The Bible gets a bad rap, dismissed by many as a mishmash of tribal legends, at best fairy tales. With as much vehemence as their opposite number they believe there is no God, Genesis is a myth for simpletons. We have the Big Bang.
The argument continues with or without me, but recently I began to wonder whether we are perhaps looking at those early stories from the wrong end of a telescope; that they are not so much an account of what happened, but prophecies, a warning of what is to come. Those without faith but believe in Carl Jung may reach similar conclusions in archetypes and a collective unconscious.
Genesis describes how God created the world in six days and then Adam from dust animated by His breath. He placed Adam in Eden, a now unobtainable paradise with but one injunction: not to sample the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The serpent tempted Eve, appealing to curiosity and ambition; and perhaps aesthetics, the fruit looked damn fine. Eat it, and they too would share in the wisdom of God; disobey his command and bite into the fruit.
God’s reaction is swift. Adam and Eve are banished from Eden for fear of them eating more from the tree and so live for ever. His final words are harsh ‘Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee….in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; and unto dust shalt thou return.’ And, for good measure, Eden was guarded by a cherubim with a fiery sword. Genesis 2:8—3:24
Scientists have disproved the literal truth of the Genesis story. In response, theologians focus on what they see as a deeper meaning and see the seven days and seven nights as a metaphor for the process of creation.
Likewise, in the story of ‘The Flood,’ geologists dispute the possibility of such a world-wide phenomenon, though flood myths are common across many cultures.
In the Biblical version—Genesis 6-9—God is so appalled by the evil of man, he determines on a watery cull and start again with a tiny seed—an Ark of creation: Noah, his immediate family, and a bunch of animals. It’s heartening that God promises never to flood the earth again and marks the promise with a rainbow. It does though leave open more unpleasant options.
The flood comes and goes, but man is incorrigible. In the words of Chumbawamba
The next challenge to God is described in Genesis 11:1-9 and the story of the building of a great tower that would pierce the heavens.
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It was a time when a united human race, sharing a common language, migrated eastwards to the land of Shinar. There, in a spasm of hubris, they began building a great tower, for some a stairway to heaven. God, aware of their ambition confounded them by fragmenting their common tongue. Divided by language and unable to share their commonality, they separate and scatter across the earth.
Not surprisingly, the flood myth was told in earlier Sumerian civilisation and known to the Assyrians. More surprisingly perhaps there are similar legends in Nepal, Africa, Arizona and Central America—all focusing on mankind grown over-powerful before scattered like chaff in the wind.
The myths have one thing in common, self-indulgence, pride and ambition being regularly humbled by a creator. They share one further thing in common. They are now largely derided, or perhaps more dangerously forgotten.
And yet the niggle won’t go away. Perhaps as suggested in the opening paragraph, these are not so much myths as prophecies, warnings of things yet to come. Perhaps Chumbawamba’s anthem is less a song of defiance and more the signature tune of Sisyphus, doomed by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill only for it to fall back again every time he nears the summit. We perhaps are nearing our summit, self-indulgent cultures fragmenting as we become more global. Marx talked of class divides and called for workers to unite. Now we have so many divides, it’s hard to keep up. A modern Babel. An exhausted and tarnished planet.
We have to know – the original blessing and curse. Will we master creation or will arrogance and pride bring us tumbling down? Again. An Eden in the cosmos reduced to a cinder or at best wasteland and a fragment of humanity reduced to scrabbling for subsistence. A cherubim with a flaming sword guarding what we once had.
Still, time for a cup of tea.
2 comments:
That's a deep philosophical minefield you've entered.
According to scientists the earth has endured at least five mass extinctions. We are but a droplet in an ocean.
Perhaps it's pride or or perhaps its sentience but we still self-important, at least in our little brains.
‘According to scientists the earth has endured at least five mass extinctions. We are but a droplet in an ocean.’ True, but there’s a thin line between humility and nihilism
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