Adam and Eve

aged hippy · #1 (**permalink**) 14th December 2007, 10:47 PM

Quote:

The Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, is known to modern readers from the Masoretic text, a compilation of Hebrew texts assembled by Jewish scholars in the seventh to tenth centuries A.D. from older scrolls and codices. That text, and thus the Old Testament, contain two creation stories. It is not unusual for cultures to have multiple creation stories, and throughout this booklet the paraphrases have melded two or more variations of a culture's creation story into one. However, because the two stories in the Old Testament are so different, the two stories are recounted separately here as "Yahweh" and then "The Elohim".

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This creation story is from Genesis 2:4 to 3:24 of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. Extensive analysis of its style and content have led scholars of the Bible to conclude that the story was written in about the Tenth Century B.C.. That was around the time of King Solomon's reign and in a time when Israel was a powerful nation. In contrast, the story in Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 was written three or four centuries later and under very different circumstances.

The author of the story in Genesis 2:4 to 3:24 is known to scholars as "J". That is because J referred to the creator as Yahweh (Image or "YHVH" in ancient Hebrew, or "Jahweh" in the German native to many scholars of the Bible, or ultimately "Jehovah" in modern usage). The paraphrase below maintains J's use of the Hebrew name "Yahweh" rather than the English word "God". The latter is, after all, only a derivative of the German word "Gott" and is in no way tied to the Hebrew language of the Old Testament or even the Greek of the New Testament.

Some scholars have considered J the more primitive or rural of the two authors of the creation stories in Genesis. Others are more generous and characterize J as a poet rather than a priest. J was probably recording his or her people's oral traditions in written form. Certainly J's story is a more human story of temptation and punishment than the austere story written later by the author known as "P", and J's creator is more anthropomorphic.

In J's story, the humans that are created have names. To English speakers, "Adam" and "Eve" are just names, but "Adam" meant "man" in ancient Hebrew and may also have been a play on "adamah", the Hebrew word for "earth" or "clay". "Eve" was the word for "life".

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Emphasis added

Creation Stories

It seems to me that Yahweh took 'life' from Adam, and left him 'dead' - metaphorically.

Quote:

The wife of Adam. According to Gen. iii. 20, Eve was so called because she was "the mother of all living" (R. V., margin, "Life" or "Living")

JewishEncyclopedia.com - EVE

Peace, Love, & Light

vivamis123 · #2 (**permalink**) 15th December 2007, 12:17 AM

So, can we say that when man saw himself to be separated from LIFE (reality) he "died"? Which would make sense to me.

aged hippy · #3 (**permalink**) 15th December 2007, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vivamis

So, can we say that when man saw himself to be separated from LIFE (reality) he "died"? Which would make sense to me.

I think that when we first developed self-awareness, we were living and behaving in a way which was natural, and that we were aware of both of our aspects, the one spiritual, and the one physical.

As the ego (the physical aspect) became more and more dominant, we became less and less aware of our spiritual aspect, and started to live in our egos.

Eventually, the ego decided that it was all that existed, and that everything else (in the psyche) was imaginary - at this point it (the ego) imagined that it was God, and named itself as such.

It is in this sense that i think that 'God' took life from Adam, it removed the balance of spiritual/physical from him (i'm not saying that i believe that a man called "Adam" actually lived, it is a metaphor for humanity).

The spirit is what lives.... eternally, but the body only exists in time. "Only that which is born can die" -- a common statement in old religious texts.

What i'm saying is that - in my opinion, Jahweh (the ego) removed eternal life from Adam -- by the very act of removing Eve from his awareness.

Peace, Love, & Light

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