|
The first part of the story, the creation of everything up to the ridiculous garden, was done by the "Elohim" or gods, plural. This whole bit is fairly poetic and seems to have been largely cribbed from Babylonian mythology.
There is an abrupt transition when the garden is created and the prose starts to get a little clumsy, and that's where Yahweh appears all by himself, and he hogs the whole show after that.
Funny, I've always thought the whole thing problematic on so many levels. For one thing, the garden is a pen for pets. For another, Yahweh lies to Adam when he says the fruit will kill him: it doesn't. For another, Eve is never told to forego the fruit, apparently females can withstand the knowledge of good and evil perfectly well and it's only when a male decides he wants it for himself that the trouble starts. Then there's the snake, who tells the absolute truth to Eve, that the fruit will give her knowledge and that it won't kill her. Who's the real villain here?
Also, when they are kicked out of the wildlife refuge, pet cage, whatever, they go to dwell in the land of Nod, where they presumably found spouses for their children. Either that, or Eve was remarkably fecund for a very long time and not picky about bedding her children. I guess that's where the allegorical part comes in, even for the literalists.
Then there was Lilith, someone who exists mostly in oral history, that first proposed mate in the pet cage who spurned the weakling Adam because she didn't feel she ought to be subordinate to such a poor creature.
It's fun to play with on an intellectual level, but I wouldn't want to base a religion on it.
|