The Genesis Myth Explained

[catbert836]

Around 4000 BCE, in the Middle East the Agricultural Revolution was just revving up. There existed during that period and in that place two main types of people: The people who embraced the agriculture as a way of life and settled down to live on it permanently. We don't know what they called themselves, so let's call them the As. The As mainly lived in the Tigris-Euphrates area, what is now Iraq. On the other hand, we have the people who have not yet embraced agriculture, and still live the nomadic hunting and gathering life as they had been doing for thousands of years. We'll call them the Bs. The Bs lived south of the As, mainly in what is now Arabia and southern Iraq.
As soon as agriculture was realized by the As, their population started expanding. It's easy to explain why. A surplus of food in their settled location meant more people were able to be fed. The population of the As expanded accordingly. Suddenly, the As were in a crisis. They had more people, but their land was not big enough to accommodate a population explosion. It's also very easy to see what the As did about it. They expanded onto the land of the Bs. The Bs couldn't stand up to the As sheer numbers, and so were soon either killed or assimilated into agricultural society. This is the story of how the agricultural revolution began to spread around the globe.
Now, at this point you may be asking yourself what all this had to do with Genesis. It has everything to do with Genesis, but not particularly with the original creation story (God creates the world in 7 days, etc.) That story was a myth of the early Semites, and was developed much like creation stories of the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, Norse and every other people around the globe developed their own myths to explain how they got where they were. My story from the previous two paragraphs has more to do with two legends specifically within Genesis: The Fall of Man, and Cain & Abel. I'll take them one at a time.
1) The Fall of Man
This story describes Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. God did not want them to do this because "they would surely die". It's easy to interpret this myth. The knowledge of good and evil was the knowledge of agriculture. Agriculture enabled man to be supreme master over the planet, something that at least the neighbors of Adam and Eve did not like. So, as you see, Adam and Eve were the As. This assertion makes more sense once the second myth is explained.
2) Cain & Abel
Cain was the As. Abel was the Bs. This makes very much sense because, as you might recall from Genesis, Cain was the farmer who offered God the fruits of the Earth as sacrifices, while Abel was the hunter who offered his prey to God as sacrifices. For reasons unexplained in the Bible, God liked Abel's sacrifices better than Cain's. So Cain got jealous and killed Abel. But now, we are able to explain why it was that God favored Abel. Abel (Or the Bs) were the Semitic peoples who formulated the original myth of Genesis and passed it down to their descendants, who wrote a book about their and their ancestors experiences. The book is what we know as the Bible.
So, as you can see, our culture's creation story is just a piece of Semitic propaganda from the wars between them and their northern, agricultural neighbors.

I'd like to acknowledge that I got this interpretation mainly from the books of Daniel Quinn, especially "Ishmael" and "The Story of B", which I recommend to all of you if you would like to read more. Also, this is the only interpretation I know of that really makes any sense. If there's any others, I'd like to know what they are.

[zeal]

1. JDEP

look up higher critism form the oxford companion to the Bible and JDEP theory

[Teaser]

2. Quinn's explanations

were in vogue several decades ago, along with Joseph Campbell and other similar approaches to myth. While not without some validity, I think the scholarly concensus is that these stories' origins and meanings can not easily be boiled down into an agriculture vs. animal husbandry metaphors.

For example, the preference for the sacrifice of Abel may simply be a reflection of the notion that blood was "the life".

[Zorbuddha]

3. The knowledge of good and evil is the knowledge of agriculture?

That's a bit of a stretch.

[mzteris]

4. here's an interesting link

http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnellyr/summary.html

[More Than A Feeling]

5. In my opinion, Genesis did not begin in what we would call history

Hanging with God in the Garden of Eden isn't exactly finite, you know? I don't think the GoE exists anywhere on the face of the Earth.

It's a myth, but it isn't a "we don't understand how science works, so let's invent a story that will amuse our descendents" myth. It explains something important about human nature.

It demonstrates that human nature has tremendous freedom, but that humans aren't perfect, so they are going to screw up. They will screw up more if they try to hide from the knowledge of their finiteness, dependency, and capacity to do wrong.

Basically, the message of Genesis: "Accept your insecurity."

[ROakes1019]

7. blood sacrifice

I think the reason the myth shows God's preferring Abel is that animal and blood sacrifice were part of the people's belief. After all, wasn't Jesus a blood sacrifice? The Jews set up booths outside the temples to sell pure white doves and pure white lambs for sacrifices. It all ties in with the Semite myth.

[Extend a Hand]

6. I've read that

it was based on an earlier pagan myth...

But as far as my own Christian beliefs are concerned
I think that God is demonstrating "values"

God created .... and it was good.
God used creativity to create value
and then rested to enjoy the things he created.

It seems to me that people are happier when they are creating value for themselves and others and then enjoying the things they produced...

It seems like many many people spend their lives working as a wage slave at jobs they hate just so that they can consume more and more things produced by others.

[wli]

8. look for Ugaritic literature

e.g. the Ugaritic words for the sea and death gods became the Hebrew words for sea and death.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. While Cain and Abel may be a mythological account of the

conflict between agriculturists and hunter-gatherers, the Fall seems more like an allegorical explanation of how humanity evolved from operating mostly on instinct (like animals) and therefore not being judgeable on moral grounds (a black widow spider is not a murderer, a cat is not an adulterer) to becoming conscious that their actions have consequences and that they need principles and rules to keep their societies running smoothly.

[GOPBasher]

10. That's the exact same interpretation I have. n/t

[shrike]

11. I agree with your summation of the Fall

But I'm afraid I don't buy the herders vs. farmers interpretation of Cain and Abel. Not that I personally know what it means -- I just don't buy that interpretation.