Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

	I always assumed that chapter 2 was the long version of what happened
	the 6th day. That God origionally created one man. Later he decided
	that for one reason or an other He should create a second man type
	person to keep the first company. As He had already created two sexes
	for the animals He decided to make the second man-type female.

	The use of the name Adam as a generic name for people, or tribe it 
	you will, sounds logical.

			Alfred

     Playtoe:

               First, let me say that what you have written is
              quite interesting and thought provoking.

               Second, even though what you wrote is based a 
              literal interpretation of what the Bible says,
              I have a feeling the literalist are gonna be 
              all over you on this one.


                                                               Mike

   Playtoe,
   	
   Interesting.  What's the question or point your trying to make?


   Allison

    Re 2
    
    Hi Mike:
    
    Actually, it was a "literalist" that provoked me to question this
    conference on this matter.  A minister friend of mine came over
    Saturday morning (last weekend) at 7:30 and we were together talking
    til 6:00 a.m. the Sunday morning, when he left to go to church and then
    home...I'm serious, and I've done this sort of thing before.  That's
    the nature of my ministry, spending "quality time" with others and
    exchanging views. 
    
    This friend, was black, had attended two years of seminary school.  I
    find it most amazing that the socalled "literalist" can infer meanings
    of scripture which AREN'T supported by scripture, like "the sons of
    God" in Genesis 6, being "evil demons" or "materialized, women
    imprenating, fallen angels" (when nowhere in the bible does it every
    say an angel imprenated a woman, nor that they materialized and married
    humans, and there is scripture against that thought.  On the other
    hand, where there is clear scripture to support an unsual idea, like
    "the androgynous original man" the literalist can't believe it, can't
    receive man as being "androgynous", or that God can be refered to as
    having a "sex" (male or female)...
    
    re 3
    
    Allison:
    
    If it serves to "provoke thought", that is the point.  If those who
    have been so provoked would care to share and discuss their thoughts
    that would be excellent.  If you are afraid of being disagreed with, if
    it offends you to be reproved, instead of being thankful, then you
    shouldn't open up to others...but if you want to learn and grow, one
    can ONLY do so by discussing ideas with others...you cannot learn from
    yourself things and perspectives you haven't heard of, and how can you
    hear without some else to tell you of them?  (does that phrase sound
    familiar?)
    
    Anyway, I think it is imperative that we Christians come on one accord. 
    The differences of "denominations" is superficial, which can be
    corrected once we all find that "accord".  The literalist vs the
    fundamentalist vs the esotericist, the evolutionist vs the creationist,
    etc, are primary to denominational differences.  Do *I* possess the
    correct view?  Well, I don't think my view is at all complete, but I
    think I do have a very good handle on the "correct" view fundamentally. 
    And that is due to the fact that it begins in Egyptian roots...a root
    which those who do not understand will have problems understanding
    scripture.  If you don't understand the depth and breadth of wisdom the
    men to whom God revealed the Word possessed you cannot understand the
    Word they wrote.  If you don't possess the knowledge of mathematics
    necessary to understand the formulas Einstein uses in his theory you
    cannot understand the implications and usages of his theory of
    Relativity.
    
    So, I'm attempting to inspire that "accord", at least in
    interpretation, through reason and consistency in the standards used to
    interpret scripture...certain standards, particularly the "literalist"
    is not valid, as the men of God, even Jesus, was not literalist...Jesus
    said himself he spoke in parables to the masses. 
    
    Playtoe

   Playtoe,

   Thanks for the reply.  I don't feel challenged by your conclusion.  I
   think what you have presented is insufficient in detail for me to
   challenge.  Conceptually you present parallels to my thinking regarding
   the origin of the world and humans. 

   Your friend who cannot conceive of androgyny is more interesting to me
   as that is the predominent thought process.  This may be attributed to
   many people feeling that androgyny respresents the absence of male and
   female rather than the presence of both.  I encounter this frequently
   so it attracts my attention.  In my life the questions of origins and
   gender are significant and interesting to me.

   Why did you write this and ask the question at the end?

<    shouldn't open up to others...but if you want to learn and grow, one
<    can ONLY do so by discussing ideas with others...you cannot learn from
<    yourself things and perspectives you haven't heard of, and how can you
<    hear without some else to tell you of them?  (does that phrase sound
<    familiar?)

   Allison

    re: 5
    
    First:
    
>>  Why did you write this and ask the question at the end?
    
<<    hear without some else to tell you of them?  (does that phrase sound
<<    familiar?)
    
    I was speaking of the fact that I was merely paraphasing, "How can they
    believe in whom they have not heard and how can the hear without a
    preacher."...nothing more.
    
    To expand of the basenote:
    
    Many people believe the Adam and Eve story happened in the recent 5,000 
    to 20,000 years ago.  And that Noah's flood happened as well within
    this time period and that the world was repeopled within the last
    20,000 years or so...I say HOGWASH, and that's too literal.
    
    First, the ADAM & EVE story is the OLDEST story known to man, and did
    not originate with the Hebrews, as a matter of fact the HEBREWS weren't
    even a people until long after Noah's flood according to Genesis!  So
    that shows that the story could not have been originate by them as much
    as Moses could not have written the story of his burial and afterwards.
    
    Adam & Eve are, for me, allegories of the beginning of human life on
    the planet.  "Androgynous" man speaks to the early development of the
    human germ seed.  The anthorpomorphism of this event is necessary for
    the digestion of the masses...but MAN did not look like a man that we
    know today.  Which is why I believe that man did not evolve from apes,
    but was always a MAN-seed, and just happened to evolve through a stage
    where he resembled the ape, even as he was once a fish and and then a
    lizard of sorts and evolved up to the point of SETH, "when men began to
    call upon the name of the lord."  The amount of time this took is
    unknowable, though science speculates millions of years...this is Gods
    way of "created man from the dust and breathed into him the breath of
    life"...a most natural and not mystical event.  For me Religion and
    science do not disagree, but you need to know science and you need to
    know the mind of and the extent of wisdom of the bible writers.
    
    The literalist, IMO are a lazy bunch, who take the easy way out.
    
    Playtoe

    Here is a quote from the Jewish author Arthur Waskow, in his book
    "Godwrestling".  He offers a Jewish interpretation of the Adam and Eve
    myth that ties in to this discussion.  I have posted this quote
    elsewhere, at other times; it represents only part of a much longer
    discussion.

	To begin with:  who was Adam?  We have been taught to think that he
	was male and that the woman was created from his rib; but the
	tradition did not always think so.  The tradition had to face a text
	that said, "And God said: 'Let us make Adam in Our image, after Our
	likeness; and let them have dominion...'"  Them?  What "them"?  Our
	image, our likeness?  What "Our"?  And the tradition had to face a
	text that said, "And God created Adam in His own image, in the image
	of God created He him; male and female created He them."  What
	"him", what "them"?  And finally the tradition faced a text that
	said, "In the day that God created Adam, in the likeness of God made
	He him; male and female created He them, and called their name Adam,
	in the day when they were crated."  Called *their* name Adam?

	There were several ways to explain these baffling ambiguities, these
	shifts from "him" to "them" and back again, this frightening
	reference by God to "Our own image," as if God were plural--God
	forbid!  Some of the rabbis collapsed the question by saying these
	texts were simply summaries of the familiar story of the rib and
	Eve--and this became the main line of interpretation.  Some rabbis
	had a darker, nightmare vision.  They imagined a woman created
	before Eve, created from the earth, the "Adamah," and therefore
	equal to the male Adam.  They imagined this woman, Lilith, "the
	night one," insisting on her equality and freedom--to the
	destruction of Adam's peace and dignity.  These rabbis feared free
	womanhood, and they saw Lilith become a demon, devourer of children,
	destroyer of men.  And this dark fear colored hundreds of years
	of Jewish history--dark days and darker nights when men and women
	feared the furious energy of free and passionate womanhood.

	But there were still other rabbis.  Jeremiah Ben Eleazar and Samuel
	ben Nachman, may they be remembered for a blessing to our
	generation, said that Adam was male and female in one person.

	And to my own eyes this is the only way the text makes sense.  God
	in one moment "Our," in the next "His"; Adam in one moment "them,"
	in the next "him."  To me this sounds like an effort to express
	"two-in-one"; to say with all the clumsiness of human language that
	which humans had no word for; to describe what they could only
	envision because there was no place to see it:  a non-dualistic
	duality, a unity of opposites, androgyny.  And the Torah even
	reveals to us the difference in the understandings of this unified
	duality from God's standpoint and from our own.  For God from the
	outside, to the human observer, looks utterly One:  in His Image,
	says the Torah from the outside.  But from inside God knows that the
	Unity contains all opposites:  "in Our image," says God's own voice
	speaking about God's own Self.

	So let us hear the story in in this way:  God makes an androgynous
	Human in the image of an androgynous God.  And then God decides it
	is not good for the Human to be alone.  Perhaps it is the Human who
	thinks so first, learning from the procession of male and female
	beasts that go past him to be named, that it is not good to be
	alone.  But if it is Adam who notices, it is God who agrees...

	So the original Adam, the androgynous Adam, is divided.  So that
	each human might have a counterpart, the two sides of Adam, male and
	female, are separated.  Not a rib but a side (they are the same word
	in Hebrew, as Samuel ben Nachman pointed out) is taken to make the
	woman; the other side becomes the man...
    
    -- Mike

    re 7
    
    Yes....I'm glad to hear it.
    
    I think it truly is the most reasonable interpretation of the
    scripture, even though one may not believe it's true...but then again
    we are not suppose to lean to our own understanding but to the
    understanding of God...
    
    Yes, "Study to show thyself approved, a workman how needeth not be
    ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth...."  yesss, we've got to
    STUDY that Word...
    
    Playtoe, In the Spirit of Truth