Their mission, of course, it to save our
heathen souls by turning us on to "The Word of the Lord" - their Bible. I
guess they figure some of us just haven't heard about it yet, and we're all
eagerly awaiting their joyous tidings of personal salvation through giving
our rational faculties to Jesus. Every time they come around, I look forward
to trying out a new riposte. Sure, it may be cruel and sadistic of me, but
hey, I didn't call them up and ask them to come over; they entered at their
own risk!
This time should be pretty good. After
letting them run off their basic rap while lovely Morning Glory serves us
all hot herb tea, I innocently remark: "But none of that applies to us. We
have no need for salvation because we don't have original sin. We are the
Other People."
"Hunh? What?" they reply eloquently. It's
clear they've never heard this one before.
"Right," I say. "It's all in your Bible."
And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own book for reference:
Genesis 1:26 - The [Elohim] said, "Let
us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let
them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle,
all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth."
Elohim is a plural word, including male
and female, and should properly be translated "Gods" or "Pantheon."
27 The Gods created humanity in the image
of themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them, Male and female
they created them.
28 The Gods blessed them, saying to them,
"Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the
fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth."
Now clearly, here we are talking about
the original creation of the human species: male and female. All the animals,
plants, etc. have all been created in previous verses. This is before the
Garden of Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these people.
The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the Pantheon,
goes about assembling his own special little botanical and zoological Garden
in Eden, and making his own little man to inhabit it:
Gen 2:7 - Yahweh God fashioned a man of
dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life,
and thus the man became a living being.
8 Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden
which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned.
9 Yahweh God caused to spring up from
the soil every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the
tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle
of the garden.
15 Yahweh God took the man and settled
him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it.
Now this next is crucial: note Yahweh's
precise words:
16 Then Yahweh God gave the man this
admonition, "You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden.
17 Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall
most surely die."
Fateful words, those. We will refer back
to this admonition later.
Then Yahweh decides to make a woman to
go with the man. Now, don't forget that the Pantheon had earlier created
a whole population of people, "male and female," who are presumably doing
just fine somewhere "outside the gates of Eden." But this setup in Eden is
Yahweh's own little experiment, and will unfold to its own separate destiny.
21 So Yahweh God made the man fall into
a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it
in flesh.
22 Yahweh God built the rib he had taken
from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.
Right. Man gives birth to woman. Sure
he does. But that's the way the story is told here.
25 Now both of them were naked, the man
and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other.
Well, of course not! Why should they?
But take careful note of those words, as they also will prove to be significant . . .
