III: INCARCERATION - 221

JOSEPH, PART IV: ELEVATION - 223

JOSEPH, PART V: CONSOLIDATION - 225

JOSEPH AS A CLIMAX OF GENESIS - 227

A POLITICAL READING OF THE JOSEPH STORY - 228

THE DEATH OF JACOB - 231

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: JUDAH AND TAMAR - 234

JUDAH: THE FOURTH PATRIARCH - 234

JUDAH AND TAMAR, PART I: IN THE TEXT - 235

JUDAH AND TAMAR, PART II: CANAANITE CUSTOMS - 238

JUDAH AND TAMAR, PART III: IN RESPONSE TO GENESIS - 239

CONCLUSIONS - 241

A SOCIAL MOVEMENT - 241

A THEOLOGICAL CROSSROADS - 244

CONCLUSION - 247

APPENDIX : THE TRIBAL REVOLUTION - 250

THE CANAANITE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX - 251

THE BLACK BOX: CANAAN FALLS TO THE HABIRU – 252

ORIGINAL RENEGADES – 254

UNCLES - 256

LISTS OF TRIBES - 257

TRIBAL CONFEDERACY IN THE “SONG OF DEBORAH” - 258

THE TWELVE TRIBES IN GENESIS 49 - 260

REUBEN - 260

SIMEON AND LEVI - 262

JUDAH - 264

ZEBULUN AND ISSACHAR - 266

DAN - 267

GAD - 268

ASHER - 269

NAPHTALI - 269

(DINAH) - 270

JOSEPH (EPHRAIM AND MANASSEH) - 270

BENJAMIN - 273

ROLL CALL - 275

THE TRIBAL CONFEDERACY (1250-1000 BCE) - 276