The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

Let me admit again I am by no definition a biblical scholar, or any other kind of expert on religion.  The bible may or may not be the word of God, as far as this study is  concerned. However, it contains a story of creation, in some respects much like other stories of creation. What we should remember as we read it is the context within which the telling of it was conceived. There are two choices: it is the word of God, or it is not. If it is not the word of God, we again have two choices. Either someone was present at the creation, or someone made the story up. If it  is the word of God, verbatim, then the story is of course true as written. If the story was made up (I tend to believe no one else was present at the creation) then it could have been written as a parable, and may also contain anecdotal facts.

Whatever you choose to believe, the fact is the creation sequence in Genesis has been an important part of the Judeo-Christian religion for thousands of years. Which in itself is remarkable, since in many ways it’s just another “god made the world and made man and woman” story. What has made it so important, of course, is the “forbidden tree” section, which has spawned countless interpretations, including the concept of “original sin.” It has also spawned this study.

God told Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil on pain of death. Let’s talk about that, too, for a minute. God made man, then God made woman. At one point in time, I wondered if the tree of knowledge and of good and evil was an allegory representing the carnal knowledge of man and woman, pregnancy, and birth. Thinking He had made a couple of humans in His (our) likeness and that was plenty unless he decided to make some more. But that was pretty well quashed when He said “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”

So how would they do that without sexual intercourse and pregnancy and birth? Well, they wouldn’t. But after they eat “the apple” He says to Eve “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” So evidently intercourse, pregnancy, and birth was the plan all along; He’s just going to make it an unhappy event as punishment.

No, I don’t understand all that, either.

Anyway, God made man and woman, and the snake came along, and the rest is history. Voila! Original sin. But what actually was the sin? Disobedience? Nope. Hubris? Nope. It would be a petty god indeed who doomed mankind forever for such venialities. In fact, it was not a sin at all. It was an act that had almost nothing to do with God, or the serpent, or any petty (or even egregious) wrong.

God wanted Adam to continue in His image. That requires purity of thought, purity of emotion, purity of soul. It also requires the absence of knowledge, the suspension of conventional reality. “Mar 10:15  Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein.”

By “eating” the fruit of the forbidden tree, Adam and Eve brought mortality into their souls. Not just the fact of death, but a completely new perspective – that reality was only what you could touch and feel: the “reality” that keeps us from believing in God and that we are God’s creations, and therefore godlike ourselves. The only “sin” they committed (except for the obvious disobedience and lack of gratitude) was that they were henceforth barred from full exercise of their spiritual powers.

Gen 3:16 (and forward)  “Unto the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’  And unto Adam he said, ‘Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’”

This was not punishment; it was simple fact. God obviously knew that by diminution or complete absence of their godly powers, Adam and Eve and all their descendants were going to have a tough time in the world.

So what was Adam and Eve’s sin? Let’s see how their actions fit the traditional “seven deadly sins.”

Wrath? Obviously not. They weren’t “mad” at anyone. Wrath is described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. In its purest form, it involves self-destructiveness, violence, and hate. I read none of these feelings in the story of Adam and Eve except, perhaps, where the serpent is involved.

Greed? This would probably be the closest description of their “sin.”  The Catholic church defines greed as  “a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power.” The serpent tempted them with the promise that they would “be as gods,” so the greed definition seems to fit. The problem is, they were already “as gods.” They were immortal, and had been given “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” What more could they want? The serpent explained “God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” (Some translations use the noun “angels” instead of “God.”

This is enormously interesting. God created two sentient beings, at least one of whom was intelligent enough to name all the plants and animals of the newly created world, and who was given dominion over all of them. Which is secularly defined as “control or the exercise of control; sovereignty.”

Biblical scholar and essayist Theodore Hiebert says this: “The inescapable fact about the biblical term “dominion,” from the Hebrew verb radah, is that it grants humans the right and responsibility to rule, to govern the rest of creation. It establishes a hierarchy of power and authority in which the human race is positioned above the rest of the natural world. Such a conclusion is clear from the use of radah elsewhere in the Old Testament, where it is employed for the rule of the head of the house over household servants (Lev. 25:43) and of Solomon’s officers over his conscripted labor force (1 Kings 5:16 [Hebrew, 1 Kings 5:30]). On the international scene, radah is used for the rule of Israel’s king over Israel’s enemies (1 Kings 4:24 [Hebrew, 1 Kings 5:4]), or for the rule of Israel’s enemies over Israel itself (Lev. 26:17). In all cases, radah signifies the power, control, and authority of one individual or group over another.”

It is inconceivable to imagine someone receiving “dominion” over all things without some kind of concept of good and evil, or what’s right from what’s wrong. Perhaps a better definition of the nouns used by the serpent would be “happiness” and “sadness,” or “pleasure” and “misery.” Note the serpent doesn’t say “you will know good from evil;” he said “you will know good and evil.”

Being newly formed, it’s quite possible Adam and Eve’s elevators didn’t go all the way up to the top floor, but you’d think any simpleton would turn down an offer like that, because all they currently know is good. Why bring evil, or misery, or sadness into the picture? I’m certainly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I’m pretty sure I would have said “thanks, Mr. Serpent, but no thanks. I’ve got it pretty good here, and I don’t need any pain, misery, death, or sadness in my life.” So greed doesn’t really seem to work. Unless he said “you will be God,” he’s offering an empty promise.

Sloth? Doesn’t appear to be true. After all, Adam named all the beasts, and fowl – not a small job in itself – and evidently took care of the “garden,” since that was his job: to “dress it and keep it” – another pretty big job. Since we have no evidence that he did not do it properly, we must assume he was not slothful.

Pride? Many have used pride and envy as the basis for Adam and Eve’s actions, but it simply doesn’t hold up, for much the same reasons that greed doesn’t hold up. And gluttony isn’t even in the picture. Oh, I suppose you could make a case for Eve wanting to be on the same level as God, envious of His powers, etc. But that’s actually irrelevant to the fundamental truth in the story. In fact, it is a parable, but as far as I know, no one has discerned the true meaning of it. Many do believe, however, that this was the sin – the original sin – that Jesus came to absolve us from. Which never really made sense to me.

I could never believe in a god who made two creatures in His likeness, and gave them dominion over the entire world in which they lived, with only one rule – which he knew they were going to break – so he could damn them for an eternity to mortality, sickness, and chaos. Then he spends the next few thousand years intermittently torturing them, saving them, killing them, rescuing them, then has a sudden change of heart and sends his only son among them to absolve them from whatever the sin was the two progenitors committed, knowing he will be tortured and killed. From fairly neutral god (in genesis) to vengeful god, to loving god. I simply never understood it.

So here’s the truth of it. Whatever “sin” made Eve eat the apple was only, as Alfred Hitchcock used to say, the McGuffin – the thing that captures and keeps our attention while important things are going on in other areas.

What made Adam and Eve do what they did is not nearly as important as what they did, and what followed from that act, which also explains the appearance and importance of Jesus. Because their “sin” was separating themselves from their higher power. Embracing the belief that only the things we can prove are real. That our five senses are the limits of our world. That god was inaccessible, if not unreal. In other words, they chose materialism rather than spiritualism. The apple was merely an earthly symbol of their choice.

In other words, instead of moving up to his level by “becoming as gods,” as the serpent promised, they turned the phrase around, and brought god down to their level. Eve allowed the serpent to diminish the distinction between God and humanity so she could be tempted to eat the fruit.  She would never have disobeyed GOD. But disobeying “someone who was her equal” was not such a big deal. So instead of trying to make themselves gods, their “sin” turns out to be just the opposite – humanizing God, and thereby shutting the door on him and on their own unearthly powers.

God didn’t kick them out of the “garden;” they walked out. If I were god, this would make me unhappy – to see the creatures I made turn their backs on me. But of course I’m not god. It must have had some effect, however, because the next few thousand years appears to be the source of fire and brimstone, with those who disobey him (and sometimes those that don’t) receiving terrible punishment. He is, as Adam and Eve came to believe, a separate, authoritarian, fearsome god with more cruelty than love in him.

Occasionally, as we’ve said, someone would believe in god so intensely that he was able to work miracles. Maybe. Or maybe God worked them. Maybe those stories are anecdotal, too, intended to tell us that with a connection to our extrasensory powers we can do extraordinary things.

Then Jesus appears. And what is his message? That we are divine creatures, capable of performing miracles. And of course he gives us proof: turning water into wine, healing the sick, raising the dead, and the ultimate proof: his own immortality.

So Jesus is, in effect, our connection with our higher power. And sin, in Jesus’ mind, is separation from that power.

John the Baptist said “Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!” Note John used the singular: sin. Not sins. Jesus came to revive our spirituality, to make us believe all things are possible, to re-instill in us the knowledge that we were made “in the image and likeness” of God. He came to re-birth us, because in order to be all that we can be, we must “be born again.”

God said to Adam and Eve, in effect: “Don’t stop believing in your godliness.”

Jesus said to us, in effect: “Start believing in your godliness.”

Why hasn’t anyone (to my knowledge) brought this to light until now? Probably because it’s too subtle, and we get too caught up in the religious inference – kingdom of god, heaven, hell, sin, etc. Or maybe I just haven’t read enough commentary.

But this is not about religion; it’s about enlightenment. You’re certainly free to believe in God or not, afterlife or not, sin or not, guilt or not. Those beliefs are irrelevant to the concept of self-actualization, as Goldenstein (and later Maslow) labeled it. Or as a past Army commercial encouraged you – to “be all that you can be.”

Religion and God are not a necessary part of the equation. They are, however, handholds many have used on their way to achieving this fully developed state, Jesus being the most outstanding example. Jesus told us “All these things that I do ye shall do also, and greater things.”

“Whatever you wish, ask it in my name, and you shall receive it,” he told us. He reminded us many times that we are “children of God,” capable of performing miracles. He showed us by his miracles what we might achieve through faith. He made a handhold of himself, and of His Father, that we might pull ourselves out of our assumed mortality and become as gods again.

Really? We can work miracles? Us ordinary people? Well, Jesus evidently said so, and strangely enough, so does quantum physics. We’ll look into that a little later.

By the way, here’s another, sartorial question.

In Genesis, the Bible says (Gen 3:8,9,10, and 11): “Late in the afternoon a breeze began to blow, and the man and woman heard the LORD God walking in the garden. They were frightened and hid behind some trees. The LORD called out to the man and asked, ‘Where are you?’ The man answered, ‘I was naked, and when I heard you walking through the garden, I was frightened and hid!’  ‘How did you know you were naked?’” God asked.

Okay, here’s my question.

So God was walking in the garden, came upon Adam and Eve, and discovered they were naked. My question is “What was God wearing?” Either He was covered or He wasn’t. If he was, then it would have been no problem for Adam and Eve to also be covered. So obviously God was naked, unless He had made it clear that it was appropriate for Him, being God, to be covered, but inappropriate for Adam and Eve, his creations. But the Bible doesn’t say that. It’s my guess the authors didn’t think of that niggling problem, or thought it would never come up, because no one reading the Bible would ever imagine that God was walking through the garden naked.

What about the creation of the universe, anyway? We’re pretty sure no one was there to record it, so where did the steps come from? Why those exact steps? Is it just a story made up to explain how the world came to be, or is it something more? I certainly don’t know, but I can draw some comparisons.

For example:

Let’s assume the Big Bang theory is correct. Does that rule out the biblical creation? I don’t think so. According to popular science, the only part of the universe that existed was a black hole; there was nothing else. The bible says “In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth — the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters.” In other words, there is nothing. If you want to take it a step further, you can take the words “In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth” to mean He was assembling all that went before into the form of a black hole, preparing the Big Bang.

“And God saith, ‘Let light be;’ and light is.”

And science says “During the first three minutes of the universe, the light elements were born during a process known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis. This set loose the initial flash of light created during the Big Bang.” Wow! That works!

“And God saith, ‘Let an expanse be in the midst of the waters, and let it be separating between waters and waters.’”

I know I’m stretching a point here, but substitute dark matter, or quarks, or whatever particles were originally part of the Big Bang, and you can see it as a sea of unbounded material.

“And God saith, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be collected unto one place, and let the dry land be seen’ and it is so.” In the simplest terms, this is exactly what the scientists say happened during the Big Bang – particles became attracted to each other, clung to each other, and formed objects, separating the “dry land” from the “waters.”

“And God saith, ‘Let the earth yield tender grass, herb sowing seed, fruit-tree (whose seed [is] in itself) making fruit after its kind, on the earth.’”

And the scientists say “Cells resembling prokaryotes appear. These first organisms are chemoautotrophs: they use carbon dioxide as a carbon source and oxidize inorganic materials to extract energy. Later, prokaryotes evolve glycolysis, a set of chemical reactions that free the energy of organic molecules such as glucose and store it in the chemical bonds of ATP. Glycolysis (and ATP) continue to be used in almost all organisms, unchanged, to this day.” And later ”Photosynthesizing cyanobacteria evolved; they used water as a reducing agent, thereby producing oxygen as a waste product.”

Sounds a lot like plants, doesn’t it?

On the fourth day “God saith, ‘Let luminaries be in the expanse of the heavens, to make a separation between the day and the night, then they have been for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years, and they have been for luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth’ and it is so.”

That’s pretty simple. Because science says “The Earth is thought to have been formed about 4.6 billion years ago by collisions in the giant disc-shaped cloud of material that also formed the Sun. Gravity slowly gathered this gas and dust together into clumps that became asteroids and small early planets called planetesimals.” No conflict there.

Then God said “Let the waters teem with the teeming living creature, and fowl let fly on the earth on the face of the expanse of the heavens.”

”And God prepareth the great monsters, and every living creature that is creeping, which the waters have teemed with, after their kind, and every fowl with wing, after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good.”

And science says “Like the plants, animals evolved in the sea. And that is where they remained for at least 600 million years.” Catch the “waters teeming with living creatures” reference?

On the sixth day, God said “‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind’ and it is so. And God maketh the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good.”

And science says over hundreds of millions of years the oxygen generating organisms in the seas produced enough oxygen for animals to survive on the land, so they began to come out – as simple organisms, obviously.

And here’s an interesting scientific factoid: “Biologists reason that all living organisms on Earth must share a single last universal ancestor.” Wait. Was that one-celled organism named Adam?

Lastly, of course, God said “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” And over the next few hundred million years, that happened.

So there you are. As far as I’m concerned, the biblical description, simple as it is, jibes exactly with the scientific version. A pretty substantial argument, if you’re so inclined, for the veracity (and therefore divinity) of the Bible.

Are we sure there wasn’t someone writing this all down?

I’m probably the farthest thing from a “scientist,” leaning more toward the “creative.” But I have some pretty simple questions about the Big Bang theory for which I can find no satisfactory answer from the scientific community. Like “What was there before the Big Bang?” I mean, if the Big Bang was the result of a singularity expanding, or blowing up, where did the singularity come from? The one that exploded into trillions of stars, and an immeasurable amount of matter? No one seems to be able to answer that question, at least to my satisfaction. Steven Hawking obviously thinks that’s a frivolous question; he says it’s irrelevant. Time began with the Big Bang. Okay, I’ll accept that time as we know it began then, but that’s begging the question.

And if that was the beginning of the universe — If nothing else existed at that time, If there was no “space” – where was the “big bang” located when it went bang? What did it “bang” into? And if it did bang (scientists don’t like the word “explode” to describe it, because it “wasn’t an explosion in the usual sense”) how did it bang into nothingness? The simplest answer, and the one that makes most sense, is the universe was “created.” But that requires belief in a God, or Person, or Consciousness, or Thing that existed before the universe, and that’s incredibly difficult for some folks to believe. So they have to invent something else,

Many years ago, “scientists” invented the “luminiferous ether” to explain how light moved through the air. Seems like they’re doing the same kind of thing with the Big Bang. Either they completely disregard it, or they invent some wild theory to “fit” the circumstances.

Recently scientists have found an anomaly with the balance of microwave activity in the universe. From this has come a theory that there are many universes banging around out there, on levels we can’t see, and that one of them somehow came in contact with our empty one and that’s where the Big Bang came from. Of course it’s much more detailed and complicated than that, but that’s it in essence.

If you tell a scientist that God created the universe, or created DNA, or did any of a dozen other things, the scientist will probably put his fingers in his/her ears and cry “God gap, God gap, God gap. When you can’t find any other answer you just throw God in there.” Well, yeah.  And when scientists can’t find an answer for a set of circumstances they just seem to throw whatever’s handy in there.

I think perhaps it was Dawkins who talked about the origin of life, saying with the billions of planets out there, things got just right, and with a little luck, life appeared.  That’s miles from the real quote, but it’s substantive enough. (Actually, I never thought “luck” was an essential part of scientific equations.)  But if I say “I think it was caused by an intelligent agent” I’m laughed out of the building. They can have their “science” gaps, but deny me my “God” gap.

They throw the Creationists in my face and say the world is obviously older than 5,000 years. Well, I’m not a fundamental Creationist, so that rebuttal doesn’t apply. So I say to them, “What was there before the big bang?” And they give me stuff about parallel universes. Which really, in my humble opinion, is a whole lot harder to believe in than creation by an intelligent agent (God).

Which brings up a point. Data is data. It doesn’t propose or deny theories or hypotheses; it simply exists. Data, at least accurate data, is simply information. From that information we can draw theories or hypotheses, but when we do, we leave science behind and become philosophers. Science researches, discovers, organizes, and presents the data. Theorists (philosophers) interpret it. Someone once said “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Because the only limit to a theory based on data is that it must somehow fit the data (circumstances).

Big Bang? Let’s see. Multiple universes. Collision. Yeah, that’s it. (applause).

Big Bang? Let’s see. God. What? Get off the stage, moron. (Vegetables thrown).

The “scientists” say because you can’t prove or disprove the existence of God, you might as well believe in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and leprechauns, because you can’t prove or disprove their existence, either. A dopey argument in my estimation, but one that would make a lot more sense if they could prove the existence of multiple universes. Which they can’t. Any more than they could prove the existence of luminiferous ether.

I understand it’s hard to accept an intelligent agent if you equate its existence with belief in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.  But science is supposed to be even-handed and unprejudiced. So why not accept the existence of God as a theory at least as plausible as multiple universes? And one more niggling question. If there are multiple universes, where did they come from? One problem, of course, is that existence of an intelligent agent might also mean the existence of a set of moral standards to live by. And we certainly don’t want that, do we?