Pull up a chair, kids. It's bible study time.
I actually posted this in the
atheism community about a week and a half ago. I know a lot of you cats are in that community, and have thus already read this, but for the benefit of the rest of y'all...
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You know one of the things which bugs me about christians? It's their ignorance of their own mythology. Not JUST the fact that they don't bother to read the bible which they claim to support, though there's that too. No, it's the fact that they're UNWILLING to admit information about the actual history of their religion, because it conflicts with their invented history. And it's their actual history which I find interesting.
For example. The serpent in the Garden of Eden fable. Fascinating stuff.
Now, these days, christians identify the serpent as being one and the same as, indistinguishable from, the devil, whom they also identify as the fallen angel, Lucifer.
Not one part of this actually washes.
First of all, according to the bible, there IS no "fallen angel Lucifer"; Lucifer was just a guy. A babylonian king namd Nebuchadnezzar. His "fall" was not a fall from heavan, but a fall from power, as his rule came to a disastrous end. The whole "Lucifer as fallen angel" myth originated in or around the 1st century CE, with a myth (or, if you prefer, midrash, or apocrypha), called The Life of Adam and Eve. There is not one thing in the entire bible which supports the concept whatsoever. Lucifer, according to the bible, is neither a fallen angel, nor the devil.
Secondly, there is no biblical support for the idea that the serpent is the devil, either. So what WAS it supposed to be? Well, therein lies a tale! In the bronze age middle east, the early hebrews bumped up against all sorts of polytheistic religions, such as the Canaanites and the Egyptians. Indeed, there was so much contact that a certain amount of cultural interchange was inevitable. Symbols, concepts, and yea, even gods and goddesses of these other cultures found their way into the early versions of hebrew mythology. Though they have largely been excised in later redactions, there remain traces. The serpent in the tree of the fruit of knowledge is a classic example.
A popular goddess in the region was Asherah. She was alternately known, in various versions, as Ishtar and Astarte. Small variations, but basically the same figure. Asherah was a goddess of, among other things, knowledge. She was also, to the degree that ANY such virtues existed in those primitive days, a goddess of female empowerment. She was frequently symbolized by trees and snakes, and in fact the caducus, which today has come to be associated with medicine, seems to have some connection with an ancient symbol of Asherah, which was a pair of snakes twined about a tree.
Now, the Genesis myth covered a lot of ground for the ancient hebrews. The hebrews were always big into discouraging their people from having any truck with foreign gods. Throughout the Old Testament in particular, it comes up over and over again, usually explicitly stated. In the Garden of Eden myth, it's alluded to in heavy-handed terms, with allusions which are lost on most modern readers; the people of the time - the intended listeners/readers of Genesis - would have IMMEDIATELY understood the symbolism of a snake in a tree offering a woman knowledge. You wouldn't even have to use the word Asherah, since they all knew about the goddess from the neighboring cultures they were dealing with. Today, it's a little more obscure. The point is, the whole deal with Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden was meant to be a parable for doom and disaster befalling people who dared to deal with foreign gods, like Asherah, such as when dealing with her in the guise of a snake in a tree.
Later on in the bible, there are references to the hebrews being ordered to go out and destroy "Asherah Poles", which were the centres of places of worship of this goddess for the local peoples. Just as with the Garden of Eden story, though, this point goes without explaining, leaving modern-day readers in the dark as to what's really being discussed here.
As with so much of the bible, you have xenophobia and misogyny wrapped up in a fable, wrought in symbolism, and meant to convey an obvious message to the readers. Todays christians, though, by keeping themselves carefully ignorant of their own history, isolated from other cultures mythology, and deluded as to the literalism of their own stories, manage to completely miss the point of one of their own central stories.
And it's all there to be learned if they just pay attention. But that might be too much to hope for.
Which is bloody irritating.