Well, to be fair, the snake is talking, so we can assume it’s not just a snake. That leaves us with two possible identities for the snake, given our cast characters, and the snake is telling Eve to do something that God has already told her not to do. This would seem to indicate that the snake was Satan be default. According to Gary Larson’s theory, it may have also been a gopher. But most Hebrew scholars discount this.
Are you stating that morality is not essential? If so, I can only shudder to think at what you replace such a vital function with. Yes, moral essentialism is a “twisted” way of thinking. It twists thinking towards life and away from evil. Again, to an indifferent mind, that may well seem arbitrary. To a rational mind it is not. Morality will usually seem alien and artificial to an amoral being.
Please tell us the meaning of what it is to be, as you say, “essentially human.” Do you mean a mere passageway for food? Or do you refer to our capacity for mentative process? If it is the former, then your estimation of man is now apparent. If it is the latter, then what foundation do your rest your intellect upon? If it is not reason, then you are a fraud to yourself and those around you. If you claim to base your cognition upon reason, then you do have some sort of moral structure, whether you admit it or not. I am intensely curious as to what method you use to make your own “observations of the world.” If reason is such an unsuitable tool, please enlighten us as to your newfound replacement or whatever improvement upon it you may have devised.
Rational people make all reasonable attempts to shun “woolly thinking.” I fail to see where you have made the least effort to do so. I invite you to no longer “filter” your actions and behavior through a moral structure. You might quickly find yourself invited to occupy the aforementioned substandard government supplied housing accompanied by substandard government supplied neighbors. Moral structure and philosophy are pretty much interchangeable. A thinking human being does not live without some sort of philosophy, it is only a matter of what sort they practice. Please feel free to dispute this if you are able.
Feel free to practice evil as your mainstay, it is entirely your choice (although society might soon intervene). Unless you live on a desert isle, most of what surrounds you are “human constructions.” Most of these “human constructions” were the product of moral and rational people. If these “human constructions” are utterly inessential to you, I suggest you try spending the night without clothing or provisions (all byproducts of these pesky “human constructions”) in a nearby forest. By doing so, you might gain some faint glimmering of respect for the essentially moral and rational “humans” that lived and died to make your life so very comfortable. However, I do not suggest that you throw in their faces the “defects of essentialism” you ignorantly proclaim. You would probably be entirely dissatisfied with the sound drubbing that might ensue.
Thanks for a bit of well-needed comic relief. Thank goodness I wasn’t drinking coffee while reading that.
Zenster, I felt convicted by your comment in another thread about my absence from here – but truly, I felt that I have nothing much to add that hasn’t already been said, and better.
If you want my two cents on the subject, it would be that if sin has any meaning to people generally, without reference to their particular religious beliefs, it would be a state of man’s inhumanity to man. And that this exists and is prevalent throughout the world, one need only look at the daily newspaper to see. And I’d venture to guess that every single person will be more than willing to admit that there were times when they screwed up, badly, on something of some importance.
“Original sin” to me, has little to do with the Eden story, and a great deal to do with the fact that in point of fact, human beings are born into a world full of sin, experience sin in much of what they come in contact with as they grow, and in consequence cannot be expected to live whatever one conceives as an ideal, sinless life. It’s a natural part of the human condition, from which one can theoretically be freed by the grace of God – but I know I sin, on a daily basis, by not living completely up to the ideals that I see set before me in the Gospels. And so I ask God’s forgiveness, try to make recompense for those sins so far as I am able, and continue on to try to live up to those ideals – knowing that I’ll fail, but that I’m called to do my best to at least try to make a difference for good.
Satan as an evil anti-God is really a Christian concept not a Jewish one. The “Devil” as we think of him now, was not a part of Jewish thinking at the time that Genesis was written (nor is he now, for that matter). It seems like a logical default to you now because you are looking at it through a modern Christian lens, but that default didn’t exist in the historical and cultural context in which Genesis was written.
Furthermore, the Genesis story is originally Mesopotamian in origin and is derived from a store of teleological myths where talking animals were common place. Genesis was written at a time when the exile in Egypt was still a recent memory and the serpent, being sacred to the Egyptians, was a symbol of corruption to the Jews. Really, what it boils down to is that the ancient Hebrews just didn’t like snakes.
I’m just saying that if we interpret the Genesis passages literally, you would have to supply some sort of explanation for the talking snake. I think we could say that the snake represents evil, by coercing Eve away from the orders of God, and that the snake must not be an ordinary one. I would say that the name that we give the snake in a modern context is the representation of what the snake was. In other words, I’m not throwing the name Satan back onto the snake, but that the identity of the snake by it’s actions represented a previously unnamed concept of that which was not of God. In the modern context we represent this with Satan. The Hebrews had many concepts of the Devil, and you could substitute any of the names for it. Astaroth, Balaam, Azazel. Many are borrowed from concepts closely related to Satan in the modern concept, although they were used in their own cultures as Gods. I used to have a book on this, something like 500 devils of the Hebrew faith, listing the names and origins of each Satan-like concept adopted by the Hebrews.
Polycarp, thank you for contributing. I have looked forward to hearing your input on this matter and am not in the least disappointed by your reply.
While we may be “born into a world of sin,” I cannot accept the doctrine of mankind being born innately sinful. I view this as an incredibly untenable aspect of Christianity as a whole. Those who support such a mean-spirited notion are enemies of life. I do not seek to condemn Christianity at large, so much as decry such contrived dogmatism.
All of your above statements are largely (if not completely) acceptable to myself. Please post or email me a link to my other comment that left you feeling “convicted.” I have always had the deepest respect for your well-considered posts and gentle mien. I want you to know that your feelings of being “convicted” concern me.
I believe that the author Henry Fielding once wrote (something like):
“Rather than be surrounded by ten pious men, I would instead have the company of one honest sinner.”
If you are that “one honest sinner,” then the world could stand to be full of them.
The “devils” you name are all just other tribal gods. they were (quite literally) demonized by the Jews, but there was (and is) no big bad DEVIL as in Christianity. Jewish commentary does not define the serpent as Satan.
I indulged in a bit of “Christianspeak” there, for which I apologize. In another thread on religion in GD that I’ve been following and have commented to a couple of times, you said something to the effect that “those who had made good comments here and had not commented to this thread really ought to” – and I felt that compunction of having failed to do something that I ought to have done – a classic “sin of omission.” The Holy Spirit “convicted” me – made me feel guilt for that omission – through your post. 'Zat help to clarify it?
Polycarp, no apology necessary. If in some small way I have managed to channel that which you hold highest, I can only be honored.
I believe I may have just ascertained the root of your screen name.
Polycarp = Many Fish
As in the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Or is it a reference to all those little fish-shaped plaques we see on cars?
Ha! That’s what I thought too. But it turns out Polycarp was a guy’s real name. I don’t have the link, but I’ll assume Poly has it written down, given the obvious number of ‘explain your name’ requests he must get. I made the fish connection too, but I asked him before I said anything.
I swear my wife cookies every machine she touches. This isn’t even our computer! The above post is mine.
Diogenes, I know what you’re saying. I’m saying that while the snake is unidentified, Christians are not throwing the name Satan onto it, but that the snake’s nature would indicate that it is what modern Christians would call Satan, for lack of another name, or perhaps a demonic servant of Satan. So, I woiuld not agree with someone assuming said snake had properties that must be attributed solely to the modern idea of Satan, but labelling the snake is not off base, as satan, or satan-like, or related to the workings of satan.
Good guess, but no. Here is a bio. of my namesake, and a .sig I regularly use is from one of his letters (probably cadged from St. John, who taught him): “He who has love is far from all sin.” (BTW, the “fish” symbol for Christians comes from IChThUs, greek for “fish,” and also an acronym for "Iesous Christos, Theoui 'Uios, Soter – “Jesus Christ, Of God Son, Savior.”)
Fair enough from a Christian perspective.
I said for lack of a better name. What would you call it?
I could say that the forensic evidence we have compiled over the millinea would seem to indicate that this snake was indeed Satan. But we’re not tracking Bin Laden here. I don’t think there even was a snake, or a garden. But, given the talking snake I would say it was Satan if you asked me, as that is the moniker I apply to such things. It’s not really a Christian perspective, in that God is clearly identified in the story. I suppose I could say it was Astaroth, but that has no personal meaning. Hell, it might actually be Astaroth, and maybe I call Astaroth “Satan”. See what I’m saying?
What’s Christian about it is that it implies a supernatural being who is opposed to the will of God. Satan, in Judaism, is a [url=http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/06-Jewish-Thought/section-36.html]servant of God. There is nothing in Judaism about a “fallen angel” who hates God and is trying to corrupt mankind. This is a strictly Christian development.
The “devils” you’ve referred to in previous posts were, as I said before, heathen gods and idols. The Hebrew word translated as “devils” is “sa’iyr,” literally “hairy ones” or “he goats.” This was a descriptive reference to the idols of pagans. These idols were not actually believed to have any power.
There was also some idea of spirits who possessed and tormented humans, but these spirits were originally believed to have been sent by God. In the last couple of centuries BCE, these spirits did seem to transform into the evil 'demons" we are familiar with now, but that idea did not exist at the time that Gensesis was written, and AFAIK, no Jewish scholarship has ever contended that the serpent was a demon.
I think what I’m trying to get at with all this rambling is that even if the serpent was the Jewish version of Satan (i.e. “the Adversary”) he would not (and could not) have been doing anything against God’s will. The serpent was doing God’s work, so to speak.
Either the serpent talked because God wanted it to talk, or the Adversary possessed the snake because God wanted him to. Either way, the temptation of Eve was God’s will.
Gaah!! Preview is your friend. Here’s that link again.
Ok, I see what you are saying. As I said, I don’t think there was a snake, or a garden. I think it’s a metaphor. Whether within the concept of that metaphor we choose to believe that the snake was doing the work God had set out for it or not is a matter of semantics. In the metaphorical sense, I agree with you that the snake would have been doing the work of God. I don’t think that Original Sin holds water. I was merely pointing out that I like to throw labels conciously.
Well, yeah, the whole thing is a literary exercise. We’re just debating over the motivations of the characters.
Original sin is actually another exclusively Christian idea. In Judaism the sin of Adam is Adam’s alone. There is no Jewish doctrine that humans are born corrupt. The whole idea of original sin seems to have been invented by Paul.
To me, the meaning of the Garden story is more about the double edged sword of man acquiring knowledge and self-awareness at the expense of losing his innocence. Once we evolved enough to know “good and evil” we became responsible for our own actions.
The fruit? I don’t know what the fruit was. I suspect it was just a McGuffin. Humans were aware that they were different from how they used to be (Remember, we had a couple of million years of human history before we got to Genesis). Something had changed somehow. We had a different kind of awareness. The fruit was just a literary device to convey the method of this change.
Actually, it was my understanding that Paul’s meaning was different from what we understand today. Of course it was debated regularly, and became doctrine under the Catholic church, as a means for explaining why sin exists at all. The exact nature of the concept has been tossed around for a couple thousand years, and I never saw it as anything more than filling in the blanks. The Catholic Church did this with the immaculate conception later. Once again, depending on which Catholic you talk to this can be the virgin birth, or the birth of Mary without the taint of Original Sin. Don’t you hate when you come up with things and then try to come up with other things that explain the new circumstances?
I agree with your assessment though, I think I posted something like that earlier in the thread.