Genesis 3

And now we get to God's first asshole move. Now, tradition states (and I say tradition because I have found it nowhere in the Bible) that the garden of Eden was a deathless state. Nothing died of old age or wounds or what have you. Carnivores didn't even carn.

Into this world steps God and he places a tree in about the middle. He then tells Adam and Eve, and I quote, "You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die."

Think about this for a moment.

There is no death in the Garden of Eden. So this is kind of like me walking up to my wife and saying, "Do not touch my bagel, or you will uggle." She had no fucking clue what 'uggle' means. She can infer that it's something bad by my phrasing, but I'm far from specific.

Yeah, yeah, I know. "That's not the point, Zach! They were supposed to obey God and not touch the damn tree!" But look at it this way. Your parents ever threaten to beat you black and blue and then not deliver? Like, instead of not being able to sit down for a week, all you got was a stern talking to? Didn't you begin to start not completely trust your parents when they said something?

So, God's put this tree there and told Adam and Eve that if they screw with it something less-than-good-but-unspecific will happen and leaves them there. And everything's going smoothly until the snake shows up and says that A&E aren't going to die if they eat the fruit, they will instead be "like unto gods" knowing the difference between good and evil.

I have heard arguments that the snake was correct 'cause A&E didn't die as soon as they ate the fruit. In fact, it took a long damn time. And their eyes were opened because the first thing they did was realize they were naked and clothe themselves in fig leaves.

And God got pissed off and chucked them out of the Garden and put an angel at the door to stop them from going back in.

All in all, asshole move. Just a little.

Genesis 1-2

When I was a kid, I had a book called In the Beginning. It was full of creation stories from all different cultures in all over the world. It was pretty cool, Newberry Award Winner and everything. It had in it, near the back "First Man, First Woman: Yahweh the Creator".

It was not the most interesting creation in the book. Honestly? I think the most interesting one was where the universe hatched out of a hen's egg 'cause even that young I knew about the big bang (my parents, though deeply Catholic, were gung ho with the science) and I thought it was a fairly close analogy.

This book sparked my interest in mythologies, so it could be considered the parent of this blog. Thank you, Virgina Hamilton!

Anyhow, it also sparked my interest in the bible and all it's goodies and I was soon known at CCE as "that annoying kid with the questions." And boy did I have them.

There are two stories regarding the creation of the world in Genesis and they do not quite match.

I am not one of those atheist apologists who thinks this a major crime, but I did bring it up to my priest because I lived in the south and was told that the Bible was written by the Hand of God and I wondered how God could get things wrong.

My priest told me to read my footnotes.

My footnotes told me that the old testament is composed of books by various different authors named J, E, D, and P. This was complete news to me but it does explain how Genesis 1 and 2 don't quite match.

Anyway, Genesis starts off with the creations of the word, substance from nothingness. God makes light, darkness, the sun, the moon, the stars, all plants and animals. And then we get to Adam. Adam needs a companion and the animals just ain't cutting it. (I guess Adam wasn't meant to be a loaner.) So God puts Adam to sleep, removes a rib and makes Eve.

End chapter, although it's interesting to not that the last verse in Chapter 2 is "The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame."

So modesty comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and is not godly? H'm.