Extract from The Gods, All of them (Religion)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, December 06, 2010, 01:13 (5102 days ago)

I took this out of "The Gods, All of them!" so as not to clutter up that thread.-B_M
>.... The creation process is almost incidental to the overall story, which is why it was given so little attention. Like most things, we tend to obsess on the incidental bits and ignore the big friggin' signs that say this bit is important. (For example We have been obsessing over Christ's birth since the church was formed, yet the bible never gives his birth date, year, sign, or any other indication that it was supposed to be a 'special' event worth spending your annual income on gifts over :P)-Xeno
>A good piece of writing--not sure how it answers my question, but I acknowledge what you say with nods! The only exception I have here is this: The Bible does NOT exist as a single, contiguous work with a true beginning and end; each book is itself sacrosanct, and there is no overarching narrative that binds each chapter. In fact, I find no mention of Christ in Genesis, in either my NRSV or Jewish Bible study editions; you must admit here, the hand of Paul in his reinterpretation of Jewish history to suit his own ends... Early Christians notoriously Cherry-picked lesser prophets for proof of Christ.-David
>Sorry to break in but Genesis 3:15 in the Masoretic text is discussing Eve's relationship with the serpent. Is the KJ version so different that Satan and Christ can be extracted from it?-Xeno 
> In fact, in the ancient near-east, Serpents were not evil--they were symbols of wisdom, hence how the Staff of Moses was a Serpent. Christian re-interpretation of Judaism is how we got our Devil. 
> 
> Hell, Satan as the root of all evil, are both fabrications based on Jewish mystical theology. 
> 
> Especially the Apostle Paul; the early Christian church was hell-bent on differentiating and removing themselves from the Jewish people and theology in order to separate themselves after the failed Jewish Revolt against Rome. Reinterpretation is what we inherited from the Church. They adapted the Zoroastrian Ahriman as Satan, and tried to interpret the entire OT as the ultimate culmination ending in Christ. 
> 
> One needs only read ancient Jewish commentary (such as the Zohar) to realize exactly how different Paul's (and hence our own) interpretation really was.-Yes, I am well aware of this. Of course, I am also well aware that the Jews don't dig the NT, the Christians don't dig anything that doesn't include Christ, etc and most of them are too ignorant to realize that they all teach the same things and that what the texts teach is not what they believe it does.-But if you want to go down the esoteric route...
 The serpent, as a symbol of wisdom, was also present on the staff of Hermes which later became the symbol for our medical profession. On an even deeper level, the serpents representation of wisdom, the tree of knowledge, and Eve's choice to take them of her own accord is the actual cause of the fall of man. Not a talking snake and a piece of fruit. It was the choice to try and take a shortcut to the mastery of knowledge and wisdom(tree of knowledge and serpent of wisdom) The enmity between her(Binah, understanding, and interpreted into the holy spirit in the bible) seed and his(the serpent, Chokhmah, wisdom) is the divide between wisdom and understanding that exists without Keter(Christ, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, etc) All of these fall under the Ain Soph which is analogous to YHWH or the UI etc, all encompassing. -As I have mentioned before. The Bible is chalked full of esoteric meaning. I am not in any denial of that. However, I am of the opinion that when Paul, in 1 Tim 3:16 said that "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." He was not simply referring to the Bible, but, as he explicitly said, ALL SCRIPTURES. I would take that to include the Vedas, the Kabalah, the Koran, the Torah, and probably many other texts that I am not yet familiar with. -This is why(perhaps in another thread) I said explicitly that I don't want to debate RELIGIONs. If you want to debate a text, taken in its entirety, ok. If you want to debate it taking only the first five books, Ok. If you want to debate it taking anything in between, ok. This debate started at the mention of an over reaching theme to the bible, hence why I pursued the line of argument regarding the over-reaching text of the ENTIRE Bible, not just the OT.