On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:21:23 +0000, Mozzer <
mozzer...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
>On 15/03/2013 13:01, Patrick wrote:
>
>> No Catholic is a bible thumper who accepts everything in the Bible as literal.
>
>So you don't believe in the talking snake? What about the adam & eve
>part of the original sin myth then?
This story is an allegory, and within it there are many hidden truths.
It is not a myth and not a parable either. To use the term 'myth', in
the old sense of involving supernatural ideas about natural phenomena,
like the myths of the ancient Babylonian gods, or the gods and heroes
of ancient Greece, would not be applicable here. Nor would 'Parable'
be the right word to use, for Parables usually point out a single
truth or group of ideas. An allegory contains a message - a whole
string of truths, one truth leading to another, and this is what we
find here. We also find such allegories in other parts of Genesis.
"Who would be so childish as to think that God was like a human
gardener and planted a paradise in Eden facing the east, and in it
made a real visible tree, so that one could acquire life by eating its
fruit with real teeth or, again, could participate in good and evil by
eating what he took from the other tree? And if the text says that God
walked in the garden in the evening, or Adam hid himself under the
tree, I cannot think that anyone would dispute that these things are
said in the figurative sense, in an effort to reveal certain mysteries
by means of an apparent historical tale and not by something that
actually took place. . . . . " (First Principles - 4: 16 by Origen of
Alexandria)
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil plays the most important
part in the story. In one sense, it is symbolic of the good we all
experience as human beings living on earth, all the blessings we
receive, the lessons we learn and all the difficulties and blows of
fate we each undergo as part of our spiritual training. But most
importantly it symbolizes the desire for knowledge or experience - the
curiosity which leads the Adam-Eve entity to leave Paradise and seek
to satisfy that desire for knowledge on the physical earth.
The Talking Snake
First, we must analyze that which is called the "serpent", and the key
to this is given by the Hebrew original for the word. The Hebrew root
is 'nawkhash' meaning "to hiss or whisper an enchantment", "to learn
by experience" and "to prognosticate", among other things. The
extrapolation of 'serpent' from hiss is obvious, but it is not the
whole story, for the same Hebrew root also gives us 'fiery' 'burning',
‘Satan’ and 'seraph' meanings which suggests that we are not talking
about a normal animal. In fact, the text itself makes this quite
clear. It says "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the
field which the Lord God had made." (3: 1a)
Clearly the description of this being as a serpent is symbolic, which
is just what you would expect in an allegory.