In church this week we read the first part of Genesis and I was struck by something. "God created man in His own image, male and female He created them" Kind of shoots down the idea of God as male and of males being the primary expression of humanity, don't you think?
It struck me that semantics and linguistics have confused this text. Because it refers to God as He and also comments that God's image is both male and female. I would think that this has to do with has to do with both limitations of language and cultural agendas.
This is often assumed to mean that men and women were created as two sides of the same coin. Heads and tails, male and female and so on. The unfortunate juxtaposition of words in that last sentance was not my intention by the way but it's a great example of how the simplest statement can get wierd real fast when talking about these things. And while we are separate, collectively humanity is both male and female.
I'n not about to say that people who are transgender are any more or any less Godlike than any one else. But who's to say God didn't decide that every once in a while that things should not be so straightforward as being male OR female?
Bottom line is that this world, perfect in it's imperfection was God's plan A. And we are part of it, wether we are male OR female or wether we are male AND female.
Absaroka
Genesis
Moderators: KimberlyS, CathyAnn
-
DonnaT
- Miss Great Goddess
- Posts: 8222
- Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2004 11:04 am
- Location: No. Virginia
-
Absaroka
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3344
- Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:30 am
There are three descriptions of the creation of humanity in the first part of Genesis. The one where Eve was created from Adam is the one that gets all the attention and everyone is familiar with. It has been given the implication that Adam was here first, and depending on your point of view this means Adam was either more important or a prototype which was improved upon with Eve. Or that the entire thing was part of one creative action. But the other two descriptions say nothing about the order in which we were created, merely that we were created in God's image, male and female.
Absraoka
Absraoka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
-
CJ
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3562
- Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2003 11:12 pm
- Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Hi all,
I've always found this part of Genesis fascinating. According to many biblical scholars, the two different "tales" of the birth of humanity really do come from two different sources. While, in "God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" (KJV Gen. 1:27), the word "man" is thought of as meaning "humanity" (hence both males and females are represented), there is, in the second Genesis creation tale (KJV Gen. 2:21-24, where Eve is "created" out of the very body of Adam), a distinctly Eastern (and possibly pagan) influence. Many cultures, prior to the era that saw the birth of the Bible, had human creation myths of their own involving some "primordial androgyne," some original being whose features encompassed characteristics of both sexes. One of the closest such myths to our own cultural history is the ancient Greek one best expressed by Plato, who thrived close to five centuries before the composition of the Bible. Another way to look at this is to see the two sexes as representing the "original couple," whose original union was "the marriage of heaven and earth."
For us, here in the West, the Mediterranean basin and the Near East and Middle East were pretty much the extent of the world back then so it's not surprising that a great amount of cultural interpenetration would occur between the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Phoenician, Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Persian worlds. In the popular legends and myths of many of these cultures, we can find the source of much that is written in the Hebrew scriptures, from the Flood (Babylonia) to the Serpent (Mesopotamia) to the separation of earth and sky (where, again, the sky--and, by extension, the Sun--is seen as male and the dark, moist earth is seen as female). Many ancient esoteric theologies refer to this primordial "unity-in-duality" and the Judeo-Christian tradition is no exception to this.
From The Golden Vessel, an online 'zine exploring the symbolism behind various religious traditions:
One of the most ancient concepts in religion is that of the divine couple. In Sumeria the divine couple appears as part of perhaps the earliest notion of Trinity. God the Father was symbolized as the Sun, his consort was symbolized alternately as either the Moon or the Earth, and the king was viewed as their offspring: the Son of the Sun; a living representative (or emanation) of God on Earth. A similar idea can be seen in Egypt, where the Pharaoh was viewed as a living incarnation of Horus, son of the divine couple Isis and Osiris. The Pharaoh was seen both as a god, and as a mediator between the earthly and the divine. It was said that when he died, he ascended to the heavens and became Osiris (essentially returning to the source with whom he had always been synonymous in the minds of the Egyptians.)
In many traditions the gods and goddesses who comprise the divine couple are not seen as being separate or distinct entities, but rather as differing aspects of one another, or even emanations of one another. In this we see traces of an even more ancient tradition, God as the primordial androgyne. Such a notion has been part of many theologies, although the idea has largely been forgotten or (perhaps) ignored. Traces of it can even be found in Judeo-Christianity. For instance, we are told that the name of Jehovah is comprised of Hebrew characters representing the four elements: air, fire, earth, and water. But read slightly differently, the same characters spell “He She.” And the word Elohim, usually translated as “gods”, or “the angels” is actually a composite of “Eloh”, the feminine plural of god, and “Im”, the masculine plural of god. Even straightforwardly Christian sources concede that this is no doubt indicative of the belief, anciently held, that God was primordially possessed of both sexes. (...) It developed into the doctrine that the entirety of creation flows from the differentiation of the unmanifested divine into male and female. To those who followed this doctrine, the reunification of the divine duad represented the means of achieving union with God.
In ancient cultures, the sundered aspects of this duad were seen symbolically as being the heaven and the Earth; the heavens representing God the Father, and Earth representing the Earth Mother. Together the two represented the most fundamental notion of generative power. In Mesopotamia it was said that there was a time at which the heavens and the Earth were one. This primordial oneness, called Anki, gave birth to a son : Enlil. This son proceeded to cleave the heavens and the Earth apart, creating two separate entities from a primeval whole. An departed to rule from the heavens. Ki descended to earth to rule with her son Enlil. Thus we have the birth of the divine couple, in an early creation myth that chronicles the original state of union from which the two emerged.
In a related story, the god Marduk is said to have created the heavens and the Earth by killing Tiamat, the goddess representing the primeval waters. He cut her corpse in half, and one part became the heavens, the other the Earth. Her eyes became the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that bordered Babylon. Though the story dates from a later period than the Anki tale, and the symbolism is less straightforward, it nonetheless demonstrates that even at this latter date, the idea that Heaven and Earth constituted a primordial unity was still in currency. And although many other creation myths involving a divine couple seem to hint at this, most are far less specific in their details. For instance, in Hindu mythology, Dyaus Pitar (God the Father) and Prthivi were the primordial couple who sired the Vedic pantheon of gods. They were said to have placed Heaven and Earth into “conjunction” with one another. If any original cleaving asunder took place, it seems to have eluded mention. (Note: from the Hindu Dyaus Pitar, the Greeks got Zeus Pater, whom the Romans called Jupiter.)
(...)
Be it Ia and Inana, Isis and Osiris, Odin and Freya, Zeus and Hera, Kronos and Rhea, Ouranos and Gaia, Baal and Astarte, or El and Asherah, the names may vary, but virtually every culture has had a version of the divine couple. Before the formulation of the notions of good versus evil, or God versus the Devil, Man understood duality in terms of male and female, Sun and Moon, fire and water, and the divine couple represented an equilibrium between these opposing forces; a marriage, if you will, between the two. Ancient man seems to have had a far better understanding of the schematic upon which the universe operates than does his modern counterpart.
(...)
Though the gods and goddesses of the ancient cultures we’ve examined may at first glance appear to have no connection to the later creeds of Judaism and Christianity, such is not the case. Even Judaism (a relative newcomer in the context of the theologies thus discussed) had its own divine couple in the persons of El and Asherah, who appear to be the Judaic equivalent of the older Babylonian Baal and Astarte. It is thought that the Jewish move towards monotheism was necessitated when the notion of the divine couple became lost, as polytheistic cultures interacted with the Jews, giving rise to an increasingly confusing proliferation of deities, both foreign and domestic. The emerging Jewish nation needed to be united into a single will if it was to survive. And in order to accomplish this task, the polytheistic miasma of gods and goddesses, of belief and counter-belief, had to be transcended. Thus began the emergence of patriarchal monotheism, with its harsh father figure, Jehovah.
(...)
The divine couple was not a duad of man and woman, but a triad. The third element was the equilibrium between the eternal male principle and the eternal female principle. And from the resultant harmony of the Ternary, we arrive at One. This seems to represent an idea central to the ancient understanding of the sacred, and can be glimpsed in its purest, most elemental form in a tradition undoubtedly of far greater antiquity still: the worship of the primordial hermaphrodite...
As an aside: I'm convinced that, though there are many today that worship God the Father (male) or Mother Earth (female), few are those that have an understanding of the lost equilibrium between the two, a loss that results in disharmony and spiritual strife and an inability to reach "the One." But I digress.
The two biblical human creation tales aren't as contradictory as they appear to be when the foregoing is kept in mind. The first expresses what is "manifest" in our condition (i.e., that ours is a binary and sexually differentiated species or "creation"... "male and female created He them") and the second expresses what is "unmanifest" in our condition (i.e., that both sexes form a whole--despite the appearance of Eve being somehow "subordinated" to Adam--and are complementary and thus partake of an original unity). The latter is the more symbolic and esoteric view of our origins and the more difficult to interpret. Hence, its meaning being much more obtuse, it's not surprising that any individual expressing that original unity in fact (say, by the personal blurring of genders) may encounter some resistance from folks (yes, that would be the majority) who haven't yet delved a little more deeply into the significance (spiritual or otherwise) of our dual nature.
This is a great subject for a thread, Absaroka. Thanks for starting it!
I'm very curious to see what other people's views are on this endlessly fascinating subject.
Love,
CJ
I've always found this part of Genesis fascinating. According to many biblical scholars, the two different "tales" of the birth of humanity really do come from two different sources. While, in "God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" (KJV Gen. 1:27), the word "man" is thought of as meaning "humanity" (hence both males and females are represented), there is, in the second Genesis creation tale (KJV Gen. 2:21-24, where Eve is "created" out of the very body of Adam), a distinctly Eastern (and possibly pagan) influence. Many cultures, prior to the era that saw the birth of the Bible, had human creation myths of their own involving some "primordial androgyne," some original being whose features encompassed characteristics of both sexes. One of the closest such myths to our own cultural history is the ancient Greek one best expressed by Plato, who thrived close to five centuries before the composition of the Bible. Another way to look at this is to see the two sexes as representing the "original couple," whose original union was "the marriage of heaven and earth."
For us, here in the West, the Mediterranean basin and the Near East and Middle East were pretty much the extent of the world back then so it's not surprising that a great amount of cultural interpenetration would occur between the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Phoenician, Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Persian worlds. In the popular legends and myths of many of these cultures, we can find the source of much that is written in the Hebrew scriptures, from the Flood (Babylonia) to the Serpent (Mesopotamia) to the separation of earth and sky (where, again, the sky--and, by extension, the Sun--is seen as male and the dark, moist earth is seen as female). Many ancient esoteric theologies refer to this primordial "unity-in-duality" and the Judeo-Christian tradition is no exception to this.
From The Golden Vessel, an online 'zine exploring the symbolism behind various religious traditions:
One of the most ancient concepts in religion is that of the divine couple. In Sumeria the divine couple appears as part of perhaps the earliest notion of Trinity. God the Father was symbolized as the Sun, his consort was symbolized alternately as either the Moon or the Earth, and the king was viewed as their offspring: the Son of the Sun; a living representative (or emanation) of God on Earth. A similar idea can be seen in Egypt, where the Pharaoh was viewed as a living incarnation of Horus, son of the divine couple Isis and Osiris. The Pharaoh was seen both as a god, and as a mediator between the earthly and the divine. It was said that when he died, he ascended to the heavens and became Osiris (essentially returning to the source with whom he had always been synonymous in the minds of the Egyptians.)
In many traditions the gods and goddesses who comprise the divine couple are not seen as being separate or distinct entities, but rather as differing aspects of one another, or even emanations of one another. In this we see traces of an even more ancient tradition, God as the primordial androgyne. Such a notion has been part of many theologies, although the idea has largely been forgotten or (perhaps) ignored. Traces of it can even be found in Judeo-Christianity. For instance, we are told that the name of Jehovah is comprised of Hebrew characters representing the four elements: air, fire, earth, and water. But read slightly differently, the same characters spell “He She.” And the word Elohim, usually translated as “gods”, or “the angels” is actually a composite of “Eloh”, the feminine plural of god, and “Im”, the masculine plural of god. Even straightforwardly Christian sources concede that this is no doubt indicative of the belief, anciently held, that God was primordially possessed of both sexes. (...) It developed into the doctrine that the entirety of creation flows from the differentiation of the unmanifested divine into male and female. To those who followed this doctrine, the reunification of the divine duad represented the means of achieving union with God.
In ancient cultures, the sundered aspects of this duad were seen symbolically as being the heaven and the Earth; the heavens representing God the Father, and Earth representing the Earth Mother. Together the two represented the most fundamental notion of generative power. In Mesopotamia it was said that there was a time at which the heavens and the Earth were one. This primordial oneness, called Anki, gave birth to a son : Enlil. This son proceeded to cleave the heavens and the Earth apart, creating two separate entities from a primeval whole. An departed to rule from the heavens. Ki descended to earth to rule with her son Enlil. Thus we have the birth of the divine couple, in an early creation myth that chronicles the original state of union from which the two emerged.
In a related story, the god Marduk is said to have created the heavens and the Earth by killing Tiamat, the goddess representing the primeval waters. He cut her corpse in half, and one part became the heavens, the other the Earth. Her eyes became the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that bordered Babylon. Though the story dates from a later period than the Anki tale, and the symbolism is less straightforward, it nonetheless demonstrates that even at this latter date, the idea that Heaven and Earth constituted a primordial unity was still in currency. And although many other creation myths involving a divine couple seem to hint at this, most are far less specific in their details. For instance, in Hindu mythology, Dyaus Pitar (God the Father) and Prthivi were the primordial couple who sired the Vedic pantheon of gods. They were said to have placed Heaven and Earth into “conjunction” with one another. If any original cleaving asunder took place, it seems to have eluded mention. (Note: from the Hindu Dyaus Pitar, the Greeks got Zeus Pater, whom the Romans called Jupiter.)
(...)
Be it Ia and Inana, Isis and Osiris, Odin and Freya, Zeus and Hera, Kronos and Rhea, Ouranos and Gaia, Baal and Astarte, or El and Asherah, the names may vary, but virtually every culture has had a version of the divine couple. Before the formulation of the notions of good versus evil, or God versus the Devil, Man understood duality in terms of male and female, Sun and Moon, fire and water, and the divine couple represented an equilibrium between these opposing forces; a marriage, if you will, between the two. Ancient man seems to have had a far better understanding of the schematic upon which the universe operates than does his modern counterpart.
(...)
Though the gods and goddesses of the ancient cultures we’ve examined may at first glance appear to have no connection to the later creeds of Judaism and Christianity, such is not the case. Even Judaism (a relative newcomer in the context of the theologies thus discussed) had its own divine couple in the persons of El and Asherah, who appear to be the Judaic equivalent of the older Babylonian Baal and Astarte. It is thought that the Jewish move towards monotheism was necessitated when the notion of the divine couple became lost, as polytheistic cultures interacted with the Jews, giving rise to an increasingly confusing proliferation of deities, both foreign and domestic. The emerging Jewish nation needed to be united into a single will if it was to survive. And in order to accomplish this task, the polytheistic miasma of gods and goddesses, of belief and counter-belief, had to be transcended. Thus began the emergence of patriarchal monotheism, with its harsh father figure, Jehovah.
(...)
The divine couple was not a duad of man and woman, but a triad. The third element was the equilibrium between the eternal male principle and the eternal female principle. And from the resultant harmony of the Ternary, we arrive at One. This seems to represent an idea central to the ancient understanding of the sacred, and can be glimpsed in its purest, most elemental form in a tradition undoubtedly of far greater antiquity still: the worship of the primordial hermaphrodite...
As an aside: I'm convinced that, though there are many today that worship God the Father (male) or Mother Earth (female), few are those that have an understanding of the lost equilibrium between the two, a loss that results in disharmony and spiritual strife and an inability to reach "the One." But I digress.
The two biblical human creation tales aren't as contradictory as they appear to be when the foregoing is kept in mind. The first expresses what is "manifest" in our condition (i.e., that ours is a binary and sexually differentiated species or "creation"... "male and female created He them") and the second expresses what is "unmanifest" in our condition (i.e., that both sexes form a whole--despite the appearance of Eve being somehow "subordinated" to Adam--and are complementary and thus partake of an original unity). The latter is the more symbolic and esoteric view of our origins and the more difficult to interpret. Hence, its meaning being much more obtuse, it's not surprising that any individual expressing that original unity in fact (say, by the personal blurring of genders) may encounter some resistance from folks (yes, that would be the majority) who haven't yet delved a little more deeply into the significance (spiritual or otherwise) of our dual nature.
This is a great subject for a thread, Absaroka. Thanks for starting it!
I'm very curious to see what other people's views are on this endlessly fascinating subject.Love,
CJ
-
Absaroka
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3344
- Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:30 am
Now that is a scholarly discourse CJ. Thanks. I hope others will chime in and not be intimidated.
Personally I haven't seen a real contradiction between the two versions. I figure one just goes into more detail about sequence. I think the mistake comes when import is assigned to someone being made first, as I mentioned before, either as a faulty prototype that needed improvement or as the main creation who merely needed a helper.
I did find the idea of the male/female dichotomy being replaced by the good/evil dichotomy very interesting, as our culture is full of symbolism and hidden (sometimes not so hidden) ideas of the male/female dichotomy also being the good/evil dichotomy.
Absaroka
Personally I haven't seen a real contradiction between the two versions. I figure one just goes into more detail about sequence. I think the mistake comes when import is assigned to someone being made first, as I mentioned before, either as a faulty prototype that needed improvement or as the main creation who merely needed a helper.
I did find the idea of the male/female dichotomy being replaced by the good/evil dichotomy very interesting, as our culture is full of symbolism and hidden (sometimes not so hidden) ideas of the male/female dichotomy also being the good/evil dichotomy.
Absaroka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
-
Caith
- Software Administrator
- Posts: 537
- Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:06 pm
- Location: US
Probably a bit off the original topic, but the Roman Catholic tale of virgin birth has been suggested by some to be adopted from earlier Greek tales of parthenogenesis, in order to gain acceptance from Greek cultures and societies as the Roman Catholic faith spread outward.
Where I wish we had more historical information is from the ancient Sumerian civilizations that preceded even the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and more modern faiths. Joseph Campbell's 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces was an early discourse on comparative mythlogy that still fascinates me today. Here's a quote from the Preface:
Where I wish we had more historical information is from the ancient Sumerian civilizations that preceded even the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and more modern faiths. Joseph Campbell's 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces was an early discourse on comparative mythlogy that still fascinates me today. Here's a quote from the Preface:
There are of course differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of mankind, but this is a book about similarities; and once they are understood the differences will be found to be much less great than is popularly (and politically) supposed. My hope is that a comparative elucidation may contribute to the perhaps not-quite disparate causes of those forces that are working in the present world for unification, not in the name of some ecclesiastical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual understanding. (Third edition, page VIII).
Caith 
-
Amelie-Laveau
- Permanently Banned
- Posts: 629
- Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2004 7:20 pm
I have no idea what is being discussed here. I should stay in the closet,, it's safe there, safe from all the smart people of the world who baffle me with words. lol
Lilith came before Eve,, but she was sort of a feminist and ran away to harm all the first born. I read this somewhere, don't know where.
Lilith came before Eve,, but she was sort of a feminist and ran away to harm all the first born. I read this somewhere, don't know where.
-
Frances Jewell
- Miss Emerald Goddess
- Posts: 249
- Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2008 3:38 am
- Location: Upstate New York
Caith
you are absolutely right many of the early Catholic beliefs were modifications of earlier religions. Catholicism in Ireland for example was modified to accept some of the ancient Celtic pagan rituals such as Halloween and All Saints day. Its very surprising how intelligent early civilizations were to reason out the elements of creation and formation of the universe. It may not be completely scientific or within the time frame of the Bible, but it is a roadmap.
Fran
you are absolutely right many of the early Catholic beliefs were modifications of earlier religions. Catholicism in Ireland for example was modified to accept some of the ancient Celtic pagan rituals such as Halloween and All Saints day. Its very surprising how intelligent early civilizations were to reason out the elements of creation and formation of the universe. It may not be completely scientific or within the time frame of the Bible, but it is a roadmap.
Fran
-
Caith
- Software Administrator
- Posts: 537
- Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:06 pm
- Location: US
The only thing that belongs in a closet is your clothes, beautiful. You stay out here with the rest of us. (Please?)Amelie-Laveau wrote:I have no idea what is being discussed here. I should stay in the closet,, it's safe there, safe from all the smart people of the world who baffle me with words. lol
Caith