Can Genesis in the bible be read to mean something completely differently that the various forms of Paulian Christianity deem it to be? Yes it can, and if it is read literally the meaning is surprising.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female he created he them. (Genesis 1-27 KJV)
This was long before Adam and Eve so Adam was not the first 'man'. What was the purpose of man? To have 'dominion' over the earth and everything that lived on it. Basically man was God's caretaker. It is interesting that according the Genesis that at this stage man and all the animals where vegetarian. With man as his caretaker and everything ticking over nicely God could take a rest.
But God did not leave it there, and Genesis continues with a contradiction.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into hid nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2-7 KJV)
If man (male and female) already existed this could be God giving man a soul. We had progressed from one of the animals to having a soul.
The next section of Genesis, from chapter 2 verses 8 to 14, describes how God created the Garden of Eden. Surprisingly from such a detailed description there is no place on earth that has the physical features of the Garden of Eden. But there is one place that fits. That place is the human brain.
The circular river flowing out into four lands is a match for the Circle of Willis, the blood supply to the human brain. Man suddenly becomes Adam. No reason given or suggestion before this that man had a name. Not surprising since man was the generic name covering both male and female.
It is Adam who is placed in the centre of the Garden of Eden. It could be that Adam is the name given to the newly created soul, and that the soul was placed in the centre of the human brain. This would be about the position of the 'third eye' of Eastern religions. There is progression here.
We start with a humanoid whose purpose is to look after the planet for God. We then progress to humanoid with a soul place at the centre of a developed brain. We are not yet at the human stage as we know it. The next step comes with the naming of the animals.
And Adam gave names to all the cattle, and to all the fowl of the air, and of every beast in the field; but for Adam there was not found a help meet for him. (Genesis 2-20 KJV)
The Book of J version is much clearer than the Christian Old Testament at this point.
'It is not good for man to be alone', said Yahweh. 'I will make a partner to stand beside him' So Yahweh shaped out of the soil all the creatures of the field and birds of the air to see how he would call them. Whatever the man called became the creature's name. Soon all wild animals had names the man gave them, all birds of the air, and creatures of the field, but the man did not his partner amongst them. (Part of Chapter 4, Book of J translated by David Rosenberg, Vintage, New York, 1990)
Man was no longer one of the animals and he was lonely. But 'man' is the generic name. There where others, male and female, so loneliness should not have been a problem. This must have been a special loneliness. If it was Adam that was lonely then it is the soul that was lonely. The soul needed a partner.
Why would the soul need a partner? My hypotheses is that with a single soul mans consciousness would have been external. Mans only source of reference was the animals and birds but this was not enough.
The soul needed a source of reference so that it could know itself. So woman was created from Adam's life (an alternative translation to rib). Woman would have been an exact clone of Adam. Man now had an internal mirror. The soul called Adam would now itself because it could see Eve. The soul called woman would know itself because it could see Adam.
Man was now conscious of itself from within because the soul now had a partner. There is no mention of Eve in the whole story. Eve only appears later as a wife who became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. So now man was now internally conscious. Man now new the meaning of the word 'I'.
Therefore shall a man a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be as one flesh. (Genesis 2-24 KJV)
Man has now moved on and left its heritage behind. Man is now unique in that it is a fully internally conscious species. They have each other but are separate from its half conscious forbearers.
In the centre of the Garden (The Human Brain) are two trees, the Tree of Life (the connection to all life), and the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil (judgment). The only thing we must not do is judge good and evil.
There is a reason for this. The twin soul system of internal consciousness is very elegant. It is an almost perfect system with only one weakness. If the souls start judging each other the system self destructs. As the souls start judging each other the perfect mirror is lost.
There is still an internal mirror but it is a mirror of conflict and the twin souls degenerate into what we know as the soul and the ego at war with each other. The final move is for God to move the souls out of the centre of the brain to the right hemisphere so that they do not interfere with the tree of life.
So why did the souls start to judge? My guess is that there was one thing missing. We did not have an innate sense of self. We know we existed as a separate entity but had no idea who that entity was. That was the beginning of our problems.
There are three questions that caught us out. Who am I? How did I get Here? Why am I here? Given these three unanswerable question it was inevitable that we should judge and invent religion, philosophy, race, creed, color, nationality and sexism in an effort to give ourselves some form of identity.
To view David's work, and to contact David please go to his website http://www.david-young.com.au There is a comment question/answer box on the Article page where you can post your question. You can also link through my Bio link on this page. David Young has been writing for twenty years on any subject relating to the human condition. The human race is capable of much greater things than it has achieved in the past. The key to greater achievements, and the elimination of negatives like war, greed , poverty and oppression (to name a few) is for people to make informed choices based on understanding instead of just leaving it to the experts to tell us what to think. Much of David's work involves looking at issues and translating them into plain language. If the expert spoke in plain language we would understand that the experts know no more than we do. We are both spiritual and physical beings. The two must go together if we are to be complete in this world. When writing on spiritual subjects this is always tempered with bringing our spiritual being into the world. If one or the other is neglected we suffer. These are the twin motivators of my work. Physical well being and understanding issues so that we have choices, and making those choices from a spiritual base of knowing who we are.
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