Thursday, January 12, 2012

THAT FIRST GARDEN....THE BIBLICAL ONE

I have an intense dislike for religions, particularly those tree originating in the same geographical spot, not to get into my opinion on bible freaks and people with fear of god.

However, there is something many people practicing gardening or the uninitiated do not give much thought. The worn out Eden.

Here some thoughts about it.  

Knotgrass
Weeds as parable
WEEDS
RICHARD MABEY
pages 39-40-41

There are two extreme views  of the authors of Genesis - that they were amanuenses for God or politically motivated propagandists. What is inescapable is that, whatever their inspiration, they were preoccupied by plants and their metaphors.   They see the world through vegetable allegory and myth.  They place 'Grass and herb yielding seed after his kind' in their proper evolutionary position in the Creation story before the fish and birds and mammals.  They stage the great drama of the Fall in a garden.  The plot is elaborated largely through botanical symbols - fruit and herbs, contrasting styles of cultivation, a magical and forbidden tree.  And the denouement is exile from the carefree life of foraging to the toil of farming and the eternal course of 'thorns and thistles'. Genesis helped form a moral context for weeds, to stigmatise them as more than a physical nuisance. The text itself may even have been partially prompted by the proliferation of weeds in the Middle-Eastern 'cradle of civilization'.

The first written versions of the Genesis Creation myth (the stories in it are much older) date from about 600 to 500 BCE, and appeared in the region known  as Canaan, (modern Mesopotamia), part of the 'Fertile
Crescent' where agriculture was first developed.  There are two versions of the 
myth.  In the first, God creates humans immediately after the animals, and establishes them in their role as agriculturalists, rulers of the rest of the Creation.  'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness' says God rather, telling slipping into the royal 'we'; 'and let them have dominion over the fish of the seas, and over the fowl of the air,  and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every thing that  creepeth upon the earth'.  Despite this abundance of subservient and lightly edible creatures, God seems to insist on a strictly vegetarian lifestyle: "I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat'.

The second version(Genesis 2 and 3) which introduces the Garden of  Eden, is more complex.  It takes off at the point when the creation of heaven and earth are complete, and has God creating man in advance of other creatures.  He forms him from 'the dust of the ground' and places him in  'a garden eastward in Eden'.  It contains 'every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life... and the tree of knowledge of good and evil'.  Adam's responsibilities are to 'dress it and keep it', to eat what he likes but to stay away from the tree of knowledge.  Only then are the animals created and brought before Adam to be named -  though his mate, fashioned from one of his ribs, is at this stage called simply 'Woman'.

Then they eat the fruit of a tree of knowledge, and hell breaks loose.  God's punishment is severe and unambigous. Life will become a vale of tears, ending in death.
Women will bear children in pain and sorrow, and become their husband's serfs.
And the unbidden harvests of the Garden will now have to be won by hard toil, agricultural toil: 'cursed is the ground for thy sake' God rages, in  sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to there; and thou shall eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground'.  Then he expels Adam (no mention of Eve) 'from the  Garden of Eden, no till the ground from whence he was taken'. It was a stark change from those gardener's duties of 'dressing and keeping'.

    If  you ask my opinion on the crime and punishment, being first offenders it was exaggerated, cruel and in terms of jurisprudence with plenty of flaws, like no due process,  to appeal in Boston or the Supreme Court.

to be continued
that is that

4 comments:

  1. It's all a bunch of hoo ha! I agree with you. It's frustrating for me to understand and I deal with this on a daily basis. I don't know how people believe in this stuff. Well I know. It's fear. The fear of dying. And if you don't believe, people will say that they'll pray for you. In my mind, a god wouldn't create inequality, sexism, racism....antigay sentiments. As a child, I wouldn't be brainwashed. Men began agriculture. Pure and simple:)

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  2. Many people forget that most aboriginals cultures in five continents and archipielagos had their own set of beliefs from the beginning. Yet, some religions, the mono kind, as in monotheist became more dominant, fashionable and imposed upon the others by the sword or plenty of gimmicks and offers of this or other kind for the afterlife.

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  3. I'll have to re-read this post. My initial take is that you make valid points, but those are more of man's influence...but that is one heavy influence and perversion. Not to mention it is one fine line between that of God or mankind.

    I certainly see the negative aspect of the Abrahamic religions' attitude towards the land, though it certainly is not confined to those or any beliefs. "Perversion", again, is the word that comes to mind.

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  4. Desert Dweller, if you want to read a really wild post covering the whole possibilities of this one drop by alcantarillaalquimica.blogspot.com...

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