Fire: origin stories
Fire is so central to human existence that it would be impossible to find a living culture today that is without it. And every culture seems to have its origin stories about fire, how it came into the world, and what happened because of that.
For example, the Greeks told the story of Prometheus, the Titan who brought fire to Earth and gave it to humanity, and was punished for it by Zeus by being bound to a rock in Tartaros, where an eagle ate his liver every day, his liver growing back by the next day to have the same thing happen to him all over again. The Hindus tell of Agni, the Vedic God of fire and acceptor of sacrifices. And the Norse told of Loki, a God or Jötunn (or both), the Trickster Who was the spirit and avatar of fire on Earth.*
But there is one cultural history from which an origin-story of Fire is curiously absent: the Old Testament. Considering its age and the reverence given it by billions of people -- Muslims, Jews, and Christians -- the world over, this is indeed curious. Why is the birth of fire missing from that document, which tells the story of humanity from its creation by God up into the last few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era (A.D.)?
-- Or is it missing?
Genesis 3:1-6 tells the story of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and how it figured into the ultimate fate of Adam and Eve. To many scholars and others, that story symbolizes the discovery of the delights of sex and, perhaps, alcohol or other intoxicants as well by adolescent humans, and the troubles because of and guilt over it they endured afterward. But what about fire? Fire is a wonderful servant -- it enables us to cook our food, without which we could not preserve it or even eat many forms of it; by its aid, we can turn metallic ores into liquids that run like water and can be shaped into virtually any desired shape, and thus become magnificent and even deadly tools of far higher quality than those of bone, stone, wood, shell, or ivory; we can use it to heat our homes in the winter, flush fields with new herbs and forbs to draw game that we can then slaughter for our tables or corral to use as our domestic work-animals, and clear ground for agriculture and, at the same time, create fertilizer in the form of potent ash that will keep those fields fertile for several seasons before we have to do it all over again. But fire can also be used as a weapon -- a truly terrible one. And when, either by accident or human malice or nature's lightning, it gets loose in the world, it can wreak havoc, killing and maiming and leaving communities devastated. Fire is the central fact of human culture and civilization. After first taming it around 1.8 million years ago, our ancestors began putting together all the cultural innovations that would ultimately culminate in our modern high-energy, high-tech civilization, many of which depended absolutely on the use of fire for their creation and employment. Both great good and great evil have come from our taming and use of fire. It's possible that, as it does to certain other things, such as cannibalism, the Old Testament refers to the first creation and use of fire by humanity obliquely, and does so via Genesis 3:1-6.
I could easily be wrong. Have I somehow missed the origin story of fire in Genesis? If so, please let me know in the comments to this post.
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*Of all the world's origin stories and mythologies about fire, the Norse truly nailed it. Loki, a Jötunn, is not a God of fire -- he is fire. Like fire seems to, he definitely has a mind and will of his own. He can do all sorts of amazing tricks, make the most wonderful artifacts, and come up with the greatest strategies and tactics for dealing with problematical situations, just as fire has countless uses we could scarcely do without -- but he can also be horribly destructive, again like fire. Whereas Prometheus was the benign being that gave us fire out of pity for us, living as we were in a cold, cruel world, and Agni is the Hindu Lord of Fire Who oversees the most exalted rituals, Loki is the Trickster who is, in a way, an accurate representative of humanity itself and all our wiles, our cleverness, our inventiveness, our inquisitiveness, our ingenuity, and our cruelty and rapaciousness and destructiveness. The very core of our nature is fire, the fire that made us what we are, and Loki embodies that core. The Norse got it right: within us is every potential for greatness -- but also for evil and, ultimately, self-destruction.
For example, the Greeks told the story of Prometheus, the Titan who brought fire to Earth and gave it to humanity, and was punished for it by Zeus by being bound to a rock in Tartaros, where an eagle ate his liver every day, his liver growing back by the next day to have the same thing happen to him all over again. The Hindus tell of Agni, the Vedic God of fire and acceptor of sacrifices. And the Norse told of Loki, a God or Jötunn (or both), the Trickster Who was the spirit and avatar of fire on Earth.*
But there is one cultural history from which an origin-story of Fire is curiously absent: the Old Testament. Considering its age and the reverence given it by billions of people -- Muslims, Jews, and Christians -- the world over, this is indeed curious. Why is the birth of fire missing from that document, which tells the story of humanity from its creation by God up into the last few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era (A.D.)?
-- Or is it missing?
Genesis 3:1-6 tells the story of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and how it figured into the ultimate fate of Adam and Eve. To many scholars and others, that story symbolizes the discovery of the delights of sex and, perhaps, alcohol or other intoxicants as well by adolescent humans, and the troubles because of and guilt over it they endured afterward. But what about fire? Fire is a wonderful servant -- it enables us to cook our food, without which we could not preserve it or even eat many forms of it; by its aid, we can turn metallic ores into liquids that run like water and can be shaped into virtually any desired shape, and thus become magnificent and even deadly tools of far higher quality than those of bone, stone, wood, shell, or ivory; we can use it to heat our homes in the winter, flush fields with new herbs and forbs to draw game that we can then slaughter for our tables or corral to use as our domestic work-animals, and clear ground for agriculture and, at the same time, create fertilizer in the form of potent ash that will keep those fields fertile for several seasons before we have to do it all over again. But fire can also be used as a weapon -- a truly terrible one. And when, either by accident or human malice or nature's lightning, it gets loose in the world, it can wreak havoc, killing and maiming and leaving communities devastated. Fire is the central fact of human culture and civilization. After first taming it around 1.8 million years ago, our ancestors began putting together all the cultural innovations that would ultimately culminate in our modern high-energy, high-tech civilization, many of which depended absolutely on the use of fire for their creation and employment. Both great good and great evil have come from our taming and use of fire. It's possible that, as it does to certain other things, such as cannibalism, the Old Testament refers to the first creation and use of fire by humanity obliquely, and does so via Genesis 3:1-6.
I could easily be wrong. Have I somehow missed the origin story of fire in Genesis? If so, please let me know in the comments to this post.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*Of all the world's origin stories and mythologies about fire, the Norse truly nailed it. Loki, a Jötunn, is not a God of fire -- he is fire. Like fire seems to, he definitely has a mind and will of his own. He can do all sorts of amazing tricks, make the most wonderful artifacts, and come up with the greatest strategies and tactics for dealing with problematical situations, just as fire has countless uses we could scarcely do without -- but he can also be horribly destructive, again like fire. Whereas Prometheus was the benign being that gave us fire out of pity for us, living as we were in a cold, cruel world, and Agni is the Hindu Lord of Fire Who oversees the most exalted rituals, Loki is the Trickster who is, in a way, an accurate representative of humanity itself and all our wiles, our cleverness, our inventiveness, our inquisitiveness, our ingenuity, and our cruelty and rapaciousness and destructiveness. The very core of our nature is fire, the fire that made us what we are, and Loki embodies that core. The Norse got it right: within us is every potential for greatness -- but also for evil and, ultimately, self-destruction.