"And God said..." The language of Genesis and beyond...

[Fearless]

I have read the first few pages of Genesis for a bit of amusement a few times now (yes, you read it correctly) but I keep trying to get into words something that immediately hits me that I just can't process in my brain.

I haven't read the whole thing (not sure if I should apologise or not) but the language is my stumbling block at this stage. I know the bible has been re-written more times than a badly evolved Chinese whisper (take a look at this website for a tonne of laughs http://www.brokenpicturetelephone.com/), but am I to assume on a very basic level that God created language before he created anything else given he could construct sentences?

And God said, "Let there be light"

Am I to assume he plucked names out of thin air for what was to be the definition of matter for the rest of time? ie Light, Sea, Earth etc

This passage would suggest it was so:
God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas

And then got a bit more in depth and specific with:

And God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

What this suggests to me and should probably be a good argument for an initial criticism is if he was floating around or whatever he was doing creating all this stuff and giving it names and talking to... well himself I guess, who was taking notes? or when he created Adam and Eve he passed on his complete language system to them and in turn they passed it on etc

But then there is this:
So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

So basically Adam was then entrusted to give definition to animals before Eve came along... so who was taking notes again? I guess God was able to remember the fine detail.

I am sure there is text somewhere that explains all this. I hope it can also explain why god decided to make a snake talk his lingo too because this is one strange little point I just can't get my head around.

So my brain can move on from here... god created language and definition for all things great and small with a bit of a hand from Adam before that pesky trouble making Eve came along and spoiled it all. So did god give Adam a memory as bad as mine and instead found someone else (ie, Moses) to write the first Encyclopedia of Life if you like which was the starting point for a bible? Or did god magically start making scriptures and scatter them about the place as some sort of treasure hunt for nerdy scholars and significant others to piece together?

I guess I am supposed to keep reading but at this stage I want to know who the teachers of the completed language were or am I just meant to believe that god had personal secretaries taking shorthand while he spilled the beans on all creation. Or did everyone just conveniently know everything there was to know without being educated. It is the point of language I am trying to understand because I'll be darned if Joe Caveman was going to scratch everything on the side of a rock face that he learned... oh hold on... Joe Caveman never existed.

I really don't think I got my question out properly in the end :p ... maybe someone can help me along a little bit without drowning me in heavy reading like I have here. Maybe this is just me getting my thoughts down on paper.

Goodness knows! I think I have just confused myself more!..

Cheers


p.s. Before anyone wonders why I am reading the bible and asking noob questions, no I am not trying to annoy folk and I am certainly not applying for a one way ticket to the Island, but in order to understand half of what I read I am trying to give myself a crash course in understanding. Bible for beginners if you may.

/essay

[davo]

what then of Genesis 2:17? "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

How would adam and eve know that eating of the tree is 'evil'? The tree held the knowledge of it, eating of it brought the knowledge of evil/sin into the world ...

.. how did adam and eve therefor know what they were doing was a 'sin' if they only got that knowledge after doing it?

needless to say god never ever mentions eternal sin for their offspring .. but i digress ...

:P

answer: it's the BIBLE thats why!

[youngmoigle]

My favourite is Adam hiding from the All-knowing god who is wandering around the garden calling out "Adam, where are you?"

Cain is condemned to be a refugee and a vagabond in the earth, but he actually leads quite a settled life in the Land of Nod - gets married and builds a city!

(A city for about three or four people - shit, he didn't even need a village, a cubby-house would have done the trick).

[Fearless]

How would adam and eve know that eating of the tree is 'evil'? The tree held the knowledge of it, eating of it brought the knowledge of evil/sin into the world ...

.. how did adam and eve therefor know what they were doing was a 'sin' if they only got that knowledge after doing it?

Didn't god tell them not to but Mr Snake had a better plan?

True Story:
I was in hospital years ago (age 18) having microsurgery on my hand after a workplace accident (cut 3 fingers to the bone on an industrial granulator). They knocked out my arm to do the operation (as in numbed). Afterwards I was wheeled into the recovery room laying on a bed, the nurse put my lifeless arm on my chest and said "Whatever you do don't lift your arm up in the air with your other hand!"
Well of course my curiosity got the better of me and when she was out of the room I decided to give it a whirl, lifted it up in the air and thought to myself 'ha, it didn't do anything... what would she know!'. Then without thinking I let go of my arm forgetting for a split second that I had no control of it... my arm and heavy hand fell down onto my face. I nearly broke my own nose from the impact... when she returned to the room I pretended nothing had happened in spite of being in pain... I am pretty sure she knew what I did.

If I didn't know any better she set me up, like a twisted psychological test and waited outside for the inevitable outcome... why even put the temptation there for me? Why mention it? nasty nurses! :rolleyes:

Wait a minute... why would god put the tree there, with nice fruit just to set someone up? test them? waiting for them to fail maybe? He could have put a butt ugly, stinking shrub there with poison berries but noooo, put nice shiny apples on it of course. If god made Adam and Eve so perfect as his creation why did they fail so quickly? Bad design maybe?... better ask Mythbusters.

If you ask me god sounded just like my nasty nurse was... sick sense of humour.

[davo]

Didn't god tell them not to but Mr Snake had a better plan?


yea, god may have told them not to do it, but in a world where the knowledge of sin (going against god, just ask some christian the amount of different sins there are) doesn't exist, where the tree holds the knowledge of it, how do they know what they are doing is a sin?

They only get the knowledge of sin, bringing it into the world, after eating from the tree.

[Fearless]

I follow you now cheers.

[joshman108]

My favourite is Adam hiding from the All-knowing god who is wandering around the garden calling out "Adam, where are you?"

Cain is condemned to be a refugee and a vagabond in the earth, but he actually leads quite a settled life in the Land of Nod - gets married and builds a city!

(A city for about three or four people - shit, he didn't even need a village, a cubby-house would have done the trick).


If you look at the rest of scripture in its context, it says that in those days (im not sure why...) but people lived to be hundreds of years old. I imagine that by that time he was hundreds of years old. Given such a long life span, it would be very possible to need a city for all those people. Imagine how some people can have 5 kids in their short lifetime (on a good day). Now imagine if you had hundreds of years to reproduce. Think of all the people that would be produced. By the time cain hits a couple hundred years old and hes ready to build the city, he could already have great great great great great great grandchildren. As long as were giving precedent to scripture, we may as well look at the whole of scripture.

[Brother Nelson]

And God said, "Let there be light"

So who was he talking to? Was he talking to himself or was it like saying abracadabra, the magic doesn't work if you don't say the right words?

[Worldslaziestbusker]

But the levels of inbreeding from such a genetic bottle neck would keep the population low as immune system resistance to diseases would never get established and the incidence of fatal congenital disorders would be high. Youngmoigle's cubby house would suffice.
If you're going to apply reason to a bronze age fairy story, so am I.
WLB

[Goldenmane]

"And God said..."

This shit is all magical, doncherknow.

Seriously, it's all tied up with certain magical systems of thought, wherein words actually have magical power (which is why some adherents of certain sects omit the 'o' from 'God', rendering it 'G-d'). In the beginning, after all, was the Word, and the Word is God and the Word was God and and that magical bullshit.

It's related to various schools of numerology and all that bollocks too. I'll go into it in more detail if you want, but it's been a while since I was really seriously interested, so I'm a little rusty on the actual details and probably can only really rustle up a sort of general overview.

[Loki]

I have always seen similarities to the "voice of authority" style used in the bible and the narrative style used by Tolkien in TLOTR. It's a useful literary trick to convey seriousness and authority.

I prefer Tolkiens novel to god's one though, Tolkiens is well written with well fleshed out characters and a logical and detailed story line. God's one comes across as an incomprehensible first draft.