Genesis must be myth.

[Kuznetzova]

It is not the fact that the book of Genesis simply omits the Lower Paleolithic, the Middle Paleolithic, or the Upper Paleolithic periods of human history. Rather it is the fact that there is simply no place in the story of Genesis where these things could even fit. The first two human beings, Adam and Eve, are expelled from a garden in the middle east by a floating angel with a light saber. They have two sons, Cain and Abel -- who are explicitly said to be engaging in agriculture in chapter 4 of Genesis. Other mythological aspects of the fourth chapter will be explained below.

Today we do not surmise or guess that the three paleolithic periods took place, but we know they happened, with the strength of a large body of self-consistent evidence. During the paleolithic period, human beings moved around as nomads in make-shift villages that had to be quickly constructed and just as quickly abandoned. Agriculture did not exist, rope did not exist, textile clothing with wool , cotton, and silk did not exist. Stone masonry did not exist, and smelted metal tools were not yet invented. Axes, knives, and swords did not exist, and so trees could not be felled quickly, nor could cabins be built by a small entourage. Agriculture was invented not suddenly, but required a slow centuries-long process of domestication of wild variants of grasses, with artificial selection for the most desirable traits (meaty, good-tasting kernels, lack of skin covering on the kernels, high crop yeilds, etc) In sheep and goats, wild variants had to be slowly domesticated, and even more slowly, animal husbandry had to promote those traits of large amounts of wool for clothing and for fattened flesh for consumption.

It is the topic of agriculture and domestication of wild animals and plants that is the single most damaging attack on Genesis. It is the problem of this sudden, unexplained emergence of bronze-aged technology that shows in the most clear light -- that the book of Genesis is a creation myth. This creation myth is not related to the true objective history of homo sapiens. Tens of thousands of years of human history took place, where humans were hunter-gatherers on many continents prior to the invention of these technologies. We don't surmise this happened. We know this happened.

In a final assessment, the idea that four humans beings (Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel) could settle down into a agricultural village is not even logistically feasible. If for no other reason, metal axes and stone masonry did not exist. You cannot construct the basic amenities of agricultural life without these tools. There is probably some lower bound on the number of people would could construct an agricultural village starting from absolutely nothing at all out in the wild, -- but this number is far greater than four. A more reasonable estimate may be as high as 300 people near a river.

Sudden technological references in the fourth chapter of Genesis demonstrate that this book is a creation myth, and not connected to real history. Let's cover the examples.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
- Genesis ch.3 v.19

The end of the third chapter in Genesis mentions bread. And apparently this statement was made by Jehovah himself to Adam, prior to him having any time out in the wild after expulsion from the garden. Some evidence shows that bread was first eaten by people of the Upper Paleolithic period, who had to first roast kernels in order for them to be ground. The first human beings probably did not know what bread was.

And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
- Genesis ch.4 v.2

Genesis chapter 4 mentions domesticated sheep and the agricultural practice of tilling. Tilling is an anachronism. Human beings moved in nomadic bands for tens of thousands of years prior to utilizing farming plots to maximize yield in a small area. Additionally, there is no reason that four humans would need the amount of food afforded by tilling plots. They would throw out most of it.

And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain, was Naamah.
- Genesis ch.4 v.22

The 22nd verse mentions iron and brass. We can excuse the fact that brass was mentioned because the Hebrew word could also refer to bronze. Both cases are damning anachronisms, but the mentioning of iron smelting moreso. Iron smelting was invented by the Hittites several millennia after the invention of bronze smelting. This is in recorded history! The Hittites were an entire civilization that existed subsequently several Egyptian dynasties. That is to say, iron smelting was invented after the invention of writing. We can surmise from the order of the verses in chapter 4 that Adam was still alive after the invention of iron smelting. That is completely ridiculous. Without a shadow of a doubt, we know that metal smelting technology was invented far later than early stone tech.

With such bizarre technology mentioned at the time of the first four humans, we might hypothesize here that the book of Genesis was actually intended to refer to Jehovah creating the people who later became the Hebrew tribes. Cain is said to marry a wife while in the land of Nod. Where did his wife come from? This is more evidence that it was only later that the book of Genesis was interpreted to refer to the beginnings of all human beings on earth, rather than refer to the creation of Hebrew tribesman. At the time it was written, Genesis was probably intended as a creation myth only for a single tribe, not as a description of the origin of homo sapiens.

These observations only strengthen and reinforce the intended main thesis: the book of Genesis must be a creation myth.

[uwot]

These observations only strengthen and reinforce the intended main thesis: the book of Genesis must be a creation myth.

Have you only just worked this out, Kuznetzova?

[Kamalayka]

You're "revelation" regarding Genesis is about two millenia late!

Origen (183-253), in his Commentary On Genesis:

"Very many mistakes have been made because the right method of examining the holy texts has not been discovered by the greater number of readers....because it is their habit to follow the letter....

"Scripture interveweaves the imaginary with the historical, sometimes introducing what is utterly impossible, sometimes what is possible but never occured..the same with the Gospels and the writings of the Apostles; for not even they are purely historical, incidents which never occured being interwoven in the 'corporeal' sense.

"And who is so silly as to imagine that God, like a husband-man, planted a garden in Eden eastword, and put in it a tree of life, which could be seen and felt...And if God is also said to walk in the garden in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that any one will doubt that these passages, by means of seeming history, though the incidents never occured, figuratively reveal certain mysteries."

[Kuznetzova]

Thanks for the replies. Very good observations. The following paragraphs were taken from an article first posted on the blog located at contradictionsinthebible.com


The Yahwist text opens, in what is now Genesis 2:4b, with a mythic tale of man’s creation from the dust of the earth—not the cosmos’ creation as in P (#1)—and his placement in and later expulsion from a lush and fertile garden. Not incoincidentally, the Yahwist source ends with stories about the spying and future conquest of a lush and fertile land, bearing fruit and “flowing with milk and honey” (Num 13:27)—namely, the land of the southern kingdom of Judah. In other words, the majority of the stories told by the Yahwist focus on Judah, its geography, its political relationships with its ethnic neighbors, its important cultic centers, and its ancestral heroes. It is for this reason that scholars accredit the composition of the Yahwist text to southern Judean scribes. As we will see, many of these stories were written down by the Yahwist to serve a specific purpose: to legitimate and endorse the political and ideological views of the southern kingdom. The Yahwist additionally narrates stories about man’s primeval beginnings as a series of increasingly violent and disobedient acts (Gen 3-11), however now placed within a later Priestly interpretive framework that attempts to diminish and amend the Yahwist’s rather disappointing view of early humanity (chapter 3). Stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which were also heavily commented on by insertions made into the narrative by a later Priestly tradition are also found in the Yahwist source. A few of these stories are now also combined with duplicate stories from the Elohist tradition, which makes its first appearance at Genesis 20, thus providing yet another voice in this now polyphonic redacted text we call the Bible. The Yahwist textual tradition continues into the book of Exodus but quickly disappears and gives way to the much stronger presence of the Elohist and Priestly sources. Finally, the book of Numbers preserves a few stories from the Yahwist tradition that center on the spying of the land of Judah and the conquest of Transjordan—again heavily amended and commented on by later Priestly inserts and variant traditions from the Elohist source.

The Yahwist text itself is most likely a compilation of stories, traditions, and archival material that was shaped into a continuous narrative by a southern Judean scribe or scribes. It is difficult to say when these traditions and stories were shaped into the larger narrative we call the Yahwist, but it could not have been earlier than the 8th century BC. Many of the Yahwist’s stories display knowledge of the geopolitical world as it was in the 9th-8th centuries BC. The final form of the Yahwist text was probably fixed sometime in the 7th century BC and continued to be revised into the exilic and post-exilic periods (6th-5th centuries BC). We must bear in mind that ancient texts are products of their historical circumstances. Stories were written down to preserve tradition, define identity and/or nationality, and explain present religious and political institutions and beliefs by tracing them back to their ancestors. Much of the ancient literature that makes up what later tradition has come to understand and interpret as “the Bible,” had its roots in the scribal activity of the royal courts and temple precincts of the late monarchal (late 8th century and 7th century BC), exilic (598-539 BC), and post-exilic periods. As such it was literature that was never produced for dissemination to the public. In fact there was no such thing as a public readership; it did not exist! Rather, religious and political texts were written to support or legitimate the beliefs or worldviews of its author and its community to other elites and powerful political figures, or to condemn and illegitimate the position of others, as we will see.

[reasonvemotion]

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
- Genesis ch.3 v.19

The Bible uses the word "bread" to mean "that which is taken into the body and provides nourishment."
This verse means that food will be obtained by the sweat of the brow, manual work, until the end of their days, death.


The text below simply says Abel was a keeper of sheep while Cain was a farmer. There is no reason to doubt Cain"s occupation as a man of the soil.

And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
- Genesis ch.4 v.2

And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain, was Naamah.
- Genesis ch.4 v.22

The Hebrew word for instructor literally means "hammerer" or "forger". Hammering was no doubt earlier than smelting. Adam lived for 930 years and surely was alive to see many inventions, arts and crafts of which no evidence survived the flood.

[Kuznetzova]

Dear reasonvemotion,

This was only the tip of my studies of this subject. Basically what you see above is me during my first few days of studying Genesis within a historical perspective. Now I have returned. I am stronger, more knowledgeable, and more prepared than ever before.

I could nearly write a book on this subject. So for brevity I will simply enumerate the most important "high points" in this historical research. I am certain you will see something that you were unaware of.

• 1400 BC is named by historians as the "Late Bronze Age".
• The Hittites were the largest metropolitan empire in the world for approximately the last 700 years leading up to the "biblical" times.
• East of the Hittites was Assyria, and to the south was Egypt. A small coastal area between Hittites and Egypt is called the Levant, and it was the location of Canaan, where Canaanites lived.
• The kingdom of Saul-David-Solomon was a backwater. It was never an empire. Its heyday took place after a calamity that historians call the "Bronze Age Collapse"; wherein the major empires had eroded into little city states.
• The god of the Canaanites was Baal. The Canaanites word for "deity" was El. Because of language admixture, the word "Elohim" was adopted by Hebrews. Israel was a major city of the Canaanites, and it was later captured or converted by the Hebrews, giving rise to the later kingdom we call the "Israelites". IS-RA-EL, meant "El perseveres" in the Canaanite language.
• Israelites was adopted as a political class, because the Levant was splintered into four regions at one point: Israel, Philistine, Judah, and Edom.
• The book of Judges recalls the time in which the Hebrews had a priestly class inside of Canaan, but held no political power in the region.
• The book of Joshua recalls military conquests of Canaanite cities and strongholds by the Hebrews.
• Solomon's little kingdom was suppressed by the Assyrian military, who left them there and demanded taxes.
• Solomon's kingdom was later crushed flat by the Babylonians, who caused a diaspora of the priestly scribes. Many scribes were placed in captivity, and this time period is called the "Exilic Period" by historians.
• The septuagint was the main text used to form the Catholic Bible in the 3rd century AD in Italy (Rome). All of the original Hebrew source text was written down by the scribes of the Exilic Period. That was circa 530 BC.

Okay, there are the facts. Now onto some personal remarks.

My studies have been unable to tie anything in the Old Testament to any time period prior to 1350 BC. If you know something that I don't, I'd love to hear it.

There is no archeological verification that the Hebrews ever waged a military campaign against the Canaanites, ever -- implying the that book of Joshua is full of inflated mythology.

If the book of Genesis claims to tell the story of the origin of Homo Sapiens, as a species; that is to say, if you assume that premise is true, then there are serious, (indeed fatal) chronological problems with the Old Testament. The first fatal flaw is the migration of people to various continents after the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel suggests that human languages were split by a divine act. But that could not have happened in the post-flood world, since Egypt had written language vastly different from Sumerian cuneiform. Egypt first had written language in the 3rd dynasty, roughly around 2800 BC. Sumerian language is even older. There is no place where the Tower of Babel can fit into this story, because there is an unbroken lineage of dynasties in Egypt, with a unbroken lineage of Heiroglyphic development.

I tried to four solid days to get Creationist Fundies to give me a chronology of the Tower of Babel and the flood and so on. They refused for four solid days until I gave up.

The Noah Flood may refer to an actual event, and the Epic of Gilgamesh acts as verification that it may have actually happened. But for all intents it was probably a very severe local flood, for reasons I will give below.

All of the rivers, oceans, mountain ranges, and geographical areas within the Bible are found inside the Middle East adjacent to the Levant. ALL of them

All the rulers, peoples, languages, cultures, kingdoms, and empires mentioned in the Bible are found inside the Middle East in places adjacent to the Levant. Not most of them. ALL of them

Many Creationist Fundies prefer to believe (with zero evidence) that there was an antideluvian culture which had written language, brass, iron smelting, stone masonry, high culture, and complex politics. All evidence of that culture is either.. 1) ...completely destroyed by the flood. 2) ...is currently buried under water in the Black Sea and/or the sea floor of the Mediterranean. Which version you get will depend on which fundie you happen to consult. They take this position probably because the clever ones among them realized that there are fatal chronological problems with the Old Testament. This belief in an unverified, magical antideluvian empire gives them a tricky escape hatch out of the problem.

! Take note ! The chronology problems are only partially remedied if you consider the Old Testament to be a creation myth of the origin of the Hebrew People , as a People, as a culture -- and not the "origin of all humans everywhere". The migration problem after Babel-Tower (that is , there are natives in South America, Australia, and Japan) is insurmountable as far as I can see.

[uwot]

Basically what you see above is me during my first few days of studying Genesis within a historical perspective. Now I have returned. I am stronger, more knowledgeable, and more prepared than ever before.

I could nearly write a book on this subject. So for brevity I will simply enumerate the most important "high points" in this historical research.

So the conclusion of your historical research is that a bunch of stories written in the middle east is about events in the middle east.

[Kuznetzova]

uwot,

You might be interested to know how some Creationist Fundamentalists view the Bible. Many of them don't even it perceive it as a collection of books written by human beings; human writers of a certain time and place. That is, they don't consider it human writing with human flaws and contradictions (it contains both). To many creationists, the Bible is some sort of Magical Divine Tome, all inspired of God, and perfect in its construction and penmanship. Every last word is perfectly placed and objectively true beyond reproach.

Meanwhile, back in the literate, rational world, the Bible is clearly a history of the political and spiritual struggles of the early Jews in the Bronze age. Written by the Jews, about the Jews. The peculiar obsession with "begats" in the Old Testament can be explained in hindsight. The early Jews were obsessed with who could legitimately assume the throne as King. That was a big deal to them. Ancestry was the method they used for establishing legitimacy to the throne.

During my fours days of please-give-me-a-crhonology I found out that many Creationists feel no responsibility, at all, to verify or corroborate the Biblical histories with any outside sources. Their mental atmosphere sort of goes like this: You should not feel a need to corroborate or verify the Bible, because doing so would mean you are open to doubt -- but doubt is not allowed.

[skakos]

"Genesis must be myth".

What does that even mean?

Do you think of a myth as something totally wrong?

All myths across cultures are containing truths filtered through the aeons up to now...

[Kuznetzova]

In this context, "myth" means not history. Not facts.

[Hjarloprillar]

"Genesis must be myth".
What does that even mean?
Do you think of a myth as something totally wrong?
All myths across cultures are containing truths filtered through the aeons up to now...

Skakos

I believe kuznetsov is questioning your long held belief.. and
you not like it.

Genesis is in my view a funny book. my gran daughter would laugh at it.
Much like winnie the pooh. yes bears have a link to real world too.
IS olympus based in fact or atlantis?
Do you hold up this at UFO convention as truth?

Kuz writes what we all know in our guts as true.

my 2cents

Prill [aka Nikos of sparta or 1/3 diogenes 2 parts camel grease]