Reply #54: I went to a college where we were required to take [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

a religion course every year. My senior course was called Studies in Genesis I-XI.

We learned about how the book of Genesis was formed, namely as an interweaving of three distinct oral traditions. That's why there are two creation stories, one in which man and woman are created at the same time, and one in which woman is created out of man.

Obviously, a lot of interesting stuff got left out. I think it's all allegorical, but based on ancestral memories of historical events.

For example, archeologists believe that there was some evolutionary leap that took place I-forget-how-many-thousand years ago that caused humans to have imaginations and become creative. Before that, humanoid cultures remained unchanged for thousands of years and showed no signs of creativity. Then, all of a sudden, you get technological innovation, art, and signs of belief in an afterlife. There must have been a time when both types of humanoids existed, the evolved and the unevolved. Perhaps that event is the basis for the Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden story, the idea that once humans were more or less like animals, just doing what seemed natural or expedient at the time and not having any sense of morality or ethics, nor any sense of guilt. Then at some point, they must have developed the imagination necessary to understand how their actions could hurt others.

There are all kinds of intriguing fragments in Genesis. Now archeologists have found that Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals coexisted for a time in the Middle East. Skeletal remains indicate that the Neanderthals' average strength was much greater than that of the average human. It has occurred to me that an ancestral memory of this kind of coexistence is the origin of the cryptic line about "there were giants in the earth in those days" and the statement about "the sons of God marrying the daughters of men."

The idea that ancestral memories can persist for thousands of years without being written down may seem strange, but there's a clear case in Oregon. When the first white settlers came upon Crater Lake, the local Indians told them that it had been formed when a mountain blew up. Of course, the settlers dismissed this as an old Indian legend--until geologists discovered that Crater Lake had indeed been formed by the explosion of a mountain, 7,000 years before.

Another example is from the Delaware tribe, who have a tribal origin story that tells of coming from a cold land and passing through mountains where the snow never melted and crossing vast grasslands with no trees, even though their tribal lands were on the East Coast.

So if you look at the strange fragments in the Bible, especially in the early books, remember that none of the books were written by a single author, they were all in the oral tradition for an undetermined period of time before being written down, and they may reflect either distant memories or allegorical reinterpretations of actual events.

On the question of what God looked like, the ancient Hebrews believed that no one could look upon the face of God and live. They also had a strict prohibition against making any images of God. This is why he always appears in some intangible form, such as smoke or fire.

He tells Moses that his name is "I am" in the English translation. In the actual Hebrew, it's not the word "I am," but the letters YHWH, which is the only word in the Hebrew scriptures that is never given vowel markings and never pronounced aloud. (Readers substitute "Adonai," "the Lord.") Some scholars believe that God really tells Moses,"My name is Existence."

By the way, the "Jehovah" of Jehovah's Witnesses comes from a sloppy attempt to make YHWH pronounceable. (All the Biblical words with "J" in English have "Y" in Hebrew.)

While there are pictorial representations of Jesus from early on, there are almost none of God. I think it was Michelangelo who popularized the image of God as an old man with a beard.

But in ancient times, the Jews were unique in having a god who was never represented in painting or sculpture.

So this is a roundabout way of answering your question. I think we can blame Michelangelo for the popular representations of God.